Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (8 page)

Now this is definitely not the Las Vegas I know and love, and sometimes loathe. All the streets around here are the usual suburban sprawl, and Las Vegas has sprawled more than most urban areas, being that the landscape here is flatter than a tapped-out tortilla, so there is nowhere to go but up and out.

So I start ambling down the lane. The night is dark, but the moon is yellow and the leaves come tumbling down. Still, my built-in night vision is in fine shape. I notice that a lot of long green has gone into furnishing the grounds beyond the fence…not only the cash kind, as in long, green paper money, but long green grass. The upkeep on what the English call sward costs a bundle in this desert burg.

I know this is the right place because it is littered with small stone slabs, the upright kind that usually mark where a person is buried.

Strange that I have never before noticed an in-town plant-a-tarium, so to speak. That may be because my kind is so seldom interred. In fact, as I move down the road, I spot a pair of iron gates with the heavenly host on guard duty in the form of plaster statuary. On one of the big stone pillars is a brass plaque, and inscribed on the plaque in raised letters are the words “Los Muertos.”

Now, when you live in a city called Las Vegas, and there is another burg of the same moniker in New Mexico, which also has a town called Las Cruces; when, in fact, Los Angeles is just three hundred miles west of where I now stand, you tend to get used to Hispanic place names and do not think twice about what the words mean, although there is often a religious connotation. Las Cruces means “the crossroads” and Los Angeles means “the angels.” Even the early Spanish monks must have known Las Vegas was never going to live up to any Biblical ideal, except maybe Sodom and Gomorrah, because its name just means “the meadows” and there is nothing holy about that.

But
Los Muertos
…a few hours ago and in broad daylight I would have strolled by without a second thought. Now, though, I think. And it comes to me that
muertos
must have something to do with death, or the dead.

So I am in the right place, the Dead Place. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get into where nobody ever gets out.

I sit down under an overarching oleander bush and am rewarded by the hiss and sting of a venomous serpent on my rear end.

I bristle and leap around to face the attacker, which is a little too little too late, apparently. Ask not for whom Los Muertos is named: it is named for me. A sinking feeling in the pit of my pith tells me I may be done for. There is no antidote for snakebite way out here, alone, in the dark.

Unfortunately, I am not alone in the dark. I gaze into the chilling sight of a dark open maw with two world-class Dracula fangs bared for a second, totally unnecessary, lethal strike.

“You are sitting on my train, Pops,” the snake hisses. “Move or I will staple you to the nearest prickly pear.”

“Midnight Louise! What are you doing here?”

“None of your business,” hisses my darling daughter-not, closing her maw to reveal her piquant little black face, which is purely feline.

“It is my business if you nearly give me a cardiac arrest. I thought I had been hit by a rattlesnake with a contract to kill.”

“No one would sic a rattlesnake on you, Dads. You have not aggravated any feuding Mormons lately. Besides, you are a polygamist by nature. You would be kissing cousins with the early Mormon patriarchs.”

“Leave the Mormons out of this. I want to know what you are doing out here alone at this late hour.”

“Since when do you play the stern parent, Daddy Densest? The real question is what brought you here.”

“Business, which is none of yours.”

“So I guess we are even. This is what they call a Mexican stand-off. Unless you want a way in, which I can provide for a price.”

“And the price?”

“We are partners.”

The nauseous feeling in the pit of my pith lurches into a vomitous feeling. I sense the Mother of All Hairballs coming on.

“Throw up anything gross and you are on your own.”

“I am merely…gagging. So show me the way to San Jose.”

“Odd you should mention that. There is a handsome statue of St. Joseph just inside the gates, along with a raft of plaster-winged angels. And farther in, a quite nice grotto to Bastet.”

“Bastet! She does not get any respect here in Vegas!”

“Perhaps you underestimate our esteemed Egyptian goddess. Like me, she gets around.”

“The females of the species always do,” I grumble. “That is what is wrong with the species.”

“What? I did not hear you, Daddio Dearest.”

She has turned her back on me and is wiggling through the oleander thicket and toward a stone wall.

There is nothing like a dame for pointing out that she is younger, sleeker, and more limber than you, particularly if she is claiming to be your offspring.

I belly down and crawl right after the minx. Midnight Louie can do night recon with the best of them. Black berets are built in with us.

The oleander stalks prick like barbed wire and my dress blacks will be sadly disheveled, but I manage to push myself through the tunnel of missing stones to the other side.

I allow my innards to expand, shake out my outer coat, and gaze upon the moonlight grazing among the short grasses and tall monuments.

“This is a cemetery,” I complain. (I am too young to be in such a place.)

“
Hmmm
,” Miss Midnight Louise says thoughtfully, rubbing against my side.

Kissing up will not cut any crypts with this dude.

“So why are you here?” she asks.

That was my question, but it has been forgotten. “I am hunting Big Game.”

“You are always doing that, to hear you talk. I suppose you want a tender reunion with Butch and Osiris.”

“Tender I will leave to you. Reunion, yeah.”

“Follow me.”

This is not what I had in mind, but I have almost no choice. I am still trying to figure out what Miss Midnight Louise is doing on the premises when I find myself past all the monuments and tomb-stones and crypts and other gruesome but ornate set dressings.

I hear the tinkle of…a waterfall, I hope. Either that or the MGM Grand’s giant Leo the Lion statue is taking another untimely, three-story leak.

There are walkways of flat stones, bowers of exotic plants, patches of clipped thick Bermuda grass, sandy pits…this is either a really nice golf course, or it is —

A growl that sounds like marbles the size of basketballs being shaken together makes the ground vibrate.

I freeze.

“Do not worry,” Miss Louise purrs in that superior tone that makes me want to slap her whiskers off. “It is a friend of ours. Of mine, I should say.”

“You have earth tremors for friends?”

“Just
Lucky
, I guess,” she answers with a grin that would make the Cheshire Cat frrrrrow up.

We round an outcropping of canna lily leaves and come face to face with this large black dude with a mug the size of a beach ball.

Black panther, no doubt about it. Lean, mean, and counterculture, if domestication is the name of your game.

A huge black paw lifts and hangs over Miss Midnight Louise.

I gulp, then leap forward to knock her to safety.

The looming paw does not descend, but Miss Louise swipes me again on the rear.

“Ow! What was that for!”

“Conduct becoming a male chauvinist porcine. I do not need protection from Mr. Lucky. Do you not recognize Butch from the Rancho Exotica? He is the one who shared his dinner with poor Osiris, thanks to me.”

“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Butch. I mean, Mr. Lucky.”

The paw lowers and tickles my ears, and my back and my everything.

“Is this your poor old dad?” the black panther’s voice growls like thunder above me. “He was most valiant in your defense, although sadly ineffective.”

“That is my dad. He wants to see you for some reason. I am sure he will update me shortly.”

Well, what is a practical private eye to do? I am where I want to be, about to interview who I want to see. The only fly in the ointment is the odious Miss Louise, and telling her so would be highly self-destructive in present company.

So I do the right thing, ignore the chit, and get down to the chitchat with the Big Boys.

Saturday Night Stayin’ Alive

Women in strip clubs that catered to men either had business in being there, or no business at all in being there. Women with no business at all being there attracted attention, all of it either bigoted (“dyke!”) or unflattering (“frigid freak”).

Molina couldn’t afford attention and she couldn’t admit to her real business in being here at Saturday Night Fever — police business — so tonight she was a location scout for
C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation.

It gave her a professional payback to name-drop the hit forensic science TV show that uses Las Vegas as a backdrop for its high-tech and personal look at maggots, body parts, and implausible police procedure.

Tonight, Molina was here on official business, and she was not alone.

Visibly alone, yes. Actually, no.

She glanced in the mirror behind the bar at Sergeant Barry Reichert, who usually did undercover drug detail. His dirt-biker ensemble and party-animal attitude fit right in at Saturday Night Fever.

At the moment he was stuffing ten-dollar bills in about six G-strings at a prodigious rate, all the time getting paid back in information that was worth hundreds.

Molina sipped her watered-down no-name whiskey and kicked back, despite the relentless overamped beat of music to strip by: loud, all bass, and brutally rhythmic.

She could relax and (almost) be herself because tonight she knew where Rafi Nadir was: being tailed by a plainclothes officer who had reported him across town at another strip club. Purely a customer now, not a bouncer.

She glimpsed her curdled expression in the mirror, as if she was drinking a whiskey sour.

Didn’t want to think about why a man she had used to know hung out at strip clubs. Know? “A fellow officer” was the now-inoperative phrase. Another phrase followed, one even more painful to roll around in her head like ice in an empty lowball glass: an ex-significant other.

Barry unglued himself and his wad from the bevy of off-duty strippers and lurched to Molina’s station at the bar.

“Hey, casting director lady!” he greeted her with feigned quasi-drunken camaraderie.

“Location scout,” she corrected him for whatever public they played to during even the most private conversation.

“Whatever, babe.” He grinned. Barry Reichert enjoyed getting into a persona where he could play fast and loose with a ranking female homicide officer. That was almost living as dangerously as risking his sanity and life among the crystal meth set.

Barry was an unstriking brown/brown: hazel-eyed, dishwater brown-haired, middle-American guy with scraggly coif, a five o’clock shadow aiming for midnight blue and missing by several shades, and scruffy casual clothes.

Like all undercover officers, he absorbed his role. He was “in character” night and day, even when a slice of reality stabbed through on the knife of a cutting remark.

Despite his apparent shaggy geniality, Barry reminded her of that walking immaculate deception, Max Kinsella.

Molina tried not to let her distaste show. She was playing at undercover work now herself, and it was entirely different from anything she had done in police work before except for a brief, early stint as john-bait in East L.A.

“Come on,” Reichert was cajoling, maybe only half kidding in his womanizing role, “you could use a guy like me, admit it.”

“Using is one thing; liking it is another.”

“Ooooouch!” He shook a mock burned hand. “I’d be great on camera.”

By now everyone at the bar had lost interest in their interchange.

Barry leaned so close she could smell his motor-oil cologne. “You getting any info?”

“A little. And you?”

He lifted her almost empty glass and sucked the remaining water and the ice filling it. “The girls are spooked.” He spoke so softly that he might have been whistling Dixie through his teeth. “These parking lot attacks are getting to them.”

Molina nodded. Strippers weren’t dumb. They saw the axe from the first. “You see that man I mentioned?”

Reichert’s shaggy yeti-like head shook. “No really tall guy like that here. You ever notice that guys who patronize strip clubs tend to be short? No? True. Must be compensation. For the height of what, I won’t say.” Grin. “As far as tall guys go, not even an Elvis in disguise either. Were you serious about that?”

“I’m always serious, Reichert.”

He grinned as if she had issued him a challenge. “So I heard. The Iron Maiden Lady of Homicide.”

She didn’t react. Stoicism was the best defense. “Believe it. I don’t care how much you’re enjoying a break from the speed freaks, Reichert, I’m after a killer here, maybe a serial killer. He won’t play the part, like you do, but he’ll mean business. So you keep at it. I’m sure those bills are burning a hole in your…pocket. Enjoy.”