City Nights: Secretive Construction on Murder Site Lends Itself to Conspiracy

What's he building in there?
I'll tell you one thing, he's not building a playhouse for the children.
What's he building in there?
-- Tom Waits

Remember the story of the City Nights, the supposedly racist strip club in East St. Louis where a black man was murdered last fall?

The club, which advertised "Hot Girls, Cold Beer" was owned by Woodrow Allen. Family and friends of the deceased victim, Anthony Rice, say a group of white thugs -- allegedly bearing Tasers and swastika tattoos -- chased Rice and his brother Audrey out of the club last October 9 and then ran over him with a truck in the parking lot.

Two months after Rice's death, City Nights mysteriously burned to the ground.

Now the story turns ever stranger as Allen has shrouded the site of the burned down club with shipping containers -- making it impossible for the public to view what's going on on the property.

As the Belleville News-Democrat reports today (with an illuminating photo), Allen is ostensibly building a commercial building on the site and has received permits from the city for construction.

The East St. Louis director of regulatory affairs, meanwhile, tells the newspaper that he has no idea what Allen is constructing but says that shipping containers could be incorporated into the design of the building.

Then again, could the shipping containers be used to hide what's going on inside?

With a case as fishy as this one, it seems the question would be worth asking.