Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 19

Hot Tamale Jalapeno Deathburger

Molina picked up the ringing phone, one eye on her watch and one eye on the report in front of her. Split attention span was ever the busy executive's best personal assistant.

"You wanted me?" The male voice was deep, assured, and sardonic.

She didn't have to ask who was calling.

"Not here. You heard of Charley's Burgers?"

"Not in Las Vegas."

"Maybe not in 'your' Las Vegas." She gave him the intersection, wishing she could watch the address's effect on his expression.

Charley hung his sign in a light-industrial area chug-by-shriek next to a railroad track. Not exactly Max Kinsella territory, but then she didn't know the full range of his wanderings. Yet.

"One-thirty," she added.

"You like a late lunch, Lieutenant."

"I like a quiet restaurant."

She smiled as she hung up. She would get there first, and watch him arrive.

****************

But she didn't, damn it.

You had to be earlier than she had thought to beat Max Kinsella at undercover games. So . . .

next time she would reset her watch to dawn patrol, if that's what it took. Next time. She wasn't sure whether that unconscious assumption worried her, or pleased her.

He was leaning, black-clad, arms folded, feet crossed, against a white Firebird convertible, resembling an exclamation point on an empty page. Perhaps a question mark would be more apropos.

Whatever symbolic piece of punctuation she compared him to, it was grievously misplaced in front of Charley's Old-Fashion Burgers. Molina relished the illiterate, hand-lettered sign. She loved the small weathered shack hunkering clown all by its lonesome on an off-the-beaten-path road. So did about six thousand other aficionados of the best burgers to be had in Clark County .

. . if you didn't mind messy fingers and a skyrocketing cholesterol rate.

Charley's Old-Fashion Burgers was truly a "joint" in the time- honored, sense of the word.

And today was a photo-opportunity late-winter afternoon in Las Vegas: pale blue sky and clear desert air, all deliciously perfumed by the greasy, smoky aroma of sizzling ground beef.

Kinsella followed her to the order window. Charley's was mostly a take-out place, especially if the took-to place was an over-the-road truck seat. A tacked-on addition featured a ten-stool lunch bar and a half dozen aluminum and faux-onyx Formica tables and chairs dating from so far back that they'd probably send a vintage-freak like Temple Ban into paroxysms of covetousness.

Except that decades of taking cigarette bums and banging around had made the stuff too beaten-up to cherish.

Kind of like an abused spouse.

"Charming." Kinsella kept any discernible tone from his voice.

Even on matters of public taste he had to be a mystery. She enjoyed eying him against the rough background of Charley's Burgers. It was almost as good as a line-up wall with the heights marked in paint-peeling wood slats rather than impersonally neat notches.

With his patent-leather hair sleeked back from his angular face into a discreet ponytail and the black turtleneck sweater, he resembled an escapee from an Esquire magazine ad, and somehow looked more Italian than Irish. But maybe it was the sweater that was Italian. It was expensive, that was for sure.

Molina ordered the usual: a jalapeno "deathburger," a side of coleslaw, and black coffee.

Kinsella's eyebrows went up at mention of the "deathburger" and stayed up while he ordered a custom bleu-cheese-mushroom-tomato combo with fries. It figured.

"Too bad Charley doesn't have sun-dried tomatoes," she opined rather snidely.

"I'll live." He looked around the junky neighborhood. Any visible outbuildings made Charley's look new. Cans and bottles gleamed alongside the naked railroad tracks. "What do we do?

Sit inside and wait?"

"We eat in the car, we wait in the car."

"Mine or yours?"

She glanced from the sculpted white dazzle of the Firebird to the faded, boxy silhouette of her Toyota wagon.

"Mine. What's the gimmick? You drive a black car by night and a white car by day?" He shrugged, hands in pockets. The man always seemed posed as artfully as a model, but then a magician's act was all pose, wasn't it?

"Isn't that snow-white charger a bit attention-attracting for a low-profile guy like you?" she pressed.

"You need to take a moment and visualize the Las Vegas Strip in rush hour without a cop's eye, Lieutenant."

She didn't have to do that, she had only to mentally rewind back to her last couple drives on the Strip. White cars bounced back the desert heat, so the rental agencies ran scads of them, and the tourists like to spin around town in a convertible. He was right: in Viva! Las Vegas, high-profile was low-profile.

She escorted him around to the passenger side of her car.

"Wait a minute," she ordered.

When he turned, she pushed him expertly against the car door, and began patting down his sweater-clad chest.

He submitted, amused. "This is so sudden, Lieutenant."

"Wisecrack all you want, just so long as you're not wired."

"Who'd wire me? This an interdepartmental hassle?"

"No, it's you l don't trust." She detected nothing, and gave the wool a farewell pat. "Nice fabric."

"Cashmere."

"Why am I not surprised? I hope you'll be very happy together."

"Maybe you want to do a weapons search too."

Molina produced her best fake smile. "Sorry, this isn't your lucky day." She lightly slapped his cheek, then opened the door.

She closed it on him, assessing the interchange. The mock slap had been a bad move; she couldn't afford to be pulled onto the man-woman ground he was always trying to push her onto.

She wanted their positions clear: me authority, you citizen under suspicion.

'When she got in the driver's side, she saw the manila folder she had balanced on the dashboard beyond the steering wheel the last thing before getting out.

Kinsella was watching her without expression. "I've been trying to make up my mind whether this is a lunch date or an arrest, but it's neither. It's a meeting with a snitch. Isn't it, Lieutenant?"

"Oh! Been there, done that, by any chance?"

"No way, if that's what you're after." His tone had grown so suddenly curt that he almost sounded British. But then, he'd lived over there for some time.

"Relax. This won't take long. I want you to investigate something for me."

He actually allowed himself to look stunned. "What the hell--?"

This time she shrugged and looked smug. "Nothing big time.

Just a character whose whereabouts I'd like to know." She tossed the dashboard folder into his lap. "One Raf Nadir."

"Ralph Nader? Hasn't he been done to death?"

"Pretty funny. But Ralph's so clean nobody has ever had any fun investigating him. This guy should be at least a little dirty.

Raf. It's short for Rafi. And Nadir with an 'ir.' "

Kinsella opened the folder to skim the contents, then looked up. "A cop? "

"An ex-cop. And you're not wearing your cat-eyes today."

Beneath a concentration-furrowed brow. Kinsella's blue eyes grew wary. She actually had him off-balance, and drawing attention to his missing green contact lenses only intensified the effect.

"Is it green for nighttime, blue for day?"

He shook his head as if dislodging cobwebs. "Nothing sinister, not even dramatic. I forgot.

Copies," he noted of the employment records.

"Keep them confidential anyway. You can understand I shouldn't be doing this."

"What's so important that you're willing to cut procedural cornets?"

"It isn't important, but, ah, sensitive. I've got an unidentified dead body and a very slim reason to think this guy might be involved. Then I found out he's not in L.A. anymore."

"Lots of people aren't in L.A. anymore. Fire, mudslide, a few too many earthquakes, a fatal tofu avalanche--"

"Anyway, I only want to know where he is, if it's here, or near here."

"I'm not on your staff, Lieutenant. Why pick me?"

"You mean 'pick on' you. Because." She couldn't help making a disavowing face. She hated her logical conclusion as much as he did. "Because this needs to be ultra-discreet. Naturally, I thought of Mr. Invisible."

"Why do you think I'd do it?"

"You've got the time, living without visible means of support."

"All magicians live without visible means of support." His smile reminded her of Lou Diamond Phillips.

Jeez, now he was looking Hispanic. A real chameleon. One handy facility. There was something international about him, probably due to living abroad for so long. Probably due to cultivating a maddening ambiguity.

"I don't want whoever's tracking this guy to smack of officialdom at all. In any way. Nada. "

When she said the popular slang expression, the Spanish word for "nothing," it was pronounced emphatically, with the proper accent, the d soft as retried beans.

He nodded to acknowledge her serious use of the word.

" Nada, " he mimicked, just as impeccably.

Oh, he was whipped cream with hot melted chocolate on top. What an undercover operative he would make. Did make. Would make for her.

"You think this guy is that dangerous?" he asked next.

She waffled in answering that one. To women, maybe. To a man, maybe not.

"I'll tell you what I know, or think. It's not in the record, not directly anyway, although it ultimately got him canned, apparently. He's a sociopath, all tight? Ego the size of the Goliath Hotel. He likes to scam his way around everyone, particularly women. Could have charmed the pants off Mother Teresa. He's probably only dangerous when crossed. Getting dumped by the LAPD would make him dangerous. The usual sociopath." She smiled in conclusion. "You know the type."

He smiled back, as pointedly as she had. "To catch a thief . . ."

"Exactly."

"I'm not a rogue cop."

"The cop part is incidental, as well as past history. Otherwise, he's just your ordinary sociopath."

"You make him for the Blue Dahlia killing?"

"I--" Too late, she'd already started answering. "What do you know about that?"

"A too-small, too-vague item in the newspaper, that's all. I read a little. That's why you want me on this. This one came too close to home."

"I want anyone on this who can cut through the red rape and eliminate one far-out suspect, all right? And, yes, I . . . don't like a body in my backyard. Especially one whose killing will go unsolved unless l do something to break through the lack of evidence in this case.

"Look. I'm not asking you to make a citizen's arrest, Kinsella. I just want to know where he is without stirring up any official channels. You seem to have your labyrinthian ways."

"A poetic sensibility is a rare thing in a homicide lieutenant."

"I read a little. So, will you do it?"

"Why should l?"

"Because l might reciprocate with some information you want."

"Might?"

"Ask me something now."

He didn't have to think about it. "The two men driving the drug truck. What's going to happen to them?"

"The narcs will get them. We don't have enough evidence on the Effinger homicide. One blurred partial print lifted off a bit of duct tape used on the victim's mouth. They'll probably get a longer sentence on the drug charge than they would have on the murder rap," she added bitterly.

He nodded.

"Is your girlfriend recovering from her traumatic experience?"

"Temple's fine. She's tougher than she looks."

"I should know. I was at the emergency room when Devine brought her in after those unfriendlies of yours roughed her up.

Even then she wouldn't give me anything on you."

" Nada. " he said, smiling reflectively, even tenderly.

It irritated her, and her voice grated when she spoke. "Me, l would have sung like a nightingale in her place, if my live-in had vanished like that without a word. But not her. Not Miss Temple."

"What makes you madder? Her grit, or her loyalty to me?"

"Both, damn it."

"Everybody loves beating me up for what happened to Temple: you and Devine--"

"You didn't see her."

That sobered him. "No. For the best, probably. Then you'd be chasing me for what your real job is, homicide, instead of vagueness unbecoming to a stranger. Why are you so . . . fanatic about that old Goliath killing?"

She found her hands gripping the steering wheel. "It was my last case before l made lieutenant. l don't like open cases."

"It may never be closed, especially now. Tell me something don't know. You don't know how much I blame myself for what happened to Temple."

"Does it matter if I do?"

He paused. "No. The important thing is that Temple doesn't blame me." Molina nodded. "It's her life. Now, you gonna do that job?"

"Of course, Lieutenant. I'll get that info so fast it'll make your blue-eyes-brown. Any honest citizen would."

"An honest citizen would be no good at it. Food's probably ready. I'll get it."

But he got out of the car and followed her to the window, Watching as she paid for the two bags.

"That's my jalapeno deathburger," she said grabbing one. "I can tell by the round pattern of the grease spots leaking through."

"Smart investigative work." He grabbed the other bag and walked back to her car.

"Look. Lunch is over. You can take the folder and the burger and eat it in your own car.

"Eat this sloppy mess in my car? I don't think so, Lieutenant."

He grinned and hopped in her passenger seat.

Damn. She didn't want to chow down this disgustingly delicious mess with Max Kinsella looking like he'd stepped out of an Armani ad, looking on.

On the other hand, how would a man who'd just materialized out of a Town and Country magazine eat a Charley's old-fashion burger?

Watching worked both ways, she decided, as she unwrapped the high, wide, and unhealthy jalapeno deathburger. It smelled divine.