Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 15

Slugfest

Lieutenant C. R. Molina stood in the hot sun, staring down at the corpse planted under a bit of rubble in a deserted lot. It wasn’t concrete that had killed him, but a .38 slug that had missed being an earring by two inches.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” a voice said behind her. “What you got?”

“A bad feeling.” She slid her eyes behind the sunglasses to Morrie Alch’s tanned and seamed face. “You’re old enough to remember mob hits in this town.”

“As a kid, yeah.”

“This guy’s no kid.”

“Pushing seventy before he stumbled, I’d say. He’s sporting the mob-approved execution-style ventilation, all right. But, uh, dumping a body in public like this? It’s just bad taste nowadays. Looks amateur. The mob is finally being recognized as the down-and-dirty influence on the making of Vegas with the official museum, the competing attraction, the Ocean’s whatever-number ‘son of Frank Sinatra’ Vegas heist movies a few years back.”

“Nothing ever dies here but people,” Molina commented. “Certainly not the notion of mob activity.”

“A cheesy body-dump like this looks small-time. Any remaining hoods would rather fling it than flaunt it.”

“So that dead face doesn’t populate a Ten Most Wanted list? There’s something familiar about it to me.”

Alch braced his hands on his knees and semi-squatted for a better gander at one dead goose. “Older guys all start to look alike.”

“Not you, Morrie. It’s that Justin Bieber hair of yours.”

Alch snorted as he rose. He did have a handsome mop of hair, but it was the iron gray of an aging Scottie dog. “I know some CIs who are pretty senior. I’ll ask around.”

Molina nodded. “Actually, some leftover mob hit would be a nice change of pace on cases.”

“Yeah?”

She produced her most sardonic face and voice. “This is nothing involving crazy public relations events or … critters. Old dead guy shot execution-style. Plain as dirt.”

“Oops. Not quite, Lieutenant.”

Alch pointed at a shadow near the large building construction.

Something was moving in it and vanishing.

A rat.

Molina raised an eyebrow over the upper sunglass rim. “Grizzly Bahr at the morgue will be glad our vic avoided being lunchmeat for the rat pack and losing any body parts that might be evidence.”

Alch nodded. “That was a piece of luck. These empty lots attract a lot of vermin. Maybe this guy was a literal rat.”

“A snitch, you mean?” Molina reflected. “Either that or a drug dealer or even a gambler who welched on a bet. Empty lots attract a large clientele of human vermin.”

They backtracked in their crime-scene booties to let the tech team have its way with the body.