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CHAPTER ONE

CLUB VELVET

OCTOBER 1956

There was a drum roll from the salon, disorderly customers on the verge of mutiny, chanting: “Crystal, Crystal, Crystal!” But Crystal was sick and scared and couldn’t get off the dressing room couch.

Club Velvet was in a shabby stucco building on a semi-rural dead end east of the Los Angeles River. It was somewhere between the Housing Projects and the freight yard, not that easy to find unless you knew it was there. All the wrong people did.

“I want you on stage in two minutes,” said César, looming over her. He was dressed entirely in black, conchos flashing from his western hat. Tall and hard, the only thing that kept him from movie star good looks was a face as acne-scarred as a bad cement pour.

“I’m not well, César. Please, put Ariceli on, just for tonight.”

“You’re the one they pay to see,” he said, pulling her up by her long silver-blonde hair. A few strands tangled in his turquoise ring and she cried out as he ripped his hand free.

Crystal was just out of high school when César had offered her ‘easy money’ to strip at the club over the summer. She needed tuition for nursing school. What harm could it do? She was so popular César refused to let her go when fall came. She was statuesque and full-breasted, with a natural flare for graceful, sensuous movement. She was César’s big money-maker, but, Crystal wanted to be a nurse, not a stripper.

The last time she’d escaped, César had abducted her fourteen-year-old sister and held her captive until she returned. In retaliation, he’d handed Crystal off to a stranger for one terrifying night to cover his gambling debts. What Lisa had endured during her three days of captivity was something she refused to discuss. That was three years ago and Crystal had not had the courage to run away since.

César pulled Crystal’s costume from the rack and threw it in her face. It consisted of two sequined pasties, a handful of red ostrich feathers, and long velvet gloves.

“Put it on!”

“I’m going to be sick. I think I’m pregnant.” There, she’d finally said it.

The muscles clenched in his jaw.

“How could you be so stupid a second time?”

“I didn’t get this way by myself,” she said, summoning a spark of rebellion.

“I’ll set you up one last time, but it better not happen again.”

“I want to go home to my mother. I can’t go through this again.”

“You’ll do exactly as I say.”

The next day a bus took her to an abandoned building near Skid Row. Alone and scared, she walked the three flights to a room where plaster crumbled from the walls and wind blew through a broken window. A tray of surgical instruments stood beside a wooden table.

Crystal put two hundred dollars in the hand of the withered crone who’d fixed her up the last time, a woman who’d been a surgical nurse in a previous incarnation, or so she’d been told.

“Get undressed,” said the woman. “I don’t have all day.”

When Crystal lay naked and shivering on the table, the old hag pushed her knees apart and inserted an ice cold speculum.

“Stop moving!”

“It hurts,” said Crystal, her teeth chattering. The nurse twisted the instrument one way, then another, and removed it.

“Get dressed,” she said, dumping the instruments in her black bag.

“You haven’t done anything.”

“I can’t help you. There is no fetus.”

“What do you mean? I’ve had morning sickness for three months.”

“You’re not pregnant.”

A surge of wind shook the pane. Crystal sat up and wrapped her arms around her shivering body. “But.…”

“You need to see a physician dearie, a real doctor. Something’s not right in there.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I just do scrapes.”

”What about César’s money?”

“I charge for my time.”

The crone picked up her bag, clattered down the stairs, and left in a taxi.