Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Read online

  Before our eyes, more cars are wheeling onto the lot in front of the trailer. People from nowhere are screeching in on new and old wheels, setting up shop as an outdoor gaming parlor.

  “This,” I declare, “is weird, even for Vegas. ‘Dusk to Dawn.’ That is like eight p.m. to five thirty a.m. I never knew this secret gambling stuff was going on.”

  “This is more than weird,” Louise whispers back. “Those are vampire hours. Could something supernatural be occurring?”

  Before I can answer, I hear the screech of speeding automobiles hitting the brakes. This unlit side street is suddenly illuminated by headlights that quickly go dark and is lined by parked vehicles, from which clots of four to seven people pour out. Wait. Not just people. Guy people. Of course the male of the species is the most hardened gambler. The female favors better odds than mere chance.

  “Oh, my mama’s lumbago,” Louise hisses under her breath. “This has turned into a secret betting parlor under the stars. Even though gaming is legal in Las Vegas, licenses are still required. What the Havana Brown is happening here?”

  Normally I know everything, but must confess to ignorance in the current instance. This nighttime carnival must have a rhyme or reason, but I am without a clue in this case.

  Although the sun has slinked out of sight for the day, I am not surprised to see some usual suspects strolling onto the frantic scene.

  Punch Adcock and Katt Zydeco, who would be dressed to the nine lives were they feline, play hosts, and escort the imported gamblers to various slot machines. Leon Nemo cruises the chaos, his eye on his Rolex wristwatch.

  Louise and I watch a few dozen gamers argue about the house rules (only cash and gone by 5:00 a.m.), but the house, well…rules. Even more suspicious, Adcock, Zydeco and Nemo’s cell phone cameras record all the frenetic doings of this elite few on the night crew.

  After weary hours of crouching on my fore and aft limbs alongside my far more limber associate, I see the bettors shuffle toward the curbs to depart. Nemo counts out a paltry few bucks, which are pushed into gamblers’ pants pockets as they leave.

  Vehicle engines rev at the curbs. The pack of gamblers vanish in a herd of red taillights. Leon Nemo adds to the fan of bills representing the night’s slim “take”, and distributes them among the musclemen scooping up the slot machines on dollies and returning them to the unplumbed depths beneath the ex-antique mall.

  He is left with empty hands and a grin we can see even from under the RV.

  “This is the most bizarre event I have ever witnessed in Las Vegas,” I impart to Louise’s petite ear, which twitches. “And that is saying something given the over-the-top entertainment on the Strip.”

  “That is indeed a first,” she admits. “Oh, I am tired of serving as a stock-still vermin attraction. Tell me we can fold our tents for the night.”

  “Agreed. I need time to think on this startling event, which,” I proclaim, “is even odder than when UFOs were reported buzzing the Las Vegas Strip. What is most wrong here, is that I do not see anyone profiting in any way from this night’s events. That is just plain unnatural in Las Vegas.”

  “Agreed. An absence of greed is hard to stomach. Oh, my aching pads!”

  On Louise’s last comment, we scratch our heads literally and simultaneously, and depart for our separate home, sweet homes.

  12

  Guardian Angle

  Matt was jostled awake by a vehicle speeding over pockmarked roads.

  His head ached, his side stitches from the bullet-wound burned, and his jaw felt dislocated. He kept his eyes closed to take inventory. All right. Semi-upright in a car seat, but not buckled in.

  Yeah, mobsters dumping a body-to-be would worry about traffic rules.

  The rough ride felt like an SUV, not Woodrow Wetherly’s old sedan. Matt guessed he could have been out cold for three minutes, or a quarter of an hour. Would he make his showtime like Woody had promised? Not his worst problem. His closed eyelids sensed the regular rhythm of passing streetlights, intermixed with some vagrant neon, he’d bet.

  The driver was exceeding the speed limit for this old, bumpy part of town. In Chicago, winter snow and distributed salt made for spring potholes. In the desert southwest, the summer sun did the same job on the asphalt in its own searing way.

  It didn’t sound like the vehicle was on its paved-highway path to a sandy grave in the litter box of the Mojave desert, where all the mobsters hits lay undiscovered.

  “You can stop playing dead to the world,” the driver said.

  The man’s voice was deep, but he wasn’t Kinsella or Frank Bucek, Matt’s mentor from the seminary. Matt must have hopefully hallucinated someone from his past coming to his rescue.

  Yet this voice was so vaguely familiar… It could have belonged to the last guy at a gas station pay booth or an actor on a recent TV commercial.

  It rumbled on. “Sorry for the ‘light’s out’ tactic, but a fistful of bad actors were about to clean your clock, so I’m taking the inner workings home for patching up and some necessary adjustments.”

  Matt blinked his eyes open and struggled to focus on the driver’s profile. The dark hair was thick and wavy, the nose beaked. He recognized the least likely person he’d expected to hear or see, but the guy talked like a cop.

  Matt’s voice came out a dry croak. “Mariah’s new singing coach knocked me out? Why was an ex-cop like you at a dive like that?”

  “That’s my line, choir boy.”

  “But you will answer it.” Matt made the sentence a demand. “What’s your angle?”

  “Lucky for you, I’m up for the head security job at the Goliath Hotel. I was doing some extra-curricular tailing of a guy I thought was sizing up the hotel for a hit. The Lucky Stars bar is a cesspool of what passes for organized crime in this city, which now finds street gangs the biggest policing problem. And who do I see raising a ruckus with six guys but Mariah’s fave candidate for her freshman Dad-Daughter dance escort. Can’t allow the kid’s crush to get a broken nose.”

  “A broken jaw is better?”

  “That shot hurts you more than it will your looks. We’re heading for your Circle Ritz digs. I always wanted to see the inside of that infamous building.”

  “No! I need to pick up my car.” Matt checked the street signs. “It’s not far. I’ll direct you. I guess I should say thanks, Rafi…Nadir, isn’t it? Yeah. I got in over my head.”

  “So what’d you do to rile the Lucky Stars’ Silver Senior crook crowd?”

  “Those guys really go back on the Vegas crimeline, don’t they?”

  “And they are so out-of-date, but not out of cold criminal intent.”

  “I’m trying to figure out why my stepfather from Chicago came to Vegas and got himself offed in a dramatic way Bugsy Siegel would envy.”

  “Oh, yeah. That Effinger goof.”

  “You know about his murder? More gory than goofy.”

  “There are some extreme Las Vegas mob-style hits, but, dude, that drowning in the dark of night on a major Vegas attraction is infamous.”

  “Really? You say ‘dude’? Man, you must be forty years old.”

  “A well-worn thirty-eight, like the caliber of my favorite gun. The ‘dude’ is from hanging out with the kid.”

  Matt wondered what else in Rafi Nadir’s life might “be from hanging out” with Mariah’s mother hen, all-pro homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina. A guy with major hotel security responsibility playing singing coach? Was this a way to edge Mariah’s secret father into her life? Because Molina was well qualified to tutor her daughter herself, given her own fantastic vocal talents.

  “If you have any influence, I wish you could persuade her mother to get back to performing,” Matt said, hardly realizing he’d spoken aloud.

  Rafi refused to share his status with the lieutenant or her family, just saying, “Carmen’s torch singing was a classy act. And nobody persuades Molina to do anything,” Rafi added, probably unaware of the naked bitterness Matt detected i
n his tone.

  He went on. “The kid gig is because I used to be a…what you’d call an amateur ‘talent developer’. Don’t judge her mother. She has a huge job responsibility as a woman on the rise in law enforcement. Puttin’ on the ritz now and then at the Blue Dahlia can’t be on her agenda these days.”

  “She has a great voice, though. I’d want her to sing at my wedding any day.”

  “Wedding. That in the cards soon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you don’t want to be offed in a free-for-all fight at the Lucky Stars nudie bar, do you? Might annoy the bride-to-be.”

  “No. But I don’t want to make that big a step without knowing what my rotten stepfather was up to in Chicago and then here that was so bad it, thankfully, widowed my mother. That has got to be linked to something big.”

  “Stubborn, aren’t you?” Nadir swung the steering wheel ninety degrees. Matt looked around to see Woody’s house. “I guess if you’re going to live long enough to get married, you should creep into the home place unnoticed tonight.”

  “I’m not staying. I’ve got to clean up and get to work for the night shift at the radio station. What have you done to me? I’m leaving early tomorrow morning with my fiancée for Minneapolis. My jaw will be a dead giveaway.”

  “Sleep on an ice pack and you’ll be normal by morning. Say, I’d still sure love to see a condo or apartment at the Circle Ritz. Let me know if you and the lucky little woman are going to leave a vacancy.”

  Matt sighed and opened the SUV door, trying not to land hard on the asphalt. Every little move he made right now was not magic. Ouch.

  Rafi leaned over the passenger seat to pull the door closed after Matt. “Remember. ‘You’ve got a friend.’ Carole King. ‘I’ll Be Watching You.’ The Police.”

  “Babysitting not appreciated,” Matt said. “I don’t know if you’re my guardian angel or worst nightmare.”

  “Sometimes, dude, they are the same thing.” Rafi Nadir winked and pulled the door shut with a nerve-shattering bang, at least for Matt’s nerves at the moment.

  Being hauled away from his first serious investigative move like a delinquent teenager could be considered humiliating.

  He didn’t humiliate, though; he persevered. For Matt, the evening’s debacle was proof that Clifford Effinger was gone, but not forgotten, and was still of deep interest to both the crime and punishment sides of Las Vegas. How could Matt marry Temple with that kind of threat from his past hovering over them?

  He couldn’t.

  So the only way forward was to ID and eliminate the threat.

  Matt groaned. He was beginning to sympathize with Max Kinsella.

  First, he had to get the Jag out of Wetherly’s garage before the old guy came back. The ramshackle door didn’t have a lock. Woody must consider himself theft-proof for some reason and would know who had taken it.

  Then Matt had to get home to ice his jaw for a while, drive to his radio talk-show gig, and rise and shine early tomorrow to look fine and accompany Temple to Minneapolis to meet his future in-laws.

  Right now, he might prefer to be Max Kinsella on the run from Kitty the Cutter.

  13

  Call Girls Inc.

  “I’ve found the visiting house louse. Are you game for some vermin extermination?”

  Temple blinked to hear her cell phone’s rude but mystifying announcement this late in the evening. The gritty voice didn’t even sound like Electra’s. Her watch showed 11:06 p.m. She’d just finished packing. She and Matt could nap on the plane, but Temple was eager to get some sleep now.

  “What kind of vermin? Something creepy invaded the Circle Ritz?”

  “Just my dirty rat ex-husband, who hasn’t been in town for years, and who swore he wouldn’t sell his land without telling me first.”

  “He’s here? Now?” Temple’s adrenaline was kicking into overdrive.

  “No. In town, hiding out. At the Araby Motel.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, that dump. He must have needed money fast.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “I called his latest ex-wife, Diane, and she wasn’t surprised he hadn’t told me he was in town. His recliner furniture business in St. Louis hit the skids in the Great Recession. Jay has been gambling again to get back on his feet, which means he’s only losing more money.”

  “You certainly have colorful exes.”

  “Look who’s talking? And that’s why they’re exes.”

  “So what do you need me for?”

  “I’m not dumb enough to go to the Araby Motel at this hour. Alone.”

  “And little me would be a witness and protection? Matt’s already left for his midnight show, but I could call—”

  “No. I want as few people as possible to know my business.”

  “So a Fontana brother or two—?”

  “Out of the question. This is women’s work. I’m not afraid of Jay. It’s just that the Araby Motel is a two cell-phone destination. One with a 9-1-1 autodial for me, and one with a 9-1-1 autodial for you, if I have to resort to violence. That’s how the hookers work it, in pairs.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Great witnesses, though, if something goes wrong.”

  “This is crazy, Electra. It’s late, and Matt and I are leaving early in the morning.”

  “I have to talk to Jay, and he’s liable to move around, dodging people he doesn’t want to see, like creditors or ex-wives. Listen. Jay is really a pussycat. I just need to do some instant lion taming. There’s got to be a way out of this deal he supposedly wrangled. We split the Circle Ritz and some surrounding acres in the divorce, with him agreeing to give me right of first refusal on a deal for his acreage. I can’t imagine him reneging like this. Please!”

  “Okay, Electra. I’ll go with you, but you’re forcing me to do the unthinkable.”

  “What is that?”

  “Wear jeans and my ugly running sneakers. At least it’s dark out.”

  Temple had slipped her cell phone into a wrist case so she could use it fast.

  They drove Electra’s old Probe. Temple rebelled at her landlady’s suggestion of them riding the Hesketh Vampire motorcycle that had originally been Max Kinsella’s. It was fast but noisy at high speed (hence the screaming vampire reference), and not low profile. For the same reason, Temple was not about to take her Miata convertible.

  Sixty years ago, the motel had been a chi-chi little motor lodge, the latest thing in Western Accommodations for travelers wishing to see the U.S.A. in their Chevrolets. Today it was someplace Bette Davis could loathe. Dump Central. Not many cars littered the asphalt, but they all were missing something—paint, various windows, wheel rims.

  It wasn’t that the Araby Motel didn’t have the usual Vegas vibe, including a snazzy neon sign. The Araby Motel was laid out like an exclamation point: a long, low one-story string of rooms stretching out from a registration office that sat under a tower of tired neon. Earthworm-pink neon cursives spelled out ARABY MOTEL above a sputtering green minaret and a huge purple genie wafting up from a blue bottle.

  Every entertainment Mecca has its low-rent areas where the offbeat, the broke and broken, and the slightly criminal congregate. Temple remembered Matt visiting places like this when he first came to town hunting his stepfather.

  “Room 16,” Electra said as the Probe turned into the motel courtyard. That proved to be one of the few units where the light above the door hadn’t failed, or been turned off by the occupant.

  As Electra knocked at the metal door, Temple couldn’t decide if standing in the light was a good or a bad thing. She’d glimpsed shadowy women along the street, and men in cars cruising slowly.

  “Don’t worry. I’m armed,” Electra whispered, worrying her again. Again? You bet.

  “Jay. Jay.” Electra leaned out to knock on the picture window glass instead of wearing her knuckles out on steel. “I know you’re there. We’ve got to talk.”

  The dust-stained lining of the
window curtains edged back at one edge.

  “Jeesh. How’d you find me?” a man exclaimed through the glass.

  “Diane.”

  The pinch of lifted curtain fell back into place.

  Temple turned to face the parking lot as a low-rider grumbled through. When she turned back, the steel door was opening.

  “Jeesh, Electra.” The man stepped back with the half-open door as a buttress. “You and Diane in cahoots. Makes my blood run cold. Who’s the kid?”

  Temple was used to being cut down to her petite size.

  “My bodyguard,” Electra retorted.

  Jay’s jaw dropped. “Funeee. You girls better come in. This can be a rough neighborhood.”

  Inside the room, by the insipid light of a floor lamp, Temple saw a big man both high and wide. Yet he stood like a guilty kid, neck bent forward and blue eyes peering out from under a forelock of thick white hair.

  “We wouldn’t be in a ‘rough neighborhood’,” Electra said, hands on hips, “if you weren’t in one, or in Vegas at all, for God’s sake.”

  “You’re looking…festive,” Jay said.

  Temple bit off a laugh. Electra, with her colorfully patchwork white hair that predated the fad for purple and indigo chalk streaks, was her own eccentric self. Festive was the perfect word.

  It did not appease. “Festive? I am furious, fellow. You show up in Vegas just as some scumbag is fixing on building an extreme strip club a rhinestone’s throw from my residential building and its attached wedding chapel. There goes the neighborhood.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Electra.” Had Jay owned a hat, he’d have been holding it in front of his generous belly and turning it around and around. Aw, shucks.

  “You swore I’d have first crack at the land. It’s in our divorce settlement.”