Page 31 of Backtrack

The Show Ponygentleman’s clubwas a sad, windowless building tucked off the I-20 frontage road behind a drive-through liquor store and an adult movie arcade. Three different bars crowded into this Goldilocks Zone on the east side of the county line—far enough away from Weatherford’s teetotaling crowd for city fathers to escape their jaundiced eyes, but mercifully close enough should any of those fathers need a drink. In public forums, Parker County leaders reasoned that the downfall of civilization would come by way of social dance, liquor by the drink, and parimutuel betting. Probably in that order. Parker County remained dry, but commissioners, clerks, and even a pastor or two could often be found a few hundred feet inside Tarrant County. As long as their vehicles were spotted at the bar and not the Show Pony, no one said much about it.

The strip club’s parking lot was remarkably crowded for eleven in the morning. Cutter wondered how many folks at church would be giving his wifepoor Lucylooks if they happened to see his El Camino parked out front.

He killed the engine.

“Reach under your seat,” he said. “There should be a Kel-Lite under there.”

Johnson pulled out the fourteen-inch flashlight. It was made of black aircraft aluminum and powered by five D cell batteries. Essentially, a metal club that happened to produce light.

Johnson slapped the heavy flashlight against his open palm as if testing the weight. “My academy instructor called thesetonks,” he said. “On account of the sound they make if you have to smack somebody.”

“Hell, kid,” Cutter said. “Everybody calls ’emtonks. But times are changing. We’re expected to be kinder and gentler than in days past. Not a bad thing, as long as the bandits comply. Anyhow, you might want to figure out a different word besidestonk. I’d hate for you to have to testify in court that you see that piece of equipment as anything other than a flashlight.

“Got it.” Johnson pushed the Kel-Lite toward Cutter.

“You hang on to it,” Cutter said. “It’ll come in handy if somebody needs tonking.”

Cutter eased his door shut out of habit and snugged down his hat against an oppressive sun.

“Which is your dominant eye?”

“My … what?”

“Your shooting eye,” Cutter said, walking across the parking lot. “The one you aim with.”

“My right, I guess.” Johnson hitched his belt as he trotted to keep up.

“Keep it closed until we get inside,” Cutter said over his shoulder. “The women who work here can be pretty desperate. Kind of hard-put, if you know what I mean.”

Johnson shook his head.

“They’re not getting modeling gigs forCosmo,” Cutter said. “They keep the light low. Some use red lights, some black lights.

“Like Spencer Gifts in that new mall by Carswell?”

“I suppose.” Cutter had never been to a Spencer Gifts, but he had walked around Ridgmar Mall with Lucy shortly after it opened the year before—the same day the doctors told her she was terminal. She’d chatted and laughed, like she’d not just gotten a death sentence. He’d been too stunned to notice much of anything.

“Just keep a damned eye shut until we’re inside.”

Cutter realized there was a problem the moment he and Johnson stepped through the red double doors and into the small mantrap entry. Someone inside the Show Pony was either rearranging the furniture or deep in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out fight. A strangled half scream carried through the inner door. At least one of the participants was female.

Johnson looked to Cutter, squinting in the scant light of the vestibule.

“Can I open my eye?”

“Go ahead.” He’d thought the kid would be better than nothing as backup. From the addled look on his face at the moment, losing him now would be like gaining two good men.

Hardwired to move toward violence, Cutter’s right hand dropped to his revolver while he yanked open the inner door with his left. “Stay close!” he snapped over his shoulder.

Whoofing base notes thumped Cutter in the chest the momenthe opened the door. Another scream pulled his attention to his left and the tip-rail at the foot of the stage. He took a step inside and paused, giving himself just enough time to get a quick lay of the land.

The tight screams of AC/DC’s “Soul Stripper” gave way to the twelve-bar blues beat of “Call Me the Breeze” (JJ Cale’s original, not Skynyrd’s cover). The music seemed an unlikely choice for working a stripper pole, but it was the perfect accompaniment to the slight woman in a baby-doll kimono robe to fly backward off the stage. She landed on her butt with a loud grunt, sliding from the momentum across the scabby carpet by the bar, finally stopping almost at Cutter’s boot.

A mountain of a man in jeans and a denim vest vaulted the tip-rail and lumbered after her, yelling something unintelligible in a high-pitched whine that didn’t match his physique. The earlier scream had likely come from him, not the woman.

Behind Cutter, Lafayette Johnson gave an audible gasp, like he’d just seen a ghost. Cutter couldn’t blame him. The big man’s hair and half his grizzled beard glowed blue, as if alive with Saint Elmo’s fire. The woman’s lips formed a matching blue-green O against the shadows of her face as she sprang to her feet screaming insults at the man.

A glass on the bar—also glowing electric blue—gave Cutter a clue to what was going on.