"Jack, can you help me get Joe out of jail?" the girlish voice on the phone urged.

"Who's Joe?" I asked.

"The guy I live with."

So she calls me up because I'm supposed to be the expert on jails since Lori Mellon had once turned me over to the cops after telling them I was beating on her. It had been the other way around but she had marks on her face from her boyfriend trashing her the night before.

"Tell me what happened."

"Jack....you remember that first night we met at Main Street and we did that private. The night you were out with Lori and she was sitting with that guy with the glasses and you asked him to take her home?"

"Yeah----I remember."

"That's Ed and he's been hanging around this apartment complex at all hours of the night and morning. Joe didn't want him hanging around her pestering me so he went outside to have a little talk with Ed and Ed didn't leave."

"Then what happened?"

"Joe came back into the apartment, then a half hour later he looked out the window and Ed was still out there so he went outside with a claw hammer."

"Did Ed get hurt?" I asked.

"I probably saved his life. Joe started beating him with that hammer and after awhile he was lying on the ground bleeding like a stuck pig. I begged him to stop and finally he did. Then the cops came around and hauled Joe off to jail."

"Okay....give me Joe's full name and I'll start making some calls. Will you be home later in the morning?"

"I'll be here, " she told me.

I called the St Louis county jail and found that Joe had been taken there, then transferred to St Louis City. Then I called Jan back. She did not answer the phone.

"Her problem now, " I told myself. " I've made all these long distance phone calls to help her and Joe out and she can't be at home when she knows I'm calling her back? Done what I could and now she's on her own."

Two days later, I called the apartment and a man's voice answered the phone. "Hello", the man said.

"This is Jack. Are you Joe?"

"Yeah. I heard all about you."

"I can see you are out of jail. That didn't take long."

"They only had me in for a few hours over what I did to Ed. That's why they transferred me to the St Louis City jail for phone harassment charges."

"Phone harassment?"

"It was one of those things, man. One of Jan's dancer friends making up a lot of stuff about me, but I think I got it taken care of."

It was the first time I talked with Joe and we got along well. At least he ended up knowing I had tried to help him even if Jan had not been there to follow up. Somehow I got the distinct impression that Jan had a few others pay her for sex on a regular basis and that Joe took his cut of the money while remaining out of sight but close by.

Can't remember how many times we got together at the apartment before it happened but it wasn't that many. Three or four----something like that. We had just finished our business in her bed when she said to me-----"Let's go out somewhere. That way we can be together longer."

She lived off highway 40 off of Brentwood and the area she had in mind was southeast....still off 40 but south on Grand Ave. She nodded towards a house and told me that's where she had to go, then said: "That bar up the street. Let's go in there first and have a drink."

The bar was one of those neighborhood taverns--what one would call a working class bar. They are about the same all over with most of the clientele living within a few blocks of the place. Small town atmosphere in the middle of the city is the best way to describe them. We sat at the bar where I had a Budweisser and ordered her a shot of tequila. Jan downed it in one swallow, then immediately asked me to buy her another.

I"m one of those guys who likes to socialize over drinks, often winding up drunk by the end of the night like most of the people around me but it takes a few hours and I'm off shooting a blue streak with those sitting near me. I would later think of Jan as the kamikaze drinker since she always seemed to have one purpose in mind and that was to get drunk in as short a time possible. Which was a damn shame since Jan had a bubbly personality and everyone seemed to like her wherever she went. Even the women, which is surprising since Jan was a very cute girl with her long, thick, curly blonde hair and her tight little butt.

This time it was two quick shots which took her five minutes to dispatch of, then she was out the door walking towards that house, telling me she'd be back in half an hour. This didn't bother me in the least because I'd sure as hell meet all the people sitting around me and I had enough money to keep myself supplied with fresh bottles of Bud.

It all went well for a while and I must have had five or six beers, talking to the people around me. Two hours went by and still no Jan and I ended up talking with a guy on my left. I was more than half way done with "Death on the Wild Side" and we ended up talking about writing. The guy turned out to be a very closed minded argumentative type and I finally left the bar with a bad taste in my mouth. Jan had stood me up so I drove back to the farm thinking the country bars I often drank at were no different from the bar I had just come from.

Back to Whoring in the Metro East

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