Shamrock Alley by Ronald Damien Malfi Page B

countless fingerprints. Opposite the bar stood a bank of pay phones and an ATM.
    “Busy night,” John mumbled, shoving past two large men in ties. Most of the people were just shapes, just caricatures floating in darkness.
    John and Kersh squeezed their way around the bar, pausing before one of the runways. A young Asian girl, desperately struggling to look eighteen, gyrated her buttocks while gripping a brass pole that rose from the stage and disappeared into the rafters. The only things she wore were a pair of tall, white go-go boots and an ear-to-ear smile.
    “Lord,” Kersh said, rubbing his eyes and tweaking his large nose, “the incense in this place wreaks havoc on my sinuses.”
    “You mean you’re not a regular here?”
    “Ha.”
    “You know what this Carlson girl looks like?”
    Kersh rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “No.”
    John scanned the crowd. The clientele was comprised mostly of middle-aged men in cheap suits showing more scalp than hair. A few younger men had gathered at the foot of one stage, hollering at one of the dancers and waving fistfuls of greasy singles. Beyond them, women in nylons and nothing else filed in and out of bathroom and dressing room doors.
    Kersh leaned over and whispered something to a passing dancer who whispered something back and pointed across the room with her chin. Kersh chuckled—he sounded so out of place doing that—and then the girl laughed once, sharply, with her head craned back. Before she disappeared into the crowd, Kersh tipped the girl a dollar.
    “Follow me,” he told John, and they began snaking their way toward the rear of the club. Smells intensified: lilac and bourbon and sweat—lots and lots of sweat—and something very close to rotting fruit. A few couples were tangled together within the cover of shadow, their bodies propped on tattered couches or smashed against wood-paneled walls. They were oblivious to passersby.
    John and Kersh stopped before a small table occupied by a number of young men wearing ski coats and knitted caps and smoking cigarettes. Two men had girls perched in their laps while their friends cheered them on with drunken catcalls and the pounding of beer bottles against their thighs. One of the women, a young black girl, was nibbling on one man’s ear.
    “Heidi Carlson?” Kersh said.
    A few of the men looked up, as did the half-naked nibbler. She was young and attractive, her skin the color of motor oil beneath the neon lights. She wore a sheer bra and a multicolored sarong around her waist, her black hair in loose coils around her face. In the dark, she was mostly eyes.
    “Miss Carlson?” Kersh repeated.
    “Yes?” The woman pulled herself from the man’s lap, straightened her sarong. “Oh—you’re the—with—”
    “Sorry to interrupt,” Kersh went on, “but we’d like to speak with you. Could you give us a few minutes, please?”
    “Right now?”
    “Right now.”
    Her eyes darted between John and Kersh. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “All right.”
    The young guy whose lap Heidi had been previously occupying reached out and grabbed Heidi by the wrist, startling her. “Hey!” he shouted. He stood from the chair and glowered at Kersh. He was an ugly bastard, with eyes set too closely together and a row of upper teeth that resembled fence pickets the day after a tornado. “Wait your goddamn turn, buddy.”
    “Sit down, son,” Kersh said, unaffected.
    “You think you’re my father now?”
    John took a step toward the table.
    “Let go,” Heidi Carlson said, trying to shake her wrist free. “You’re hurting me …”
    “Sit the hell back down,” the man told her, his eyes never leaving Kersh’s face.
    She continued to struggle. “Stop—”
    “Listen, Snaggletooth,” Kersh said, and casually reached into his jacket pocket to produce his badge. At the sight of Kersh’s gold shield, the man frowned and dropped his grip on Heidi Carlson’s wrist. Free, the stripper brought