Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Chapter 6

Fast Food 4 Thought

Max Kinsella brought home many memorabilia from his tour of the Circle Ritz, a full slide show in his mind. The first was a recaptured memory of the building’s quaint wood-paneled elevator cars, small enough to be elegant coffin.

Okay.

Click to an image less morose.

He envisioned the triangular patios at the “corners” of the four outermost units on each of the five floors. Electra had not let him tour any occupied premises, of course, especially not Temple and Matt’s, which were above each other, his on top.

Okay.

Click the laboriously operated memory to something less … personal.

Electra did guide him to the attached wedding chapel with its soft sculpture figures in the pews. Nope. Still personal.

The circling narrow halls that led to short cul-de-sacs with “front doors” for each unit seemed the safest territory. He remembered them well now, as well as the insecure French doors leading to the balcony patios, which he had used many times.

The only things he’d brought back to this safeguarded low-profile home, formerly the property of his slain longtime mentor, were more vague ghosts.

He was sitting in this chair with healing legs because someone in Vegas had wanted to kill him, as did a bunch of ex-IRA terrorists in Ireland who had plenty of U.S. contacts, including hitmen. Or women.

And now the one person—the only person—who best knew his past and present and his inner and outer demons had skedaddled off for a glamour tour of Chicago with the man who’d replaced him in her life and was also on the cusp of a network television career.

Onetime poor-as-a-church-mouse ex-priest Matt Devine had the job, the money, the girl, and everything. Max wasn’t broke, but a sense of mission and love trump mere occupation every time.

Then the phone rang.

It wasn’t the portable in Garry Randolph’s dim living room, where a slightly sensationalized ancient archeology educational program on the big-screen HDTV was running silent and deep. Max had muted the sound, and the presentation was scholarly in the extreme.

Max cursed under his breath as his still-sore hips rolled slightly while he pried the smartphone from his back pocket. His contact list showed a creepy faceless profile, but he had no personalized photo contacts listed on his new phone except for a way-too-perky pic of Temple Barr, but he recognized the incoming number.

“Yes?”

“Home alone by the telephone?” The mocking voice was sour and low.

“If I deny that?”

“Look out your window when you click back the protective window blind.”

He hadn’t enabled all the security systems and his recovering broken legs could make him lazy and dependent on remote devices. He did not want to appear dependent with this caller. It wasn’t easy, but he could rise and check for himself. He pulled back the heavy drapes when he got there.

“I don’t see the wheels. You must have parked discreetly in front of a neighbor’s yard. You driving a Crown Vic, Lieutenant? Or the faithful old family Volvo?”

“The impetuous new family Prius,” Molina said. “Come out of your lonely lair and I’ll take you to dinner.”

“A Prius? Impetuous? Hardly. Daughter Mariah, the soon-to-be student driver, must be pretty slammed about that.”

“A Mini Cooper was not in my game plan.”

“And you wouldn’t be fitting my bum legs into that model tonight anyway.”

“I was tempted, but of course I thought of that fact and resisted. Get out here, Kinsella. I have more work for you. It’ll be good for you to exercise your broken parts anyway.”

“The legs are doing better.”

“I meant those Wizard of Oz valuables, like brain and heart.”

Ouch.

* * *

If he must be carted around in a family Prius, Max had at least hoped to be conveyed someplace quiet with exquisite food.

Alas, Molina’s mood at the moment for eateries was fat-filled and franchised. This off-Strip joint had high-impact family noise, an overbearing odor of french fries, and grease-spotted wood-grain melamine tables in cramped booths.

“I figured,” she said, watching him maneuver his long legs sideways into the seat, “this would save you a long walk through a major Strip venue, and I’m not paying valet parking as well as the tab.”

“Saving for college, probably,” he muttered. Max picked up the large, unbearably reflective menu in its coat of clear laminate.

“Exactly,” Molina said. “And you cost more than a kid-sitter.”

“When does a kid get to stay home alone these days?”

“I don’t know about these days,” she said, “but for this parent it’s when my kid doesn’t pull dumb stunts.”

Molina set about studying the menu, a given in a place like this devoted to quick frying and slow service. They’d probably bread the shrimp in the shrimp cocktail appetizer.

Max eyed the busy restaurant crammed with kids and the smell of food so fast, it had chicken wings on it. He shuddered at the incivility, then looked around and blinked. There was method in Molina’s madness. He was much safer here from unknown or undeclared enemies, which he’d apparently had a lifelong habit of acquiring, than in an upscale supper club. And anyone trying to eavesdrop or bug someone in this place would probably scream with frustration … and never be heard.

Still, he’d eaten well even on the run for his life in leg casts and without ID in Switzerland, with no aid but filched credit cards used only once and destroyed afterwards … unless the holder was a soulless corporate swine. Max smiled. Molina would have hated his survival tactics, including dragging along the sophisticated French-German shrink who might be his hostage, or hunter. Revienne had no reason to complain after the bling fling he gave her in Zurich as a parting gift.

Molina’s voice halted the trip down recent-memory lane. “Dreaming the tap water in your giant plastic glass is a single-malt whiskey in … where? Paris? London?” she asked, all too accurately.

“More like sipping Hitchcock-blonde champagne in Zurich,” he said, thinking next of his horizontal fling in the Swiss city.

“So Temple Barr winging off as arm candy with a guy headed to a dream job in Chicago is no loss to you.”

“Why should it be? I don’t remember my past life and loves, or enemies.”

“Lucky you,” Molina muttered. She rested her head on one hand as she scanned the entrées, giving him sum-up time.

Fingernails: unpolished and clipped short, but filed smooth. Unlined olive skin except for vertical tracks between her black eyebrows, which were sweeping, strong, and unplucked. The frown lines flirted with forty, a prime age for a woman. An angle of serviceable bob the color of espresso brushed her knuckles. She pushed it behind one ear. No earrings, no rings.

She tapped the menu’s hard glossy edge on the tabletop before laying it down, for good. “You ready to order?”

A veteran waitress with a patina of perky overlaying tired eyes—and probably feet—had appeared like a magician’s assistant beside the booth. The Mystifying Max had always worked solo. He made up for lost time by skipping his eyes past entrées like meatloaf and pot roast … and sides of baked potatoes that would be small and tough-skinned … and desserts like banana pudding and chocolate cake. He surrendered.

“Cajun-style blackened steak; baked potato with bacon, sour cream, and chives; the house salad to start.” He skipped the vegetable sides, which would be watery with all the color leached out. No sense in ordering meat rare or medium here. Everything was cooked to death.

Molina jumped on the chuck wagon. “The grilled fish, salad, Italian dressing on the side, and the, ah, baked beans and green beans.”

Max rolled his eyes as the waitress left. “My treat next time. I just risked death six thousand miles away. I’m not going to be killed by cuisine in my home city.”

“What makes you think there will be a next time?”

“You said you have work for me. I don’t see you as a penny-ante copper. Given the fine line of legality you’ve been walking to protect your personal issues for far too long, you’re going to need a heap of help.”

“Hired help.”

“Yes, ma’am. I was going to add ‘even from a memoryless cripple.’”

She snorted as their small salad bowls arrived with saltines on the side, tabletop. “Playing the self-pity card, eh? Spare me. Why take my offer? You don’t need the money.”

“I need the exercise. Both the mental and the physical.”

She nodded. “That I buy.”

“So what’s next? Now that the Barbie Doll Killer and your unprofessional hiring practices have been exposed…”

“I suppose Miss Barr has been sharing my longtime low opinion of you—”

“And it is based solely on bias and my sleight-of-hand reputation. I’m flattered.”

“It was based on the fact that your act at the Goliath Hotel ended the same night a body was found in the surveillance passages over the casino area, and you disappeared that same night.”

“It was a magic act.”

“You bailed and left your loyal live-in squeeze to face the questions.”

“Doesn’t sound like me. I did hear recently you harassed my … then-fiancée for information she didn’t have about my whereabouts. For months.”

“Just doing my job. I don’t like material witnesses disappearing after a murder. They could be perps.”

“You don’t know for sure I witnessed anything. I don’t even know that now.”

“Innocence by absentmindedness. Not a plea you can cop.” She sighed. “Later events have convinced me you were more likely a target than a criminal.”

“You mean that Garry Randolph’s death at the hands of ex-IRA factions in Belfast last week convinced you that real bogeymen were after me in Las Vegas almost two years ago.”

“Don’t sound so bitter. Trust me, that’s no way to live.”

Max raised his eyebrows. “Trust, huh? So what’s happened to Dirty Larry Podesta, or whatever his surname really is.”

“Out of town, out of law enforcement, out of my hair.”

“I’ll give you credit. You played him as much as he might ever have played you.”

“Never, Kinsella. He never played me.”

“Is that a challenge, Lieutenant?”

Their wilted salads had been sampled and then set aside for a round of crisp dialogue. Now they had to shut up and lean back and away from each other as entrées descended on their place settings, a plastic mat surrounded by the Chinese New Year symbols and a color-crayon-ready blank-white center.

“Trust? Try it,” she said. “Meanwhile, your first assignment, should you choose to accept it, is looking into that Goliath murder you skipped out on.”

Max gazed at his plate, a piece of meat more charred than blackened and a small baked potato in its brittle brown jacket. His ancestors had starved by the thousands for the want of these commonplace root vegetables. Even his happy-to-be-back-in-the-USA appetite for kitschy food had picked up its paper napkin and gone.

“I don’t remember a thing about that place, that time, those people.” Max began picking at his meal. “I walk into the Goliath Hotel now and someone, a lot of staff probably, will recognize me and I won’t have a clue.”

She smiled, having eviscerated the fish into flaky bites of white non-taste. “Too proud to be ignorant, are we? That’s the beauty of it. Poking around the Goliath will prod your memory. It will take a smooth, prevaricating SOB to hide your disabilities. You can thank me when you make your first report.”

“But—”

“Yes, you have accurately recalled the disadvantages of your situation. Your ever-helpful ex-redhead-in-residence is not in town right now. You can’t rely on her extra-sharp memory. She’s quite the little snoop and puzzle-solver. You’ll be on your own. Might be interesting.”

“Funny. Nobody mentioned you were a sadist.”

“If you made it across Western Europe dodging assassins, I think you can navigate the Goliath Hotel. Consider it a challenge grant.”

“The pay is lousy.”

“And so is the food. Welcome to a menu of plain, old-fashioned law enforcement, Mr. Kinsella.”

He chewed on her assignment and the rest of the dinner, including the plain, old-fashioned tapioca pudding she insisted on ordering for him, saying it might spark memories of his childhood—she was indeed a sadist.

She also gave a dry, even skimpy, summation of the Goliath murder case files, which were basically the method of murder—knifed above a casino table, interesting—name of victim, and time of death and discovery.

This was a cold case and most likely a criminal hit, not a juicy crime of personal motive. It was the deep-freeze of cold cases and the most personally challenging crime she could ask him to investigate.

Game on.