Matt had never patronized the Magic Muffin restaurant. It occupied a free-standing building near Electra Lark’s cluster of commercial properties. The gone-under chain there before it used A-frame buildings as an instant recognition factor, but the trick had failed, and the entire exposed roof and exterior had been painted over like a classic hippie van with psychedelic lettering and images, the Franchise That Time Forgot.
Inside, Matt found a blackboard with neon-colored chalk descriptions of super-sized muffin meals from Meatballs to Vegan and sweet to sweet-and-sour. The muffins were as big as a pot pie and did come in that variety.
Matt got there first. He was the favor-asker. He was surprised to see that Frank had gained a paunch since they last met a couple months ago. He hadn’t lost energy, though.
He strode over to greet Matt with a crushing handshake and a back slap.
“Marriage is a great institution, as long as you’re not locked up in it,” he said while seating himself, laughing. “I can’t read that darn blackboard writing.”
“Here’s the printed menu, on the table. I think they have a steady clientele that doesn’t need to read.”
Frank laughed. His luxuriously haired graying eyebrows lifted as he scanned the menu.
“Two Meatloaf, Cheese, and Pepperoni-Olive muffins. I’m set.”
Matt went with one Whole Wheat Breakfast Scramble, feeling like a wimp. But that disadvantage had always been Frank Bucek’s personal magic.
Over the two-fisted-size muffins and huge mugs of potent coffee, Matt made his first pitch.
“I’d like to ask you to be my best man. We don’t have a date yet, but it’ll be soon. Probably not much notice.”
“Matt, I would swim a piranha-infested Lake Mead, what’s left of it, to stand up for you. Anytime. Anywhere.”
“Thanks for the ringing endorsement. I’m also wondering… Why do I think I saw you someplace off-Strip that was…well, way more sleazy than anywhere two ex-priests should ever be?”
“My job takes me into situations beyond sleaze to human trafficking tragedy.” Frank set down his coffee mug, empty, and stuffed his second muffin and napkin in his suit coat pocket.
“If you did think you saw me in someplace sleazy, maybe you shouldn’t have been there. Guy about to get married. I gotta run. These muffins are sure portable. Thanks.”
“Frank—”
“Just saying. Think about it. We’ll be here.”
“We’ll?”
“Hey, this place as has every variety of Magic Muffin you can dream of. So does Life. Always order wisely.”
Matt, his mind churning with unease after Frank had been so brusque and tight-lipped, was driving the Jaguar toward the entry into the Circle Ritz parking lot.
Then he recognized the ugly rear of the huge seventies junker he’d last seen parked in front of Electra’s inherited building. It was idling by the curb just a short stroll away.
Why was Woody Wetherly’s mysterious henchman parked on the street outside the Circle Ritz?
Besides lounging low in the driver’s seat, gimme cap bill pulled down over his eyes, staring fixedly at the building’s rear…where both Matt and Temple, and Electra on the penthouse level, had visible balconies overlooking the pool and parking lot.
Where an intruder had breached Temple’s French doors recently, and more recently, another intruder had fallen to his death from the penthouse level he’d broken into. That left Matt’s unit in-between untouched. So far. Good thing he had the treasure hunt maps in a hidden safe.
Matt understood the phrase “cold sweat” for the first time. Not that he hadn’t sweated out some dangerous situations since following his no-good stepfather to Las Vegas, but now he actually saw someone watching and probably wishing Temple nothing good.
After the sweat came the defensive adrenaline rush, almost blinding him with icy-hot murderous intent.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Not swearing, a brief prayer from his Catholic grade-school youth, calling on their protection. The interruption of his speculations and worries instantly calmed him.
He drove slowly past the car, the same one he had followed from Woody’s place into the desert on a quickie digging expedition days ago. He willed himself not to be seen by the driver. That car gave him the creeps. It had returned from the desert with a bloody jackhammer in its trunk.
His own junker, a 2001 gray Chevy Impala, freshly purchased, sat parked around the block.
He’d have to park the Jag on the other side of the building, on the street. It was expendable. He locked it after pulling to the curb behind the Impala, and slipped the second set of keys out of his pants pocket, his hands shaking with excitement.
He realized Temple had mentioned seeing this guy around when she was out, scraggly looks and loping gait. Woody knew about and had clearly threatened Temple during his call-in to WCOO. Since then Matt had steered clear of the supposedly “retired” cop, who either wanted to discourage or goad him into some action. Over eighty or not, Wetherly was involved in current criminal schemes. Evil and greed had no expiration date.
Now, Matt needed to follow this unappetizing lurker and figure out what he was up to. Or choke it out of him. That was why his hands were shaking. Not fear, fury. The man was several years older than he. Closer to forty than to thirty. Prematurely stooped and lazy-looking, but that kind could be wire-strong.
And he had that frequent offender look. Beat-up billed cap, stingy soul-patch under his lower lip, straggly ponytail disappearing into the collar his lightweight Eisenhower jacket.
Matt struggled into a worn jean jacket while getting behind the Impala’s wheel, picked up the greasy billed cap from a used clothing store from the passenger seat, mussed his choir-boy blond hair and donned it at a laid-back angle. He lowered the driver’s window all the way, the air-conditioning off as if broken, and rested his crooked left arm on the window opening.
A lit cigarette in his fingers would be a crowning touch, but smoking was too foreign to mess with. He started the car and drove around the block as fast as he dared, then slowed to make the right turn onto the street where the jackhammer-toter had parked.
The car was gone.
8
Ring Around the Ritz
I stand with Midnight Louise watching Mr. Matt drive off in his “new” old car, leaving us ride-less in mid-tail.
“I told you,” Miss Midnight Louise says, “we should have slipped into the Impala on the other side of the block while Mr. Matt was occupied into downsizing his look.”
“You mean while he was changing into scruffy, probably stinky clothes to match the driver of the junker car he found so fascinating. What a loser that guy is, ponytail and soul patch.”
“Whatever…”
For the moment, Louise sounds like little Miss Mariah in a teenage snit. “At least, Pops, the clothes would have made it easier to follow him if he left the Impala, which we cannot do now.”
“If you would have listened to me,” I tell her, “we would have slipped into the Jaguar right off, and not have had to race back and forth from that very unsatisfying breakfast rendezvous at the Magic Muffin.”
I am huffing quite a bit from proving to Miss Midnight Louise I can still keep up with a car for a four-block round trip.
She shakes her head. “Only you would stop for a Dumpster inspection on a tailing assignment.”
“There might have been evidence.”
“The only evidence you found on this expedition is the bacon crumbs on your whiskers.”
“It is of interest that Miss Electra has a popular breakfast joint near the Circle Ritz. Good for business.”
“Her business, not ours. What has been the point of this runaround while Mr. Matt changes looks and cars? We have lost him.”
“But we have gained information?”
“What?”
“Night before last, in the aftermath of Miss Electra’s penthouse invasion, Ma Barker told me that tall, dark-coated men from here—men, plural—a
nd one yellow-haired one, were showing up recently on the bad side of town. I have seen Mr. Matt’s breakfast partner before.”
“You have me there, Popster. I have not. And what is Ma Barker doing visiting you at the Circle Ritz when you could bop over to her headquarters at the police substation?”
“Family business, Louise,” I say loftily. “Mother and son bonding. You would not know about that, since you are fixed.”
“Hmmph. So who is this tall, dark-haired man who is so busy he has to run off with the extra breakfast muffin in his pocket?”
“They are super-large. I wonder if there is a dumpling-shrimp version.”
“Daddy Greedy-gut!”
I choose not to take offense. “He is not a frequent player on the scene, but has been assigned back to Las Vegas only recently. Interesting. Mr. Frank Bucek, Mr. Matt’s mentor from years ago in the seminary and now an FBI agent. And Mr. Frank did not seem to share much information with Mr. Matt, or have time to waste.”
“Neither do we,” she says as I wander over to sniff where the junker car of interest to Mr. Matt had been parked.
Hmm. Traces of leaking motor oil with an attar of crushed cactus flowers. The car had been in the desert, but where was it going now?
Only Mr. Matt would know for sure, and he was not talking.
“What will we do next?” Miss Midnight Louie inquires in an exasperated tone.
“At my favorite listening post two nights ago—”
“Under the bed like a chamber pot, no doubt!” she spits. “That is low, Daddy-o. Also an invasion of privacy, so there were two home invasions at the Circle Ritz that night.”
I am not concerned about privacy when so many secrets are circulating among my nearest and dearest.
“I heard a familiar location discussed. That is what I will investigate next.”
I look at the ugly oil spot the junker has left on the asphalt, like a very big bug died under its wheel.
“I think Ma is right. A sinister conspiracy is spreading into our territory.”
“If it turns out as well as our tailing operation this morning, Pops, you had better pack a lunch!”
9
Serpentine Schemes
Matt cruised the Circle Ritz neighborhood almost blindly, his mind churning, trapped behind the wrong vehicles, looking ahead through their windshields for a glimpse of that bare-metal green paint finish version of psoriasis. Madly impatient to wait in line for a red light to turn.
Then, looming in Matt’s rearview mirror, fast and furious, like a squad car that had burped its siren and pulled him over, only there had been no sound, was the driver of the junker glaring at him.
Matt had three vehicles ahead of him, including an SUV that blocked the sight of anyone crossing the intersection. The light was changing and the guy behind Matt laid on his horn as if he had died on it.
Matt looked left, right, ahead. Undecided. Traffic was moving. The car behind jerked ahead enough to tap his bumper. That was a common tactic of someone wanting to claim an accident and then bully a driver into paying him off to go away, or, worse, assaulting and robbing the poor soul.
The gap ahead of the old Impala was growing.
Matt wrenched the wheel, screeching, hard right into the side parking lot of a closed-down dry cleaning store, and put the car in Park.
He charged out of the idling car, slamming the door behind him as the other car followed him into the lot and stopped.
“What the Hell are you doing tailgating me?” Matt demanded. “I’m not falling for any scratch-and-dent scam. Get off my tail, buddy.”
The man got out, slowly, not expecting this. “You were following me.”
Matt snorted. “Like I’d want to look up your tailpipe. Your junker is worse than mine.”
“What’s your game, buddy?” He squinted at Matt. “I’ve seen you somewhere. You look familiar. Somewhere poor dead Ox was. Wait! At the Lucky Stars nudie bar. Word is a new guy was with Woody… That was you, all cleaned up. I didn’t think much about it, ’cuz you looked so familiar in a funny way I can’t put my trigger finger on it. Yet.”
Not good. Had the guy spotted him at Woody’s house too? Matt hadn’t expected to encounter his prey face-to-face, standing up.
“Woody? You his errand boy?” Matt asked, aware his khaki slacks and beige leather loafers didn’t match the shabby jacket and cap. He’d have to hope his dishonest face would look different enough under mussy hair to throw the guy off.
The man suddenly leaned against his diseased fender. The arms on his faded denim jacket had been torn off, a tough blue-collar look, and common in the Vegas heat. The arms folded over his chest displayed unimpressive muscle, but a ton of tattoos.
Matt had maybe twenty-five pounds on him, but figured this guy wasn’t anybody’s muscle. He looked and acted like a born sneak who’d be useful for sleazy jobs, like following and threatening women. And…digging up dead bodies…and moving corpses…or even fifty-year-old murder weapons.
The sleeves of ink on both arms crawled to his neck, ending with a fat spider in a web under his left ear.
Why did so many dispossessed people, convicts or depressed teens, wear tattoos as armor nowadays? A sign they could endure some pain? A third finger stuck up at the world? Tattoos were too chic now to be seen as threatening.
This guy’s skin art was a crude and uninspired patchwork—except for his forearms. Snakes seemed a favored subject. The right arm showed the blue waves lapping and a set of serial blue-green humps of the Loch Ness monster in its most famous, and never duplicated, photograph. A small human figure with a headdress stood next to it. A fully seen serpent wound around his left arm in lurid colors, fighting some comic book hero with bulging muscles, ridiculously oversized, but…nude. What comic book superhero wrestled nude?
“You starin’ at something?”
“Uh, yeah. Righteous arm tats.”
“What would a Mr. Clean like you know about it?” The man lifted and turned his left forearm to acknowledge his major and prize tattoo. “Yeah, a beaut. Nothing canned. No one has a tat like this.”
Matt watched the arm rotate as he’d watch a cobra coiling for a strike. Another blood-run-cold moment, not welcome on even a hot day. The naked man entoiled by a large snake seemed to move with the guy’s rotating elbow, the point of having it on the forearm.
Man and serpent entwined, the exact image of the contested thirteenth (unlucky for him) sign of the Zodiac. Located in the constellation named Ophiuchus.
This same image had been discovered in his mother’s Chicago apartment, in a fireproof box along with other memorabilia of Matt’s late, most unlamented abusive stepfather, Clifford Effinger.
“Yeah,” the tattooed man was saying, “my old man traced it out of some book in grade school. It was a kind of banner with him, I guess. Didn’t go to school much past eighth grade. Had to work. But it’s like based on some classic nudie sculpture. Famous.”
Matt knew the sculpture well, the prize of the Vatican museums. “Laocoön and His Sons.” A man and his two sons in mortal agony under attack by venomous biting and constricting sea serpents, probably sent by some miffed Greek god.
Matt felt an empathetic shiver from the ironic fact that Effinger had two sons as well, but the tattoo had been simplified to man and snake only.
The guy was still admiring his arm art. “When I was a kid, it was on the refrigerator door with a magnet, you know? That’s when my uncle promised me I could get it tattooed on when I was eighteen.”
“It was your uncle’s refrigerator?”
The guy shrugged. “Them was still mob days. An Outfit capo needed my dad in Chicago. I never knew why. Anyway, he married some rich woman with a house and a snotty kid there. And bye-bye, Chuckie. So it was always me and my uncle here in Vegas.”
“Your mother?”
“Never knew her. OD’ed on drugs, I guess.” The guy’s Mississippi-mud-colored eyes sharpened. “Why are you asking all these questions?”
<
br /> “Why are you answering them?”
“That’s because I was trying to figure it out, why you’re passing the time of day admiring my tattoos, and where I remembered you from.”
“That Lucky Stars fracas? I ducked out of there early.”
“So you were the new guy with Woody?”
Matt nodded, hoping the guy remembered his worn jeans, scuffed motorcycle boots, and faded Grateful Dead T-shirt topped with a plaid long-sleeved work shirt. “I have Chicago connections too.”
The guy started laughing, a humorless wheezing sound that ended in a cough. “You’re telling me? I’ve finally remembered what else was under a magnet on that refrigerator door, with a Chicago phone number. A photo of some sad, but not bad-looking woman, and this perfect little blond kid leaning against her.
“My stepmom and stepbrother I never saw, but who kept my dad away from me for over twelve years. That kid didn’t look too happy either, just the way you’re looking now.”
Matt knew he’d been “made”, but he needed to know more, everything.
“Cliff Effinger had a son in Las Vegas? You?”
“And a not-real son in Chicago. Matt, they called him.”
“And Cliff had a brother?”
“Well, he did, but Uncle Joe died too. I should say, was killed too. Nobody copped to either hit.”
Gold mine, Matt thought. Gold mine. How do I win over this guy?
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Chuck.”
“For Charles.”
“Naw, just Chuck. Chuck Effinger.”
“We should go somewhere and talk.”
“And what game are you playing, little Matt, with your fancy shoes and down-low cap? Yeah, I noticed. I’m not as dumb as I look. Lucky Stars okay?”
“No, not anywhere near that crowd, where someone could overhear. I think we’ve both been had.”
The nearest hamburger joint had a dated look involving lots of the color orange, Burgers ‘n’ Beers.
The tabletop juke-box music was loud, but there was an empty corner booth at the back.
Cat in an Alphabet Endgame: A Midnight Louie Mystery (The Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 28) Page 8