Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 4

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Molina felt like the wolf at the three little pigs’s door.

She was still huffing and puffing, at least, from hoofing it up three flights of stairs. Needed more time at the gym than behind a desk.

The faded stucco apartment building had no elevator, and the cheapest units were at the top. A scuffed plastic trike sat abandoned by the door. Who would let a three-year-old ride a trike on this narrow concrete balcony that ended in a corkscrew of stairs downward?

The dusty windows along the wall of the unit were covered with miniblinds, the thin metal slats crushed askew, as if the inhabitants were always peeking out.

Her outfit was more a costume than clothes, so she took quick inventory before she knocked: scuffed moccasins missing beadwork, worn jeans, a cotton-polyester shirt, and a fringed suede jacket the color of diarrhea, all courtesy of the Goodwill.

The cheap watch she had found there too read 10:00 A.M., a bit early to be rousting ladies of the night, but she wanted to find them home. Finding them sleepy and hungover as well would be a bonus.

Her fist hesitated above the door’s scratched surface. She hadn’t gone undercover in years; she felt like an ingenue about to make her first entrance on stage.

And she wasn’t undercover at all, officially.

She ran a hand through her hair, mussing it. This wasn’t a situation where pounding and badge flashing was going to get her anything.

She knocked.

Waited. Waited some more.

Knocked again.

No shouts of “Police! Open up!”

Just knock and wait, like the pizza delivery guy.

And hope you don’t get mugged while doing it.

No one was stirring yet in the complex, though. And vehicles born to be towed away littered the parking lot three stories below like a kid’s battered and scattered toys.

Through the door, she heard a child fussing, the whining, accelerating cry that sounds eerily like a siren.

The door shook and opened the length of a scratched safety chain.

“Yeah?” The face could have sold cold cream, so bleary, morning-after it looked.

Molina tried for a tone as jaded, and fell short. “Name’s Gina Diaz. I’m looking into what happened to Mandy.”

She had been summed up while she spoke. “Why?”

“I’ve been hired to do it.” True, in a way.

“You some female PI?”

“You could say that. Look. I just want to know some personal details, so I have a prayer of helping these folks out.”

“Her parents?”

Molina shrugged. “Sometimes they like to know what happened to dead daughters.”

A crinkle of curiosity crossed the swollen features. Behind her, the kid’s whine rose to a screech.

“Oh, God. Okay, come on in, lady. We don’t know anything, though.”

Once in, the door was locked behind her. “Good idea,” Molina noted. Cripes, had to forget being Cop Lady for a day.

“Sometimes good ideas aren’t enough, though. Sit down. Name’s Reno.”

Sure, Molina thought. Name was anything but Reno. As for sitting down…well, on what junk pile?

She chose a sofa end that was stacked with washed department-store-quality kiddie clothes, clean but wrinkled.

A moment later a sprite of two with tear-slicked cheeks was lifted atop the kitchen counter. Molina heard a toaster thump and soon the child was gnawing on a Pop-Tart.

Mom was a spare, attractive brunette somewhere in her late twenties, wearing lime green capri pants and a white-lint-strewn black sports bra.

Molina guessed they were the easiest clothes to grab when she had come knocking.

“You live alone here with the little girl?”

“No, but Ginger slept right through your pounding on the door. God, Trifari, don’t gobble! You’re getting raspberry on your new Gap top.”

Reno swiped the kid’s chin and set her on the carpet cluttered with plastic toys and dolls.

She noticed Molina folding the clean clothes and suddenly grinned. “Thanks. Just stack ’em on the end table. On top of the magazines. So you’re really a detective?”

“Really.”

“Say, do you want some coffee?”

“Why not? You look like you could use some anyway.”

Reno returned to the kitchen to fuss with a coffeemaker. “You probably figured out I work the clubs too, like Mandy did. Her real name was Cher.” She poked her face through the pass-through over the snack counter. “How long you been a detective?”

“About twelve years. How long have you been a stripper?”

“Forever.” Reno came back into the living room and plopped down on the floor beside the little girl. “I bet they don’t mess with you much, not at your size.”

“It helps. But they mess with me if they think they can get away with it. And they always do. You?”

“Let’s just say I hope Trifari grows up a little bigger than her mother. But I manage.” She smoothed the blond hair off the child’s brow. Raspberry jam smeared her lips like gloss, for a painful instant reminding Molina of photos she’d seen of Jon-Benet Ramsey. “She will, too,” Reno said softly, more to the kid than to Molina. “I’m gonna see she gets a much better deal than I did.”

“What kind of deal did Mandy/Cher get?” Molina had pulled out a stenographer’s notebook from which she’d torn half the pages before coming.

“You’ve seen the parents?”

“Well, the mother.”

Reno’s mouth soured. “Yeah. It’s interesting she’s coming around now. I mean, that stepfather…the usual scum.”

Molina nodded. “Maybe she learned too late that the kids have to come first. It’s a long shot, finding someone who killed a stripper.”

“Don’t we know that. Just paint a target on us. The cops could care less.”

“Not care less.”

“Huh?”

“Sorry. My, ah, aunt was a grammarian. It’s ‘could not’ care less.”

“What-ev-er. You make much money at this?”

“No. It’s just how the movies show the old-time PIs. You know, the borderline guys with the junker cars living alone and suddenly they get this one case that all the bigwigs care about and they save the day. It’s like that, except for the big case and saving the day.”

“I probably make more dough than you do.”

Molina nodded. It was likely even true in terms of her real job. “Probably. Did Cher?”

“Cher?” Reno laughed, a bit pensively. “Not Cher. She was new, but she was worse off than that. She was…raw, you know? Didn’t have a clue how to take care of herself. She hated stripping, but pretended she didn’t. Drank like a fish. Drank like a whale. Just a mess.”

“An easy victim, then?”

“Listen. We’re all easy victims. That’s why we’re there, pretending we’re somebody, that we’re pulling the strings. But we’re not. We get paid good, though.” She glanced at the child, content with her dreadful breakfast and her upscale toys. “I’ll be able to send her to college. If I manage to hang on to my money. Sometimes it’s hard.”

“Boyfriends? Drugs?”

“I stay off the stuff.” Her face deadened. “My boyfriend, though…” She sighed. Looked at the child. Sighed again.

Reno laughed uneasily and jumped up, as fluid as a teenager. Stripping kept a girl in tip top condition, oh, yes. Molina was surprised no enterprising media queen had put out an exercise video based on stripping moves.

“Coffee’s ready,” Reno called from the kitchen. “Man, I could use a hit of caffeine.”

She brought two steaming, if water-spotted, mugs into the living room. Molina eyed the magazine-covered end table wondering where she would balance the hot mug.

“Just put it on the magazines. We don’t worry about coffee rings around here.” Reno settled cross-legged on the floor, while Molina felt a twinge of envy. She felt a lot older than Reno. Why had a woman this street savvy been caught with a pregnancy? Maybe she’d just wanted a kid.

“So. Any suspicious characters around that strip club? Secrets.”

“‘Suspicious characters.’ That is so NYPD. You crack me up.”

“Sorry. Why’d Cher leave the last club she appeared at?”

Reno shrugged, her face buried in the child’s hair, then looked up. “She didn’t say. I only saw her for a few minutes the day she died. She was all high on some guy she met named Vince. Said he might look out for her. I guess he played white knight when the bouncer got overeager.”

“The bouncer?”

“Guy named Raf. Likes to throw his weight around. Most of us don’t take guys like that seriously. All show and no go, but Cher was a scaredy-cat.”

“Maybe she was right.” Molina made a point of writing down the names of the men. Vince was new; Raf, of course, was not.

“This Raf been at the club long? What does he look like?”

“We called him our man from the Iranian secret police. Iranian Secrets police in our case, I guess.”

“What do you mean ‘Iranian secret police’?”

“Oh, Raf, our bouncer, just has that dark and dangerous look. Kinda foreign, but I don’t think he is. Kinda dominating. Then there was this Vince guy that came in. He was dark and dangerous looking too, but Cher was jazzed on him, oh, boy. He gave her money for nothing, after all. No dancing, no sex. Got her thinking about hair-dressing school, my gawd, can you believe it? Standing all day and no money in it? At least hookers get paid for standing around. And their blow jobs are over a lot faster. And then this guy tried to talk her into calling some counselor. For someone who looked like sleaze on a skateboard he sure acted like Mr. Goody Two-shoes.”

Molina nodded. Straight arrows, even cops, could fixate on reforming hookers and strippers. Probably unconscious libido.

“She say what this Vince looked like, anything identifying?”

“Tall, dark…you fill in the blanks. She offered to sleep with him for nothing, but he wasn’t interested. Gay, you think?”

“Maybe. Maybe just a do-gooder, like you say. Or a do-badder setting her up. No address, no way to get in touch with him again?”

“She didn’t say. She did say he tangled with Rafi. Raf. That’s short for Rafi. I ask you, what kind of name is that?”

Molina held back a smile in answering a woman who’d named her daughter Trifari. Trif? “Foreign maybe, like you say. Middle-Eastern, I’d bet.”

“Oh! Don’t tell me about those guys! Control freaks, and it’s all okayed by their religion or whatever. Anyway, that’s why Cher was switching clubs that next night. That she…died. Didn’t want to run into Rafi again at Secrets.”

“You’re free to do that?”

“Yeah. Not at the hoity-toity clubs, but at places like Secrets, it’s just who shows up. We move around. Get a wider clientele that way. More bucks. Poor Mandy. She coulda used more bucks. I hate to say it, but she was born to be somebody’s victim. Was it a nut case, do you think? Or that guy Vince?”

“Murder like this? Night. A woman alone in a strip club parking lot. It could be anybody.”

Molina read between the ancient lines. Despite Reno’s hard-nosed survival attitude and her genuine desire for a better life for her daughter, she would be putty in the hands of any controlling guy who threw a little money, time, and attention her way before taking over her life. Like the late, mostly unlamented Cher, little Trifari was in a race for her future with her mother’s abusive background. Would conditioning or maternal instinct win?

Molina hoped Reno was one of those women who, even if she couldn’t stop being a victim in her own life, at least could draw the line at that happening to her kids.

Some did it, and they deserved a medal. Most didn’t, and they deserved what they got: another generation reared for heartbreak.

Molina nodded at the little girl. “Why did you name her Trifari?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“I do. Much better than Tiffany.”

“Yeah. That sucks. Like anyone from where I came from would ever have anything from Tiffany’s. But they might have some Trifari, huh?” She leaned back against the sofa, grabbed her knees, grinned like a teenager.

“I had this aunt, too, only she didn’t care about grammar. But she let me try on her jewelry when I was a kid. And some of it, the glittery stuff, had this little tag that read ‘Trifari.’ I always swore I would get me some of that someday.”

“And you did.” Molina nodded at the child.

“Yes, I did.” Reno slid into a kiddish singsong. “Mommy sure did, precious baby.” She hugged and rocked the little girl, stealing raspberry kisses while the child giggled.

Molina could have felt a lot of things at witnessing this mother-with-child scene: skepticism, anger, sorrow. Instead she just felt helpless. It was a feeling she hadn’t indulged for years. Not until Rafi Nadir had recently turned up in Las Vegas.

Belated rage literally straightened her spine. Reno wasn’t just a struggling single mother from a rotten background, she was a link in safeguarding Molina’s own daughter from the past, and the future.

“So Cher was a basket case. Why would anyone strangle her?”

“She was there? She was easy? Maybe that’s what it comes down to.” Reno’s grip on Trifari tightened until the child fussed in protest. “That’s why I don’t let any man live with us. Too many of them try things with little girls.”

Molina nodded. No argument. Every woman these days knew a woman whose child had been molested, and most molestations happen within the charmed circle of family and acquaintances. Those just were the odds, plain and simple. The only certain odds in Las Vegas related to domestic abuse.

“About this new guy, Vince. New at the club?”

“I’ve never seen him, but Rick had. He’s one of the bartenders.”

“How about this theory? Say someone Cher knew or met at Secrets got big ideas, or was mad at her. Suppose that person followed her to the new place and killed her there to keep everyone from thinking about any suspects from Secrets?”

“You suppose. That’s your job. Me, I don’t know. Could be someone from Secrets.”

“Who?”

“What guy, you mean?”

“Strangling isn’t the average woman’s choice of attack. It helps to be taller than your victim. Was Cher a tall girl?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. Here. I’ve got a photo.” Reno rooted in the drawer of the end table that seemed more useful for holding the stuffing in the couch side than putting things on. “One of the club photographers took this.”

Molina took it in turn, a five-by-seven horizontal group shot of whatever girls at Secrets happened to be around. They stood in a ragged line, arms around each other like cheerleaders, most of them wearing only G-strings and the grinning expressions of the happily smashed.

“It was Senegal’s birthday. We all hung around after and broke balloons and sang ‘Happy You-Know.’ That’s Cher there.”

Molina stared at a face slightly blurred by booze and movement. “She looks pretty tall. Five eight, nine maybe.”

“You got a great eye.” Reno nodded, both impressed and suddenly sad. “Cher was about that. I know because she was always bitching about having to wear high-heeled boots. Said men like women who weren’t as tall as they were. What do you think?”

“From the photo, five nine.”

“No.” Reno was grinning like a girlfriend at Molina. “I mean, do men like tall women? You oughta know.”

Molina, surprised, said, “I doubt it. Too many guys are nervous about women anyway. I’d say short girls have it all over us tall ones.”

“Kinda what I thought. That was Cher’s problem. She felt like a horse and acted that way. Turned guys off. And, she was drunk as a skunk most of the time. She wasn’t stripper material. Had to drink to do it. Probably had to drink to do sex too. I think there was, you know, in her family.”

Molina nodded, making aimless marks in her notebook. Scratch a stripper and find a depressing life story. “What other guys hung out at the club?”

Reno curled up in the couch’s slightly soiled corner. “Too bad you can’t interview the police. They went over all this with me.”

“Did they?”

“Oh, yeah. Two of’em. Over and over, everything.”

Molina felt a rare, secret satisfaction. “You remember their names?”

“No, just detectives. Like you. Notebook, the whole deal. Only with IDs.”

“So what’d you tell them?”

“Just about the usual suspects. They were interested in the photo guy. I noticed you wrote his name and address down from the stamp on the back of the picture. And there’s the deejay, Tyler. Just a kid, underage, but I didn’t tell the cops that. Loves music, likes to watch naked girls dancing. All pimple-faces do. And he doesn’t have to pay for it.”

“He ever bother any of the girls?”

“All he knows how to bother people yet is by playing his tapes too loud, although you can’t possibly do that at a strip club. Naw, he’s a good kid, and the bartenders and bouncers, they’re just regular guys. You’d be amazed how boring it is to be around women shedding their clothes after the shock wears off. That’s why we move so much from club to club. I just don’t see any of these guys going berserk and offing a girl. Why?”

“You like the idea of an outside stalker better?”

“Yeah. Maybe it was her old man. Stepdad. Those are the kind who can diddle their own kids and then get mad when the kid grows up and goes off and lets someone outside the family do it. Maybe it’s that Hannibal freak, huh? Most of the guys who come to strip clubs are pussycats. That’s why we love doing it, putting a smile on their pussycat faces while they stuff our G-strings with cash money.”

Trifari started banging a plastic assembly toy on the floor, and Reno jumped down to take it away. “Come on, honey. Save that toy for next time.”

Molina had noted down the names of Secrets’ male workers. The detectives’ reports would cover all of them.

“Only one guy from Secrets came anywhere near Cher away from the club,” Reno said as she straightened up. “That guy she met her last night there.”

“The day before she was murdered.”

“Right.” Reno shivered as she sat again to sip strong, cooling coffee. “I think I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been at this a long time. Too long. But the money’s good and I come and go when I want, and I’ll be free days to go to my little girl’s school stuff when she’s older. When she’s in the school play, right, little star? If I hold up.” She laughed. “I look pretty good for my age, don’t I?”

Molina smiled. “I don’t know. What’s your age?”

“Guess.”

“Twenty-eight or nine?”

Reno preened. You could almost see a spotlight on her. “Add ten, honey.”

“Really?” Molina was honestly surprised. Reno was in great condition.

“I get in another ten years, I’ll have this kid in junior high and a nest egg for college. Then I can do nails at the Goliath or something.”

If, Molina thought, shutting her notebook, nobody ever caught her in a parking lot alone.