you to VIP ’em. No way Salami could hold on to serious staff.”
I said, “No VIP lounge at The Aura.”
He laughed. “Not hardly.”
“Salawa said there was a bouncer named Del something.”
“DelRay Hutchins. You guys follow the Olympics?”
“Some of it.”
“DR powerlifted on the 1990 team. Guy could dead close to eight hundred pounds, back in those days he could’ve qualified for one of those World’s Strongest Man competitions. Not anymore, Eddie Hall just went eleven hundred pounds. But Eddie’s Eddie and who wants to bulk up to four-hundred-plus and wear a breathing machine?”
Milo said, “Del worked with you for how long?”
“Maybe the last couple weeks I was there,” said Johnson. “Nice person. There were also some foreign guys—Russians, Finns, Croats, a massive dude from Morocco, an Israeli into that Krav Maga. Mostly older dudes, doing it part-time for a retirement gig, can’t tell you their names. Soon as I found out the Roxy was hiring, I got the heck out of there. Door work wasn’t my main focus, anyway. After a couple of years at Cal State L.A. and the weights team, I transferred to Tulane and got to defensive tackle. The NFL would’ve been nice but not with my injured ACL.”
He massaged the back of one leg. “The goal was to get myself a high school coaching thing or build a career as trainer. I ended up with training, best thing ever happened.”
He checked the time on his phone. “Five more minutes. Brentwood client’s a producer’s wife with an eating disorder. She is not into waiting.”
Milo said, “What can you tell us about Kimba?”
“Good looking, quiet, like I said, not putting on any sexy moves onstage—basically she’d get up and fake it. Can’t blame her, the losers coming in there weren’t exactly stuffing Benjamins in g-strings.”
I said, “Going through the motions.”
“Minimal motions,” said Johnson. He got to his feet with astonishing speed and grace, rounded his back. Letting his arms sag, he sidestepped to the right, the left, then back.
“The shuffle, you know? Like guys who can’t dance but they’re with a hot girl who can so they try to be part of it? That was her. Back and forth.”
He sat back down and took another swig of vegetable matter.
I said, “Low-key and quiet.”
James Johnson thought about that. “Not unfriendly-quiet. More like…reserved. She’d come in and say hi but she wasn’t like the others.”
“Not a lot of reserved dancers.”
Johnson smiled. “I did it long enough so I can generalize. Girls like that, they’re basically show-offs—exhibitionists. Same deal with actresses—some of the dancers still think they can become actresses.”
I said, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.”
“Exactly. Look at my body, look at my sexy face, look at my moves. Kimba wasn’t into that—oh, yeah, she dressed different, too. I’m not talking her stage stuff. What she wore when she arrived.”
He smiled. “Guess that’s what you meant by jogging the memory.”
I said, “What were her street clothes?”
“Baggy sweaters, jeans, running shoes. No makeup, hair in a high pony. Okay, here’s something—another jog. She carried a backpack instead of one of those big fake designer things the other girls were into.”
“Did her being different lead to conflict?”
“Not that I ever saw. But like I told you, I am not the expert, here. She definitely didn’t hang with the other girls. In between shifts, the rest of them would be drinking or smoking or on the phone or doing their nails, whatever. Kimba would go into a corner, take a book out of her backpack, and read. Or she’d write something in a book, like a diary.”
“Maybe a puzzle book?”
“Hmm,” said Johnson. “Yeah could’ve been a Sudoku, crossword, word search, something like that. Jamie—my husband—gets into bed with one of those numbers thing and…” He mimed a giant yawn and grinned. “So, yeah, maybe. I wasn’t paying close attention.”
He took another look at his phone. “Two minutes.”
I said, “What car did Kimba drive?”
“Some compact, Toyota, Honda, they all look the same to me. Gray, maybe? Or brown? Or blue? Honestly, I wasn’t paying attention. Now I really have to go.”
He stood, took car keys out of a pocket, and faced the Macan.
Milo said, “Just one more thing, sir. Do you have DelRay Hutchins’s number handy?”
“No reason I would. What I can tell you is I think he moved to Lancaster. He got himself a high school football thing.”
Milo thanked him again and handed over his business card. “Anything else comes to mind, sir, please call.”
“Sure. Kimba a victim.