She nodded. 'Well, they do say Elvis is king.'

'Elvis is king,' he agreed. 'Do you imagine me in one of those white satin jumpsuits with the big collar?'

'Oh, no, no.' She shook her head. 'I'm thinking of his black-suit-and-skinny-tie phase. Young Elvis,' she assured him.

'But I can't sing. I listen more to the Sex Pistols, Spiderbait or The White Stripes.'

'If Elvis were alive I'm sure he would be listening to The White Stripes, too,' Mak said.

He pulled up at a red light. 'You're in Melbourne for a job?' he asked, and turned to her while he waited for the light to change. He had that pleasing face, but she could see his punk influence too. He might be more Sex Pistols than 'Blue Suede Shoes', but she still thought he looked like an Elvis man. Maybe a punk Elvis?

She looked away. 'Um...yeah, I'm working, but visiting Loulou mostly,' she answered, wanting to evade the details of her work. 'We're good friends. Pretty inseparable most of the time. I moved to Australia only a year or so ago and I still don't know that many people,' she admitted. She hoped her comment didn't make her sound lonely. 'Still, I've been here longer than in most cities I've lived in.'

Bogey nodded in response, then turned right down a main street and drove a few blocks. They passed the Supreme Court and the Magistrates' Courts. 'It sounds like you've travelled a lot.'

'Yeah,' Mak agreed. 'I've become so used to it over the years that I don't even notice any more. The other day I realised that since I have been an adult I had never actually lived in any country for longer than twelve months. This has literally been my longest stay anywhere.' Mak realised she was telling him her life history for some reason, and thought she really should switch the subject. 'So how did you get a name like Bogey? Is that Bogey as in an evil or mischievous spirit, or the number of strokes a player is likely to need to finish a golf hole?'

He glanced at her with a raised a eyebrow, and Mak recalled, too late, that not everyone liked to read the dictionary for kicks.

'It's no golf reference. It's because my name is Humphrey. Humphrey Mortimer.' He said the name quietly, and rather quickly, she thought.

'Ah, Humphrey. Actually, Humphrey Mortimer is not such a bad name,' she said, trying to reassure him. 'It couldn't be any worse than mine, surely-"Makedde Vanderwall" is a mouthful! Humphrey suited Mr Bogart just fine. You know, my opa looked exactly like Humphrey Bogart. In all my old black-and-white photos of him, he's the spitting image...'

'Yeah?'

They had reached Lonsdale Street.

Well, that's it.

Mak looked out the window at the grand neon signage of Thunderball Gentlemen's Club. The entrance to the club opened brazenly and incongruously onto a street almost entirely inhabited by barristers' chambers, just as Maroon had said. Both the Magistrates' and Supreme courts were a stone's throw up the road. It seemed an odd location for a club of its kind. She could guess that more than a couple of the Melbourne legal fraternity would be on a first-name basis with the staff inside. Perhaps that had come in handy from time to time for the owner.

'Well, um...I'll get out here. Thanks for the lift,' she said, regretting the end of their little journey together.

Bogey pulled the car into one of the available spots on the street and shut off the engine. Mak opened her door, panicking inside. Why is the engine off? What is he doing?

'You're going into the club, right?' he asked her.

Mak nodded, not looking in his direction. She gathered her purse as casually as she could and turned to say goodbye. When she looked at him their eyes locked again like they had in Drayson's apartment, only this time she could see that he was concerned.

He broke their gaze and looked down at the steering wheel. 'It worries me a bit that you are going in there alone.'

Mak felt a rush of relief that his turning off the car had to do with her getting a lecture on safety, and not a pressured sexual proposition of any kind-not that this guy seemed the type. She laughed. Any hormonally influenced thoughts had no doubt been entirely in her head.

'I've been a lot of places,' Mak said. 'A strip joint doesn't worry me, honestly.'

A stranger like this could not guess what she had gone through in her life. Walking into a men's club would surely be the least of her horrors.

'I am an investigator. This sort of thing is what I do, and I do it alone.'

Well, that was embellishing it a bit-she was only a fledgling PI and she had never actually been into a proper strip club before, let alone on her own. But he didn't need to know that. His being worried was silly, regardless.

'All the same,' he said, 'I think I'd like to wait outside with the car in case you have some trouble.'

Mak didn't have a response ready: she had not seen this coming. 'You want to wait outside until I'm done?' she asked incredulously. 'You would do that?'

'I'll be parked right here,' Bogey insisted.

'No, no...that's crazy. I'll be a while, and you have your project to start on tomorrow-the staining you haven't started yet, remember?'

'I know.' But he seemed to be immovable in his desire to see that she was safe. 'I'm just not comfortable leaving you in this area when you are alone and you have no car.'

Mak sat glued to the passenger seat, the door open and one foot on the kerb, considering his words. She was at an impasse. She hadn't planned on letting anyone but Marian Wendell in on her little mission. And she certainly didn't need a babysitter, day or night, cafe or strip bar. If she didn't like Bogey, she would have blown him off already, but he seemed sincere. And perhaps he could be helpful? A young woman in a gentlemen's club alone might become a target for the other patrons, or even a threat to some of the girls working there. Having a man with her might help her to blend in.

'Well,' she said, somewhat reluctantly. 'I don't need a babysitter. I want you to know that. But, if you're going to insist on waiting here anyway, you might as well come in for a drink.'

She ignored the voice in her head that told her she might also be asking him inside for the wrong reasons.

Despite living much of her life near Vancouver, a city with one of the most thriving strip scenes in North America, Makedde Vanderwall had little experience with gentlemen's clubs. She'd partied in some gay clubs in New York and been subjected to the usual buffed-up male strippers in requisite construction-worker costume, swinging their hammers, so to speak, and she'd seen half-naked burlesque performers at some extravagant parties. But despite the passing fad of going to strip joints en masse with the girls, a proper gentlemen's club was something Mak had only seen in movies. She certainly would not have imagined that the first time she found herself purposefully walking into a 'girlie bar', she would be doing it in Australia, as a private investigator, flanked by a coffin-maker she'd only met that night, and there to try to solve a complete stranger's murder.

Life is strange...

Mak approached the front door of Thunderball with her punk Elvis next to her, his hands in his pockets. An entirely expressionless security guard in a dark suit stood at the front door of the club and watched their approach. 'Good evening,' he mumbled. He must have been satisfied with the look of them, because without another word he pushed aside a heavy wooden door so they could enter.

The lighting was low inside, and Mak could hear pulsing music from upstairs. Just inside the door was a coat-check area with a cashier.

'Forty dollars each,' the woman at the register said with an insincere smile.

Bogey automatically dug into his jeans to get his wallet, but Mak stopped him with a firm hand. She paid up with a couple of fifties, waited for a receipt, and soon they ascended a staircase together into the club, where the music grew louder, and the light grew dimmer.

'This is on my client's tab,' Mak told him in a loud whisper so she could be heard over the music.

'Oh, okay,' he said.

At the top of the stairs the club opened up into a sprawling space of several bars and performance areas in different sections. Directly in front of them was a billiard table where a group of men were playing a game with scantily clad girls draped over them, giggling and posing as if they were trapped in the foreplay scenes of a bad porn film-'Ooooh, can I help you with your stick?' Beyond the divider of some gold-painted Roman pillars there was a larger room with a number of round bar tables and a big stage with the expected pole, presently unoccupied. To the right the club opened up even further, with a cocktail bar and several smaller stages where girls in bikinis, frilly underwear and skin-tight lycra micro-dresses swayed and arched for the enjoyment of watching men. A girl performing in hotpants bent straight over and flashed a good part of a fully waxed crotch.

Mak blinked.

It's like something in the movies, Mak thought, only none of the dancers were fully nude. For the moment, anyway. She had expected to see an orgy of naked flesh sliding up and down greased poles, vaginas unleashed in all directions as men bayed and howled like dogs. She was mildly relieved at the reality.

'Let's get a drink,' she suggested to Bogey, and led him to the right. They sidled up to one of the main bars and took position on a couple of stools. Mak swivelled around to face him. 'What do you want?' she offered.

'What are you having?'

It didn't look like the sort of place that would do a satisfying mojito.

'Vodka, lime and soda,' she said.

Bogey flagged down some service while Mak observed the establishment from her barstool vantage point. There were women everywhere, almost outnumbering the men, but Mak was quite possibly the only female there who wasn't working at the place. A few patrons looked in Mak's direction and appraised her openly before refocusing their attention on the undulating performers. Already she was starting to think that having Bogey with her was of some genuine value. He was helping her to blend in, and was quite possibly preventing her from being propositioned as well. She was certain that she could manage fine without him, but clearly his presence was going to make her job easier.

An impossibly large-breasted, bleached blonde bartender appeared, drawing Mak's eyes to the bar once again. She wore an over-strained gingham tie top that could have been made from a cocktail napkin, and looked to be a few days out of high school.

'What can I getcha?' the bartender asked, smiling brightly with a full set of braces.

Oh dear.

Bogey smoothly gave the scantily clad young woman Mak's order of vodka, lime and soda, and asked for a bottle of the Japanese beer Asahi for himself. They didn't have it. 'Heineken?' They didn't have that one either. 'A bottle of Crown?' he asked. She plonked one on the bar and popped the top. Bogey didn't touch it, evidently waiting for Mak to get her drink before he started his beer. If he had ogled the girl's breasts while he ordered, Mak somehow hadn't noticed it. And she had been watching.

Impressive.

Mak had to admit that Bogey wasn't really eyeballing the visions of fake-tanned flesh surrounding them, much less howling for them to 'take it all off'. And the women really were surrounding them-on the many performance stages, walking past slowly in lingerie, leaning wantonly on pillars in mesh slips and pouring beers wearing improbable tops. It was a visual feast of toned flesh and Worst Dressed Listworthy outfits such as Mak had never seen. Bogey was probably being polite for Mak's sake. His discipline might change after a few beers, she guessed.

Bending over the bar and with breasts jiggling, the bartender presented Mak's drink and Bogey paid for it before Mak could stop him.

'You remember what I said about the client?' Mak reminded him.

'Your tab covers drinks?'

'Everything,' she replied, and took a sip through her straw.

It wasn't the best drink she'd ever tasted. They had some good vodkas displayed along the bar, but she was guessing that none of those had been used to make her drink.

'It must be nice that you can drink on the job and get paid for it,' Bogey commented.

'That's one of the perks of being a private detective and not a public one,' Mak explained. 'The cops have so much regulation. Rank. Superiors. Inspectors watching their every move. Every step they make has to be taken thinking that it might be investigated in court and ripped to pieces by a defence barrister. Whereas with me...well, so long as I don't break the law too badly, I can do just about anything to get the job done. And there's no law against drinking on the job, either. In fact, there's a rather illustrious history of partnership between investigators and their booze.'

Bogey smirked, seeing that she was at least half joking. 'I'll keep that in mind.' He shook his head and did another of his little huff-laughs. 'You sure are surprising,' he said, and lifted the beer to his lips.

Concentrate, Mak. Stop trying to impress this guy and just do your job.

Mak leaned one elbow on the bar and worked on her drink, watching the room for anyone who resembled Amy Camilleri's picture. There were a disproportionate number of blondes, as one might expect, but still no sign of anyone with Amy's face. Mak noticed, to her surprise, that a number of the male customers were actually on their own, or in sedate groupings of two or three. It wasn't the screaming buck's night crowd she'd expected to see.

She also observed with interest the various interactions: lots of looking but no touching, unless it was the girls touching the men. Some ladies working the floor actually leaned against customers as they chatted, seemingly relaxed in their underclothes despite the layers of suits or jeans the men wore. And she noticed that there were a lot of surveillance cameras but, apart from the guard at the front door, Mak had not yet spotted any of the stereotypical frowning no-neck bouncers. They would be there somewhere, she was sure, but they were subtle. Security was probably briefed to keep a low profile so the customers could relax.

Check out their faces...

On one of the nearby stages a Latina with huge hoop earrings, a neon-yellow string bikini and clear platform stilettos wiggled and tapped her brown buttocks to the delight of a growing audience. The men seemed mesmerised but helpless, like diabetics in a candy store. They could look but not touch, and there was not much room for conversation with all that staring, so for the most part they just sat and stared mutely. A slim Japanese girl in a schoolgirl uniform shared the other half of the same stage, not working with the Latina dancer, but keeping her back to her and trying to win her own fans. She wore a white tie top and a micro-mini version of the tartan schoolgirl skirt, her white socks pulled up to her knees. An older man leaned forwards, staring at her with his mouth slack. When she kneeled down in front of him and caressed her small breasts through her top, he took a folded bill and slid it into a garter on her thigh.

The goal was cash, and it was every woman for herself.

'Is there anything you want me to do?' Bogey asked after they had sat quietly for a while.

'Nothing for the moment,' Mak responded. 'I just need to check things out for a bit. Is there anyone you want to look at?' She gestured to the girls performing.

'This kind of place isn't my thing,' he said dismissively. 'I'm just happy wherever you need me to be.'

'It's nice of you to help out like this,' she said, trying to figure out just exactly why he was being so generous with his time, particularly if he had a work project to start on first thing in the morning. 'I know you have to work early.'

Bogey gave her a slow smile. 'Don't say it like I'm a saint or anything. Accompanying someone like you to a place full of naked women is no chore for any man, and don't let them tell you otherwise. I'm not complaining.'

Someone like me?

'About what you said before,' Bogey went on. 'I know you don't need a babysitter. That's not why I wanted to stay. I can tell that you can take care of yourself.'

She waited for him to finish.

'I just didn't feel good about leaving you here on your own. It's not a great part of town to be alone in at night.'

'It's all right, I think it's a nice gesture,' Mak assured him. 'I didn't take it the wrong way.' With a different guy, with a different attitude, though, she might have. 'If I wanted you to leave me alone, I'd have just told you.'

'I believe you would too. Now, if you need me out of your hair so you can work, that's no problem. But I'd really rather not leave you on your own here. I can wait outside until you're done.'

Mak laughed. 'It's too late now, mister. You can't leave. You're part of my cover. We are a couple who have come to Thunderball to spice up our sex life with a little titillating entertainment. If you leave me now it will look too obvious.' She cast her eye towards some of the nearby male patrons. 'And I think someone here might take too much notice.'

He nodded, signalling that he understood.

'I'm glad you're here,' she told him. 'This is fun. Cheers,' she said, and clinked his bottle with her glass.

'Cheers.'

'Now check out some babes, will you? Otherwise people will wonder why we're here.' Mak swivelled her chair around and watched a group of patrons in chairs circling a platform where a girl was perched in her underwear. 'Check her out, for instance,' Mak said. 'She's on a train to Boresville.'

A ring of beer-swilling men watched a stunning blonde in black briefs, bra top and classic stripper heels as she lay on her back on a small, circular stage and swirled her legs around occasionally, plainly bored. Her mouth was stuck in an unattractive line, the look in her eyes distant; she was clearly imagining some place she would rather be. She wasn't even trying to appear as though she was into it. Mak caught her yawning and looking at her watch.

Who could find that sexy?

'Did you see that? She's just waiting for her shift to end, poor girl. That can't be good for business,' Mak said.

'It's not,' Bogey said. 'Look...' A handful of men wandered away from the platform, leaving the seats around her empty. Bogey finished his beer. 'I'll be back in a minute,' he said. 'Do you know which way the men's would be?'

'I saw a sign to the left at the top of the staircase,' Mak told him. She noticed pretty much everything when she was working.

She concentrated on the room again, and her eyes were drawn to the bored blonde once more as she swivelled her legs, circling her ankles in one direction and then the other. Zoned out and distant, she was nothing more than a sensual automaton, unaware or indifferent to the fact that her audience had moved on. She looked every bit as pretty as a lot of the models Mak had worked with, and Mak could not help but wonder why a girl with that face was on a stripper's podium instead of a catwalk somewhere. Did it pay that much better? She sure didn't seem to be there because she loved dancing.

Bogey had been gone for perhaps sixty seconds before Makedde felt a hand on her shoulder.

Oh no.

CHAPTER 31.

'The job is complete.'