The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors by Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan Page B

tell Harmony to put some clothes on, get down on her knees, and pray to the stripper gods that the ceiling doesn’t fall before her sixty days are run. ’Cause when the sky falls in here, then Chicken Little will have some ’splaining to do. I’ll probably need a job when that happens.”
    We both looked up at the ceiling with a sense of apprehension. I wondered how many files the ceiling could hold before Seiver’s pretrial intervention program came crashing down.
    â€œLet’s finish our sandwiches and not worry about it,” Seiver finally said.
    â€œOkay.”
    We resumed our positions on either side of the wall of files.
    It was early evening and still bright outside. When I walked into the Snake Pit North I had to pause for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. When they did, I saw my client Harmony was on the main stage, her perfect triangle glittering in the spotlights. She moved with a natural rhythm that was as entrancing as her naked body. No tattoos as distraction. Just her, pure and beautiful.
    That’s why I had come. I could have delivered the good news by phone and been done with it. Said, See you around the courthouse in a year. But I had to see her one more time. Her body had left a memory imprint on me in the privacy booth. And I had started dreaming about being with her now that the case was closed and it could be argued—before the Bar if necessary—that she was no longer a client. Bar or no Bar, I wanted her. There was something intoxicating about having the smartest girl in the room moving up and down on you.
    The song was an old one, “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” and had just started. I stood in the crowd and just watched and after a while she saw me and gave me the nod without breaking her rhythm. It might be a young girl’s game but I thought she could give lessons for the next twenty years if need be. She moved with a rhythm that seemed to push the music, not the other way around.
    I looked around and found an open bar table along the back wall. I sat down and watched Harmony dance until the song ended. While another dancer took the next song, she stood by the stairs at the back of the stage and put her orange G-string and zebra-striped camisole back on. The garter around her thigh was flowered with money—ones, fives, tens, and twenties. She walked down the steps, stopped at a few tables to kiss heavy donors on the cheek, and then came to me.
    â€œHello, Counselor. Do you have news for me?”
    She took the other stool at the table.
    â€œI sure do,” I said. “The news is that your research was superb and your strategy excellent. The prosecutor bought it. He bought the whole thing.”
    She held still for a moment, as if basking in some unseen glow.
    â€œWhat exactly is the disposition of the case?”
    â€œIt goes away. Completely.”
    â€œWhat about the record of my arrest?”
    â€œI go back in a couple months from now and expunge it. There will be no record.”
    â€œWow. I’m good.”
    â€œYou sure are. And don’t forget I had a little part to play in it, too.”
    â€œThanks, Mickey. You just made my night.”
    â€œYeah, well, I was hoping you could make mine.”
    â€œWhat do you have in mind?”
    â€œI was thinking about what you said last night.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout a man needing to eat pussy.”
    She smiled in that way that all women have, that way that says it isn’t going to happen.
    â€œThat was last night, Mickey. Tonight it’s a whole new world.”
    She slid off the stool and came around the table to me. She kissed me on the cheek the way I had just seen her kiss the big donors, the schmucks who had put twenty-dollar bills in her garter.
    â€œTake care, baby,” she said.
    She started to glide away from the table.
    â€œWait a minute. What about the privacy booth? I thought maybe we could go back there …