Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

friends. She gave me three names. Bill Allred’s was the first.
    The picture of Vogue that emerged from his three colleagues was remarkably similar. They respected him as a highly capable parole board member and administrator. In his personal life, the picture they painted was of a man of high moral character, devoted to family, church, and community.
    None of his colleagues recalled Vogue being upset or distracted by anything in the days preceding his murder. They were unable to identify anyone who disliked him or who might have wanted to see him dead.
    As I left the Board of Pardons, I asked Gallagher to secure Vogue’s office and not let anyone in without obtaining authorization from me or Kate McConnell. He agreed.

Chapter Six
    My next stop was the Starlite Motel. Before I got there, my cell phone rang. It was Kate.
    “I wondered if I might interest you in a front-row seat at Levi Vogue’s autopsy? It’s scheduled for one o’clock this afternoon.”
    “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll pass.”
    “Chicken?”
    “Absolutely.” I had long since developed a strong aversion to attending autopsies. I’ve never gotten used to the smell of a ripe corpse. When I couldn’t avoid them, I always attended smoking a strong cigar. And I don’t even smoke.
    I agreed to meet Kate later in the evening so we could review what we had learned that day.
    ***
    I arrived at the Starlite Motel and contacted the manager, Frank Arnold. The motel was not one I considered upscale, but it wasn’t bad either, considering the surrounding neighborhood.
    Arnold was an older man with a ruddy facial complexion that probably belied years of serious drinking. The one thing that stood out about him was a voluminous nose. It looked like it have been broken on more than one occasion, but nonetheless, would have made Karl Malden envious.
    I introduced myself, showed him a picture of Levi Vogue, and asked if he recognized the photo.
    “I wondered if you guys might be coming around. It sure as shit didn’t take you long.”
    “So you do know him?”
    “Well, not exactly, but I have seen him come in a few times. He usually doesn’t stop here at the front desk. He typically drives in and goes straight back to one of our guest rooms.”
    “To meet someone, I presume? You wouldn’t happen to know the name of the fair maiden?”
    “You know,” replied Arnold, “I ain’t under any fuckin’ obligation to talk to you, am I?”
    “No, sir. You surely aren’t.”
    “In that case, you come back later and talk to the lady who owns this place. She comes in around three in the afternoon. Her name is Lou Ann Barlow. She knows a helluva lot more about this than I do.”
    “And why is that?”
    “Because the young lady you’re referring to happens to be Lou Ann’s daughter. I live with Lou, and I ain’t gettin’ involved. Christ, she’ll toss my sorry ass out on the street if she thinks I’ve been talkin’ outa school.”
    “Yeah, I can understand that, and I’ll be happy to come back later. But, surely you can give me her name—not much harm in that.”
    “I suppose that’s true. Her name is Sue Ann Winkler. She works as a dancer in a club called Satin & Lace.”
    “How did she meet Levi Vogue?”
    “I don’t know for sure, but they probably met at the club. That’s how Sue Ann meets most of her male friends. And I don’t have a clue whether an exchange of money was a regular part of the friendship, if that’s your next question.”
    Unlike most of the Salt Lake strip clubs that served alcohol and required the dancers to wear pasties and a t-bar on the lower extremities, Satin & Lace didn’t serve alcohol. It was a nude club. Strip joints like this are known as “pop shops” in the trade. The dancers perform on stage and are encouraged to sell customers table dances and private sessions in private rooms. The rooms are monitored with cameras to provide security for the dancer and to enforce the no hanky-panky rule. Of course, whatever arrangement a dancer makes with a customer outside the club usually goes unnoticed. That’s not to say that the hanky-panky rule is always enforced by the club’s management. Police vice squads know that the private rooms provide safe harbor for hand-jobs, oral sex, and even intercourse.
    I recognized that Vogue’s apparent involvement with a local stripper might be completely unrelated to his murder; however, I couldn’t ignore it. Perhaps there was another side to Levi Vogue—a more