Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [70]
The Sheik had partied there, and so had the Space Man. The models that roamed there swayed like palm trees on the dance floor, and upstairs, in the VIP section, I had seen things usually reserved for motel rooms with mirrored ceilings, bedbugs, and hourly rates. I’d never expected to go back there again, just as I had assumed that I would never see Vivian again. Now it seemed I was wrong on both counts.
It was still early by South Beach standards, just twenty past midnight, but there was already a long, pulsating line of people stretching around the corner. Rain showers had swept in off the ocean, and the crowd pressed its back against the sides of the building and under the narrow ledge that girded the curtained windows of the second floor. I stood across the street beneath the awning of a tattoo parlor and watched them get wet. The rain fell with the kind of slanted fury that gives birth to jungles and howling monkeys, to floods that cover the earth. It overran the gutters and jumped the sidewalks, rolled back, then rose up and tried again.
The line moved slowly toward the door where long, tall Sidney, the gatekeeper to paradise, waited under the awning behind a lectern, checking names against the guest list like St. Peter making sure the wrong people didn’t get into heaven. He wore a white sequined gown and looked like the giant bride of a man few other men would envy. The yellow wig on his head, contrasted with his black skin, failed to add to his attractiveness. It was hard to believe he had once been a karate instructor up in Detroit—that is, until you saw him drop-kick a troublemaker.
I waited for a break in the rain, then sprinted across the street and up to the lectern. The two bouncers flanking Sidney straightened up and prepared to whip my ass. Sidney glared down at me as though I were a water beetle who had swum across the surface of a lake. Even without the heels, he would have still had me by three inches; with them he had me by six or seven. I could smell his perfume from four feet away, and it filled me with the opposite of romance. As usual, he had overdone his makeup. His lipstick was the color of purple orchids, and his mascara had started to run down his face, which was dark and handsome in a Denzel Washington kind of way.
“Hey, Sidney,” I said. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember me.”
He slammed the guest book shut like a preacher closing his Bible at a revival meeting.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned! Look who it is! Where the hell you been, you dried-up burden of a white man? I thought the Good Lord had called you home. Him or the devil, either one! Last time I saw you, we were playing pool at that after-hours place up behind the library. Remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That was the night they stole your wig.”
“That’s the problem with this godforsaken town, Jackie,” he said. “Take off your hair for one minute and they go and steal it on you.”
“The neighborhood has changed,” I admitted. “By the way, is Vivian here?”
“I believe she is.”
“Can I get in?”
“I believe you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You ain’t got on the right clothes. I let you in, I got to let in the homeless people, too.”
“It’s an emergency,” I said. “Come on, just this one time. I’ll be in and out in ten minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s after her. Somebody bad.”
He looked me over for a moment. I guess he sensed my desperation, because he told his assistant to let me in.
“You must have snuck in,” Sidney said. “’Cause I sure as shit didn’t see you.”
“That’s right. I came in through the back way.”
“Dressed like that, you should have.”
The bouncer unclipped the rope from the brass post and lifted it past me.
“He ain’t dressed right,” the bouncer said.
“Shut up,” Sidney said.
“Say, Sidney. Did you ever finish law school?” I asked.
“Sure did,” he said, clapping me on the back. “Passed the bar exam, too