Chapter 11
Blue Dahlia Bogey Boogie
Lieutenant Molina wouldn't have housed a homicide suspect in it, but Carmen loved her tacky dressing room at the Blue Dahlia.
It was only a large storage closet that the management had dedicated to her use. She had furnished it with a battered '30s Goodwill dressing table, the film-noir kind with a big round mirror centered between two low pillars of drawers. The maintenance man had scrounged a couple strips of makeup lights to act as sconces on either side.
A matching bench was too low for her height, and the lighting looked better than it lit, but the forties nightclub dressing-room ambiance tickled her fantasy. When she got out the Carmen paraphernalia, she felt like a big girl playing a little girl playing dress up.
The act of singing under a spotlight, however tiny the stage, the ritual of assuming another persona and then losing herself in the lyrical landscapes of the great old songs, these were all creation and recreation to her. She never changed clothes and left right after a performance. Instead, she sat and drank the whiskey and soda Rudy always had waiting on the blue-mirrored glass atop the dressing table.
She hummed some Gershwin, thought of nothing and everything, and replayed the music in her mind.
She was lucky to have this romantic escape from the realities of her profession.
She studied herself in the mirror. Lieutenant Molina didn't look in mirrors, but Carmen could, being a creature of smoke and illusion. Matt Devine's comment that her Carmen persona provided a playground for a policewoman's sensual side floated to the forefront of her thoughts.
Her mirror image rolled her eyes. How weird for an ex-priest to express such an intimate insight!
Even now she felt slightly embarrassed, whether by the remark's source or its truth, she wasn't sure. But Devine had used the dry, dispassionate tones of a trained counselor, and his perception was probably true.
Some women who went into police work, especially on the patrol level, reveled in the ultra-feminine: long nails, bleached hair, hard-edged makeup. That only reinforced any innate chauvinism and made the men's wives uneasy. Women hankering after careers rather than personal attention kept a rigorously neutral profile. Sure, they were called tough bitches and lezzies for it, but in time the lack of nonsense won out and won over.
So successful had C. R. Molina been at this form of defensive coloration that her showy alter ego had become something of a risk. If word of Carmen got out now, she would not like it.
She touched the signature blue dahlia, pulling a loose bobby pin from her hair and dropping it into a top drawer. The drawers, cramped and cheaply made, tended to slide awry. She bent her attention on making the drawer shut and only accomplished it with a bang.
When she looked up, she was no longer alone in the room, or the broom closet, rather.
The closed door framed a man's figure, as if he were painted on it. A professional description leaped into her mind: six-three or -four, 180 pounds, black slacks, black turtleneck sweater, black hair. Eyes indeterminate. Of course she hadn't heard or seen him come in; Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella was a magician, wasn't he? At least sometimes.
If his unconventional entrance was supposed to surprise or alarm her, he wasn't counting on the steadiest nerves in the LVMPD. Who did he think she was, anyway, and why was he here?
"Thanks for knocking." She lowered her eyes to the dressing table as if searching for something among the sparse accoutrements and didn't have to worry about watching him at all.
She looked up again when he pushed himself away from the door with a gymnast's ultra-controlled ease. "The situation didn't seem to call for formalities."
"What situation? Are you a fan?"
His smile was slight, and slightly mischievous. "Only since tonight."
"A new customer. Still, you could knock. We're not that hard up."
"Not if I wanted to enter unseen."
"Don't tell me. A deranged fan. I've always wanted one."
"I've always wanted an explanation."
"Of what?"
"Yourself."
"I don't see why."
"You should, Lieutenant."
"As you should know that I want an explanation of my own. But not here. I believe the expression is
'downtown.''
"I believe you have to take what you can get."
She didn't answer, never having settled for that, but well aware that he had chosen this time and place to suit his purpose.
She spun around on the bench to face him in something other than the deceptive, reflective glass-made-mirror by a dark, poisonous cloud of silver nitrate.
"So what brought you back, Kinsella, after all this time?" she asked in her usual flat, professional tones, empty even of curiosity.
"Apparently you have nothing better to do than harass Temple."
She felt humor flare when she least wanted it, but had no time to veil the impulse. "I would say that the case is just the opposite."
"You don't appear very harrassable."
"Let's say that Miss Barr has a talent for getting underfoot at the scene of a crime. Since she has never been very forthcoming about your past, present and future whereabouts, I make a point of asking whenever the occasion presents itself."
"Apparently an occasion presented itself to produce my class photo from Interpol."
She leaned back against the dressing table, resting her head in her hand, and smiled. "You know, it really is rather intriguing to be the interrogatee for a change. Is this what you did for the IRA?"
His head shook in wry disgust. "That old bureaucratic snafu means nothing, except to Temple."
"They say love is blind, but I guess it's not color-blind." She stood slowly, and tilted her head again.
"Let's see, are they green, or blue?"
"Nobody's business," Kinsella said tightly. "I had no idea the police were so interested in professional illusions. That Interpol alert was a farce when it was issued seventeen years ago, and its unconscionable ancient history now. Why brandish it in front of Temple?"
"Good psychology." She sat again, preferring to appear more casually in control. "Her idiotic loyalty to you made her a hostile witness. I needed to wake her up to the fact that I had good reason to be interested in you and your whereabouts."
"So you had to unmask me as some sort of imposter."
She shrugged. "Aren't you? I'm not one of your admiring audience, Kinsella. I'm not a gullible little girl from the Heartland. Don't expect me to buy for a moment the notion that you abandoned a lucrative performing career on an inexplicable whim. And where is all that money you made performing, anyway?
Miss Barr often struggles to pay her mortgage and monthly maintenance on her own income. Why sign her up as a co-owner if you had planned to skip out so soon?"
"Does your job allow you to sling suspicions at any passing stranger?"
"Do you think you can vanish just as a dead body is discovered on your turf and not stir up interest?"
"The Goliath is a big place, Lieutenant. That's why it's called the Goliath. The employees alone number in the thousands, not to mention guests and gamblers. Why should I have anything at all to do with that dead body of yours?"
"Because all of a sudden, you weren't there."
"My contract with the hotel had ended; there was no reason for me to stay."
"Except for Temple Barr and the Circle Ritz." She folded her arms. "I always suspected you'd come back."
"Good for you. Why shouldn't I? And what do I find when I do? Your baseless suspicions have put Temple in an ugly spotlight. Where's your sense of responsibility? Temple has nothing to do with anything you might suspect. Having the police interested in her might attract the wrong elements."
"Besides yourself, I suppose you mean?"
"You know what I mean. Pick on someone your own size, Lieutenant."
She stiffened at the implication. "I would if he would stay visible."
"Look." Kinsella spread his hands in a disingenuous gesture. "I presume there are no warrants out for me."
"Not. .. yet. But I do want to talk to you, and officially. What's wrong with that? What are you afraid of?"
"Not you," he said quickly. Too quickly. "Listen. I'll make you a deal."
"You'll offer a deal. I doubt I'll take it."
"Get me copies of the mug shots and rap sheets on the men who roughed up Temple, and I'll come in quietly for a talk, but not publicly. No downtown."
" 'Get you'? Get real! Why should I trade you police information for a few moments of your precious time, on your terms? Besides, Miss Barr only made tentative identifications. I can't unleash a rogue citizen on unsuspecting crooks."
"Since when are the police so solicitous of petty career criminals?"
"You seem to have those guys pegged without any documentation. I don't need your time or your insight so badly that I'm about to make any deals with a disappearing act."
"That's too bad. I might have something to show and tell, but first I need to check some things out."
"Who's the cop here?"
He smiled. "You are, Lieutenant, as close-minded a hard-nosed dick as I've ever seen in a velvet glove."
"Don't let this getup fool you."
"I won't, if you won't."
She was silent as she contemplated the conversation thus far. Elusive was his middle name, as if he didn't have enough of them already. She might have to deal for her long-wanted interrogation, but he was capable of taking the info and running. He was even capable, she suspected, of breaking into headquarters to get it.
"If I decide to let you take a look at these guys, it will have to be downtown. And I'll want some answers about the Goliath."
His mobile face soured with a doubt-curdled expression. "I don't want that high a profile. Much as I enjoy chatting with you, this clandestine tete-a-tete will have to do for now. You're right, Lieutenant; I do have a thing or two to tell you. Meanwhile, just remember that it's not Temple that you're after."
He was at the door so fast the fact seemed supernatural.
She nearly knocked over the light bench as she stood.
"I'm not through with you," she warned him in the dead serious tones she would use with any suspect.
Kinsella paused, his hand on the battered doorknob, looked over his shoulder, turned.
She knew enough to approach him deliberately, her face an authoritarian mask. Still, she felt she was wading through Jell-O, aware of the long, soft skirt brushing her calves, of the lightweight holster gartering her ankle. No cop was ever off duty.
He waited, wary but curious. "Do you think you can arrest me?" he asked when she reached him.
That issue had both legal and physical implications, especially in a confrontation that had become an exercise in domination. They faced off, not moving, neither giving an inch in determination. She was not a small woman; in her vintage shoes she surpassed six feet, so he had a scant two or three inches on her. And probably only thirty pounds, she estimated expertly.
She sensed imminent movement on his part--street sense-- and her right arm lifted to stop his escape.
He caught her wrist, a weak tactic, but a canny move. That token counterforce allowed her to test his mettle. His upper body strength was surprising for one so lean, and his expression was now amused, which angered her, as he meant it to. Resistance did not dismay her. She knew some moves, but better yet, she had spent four years as a patrol officer doing take-downs in South Central L.A.
For the moment they remained paralyzed, exerting equal counter-strength, balanced like arm wrestlers before they get serious. Her will was as adamant as his. Besides, the real battle wouldn't begin until she slipped his wrist-grip to work some surprises of her own.
The balance held for frozen seconds.
Suddenly, without relaxing his grip, he leaned close and spoke in a deep whisper. "Don't." His vibrant baritone at her ear almost made the silk dahlia at her temple tremble. "Don't ruin the start of a beautiful . . . pursuit."
Irony and intimacy were concealed weapons she hadn't expected. Her wrist was now free, but so was he, eeling through the barely open door like a second-story man.
For a split second she debated pulling out her own concealed weapon and chasing him through the Blue Dahlia. No. Not yet. She wanted publicity no more than he, because she had so damn little probable cause for pursuing him, just the terminal itch of instinct.
Furious, she turned and slammed the door shut with her back. The grand gesture forced her to face herself in the tacky mirror across the room. C. R. Molina shut her eyes. Whatever her professional annoyance at anyone's--any suspect's--manipulation, she had to analyze the personal flaw that had surprised and paralyzed her for the vital instant he had used to leave without resistance. It wasn't pretty, but it was pretty obvious.
She allowed herself to replay the bolt of sheer sexual heat lightning that had riveted her from head to toe. His swift, alarming closeness, the warm, ironic voice, the physical tension of resistance, his and hers, suddenly altered into something else.
She hadn't allowed herself, hadn't had a hope in hell of experiencing anything like it in . . . years. She had felt as if an elevator she rode daily and indifferently had suddenly plunged three stories, and would the elevator operator do it again, please.
Calculated, of course, down to the second. Manipulative. Cocky. Effective. Part of her despised any woman's vulnerability for that ancient sexual domination game, always stacked against women. Part of her wanted to play it again, Sam.
Carmen leaned against the closed door, bracing her hands on the cool, smooth wood. She felt as if Bacall had just met Bogart. And he was good.
He was very, very good.
Lieutenant C. R. Molina pushed herself away from the door's support, from the past, from dispensible trivialities like libido.
So was she.