Vicky de Groot P.I. & The Case of the Dead Stripper’s Gambit
Preface by the author: Everything I’m going to tell you is true, some of the names have been changed, and some of the events combined. These are the stories from my five years as a private investigator in Beaumont, Texas (1978 – 1983) and every single stitch of it is true.
Chapter Three: The Sanguine Ingénue
I head south to meet my buddy Chance at the Ton’s Deli and European Bakery. It’s a pretty unique place, exactly what it says, a meat market and a bakery. It’s also a dining hall, a specialty grocery store and more importantly a secret bar. Not really a secret, it’s just something they don’t advertise. The locals prefer to keep it to themselves.
When I moved to Texas, I was surprised to find there was a Nederland. I walked into the deli an orphan from the Netherlands, I left with a half-dozen new parents. The deli is the focal point of the local Dutch community. Many of the old men remember my dad from the war. The bar is in the back of the building, a huge hardwood affair brought over from the homeland. Today, like most days, it’s populated by older men.
When they see me, they start to bellow my father’s name. Pronounced with the glottis clearing hard “G” of the homeland and drawing out the vowel in a long howl “de Grooot!de Grooot!” The first time my friend Chance heard it, he thought they might be out for blood, today he is at the bar bellowing with them.
The old Dutch guys don’t take to strangers well, but Chance is the sort of person people just like. He was in Vietnam, and that’s instant points with the military guys. He’s a small, slender man with a rich Acadian accent that sounds like pouring cane syrup on hot biscuits. Half-Cajun and half-Coushatta he’s deucedly handsome and draws women like ants to a picnic, even some of the old guys seem to have a crush on him, but I’ve never known him to date. Once, drinking, he confided in me that he just wasn’t interested in women, or men, or sex for that matter.
He’s a decent man with his feet deep in the bogs of the piney woods. He left school early, but may be the smartest man I’ve met, not just in the way of the woods, but just about everything else too. Well he can hold a conversation about physics and philosophy, while starting a fire out of wet moss to cook the critters he trapped. He was the first friend I made in Texas, but I don’t remember meeting him. I had been drinking an ex off my mind and this little man, I had never met, swept in and told the responding police I was his sister. I woke up with the sun, in the bed of a pick up truck by the river, fully dressed and the smell of campfire coffee pulling me toward the land of the living.
I don’t tell Chance we are meeting Detective Gallo to look at a dead girl until we are heading back to Beaumont, he takes it in stride. He doesn’t bat an eye when they pull her out on a tray. What we see is a nightmare. There isn’t much left. Arms gone below ragged elbows, feet and calves ripped away. A jagged hole where her face once was, the skull smashed in, until only her hair looks unbroken. Gallo brings his usual charm
Darla the dancer, danced off the wrong damn bridge. I bet we find she’s full of black beauties. Strippers love speed.
Chance brings his impeccable logic,” You right Detective, I hope she’s dead enough for you, for doing them black beauties and all.”
Ignoring this, Gallo turns his attention to me. “So, is it her or not?”
“I have no idea, there’s nothing left to ID.”
“We both know it’s her, baby, just sign it.”
“You sign it.”
“I didn’t know her.”
“But you’re sure that’s her?”
“Pretty much.”
“I don’t think I honestly can.”
“Now, baby, you think on it for a minute, I gotta hit the head, it’d be extra groovy if you could maybe sign that before I get back.”
Gallo hands me the clipboard and storms off to the bathroom leaving Chance and I alone with the macabre torso. Chance asks, “So that’s her?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“These gator bites, they’re not gator, them’s pigs. Look at that gnawin’ at the stumps. Gators rip an’ tear. And that bruisin’? It’s from rope. This child was tied up next to a pen, so the pigs don’t get her all at once. Hard thing if she was alive, but something someone might do if they were mad at her.”
“So you think she was dead already when they threw her over.”
“Most likely, or when they just set her down there, she ain’t been in the water too long, and she would’ve been a few miles down river if she just plopped in. Also her face is caved in, ain’t no critter did that.
“Then they just left her car at the top of the bridge, makes sense. Hey! Let’s cut out before he gets back.
We drop the clipboard, unsigned, and hit the door before Gallo can finish his constitutional. Chance is docked in Port Neches so we have a little more time to talk, before I drop him off at his boat. After I head back to my place to ponder and paint my tonsils.”
I walk into my lobby and it’s full of cowboys. Not the cool kind of cowboys with the yodeling and clean living. These were the sketchy kind of cowboys. Three men with big hats and hard faces. The main talker looks like he was carved out of six feet of leather and smells like tobacco and sweat. He steps in menacingly close and before I can decide if I am going to fight or flee he lifts his shirt and lets me see he has an automatic stuck in his waist band.
“Them too miss, but don’t worry Miss de Groot, we’re not here to hurt you.”
“Sure, that’s what everyone says when they show up heavy.”
“Miss, I’ve been sent with a message for you, I hope you can listen.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Certain parties want you to know you are barking up the wrong tree, and you need to make sure you ain’t stepping on the wrong toes.”
“Would certain parties own any strip clubs?”
“I don’t know, Miss, I just know if you want to know what happened to Baby Jane Doe you need to ask your client.”
“My client isn’t answering any questions right now, she’s on a slab.”
“Oh, is she? Where do you suppose Baby Jane is?”
“Do you know something I need to know?”
“I know you’ve been told. Let me tell you this too, if you come back to any clubs you better bring flowers and have your hat in your hand.”
“I don’t think they are gonna be too friendly in any case.”
“Miss, if you didn’t have friends there, this would have been a ‘no-talking’ get together. You take care now.”
The group herded themselves towards to door, and I was left to digest the death threat and the equally unpleasant thought that I have friends in low places. There’s a rustle in the stairwell and I spin to put up my dukes. Clyde steps out clutching an M1 Garand.
“Oh thank the lord they left. When they asked for you, I went and got this and have been hiding over there ever since. I thought for sure they were gonna take you for sure.”
“Me too, buddy, me too. Say is that government issue?” I said, looking down at the rifle.
“This? I don’t know what this is or where it came from.”
“Well, I’m sure glad you found it.”
“You didn’t need the help.”
“But if I did, you were the one who was ready to come running. You wanna take me up and help me kill a bottle?”
“I could do with a touch of nerve tonic.”
Clyde only stays for one and a half so sunset finds me alone, in the garden, clinking ice against glass and digesting the day. Hard thing to find out your client may have been fed to pigs. Hard thing to find out you have the Dixie Mafia watching your back. I think and drink until both the sun and the last of the bottle, disappear.
Next installment, the exciting conclusion: “Curtain call for the dead.”