The Dog Collar Murders (8 page)

I guessed this was my chance to find out.

Some of the pictures turned me on, I couldn’t deny it. All that lust, everywhere I looked: men doing things to men, women doing things to men, men doing things to women, women doing things to women, everybody with large primary and secondary sexual characteristics and everybody with their eyes bulging out in carnal delight. Still, after a bit, it palled. As Abby had said, there
was
a lot of bondage and domination. It wasn’t just women being dominated by men however; there were lots of pictures of dominatrixes (in black leather of course) grinding a sharp stiletto heel in some poor slob’s back.

After about thirty minutes my curiosity had turned from lust to queasiness to a sad feeling that human beings had been created for another purpose than to loll around with their tongues sticking out, having their various orifices and protruberances photographed and sold for great sums of money. I didn’t know what that purpose was—I didn’t think we had been created to participate in television game shows either—but it had to be different from this.

I was just replacing a magazine called
Lesbian Enema Lust
on the rack when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Well, Pam, I never expected to find
you
in a place like this.”

It was Miko, wearing a short leather jacket, skin tight purple stretch pants and tall, embossed boots.

I was so taken aback that
Lesbian Enema Lust
fell from my hand. Miko picked it up.

“Wow,” she said. “I’ve never seen this one before. Does Hadley know you’re here?”

“Leave Hadley out of this.” My voice had returned. “It’s my own business what I’m doing here. And another thing, I’m sick of you chasing after Hadley.”

Miko seemed flabbergasted in her turn. “Me—running after Hadley? You must be imagining things. She’s not my type and even if she was, it’s clear the two of you are a couple. I may not be into monogamy, but I’m not into triangles.”

“Well, then why are you always flirting with her? And asking her to come see your sex videos?”

“Oh, I do that with everyone,” Miko laughed. “It’s just how I am. It’s PR. Remember, I invited you too.”

I didn’t know whether to let myself be mollified. Maybe she was just trying to throw me off the track.

“Well, what are
you
doing here?” I asked her.

“Me? I come here all the time. Sometimes I rent a video, or see what the new magazines are. I buy my copies of
On Our Backs
and
Bad Attitude
here. Do you ever read them?”

“What are they?”

“Lesbian sex magazines. They’re a lot of fun. The photography could be slicker, but what can you do? It’s low budget. The articles are interesting…. Isn’t that what men used to say about
Playboy?
‘I read it for the articles.’ ”

Miko flipped open a copy for me to see. Two very attractive young white women, bare-bosomed and in lace petticoats, were gently touching each other. It didn’t seem so bad. Then I noticed that each of them had one nipple pierced with a ring linked to a chain that the other was pulling. The petticoats were lightly spotted with blood.

I closed the magazine and handed it back to Miko. “This isn’t my kind of thing.”

Miko tucked it under her arm and sighed, “I can’t help it, Pam. I like you. You’re such a straight little arrow. Though I still can’t imagine what you’re doing in here. Unless it has something to do with Loie’s death. Somebody told me that’s a hobby of yours, investigation.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Well, if you’re really looking into Loie’s murder, you’re not going to be able to avert your eyes from some pretty nasty stuff I imagine. So you might as well enjoy it!” Miko whirled provocatively and sauntered to the cash register.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON AFTER
work Hadley and I went downtown to the Fun Palace on First Ave to see if we could find Nicky Kay. Hadley wasn’t too sure how much she wanted to get involved with this whole thing, but I persuaded her. I didn’t particularly want to go alone and I had the feeling that if anyone knew anything about dog collars, it would be Nicky.

Even though Hadley was along I still felt uneasy going into the Fun Palace. Just as when I’d entered The Vault, I gave a hasty but thorough glance around to see if anyone I knew was watching.

We asked for Nicky and were told she was working. Dancing. “You’ll need quarters if you plan on watching her.”

I was taken aback. “Oh we didn’t plan on
watching
… Can’t we give her a message that we’d like to see her?”

“She don’t get a break till seven and the boss don’t like her to talk to customers on the premises.”

No use arguing that we didn’t think of ourselves as
customers
for godssakes. We bought five dollars’ worth of quarters and made our way to the exotic dancing booths.

They were arranged in an L-shaped pattern, two corridors of doors each with a light above. Some were lit up red—they were occupied. There apparently were two kinds of booths: those with a one-way mirror and those with a two-way. We stood in the corridor debating in whispers which kind we should choose. There were more with one-way mirrors.

“How’re we going to get a message to her if she can’t see it?”

“We should make sure she’s there first.”

So we crowded into one of the one-way booths. It was a tight fit for two, dim and shabby, with shag carpeting on the floor and walls. Something under my feet felt wet and sticky—I tried not to think about it. On one wall was a small plastic screen with a coin receptacle under it; when we put in a quarter the screen went up slowly, revealing a brightly lit room. In front of a wall of mirrors three women were dancing naked to soft rock music.

“Whew,” said Hadley.

All three of them were wearing high heels and one wore a wide belt. They danced well, if a little perfunctorily, in smooth gyrations. One of the women was Nicky. Again she looked different from the times I’d seen her before, but it wasn’t just because she didn’t have any clothes on. Her soft brown hair was gathered up on her head with a butterfly clamp; she was wearing a small forest of fake lashes and lots of black eyeliner; her armpits and legs were shaved and her fingernails were painted fire engine red.

“I’ve always wondered what my customers did when they left the Espressomat,” Hadley joked, but her light tone changed when she saw the screen going down. “Quick—put another quarter in!”

The music had gotten slower, sexier. Nicky swayed into it and threw back her head, singing the bluesy lyrics. The other two women didn’t seem quite as much into it. They were younger, a little vague about the eyes. One of them moved as if the lower half of her body didn’t really belong to her. She went up to one of the windows and, still dancing, spread her legs and thrust her pelvis out casually.

Hadley put in two more quarters.

“I can’t help it, Pam,” she said. “This is turning me on. Is she going to do that to us?”

“Hadley, look at her eyes. Don’t just look at her crotch. She’s doing a job for money—she’s probably thinking about something completely different, like whether she took the hamburger out to thaw for tonight’s dinner.”

I found Nicky far sexier. And I think it was partly because she was good at her job, which was to create the illusion that she was in a state of sexual heat, easy and uninhibited with her body, ready to satisfy and be satisfied. She really seemed to be enjoying herself, enjoying dancing and moving her limbs—not so much exposing herself as showing off. I wondered how it would feel to know that a dozen men (or women, perhaps, like us) were staring avidly at your naked body.

Hadley was putting more quarters in. I tried to stop her. “We’ve got to move to a two-way booth—so we can communicate with her.”

“All right,” Hadley agreed, unenthusiastic. “But it’s going to be different. They’ll know two women are watching them. And I bet they won’t like it.”

The dancer with the detached eyes and flexible pelvis had made her way over to our booth and was pressing her crotch up against our window like a sea anemone at an aquarium.

“Oh my god,” said Hadley. “I can’t decide whether it’s horrible or it’s wonderful.”

“Come on, Hadley—didn’t you ever do one of those women’s self-help health groups? If it weren’t for the music and the sinful atmosphere, it’d be just like doing a cervical check-up.”

Our screen went down for the last time. We’d spent $2.50 in ten minutes. Out in the corridor a couple of men were waiting; they looked surprised and embarrassed when they saw us. One of them hastily ducked into the booth we’d left and the other stared at the floor. He was a middle-aged businessman in a suit.

“You’ll like the girls,” Hadley told him enthusiastically. “One of them’s got a great pair of tits.”

He turned and fled down the corridor.

After a few minutes a two-way booth opened up and we went in. We put all the rest of our quarters in the slot and our screen went up. One of the dancers gave us a casual glance and then looked again, her mouth tightening. Hadley smiled, to try to put her at her ease, but she turned away with an emotion we couldn’t read, and moved over to another window.

“I knew they wouldn’t like it,” said Hadley. “She probably thinks we’re perverts.”

“Well?”

“Look—Nicky’s looking our way. Hold up your sign.

I held it flat against the window. It said:
NICKY COULD WE PLEASE SPEAK TO YOU DURING YOUR BREAK? IF YES MEET US AT THE FRANKFURTER ON THE CORNER AT 7 P.M.

She stared at the sign, then at us. Without changing the tempo of her dancing she nodded her head slightly.

“I guess we have to go now?” said Hadley.

“We’ve gotten what we came for.”

“More or less,” said Hadley.

We had an hour to kill so Hadley suggested having a drink in the market. “That’s beer—not coffee.” She shuddered slightly.

We went to the Copacabana and sat out on the balcony. Two Tecates and a plate of ceviche. The sun was just going down and it was still surprisingly warm.

“It’s too bad hats have gone out of style,” I told Hadley as she arranged her long limbs in the small chair. “There are times when you could look just like Virginia Woolf.”

“Her cheekbones were nicer than mine.”

“I love you anyway.”

She smiled at me, and then looked troubled. “Peggy and Denise are coming back in three weeks,” she said.

“I know. Have you thought anymore—about living together?”

“I’ve thought about it—I think about it a lot, but I don’t know. It’s not that I find it hard to live with you—sometimes I just wonder if I could live with anyone, give up my freedom.”

“You want to sleep with someone else, don’t you?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions… All I’m saying is—you’re a twin, you grew up under your sister’s armpit, in each other’s pockets. I’ve seen those kid pictures, the identical striped dresses, the same haircuts. You’re used to having someone around all the time, it feels natural to you. But I was an only child, my parents were divorced, I’ve never stayed with anybody longer than two years.”

“Are you getting restless already? It’s only been eight months. You can’t really count the summer before last.”

“It’s not you,” she assured me. “You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s me—sometimes I feel cramped.”

“Maybe it’s the houseboat,” I said. “We could get a bigger place, each have our own room.”

Hadley drained her beer and looked out over the market below us. “I think it would be better,” she said softly, “If we went back to each of us having our own place, Pam.”

I felt tears at the back of my throat. I wanted to cry, “But I don’t like to live alone, I’m lonely living alone. I always thought after October we’d find a house together, live happily ever after.” Instead I said, rather stiffly, “We don’t have to be monogamous either, if you don’t want to.”

I wanted her to tell me again not to jump to conclusions. That was why I said it. But Hadley only stared a little moodily off into the distance and said, “Well, maybe we should consider that.”

When we got to the Frankfurter, Nicky was waiting for us, nondescript again in jeans, a black raincoat and with a black slouch hat over her curly hair. Only her eyes, with their false lashes and thick liner, connected her with the secret world of the Fun Palace. She was eating bockwurst and drinking a Pepsi.

“I only have half an hour,” she said. She had a soft voice, a relaxed but slightly shy manner.

“Well,” I said. “It’s about Loie.”

“Yes,” she said. “I thought it might be.” She looked at me with direct brown eyes and I found it harder than I’d thought to ask my questions. Maybe it would be better to lead up to it.

“What’s it like?” I said. “Dancing at the Fun Palace?”

“It’s different for different people, the same as any job. Did you watch us long?”

Hadley laughed. “Five dollars’ worth.”

“The other two women have more mixed feelings than I do. Shelley’s like me, a student, and there for the money. The other one, Cyndi, has a lot of complicated emotional things going on and she says this is helping her work it out. She’s the one who goes right up to the windows.”

“You’re a student?” I said.

“I’m finishing a Ph.D. in English Literature. I did all my course work at Stanford. Now I’m writing my thesis on Djuna Barnes. Shelley’s in nursing school.”

“Oh,” Hadley and I said.

“Don’t be embarrassed. I try to keep different parts of my life separate. I’d be in trouble at the university if people knew. Still, I expect I’d survive it. Meanwhile, dancing pays the rent and, I have to admit, I really enjoy it. It feels like a relief, after you’ve been reading and making notes, to take off your clothes and move and dance.” Nicky looked at our faces. “It’s so hopeless to try to explain one’s particular form of sexuality; still, I find I’m always trying. I’m an exhibitionist really. I like to show off my body, to feel looked at, to play act. I always have and I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with it.” She finished her bockwurst and smiled. “So what did you want to know from me?”

“Do you think—I mean, Loie and the dog collar—I mean, what I’m wondering is, would be possible to kill someone by tightening a dog collar on them?”