The Enemy

Tell her there’s no real problem. Tell her nobody will get in trouble. I think you’ll find she understands that.”
    “Or?”
    “Or I’ll roust everybody out of here and I’ll burn the place to the ground. Then you can all find jobs somewhere else.”
    She glanced at the velvet curtain again.
    “Don’t worry about the fat guy,” I said. “Any pissing and moaning out of him, I’ll bust his nose again.”
    She just sat still. Didn’t move at all.
    “It’s important,” I said again. “We fix this now, nobody gets in trouble. We don’t, then someone winds up with a big problem.”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    “Spread the word,” I said. “Ten minutes.”
    I bumped her off my lap and watched her disappear through the curtain. Followed her a minute later and fought my way to the bar. I left my jacket hanging open. I thought it made me look off duty. I didn’t want to ruin everybody’s evening.

    I spent twelve minutes drinking another overpriced domestic beer. I watched the waitresses and the hookers work the room. I saw the big guy with the face moving through the press of people, looking here, looking there, checking on things. I waited. My new blonde friend didn’t show. And I couldn’t see her anywhere. The place was very crowded. And it was dark. The music was thumping away. There were strobes and black lights and the whole scene was confusion. The ventilation fans were roaring but the air was hot and foul. I was tired and I was getting a headache. I slid off my stool and tried a circuit of the whole place. Couldn’t find the blonde anywhere. I went around again. Didn’t find her. The Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to before stopped me halfway through my third circuit.
    “Looking for your girlfriend?” he said.
    I nodded. He pointed at the dressing room door.
    “I think you just caused her some trouble,” he said.
    “What kind of trouble?”
    He said nothing. Just held up his left palm and smacked his right fist into it.
    “And you didn’t do anything?” I said.
    He shrugged.
    “You’re the cop,” he said. “Not me.”
    The dressing room door was a plain plywood rectangle painted black. I didn’t knock. I figured the women who used the room weren’t shy. I just pulled it open and stepped inside. There were regular lightbulbs burning in there, and piles of clothes, and the stink of perfume. There were vanity tables with theater mirrors. There was an old sofa, red velvet. Sin was sitting on it, crying. She had a vivid red outline of a hand on her left cheek. Her right eye was swollen shut. I figured it for a double slap, first forehand, then backhand. Two heavy blows. She was pretty shaken. Her left shoe was off. I could see needle marks between her toes. Addicts in the skin trades often inject there. It rarely shows. Models, hookers, actresses.
    I didn’t ask if she was OK. That would have been a stupid question. She was going to live, but she wasn’t going to work for a week. Not until the eye went black and then turned yellow enough to hide with makeup. I just stood there until she saw me, through the eye that was still open.
    “Get out,” she said.
    She looked away.
    “Bastard,” she said.
    “You find the girl yet?” I said.
    She looked straight at me.
    “There was no girl,” she said. “I asked all around. I asked everybody. And that’s what I heard back. Nobody had a problem last night. Nobody at all.”
    I paused a beat. “Anyone not here who should be?”
    “We’re all here. We’ve all got Christmas to pay for.”
    I didn’t speak.
    “You got me slapped for nothing,” she said.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for your trouble.”
    “Get out,” she said again, not looking at me.
    “OK,” I said.
    “Bastard,” she said.
    I left her sitting there and forced my way back through the crowd around the stage. Through the crowd around the bar. Through the bottleneck entrance, to the doorway. The guy with the face was right there in the shadows again, behind the register. I guessed where his head was in the darkness and swung my open right hand and slapped him on the ear, hard enough to rock him sideways.
    “You,” I said. “Outside.”
    I didn’t wait for him. Just pushed my way out into the night. There was a bunched-up crowd of people in the lot. All military. The ones who had trickled out when I came in. They were standing around in the cold, leaning on cars, drinking beer from the long-neck bottles they had carried out with