Page 33 of Backtrack

“He said knock it off!” Cutter growled.

The other dancers and club patrons clapped and whistled at the show. They came here to see a dance, but a naked woman wrestling a sheriff’s deputy was a worthy substitute.

“Call Me the Breeze” wasn’t a long song, but neither was the altercation. “Cocaine” started to blare over the speakers. Someone in here was a JJ Cale fan. A fleshy girl in a red G-string resumed her spot on the stage and began to dance.

A normal Monday morning at the Show Pony.

Johnson stood with cuffs dangling from his fist, glancing back and forth as if he didn’t know where to put his eyes.

Mitzi gave another half-hearted pull against his boot and then relaxed. “Troy ain’t going to jail!”

“Are you kidding me?” Johnson said. “That guy was beating the hell outta you when we walked in and now you’re protecting him?”

Cutter handcuffed Mount Troy and sat him against the base of the stage before looking directly at Mitzi.

“Someday, the Texas legislature will get its head on straight and allow law enforcement to press charges,” he said. “Until that day, we’re going to need you to give us a statement if we want the assault to stick.”

“I’m not giving you sheeit,” Mitzi said.

Johnson leaned in closer to Cutter. “They both hitus,” he said. “We can get them for assault.”

“We could hold them on that for a minute,” Cutter whispered. “Maybe. But we’d have to call Tarrant County and admit we’re poaching across county lines.”

Johnson shoved Mitzi’s kimono back at her. Cutter took the cuffs off Troy. The two of them walked out the rear door hand in hand with a warning from the bearded bouncer that Troy could not come back—until he was sober.

Cutter dabbed blood from his split lip with a handkerchief while he took his first real assessment of the Show Pony. Whoever was in charge of the air conditioning kept the temperature of the blue black haze just low enough to squeeze most of the humidity out of the dank air. It made sense. The girls weren’t wearing much of anything. And besides, patrons didn’t come in here to cool off.

Two women in robes slouched at a bar to the left of a small crescent stage where the dancer in the red G-string had resumed swinging half-heartedly around one of three metal poles that ran from floor to ceiling. The dancer threw her head left and right to the continued whine of “Cocaine.” Cutter counted eleven men in ones and twos among the half dozen small tables directly in front of the tip-rail that ran the length of the stage keeping patrons at arm’s length when they tipped. A couple of the men wore suits.

The cloying smell of cheap cigars and even cheaper perfume hung in a cloud of desperation.

A Hispanic man in a dark T-shirt worked the bar, keeping the mesmerized lunch crowd happy.

“Holy shit,” Johnson said under his breath, hollow, like he’d just taken a punch to the gut. It was hard to tell if he was getting over the fight or seeing Mitzi without her kimono. “Why do you reckon that dancer goes to the trouble of wearing those little panties? I mean, it’s not like it’s leaving anything to the imagination.”

“They work on tips.” Cutter couldn’t help but chuckle. “The G-string gives men a place to tuck their dollar bills.” The kid had obviously never been in a strip club. Probably never drank a beer or smoked anything harsher than a mustang grapevine behind his school.

Cutter wished he could say the same.

“Thanks for your help,” Sideburns said from his podium in the shadows.

“You mentioned you called us,” Cutter said.

The bouncer nodded to the end of the bar. A tallish woman with straight Ali MacGraw hair turned and looked directly at Cutter. He guessed her to be in her early thirties. Perched on the barstool within arm’s reach of the stage, she wore a red-and-black buffalo plaid robe that would have looked stodgy had it not been short enough to show off much of her tan thighs.

“It was her,” the bouncer grunted. “Gloria called the law as soon as those two idiots started fighting.”

The woman shook her head. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “Y’all darkened our door before I could let my fingers do the walking … so to speak. Anyway, Mitzi and Troy go at it every Monday after he blows all her cash over the weekend. There’s never any reason to call the law.”

“Gloria?” Cutter said. “Gloria Blaisdell?”

A look of panic flashed across the woman’s face. For a moment, Cutter thought she might try to hoof it out the back. Instead, she raised a glass in salute. The liquid inside glowed blue. Another gin and tonic.

He gave the woman a nod and then leaned sideways, raising his voice just enough so Johnson could hear him above the music.

“You take the lead on this one, kid,” he said.

Johnson turned, wide-eyed. “I … You … what should I …”