By eating only half their servings and foregoing dessert, they were ready to leave in twenty minutes flat.
By then a lot of diners were paying attention to Molina and her music. She perched on a stool at center spotlight, where the over bright light faded her skin into a luminous mask. Only her Joan Crawford eyebrows and maroon mouth stood out: dark, well-defined, like the empty features in a mask of tragedy.
Carmen Molina had launched into the lengthy Cole Porter masterpiece, ''Begin the Beguine,'' so they were stuck for an-other ten minutes.
When Matt whispered to the waitress for the check, Temple piped up, ''A doggy bag, please.
For the cat."
She was soon delicately flicking fish flakes and pork into a hinged styrofoam box in time to Molina's tempestuous tango beat while the lieutenant moaned about nights of ''tropical splendor'' and a lost love "evergreen."
"It used to be one of my favorite songs," Temple hissed to Matt.
He looked sympathetic. "And this--Molina--has ruined it for you?"
"Her and somebody else." Temple watched Matt lay two twenty dollar bills on the tray bearing the bill. No credit card. Yet. Why hadn't she seen all these signs sooner? Lord, he could have been an escaped convict and she'd have never noticed.
When his change came, Temple insisted on leaving the tip. Then they left, bumbling in the way that aims at being super-quiet but makes a spectacle of itself instead. As they exited the restaurant, surrounding diners clapped enthusiastically. Molina's dark head bowed repeatedly in the spotlight, so it looked like the damn silk orchid over her ear was blowin' in the wind. Another ex-favorite song after tonight. Temple thought sourly.
Outside, the sun had blown town and the dark felt like a cool chiffon curtain. The Strip was far enough away that they could look up and see the big desert stars without any neon competition. Temple couldn't even hear the roar of the Mirage volcano.
Autumn was coming, and nights toyed with growing chill. She rubbed her hands up and down her bare forearms, feeling goose bumps. The night felt fresh. Senses sharpened now that the heat was withdrawing from the pavement beneath their feet like fever from a healing patient. Out in the desert, night life of another sort than the Strip's frenetic pace would be stirring, scuttling. Here, on the fringes, the city of Las Vegas was quiet for a change, keeping decent hours. Only nine p.m.
They walked around the free-standing building, smiling at its neon frills, to the side parking area. It wasn't easy to find Temple's low-profile Storm among a lot crammed with alien cars that had arrived since they came.
"Popular place," she commented.
Matt looked thoughtful." Maybe--"
"I know. Maybe Molina's the drawing card. But you heard her: nobody knows when she's going to show up."
"That's a terrific trait in a police officer. Maybe in a singer, too."
Temple shook her head and pulled the loose-woven shawl she carried over her shoulders.
"When you know what she does for a living, it colors the show. I thought I'd die when she launched into 'Someone to Watch Over Me.' "
Matt laughed. ''Me, too. I mean, here I am asking you how to get information out of unwilling witnesses. And, not twenty feet away, there's the city's top homicide cop in eavesdropping distance--only she's singing her lungs out."
"Well, she's 'a' homicide cop. I don't know if she's 'the top' homicide cop."
"The top homicide cop we know. And then when she sang 'The Man that Got Away'--"
Temple started laughing and couldn't stop. She laughed so hard that she nearly dropped her doggie carton. "Holy Guacamole! Louie would kill me if this stuff went 'splat.' 'The Man that Got Away,' please! Oh, God, do you suppose she . . . she . . . dedicated it to Max?"
Matt was laughing harder than she was now, leaning against the car's aqua side, his elbows on its now-cool roof. "Max?"
Temple lurched against the car's fender, crushing her straw handbag between herself and hard metal, barely able to talk. She nodded, controlled her laughter for a few instants before it came bubbling out again with her words. "Max. Molina--"A whole glissando of guffaws."--
wants to, to interrogate him--" Temple almost slid along the fender to the asphalt, she was laughing so intensely'' --in the worst way! Oh, my side ... I think I--"
''Stop it! "Matt commanded between his own sputters of hilarity. ''We could . . . could hurt ourselves laughing like this after a big dinner.''
"What big dinner?" Temple squeezed out, doubled over. Tears showered her face. "We were so shook up we could hardly eat a ... a bite.''
"Yeah, Molina really put the collar on our . . . appetites."
They both went off again, laughing uncontrollably. "Maybe," Temple sputtered. "Maybe she could sing at Weight Watchers meetings!"
Everything they said, everything they thought, seemed hysterically funny. They laughed until it hurt, and until they couldn't stop even though it hurt. They still laughed when they had run out of words. Just an assessing glance, to see if the other had sobered up, so to speak, sent the assessor off to Ha-Ha Land again.
Temple finally shook her head, wiping away tears with her bare hands. Matt pulled himself upright, away from the car, like a man trying to shake off a drunk. He offered her a plain white linen handkerchief. Who carried handkerchiefs nowadays, she wondered--except maybe funeral directors? And priests.
"Nothing we said was really that funny," Matt pointed out.
Temple nodded agreement, wiping her face with die harsh linen, clutching her shawl, her purse, her carton. The occasional trill of laughter still broke free without warning, like a hiccup.
"I guess you had to have been there." she said, "and unfortunately--we were!"
They laughed again, an exhausted emotional eddy of self-circling sounds that faded into breathy coughing, some disciplinary lip-biting and finally rueful smiles.
Matt shook his head. "It's not my night."
"Nor mine. Listen, Matt." Temple tried real hard to get serious, because what she had to say was serious. "What you were asking me in there is important. I hate to preach at you, but if you take on the task of finding out something other people don't know, of pumping people who may not want to tell you something, or who don't know what you're really after, you've got to have a
... an ethic."
He nodded. Ethics he understood instantly.
"I may seem simply nosy to you, but I used to work as a TV news reporter. Maybe this isn't news to you, but all our institutions--governmental bureaucracy, corporate leaders, the church--" she added pointedly "--they all operate on a 'need-to-know' basis, just like the spy guys at the CIA, or something. They figure that we--the citizen, the consumer, the client, the public--don't need to know the inside scoop, the motive, opportunity and the real reasons.
They want to keep us ignorant for our own good.' "
"A major failing of the church, as the hierarchy is finding out now to its eternal regret."
''Regret?" Temple asked sharply. "Or chagrin that it can't keep washing its own dirty laundry in private?"
Matt shrugged, waiting for her point.
"So. There you are. Or I am. We think we are pretty decent human beings with pretty decent motives, and we think that knowing the truth is better than not. We have what journalists call 'a right to know.' That's in direct opposition to the 'need to know' everybody running things wants us to have. So we have to be clever instead of confrontational. We have to ask the right questions of the right people, pull back all the wrong curtains and peek. And guess what?"
''If we pay attention to the man behind the curtain--"
Temple nodded, "Sometimes we find out he's got his hand in the till, or in the wrong underwear or in messing up the future of the country."
"Sometimes we find out it's a her," Matt put in.
Temple nodded again. "And sometimes, we find out. . . he's only pissing."
That set him laughing again,
"That may be vulgar, but I couldn't resist," she said.
Matt sobered faster than she did. "Truth usually is vulgar," he said. 'That's your message.
You can't clean a window to see through it without smearing some of the dirt around first. Isn't it hard now, to be on the other side?"
"You mean doing pubhc relations?" Temple leaned against the fender again, setting her purse and carton on the hood, pulling her shawl closer. 'That's the beauty of freelance. I work for myself, not Them." She sighed. 'That's how I got involved in the murders; I couldn't just let the victims be swept under the rug, especially those poor strippers' lives, which were so rotten already anyway. I guess my only rough time in PR was at the Guthrie, when I collected a salary to protect an Institution."
"Sounds like a vocation."
She grimaced. "Even an organization as benign as an arts group can harbor its secrets: an actor who's temperamental, or drunk and disorderly on the set, or a druggie; money shenanigans. Not that Guthrie confronted me with anything like that, but the world-renowned children's ballet had a ghastly PR problem years back, if you can call it such a trivial thing. The founder and director was a pederast." She glanced at Matt. "When it all came out, they discovered he'd had one youthful molestation arrest, and he'd been in the seminary briefly--"
"Shit!" Matt said, shocking her. "Sorry. I don't usually .. . it's like having been in a war, and then finding out half your comrades have been fighting for the enemy."
"Some poor woman was PR director for the children's ballet when that broke." Temple shuddered, though the night was not that cool. "I'm glad I've never had to smother that kind of fire. I'm glad I don't work for anyone anymore that I can't walk away from at any time. I'm even glad that Max Kinsella pried me loose from my 'position,' then left me high and dry and a freelancer in Las Vegas." Her smile grew crooked. "Sometimes I think the ethics curve is higher here, believe it or not. They've had enough decades of honest greed, lust and fun to be forthright about it."
"What about the mob influence?"
"Virtually dead, from what everybody says."
"So you believe everybody?"
''Never. But in this case I believe the mob's been bought out by the corporate mafia of international consortiums. Listen to us: ethics and the mob and rogue ballet directors. So you have to lie a little--play dumb--to learn what you need to know. What's it about?" '
Matt took Louie's carton from her, and smiled. 'I'm still working on my right to find out. Let's say I'm just looking for the man behind the curtain. And I haven't the foggiest idea what he's doing yet. Shall I drive, or you?"
''Me." Temple fished out her keys and jingled them like spurs for a mechanical steed. "I like to know where I'm going."
Chapter 13
Veni, Vidi, Veto
I am generally suspicious of ugly customers, and this Vito character I first spot by the carp pond is one of the ugliest I have ever seen.
But one should not judge on external appearances. These Siamese fighting fish, for instance, would give Godzilla a good name in the beauty department, yet they are highly regarded and expensive. Not to mention tasty.
Still, I am most suspicious of ugly customers when they spend all their time in a gambling casino and are not paying clients. At this odd occupation, this Vito-person is a master.
I spend many hours tracking him around the Crystal Phoenix, which keeps me well out of the baleful purview of the captivating Caviar. Vito displays an admirable tendency for dim corners, out-of-the-way places and a profile so low he is as invisible as an earthworm to those engaged in the hustle and bustle of a gambling establishment.
Luckily, Vito is so busy looking over the Crystal Phoenix that he completely overlooks my presence. If he does spot me, his sneaky gaze rakes right past me, as if I were a piece of furniture. I like to maintain a well-upholstered condition, but jet-black mohair I am not.
Vito is most fond of the basement, and there I cannot fault him.
While all of the Phoenix is kept frigid to prevent customers from feeling the heat or letting the dealers see them sweat, the basement is not only as cool as a sea cucumber, but it is blessedly quiet during the days. I myself like to ramble among the empty dressing rooms, watching the showgirls' ostrich-feather headdresses tremble seductively on their high shelves in the icy stream of an air-conditioning vent.
The slight shimmying motion of hot-pink curling plumes is a sensory delight second only to the silver hairs of the Divine Yvette shivering with the faint pulse of her throaty purr.
Vito also seems most Interested In these dainty feathered artifacts, for he climbs upon a chair to peer over and around them until strings of his greasy black hair steal across his pock-marked, sweaty face like Michael Jackson tendrils that are slumming in a Bad neighborhood.
In fact, I begin to suspect that Vito is something of a pervert, for I also find him poking among the racks of costumes set along the hallway walls. He will even go down upon his knees to burrow into the foaming masses of sequined silks and garish feathers.
Disgusting! I am quite attracted by feathers myself, but this is a natural affinity, as Is my passion for the smell and taste of leather. You could hardly call it a fetish, any more than you could label Miss Temple Barr's innocent fondness for high fashion high heels a fixation. There is high-camp taste and then there is outright kink.
With a creature like Vito, however, any tastes are likely to be debased to their lowest common denominator, and I say that with confidence even though I have no head for numbers at all.
Neither does the unfortunate Vito, apparently.
When he is not delving below in the lonely dustbins and among the leftover sweat-stained costumes, he lurks around the Phoenix casino areas. I watch Vito watch the blackjack and craps tables. I see him prowl the slot machine aisles, staring with hungry eyes the size of midget currants at the happily oblivious gamblers and house employees. Yet never once does he commit so much as a nickel to a slot machine, or slide a ten-spot across the cashier's hard marble sill or place a chip on a taut, cushioned surface of Ultrasuede.
What a cheapskate! Obviously, Vito is Up To No Good, but what kind of No Good is he up to?
This I cannot figure, and it is driving me catnip-crazy.
So is the smell of old bananas and cigars about his person. Perhaps he smokes old banana skins as a cigar. I would not put it past him.
After a few days of surveillance I am so intrigued that one morning when I see him waddling out of the Crystal Phoenix at three a.m. when all the action is just getting going, I decide to tail him.
Luckily, he walks wherever he is going. I do not think that Vito is the kind of a dude that would care to be linked to a specific license plate at this time and place.
Anywhere Vito can walk without scaring the horses, I can. I am a stalking shadow that blends into night whenever I ^ wish to. And I do wish to, for Vito stops and turns to scan for suspicious sorts every so often.
I am as suspicious as they come, but he never sees me. Even if he did spot me, he would dismiss me as some mute, homeless dude of no danger to him. That Is the beauty of my cover: everybody underestimates me. And I am known for keeping my mouth shut.
Anyway, we stroll the cooling streets toward the south side of town where the rents get lower and the clientele descends to their level. Soon we have hit bottom: the parking lot of the Araby Motel.
What can I say about the Araby Motel? Forty years ago, it was a chi-chi little motor lodge, the latest thing in Western accommodations for the travelers wishing to see the U.S.A. in their Chevrolets.
Today it is someplace only Bette Davis could love. What a dump. Even the stray dogs in this town avoid the Dumpster behind the Araby Motel, for fear of finding an unappetizing dead body or two. Sometimes they are even human.
Not many cars litter the asphalt, but those present are missing mufflers, paint, various windows, brake lights, door handles and other accoutrements of safe motoring. Many are also missing valid Nevada license plates.
The Araby Motel is laid out like an exclamation po
int: a long, low one-story string of rooms stretching out from a registration office that sits under a tower of tired neon. Earthworm-pink cursives spell out "Araby Motel" above a sputtering green minaret. These are "Miami Vice"
colors with an emphasis on the "vice."
My quarry does not stop at the so-called office to collect a key, but heads for the littered sidewalk in front of the string of rooms. Each room has a door and a big rectangular window that is more or less covered by a sagging drape in varying patterns of Filth, Dust or Disease.
At number four, our feather-sniffer stops to knock.
It opens enough to showcase another appetizing sort, a tall, blowzy man whose face and form seem to have sunk into a permanent state of walking decay. The two talk for a moment.
The tone does not seem particularly friendly from my vantage point under a permanently parked seventies-something Opal with an oil leak that would do credit to the Exxon Valdez. I wheeze, trying to breathe over the chemical fumes, and miss the dialogue.
Then Vito is reluctantly admitted to the other man's castle. Through the sagging arras at the window-slit I can glimpse a homely glow of candelabra and no doubt hear the pluckings of the village troubadour upon a lute if I perk my ears In the proper direction. Certainly my imaginary view of the room's interior Is more pleasing than the likely landscape, which I have no desire to see in person, or imagine in reality.
I belly-crawl past a flattened tire, avoiding the oily mess, when I spot another stalker in the shadow of a Woodstock-vintage psychedelic-painted Volkswagen van.
On soft-soled feet I pussyfoot closer for a look.
I am not reassured to recognize the dude who is unknowingly sharing stakeout duty with yours truly. I know what has brought me to this unlikely site: the suspicious behavior of the unlovely Vito, who likely has mob connections.
But what even more unlikely circumstance has brought the darling of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the ladies of the Circle Ritz to this debased joint in the surreptitious flesh at half-past three a.m.?
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