Scam

he finds this girl?”
    “So he says.”
    “And you gotta listen to him, that’s why you won’t listen to me?”
    I exhaled. “I told you how it is. I’m trying not to make trouble. Just between you and me, those people I was talking to didn’t seem threatened at all. They thought it was great fun.”
    “Oh, they did, huh?” Sandy said.
    “Well, actually, only two out of three. The guy in the middle’s trying to hit on the girl. He thinks I’m a pain in the ass. But the other two think it’s fun.”
    The bartender’s eyes were hard. “It’s not fun. It’s business. You got your business, I got mine. Unfortunately, they conflict.”
    I shrugged. “What can I say?”
    “You’re telling me you won’t quit?”
    “I can’t.”
    “You mean your client won’t let you.”
    “Something like that.”
    “Because he wants to find this girl?”
    “Right.”
    Sandy frowned, pursed his lips.
    “What’s it worth to him?”

13.
    I SAT ACROSS THE TABLE from Darren Carter and watched him drink his incredibly expensive beer.
    Darren Carter was Sandy the bartender. The beer was incredibly expensive because we were in a topless bar.
    It was a fairly grungy affair around 20th Street and Eighth Avenue. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t hang out in topless bars, so I couldn’t tell you what an upscale one was like. But even with no means of comparison, this one was the pits.
    It was a second-floor walkup over a fish store, and the odor had a tendency to seep up. That was for starters. The place was also filthy. The floor was strewn with sawdust. In some bars that’s classy. Not here. Here it replaced sweeping. I didn’t even want to think what must be under it.
    The bar was poorly lit, except for the stage, where harsh lights glared. That’s where the girls performed. They wore high heels and garters and not much else. The high heels were so you could look up their crotch. The garters were so you could stuff money in. That’s what the guys next to the stage were doing.
    Sandy and I were not next to the stage. I told him if he wanted to sit there he was sitting alone, and any money he stuffed would be his own. Sandy didn’t seem to mind. In point of fact, he seemed somewhat embarrassed to be there.
    “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said.
    “Oh?”
    “You know, like I hang out in these places all the time. It’s not like that.”
    “I’m sure it isn’t.”
    He looked at me sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    I exhaled. Shook my head. “It doesn’t mean anything. I’m not here to judge you. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. Like I said, I’m just trying to do my job.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. I just broke up with my girlfriend, see. Almost two months now. The thing is, I’m a bartender. People get the idea, bartender in a singles bar, the women are all over him. They see Tom Cruise mixing drinks in a movie, so that’s the expectation, right?”
    “I’m with you there,” I said. “When I tell people I’m a detective, all they know is what they see on TV.”
    “Exactly,” Sandy said. “So you know. There’s this image to live up to. Unrealistic, you know. So I’m a bartender in a singles bar, what does that mean? I bust my ass mixing drinks. By the time I get off work, the girls that are looking for action have been hit on and are long gone.”
    “I never thought of it that way,” I said.
    The reason we were discussing Sandy’s sex life was we had already exhausted the more pertinent topics. Such as how come he hadn’t owned up to knowing the girl before. His answer, though somewhat incomplete and unsatisfactory, was probably true: a natural reluctance to divulge where he knew her from coupled with a disinclination to get involved in a customer’s personal life.
    His reason for aiding me now was also twofold: if I wasn’t going to let the matter drop, the quickest way to get rid of me was to give me what I wanted. And if anyone was going to profit from that, it might as well be him. Per agreement, Sandy stood to pick up a hundred bucks of Cranston Pritchert’s expense money if I scored.
    As for me, I was making fifty bucks an hour for looking at women’s breasts. Ordinarily, my favorite occupation. But there are breasts, and there are breasts.
    The way I understand it, the reason for the recent proliferation of topless bars was partly in response to the AIDS epidemic. As actual sex had become too risky, it had been