She pulled his face down into a kiss, a hard, ugly Judas kiss that made him rear away in disgust. What did she mean, he'd killed his first man tonight. First man. Tonight.
He heard her boots scraping away like a sidewinder snake's scales whipping across desert sand. What did she mean.
Then he saw that his right hand had automatically gone to his side and he felt melting warmth flooding his fingers, oozing between them. The night air held a sudden, tungsten tang.
Blood, Matt thought. His blood. She had ... cut him.
He finally heard the words Kitty has breathed into his ear as tenderly as a mother to a sick child as she departed. "Remember me, you bastard."
He had killed his first man tonight. Did she mean ... himself?
Chapter 16
Dead Again
"Hell of a crime scene."
"That's why we called you at two in the morning, Lieutenant."
Molina pulled her attention away from the body grotesquely attached to the Roman galley's prow. Sometimes she was a camera, and now she was panning back into a long shot.
The worklights glaring down on the dock and the water made the death scene into a stage set.
"Hair and Fiber is bitching about their technicians having to hang upside down like bats,"
Detective Morris Alch went on.
`He was a dapper, low-key man on the cusp of fifty, whose graying mustache existed more to hide a sense of humor than add distinction, which it also did.
She nodded, stifling a yawn. "We'll lose a lot more than bat droppings if we don't do this right. You talked to the crew?"
"Gaithers did."
"Do they use any kind of small boat to clean or touch up the ship?"
Alch nodded at a uniform waiting near them, who disappeared into the corona of spotlights.
That was how, in ten minutes flat, two rowboats lay poised in the water before the galley's gently bobbing bow, a fresh plastic dropcloth stretched between them. A third boat waited in the shadows to receive the body once the technicians were through and it could be detached.
"Bizarre," Alch commented.
"This is Las Vegas. What do you expect?"
Molina watched stoically, which was more than the Oasis crew boss could do. She also serves who stands and waits in larger-than-life scenes with her ID tag clipped to her lapel.
The hotel crew boss paced soft-shod in Nikes, a wiry, worried man in his fifties.
She had to credit the work crew; they snapped to like a Navy detail to man the boats. The crew boss, clasping his walkie-talkie to his mouth like a seventh sense, muttered reports and encouragement to the crew manning the other galley on a distant dock.
The evidence technicians cut the body free, sparing all knots for later analysis and fighting to keep any fragments from falling to the jerry-rigged plastic net below. Suspended from the barge's decks by ropes, two technicians eased the body bag over the lower limbs of the now-dangling corpse. If only the tourists could see this.
So far the Oasis had only canceled one show, but Molina figured she wouldn't be able to release the barge until after dawn's early light.
"The show must go on," Alch muttered, not disapprovingly.
"The real show will be on the autopsy table. This body won't be talking until the ME's report."
"You think he was dead before he was bound to the, uh, front lady here?"
"It's called a figurehead. Wonder if that means something?"
"We're hardly into the New Year and we land a freaky stiff."
"Freaky, yeah. Reminds me of those casino bodies last year."
"But those were interior death scenes, with the bodies stuffed up in the ceiling."
"They were still found publicly, in the heart of Las Vegas attractions. Somebody thinks this whole damn city is one big set for murder."
Molina walked to the water's very edge to squint into the corpse's garishly lit face. It resembled a ghost of olden days with cerements meant to hold its jaw shut obscuring its features.
"If the guy's hands weren't bound to the carving at his hips," she said, "I'd say he had tried to tear at the face wrappings while the galley was being submerged. He was alive, and I bet there's a gag in his mouth under the gauze."
"You mean they weren't just trying to make him look like a mummy?"
Molina shrugged. "It fits the ambiance."
"Ambiance, Lieutenant?" Alch mocked.
"This is Vegas, Morey. It's all ambiance, including us."
"Yes, ma'am." But his mustache grinned.
******************
An hour had passed before the plastic had been folded and stashed in the evidence van, before the rowboats were off the water, and the body lay in its garbage-bag-green body bag on the dock.
Molina stared down at the hidden face in its soggy carapace of ordinary medical gauze. The man's wet clothing was unremarkable: jeans, shirt. He had died with his boots on. Someone had stage-managed this; and more than one person had executed it, had executed the victim in a particularly cruel fashion.
She could finally snap on the latex gloves, crouch like a kid over some gruesome find, and work back the waterlogged gauze. She felt a bit like an archeologist as the rigid features were exposed to the worklights.
Nose, mouth, fish-eyes. It was enough. She wasn't aware of having frozen in thought until she realized Detective Alch had stopped searching the dead man's face to study hers.
"You know him, Lieutenant?"
Molina sighed, and stood. "Know his kind. Let me know when the ME schedules the autopsy," she told Alch. "And it better be soon."
Her features sharpened. Contrary to TV crime shows, cops seldom ventured into the autopsy room; reports said it all, or should.
"Hey." Molina offered one of her rare smiles. "We don't often get to see a mummy unveiled."
She turned to go, to go back home and hopefully not to wake up Mariah. To free Delores to return to her house and her own family two doors down. To try to sleep before getting up again to another administrative day. Being a cop and a single mother was hell on hot wheels, dragging her out with little notice in the dead of night to commune with the dead. To interrogate the silence. To speculate about the living. But it had been worse before she had made lieutenant.
Now she was only called when the case was particularly puzzling, or politically delicate, and, luckily, most murders were depressingly routine. But she doubted she'd sleep much tonight, even if she got home in time for a couple of hours rest. Too much to think about.
The dock felt exotic in the chill of a Las Vegas winter night. She could smell wet rope and dank water, could barely hear the disturbed water's slight slap against the pilings. She could have been standing on any exotic shoreline from Lake Mead to Lake Titicaca in the Andes to Lake Victoria in Africa.
At the fringe of the spotlit space she noticed a couple of upright objects.
Not objects, figures. Feline figures.
One was big and muscular with a low-pile coat. The other silhouette, half the size of the first, was blurred by frills of longer hair. They sat like Egyptian statues, still as the massive figures girding the Oasis facade, watching with eyes that changed to UFO-green as she walked away and the light illuminated the eerie night-time neon of their irises.
Leaving the bizarre crime scene, for the first time that evening, Lieutenant C. R. Molina felt a chill of apprehension, even though she wasn't superstitious.
She knew those cats, and, if so, she certainly knew they meant trouble. But who could interview a cat? Luckily, there were plenty of Homo sapiens around to do the talking, or the not-talking.
"Round up the usual suspects," she muttered.
And, she added mentally, maybe some very unusual ones.
This was Las Vegas. A cop could bet on that, and win every time.
Chapter 17
A Beached Barge
"It is most interesting to observe a police crime-scene team in action," Miss Midnight Louise says once everything human--and formerly human
--has left the death scene.
We are alone, for the barge crew has finally accepted that the show must not go on until Lieutenant Molina says it can. Only the dead-in-the-water barge remains, nudging the dock like a whale calf cozying up to Mama.
"Now it is time for the real experts to swing into action," I respond. "And I do mean 'swing.'
Think you can get up to the brow of that prow again pussycat?"
"Do not call me 'pussycat.' I find the term demeaning."
"De meaning was not meant to be anything personal. I believe I would be best suited to observing operations from the dock, like Lieutenant Molina."
"You mean you are too paunchy from sucking up free cat food in New York City to make like an acrobat. Do not sweat it, I will be up and at the scene of the crime in two shakes of a spaniel's tail."
She follows through on this promise before I can object to her parting remarks, none of which are true. And only humans sweat. I watch her balance on a cable as thick as Miss Temple's wrist as she uses it like a tightrope to the bridge, if a barge may be said to have a bridge. Despite my sire's oceanic adventures and current lakeside residence, I am woefully uninformed about maritime matters. Frankly, unless it is shallow and there are fish in it, or Miss Temple's damp clouds of bubbles, I do not care for water except for drinking purposes.
Midnight Louise is soon hanging by her fingernails from the stolid wooden countenance of a sea cow, which is the figurehead to which Mr. Cliff Effinger, whose ugly mug I was close enough to see unveiled, was bound for his final dip-and-ship. It seems that a blue mermaid of sorts has helped to do the dirty dude in.
Although the regular crime-scene team has been all over the area to which the body was bound, Miss Louise tries to rake up what clues she can, running her streetwise nose over all the surfaces.
She sneezes.
"Be careful that you do not catch your death of cold," I advise her from the sidelines. "Damp sea airs can be contaminated. And watch out that you do not fall into the water."
"Yes, Popsicle. I know I do not have your vast experience of drooling over the Crystal Phoenix koi pond."
She twists her petite frame until she is arranged over the sea cow's head like an oddly chic black fedora. "The cops seemed to have nailed most of the hair and fiber on the scene, including mine. But--"
"Do not be coy. Spit it out."
"I sniff the somewhat soggy traces of a foreign substance."
"What is it?"
"If I knew, it would not be a foreign substance. It reminds me very slightly of my favorite blend of catnip, which Miss Van von Rhine dispenses on an old sock of her husband's in her office when we are both working late."
"Miss Van von Rhine plies you with nip? I was never allowed to tipple on the job."
"Perhaps Chef Song's koi supply was the perquisite when you were house dick at the Crystal Phoenix. I had enough of sushi when I was on the streets, so Miss Van's offering is more than sufficient. And a little nip only sharpens my senses."
"Not to mention your tongue, I bet."
"What was that?"
"Nothing. I was just saying you were a little young for too much nip."
"Suit yourself, but do not try to dictate to me. All right, I have done this scene. Until I can identify the trace odor, there is nothing new here to report. I need to get back to the Phoenix to make my morning rounds. And I suppose your human will be waiting up for you at the Circle Ritz."
I sigh while Midnight Louise scampers back down the taut cable to my side.
"What is the typhoon for, Daddio-not? Did you expect to identify the perp in one go?"
"No. I just do not know where I will go. I am afraid that my Miss Temple is considering upheavals in my lifestyle."
"A waterbed?"
"Something even more disagreeable, I fear. But do not worry about me, I have survived turmoil before. Better get back to the job before some dog takes advantage of your absence and does a Dumpster raid."
She takes my advice for once and trots off without making the further, solicitous inquiries the female gender is noted for. What are these modern dolls coming to when they are so involved in their careers that they do not have time for being understanding of the male gender?
Then something dreadful occurs to me. Could Midnight Louise have a gentleman friend? Is that why she rushed off so eagerly? True, she is sterile, but that does not mean she could not overcome her missing hormones and at least be up for a little mush and slush.
I shudder. I am glad that I am not a victim of my gonads.
Chapter 18
Cut to the Quick
"Jesus, man. Jeee-sus, man."
Bennie's leathery skin had gone cocaine-white when Matt staggered back into ConTact.
Bennie ran for the bathroom, and came back, fists full of the crummy beige paper towels they were usually out of.
Thank God for small favors, Matt thought. Maybe prayed.
Blood soaked through the flimsy paper like water. His blood.
"Jezzzzzusss, man."
"My jacket," Matt said, for some reason concerned about blood getting on it.
Bennie worked off the left sleeve, dialing Leon, the supervisor, on the one -button dial key.
"We gotta get you to an emergency room," he was muttering half to Matt, half to his headset, which he had jammed back on, crooked.
Matt found himself noticing details like that as he watched his own actions and Bennie's panic through a numb veil of emotional anesthetic. Nothing hurt. That was the odd part. He didn't feel a thing. Just a disbelieving wonder at all the blood that was pouring out of him.
"Yeah." Bennie had connected. "We gotta close down now. Matt's been mugged in the parking lot. He's bleeding--all over the place. I can take him, yeah, if my damn bug still runs.
Right. We'll go now. If the lines are down, hey, we got an emergency here."
Bennie tore off his headset, looked at the wadded paper towels at Matt's side. "I bring the car around and come in for you. Or, hey! Nine-eleven. They come here."
Matt shook his head. "I think it's . . . slowing. Bennie, I can't go to a hospital. Do you know somebody else?"
"Alternative medicine, man? Now? You're loco. Loco, loco, loco- motive. You need help pronto."
Matt laughed weakly. "Thatsa Italian, Bennie. Pronto. Look, there must be someone in the neighborhood."
"You think I do drugs anymore? You think I'm still some sixties wild and crazy guy. Loco local? I don't know anybody. Well, maybe. Jesus, man. I'm gettin' the car, that's all I know."
Matt waited under the bright fluorescent lights, feeling as if the light itself was draining his color into a blue-white skim-milk pallor. He never knew he had so much blood in him, and so little pain.
Everything felt unreal. Kitty. Her charges. Her attack. His wound. Bennie's panic.
The building door banged open so hard he thought the glass would shatter.
Bennie helped him up and out to the Volkswagen chugging at the curb.
"It's a heap. A junker." Bennie raced around to the driver's seat and put the car into gear.
"No smooth ride. Sorry."
"Better than my motorcycle," Matt got out.
"Jesus, man."
Bennie drove like a demon through the deserted side streets. Matt was relieved to see they were heading north, into the Hispanic area. No nosy big-hospital intake rooms, no sirens and bright lights. He was scared but mostly he was scared of who/what/when/where/why. He couldn't risk the authorities finding out. Not for his own sake, but for his mother's. What was Effinger involved in, that it had come to this?
The small car forced his knees up into a semifetal position. Every jolt made more blood well over his fingers through the damp and reeking paper towels.
Finally the car stopped on a dark street lined with low houses and bristling cactus plants.
Bennie escorted him inside the house, knocking, not ringing a bell. By now Matt was wondering if he'd made a fatal mistake. If he'd killed his first man tonight al
l right.
He caromed off of door jambs and shuffled through dark cubby-holes and finally was guided to lay down on some hard cold surface. A bright light glared down on him.
An old man leaned over him, skin as sun-seared as the camel-colored leather upholstery in an abandoned junkyard convertible. The paper towels fell away. Gauze pads swabbed the wound. The old guy nodded and squinted, pressing scorched-earth wrinkles into an already time-seamed face.
Matt heard the murmur of Spanish, like prayers, felt a gnawing and pulling at his side as if scavenger animals tore at him.
Bennie's face hovered momentarily before the old man's, smiling like a harvest moon.
"Tape," he was saying, nodding.
Or glue too? They would glue him back together with horses' hooves. Dead horses' hooves.
Wasn't that stuff in gelatin? He would come back as Jell-O-man, maybe lime-green all over, able to ooze into any form.
Bennie lifted Matt's head and forced a white glass bottle neck between his teeth. White fire seared his lips and esophagus, spilled down his chin and neck like antiseptic.
He passed out.
*******************
He awoke to people talking about him in a language he couldn't understand. The rhythm of the speech was like background Muzak, some orchestral samba in an elevator.
He was leaning against the elevator's back panel, its sleek ungiving surface supportive. Too tired to open his eyes, he listened, soothed by the steady basso murmur.
Only gradually did he notice the bundle of scratchy newspapers he was holding at his side, did he feel the burning disagreement of a bad stomachache.
"Mateo," someone said, but that wasn't his name.
"Matt," someone else said, in English.
His eyes disobeyed him and opened.
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