Thirty-Six
Thursday
Inside Pole Kisses, I was relieved to spot Gucci stripping off her sweats in the chill room. As Layna and Zhang Xiu gushed
over Phoebe and Alice, a figure emerged from the pole studio. Salma Hayek in a cropped sweatshirt and cheeky pink pole shorts!
I was unsure if I should ask her what happened after she smashed Connor in the head with a bottle of Dos Equis or beg forgiveness
for showing up to class with kiddos in tow.
Gucci gave Salma a giant hug. “Olympia and Cheyenne were great subs, but they weren’t you!” she said. “We missed our fearless
leader. Where ya been, girl?”
Salma gave a sly smile. “Let’s just say I did something hard, but necessary.” Before I could drill deeper, she spotted the
twins. “Tilly, your girls are adorbs, but Pole Kisses is an adult space.”
I switched instantly out of detective mode to throw myself on her mercy, giving her a (very true) line about the impossibilities
of solo parenting and my need to continue my pole journey despite obstacles such as lack of childcare.
Phoebe and Alice, sensing they’d infiltrated a grown-up haven for bad bitches, were on the charm offensive too. They stared
up at Salma adoringly.
“You are prettier than my Barbie,” Alice said.
“And you have better legs,” Phoebe chimed in.
“All right,” Salma said, softening. “They can stay.”
The twins cheered, and I hurried to install them on the couch under the embroidered sign that read: SEX WORK IS A VALID CAREER CHOICE.
As all the Pole Virgins headed toward the studio, I rushed to catch up to Gucci. She’d shaved off the other side of her twilight-blue
bob and was rocking a floppy mohawk. Until now, seeking her forensics help had seemed unwise, too risky, especially because—after
Layna and I moved the body—any DNA evidence might point to one of us. But asking her to run a toxicology report to see if
Connor had lethal levels of pentazocine in his system was more straightforward. And now I knew Gucci well enough to feel certain
that even if she declined to help, she wouldn’t narc.
“What’s up, my ride or die?” she said.
“About that,” I said, leaning in to whisper. “Any chance you might be able to help me with some rogue forensics?”
“I mean, I’m definitely gonna need more information?” She held up both palms, then pressed them to her heart. “But the term rogue forensics absolutely thrills me.”
Two hours later, Gucci’s heart-shaped rump stuck out of the playhouse, which incongruously reminded me of Little Sister in
the dishwasher. Unlike the dog, Gucci put it effortlessly into reverse, crawling backward until her torso and head reappeared.
She sat back on her heels.
“He definitely has two red taser marks on his chest,” she said. “But also, his forearms look like a constellation chart. Major
track marks.”
Layna and I hadn’t even thought to check his forearms. “Track marks! Amazing news!”
“It could’ve been fentanyl. That shit is in everything on the street these days.”
I never thought the word fentanyl would make my heart sing with joy.
Yet here we were. After pole class, I’d given Gucci a shorthand account of how the skeeve from Huckleberry’s had turned up dead in my trunk.
I told her I suspected he’d died from being tased by a woman he assaulted in the alley, but that he might’ve ODed on pentazocine.
“I thought Salma hit him with a bottle of Dos Equis?” Gucci asked.
“No, after that,” I’d clarified. “He assaulted a different woman in the alley.”
“And she tased him and he died? Instant karma!” Gucci said.
“But I don’t want that woman to have this on her conscience. I’m hoping something else killed him,” I said.
Gucci had literally jumped up and down clapping—that’s how excited she was to help. She’d gone straight from Pole Kisses to
her lab on campus to liberate supplies while I put the twins to bed and set Layna up with Netflix and popcorn. Now Gucci crawled
back into the playhouse. The sounds from within were the sort I’d make trying to solve the Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword. “Hmm. What about— Shoot, that doesn’t work.”
When she reappeared, I asked, “Can you do it?”
“Like I told you,” Gucci said, “I’ve never done an unsupervised percutaneous liver biopsy before. Much less on a frozen guy
in the dark. Since he’s rigor mortis-ed and nearly fetal, there’s the possibility of bowel juxtaposition along the biopsy
tract.”
“Is that a yes?” I asked.
“I’ll give it the old grad school try,” Gucci said. “What’s in the garbage bag?”
“The what?”
“The garbage bag? In there.” She gestured at the playhouse.
His teal vest was in the garbage bag. “Clothes,” I said.
Gucci seemed happy enough with that explanation. “Lucky for you, even though freezing can alter the histologic appearance
of tissue, if we can get a liver sample, it should still biopsy fine. I’m gonna need you to light his midsection. These camping
lanterns are dim as an inbred cocker spaniel.” She rooted around in her backpack and handed me a flashlight and a footlong
needle attached to a gigantic syringe.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joan Rivers,” I said.
“Professor Bidelspach thinks he can keep me from doing actual fieldwork. Well, he can suck a big bag of—” The last word was
lost as Gucci crawled back inside. “Sharp!” she called with the sudden seriousness of a leftist surgeon tasked with performing
an emergency tracheotomy on Bernie Sanders. “Light!”
Reaching in with the hefty flashlight, I could see Gucci had already further peeled back Connor’s shirt. A liver biopsy needed
to be performed from the front. It’d be just my luck to end up with a biopsy of Connor’s colon.
“Feels like I’m shoving the needle into a gallon of sorbet,” Gucci effused. “This is fire!”
“You are definitely in the right line of work,” I said, barely managing not to faint.