Strip clubs are funny places. You get a bunch of men with negligible social skills drooling over a bunch of naked women with negligible reasoning skills, accompanied by a soundtrack composed by musicians with negligible composing skills. If you firebombed all the strip clubs in the world at once, the overall IQ of the human race would probably increase by an order of magnitude. Sadly, the guys who you’d ask to do the firebombing are all busy hanging out in strip clubs.
Anzia is stunned into silence by the performance techniques of the women here. Some of them have breasts bigger than her entire body. Remember kids: just because you can inflate a balloon that big, it doesn’t mean you should.
I find a bouncer and show him the card.
“Looking for Lava,” I say. “Private audience.”
He nods, heads off into the back. Anzia is staring at this giant blonde with sea shells on her nipples, as she plays out the role of Venus with all the acting finesse of a wedge of soggy cardboard. I think men who see this would mistake their shock and dismay for arousal. Based on the colour of Anzia’s cheeks, maybe she is, too.
The bouncer comes back and leads us into a back room with sparkly curtains and a pair of hand cuffs hanging from a horizontal pole along the wall. Anzia sits down on the unfortunately-stained chair, but I elect to keep my clothes clean. I put my hands in my pockets and wait.
A moment later, a woman enters in a flourish of red and yellow sequins, her dyed-red hair as natural as the rest of her. She poses for us, licks her lips greedily.
“Two for one is double the price,” she says.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I note.
“Who goes first?” she says, eyeing Anzia. Anzia clutches her tablet a little closer.
“Questions,” I say, flipping out the card again. “Seamus. You know him?”
“Seamus?” she asks, thinking hard. “I’m not sure…”
“He’s drunk.”
“All my clients are drunks.”
“Keeps them from noticing the rubber, right,” I sigh. “This Seamus hangs out in the Docks.”
She puts a finger to her mouth and starts fake-biting her nail. This is meant to suggest thinking and intelligence. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
“I think better with my clothes off,” she says, and Anzia covers her eyes.
“I’ll bet you do,” I say, and push her down onto her stool. “But first you need to answer some questions.”
She ‘rowr’s at me like a demented feral kitten, starts wriggling on her seat like she has to pee. I cannot for the life of me figure out why some people find this attractive. I’m too ashamed of the human race to be turned on.
“Ask me anything,” she purrs.
“Is your name really Lava?” Anzia asks.
Lava shudders with fake pleasure.
“Oh yes,” she says. “It’s because I’m so damn hot!”
“Your parents named you that?” gasps Anzia, obviously worried about what that would mean. Oh dear, she’s going to cry.
“Lava,” I say. “Seamus. Focus.”
She looks at me and unhooks one shoulder of her outfit. Anzia slides closer to me, hiding behind my arm.
“I know Seamus,” she says. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you always want to be a stripper?” Anzia asks, peering around my jacket carefully.
Lava smiles at her, unhooks another shoulder. Her rack is too big to let the thing fall off, but it’s a pretty good tease. Anzia is whimpering, the poor thing.
“You want the truth?” Lava asks with as much sexuality as grated celery. Oh, sorry, too soon. “You do, don’t you?”
Anzia shudders. “Sure.” She’s squeaking. How cute.
“I wanted to be a medical copywriter,” says Lava. “That was my dream, growing up.”
“Why did you change your mind?” Anzia asks.
“When she realized she’s dumb as fuck,” I say.
Lava nods, pushes up her boobs.
“And then I got these. And the rest is history!”
I clap my hands together to get her attention. “Hey! Focus! Seamus! Come on! We’re on a schedule here, I think.”
Lava drops her top, waves her chest around. I purposely stare straight into her eyes. I can tell she’s not used to it. She starts to squirm.
“Seamus,” I repeat.
“Seamus,” she says. “Seamus has a friend. They come in together all the time.”
“What’s this friend’s name?”
“The Squirrel.”
Well, at least I don’t have to make up a snarky nickname for once. Ready-made! That’s efficiency!
“Where’s the Squirrel live?”
“I don’t—”
“Oh please,” I snap. “I saw your rate card. House calls are $75 and up.”
She says nothing for a second. I check my watch, sigh impatiently. It takes her a whole five minutes to figure out the pen enough to write down the address.
It turns out the Squirrel lives in the shit part of town. Well, the shittier part. It’s all pretty crap, but he picked the ass end of the crap. When they made this area, way back in the ‘20s, the architect in charge was brought downtown and drawn and quartered, because it was just that obvious he’s royally screwed the pooch, conceptually-speaking.
The Squirrel’s front door is open, but all the doors in the building were open too, probably to keep burglars from the inconvenience of picking locks. Even thieving bastards have morals, you know.
Inside, the place is more of a mess than Lava’s childhood. Stacks of DVDs line the walls, all precariously balanced against each other like a leaning tower of obsoleteness. I take one of them down. It appears to be Mongolian power pop. I didn’t realize they had electricity in Mongolia, let alone power pop.
“Why are they all wearing spare tires?” Anzia asks, staring at another DVD case with wide open eyes. “And is that… is that a yak?”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I say, putting the DVD back. From the looks of it, Seamus and the Squirrel are dealing in pirated Mongolian DVDs. I think the odds of their being able to pull of a jewel heist just went down something fierce.
“Hey!” shouts a voice from behind, and we turn to see a thin weasel of a man coming through the door with a massive box of condoms. I don’t think he understands what they’re for. He can’t possibly be getting any.
“You’re the Squirrel?” I ask, crossing my arms in a way that’s meant to imply toughness, but probably doesn’t.
“That’s right!” barks the Squirrel. “Who are you?”
“A friend of Seamus’,” I say. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
The Squirrel throws himself down onto his sofa, kicking a few DVDs off. He sticks one hand down his pants, gets a big grin on his face. Anzia turns away very quickly.
“Shoot,” he says.
“You deal in Mongolian shit, right?” I ask.
“That’s right. I got Night of the Yakman. Both versions. Fifty bucks.”
“No thanks,” I say. “What I want to know is whether you ever deal in anything besides DVDs.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Jewels.”
He starts to laugh, and then chokes on his own spittle and falls off the sofa.
“Jewels?” he cackles. “Nah, man! If it ain’t yakky, it ain’t for us!”
I scratch my chin, look around again. Dead end. Perfect.
“Though you know… Seamus might be doin’ some of that stuff on the side.”
Anzia and I both look over at once. Things just got interesting.
“Do tell,” I say.
“Well, he works with this other guy. Bigger things. All sortsa shit I don’t know about. Does pretty good for himself, too.”
“I could tell,” I say. “You know the name of this other guy?”
The Squirrel squints, looking into the depths of his very shallow intellect, in a vain attempt to recall the answer. Then, with a poof of excitement, he gets it!
“I gots it!” he says. “It’s Jimmy! Jimmy Scaz!”
Anzia catches me as I stumble back.
“What is it?” she whispers. “Do you know him?”
“Yeah,” I grumble. “Do I ever.”
