Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 11

Nightcrawlers

As Max froze in place, becoming an even more noticeable tall black island in the constant flow of people diverting around him, the unlikely suspect was distracted enough to absently edge to the side with the crowds.

Then he glanced up and stopped. “You.”

Now there were two immobile islands in the stream of tourists, who, like lemmings, were all intent on getting somewhere and oblivious of anything around them en route.

“Ditto,” Max said before he played Kerrick, grabbed an arm, and pulled Matt Devine against the nearest marble pillar. “What are you doing at the Goliath at three in the morning?”

Matt jerked his arm away and swatted out the crumples in his khaki poplin sport coat. “You first. I thought you were keeping on the down low. Or is the expression ‘low-down’?”

“A crowd is the best disguise.”

“It apparently didn’t disguise me.”

“You’re being evasive. Does Temple know you’re off leash?”

“Obviously she’d notice.” Matt shrugged to loose the last wrinkled vestige of Max’s urgent interception on his arm. “Temple assigned me the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix casino’s ceiling bodies to investigate. I figure nighttime’s the right time for that. You’re certainly on the prowl, but we’d decided you needed to avoid the hotels where you’re a suspect.”

“Temple decided. She’s a bit bossy, isn’t she? Although it looks cute on her.”

Matt frowned.

“Forget being territorial. I’m seeing someone else now.”

Matt took a few seconds to react. Then he went with incredulous. “You’re nearly killed in a murderous bungee cord malfunction at the Neon Nightmare club, end up in a coma at a Swiss clinic for more than a month, go on the run across Europe, survive a pursuit by both the old IRA and the new IRA, and slink back to Vegas with an AWOL memory. You’ve been back less than two weeks, yet have a new girlfriend?”

“‘Love interest,’ they say in the movie summaries.” Max grinned. “She’s followed me to Vegas; what can I do? I’ll be happy to introduce you, should the occasion arise. Meanwhile, what are you doing here?”

“I don’t have a lot of time to interview any of the night shift, do I, getting off the air on WCOO at two A.M.”

“You might be getting off the air and night shift permanently if that daytime talk show gig in Chicago comes through.”

“Maybe.” Devine moved to brush past Max.

“Not the done deal Temple makes it out to be?” Max used the challenge in his voice as a rein to stop the guy’s forward motion.

“Nothing in media’s a done deal,” Devine said over his shoulder.

“Nothing in life, either.” Now Max had really jerked the cord.

Devine wheeled to face him. “Look, Kinsella. I get that you have to hang around Vegas until we settle who killed whom and might still do it to one of us, but who loves whom is a ‘done deal,’ and I’m not happy about you showing up again all needy and lame. You mess with Temple, and I’ll kick you to the curb all the way down the Las Vegas Strip.”

Max normally would mock and bow out of a scene like this. He measured the dark, repressed fury in Matt Devine’s eyes, the bottom-line corrugated steel in his voice.… He was poised like a guard dog ready to rend. Someone far more formidable than Max had jerked his chain.

Max held up open palms and stepped back. “Better get on with it. The night shift clocks out even in Las Vegas.”

Well. He watched Matt Devine’s golden-boy head vanish into the ceaselessly milling crowd, reminding him of an angel fallen among the habitués of Hell in a Renaissance painting, all those faces around them masks of lust and greed and terror.

He’d been ready to consign Temple Barr to the necessary gal pal category, but Devine’s bad boy behavior had him worried about her. He was hair-trigger touchy about something.

Max needed to get Revienne in the picture, if only to put paid to this broken romantic triangle so they could forget all that “who loves who” stuff tough guy Sam Spade pooh-poohed in The Maltese Falcon and defend themselves from common enemies.

Meeting Revienne. Why did he think that Temple Barr would not take that well?