Cat in an Alien X-Ray: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 25)
Page 14
“That’s just it. It wasn’t an illusion. It’s real. I needed to prove that. I needed you to see what I have here.”
She glanced over her shoulder to the Strip. “That fleet of UFOs is fake. Radio controlled.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said, swaying on his polished tippytoes in excitement. “Those are meant to be debunked. Rule One of stunt PR. First you raise expectations, then you flatten them, and then you bring them back from the dead to universal applause.”
“All right. My First Rule of Ex-clients. First I evaluate their credibility, then I grade them on a scale of minus-five to zero, and then I kick them off my client list.”
“I had to give you a preview of the attraction, Miss Barr, so you wouldn’t lose faith. So I had to distract all of the Vegas Strip to give you a peek unveiling of my little beauty behind the curtain.”
“Projecting your video concept on the deserted building frame and all that curtaining plastic and canvas is very clever, Mr. Farnum. In fact, a recent project of mine, a new attraction between the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters, employs ultra-sophisticated audiovisual holographic effects, so don’t think you can pull the pixels over my eyes.”
“Exactly!” Farnum sounded triumphant. “It takes one to know one, and you now know I’m creating the real deal, with more advanced techniques than ever seen before outside of a secret laboratory run on the level of a Stephen Hawking operation. This is not only mind-bending, it is space and time-bending as well. And, after all, isn’t that what aliens are all about?”
“I’m getting a terrible feeling, Mr. Farnum. One of your ‘silent partners’ wouldn’t go by one name?”
“Yes! Brilliant deduction. You are such the right woman for the job. So intuitive.”
“That man is a person of interest in a recent murder in town, and you have him working on a project where a dead body was found?”
“No, that can’t be true.” Farnum was so crestfallen, his five-hair comb-over seemed to shrivel to three. “Domingo has an international reputation.”
“Domingo? He’s not under suspicion of murder,” Temple conceded.
The renowned international environmental artist had come to town before to mass thousands of pink plastic flamingos around the Strip, making a statement about overblown popular taste, but that’s as close to a crime as he’d gotten.
She couldn’t imagine why Domingo would return and expand into fleets of mini-UFOs, but supposed it was another statement, perhaps about the usual suspect: the alienation of modern life.
“I’m not mollified,” Temple told Farnum, “but I can see how Domingo would be interested in a similar stunt … uh, artistic installation.”
“You do know ‘spin,’ Miss Barr.” He produced a happy grin. “However, even better, Domingo is not the only international cutting-edge figure involved in my project.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed. My other silent partner is as serious as Domingo, but in an allied field.”
Well, that had her stumped.
Farnum literally tucked his thumbs under his seersucker suit lapels in the tried and true pose of pride. “His name is Santiago.”
And that guy was under suspicion of murder.
Chapter 23
All at Sea
The pool was cool but felt like silk.
Matt pulled himself through the water, arm over arm, like pulling a liquid rope toward and past him. The underwater lights created a turquoise spring at either end that drew him like an aquatic moth. Then he pushed off the solid poolside and pulled into the second half of the lap, performing like a thread on a loom.
Swimming had always seemed a form of meditation to him, and it reminded him to breathe, deep and steady.
He pondered the Crystal Phoenix reception and the uneasy undercurrent he had sensed there, apart from the petty crime being committed … and revealed. Then he’d kissed Temple good night, more out of despair than passion, and she’d responded so intensely, it had driven him crazy because he couldn’t be with her when he wanted to … and he’d said something crazy and horrible and left her to move on to two hours surfing waves of everybody else’s pain coming over the telephone and spreading across the country. He’d finally topped off an angst-ridden evening with a wee-hour overdose of Kathleen O’Connor.
He’d left a profoundly apologetic message on Temple’s cell phone, and hoped he could atone in the morning, which would soon be here.
It must be five in the morning. The sun never quite set on the Vegas Strip, given the halo of bright lights playing aurora borealis on the skyline. Here, though, he glimpsed a bowl of black sky through his water-spotted eyelashes. He was moving too fast to stargaze, but that was the idea, to rinse off his latest encounter with a woman so volatile, even using her given name could set her off.
Tonight she’d set him off. Not really. It’d been a bit of psychodrama on his part. Her life had been so extreme, it took extremes to get her true attention. To find some genuine emotion other than anger buried under manipulation.
Still, he needed to rinse off the last couple of hours. Their jousts made him feel like the man in the constellation wrestling a huge serpent, Ophiuchus brought down from the skies to Earth, if you could call Las Vegas Earth.
What significance did the shape and stars of that unlucky ex-thirteenth sign of the zodiac hold for the rogue magicians who called themselves the Synth? Why would his dead stepfather keep, hide, and be hunted for a drawing of the entwined man and huge serpent the ancients had seen in that distant cluster of stars?”
When Matt’s hand hit the pool’s end, he turned automatically, picturing an ancient Greek statue at St. Peter’s in Rome of the same subject, only it had been a man and his two sons who found themselves in the giant serpent’s toils. The Trojan priest Laocoön had suspected the Greeks’ giant horse might conceal soldiers, but the gods who favored the Greeks, Poseidon and Athena, sent two giant serpents to kill Laocoön and his sons before they could warn the Trojans.
Laocoön had always warned them to “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
Matt was willing to bet that no Greek warrior hidden in the Trojan horse was bearing a razor.
* * *
Kitty the Cutter was always waiting for him at their Goliath Hotel rendezvous. He was stuck signing off the air at WCOO and could never get to the room before her, never sit in the catbird seat.
And she always had her straight razor cocked open in plain sight. It was almost like a pet with her.
“You’re looking a bit harried,” she had greeted him earlier this morning, stirring her room service cocktail with her pinkie finger and then sucking it with an X-rated movie flourish.
Matt had never seen an X-rated movie, and now he didn’t have to. Kathleen O’Connor had obviously frozen in the teenage Lolita stage years ago. Serial killers liked to torture their victims for sexual satisfaction. Kitty had substituted the adolescent tease to the murderous mix, but with her the payoff wasn’t sex—it was control.
She lounged on the beaded brocade bedspread like a road show Cleopatra clutching her queenship and her ever-present poisonous asp.
He sank into his accustomed chair across from the bed. He’d booked the room for two weeks after she reserved it in his name the first night they’d met here. He hoped his self-imposed deadline would prove correct. Whether it would or not depended on his ability to “reach” her and release the self-loathing that made her so dangerous.
“Extra hours at work,” he told her, “takes a toll. You must have noticed that too.”
“You must be running short of excuses back at the Circle Ritz.”
Matt celebrated a little victory. He’d warned her any specific mention of Temple would terminate this charade. She’d conceded enough to come up with a code phrase for her.
“Not really. This is just an extension of my radio advice work, only more in-depth.”
“And in person.”
Matt nodded. “Although I’m just a stand-in for Max Kinsella.”
“You know he’s back,” Matt said.
“Of course. And still an elusive bastard.”
“Really elusive this time. You know his memory is shot,” Matt added.
“Poor boy hit his head in a very bad fall.” She eyed him slyly. “Just like the poor call girl who met with you here before. Only she died. Much good you did her. Jumped down to the casino’s glass ceiling far, far below.”
“Or was pushed.”
“Are you confessing, Father?”
“I rather hoped you would.” He watched her. She wasn’t mad, with no grasp on reality, he was convinced, just very damaged. “Tell me about your relationship with Max Kinsella.”
“You priests like all the filthy details in the dark of the confessional.”
“Those dark confessionals are passé, Kathleen. And, from what I’ve heard, you were a lot less dark then. Wasn’t it a romp with the two naïve American boys lighting up dreary Belfast with high spirits and healthy but innocent hormones?”
“Oh, quite the engaging lads, they were,” she said between her teeth, her Irish accent strengthening. “Still blushed at first kiss, but that didn’t stop them from wanting one thing. You all do.”
“Boys, you mean. Men, you mean. That’s nature. I went against nature for a long time, but it didn’t work, because it was out of cowardice, not conviction. Not for the reason I thought it was.”
She settled back against the pillows. “Tell me about your deflowering and I’ll tell you about mine.”
“I know about yours and I’m sorry that I do.”
“Sorry! Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry for yourself when I’m done with you.” She’d leaped up from the bed and grabbed her constant talisman for these sessions, the straight razor, from the veined marble top of the nightstand.
“Your skin is very white, very sensitive,” he observed.
She immediately unruffled her defenses as a cat’s bristled fur settled down at the sound of a familiar voice, a familiar hand. Seducing, bespelling a man was the only way she could permit herself to be petted.
“Have you used that razor on yourself?”
“What?” She glared, hardly believing the question.
“The thin pale scars would hardly show on that skin of yours. I imagine that was some comfort, to hurt yourself and feel it, rather than being hurt by somebody else and trying not to feel it.”
She flung a string of gutter Irish expletives he could barely understand, much less take offense at. “Manipulating, lying, Judas priest and freaking bastard,” was the decipherable end of it.
“I guess we share that ‘bastard’ label,” he said mildly. Very mildly. “Toast to that?” he lifted his lowball glass.
She slammed the razor back down on the marble and paced between the bed and the wall, a mirrored wall that reflected the long mirror on the opposite wall, so she met herself coming and going. “Smug, superior professional eunuch,” she spat at him, quite literally, her lips wet from a series of savage sips at the drink in her hand. “You’re not man enough to bother seducing.”
“But Max Kinsella was, and is. You seduced Max once, when he was seventeen. Is that why not finding him is so maddening? You need to seduce Max again, but can’t, now that he knows what you are?”
Her knuckles went white on the shaft of the folding razor. “You underestimate yourself, priest. You’re my target now.”
If only, Matt thought, the Northern Ireland peace hadn’t deprived her of a “cause” to justify her fury and sexual manipulations. She had to seduce and bedevil someone.
“Ex-priest,” he said again. Calm. “Tell me about the ones who abused you.”
She sat on the bed’s foot, the razor under her supporting palm, and leaned near. “I’m sure you’ll find this very exciting.”
She certainly did.
Chapter 24
Law and Order: Truce or Consequences
“I thought,” Max said, “I was to be allowed a long leash.”
He was still gobsmacked that Molina had invited him onto her home turf for a conversation, instead of to the usual scuzzy confidential-informant meeting place.
The unexpected civility put him off his game. He actually was sounding apologetic. “I’ve barely had time to survey Goliath and the Oasis Hotels for any lingering taint from the time dead bodies occupied the casino ceiling and were shanghaied onto sinking-ship attractions.”
“Circumstances change,” Molina answered.
They sure had; she’d gone from hunting him as a murderer to accepting his secret counter-terrorism past and finding him a useful covert investigator.
“Your bias against all things ‘me’ certainly has,” he agreed. “You’re asking to see me so often, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a candidate to take Mariah to the Dad–Daughter dance next fall.”
“You know about my daughter’s school events? How?”
The truce was still iffy. Max laughed. “Scrub that Mama Grizzly look off your face and relax. Since the leading favorite for that honor, Matt Devine, is making visits to Chicago with Temple and cat in tow, he may not even be in Vegas by then. I smell a job opportunity for our golden boy.”
“Really? Apparently you still keep in touch with old acquaintances, even if you don’t remember much of them?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Devine has always visited Chicago regularly for TV talk show gigs. Your rival is a media darling.”
“Ex-rival. I’ve conceded. This most recent Windy City visit by the happy couple is enough to plant suspicions. Your daughter would be crushed to lose her Prince Charming.”
“Maybe not so much now.” Molina sat back on her slouchy family couch. “Mariah is all about becoming a YouTube sensation these days. Why do you think I can even consider … entertaining you at home?”
“She’s off with her girlfriends,” Max speculated, “singing into home karaoke machines and trying out new Girly Gaga looks.”
“Something like that.” Molina’s smile was nostalgic.
“I can see that’s in the genes. How did your secret singing career get started?”
“Church choir.”
Max nodded. “Makes sense. Singing alto on ‘Little Drummer Boy’ is perfect training for crooning torch songs at a neighborhood club.”
Molina wouldn’t be baited. “Your sarcasm,” she said, “is not going to make me ‘sing’ about how my undercover hobby got started. One good thing about today’s teen mania for fame and fortune and American Idol: It keeps them off the streets at night.”
Max smiled to hear that. He knew Rafi was getting what he wanted, quality time with his kid. And, because of that smart parental compromise, Max was getting a mellowed-out Molina. She’d actually given him a beer when he arrived.
“So what can a man with no memory tell a homicide lieutenant?” he asked, back to business.
“What are you getting from those two cold case deaths? Casino robbery interrupted?”
“Probably.”
“Does it seem … like the mob?”
“The mob?” Max repeated. “Vegas mobsters are only in museums now, aren’t they?”
“Are they?”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to know, Lieutenant.”
“Call me Molina.”
Max donned an impressed expression. “Sure thing. I could even shorten it to ‘Mole.’”
She did not look amused. “Maybe,” she said, “someone is trying to fake a fresh mob presence on the Strip. We did have one nasty murder that recalled the old-time mob methods of threats, torture, and death.”
“Anybody I know the victim?” Max asked carefully.
“You know about him. That scumbag named Clifford Effinger. He was bound to the prow of the sinking Treasure Island boat attraction and drowned.”
Max found his most disinterested look. “Yes, but it sounds a little too blood
less and histrionic for the mob.”
“Agreed. But it was a message to somebody.”
“Why do you say ‘fake’ mob presence?” Max asked.
“This department and the FBI cleared the mob off the Strip and out of town in the early ’80s.”
“For real?”
“For real. Listen. You should contact Frank Bucek.”
“Frank Bucek?”
“Yeah, the ex-priest FBI guy.” When Max’s face remained blank, she realized she’d entered a memory-free zone and explained further. “He was an instructor at Matt’s seminary. He comes to town now and again.”
“Ex-priests seem to find interesting new occupations.”
“They have a lot to offer—intelligence, diligence, discipline, knowledge of human psychology.”
“From what I remember of grade school, the parish priests and nuns were pretty good cops, now that you mention it.”
“You remember that far back still?” she wondered.
“The oldest memories are the last to go.”
Max let his mind drift back to summer twilights in a grassy climate and ball games in the street, then snow and cold and hockey, the prick of ice skate blades slung over his shoulder through his down-quilted jacket. Sean’s ears scarlet under his stocking cap. They’d reddened when he was in Northern Ireland, drinking beer with him at pubs, two underage young guys behaving foolishly but harmlessly. Sean waving him off. Max felt the small soft hand in his, the girl bewitching and ripe and as easy to acquire as that illegal-in-the-U.S. Brit version of beer. Smiling, flirting, pulling him away from Sean, the beer, the pub to slake other thirsts at a private place she knew, for him to become a man in Ireland.…
Then the memory exploded.
“Whoa.” Molina caught the beer bottle before it crashed from his numb fingers to the coffee table top in front of them. “Brain crash?”
“Memory flash.”
“Not a good one.”
He nodded. “Mixed reviews, good and bad.” He placed the one-third-full bottle as carefully on the tabletop as he would if it were made of blown glass. “I just remembered I don’t drink beer if I can help it. Your hospitality has overwhelmed me, Lieutenant.”