The Darkness - Jason Pinter [116]
night, so nobody's there during the day to watch it."
"Given the history of this place," Curt said, "it
wouldn't surprise me in the least."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll explain when you get down here. Meet me on the
southeast corner of Washington and Little West Twelfth
Street."
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"Will do. I'll be down there right away."
I exited my spot and pulled Curt's car onto the Hudson
River Drive south. The traffic wasn't bad, rush hour still
an hour or so from reaching its apex. The sun cast a brilliant glow on the water, the shores of New Jersey visible,
the highway directly across from Port Imperial Marina.
I took the Fourteenth Street exit and made my way
south on Tenth Avenue toward the Kitten Club. There
were plenty of spots available, so I pulled up on the corner
of Washington and Twelfth and rang Curt's cell phone.
He didn't answer, but then I saw him walking toward me.
Hanging up the phone, I unlocked the passenger side
door. Curt slipped in and stretched out.
There were massive bags under his eyes, and his
clothes were rumpled. Plus he smelled kind of funky.
Not the Curt Sheffield I was used to hanging out with.
"How was your night?" I said. "I feel like we bonded
a bit." I jokingly punched Curt in the arm.
"Let's not go there. You know for a chunky guy,
Goggins has a motor that would make Jeff Gordon piss
his pants."
Across the street, we could both see the entrance to the
Kitten Club. I'd been there twice. Once to cover a murder,
the second to rescue Amanda when I felt she might be in
danger. I was getting a little tired of this place.
"You said something about the club not surprising
you," I said. "What did you mean by that?"
"You're not a native New Yorker," Curt said, "so you
wouldn't remember. For about ten years during the midseventies and eighties, the space the Kitten Club currently occupies was a different club called Mineshaft."
"Sounds hot."
"You have no idea. While it was open, Mineshaft was
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one of the most popular gay bars in the city. They had
dungeons, cages, S and M, bondage, you name it. Then
the city shut the club down in eighty-five, claiming that
all the rampant sexual activity was helping to spread the
AIDS virus."
"Holy crap, are you serious?"
"Yessir. Apparently Mineshaft--and a number of other
clubs--had back rooms and basements where club-goers
could partake in, let's just say, activities that did not
require clothing. Rumors had it that the club was actually
Mafia owned and operated. The mob started losing
money hand over fist, and the lunkheads figured people
just weren't spending money, but the sad truth is they
were losing a lot of their clientele to the virus. After it was
shut down, the club was a ghost lot for almost twenty
years and was basically nothing more than an abandoned
warehouse. It was supposed to be torn down until somebody--guess who--bought the lot."
"Shawn Kensbrook."
"Bingo. This place is all sorts of bad news. It wouldn't
surprise me in the least if an entrepreneur like Kensbrook
was padding his wallet by giving some of those hidden
rooms to 718 Enterprises."
As we watched the club, a young man wearing a suit
turned the corner and entered the front door.
"You saw that?" I said.
"Sure did."
"So what do we do now?" I said. "You want to call
for backup?"
"Not yet. Right now we have no probable cause. I
didn't see Goggins enter with any drugs and we haven't
seen anybody leave with them. We go charging in now
without a warrant, the whole thing gets thrown out."
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335
"Come on, Curt, we have to do someth--"
And then I stopped talking.
"There," I said, pointing out the object of my curiosity
to Sheffield. "We follow that."
Curt focused his eyes on what I was staring at. It was
a shipping truck, and it was parked around the back
entrance of the Kitten Club. On the side were written the
words Sam's Fresh Fish! The slogan was accompanied
by a cute illustration of a live fish standing on a plate
smiling while holding