Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 54

Mad Max

Molina pulled into her driveway at six--thirty, animal hairs turned over to Hair and Fibers, and visions of a long-delayed chorus line of pepperoni slices dancing in her head. The only fibers she wanted to see tonight were long strings of hot, melted cheese between her plate and her palate.

She was famished.

She was bemused.

She was appalled the case had come down to plucking hairs off household pets at the Circle Ritz. But she was proud of Alch and Su for pursuing the unlikely scenario, and hopeful of finally making headway on the Blue Dahlia and church parking lot slayings.

Cats, God bless 'em. She had two of her own, after all.

She got out of the car, depressed the lock, and slammed the door shut. No need to pull into the garage. She'd freshen up, collect Mariah at Delores's house across the street, and they would go eat pizza, diets be damned! Daughter could play video games and Mother could have a big, frothy mug of beer. . . .

She moved, lost in thought, toward the front Walkway she seldom used.

As she passed the comer of the garage, a figure materialized in the dusk.

"You!"

Max Kinsella nodded slowly.

"What are you doing here?" After surprise, came anger. "You are out of line! Not on my premises. Not ever."

"I agree. Not on my watch. Not ever."

"Watch? What are you talking about?"

"Cher."

"Cher? Her ex-husband, 'he dead.' Cher? What? Are you crazy?"

"A little."

The steady, absolute sanity of his tone worried her. The absolutely sane were the craziest of all.

"Look. I don't know what you think you're doing, but you are not to come here. Get it?"

"Too late," he pointed out, quite logically, still with that eerie over-controlled tone that she mistrusted with every instinct in her suspicious history.

"What's your problem?"

"You."

"Besides the obvious. I've never hidden the fact that I'd love to nail you."

He nodded. "You have this time."

"Enlighten me."

"That man you had me looking into."

"So?"

"You didn't tell me he was a murderer."

"I didn't know he was a murderer." Molina's throat squeezed shut with sudden dread. "Is he?"

"First, who is he?"

"I gave you the name and the facts. You ought to remember."

"Oh, I remember just perfectly swell. What I need to know is who he really is. To you. To whatever case you think you're working on."

" 'Think' I'm working on?" She tried to brush by, but he stepped in front of her. She pulled back, unhappy about retreating, but not ready to try anything else. Talk was always good while you were thinking of something else.

He seemed to think so too. "I don't know whether you're so stupid you don't know what you're doing--what you've done--or you're so dangerous you sent me out there to get that girl killed."

"What girl?"

"Cher Smith."

"The stripper. So what?"

"So everything! I pointed him right at her, thanks to my investigative work for you. She wouldn't be dead if you hadn't used me as your Judas goat."

"Wait a minute. Are you saying this--the stripper killing--had something to do with Nadir?"

"Are you saying you didn't suspect in advance that he might be involved in the earlier killings?"

"Look. I've had a long day--"

"So have I. And I had a long night before that."

"I just asked You to check out this guy. He was a very remote suspect."

"Now that's where we differ. I don't think he was that remote a suspect. I think he was a too-close-for-comfort suspect. I've had a little talk with your other 'helpers.' "

She remained silent; no one knew better when to ignore leading questions, or statements, than a cop.

"You've really been relying on the Circle Ritz gang on these cases. That's not according to your past M.O. There's some reason you're desperate enough to rely on amateurs."

"Look. I'm sorry she's dead, but I don't see any way this can tie into the two earlier murders."

"Except through you."

"Me? What about the second woman? The magician's assistant? Ring a bell, mighty Mystifying Max? She used to work for a magician around town years ago. Gandolph the Great.

Ever hear of him?"

He was silent for a long moment. Then he pulled her into the dark of the entry courtyard with him. She could feel his fevered breath on her cheek.

"I don't care about your deaths one and two. I don't care that you think Cher wasn't the third. I only care that she wouldn't have died if I hadn't come hunting your prey. This Nadir guy.

You've been notably off-the-record on these murders, Lieutenant. You've asked me to bird-dog for you, you've invited Matt Devine and even Temple into your inner sanctum of evidence.

Why? Why were you so suspicious of this guy? Why were you driven to use me, when you knew what a two-edged sword I could be? I don't like having dead girls on my conscience."

"And why do you?" She pulled away, though it took all her strength. "How did it come to dead stripers?"

"He's a bouncer at a strip joint."

"At Baby Doll's?"

"No, at the place Cher worked two nights ago. The place I got her out of."

"How, 'got her out of?' "

"I went there to get information on Nadir. She was working the club, an obvious rookie.

drunk as a duck on champagne. She knew a little about his whereabouts on the nights of the parking lot killings, so I suggested she sneak out and I'd meet her. He caught us. Cher said that she'd find work at another club, that it'd be all right. But she died the next night leaving that Club. Guess who probably did it?"

"I don't know who murdered her, but you've just given me plenty of reason to look into your story, because you're probably the last man she had anything to do with the day before her death."

She cut him off before he could finish drawing breath to speak again. "But what l find most unbelievable in all this is your stupidity. I'd expect it of a new uniform. They're always going soft on some pathetic hooker or stripper, and trying to get her off the streets. I thought you were a bit beyond that. That is such a rank, amateur thing to do--

"Don't talk to me like I'm one of your rookie detectives. You have no idea what I do, or did, or who l trashed or saved. I'm saying you sent me in there blind, without enough information, and l want the right stuff now."

"I see."

"No, you don't see." He came closer, grabbed her arm, hard.

"I got her to leave because it suited my purpose . . . your purpose. But it made this guy of yours mad; he acted like he owned that club, and everybody in it. He didn't like eating gravel and watching her leave with me. He wasn't the type to let it be. You didn't tell me he was capable of murder. You said he was just a pathetic tough, not a killer."

"I didn't think he was!" She wrenched her arm free. The skin burned even through her gabardine sleeve. when Max Kinsella got hold of a thing, he didn't let go easily. But his words still dug in when his fingers no longer did. She couldn't fault his fury. In his position, she'd feel it too. Was Nadir a killer? Had she had any suspicion that he was when she had asked Kinsella to find out about him?

"I basically' expected you to clear him," she said, rubbing her arm. "That's all. I needed to know he wasn't responsible. And you still can't prove that he was."

"I'm the one who saw him in that parking lot. He had me from behind, an elbow across the throat. A stranglehold. He could have killed me if I hadn't been ready for him. He could have killed Cher in a heartbeat."

"She doesn't show the pattern! Her killing is unconnected. It's gotta be."

"Because that's the evidence and your professional opinion? Or is that what you need to believe to clear your conscience?"

"Evidence." She bit out the word. "So far," she added reluctantly.

But her hedging seemed to shear off some of his edge. Even stone-strong evidence could develop splits and chips.

Kinsella leaned against the stucco garage wall, mollified enough to ease off a little. "All right.

I agree that the ID left on her implies another type of killer. But Nadir might just be that other type. You wouldn't have had me look into him if it weren't a possibility. What I want to know, need to know, deserve to know, is why you suspected this guy from LA. in the first place."

She thought. She thought for a long time, maybe a minute-something, and he waited like a cigar-store Indian: wooden, relentless, wearing the weight of the wrong she'd done him like a cloak.

And she had used him precisely because she wouldn't have to explain her motivation, as she would to one of her detectives. Now, here she was, having to explain in spades, and hating every second of it. This was her own worst scenario in living color. The only person it was worse for was Cher Smith, and she was dead.

She spoke at last, trying to keep her voice flat and expressionless.

"It's simple. Read my lips. 'She left.' On my car door; beside the first body. You noticed that something had happened to my car. Murderous graffiti. The only clear-cut case of the words

'she left' being left at the scene of the crime was at the Blue Dahlia. The body, which evidence now indicates was killed elsewhere and brought to that setting, was placed near my car. I had to assume a possibility that the placement was personal. If the dead woman had 'left,' had l also

'left?' Yes, l had. The man I asked you to investigate was the man I left, years ago, in LA. That's who he is. Rafi Nadir."

His silence lasted longer than hers had. One upmanship must be his middle name, except that she now knew all of them: Aloysius Xavier and who-knows-what else.

"You and Nadir?"

"A long time ago in a place far away, he used to be a good street cop, back when he was younger and felt less challenged.

He started to change, and I left."

"I'm sorry. I just don't buy it. You and Nadir?"

She shrugged. "I evolved, he devolved. What more can I say? People do change."

"Still. Why not burn him? What can he do to you now except embarrass you?"

"Embarrass? You think this is because I don't want to admit I ever associated with such a loser? Hah! I'd testify to shacking up with jack the Ripper rather than go slip-sliding around trying to use a quasi-unreliable amateur like you! Except for the fact that this lowlife is the father of my daughter!"

"Your daughter?" he stepped back, finally giving her the space she needed. "You have a daughter?"

"Don't sound so shocked. Even the Virgin Mary had a child."

"Your daughter. I never figured that. How old is she?"

"No. My daughter is off limits. To him, and to you. And I'll thank you not to ever show up on my daughter's doorstep again."

Shock gave her the upper hand, and she used it, backing him into the house's entry area until the security lights blared on.

He lifted a forearm to his eyes. It was like having a suspect under the hot lights of The Front Page era, and she pressed, her advantage, quite literally pushing him to the wall.

"Yeah, l know you can find out what you want to find out, but you're not to show up on my daughter's doorstep ever again. I can handle you wherever or whenever you choose to materialize, but she's not fair game to you, and if you ever try to use any information about my kid, you try to blackmail me, or whatever, and you are . . . well, I'll let you imagine what you'd be. Roadkill would not be a bad guess."

Kinsella hardly heard her threats. She could watch his mental wheels turning, doing a 180-degree shift on one plane while they kept on whirling in another.

Finally, he reconfigured his suppositions. "Nadir. He never knew he had a daughter."

She was silent.

"He didn't know you were in Las Vegas, with her."

Still as the grave.

"Not until now. Maybe."

She had nothing to say.

"You were between Everest and Gibraltar, weren't you?" He pushed off her garage wall, backing her up, facing her. "Okay."

His tone was brisk, businesslike. "I want, need, deserve to know what's happening in the Smith investigation. I'll pursue it in my own fashion, which is to say, I hope you get something on Nadir, because if you don't, and you can't do anything about him, l can and I will."

"Don't bother. If he's involved, my history is public property."

"You could lose your job."

"Sometimes it's hell."

"So's mine," he said lightly. "I won't tell, unless you won't tell, and I think you need to."

"Don't hold your breath. If he does know anything, he'll come after my daughter next, and I'll do whatever is necessary then."

"No, I wouldn't want to be walking in your shoes. But then, neither would Temple." He passed her, gingerly, on the way to the driveway.

"Miss Nose E. of the Mojave Desert."

"She tries to help. Just like me."

Molina nodded wearily. Sometimes you needed a little help from your worst enemies.

"Say, Kinsella!" she called after the shadow he was becoming.

The shadow paused.

"What the hell happened to your hair?"

He was silent for a long moment.

"I had a brush with the devil and a haircut from an angel. Care to give me a polygraph on that?"

"No, I'll take your word."

"I think that's a first, Lieutenant. Better watch yourself."

She stood there for a long while, listening for a vehicle to leave that never did. He had parked out of sight and out of sound, of course. He wasn't an amateur; she had just accused him of behaving like one, because she was coming darn near herself.

If Raf Nadir had killed Cher Smith, then he had devolved into the worst kind of over-controlling misogynist, and it didn't matter if he'd had nothing at all to do with the Blue Dahlia and church parking lot slayings.

He was as dangerous as death anyway.