Strip Read online

  The men he had outsmarted and killed weren’t supposed to be his enemies. They were allies. For years Rogoso had been paying him big commissions for moving his drug profits through the banks, to make it clean. Rogoso had been a regular, dependable source of money. And having an alliance with a man like Rogoso had probably been one of the things that had protected Kapak and his businesses.

  That was gone now. Rogoso and his closest friends were dead. The big wooden beach house would be burning furiously now, would probably be dust and burned timbers in another half-hour. There wouldn’t be much left to conceal any papers that referred to Kapak or laundering money. For all Kapak knew, he might also have burned millions of dollars in cash and drugs, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Rogoso had decided he was weak and betrayed him.

  He was heading toward his house, but then he changed his mind. He didn’t want to go back and sit around in an empty house tonight. He needed to be out, to see people. He needed an alibi. If he hurried, he would be in one of his clubs in the Valley in fifteen minutes. He steered toward Temptress, which was a bit west of Siren, and closer to the 405 freeway. He took the exit at Sepulveda and drove along the straight, long road, timing the lights and keeping his eyes open for police cars.

  When he arrived outside Temptress, he parked his car close to the building, locked it, and hurried inside. He looked at his watch again. It was only 1:24. That was a little bit early for him to pick up the cash for the evening, but perfect for him to establish an alibi. He needed to be seen. He made a casual circuit of the bar and the tables, nodding at his employees or calling them by name and asking them how things were going.

  He took a seat just inside the bar and looked around him. The pounding beat of the music and the sight of the four girls who were on the small black stages across the big room didn’t hold him in the present. He looked at the club and remembered the first time he’d seen it.

  He had bought this building fifteen years ago, when he already had Siren and wanted to expand. The building had been a small factory and warehouse that made heavy packing cases for steel machine parts and screws and other devices that didn’t travel well in cardboard cartons. It had served the aircraft plants in Burbank and Long Beach, electrical equipment manufacturers in Hawthorne. But one by one, the big places had shut down until there wasn’t much to ship anymore.

  Kapak had picked up the property cheap and remodeled the building quietly, using small crews one at a time. On opening day he had carpenters bring in the refinished bar from a failed German restaurant and install the four brass stripper poles. At 5:00 P.M., before the sunset, the sign that said TEMPTRESS in red neon script went up on the roof. The first girls had been hired as dancers for Siren.

  Kapak watched the bar traffic for the final half-hour of the night. There were the usual number of young men who wanted to cheat the clock by ordering extra rounds of drinks at the end of the evening. He watched the waitresses scurrying from table to table to fill the last legal orders, scoop up their tips, and move on. He caught sight of Sherri Wynn across the room and thought about the payments on her Volvo. His gift to her hadn’t slowed her down.

  He got up and moved slowly through the crowded room past the girls working the poles. They seemed to have caught the same sense of urgency as the night ended, trying to attract the attention of the customers who were just breaking bills of large denomination they hadn’t planned to spend and receiving cash back from the waitresses and bartenders. He saw a couple of men decide not to put the money back in their pockets, but tip one or two of the dancers.

  The office was at the back of the building near the end of a corridor past the dressing rooms and the storerooms. Beyond it was only the kitchen, where he could see the cleanup was almost finished. The busboys and the kitchen floor man were mopping and wiping, and the dishwashers had the machines running hard. After closing, all that would be left were the last few racks of glasses from the late drinkers.

  He opened the office door and stepped inside. Dave Skelley was on his feet, counting and banding the night’s take and setting the bills in stacks. He said, “Salinas from Wash brought his night’s take over here. He said you were busy tonight and asked him to do it.”

  “That’s right. It turns out I’m not busy anymore. Somebody asked me to meet him, and then never showed up. Was Salinas worried about me?”

  “No. The only reason he told me was that I asked him where you were.”

  “Wasting my time is the answer. I’ll be back in a minute.” Kapak stepped out of the office into the bare corridor, but just as he was taking out his cell phone, the four dancers came toward him on their way to their dressing room. “Hi, Mr. Kapak.” “Hi, boss.” “Long night.” “So long.” They carried bits of fabric that had been parts of their costumes they’d picked up from the stage area as they’d left.

  He spoke in the direction of the whole group, his eyes at the level of their foreheads. There was an etiquette to talking to four naked women. “You’re doing a nice job for the club, ladies. I hope the tips were good.”

  “Not good enough.” It was the blond one whose name he kept forgetting. Mary Ann? Marian? Better not to guess and get it wrong.

  Kapak snatched his wallet out of his coat pocket and extracted four hundred-dollar bills. “A tip from the house. Thanks for your effort.” He handed each of them a bill and shrugged off two attempts to hug him. “Good night.”

  As soon as they disappeared into the dressing room, he used his cell phone to dial Salinas’s. “Hey. It’s me.”

  “Hi,” said Salinas.

  “Hey, pal. I wondered if Rogoso ever called the club tonight.”

  “No. I thought you went to see him.”

  “I went. They took me to a parking lot by the corner of Sepulveda and Roscoe where we’d met one time about a year ago, but Rogoso never showed up. I wondered if he had tried to reach me or anything.”

  “No, not that I know of.”

  “Well, okay. I didn’t want to bother you while you’re closing, but you know how it is.”

  “Yeah, sure. Anything else up?”

  “No. Good night.”

  Salinas and Kapak both hung up. Kapak felt as though he was covered now. He walked back out into the club and spent some time talking with the waiters, bartenders, and kitchen workers. The security people cleared the club, trying to be firm but still keep the atmosphere cheerful and calm. After a time, he saw the last four dancers leaving through the swinging doors to the kitchen. With their makeup washed off and in their sweatshirts and blue jeans and boots and sneakers, they had transformed themselves from magical creatures to ordinary, plain, tired women. Two of the security guards went out the kitchen door with them and returned after they had driven away.

  Kapak went back into the office, where Skelley the manager and Sherri Wynn had finished counting the money. Skelley said, “Twelve thousand seven hundred and seventeen in cash, nine thousand eight hundred and nine in credit and debit cards.”

  “The credit thing just keeps growing,” Kapak said. “When I got into this business it was all cash. Nobody wanted to give his card and have his wife see the monthly bill.”

  Sherri smiled. “Would you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I haven’t been married in about thirty years. I just can’t quite remember having a wife to catch me at things. What I’m wondering is if we ought to install an ATM machine in the back of each of the clubs by the telephones and see if we can get more cash. It might make more money for everybody who lives on tips.”

  Skelley shrugged. “I don’t know. I can call a few banks to see what they think.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll get started tomorrow,” Skelley said.

  Skelley finished the deposit slip for the money and put the cash and the slip in the canvas bag. “Well, this is done. You don’t want it driven to the bank anymore, right?”

  “Right. Two robberies outside that bank were eno
ugh for me. We’ll just keep everything in the safe at Siren and have a couple of guys stay with it all night. In a day or so we’ll work out another system that’s easier and less risky. Maybe we’ll have an armored car service come around each night and pick it up. Right now what I want is to be sure we don’t make it too easy for the bastards. We’ll do things a little differently each night.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Skelley said. He put the cash bag into a briefcase.

  “Want anybody to go with you?”

  “Nah,” said Skelley. “I think it’s safer alone. We’ve never done it this way, and so nobody expects it. Nobody notices one guy driving alone.” He and Kapak walked through the club to the parking lot.

  “No matter what, be careful,” Kapak said. “I don’t know what Carver is up to, or where he is at any moment, or how many people he has working with him. He could be out there somewhere in the dark, watching us right now and waiting for us to make a mistake. If it looks like somebody’s following you, drive right to the police station. If you can’t make it, toss the money out the window and let them chase it.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  He got into his car and gave a little wave, then drove off into the night. Kapak watched his taillights disappear, then went back into Temptress, where everyone but the bouncers had left for home. As he made his way back to the office, he considered telling the last couple of security men to go home, and then sleeping the night on the leather couch here. He stepped in and closed the door, then turned and saw that Sherri Wynn was perched on the edge of the desk again. “What’s up, Sherri?”

  “I thought I’d wait for you.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Not with me. You just seemed kind of lost tonight, as though you didn’t know what to do with yourself. Aimless, maybe.”

  He smiled, but his heart had stopped and then begun again. He had to persuade her that nothing was different.

  “Maybe it was the way you looked when you said you hadn’t been married in thirty years. Some nights a person just doesn’t feel like being alone.”

  He looked down at his feet, then back up at her. She went on. “I thought maybe you’d like to come over for a while. I’m not sleepy, and I could make you a midnight snack.”

  “Gee, Sherri, I don’t know. I’d like to go, but I wonder if it’s a good idea.”

  She shrugged. “What are you worried about?”

  “Is this because I gave you that bonus last night?”

  “You mean do I feel like I have to be nice to you because you gave me money? No.”

  “I didn’t give it to you because of something I wanted you to do. It was for things you’d already done. Good work, I mean. And being a cheerful person.”

  “It meant something to me to know you were paying attention to me. You noticed that I was working my ass off for the tips, and you knew that I had a few bills I was worried about, because I’d bought some things that I really couldn’t afford unless everything went perfect. And it doesn’t. It never fucking goes perfect for long. And I was in one of those bad times last night.”

  “So you’re trying to pay me back.”

  “I’m not doing that. I realized that I had a friend, and it felt good. You looked down tonight, so I’m just trying to show that you have one too.”

  “Sherri, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll admit it. I’m having one of those nights when I don’t feel like being alone.”

  “I could see that. I know you’re thinking about what you lose if you come over. Unless you’ve got a better-looking girl waiting in your car, you’ll lose nothing. Nobody will know, and I won’t remind you of it later. Just come over, and we’ll talk and have a drink, and relax a little. No promises, no pressure.”

  “Thanks, Sherri. You want to ride with me?”

  “No, thanks. I need my car tomorrow. You follow me. If you get lost, it’s 3907 Willow Oak Avenue in Sherman Oaks. Can you find it?”

  “Off Moorpark. Right?”

  “That’s it.”

  “3907.”

  She slid off the desktop and walked to the door. As she passed him, she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but he wasn’t sure how to interpret the glance. “See you in a few minutes.”

  “Right.”

  Kapak couldn’t help watching her as she went out. In the tight waitress uniform with the long stockings, she still looked good enough to attract the wistful eyes of the young customers. He wondered whether he was just making a fool of himself. He turned off the lights, locked the door, and went out through the club. He stepped behind the bar, surveyed the shelves in front of the long mirror, and picked up a bottle of Hennessy’s cognac. He looked at it, put it back, and then reached up to a higher shelf and took an unopened bottle of rare Armagnac that cost over three hundred dollars, took the bartender’s pad, and wrote on it, “I took one bottle Armagnac. Kapak.” He was careful to put a big diagonal line below the name, so nobody later could write in “and a case of Dom Perignon” or something. He walked out with the last security man and watched him lock up before he got into his car.

  Driving in the Valley at night was almost automatic for Kapak. He’d had various enterprises all over the more commercial parts of it, and he knew his way around. He arrived on Willow Oak just behind Sherri’s Volvo. He watched her pull it in the driveway and into a garage, then close the garage and lock it.

  He watched her walk up an exterior staircase to the upper floor on the left side of a double duplex, then switch on a light. Then he took his bottle and followed. He had been thinking about Sherri all the way here and wondering. He reached the top of the stairs and found the door open an inch, so he pushed it inward and stepped inside.

  Just as he was closing the door, she entered the kitchen. “You didn’t have to bring your own bottle. I have some things here to serve a guest.”

  He held his hands out to his sides in a helpless gesture. “After two A.M. it’s hard to find fresh flowers.”

  She smiled and shook her head to herself, then stood on her toes and reached up to a cabinet and took down two small aperitif glasses. “I don’t have snifters.” He uncorked the bottle and poured an inch for each of them. She lifted hers to the light. “It’s pretty, like amber.”

  He sniffed his. “Salud.”

  She sipped hers. “That’s nice. Come sit down.”

  He brought the bottle and followed her into the small living room, set it on the coffee table, and sat beside her on the couch that faced the dark television screen.

  “Thanks for inviting me over. Sometimes being the boss gets a little lonely. People get uncomfortable around you.”

  “I didn’t think I’d get you to come. I’ve heard the women you went home with were much younger.”

  He brushed the thought away. “How old are you?”

  “How old? Who tells men how old they are?”

  “I’m sixty-three.” He wasn’t sure why he had shaved one year off.

  She took a bigger sip of her drink. “Forty-one.” She watched him with intense, furtive eyes like a small, distrustful animal.

  “That wasn’t so hard. You’re twenty-two years younger than me, and you look terrific. You’ve got a sexy, healthy, woman’s body and a beautiful face. Be happy about who you are.”

  “Men like younger women, like the dancers at the club.”

  “Everything looks different from different spots. From where I am you’re young—in your prime right now. Most of the dancers could be my granddaughters. I look at the dancers sometimes, just to see how they’re doing—are they pretty enough? Is what they’re doing the right thing to keep the customers coming in the door? If it’s yes, then I start watching the bartenders.” He chuckled. “And the waitresses.”

  She nodded. “I’ve seen you do it.”

  “Too bad. I wasn’t always so clumsy that women knew I was staring at them.”

  “That’s part of being the boss. You lose your fear that people notice what you do.” She pointed at the bottle on
the coffee table. “That’s magical stuff.”

  “Why? Does it make me look good to you?”

  “No, it makes me look good to me again. I just noticed my reflection in the dark window, and I liked it.” She turned to look at him. “You just look the way you are.”

  “How?”

  “Strong.”

  “Are you divorced?”

  “You don’t see him here, do you?”

  “And you’ve been happier since then?”

  “I’ve lived alone in places like this and gone to work and come home again. After a year or so, I started to think it would have been better if I had pretended not to know about the girl, and not divorced him. By then I was serving alcohol in little costumes like this one. I had learned a lot that I didn’t know about normal male behavior. It occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t as bad as I’d thought he was. Fortunately it was too late to go back, so I saved my pride.” She sipped. “How about you?”

  “She came from Romania to Hungary like I did when we were students. Eventually we came here. We had two kids here, and I thought things were working out, but I got caught doing something foolish and went to jail for about a year. She went with somebody else.” He gulped his drink and refilled his glass, then hers.

  “That’s sad.”

  “Pay your taxes. That’s how they got me.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant her.”

  “It was a long time ago.” Kapak leaned close to Sherri and waited to see whether she would turn away and make it clear they were just having a drink together or if she would turn toward him to indicate she wanted him to kiss her.

  She turned her face toward him, lowered her right shoulder to bring her the rest of the way around, and their lips touched in a gentle kiss. After a moment he was ready to let her pull back and end it, but she didn’t. She put her arms around his neck and prolonged the kiss for a minute, and then pulled back only a few inches so she could see him. “You’re sweet.”

  “I like you, so I’m nice.” He shrugged.