Chapter 24

Det. Sgt. Bob Smith drove into Halifax that night and parked at the concrete AutoPark near Mountain Equipment Co-op down by the waterfront.
From there, it was two blocks to Cabaret, a gay night club downtown owned on paper by Alan Lee’s wife.
There was nothing else in the Maritimes like Cabaret. A popular, large dance club that made the Lee family a lot of money, legitimately and otherwise.
About a quarter of the weekend business came from straight people, which Smith was told, was something almost never duplicated by a queer bar.
It was also one of the easiest places downtown to buy dope, especially ecstasy, pot, hash, cocaine, crack, GHB, Special K, crystal meth, Ritalin, speed, PCP, acid, ‘shrooms, mescalin, Dilaudid, hillbilly heroin. Anything at all really.
It was a Monday night of all things and the place was packed like New Year’s Eve.
Even an old-fashioned Nova Scotia cop with a buzz-cut and a copper mustache didn’t stand out too much in the zoo-like atmosphere. The black and white chessboard dance floor was cut up in silver slivers by a mirror ball and white light show. Every type of person from every conceivable walk of life was on the floor.
A short Hispanic man who looked like Danny DeVito in a silver business suit brushed Det. Sgt. Smith’s ass on the dance floor. “Ever get felched by someone standing up?” the little man yelled over the loud bass-thumping.
“I don’t know. I doubt it,” Smith yelled back, honestly, and backed away.
He shoved his way through some good-looking fag hags along the left edge of the floor, then drove straight for the back bathrooms.
C’mon. Asses backed into him and jiggled forcefully in his crotch to Nelly Furtado’s new cover of Eddie Grant’s Electric Avenue.
Smith broke through the crowd and landed at a small dark bar that served beer and shooters to people going in and out of the bathroom. He smiled and debated with himself whether or not to grab a Pale Ale before pushing his way into the crowded men’s. Technically, he was not on duty.
It smelled like vanilla and sandalwood and the sweet burning smell of marijuana and menthol cigarette smoke.
The male and female symbols on the bathroom doors meant nothing at Cabaret.
Three men and about 15 dykes were all crowded around the counter in the men’s room, talking and smoking long white cigarettes.
“Here’s trouble,” one woman said as Smith made his grand entrance.
He smiled at the room, aimiably. “Is Lewis White a.k.a. the Fag, in here somewhere’s? Or is there some other men’s room in this Jesus place?”
The crowd murmured. “Why? You need your cock sucked?” came one answer. Everybody in the room giggled and stared until Smith was forced to smile himself. He resisted an urge to draw his Glock 9mm and shift the momentum in the room just a little. Not on duty, don’t be stupid.
He almost felt nervous.
“I just need to talk to him, that’s all.”
“-Cop cock tastes like bacon,” someone else said now.
It was Lewis “the Fag” White. He peered over the top of one of the bathroom stalls, grinning. His thin face looked almost handsome and innocent except for the bad pock-marking of childhood acne all over his cheeks and chin.
“Need to see you, Lewis,” Smith scolded. “If you have a moment for me, these days, that is.”
The door of the stall creaked open about a foot. “Step into my orifice,” he said.
Smith shook his head and pressed forward through the crowd, then peered cautiously into the toilet stall, immediately wishing he hadn’t done so.
An enormously, chubby bald black man was sitting on the toilet seat, naked, so naturally it was as if he had not worn clothes in years. His hands were square and huge and he used one to carefully place a small beige rock into the end of a flexible piece of medical tubing made into a crack pipe. He lit the crackling rock with a butane lighter and sucked softly, paying no notice to the cop in the doorway.
A skinny white guy in drag with a brownish Sigourney Weaver wig and black tube dress was kneeling on the dirty floor in front of the toilet, one hand each resting on the puffy insides of the man’s thighs. His head was comically bobbing up and down, giving head as Smith himself had never experienced: The way they do in porn movies.
The black man smoking crack seemed barely to notice the effort.
Smith thought of his wife for a flashing instant. The world’s worst head-giver. The sharp edge of her upper front tooth nicking him painfully on every down stroke, Jesus!
A sickly boner began to sprout in Smith’s trousers.
The Fag was putting on lipstick and standing there by the toilet just watching him. “Detective Smith, this is the world famous Miss Titty A-lot-lot. Minus hair and make-up. She’ll be performing tonight at midnight. I’m sorry, I have to help get her ready. I have commitments.”
The boner got worse and worse. The Sigourney guy would not stop fellating.
Smith jammed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and maneuvered his penis all the way upright so that he could tuck it safely out of sight, under the pressure of his belt. Nothing could be worse than pitching a tent in front of a gay drug dealer.
“Lewis,” the black guy said in a lisped but very deep voice. “It’s OK if you need to talk to a police detective. That’s more important.”
“Are you sure?”
“Jumpin’s yeah. Have some manners, would ya? We’re fine.” Miss A-lot-lot stroked the man’s wig with a huge hand
“You sure?”
“Of course.”
“-Thanks… A-lot-lot,” Smith said, nodding curtly at the black man.
“I’ll be back for the show,” Lewis said, gathering up his cigarettes and keys. He nodded his head toward Smith’s crotch. “Should we take care of that stiffy before we go?”
Smith blushed and grabbed Lewis White hard by the shirt, shoving him angrily out of the bathroom.
“Outside!”