Piss and Vinegar

There wasn’t much evidence to go by, not enough for my liking at least. Just an empty club, the maelstrom remnants of a dried out party, a skinny girl, a fat man and a very dead body.

   It wasn’t much, no, but I’d worked with less and come through the other end all right.

   The victim was tall and blonde, with a delicate face — handsome in a feminine, modelish sort of way. An Adonis. No signs of a struggle, but above his left breast, just visible through the open collar of his pink button-down shirt, was a welt, red and angry.

   I knelt next to him and pulled open the shirt. It was more than just a welt. It had the hot, blistered look of a bad sunburn. More startling, it was shaped perfectly like a handprint, as though someone had given him a shove with a hand-shaped branding iron. There wasn’t a mark on him otherwise. I’d seen things on the streets of Prague that’d make your skin crawl. I’d never seen something like this.

   A shadow fell over me, so I glanced up. A fat man in a damn expensive suit stood looking down, all piss and vinegar.

   The fat man spoke. He was the owner of the place, rich as fuck and as polite as you’d expect of his sort. “I’ve got a group of gentlemen coming in tonight who’re worth more than whatever shit town your mother raised you in. I don’t care who killed this cizinec. You’re going to make sure this place is open tonight, like none of this nonsense happened. I’ve got a reputation to keep.”

   “So do I,” I said. I didn’t tell him I was born in Prague, the same “shit town” that fed his gluttonous bank account. It wouldn’t do to make him angry, huh? At least not yet.

   By night the club was like any other in my city – a glitzy veneer of beautiful women, expensive drinks and lustful expressions painted with heavy strokes over top the reality of cocaine lines, high-class prostitution and fortunes lost and won through lucrative, alcohol-fueled foreign business deals. The Velvet Revolution had thrown my country from the pan into the fire, as they say, and sometimes it was hard to recognize it as the place I’d lived all my life. Still, it was better now. If you look at it from some certain angles. I guess.

   “Get it done,” the fat man said. “We’re opening those doors tonight.”

   “You’re not concerned that somebody was killed here last night, in your club?” I said.

   “Get it done.” He walked away, towards a plain door that led to the bowels of the building. Before he left through the fluorescent glow of the doorway, he snapped at the young girl behind the bar, literally snapped his fingers at her, and pointed a blunt finger my way. “Help him,” he said.

   She glanced my way, a bland look on her face, then took off the apron wrapped round her slim waist. The owner of the club stomped off through the door and left us alone. Just me and the pretty lady.

   “You’re here about him?” she said, jabbing a thumb at the body.

   She was like any other girl that worked at a place like this – pretty face, but nothing special, made exotic by the pulsing, toxic light of the night club. Dressed to entice, but no false-promises. Dark hair and sharp features made her look Slavic, her accent confirmed it. Likely, she pulled in more cash on a good night than I made in a week. She knew it, too.

   “Yes. You were here last night?” I asked. Easier to treat her as a piece of evidence than a pretty girl. I’m a lonely aging bastard, and I don’t need my dying hormones distracting me.

   “I might as well sleep in this shit hole,” she said.

   Most people I knew couldn’t even afford to pay cover for a club like this. Shit hole, indeed. “So you were here?”

   “Yeah. I’m always here.”

   “You’re not from here, from Prague or the Česká republika.” I made it a statement more than a question.

   “Pavol brings girls in from every corner. We deal with an international clientele here.”

   “You speak our language well. It’s not an easy one to wrap your tongue around.”

   “I’ve wrapped my tongue around much worse. I’ve been here a long time.”

   “How about him? Where was he from?” My turn to jab a finger at the victim.

   “Him? Tongue’s never been wrapped around any bit of him.” A damn devilish smile. “Blonde hair like that? Sweden. Norway, maybe?”

   His wallet, which was in the breast pocket of his jacket when I first searched the body, had no ID, but there were a couple of Swiss-issued credit cards, a few thousand koruna, a handful of euros and (the girl had good instincts) Swedish krona.

   “You didn’t talk to him?”

   “No. Margaret had a pull on him all night. She made out like a bandit, ’fore he died, I guess.”

   “Is she around? Margaret?”

   “Do you see her? You’d notice if she were, a rack like that.”

   “You know her cell number?”

   Surprisingly, she gave it to me. I rang the number, but got only voice mail. A quick message in Czech then a longer one in English. Sounded like she might be from Britain.

   “Not home?” the waitress asked.

   “No. No answer.”

   “Probably sleeping.”

   “Probably,” I said, but made a mental note to visit her apartment after I left the club.

   Awkward silence. Not something I was unfamiliar with in the realm of beautiful women.

   “He was supposed to be an asshole,” she said, finally.

   He looked like an asshole. Soul-patch, but smooth-cheeked. Even in death he had that cocky smile reserved for the rich, young and beautiful.

   “Asshole enough that he’d get himself killed?” I asked.

   “He’s got money, doesn’t he? Half the guys in here are a business move away from a bullet in the gut.”

   “Drug dealer?” I asked. He didn’t look the type, but sometimes it was hard to tell.

   “No. Clean as a whistle, if you ask Margaret. She’s always lookin’ for new clients. Especially when they’ve got money like him.”

   “You didn’t see anything last night?”

   “No. I found him dead here, this morning.”

   “I need to talk to Margaret.”

   “Yeah. Probably you do.”

   “You mind if I poke around?”

   “No. Pavol might.”

   “If I run into him, I’ll ask.”

   “Suit yourself.”

   She went back to whatever it is a pretty girl in a bar does before the doors open. People were coming to claim the body, run some tests. Could be drugs, no matter what she said. But that handprint told me it wasn’t.

   I followed in the footsteps of the fat owner and moved to the back of the building, hoping for some clues or, if I was really lucky, a stone-drunk murderer ready to spill his confession. Those aforementioned bowels of the building, where all of the club’s real dirty work happened, were surprisingly sterile. It’s like the club had an enema, knowing I was about to show up. Flushed all the shit. Doorways lined a long hallway, portals to the private rooms – to a heaven or hell (depending on who you ask) of sin, sex and spirits.

   I poked my head through a couple of doors. Some were large rooms, meant for private parties. Others were nothing more than hole-in-the-wall closets, a bed and little else. Mirrors were popular among the clientele, it seemed. So was silk.

   I found nothing of interest. They’d cleaned the rooms, and the victim had died in the main hall – dropped dead in the middle of a sweat-slicked crowd of dancers. If I hoped to learn anything, I needed to find the other girl, Missing Margaret. If she’d caught his eye, spent the night with him (or part of it), she might be just the evidence I was looking for.

   I passed through the main hall. A crew had arrived to remove the body and I stopped briefly to speak with them. They had a good look at the hand-print when I showed it to them, but said nothing.

   The body was done quickly, and I was finished with the club. I didn’t bid farewell on the way out, just left my card on the bar. The waitress and the fat owner weren’t around.

   Time to find my main girl Margaret.

   I stepped out of the unassuming doorway onto the street and squinted as sunshine washed over me. It was a cold morning in Prague and clear as you could ask for. A few steps down the sidewalk I bumped into another pedestrian, dark against the molten city.

   I mumbled an apology and tried to step around him. He stepped into my way again, bumping into me this time. He said something in a language I couldn’t understand. Middle Eastern, maybe.

   He stepped into the shade of the building, still blocking my way. I could see him clearly now — He was tall, wearing sweats and an old baseball cap turned backwards. A lean body, the subtleties in the way he held himself whispered of easy confidence. Dangerous bravado. His eyes were golden, cold as the day. Breath plumed from his mouth, hiding a twisted smile.

   “You poke your head in the wrong places,” he said, in thick-tongued Czech.

   Without another word, he lifted an arm and put a hand to my chest, fingers pressed lightly against my left breast.

Copyright © Aidan Moher, 2010