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So tonight I was a Yuppie (a Yuppie with a body in the trunk, but a Yuppie).

This was a warm evening cooled by a breeze and the parking lot was nearly full—my used car at least had that vinyl top to help it fit in with the Buicks and Caddies and BMW’s, and was maybe sporty enough to cohabit with the Stingray 280ZX’s and Jags. I parked on the far side of the lot, near where the glimmering black strip of the Mississippi River reflected the lights of the ancient steel toll bridge joining River’s Bluff, Iowa, and Haydee’s Port, Illinois.

Everybody I’d talked to so far, which wasn’t many admittedly, seemed to shorten it to Haydee’s. And from the glimpse I’d got of the little town, they might have been saying Hades, and meaning it.

River’s Bluff itself hadn’t been that impressive, a long-in-the-tooth industrial burg of maybe sixty thousand on rolling hills overlooking the river. Ivy-covered shelves of shale lined the freeway cutting through the old river city, taking me to the bridge and a thirty-cent toll. Going over the rumbling, ancient span was a more frightening ride than a fifty-cent one at any carnival.

And Haydee’s Port itself wasn’t any less frightening. A sign beyond the bridge announced it, a road curving right to eventually deposit me and my Sunbird (no body in the trunk yet—this was early afternoon) in a pocket below the interstate. Here I found myself beholding the open wound that was Haydee’s Port.

Main Street was almost entirely bars and strip clubs, rough-looking ones—big parking lots in back, empty mid-morning but indicating healthy-sized clientele. Among the few respectable businesses was a Casey’s General Store, which was also the only gas station, on a corner by itself just beyond the two-block strip of sin. No schools, and certainly no churches. Poking up out of the trees that hugged the Mighty Miss emerged grain-elevator towers, which were one legitimate business anyway that had nothing to do with selling beer, except maybe providing out-of-state brewers with some of the makings.

Main Street was paved, but the others weren’t, just narrow hard dirt, with ruts to indicate what happened when it rained. The main drag was built with its back to the river, putting the residences of the little community behind the opposite row of saloons. Mostly Haydee’s Port was a glorified trailer park, minus the glory—shabby mobile homes here and there, as if where the most recent tornado had left them, with an occasional sagging twenties or older vintage clapboard house to add a little undignified variety.

This was a welfare ghetto, with the bars handy for disposal of monthly checks and probably willing to accept food stamps, maybe at 75 cents on the dollar.

All of which made the Paddlewheel (half a mile or so out of town) such an anomaly, at least at first glance. This was a class operation, not an all-night gin mill serving blue-collar out-of-workers or the spillover from River Bluff after the bars closed, rather a high-end entertainment complex that attracted clientele with cash, not food stamps. The reconverted warehouse was a massive affair, home to a restaurant, numerous bars, several lounges with stages, and a casino—a mini-Las Vegas under one roof.

Though when you really thought about it, the Paddlewheel was not an anomaly at all—some genius entrepreneur had realized that in an environment corrupt enough for downtown Haydee’s Port to openly thrive, erecting a sin palace for Mr. and Mrs. Got-rocks Midwest was also possible. Whatever bent cops and greedy politicos were allowing these lowlife joints to run wide open would be just as for sale to the Paddle-wheel’s backers. Maybe more so.

Anyway, the body in the trunk.

You have to understand that I had no idea I was heading for Haydee’s Port. Hell, I had no idea Haydee’s Port existed. I’d been following a guy named Monahan from Omaha, Nebraska, which had been tricky for a variety of reasons, starting with the difficulty of staking out a guy