Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

it.
    Earl took his camera from around his neck and crossed with it to the window. Beyond the tattered curtains, the buildings cast their late-afternoon shadows across Mitchell Street. He focused, framing the shot to capture the disparity between the richest-of-rich and the poorest-of-poor. Maybe he’d do a series of photos on the theme. He clicked off four shots in rapid succession.
    He’d been told on occasion that his work looked like crime scene photos. The style had come to be known as urban evidentiary, a term the good-looking Beverly Hills gallery owner had coined to give Earl’s work a brand. Earl didn’t know what it meant exactly. But he had to admit, most of his work had a haunting, disturbing quality. Maybe something of his past, his own life, was wrapped up in it.
    Earl let the curtains fall shut. He was tired and had a dark sense of foreboding about his granddaughter. Melon was already lying quiet on the bed, maybe absorbing his dark mood from his master.
    Earl crossed back to the bed and set his camera on the nightstand. He stretched out on top of the covers next to Melon and closed his eyes.
    It was a little after four. He would nap until dark, then set out to find the girl.
    Just as she’d promised, Loretta was waiting at the curb when Earl and his dog came out of the hotel. It was a little after eight.
    She drove them north into midtown, telling Earl a little about the place they were headed. “Bo Peep’s Corral, mostly just topless lap dancin’ and all. But they’s a VIP room where you can get just about anything you want, you got enough money. You best watch yourself, though. This place,” she warned, “no place for a black man. This is still the South, sugar. And Peep’s is filled with rednecks.”
    “I’ll keep it in mind,” Earl said. “I just want to see if she’s there and know she’s all right.”
    “Just the same,” Loretta said.
    They arrived at the gentlemen’s club, which was in the trendier part of the city. A beefy young bouncer in a tuxedo that was tight across his chest stood, arms folded, at the entrance.
    “Maybe I better wait,” Loretta said.
    “I’m not planning on any personal services. I won’t be long.”
    “You want to leave your little buddy with me?”
    “No,” Earl said. “I almost lost him in a fire once. Now he goes where I go.”
    Earl slipped his dark glasses on and adjusted the camera around his neck. He withdrew a retractable white cane from his belt for good measure and extended it, then stepped out. “Jump!” he called. And Melon followed.
    At the entrance, the bouncer stopped him with a hand on his chest. He lifted Earl’s camera and looked at it; studied the dog at Earl’s side a minute. “Okay,” the bouncer said, and let them pass.
    The place was dark and smoke filled. Heavy-metal music blared from loudspeakers. A tall brunette, undressed down to her G-string and high heels, was on the runway, grinding her pelvis provocatively against a brass pole mounted center stage. Young women paraded past in scanty attire. Waitresses — Bo Peeps, one and all — moved about the room in exaggeratedly short blue-and-white-gingham skirts and belly-tied blouses. Young white boys lined the runway, mesmerized by the woman above them on the stage. Others sat brooding at tables in the dark, beyond the lights.
    Earl was the only black man in the place, he noticed. He tapped his way with the cane to the back. Melon followed at his cuff until Earl found a seat, then he curled up beneath his chair.
    “What can I get you?” a waitress said, appearing almost magically and before Earl’s butt had even adjusted to the hard chair. She was bent toward him, her tail jacked high by her spiked heels, showing lots of cleavage. A routine.
    “Glass of water,” he said, staying with his own routine, eyes off and distantly focused.
    “There’s a two-drink minimum. I’ll have to get you two and charge them like they’re beers,” she said.
    Earl nodded.
    The waitress went off to get his order.
    Earl sat, eyes skyward, pretending to use his ears to draw life from the sound-filled room. From time to time he would sneak glances at the faces of the young dancers who passed. There were two black girls among the exotic mix of women. One was just mounting the stage as the music shifted to a sultry beat, replacing the brunette who gathered up the tossed dollar bills on her hands and knees before slinking off, liquid-hipped, toward the back. The other black girl