Ice Lake: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the final page

“Well, well,” MK purred, “lookie at Trooper Cirba in his civvies. What are you two up to tonight? Ohhh, I get it. It’s a boy’s trip to the strip club.”

“Did you tell her?” Cirba said.

“No,” Harry replied, “but you did just now.”

“It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes,” she said. “Everybody knows Big Bill was a regular. You boys just be careful, I get a bad feeling from that place.”

“You’ve been there?”

“No, but about three months ago, one of the girls that works there ploughed into my mailbox so hard the pole got stuck under her car and lifted one of the front wheels off the ground. She was stuck up there at three in the morning, gunning her engine and going nowhere. When I came out it was obvious she was high on something, and then some guy came round and told me to go back to bed. When I said I should call the police, he got all huffy and said he already did. Then that idiot Oaktree cop Barowski showed up.”

“Ice Lake is out of Barowski’s jurisdiction. What was he doing here?” Cirba said.

“I don’t know but it was late and he said he’d take care of it. Next day when I came home from work there was a lovely new mailbox with a bottle of champagne in it, so no harm no foul. It’s just that the man who showed up was… creepy, and Barowski acted – I don’t know – weird around him.”

“So that means you’re not coming with us?” Harry asked.

“Tempting but no. My butt is probably too big to be a stripper anyway.”

“Who said you had a big butt?” Cirba asked as MK walked up the lawn and into her house.

“Your friend, Harry. Behave yourselves in the Dew Drop, boys.”

Chapter 5

“You told MK she had a big butt?” Cirba asked.

Harry didn’t answer right away. He was too busy squealing like a little girl. It wasn’t until after the terrifying G-forces of the Drunken Indians abated that Harry said: “No, well, I might have said her ass looked like the back of a bus but that was hypothetical.”

“’Cause if you told MK she has a big ass I’m gonna have to fire yours.”

“You’d fire me for insulting your friend?”

“No, just for poor judgement. MK’s ass is fine.”

“Shall I add that to the list of things I’m not to tell Mrs Cirba?”

“I’ve decided you’re never going to meet Mrs Cirba.”

“Wise.”

Cirba pulled his unmarked car into the parking lot of a run-down tavern and went in. He arrived back in the car with two six-packs of beer.

Harry took the beer as Cirba put the car into gear. “My place or yours, officer?”

“They’re for the strip club.”

“They don’t sell beer there?”

“No, it’s BYOB.”

“What? Why?”

“That way they don’t have to bother with a liquor license and the girls can be 18 as opposed to 21.”

“How do they make money if they’re not foisting overpriced champagne?”

“That’s a good question. The general consensus is that they don’t make as much money as they claim.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Money laundering.”

“Oh. Mob?”

“Don’t know, it’s just a theory. Places like these seem to make a lot more money than the traffic should allow. It grossed over two mill last year.”

“That’s a lot of lap dances.”

“Yeah.” Cirba pulled over. “Right, you get out here.”

“Say what?”

“Out – here – you. There’s a good chance somebody in there is going to recognize me. We can’t go in together, and when you’re in there, pretend you don’t know me.”

“That seems kinda lonely.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone to talk to.”

* * *

A few cars passed Harry as he trudged the quarter of a mile down the side road to the club. None of them stopped. Apparently, a guy walking alone with a six-pack under his arm wasn’t an unusual sight on this country road.

About five minutes later Harry saw the lone floodlit establishment glowing off the road like a campfire. The club was an architecturally challenged white cement box with a huge furling American flag painted on the side. Along the top was the message, “GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS”. Underneath in smaller letters it read: “God Bless the First Amendment”. The entrance was below a fancy out-of-place canopy. Above the canopy a red neon sign read, “Dew Drop Inn – A Gentlemen’s Club”.

Harry opened the door and was ignored by a bored bouncer who in a previous life ate his woolly mammoth raw. A voice to his left said, “fifteen bucks.” Harry fished out a twenty and a little guy sporting a goatee with a bald spot in the middle of it handed Harry his change in ones.

He held up a stack of singles and said: “Want anymore?”

“Why?”

He leaned in and examined Harry closely. “I would’a thought that a guy who walked to a strip club would know what singles were for.”

“For tips… yeah I knew that. And I didn’t walk here. I got a lift; she dropped me off up the road. I didn’t think it was appropriate to make my mother bring me all the way to the door.”

The little guy snorted but Harry kept a straight face. It was Friday night and that meant that a weekend of fibbing had begun. Harry gave him another twenty and received a stack of bills. He resisted the temptation to count them and turned the corner into the club.

Cirba had been right – Vegas this was not – it wasn’t even Scranton. If this place had really made two million dollars last year they certainly hadn’t wasted it on décor. There were two stages with poles reaching up to a high ceiling. The small one in the centre of the room was currently unoccupied. The larger was on a catwalk that stretched into a backstage area. To the left of the catwalk, behind glass, was a bearded DJ in a shiny jacket. He was enthusiastically introducing music, encouraging the crowd to applaud and tip the dancer on stage. He was the only enthusiastic thing in the place.

There were about a dozen customers in the room. Half were sitting around the catwalk watching a remarkably straight-figured skinny girl doing a move that Harry decided should be called the “Wish I Was Elsewhere” dance. The rest of the customers were dotted around the room. Most of them were chatting intimately with a girl wearing – not much. Another bouncer, obviously a distant relative of the guy on the door, pointed to a corridor on his left and said: “The beer room is back there.” Harry didn’t know what a beer room was but did as he was told and hoped there wasn’t a third cousin lurking in there with a blackjack.

He found a room with a supermarket-style glass-fronted refrigerator. He pried one can from his six-pack and left the rest with the other gentlemen’s beer. He wondered if beer was often stolen. Is there honour among perverts?

Harry walked back into the main room and took a seat at the catwalk across from Cirba. He wanted to give the trooper one of those secret nose-touching signals like they used in the movie The Sting but Cirba never took his eyes off the naked woman before him. Harry pondered if he was staying in character or was truly enthralled. After having a long look around at the crop of girls working here at the Dew Drop he deduced that it probably wasn’t enthralment. He didn’t have a lot of experience with strip clubs. Usually it happened at a conference in Vegas and always with a bunch of guys where the emphasis was on a bit of fun and not serious sexcapades. When Harry had entered one of those other clubs he had always been struck by how outstandingly beautiful the women had been. Here… not so much. This group of women made Harry want to sit down and ask them what they really wanted to do with their lives.

The music ended as the DJ failed to get the handful of customers in the room to applaud the dancer. She made one last round of the men sitting at the catwalk and picked up the dollar bills left for her. She smiled as she bent to retrieve Harry’s tip. It didn’t require any expertise on his part to recognize the smile as not quite genuine. The DJ gave an exuberant introduction for the next dancer that ended with, “Let’s give it up big time for – Harmony.”

Cirba and Harry shot each other a furtive look when they heard the name that Feather had said was the nom de plume of Big Bill’s girlfriend. She was an attractive girl, Harry thought, or would be if she didn’t look so… hollow. She sported bleached blonde hair cut short and wore a tiny plaid skirt, a white shirt and a tie. If she was going for the whole schoolgirl look it was ruined by the clear plastic platform shoes. Whereas the previous dancer had looked as if she wanted to be somewhere else, Harmony actually was somewhere else – at least in her mind.

Although she was dancing on autopilot it wasn’t without exuberance. A running start launched her at the chrome pole in the centre of the stage. She caught it and while twirling around she spun herself upside down clinging onto the pole with only her entwined calves. Then she spread her arms out to the side in a pose that reminded Harry of the upside-down crucified St Peter, and loosened the grip of her ankles. She dropped headfirst so fast that Harry was on his feet when she stopped, her head inches from the hardwood floor.

In that upside-down state she noticed Harry and gave him an almost genuine smile before returning to her auto-dance. As she untied the knot at the front of her white Oxford shirt, Harry found himself wishing something he had never wished before while watching a stripper. He wished she would leave her clothes on. The more naked Harmony got the less erotic the dance became. She danced close to each customer at the bar who, in turn, slipped tips into a red garter on her thigh. She moved the right moves and said the right things but behind the blue eyes was a vacancy and not just the vacancy of a bored stripper but the look of someone who had lost the will to be. In some respects Harry thought it was the most honest dance he had ever seen.

Her turn ended and over the amplified whoops made by the DJ in a futile attempt to whip up enthusiasm for Harmony’s performance, Harry called her name and held up a ten dollar bill. She returned and crouched at the edge of the stage, once again offering Harry her money garter.

“Do you do private dances?”

“Sure,” she said with an automatic smile. “Have a seat in one of the chairs against the wall and I’ll be out when I freshen up.”

The rule in the club was that girls couldn’t solicit dances from customers that were sitting along the catwalk but as soon as Harry moved to a chair against the wall the spiders were drawn to the fly.

A long-haired brunette wearing a full-length sheer orange chiffon robe over a G-string walked towards Harry. Even in this era of anorexic supermodels she was painfully skinny. Harry instantly spotted the redness around her nostrils and the closed lipped smile that hid her teeth. All of it added up to substance abuse. She pointed at Harry’s crotch.

“Hi, I’m Cynthia,” she said emphasising the “sin”. “Is this lap taken?” Before Harry could answer she sat in it. “Hiya, you got a name?”

“Hamlet,” Harry said.

“Ooh, I never heard that name before.”

“You never heard of Hamlet?”

“No, funny name.”

“If you think that’s funny you should meet my sister Iago.”

“Like the bird in Aladdin?”

“There is a bird in Aladdin named Iago?”

“Yeah, in the Disney cartoon. Where have you been?”

“Obviously, watching too much Hamlet.”

“You’re funny. How ’bout a private dance?”

“Tempting, but I have an appointment with Harmony.”

The big brunette leaned in close to Harry’s ear. “You don’t want a dance with her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s all mopey. I’ll do stuff back there that you’ll remember.”

“Why’s she all mopey?”

Cynthia sat up. “Why do you care?”

Harry, with difficulty, reached into his pocket and produced a ten dollar bill while the girl giggled. He looked around her body for a place to put it. When she offered her cleavage, he slipped the money there. “’Cause I do.”

Cynthia leaned in again. “She just lost her boob ticket.”

“Her boob ticket?”

“She had a guy who was gonna buy her new boobs.”

“Lost him how?”

“That’s a weird question. What are you, like, a stalker?”

The sound of a sarcastic throat clearing behind Cynthia stopped him from answering. Harmony had changed out of her school uniform and was now wearing a low-cut white lab coat. “I’m assuming you no longer want that dance.”

“No,” Harry said attempting to stand, “Cynthia and I were just chatting.” He carefully helped Cynthia off his lap.

“I’d keep an eye out for Hammy here,” the skinny girl huffed. “He’s a strange one.”

Harmony ignored her colleague’s advice and took Harry by the hand and led him into the dark back of the establishment.

“Is that your name, Hammy?”

“No, it’s Harry,” he said, finding it difficult to lie to the girl.

She led him to a counter with a middle-aged woman behind it.

“Dances are twenty bucks.”

Harry gave the lady a twenty, and she gave Harmony a little ticket that she stuffed into the pocket of her lab coat.

“Aren’t you going to tip Denise?”

“You want me to tip her?” Harry said, pointing to the lady behind the counter who had just lit a cigarette.

“She works hard,” Harmony said.

Harry gave the woman a couple of bucks that she took without thanks, then Harmony led him to a small alcove with an armless leather chair and a tiny jukebox. She closed the curtain behind her.

“You got a fiver for the box?”

“Huh?”

“The jukebox.”

“Oh yeah,” Harry said, handing over a fiver. “What happened to quarter jukeboxes?”

If she heard the question she didn’t acknowledge it. She punched the buttons that allowed some sort of trance music to escape. “How good your dance is depends on your tip. A twentydollar tip is customary – up front.”

“A one hundred per cent tip?”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Quality costs.”

“Yes, of course,” Harry said, handing her a twenty. “I’m just getting used to this new Pocono economy.”

There was no “stripping” involved. Harmony undid the two buttons on her lab coat and dropped it to the floor. From then on Harry’s imagination went on holiday because there was nothing left for it to do. Harmony turned and touched her toes and then sat on Harry’s lap and grinded in a clockwise motion. Harry put his hands at her sides in an attempt to lift her off his lap, but she grabbed the back of his hands and pulled them up to her breasts while leaning in and blowing into his ear.

He was momentarily distracted but finally said: “Ah, Harmony, could we talk?”

She arched her back and grinded harder into Harry’s, not unresponsive, lap. “I’m a dancer.” She again fell back against Harry’s chest and got so close he could feel her wet lips against his ear, “I don’t talk.”

“Not even about Big Bill?”

The gyration stopped. Harmony reached down, picked up her lab coat and then stood holding it in front of her like it was a towel and she had just stepped from a shower. “What about Bill?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about him, if I may?”

“You a cop?”

“No, but I’m working with them.”

“Do you have any ID?”

“Not really, I have a driver’s license.”

“Why are you talking to me here?”

“I thought it would be easier, more relaxed.” Harry looked around the tiny cubicle and shrugged. “I think I was wrong.”

A voice came from the other side of the curtain. “You OK in there, Sara?”

Harmony stared at Harry, trying to make up her mind about him. When the guy on the other side of the curtain didn’t hear anything he pushed it open. Harry was expecting one of the neckless bouncers, but instead, standing there, was a man he hadn’t seen before. He was tall and dark, maybe Middle Eastern, with a full moustache circa 1970s porn star.

Harmony spun around and took an involuntary step back, treading on Harry’s foot and almost falling over.

“What’s going on here?” the man asked.

Harmony put on her lab coat. She was obviously intimidated by the man and was struggling to come up with a response.

“I hear you been asking about Big Bill?” the man said, stepping into the alcove that wasn’t really big enough for the three of them. “You a cop? If you’re a cop you have to say you’re a cop.”

“I’m not a cop.”

The man stepped closer and pushed Harmony behind him. “Then what the fuck are you?”

This was a hypothetical question that, at that moment, Harry was unprepared to answer.

“I want you out.”

“If you back up,” Harry said as calmly as he could, “then maybe I could stand.”

“You telling me what to do in my own club?”

There are lots of theories on how to defuse aggressive situations and Harry knew them all. In his experience, predicaments like this usually got defused when the aggressor’s fist made contact with Harry’s nose. After a split second mental game of eenie, meeny, miny, mo Harry decided on polite submissive.

“No, sir.”

The man grabbed the cloth on Harry’s shirt sleeve just below the shoulder and dragged him out to the main room. The bouncers jumped to their feet when they saw Harry and the man come out from the back of the club. The man pushed Harry into the bouncers and pointed to the door.

“Hey hey hey,” came the jovial voice of Cirba as the two men roughly grabbed Harry by his shirt and his arm. “What’s goin’ on here?”

“This is none of your business,” the man said.

Cirba reached into his back pocket and expertly flipped open a wallet displaying his badge. “How about I make it my business?”

The bouncers didn’t let go of Harry but they stopped and looked to the man for instruction.

“What has my colleague done to prompt such treatment?”

“He was hassling the girls. The management has the right—”

“Yeah yeah,” Cirba interrupted. “I read the sign on the way in. Could you unhand my friend, please? He doesn’t really look like much of a troublemaker to me.”

The bouncers looked to their boss, who nodded, and Harry was released.

“Is this the woman Mr Cull was hassling?” Cirba pointed to Harmony who was standing in the entrance to the back rooms clutching her lab coat to her chest.

“One of them.”

“Multiple hassling – my, you’ve been busy, Harry.”

Harry gave Cirba a shrug.

“We came tonight to speak to this woman about a murder investigation.”

The man turned to Harmony and said: “You don’t have to talk to him.” Then back to Cirba. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Surely the lady can speak for herself.”

All eyes were on Harmony as she quietly looked at the floor and said: “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Now I’m assuming you don’t have a warrant, officer…”

“Cirba,” Cirba offered and shook his head no.

“So I would like to ask you and him to leave.”

“Do you want me to get a warrant, Mr… ?”

The man did not return the courtesy of offering his name. “Yes, Officer Cirba, that is exactly what I want you to do.”

“We shall meet again,” Cirba said and then to Harry, “Come, Watson.”

Harry took a step towards the door, stopped and said: “Oh, I forgot.” He took out his wallet, pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of it and took a step back into the club. The bouncers closed together like elevator doors. Harry flashed the bill and said: “I just never got to give the young lady a tip.” They let him past and he approached Harmony. She extended her hand, but Harry slid the money into one of the pockets on her lab coat and smiled at her. As he walked out of the club he said: “I’ll recommend this place to my friends.”

* * *

Outside Cirba stood next to his car staring up at the starry sky.

Harry waited by the passenger door for the trooper to unlock it. Finally, he asked: “You OK?”

Cirba look down from the firmament and said: “What part of undercover do you not understand?”

“Hey. Firstly, I’m not an undercover cop. You hired me to be subtle, not covert, and secondly – those folks in there are awfully twitchy. I asked the skinny stripper one tiny question and she went straight to the boss. At least I’m assuming he was the boss. Can I ask you a question?”

Cirba sighed, clicked his car remote. “I guess.”

As they both climbed in Harry asked: “How come you didn’t haul that guy, and the girl, back to the station? Or at least threaten to?”

Cirba started the engine but didn’t put the car in drive. “Well, it would have been an idle threat. I wasn’t prepared to haul anybody in.”

“Why not? That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? I’ve got nothing better to do tonight and those folks really need to answer some questions.”

“Yeah it’s just… I wasn’t ready to bring you to headquarters yet.”

“Me? Why?”

“Well, you don’t have clearance… for interrogation.”

“I thought you hired me as an interrogator?”

“I did but that’s just it. I hired you.”

“What do you mean, ‘I hired you?’ I’m not hired by the PA State Police?”

“No.”

“What’s going on?”

Cirba turned off the engine and faced Harry. “Big Bill had a brother a year younger than him that got killed in a car accident.”

“I heard about that.”

“Yeah well, what you probably didn’t hear is that his trunk was filled with Oxycontin.”

“Hillbilly heroin.”

“That’s the stuff. From the toll road ‘Easy Pass’ in his car we figure the youngest Thomson boy had driven non-stop from Kentucky right before he turned the statue of St Elizabeth into a lefty. So the department thinks Big Bill’s shooting is just some backwoods drug deal gone wrong. They realize that solving it will be near impossible, and the truth is, they really don’t care if one drug dealer kills another, as long as it doesn’t happen a lot. So I’m the only manpower and expense they’ve allocated.”

“You’re paying me out of your own pocket?”

“Well, I figure if we get a result, I’ll put in an invoice for your services.”

“How come you didn’t tell me this upfront?”

Cirba smiled. “Maybe I wanted to see if I could get away with lying to you?”

Harry wanted to be mad but just couldn’t do it. His professional side told him to go home, but he had been so professional for so long it was actually fun to be flying by the seat of his pants. He matched Cirba’s smile and said: “You realize you’re going to have to repay the ninety-five bucks I spent in there?”

“Spent ninety-five bucks! How the hell did you spend ninety-five bucks?”

“I paid to get in, tipped the first dancer, tipped Cynthia, paid for a dance, tipped some grandmother, and tipped Harmony, twice.”

“Fine,” Cirba said as he started the engine and put the car into drive. “Of course, you have receipts – right?”

Harry gave Cirba a “you’ve got to be kidding” look, but the cop didn’t see it. He squinted straight ahead then drove to the end of the parking lot and turned off his headlights.

“Are we going to start making out?” Harry asked.

“Look,” Cirba said, pointing to a small light flickering deep in the woods.

Chapter 6

“Where the hell are we going?” Harry asked as they pulled off the Five Mile Road onto a dirt track.

“Don’t you recognize this? It’s the Horseshoe Road.”

They didn’t have to travel very far before Cirba pulled in behind one of a dozen cars parked on the back road. Harry started walking up the track to the footpath that led into what this morning was a crime scene.

“Not that way,” Cirba said in a loud whisper. “Let’s bushwhack.”

Harry followed the cop into the woods. The almost full moon provided almost enough light for Harry to see without braining himself on a tree branch, but without his towering companion to lead the way, Harry would have been seriously spooked being in these woods at night. As they got close to the campfire they heard the music and then saw about thirty teenagers milling around a fire and a quarter keg of beer in a galvanized tub.