Bum Rap by Paul Levine

casinos.
    “What do you do, handsome funny man?” the blonde asked.
    “My game’s insurance.” I pointed to my plastic badge. “Say, do you girls own or rent?”
    “We visit.”
    “’Cause I got a heckuva deal on homeowner’s liability. No charge for a jewelry rider.”
    I was about to begin extolling the virtue of double indemnity life insurance when the brunette started running her fingers through my hair. I had used some of my nephew Kip’s polisher to give my mop a sleeker look and hoped she wasn’t getting greasy fingers.
    “Nice hair, big man,” she purred.
    The blonde slipped a hand inside my Armani jacket and was letting her lacquered fingernails tickle my chest. “Strong man, too.”
    We exchanged names. The brunette was Marina, the blonde Elena. I told them to call me Gus and gave them my best, “Pleased to meetcha.”
    “Gus, do you like caviar?” Elena said.
    “Yah. Haven’t had it since cousin Sven’s wedding over in Hibbing. Gotta say I prefer it to lutefisk. Any fish you gotta soak in lye, Gus J. Gustafson can do without.”
    “We know a place with great caviar,” Marina said, just as I hoped she would.
    “And champagne,” Elena added.
    “Tickles my nose. But heck, ain’t that what life’s all about?”
    My bookend beauties each slung an arm through one of mine. T he gesture reminded me of a couple of cops escorting a client toward the slammer. But these two leaned into me so I could feel their breasts against my upper arms. The feeling was not unpleasant. I knew they did not intend to bed me down on fleece pillows. They merely intended to fleece me. Their smiles, their touches, were as smooth as a Ray Allen jump shot from the corner. Giving men hope. That’s what they did for a living. And they were damn good at it.
    “Let’s go, Gus,” Marina said. “Tonight, we show you time of your life.”

-17-
    The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
    C lub Anastasia was just off Washington Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets on South Beach. “Off” Washington, because the entrance was in an alley.
    A dark alley with Dumpsters, mud puddles, and a clanging of a Jamaican steel band coming from a nearby apartment building with open windows.
    A red velvet rope in front of a narrow door looked out of place. Like a festive ribbon wrapped around a garbage pail. Standing at the rope was your typical no-neck bouncer in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. The sign above the door said simply, PRIVATE CLUB . The bouncer eyed Marina and Elena as if they were strangers and said, “Password?”
    Marina muttered something in Russian. The bouncer nodded gravely and opened the velvet rope to paradise.
    “You gals know your way around this burg,” I said as we climbed a scarred wooden staircase to the second floor. Music poured out of an open door at the top of the stairs. Not Russian music. American jazz. I could swear it was “In a Sentimental Mood,” a Duke Ellington composition with John Coltrane on sax. The club might be run by racketeers and mobsters, but their taste in music wasn’t bad.
    Inside it was dark. Marina led us to a sofa behind a translucent curtain that gave the impression of privacy. The sofa was just large enough for three very close friends. We squeezed into it, me in the middle again. A pot of artificial ferns sat on each end of the sofa. I could make out several other mini-sofas, populated by threesomes. Men in the middle, hot women flanking them. More potted plants off to the side.
    I could see the bar through the flimsy curtain. A three-hundred-pound bartender was staring into a mirror behind the bar, talking into a cell phone. A blue neon light above the mirror spelled out “Club Anastasia.”
    “Champagne!” Elena shouted.
    “Perrier-Jouët!” Marina chimed in.
    A cocktail waitress waltzed through the curtains. She wore a French maid’s outfit you might see in a porno film. Black lacy mini with a white apron the size of a napkin and a white rhinestone collar. In