Catch a Falling Knife

my eye open for talent,” Lefty said. “And I know it when I see it. Can you dance, Sandra?”
    “We’ll negotiate her contract later,” I said. “Right now, we believe there’s a couple in your audience that we’d like to keep an eye on.”
    “No sooner said than done,” Lefty said. “Follow me.”
    He led the way out of the dressing room. Cherub said she’d watch Winston and he was willing to stay with her because she had agreed to show him her car keys. Sandra and I followed Lefty along a hallway I hadn’t traversed before and up a flight of stairs I didn’t even know existed. At the top of the stairs I saw a closed door. Lefty opened it and led us into a room with a large window that overlooked the whole club below, including the stage, the bar and the audience.
    “It’s a mirror on the other side,” Lefty said. “We can see them, but they can’t see us. It’s for security, but I also use it as a VIP lounge, for folks who don’t want to mix with the riffraff.”
    There were several tables in our room, with chairs around them. It took our eyes a minute to adjust to the dim lighting of the scene before us. The spotlit stage, to our left, was the brightest area. We had a good view of a dancer who was doing her best to captivate the multitudes. The pounding beat of the music vibrated the glass of the window. As I became able to pick out the faces of individuals in the mostly-male audience, I noticed that while many of the men were watching the dancer with more-or-less rapt attention, some seemed to be more interested in their drinks and others were conversing and ignored her altogether. What must that do to her self-esteem?
    “There they are,” Sandra said, pointing toward the back of the room.
    Her young eyes had found Mark and Donna before mine could focus that far away. They were sitting at a small table, side by side, but definitely not touching each other. They had glasses in front of them, probably beer, and Donna seemed to be talking to Mark, in competition with the music.
    “I wish we could hear what they’re saying,” I said.
    “This has something to do with the Shooting Star, doesn’t it?” Lefty said, as he recognized Mark.
    I nodded.
    “I’ll tell you what we can do. I’ll invite them up here to the skybox. I’ve got this room miked. We can listen to what they’re saying in my office.  I’ll tell them it’s to make the lady more comfortable, since there aren’t many of them in the audience. And drinks are on the house.”
    “That will convince Mark,” I said. “He doesn’t have much money.”
    “That other window overlooks the lap-dancing area,” Lefty said, pointing to an adjacent wall. Would you like to take a look at what’s happening there before we go downstairs?”
    “Thanks, we’ll pass,” I said, quickly, before Sandra figured out what he was talking about.

Chapter 30
     
    The first snatches of conversation we heard were between Mark and Donna and the waitress who had guided them up to the skybox, as Lefty liked to call it. She offered them another round of drinks, free. Mark, who sounded somewhat puzzled as to why they were getting special attention, said they would have one more round.
    When the waitress left we listened, intently, for what we didn’t know. Lefty, Sandra and I were standing in his cramped office, too nervous to sit, while he adjusted knobs on an amplifier that projected their voices through several speakers. At first we heard nothing except occasional notes of the music from the main room. Then Donna spoke.
    “I’m glad they brought us up here,” Donna said. “It’s easier to talk and easier to see the disgusting things that girl is doing. That’s what Elise did. You can see that any girl who would do things like that wasn’t worthy of your attention. I would never do anything like that.”
    Mark didn’t reply at first. Donna prattled on in the same vein.
    Finally, Mark said, “If what these girls do is so disgusting, why did you pretend to be the Shooting Star?”
    There was a pause, during which we strained to hear.
    Then we heard Donna say, “Elise was my best friend. I…was just trying to protect her memory. You know how her father felt. What if he had found out that she was the Shooting Star? I wanted…”
    “Now wait a minute, Donna.” Mark’s voice drowned hers out. “You told Lillian—Dr. Morgan—and me that you were the one who told Elise’s father that she was the Shooting Star. So how can you say you