No Regrets

desires and need to hurt someone were almost beyond the comprehension of the normal mind. One trauma doctor commented that her body was far more damaged than those of most murder victims at autopsy.
    Despite her broken teeth and jaw, Arden managed to tell Pat Lamphere that the man who had hurt her had had no weapon beyond the rope which he’d carried in his pocket. She had seen him pull the rope out, and before she could stop him, he slipped it over her head. And then he’d cinched it tightly around her neck to make her obey him.
    The only link between Arden and her attacker appeared to be the Korea Tavern. Pat Lamphere and Detective John Nordlund started there. They had to wait until the daytime bartender came on shortly before noon. The woman behind the bar said that her brother was the night bartender, and he was proably the one who knew Arden. “I’ll call him at home and have him come down,” she said. “But I can’t think of any ‘Indian George’ who comes in here. There’s only one ‘George’ who comes in, and he’s not Native American. Maybe my brother will know more.”
    Yung Kim agreed with his sister. There wasn’t any “Indian George,” only a man named George who was employed as a bouncer at the Exotica Studio at Seventh and Pike. Nordlund and Lamphere exchanged glances. The Exotica was a thorn in the side of the Vice Squad; it operated just on the edge of what was legal and often crossed the line. There were a number of “businesses” in the area that were not what they purported to be, using facades to disguise what really went on beyond their doors. Most were massage parlors. Others offered “mattress demonstrations,” and the Exotica claimed to be a dance studio, with dance “lessons” performed by the women whoworked there. Almost all of the storefront businesses were thinly disguised houses of prostitution. There were always women and runaway teenagers desperate to make money just to pay their rent and buy groceries. The owners of the sex-oriented businesses assured them that their tips would more than make up for the minimum hourly wage they got. But it didn’t turn out that way. The men who managed the tawdry enterprises kept any big money that changed hands.
    The Exotica practiced a kind of bait-and-switch policy. Many male customers left without ever getting what they thought they were paying for.
    Even though patrol officers working along Pike Street kept a close eye on the Exotica, its windows stopped traffic day and night, because garishly made-up young women undulated behind the glass, beckoning to the men who walked and drove by to stare at them in their tight, short, transparent clothing. However, once the men were enticed inside, they were told that it would cost them forty dollars to view a “program” in one of the private rooms. They were promised “interpretive dancing.”
    “What’s that?” one potential customer asked.
    One of the dancers explained: “It’s however you interpret it.”
    Borrowing from the old carny routine where the rubes were asked to pay more and more for each new revelation, the men who were gullible enough and had enough cash to get as far as the private rooms were given a new price. “The forty dollars goes to the house,” the women were told to say. “We make our living from ‘donations.’ They begin at fifty dollars.”
    Some of the customers balked at that point, but many put up more money. They were then allowed to disrobe ifthey liked—and to lie on a couch to watch. The dancers stripped then to their bikini underwear and performed their interesting—if untrained—dancing.
    But that was all there was. Ostensibly there was no touching. When the “program” was over, the customers were left as unsatisfied as they were when they came in. Some were only disappointed, but most of them were very angry. Many of the women were frightened at the rage that erupted. To keep them from quitting, the Exotica managers grudgingly installed a thick pellucid screen between the plate-glass windows and the half-naked dancers.
    Several irate patrons of the dance studio returned to the Exotica after being ripped off, and they threw rocks to smash the windows. One man was so angry that he came back with a jackhammer and broke out two of the expensive windows, showering the dancers and the customers inside with shards of glass. Then, with a smile of satisfaction, he waited for the police to come and take him away.
    The Exotica managed to