Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 27

Sinking Fast on Sunset Strip

The Las Vegas Strip glowed like the Emerald City of Oz in the laser-light of the setting sun.

Max had the Firebird's top down, fifty-degree weather or not.

He had made the three hundred miles from LA. in four hours, despite having to drive decorously enough to avoid attracting a highway patrolman.

Getting away from his seclusion in the city, getting on the road and out into the streets of LA. for some honest-to-goodness, in-person detective work had been like a vacation. The beat blaring off the CD made him want to stop at the Hard Rock Cafe for more racket, for tourist-tacky rock memorabilia and elbow-to elbow eating, though a giant cheeseburger there probably wouldn't he quite as good as Charley's old-fashion burgers.

He wished Temple could have ridden along, for the drive at least. Of course, she would have wanted to drive the Trans-Am, and then a motorcycle cop would have gotten them for sure.

As he merged with the ever-more-impossible traffic clogging the highway as it morphed into the famed Strip, Max felt the desert Wind settle down to a mild breeze like a hunting falcon roosting on a shoulder, hooded and tamed.

Having contacts all over the world had cut the time it had taken to half. In a way it felt unfair, like the easy way out, but he was jubilant with what he had discovered. Not that Molina would be.

Still, it confirmed her edgy suspicions. It validated her turning to him for assistance. It gave him a gilt-edged invitation to ask for favors in return. Many happy returns.

So she should be happy. He certainly was.

For Raf Nadir had proved to be pretty much what Molina had said he was: a high-performing charmer who under the best circumstances would have been an exemplary cop and citizen, but who under pressure would go rogue.

And he had, over something small and stupid, but then guys like that usually did go ballistic over the pettiest problems--the smaller, the more at stake. Five years earlier he had blown his sergeant's rank with a couple of excessive-force suits. Two years ago he had pulled over a Son of Somebody on a DWI.

Max could see the scene now.

The SRK, LA. model. Spoiled Rich Kid. The car had been a Lamborghini, red, and the kid's high speed was probably internal as well as external, not to mention fueled by a few too many umbrella drinks at too many fern bars.

But a DWI wasn't enough for Officer Nadir. Maybe the kid had been mouthy. Whatever the circumstances, drugs were found in the car.

A lot of LA. lawyers got together to make a pretty good case that the drugs had been planted.

Maybe they had been, maybe not. The result was the same either way. Nadir was off the force, and what had once been a promising career was now tawdry history.

He moved down with his income. He became a skip tracer, tracking people who were only a little bit more down-and-out than he was. Finally, he skipped town himself. Skipped right from L.A . . . to L.V.

Max smiled as he reined the Trans Am to a stop for an endless red light in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Molina would like it, and she wouldn't like it. Either way, he was in like Flynn, whether she knew it or not.

It was a good thing that the new car had the instant pickup of three-hundred-twenty-five over muscled horses. The bullet that grazed the back of his head as he accelerated from the stoplight would have driven through his temple had he been an instant slower off the starting gate.

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

Naked was the best disguise, Max had always said, and that was true. Unless your cover was blown.

His cover was definitely blown, which is when naked becomes something to die for.

Now was a great time to find out; he was pinned in by tons of throbbing, idling metal vehicles in an open-topped car.

The shot could only have come from two types of weapon: a high-powered rifle fired from one of the massive Strip hotels, or a handgun in a nearby vehicle.

Max tried to maneuver the Trans Am into another lane, but rush-hour traffic was Sardine City. He couldn't put up the top until he hit a red light and could shut off the motor. Meanwhile the back of his scalp stung with the fury of fire ants. A welt of sticky wetness clung to his exploring fingertips like lip gloss.

He checked out the passing hotels, mostly ruling out a sniper. Too far from the street, too likely to be spotted by a gawking tourist. Unless the sniper was dressed to be part of the show.

The people in the cars and trucks around him sensibly had their windows rolled up. Night was coming and it would be cold to those used to a long broiling summer season.

Drive-alongside hits worked best on deserted roads, where the shooter could zoom off at will. Here, everyone was in the same boat, or car, trapped in packs that kept fairly parallel.

Unless . . .

Max tried to ignore the short, impatient honks providing an erratic background accompaniment to the traffic jam. He listened for the drone of an engine that marched to a different drummer than stop-and-go traffic.

There! To the right. A hornet's buzz. Only one vehicle was mobile enough to snail-dart through this rush-hour feeding frenzy. A motorcycle.

And not the roar of some souped-up behemoth like the Hesketh Vampire, but the fifty-cc spit-and-choke of a Honda.

The motor's buzz up ahead reassured Max that only one shot was intended--whether as a warning or to be fatal, no one would know but the shooter.

He maneuvered the Trans Am into the right lane. By the time it stopped for the red light 150

feet ahead, at which point he could finally push the button and loft the top into place, the motorcycle sound was a faint whine.

He turned right on Flamingo, peering through the sparse!" traffic, and thought he saw black flyspeck shooting into the darkening blue haze of night.