The four-piece ensemble in the orchestra pit rose to heights of musical expression, a heavy bass drum beat accentuating each solid bump as purple clothing fell like aster petals, a triple-tongued trumpet winding up with each pelvic grind, a saxophone wail climbing the girl's flanks in accompaniment with her sliding hands, a steady piano beat banging out the rhythm of each long-legged stride, each tassel-twirling, fixed-grin, sexy-eyed, contrived, and calculated erotic move. "She's got some tits," Calucci whispered, and La Bresca whispered back, "Yeah."
The men fell silent.
The music rose in earsplitting crescendo. The bass drum beat was more insistent now, the trumpet shrieked higher and higher, a C above high C reached for and missed, the saxophone trilled impatiently, the piano pounded in the upper register, a tinny insistent honkytonk rhythm, cymbals clashed, the trumpet reached for the screech note again, and again missed. The lights were swirling now, the stage was inundated in color and sound. There was the stink of perspiration and lust in the theater as the girl ground out her coded message in a cipher broken long ago on too many similar stages, pounded out her promises of ecstasy and sin. come and get it, baby, Come and get it, Come and come and come and come.
The stage went black.
In the darkness, Calucci whispered, "What do you think?"
One of the baggy pants comics came on again to do a bit in a doctor's office accompanied by a pert little blonde with enormous breasts who explained that she thought she was stagnant because she hadn't fenestrated in two months.
"I hate the idea of knocking somebody off," La Bresca whispered.
"If it's necessary, it's necessary."
"Still."
"There's lots of money involved here, don't forget it."
"Yeah, but at the same time, there's enough to split three ways, ain't there?" La Bresca said.
"Why should we split it three ways when we can split it down the middle?"
"Because Dom'll spill the whole works if we don't cut him in. Look, what's the sense going over this a hundred times? We
"I want to think about it."
"You ain't got that much time to think about it. We're set for the fifteenth. Dom wants to know right away."
"Okay, so tell him he's in. Then we'll decide whether he's in or out. And I mean
"And now, ladies and gentlemen," the loudspeaker voice said, "it gives us great pleasure to present the rage of San Francisco, a young lady who thrilled the residents of that city by the Golden Gate, a young lady whose exotic dancing caused the pious officials of Hong Kong to see Red … it is with bursting pride that we turn our stage over to Miss …
The house lights dimmed. The band struck up a sinuous version of "Limehouse Blues." A swish cymbal echoed on the air, and a sloe-eyed girl wearing mandarin garb came into the follow spot with mincing steps, hands together in an attitude of prayer, head bent.
"I dig these Chinks," Calucci said.
"You guys want to stop talking?" a bald-headed man in the row ahead said. "I can't see the girls with all that gabbing behind me."
"Fuck off, Baldy," La Bresca said.
But both men fell silent. O'Brien leaned forward in his seat. Parker bent sideways over the armrest. There was nothing further to hear. Kapek, across the aisle, could not have heard anything anyway, so he merely watched the Chinese girl as she took off her clothes.
At the end of the act, La Bresca and Calucci rose quietly from their seats and went out of the theater. They split up outside. Parker followed Calucci to his house, and Kapek followed La Bresca to his. O'Brien went back to the squadroom to type up a report.
The detectives did not get together again until eleven o'clock that night, by which time La Bresca and Calucci were both hopefully asleep. They met in a diner some five blocks from the squadroom. Over coffee and crullers, they all agreed that the only thing they'd learned from their eavesdropping was the date of the job La Bresca and Calucci were planning: March the fifteenth. They also agreed that Freida Panzer had much larger breasts than Anna May Zong.
In the living room of a luxurious apartment on Harborside Oval, overlooking the river, a good three miles from where Detectives O'Brien, Parker, and Kapek were speculating on the comparative dimensions of the two strippers, the deaf man sat on a sofa facing sliding glass doors, and happily sipped at a glass of scotch and soda.
The drapes were open, and the view of warm and glowing lights strung on the bridge's cables, the distant muted reds and ambers blinking on the distant shore gave the night a deceptively springtime appearance; the thermometer on the terrace outside read ten degrees above zero.
