Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Raving mad,” says Miss Louise, “but he certainly knows which side his Free-to-be-Feline is buttered on.” She glances at the empty spot where Miss Temple’s erstwhile gun and her equally erstwhile ally laid. “Though he is oddly complacent about where that bread butterer is now.”

  “That is because I have superior knowledge, Louise.”

  “How superior?”

  “That is for me to know and you to find out. Too late.”

  Blinded by the Knight

  Temple had ridden pillion on a motorcycle before. Well, once.

  But she had never been slung over the gas tank facedown like a sack of produce. Mashed tomatoes, say.

  By the time the machine grumbled to a swaying stop somewhere in the unlit night, then tilted onto its kickstand, her fillings were doing the rhumba and her sinus cavities echoed like the Carlsbad Caverns.

  So when she was hauled up by the cowl collar on her sweater and set like a Beanie Baby on the long leather seat facing backward . . . which meant she was facing straight into the helmet of her captor, she was too jolted to bolt.

  In fact, all she cared about was that the ceaseless, shuddering motion had stopped, and her with it.

  Presumably, she faced the ringleader of the foiled expedition.

  He had certainly zoomed out of nowhere and taken prisoners, solo. Her. Still, he had taken her along for the ride. Presumably he didn’t intend to kill her until she squawked. Er, talked. When she did, she would surely stutter.

  He dusted her off, patted her down—way too well for a gay guy—and pulled up the smoke Plexi visor on his helmet.

  Even in the wan light of a desert moon, with dust acting like gluey mascara on her lashes, she could see the obvious.

  “Max? How the heck did you become a gay biker?”

  “Knocked one out and took his place.”

  “How did you know about any of this?”

  “Temple, Temple, Temple. Do you really believe, that no matter how stressed out I am, I could hear about all the dangerous action in your life and not keep an eye on things?”

  “You haven’t been around.”

  “You haven’t noticed that I’ve been around. Maybe you’ve been seeing too much of the wrong people.”

  “And not enough of you, obviously.”

  “I can’t change that, for the moment,” he warned her.

  “How did you know what was going to happen here tonight?”

  “Finding out about the drug transfer was easy. Bribes, lies, and videotapes. Finding out what you were up to . . . priceless.”

  “Poor Rafi. He was left holding the bag.”

  “Is that a reference to Molina?”

  “Max! That was mean!”

  “I’m feeling pretty mean right now.” He winced, and shifted in the seat.

  She noticed that his face, never bronzed, looked paler than usual. Must be the moonlight. That didn’t stop the forthcoming lecture, though.

  “Why on earth, or anywhere in the galaxy, would you partner up with a loser like Nadir? You almost got caught in the crossfire.”

  Temple gulped back a giggle, a slightly hysterical one.

  “You think that’s funny? You should take my blood pressure right now.”

  “A lot seems funny when life and death is involved. It’s either that or go crazy.”

  “You can’t go any crazier than you are.”

  “But I was right, wasn’t I? Something was rotten at Maylords, and I was there for the kill.”

  “The takedown,” he corrected her. “Let the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department get the credit.”

  “Molina will look good.”

  “She could use that.”

  “That was meaner. You as much as brought Molina and Rafi together again.”

  She could see his grin in the moonlight, those white pirate’s teeth. “That ought to be interesting. Too bad we’re not going to see the best part.”

  “The police will want to talk to me.”

  “Let them wait. Better hop on back.”

  Max detached a passenger’s helmet that fit her head like an upended fishbowl. It didn’t have any cool name written above the visor, drat it. She scrambled shakily up behind him on the idling, pulsing motorcycle and fastened the helmet strap.

  “Max! There are holes in the back of Gay Blade’s jacket!”

  “I know,” he shouted back.

  “Are these bullet holes?” Her forefinger explored two.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t, like, shoot Gay Blade off his bike, did you?”

  “He’s fine. Just his jacket isn’t.”

  “Then . . . Omigosh, they shot you as we were riding away. Max. Say something.”

  “Yeah. And it hurts. So let’s get somewhere so I can get off this bone rattler.”

  “You really are a magician!”

  “Call me Kevlar the Magnificent. I’ll be fine. On and buckled up? Let’s ride.”

  He pointed the motorcycle back toward the city. The Las Vegas lights were blazing: bright warm white and Technicolor neon.

  It felt like taking off for the moon, free and daring, and quite splendidly alone.

  Temple pressed one hand against the leather jacket, feeling the rough round hole of a bullet, and wondered how or when or why she had ever thought she could resist the truly mind-blowing magic that was Max.

  Counterinterrogation

  Molina stood with her hands wrapped around her elbows, watching through the one-way glass.

  Alch stood slightly behind her, hating the occasional foot shuffles that showed he was more nervous than the guy at the interrogation table.

  “I suppose the drug task force would let you interview him after they’re through,” Alch suggested finally.

  “And give Nadir the steering wheel to this squad car? Everything we said would be on tape. I do not want anything I have to say to him on the record. Look. He’s glancing over, letting us know he knows we’re watching.

  “He doesn’t know who is watching, that you’re watching.”

  “Yes, he does, he certainly does.”

  Molina turned so fast she nearly walked over him on her way out. “Let’s hope the narcs nail him good for this one.”

  * * *

  But when Alch discreetly followed up on Molina’s instructions later that early Thursday morning he discovered that Nadir’s story had been iffy, but plausible enough to get him released.

  So Alch immediately reported to Molina in her long narrow office.

  “I was called because of the Maylords murders, but how did you hear about this stuff going down?” Alch asked.

  Molina shuffled papers even while he struggled to glimpse their contents upside down.

  “I was working late.”

  “Leaving Mariah alone at home?”

  “No, not that she isn’t claiming she’s old enough for it. I still have a neighbor lady sit with her nights, and, boy, do I hear about it every time. How long before they stop saying they’re old enough?”

  “Until they’re old enough. Guess I’ll go home to my English bulldog. He’s twelve too, but he’s a lot less demanding than a preteen girl.”

  “Get outta here, Morrie.” She smiled thinly and waved a hand.

  He left, as uneasy as when his Vicky had promised never to smoke. She still was smoking today.

  Some headstrong preteen girls were pushing forty.

  Molina rapped her fingers on her chair arms until she had counted one hundred and Alch had to be through the hall and on the elevator.

  She stood, unconsciously pushed her blazer sleeves up as if expecting hard work, then jerked them down again before the cheap polyester blend could wrinkle.

  She knew what she wanted to do, had to do.

  She went into the hall, down three doors to the day-watch commander’s office, and brushed her knuckles against the ajar door, moving in right after.

  She was ranking here, even if she had no authority over the drug task force.

  S
he paused to observe the man lounging at Sergeant Roscoe’s desk.

  Roscoe would have a heart attack to see this. You had to love those narcs from their filthy tennis shoes to their low-riding pants that bunched like accordions at their ankles. Add long, matted hair, tattoos, BO, and facial hair that gave scraggly a bad name. They were almost ready to audition for the Antichrist.

  “Lieutenant Molina,” the man greeted her. “Aren’t we looking natty for the night shift.”

  “No competition for you, Paddock. You’re Prince Charming.”

  He laughed. “Man, I can’t sit up straight now to save my soul. So consider yourself saluted. What can I do for you?”

  “You see right through me,” she joshed back, taking the chair across from him. “Fascinating as the drug bust at Maylords is, I’ve still got two unsolved murders on my roster.”

  “They’re related, right?”

  “I’m not so sure. That Maylords operation is a snake’s nest of sexual and office politics.”

  “Tell me about it! I could hardly arrest those biker dudes; they kept mistaking it for an especially assertive pickup.”

  “You have any trouble making the case?”

  “Nah. We’d been tipped off. The drugs were smuggled in imported furniture. The stuffing wasn’t goose down like it should have been, but it was white and fluffy and all neatly plastic wrapped.”

  “So who’s behind it?”

  “The so-called security staff was mostly all in on it. The bikers picked up the goods when they said so, and then the stuff went into the distribution chain. Your CAPERS detectives might be of use to us in pursuing the insider angle. I don’t want to drag people in for questioning and alert the contact.”

  “Sure. They’ve plenty of questions to ask. We don’t have any solid leads on the murder, or murderers, yet. What about . . . wasn’t there one guy you let go?”

  “Yeah. Ex-cop outta L.A. Turned out he’d been the one who tipped us off. Had some nutsy notion of playing the hero and tracking them before we got there. I mean, you’re off the force, stay off the force.”

  “Right. An amateur detective might be useful to us, though. What’d you get on him?”

  Paddock’s dirty fingernails rifled through a slew of paperwork. Finally he turned to the typewriter and rolled a sheet out of the platen.

  “Here it is. Rafi Nadir. Made sergeant in L.A., for about one month. I’ll call down there to check his story.”

  Molina scanned the familiar form, memorizing the only two facts she needed. “Looks like a loser,” she commented.

  “If we can use him, that’s good enough.”

  “Right.” She stood. “Don’t stay up too late. You could use a beauty sleep.”

  Dirty Larry Paddock laughed as she eased out the door. She heard the one-handed typewriting resume while she paused, repeating the numbers over and over to herself.

  Address and telephone number. That was all she needed. Not what she wanted, but what she needed.

  Same Old Song

  The apartment was like a million buildings in a thousand Sunbelt cities: three stories, pale stucco, rust stains running like tears from the window air-conditioners.

  Dogs barked ceaselessly in the distance, always three streets over and five doors down. Not quite traceable, so no one could call the cops, who wouldn’t come anyway.

  Molina always thought that owners who staked their dogs out and left them to bark ought to be staked out and left to whine for at least three days. Minimum.

  But she was in a bad mood now, and nothing about this shabby neighborhood did anything but exacerbate her anger. And fear. Where goeth anger, there always goeth fear.

  This was the last thing on earth she wanted to do, and the first thing she had to do to take steps to protect her world from the asteroid heading right for the heart of it.

  Molina slammed the car door of her aging Toyota shut.

  For a moment the lost dogs paused in their chorus, then their raw, mechanical barks resumed.

  No one listened to them anymore. No one heard. She could have been an ax murderer and no one in this neighborhood would peek out.

  The apartment lobby was six steps up and paved with brutalized mailboxes. No Social Security check would rest safe here.

  She checked the apartment number she’d read on the Maylords employee sheet. Listed in fading pencil to an R. A. Reed. Right.

  She went up eight more stairs that bent and wound up another eight steps.

  The hall rug was sculptured pea green poly, disfigured by an ancient eczema of stains.

  A fire door led to a dingy hallway with bug-dotted brushed glass light covers.

  At 2C she rang the buzzer.

  And waited.

  Not long. The occupant had been up late. Oh, yeah.

  He pulled the door almost all the way open, challenging whoever had the guts to call at this early morning hour.

  He hadn’t expected her.

  The door swung partly shut again, before she stuck her sturdy loafer in it.

  “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Rafi needed a shave. He had needed to shave twice a day anyway when he was regulation. Now, after a postmidnight interrogation, he looked like a Kabul terrorist.

  “Why not before?” he said. “You were there.”

  She didn’t bother denying it. “I don’t like to be recorded. Do you?”

  “I might, if you were there.”

  “Won’t happen. My middle name is ‘Off-the-record’ on this.”

  “ ‘This’ is me, right? My life.”

  “I am armed and dangerous. Are you? I think they took your toy gun away.”

  “That Colt wasn’t mine. I’d never carry a pussy gun like that.”

  Molina raised her Mr. Spock eyebrow. It had always driven Rafi nuts. “It was in your hands in the Maylords lot. Picked up from right beside you.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  She was a desk jockey now, an expert at scanning reports in a few seconds for the meat, that was how. But she had more clout if she didn’t say so. She was beginning to understand the weasley Kinsella modus operandi.

  “I’m working the Maylords murders. They don’t look like drug hits.”

  “No, they don’t. They aren’t. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, were you hired to think?”

  “I thought enough to see the drug smuggling going down.”

  “Yes. Rafi Nadir, Boy Scout snitch. Quite a change.”

  “Me change? Hell, Carmen, you changed first and biggest.”

  “I won’t talk about the past.”

  “Too bad. That’s all I’m interested in.”

  “Your problem. Just tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “Here? Living, if you can call it that.”

  “In Las Vegas.”

  He shook his head, shrugged. “All roads lead to Las Vegas. I follow all roads. If I’da known you were here, I’da been in Reno.”

  “Wouldn’t we have been lucky?”

  “I’m not leaving. I like the place, even though you’re here.”

  “You may not have a choice. If the drug task force doesn’t like you, you can be sure they’ll make you leave.”

  “They let me go, Lieutenant Chief Petty Officer Carmen, Sir. I know the routine. They had anything, they’d have kept me. They can’t prove I did anything but call in the Maylords action.”

  “And the gun?”

  “Not mine. One of those wussy Wild Bunchette guys dropped it at my feet like a bouquet.”

  He was looking intolerably smug about something. It had to be more than his knee-jerk disdain for anyone not macho. Something about the Colt story was dead wrong, but Molina didn’t know where to find the lie. Meanwhile, he was continuing to justify himself, and his presence at last night’s incident.

  “Wasn’t I right to arm myself in that shooting gallery? Had a nice talk with the narcs about all the drug action in L.A. Who we knew in common. I’m one of the boys still,
Carmen. You’re just an uppity woman taking some guy’s job.”

  She expressed her anger by pushing past him to eye the premises.

  Living room, eating bar between that and a tiny kitchen, a short hall probably leading to one bedroom and a bathroom.

  Everything was neat and in its place, despite the shabby surroundings.

  For a minute she felt the room was rocketing away from her. She was standing someplace else, on a different planet, in an apartment they’d shared in L.A. In the bathroom. Holding a diaphragm up to the light. Revelation through a pinhole. Mariah.

  Her daughter should know about this man, and this apartment? Alch was nuts. Never.

  “You look a little queasy,” someone was saying. “The way you always did before singing. Sit down. The bedbugs won’t bite. I Raided them out.”

  Someone had thrown a blanket depicting dog breeds over a chair. Molina perched on that, aware of the paddle holster digging into her right rear hip.

  Rafi Nadir passed a palm over his face, as if hoping to wipe it clean of fatigue and anger. “I didn’t do anything wrong tonight. Nothing illegal. I’m not afraid of the drug guys. I’m clean. You, though, I’m afraid of.”

  “You? Afraid of me?”

  “Well, leery maybe. I got some Sprite. Settle your stomach. You want some?”

  The Sprite didn’t surprise her. The offer did.

  “You can drink it out of the can, all right? Only the rats and the cockroaches in the grocery store stockroom ran over it. Untouched by my hands. Pop your own top.”

  The last comment was inciting, but she was too tired to take it up.

  Instead, she took the refrigerator-chilled can of soda he brought back, sweating with icy condensation.

  “Everything went wrong tonight,” he was saying. “You think you’re worried about me? I’m worried about that little gal the biker took hostage. The narcs shot their clips and got into rounding up the gang, and me. Her, they didn’t give a shit.”

  “Little girl?” Molina parroted, thinking about Mariah despite herself.

  “Ballsy little broad. Red hair. I helped her out at Secrets and she’s got some sort of nerve for a squirt.”