Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (41 page)

“I’m really sorry,” he said, “to be such an atypical client. I was looking at you as a means, instead of a person.”

“That’s the way I’m generally looked at.”

“How do you stand it?”

“I’m a very desirable, high-paid means. Look at what you’ve spent on me already.”

“True.”

“Let me show you I’m worth it.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“I still get my money, right?”

“Right…”

At that instant Matt realized that he had invested too much, in every respect, in this evening to chicken out. Or maybe the wine he had drunk realized it.

Vassar had become a person for him in the last few minutes. She was funny, she had a history, she was willing to take him on. And she was a paid professional. At least one of them would know what she was doing.

Max: Gloves Off

“Police shootings of unarmed men these days,” Max said as he raised his empty hands, “even white guys, get more bad press these days than they’re worth. Suspension. Internal investigation.”

“Like you’re not armed.” Molina’s tone was scoffing.

“I’m not. Ever. Once in a blue moon maybe, but when have you last seen a blue moon over Las Vegas?”

“What about police woundings?”

He was silent.

“I’m saying you’re wanted for questioning and by God this time you’re going to come downtown and sit in an interrogation room and call a lawyer or sweat bullets or whatever you want to do, but you are coming in.”

Max finally turned, very slowly, to face her, just as a car’s departing headlights pinned him in a moving spotlight glare like a man caught fleeing across a prison yard. “It really messes up an investigation to have a police lieutenant playing undercover agent.”

“You’re a pro?”

“Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it. It messes up
your
plans, you mean.”

“Are you pursuing a case, or protecting your ass?”

“My integrity is none of your business.”

“And mine is yours?”

“You don’t have any.”

“What if…what if, Lieutenant, in this case I had more integrity than you?”

She laughed. “Is that how you snooker Temple Barr? Pretending to some mysterious higher moral ground? I am not Little Miss Mischief. This is a nine-millimeter Glock, buddy. It, and I, mean business. And if I have to punch a hole in your kneecap to keep you here, I will. Try doing your usual vanishing act with a knee brace, Mr. Moto.”

“Mr. Moto wasn’t a magician,” Max said, as if they were having an idle conversation that required minor corrections.

He had already examined the parking lot for unexpected quick exits and found himself caught disgustingly out in the open. Could it be that Molina had planned her approach that well?

Meanwhile, the sense that Temple was in danger was ticking like a maddened metronome in the back of his head, where migraine headaches start.

Of course, the more he worried, the less he dared show it, feel it. If he lost this game of cat-and-mouse here, he wouldn’t be free to rush to Temple’s rescue anywhere.

“This isn’t the end of the world, Kinsella.” Molina neared, the weapon still raised. “All I want to do is talk.”

“You want
me
to talk.”

“Well, talking usually is a two-way street.”

She was using the cajoling tone of interrogation-room cops the world over, a condescending parental teasing:
you want to be a good boy, don’t you?

No.

He lowered his arms, a little.

“I think Temple’s in danger. I’m not going to hang around discussing whether you’re going to destroy your career by shooting me or not, in the knee or not. I’ll give you a rain check. Let me go to Temple, and I’ll come in to see you in twenty-four hours.”

“I do not make appointments with scum. I do not bargain with human vanishing cream. Now.”

“No.”

He moved closer to a row of parked cars.

Her feet scraped asphalt as she skittered faster than a whipsnake to block his movement.

The gun was leveled at his chest.

Was it going to be a game of shoot-me, shoot-me-not?

Yes, because Max was not going to be stopped. Even now Temple might be…Sean.

He moved again.

And stopped at an unexpected sound.

Molina had slammed the Glock down on the hood of the parked Ford-150 behind her.

Max couldn’t help wincing for the paint job.

“You can say no. I can say no.” She stepped toward him, in front of him, blocking his way, protecting her piece, daring him to go for it.

He lifted his arms from his sides. “You finally believe me about something, that I’m not armed.”

“Oh, you’re armed, and dangerous. I know that. I’m just saying you’ll have to go through me to get out of here.”

Max glanced to the pant-legs that covered her ankles. “And your side piece.”

She nodded. “I’m not going to drop my guard to bend down to take that off. Maybe you can grab it when I kick your head off.”

“That’s the most interesting proposition I’ve had all night, and that’s saying something after one too many hours in a strip club or two or three.”

“So you admit to patronizing the clubs.”

“I admit to doing what you’re doing here: investigating the clubs.”

“Who made you junior G-man?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I would love to be surprised about you, Kinsella. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Now. Into my car and down to headquarters. Or not?”

She came closer, sideways stance.

It was to be, as the British say, fisticuffs.

That put him off balance. He had to play this out here, in its own time, or he could never get away to go to Temple.

For a nightmarish moment Molina morphed into Kathleen O’Connor, and he was back to the night when a stupid adolescent dalliance became his salvation and his cousin’s Sean’s death warrant.

But Molina was not the porcelain, poisonous Kitty. Her deadliness was direct: she wanted to wage war, not love, or at least not love as a variety of war.

There was no option. Max would have to fight her. And win.

Given Molina’s size, profession, training, and fierce personal stake, he couldn’t consider winning as the usual given.

Max, the semiretired, had once been expert in half a dozen martial arts, but he was two years rusty by now. Molina, he would bet, hadn’t worked out much recently either.

Still, she had the confidence, and the anger, to challenge him. It went against all the rules of police work. It was deeply personal.

Interesting. The only woman he’d had for a mortal enemy up to now would never confront him physically.

Max began calculating, not how to pass Molina to reach the gun but how to draw her into a weaker position. He didn’t feel an ounce of chivalry about the coming struggle. Her slamming the Glock down had released him from all that. If she wouldn’t hide behind the gun she certainly wouldn’t hide behind her gender. She wouldn’t hold back either.

Neither would he.

It was tentative at first, like a knife fight. They danced around, determining each other’s reach, reflexes, speed, strategy.

Eerily, the first inward rush to engagement was simultaneous.

The moves came fast and frantic then.

They grappled silently, all their limbs twisting to find a hold that would last, but each move resulted in an effective countermove.

Breaths became pants and then grunts, but neither resorted to martial arts cries, though both had done the drill. At nearly six feet, Molina was solid and surprisingly strong. Max was a steel eel, tensile and limber. Their fighting styles were as violently different as their personalities and made them serious opponents. Molina’s determination to subdue a suspect she had hunted for months, come hell or high water, met the skilled desperation of Max’s need to end this contest and rush to Temple’s aid.

It ended in Max’s pinning Molina against the van wall, enforcing a temporary truce as they caught their breath, boxers clenched in each other’s arms like dizzy waltzers before breaking away to pound each other to oatmeal.

“We’re well matched, Lieutenant,” Max admitted between discreet pants.

Not good news. He couldn’t count on getting this over quickly and moving on to Temple.

“It’s not over,” she gritted between her teeth.

“No.”

He wasn’t really holding her. His hands had flattened against the metal beside her shoulders, one knee was braced between her legs. Technically, she was pinned, but he could see her mind reviewing a half dozen things she might try for the one right move, when he surprised her by speaking again.

“Don’t spoil the moment. This has been incredibly erotic.”

She broke their eye contact by whipping her head to the side, cheek to the smooth metal. “You’ll try anything,” she said, contemptuous.

“Yes.” He knew he sounded amused, but he meant to startle and irritate her at one and the same time.

She whipped her head to the opposite side. “Get out of my face.”

“That’s not what you really want.”

That brought her eyes forward, blazing. “Right. Next you’ll say that what I really need is a good screw.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Complicated! No. This is simple. Me cop, you crook.”

They both knew the truce was temporary, that either one could lash back into attack, and that both would be ready for it.

“Sure it’s simple. A simple matter of control, Lieutenant. Or over-control. It goes with your job. You’re on the job, all the time. You’re in charge, all the time. After a while, there’s no way
not
to be in control, in charge, on the job. Except this.”

“I can be out of this any second I want to.”

“But do you really want to?”

The Third Man

Temple nursed her decidedly flat club soda and the sample-perfume-vial-size drop of scotch that went with it.

Your midlevel strip club barware was so tacky: narrow glasses clogged with ice like a backed-up sink. No lowball glasses, no delicate-footed cocktail glasses. Just thick cheap giveaway glass, cloudy ice, squinky drink.

Not that she wanted anything alcoholic. The noise, i.e., music to strip by, had already given her a headache.

So she sat on her barstool, her feet hooked around the top rung, the gaudy selection of monokinis covering her lap, and kept an eye out for her most likely suspect.

It wasn’t a brilliant piece of deduction, but talking to Lindy had spurred some ideas.

For one thing, both Cher Smith and the girl whose attack had been interrupted, Gayla, were both new to the Las Vegas strip scene. It could be a coincidence, but Temple thought the killer might be oneof those asocial guys who are only bold when they’re over-the-top aggressive: no nerve, or all nerve. Someone who explodes. She’d seen so many wimpy guys here, mooning at the strippers like besotted computer nerds in front of a porno-site screen…. What if the worm turned? Maybe he picked new girls because they were fresh enough to still be stupid. Maybe they hesitated and talked to him, just to be nice to someone who seemed to need it. Maybe
they
needed to feel glamorous and desired. Two people meeting with so much to overcome, their separate expectations igniting instant disappointment of the other’s fantasy, and then…violence.

Temple sucked her ice cubes again. There was so little drink in the glass it stayed puddled on the bottom.

That was her theory that saved the neck of everybody she knew. And wrote a satisfying “The End” to the episode that had begun with Cher Smith’s dead body being found in this very club’s parking lot.

Or, if she wanted to depress herself, there was the Terrible Troika to consider: Max, Rafi Nadir, and Lieutenant C. R. Molina converging seconds apart over the fallen form of Gayla in another strip club parking lot more recently.

Had one of the two men attacked Gayla? The victim couldn’t say who had barreled into her in the dark. Temple thought she could eliminate Molina as the perpetrator. That left Max and Rafi. She knew she could eliminate Max, so that left Rafi.

Unless…a third man had been there just before these two natural enemies.