Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  An hour later the moon had vanished, but the carnival panorama of Las Vegas after dark more than made up for it.

  Max had suggested they top off their excellent dinners with Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur instead of dessert.

  Temple never disagreed with Max when his impulses matched her own.

  During dinner they had discussed nothing more innocuous than the old days before chaos and crime has disrupted their Las Vegas unwed honeymoon. The change of subject had given Temple time to digest the new information on Molina and Nadir along with her sea bass.

  “So why’d Molina ask you to track Nadir?” she said after savoring the first sip of Bailey’s, now braced to return to ugly realities.

  “Two reasons: One, no one in the police department knows about him and she wants to keep it that way. Number two: he doesn’t know about Mariah, and she wants to keep it that way.”

  “Why she’d have to do anything about him in the first place?”

  “His description had been noted on routine police reports, I guess. It, uh, rang a a very big bell. Remember that time I took off for Los Angeles without much explanation?”

  “Yes! You did.”

  “I was checking out Nadir for Molina. To see if he was still in California. He was a former LAPD officer gone bad. And he wasn’t still in LA.”

  “I don’t get it. She called on you for help. She’s your worst enemy. Well, maybe not your worst enemy, but your closest and most official. Why’d you do it?”

  “Any opportunity to learn more about an enemy’s secrets and vulnerabilities is rarer than rubies. Her theory was that I was sneaky and crooked enough to scent out her sneaky, crooked ex–significant other. She was right.”

  “Molina and Nadir? That’s like…Queen Victoria and Yasser Arafat.”

  Max chuckled. “Thanks for painting another indelible picture. I thought so, too, but not nearly as imaginatively. I really don’t get it, but I’m convinced Molina is telling the truth this far: Nadir is Mariah’s father and she’d move all the neon in Las Vegas to keep either one of them from finding out.”

  “So you helped her out. Why wouldn’t she ease up on you, then? Has the woman no gratitude?”

  “None. And that’s a key element of human nature, Temple. If you learn somebody’s deepest, darkest secret, even at her own invitation, she eventually comes to fear and loathe you for having that edge, for having had to give it to you. Especially a hardnose like Molina, who thinks she can do it all alone.”

  “Max, how did a veteran like you get caught in the middle like this?”

  “I know. I should have rocketed like the Roadrunner away from all this. But after Cher Smith was killed, I couldn’t.”

  “Shades of Sean,” Temple said soberly.

  “Every senseless death is a shade of Sean.” Max swiveled to scan the night sky. Nothing outshone the constellations of Las Vegas. The sky was black and blank. Not even Ophiuchus could be seen, could anybody but they recognize it.

  Temple didn’t know what to say. Scratch the surface on any part of Max and you always opened the scab of his cousin’s death.

  So instead she tried to picture Molina and Nadir as a couple and mentally choked on the image. Like the fabled O. J. Simpson glove, it did not fit.

  “I did say,” she mused, “when you asked me what I thought of Nadir, that he would appeal to a certain kind of woman.”

  “Molina’s kind?” Max had whirled back.

  “No. Not at all. But Mariah is what…twelve years old? Add almost a year for gestation. We’re talking a much younger Molina. Maybe dumber.”

  “Nadir’s a bad enough guy that she doesn’t want him to come anywhere near Mariah. I wonder what the kid will make of this if she finds out later. But you see Molina’s problem. If she used official police avenues to check out Nadir she’d have a lot of explaining to do. Whys and wherefores. At that point, no strippers had been killed, at least not in the current sequence.”

  “Hence you. She must have been desperate!”

  “Thanks.” Max’s wry smile faded quickly. “When Cher Smith was killed, it brought everything to a head. I had witnessed Nadir threatening her, but I was the last man known to have any substantial contact with her. It doesn’t help that a few days ago I was undercover at a strip club when another girl was accosted in the parking lot. I came on Nadir kneeling beside her, and then Molina came on both of us. I recognized her despite the undercover drag but Nadir didn’t.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What she told me. She had a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pointed at my head. Nadir ran and she let him. I wanted to go after him, stop him, but she wouldn’t let me. You tell me what she was thinking. She made it pretty clear that she could forget she saw Nadir and ‘remember’ just me. She had me dial for assistance on her cell phone and then told me to get out of there.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “She was basically all right, just knocked down. But somebody had her by the throat first, and it wasn’t me.”

  “Then Nadir is the killer!”

  Max hesitated. “He could have arrived on the scene just moments before I did. We all could have heard the girl scream. I can only say that he was there first, but Molina has a lot of reasons for not believing that. If she nailed me for these crimes, she could close the case-book and be pretty sure that Nadir would discreetly fade away.”

  “She’d rather see an innocent man convicted than deal with an old boyfriend?”

  Max grinned. “I’m not an ‘innocent man’ to her. Never have been.”

  “If only you could reveal your counterterrorism past. Don’t you have someone who could testify that you’re a good guy?”

  “No. We don’t operate like that. We can’t. You’re taking it on my word that I’m a good guy. As far as any official trail shows, I’m an iffy guy. It served me well when I wanted to infiltrate a rogue operation, but it’s left me without a safety net. About the only respectability I could claim is my magician career and that ended on a suspicious note, to say the least.”

  “You’re trapped in this…circumstantial straitjacket, and every time you try to wiggle out of it, you just draw the buckles tighter.”

  “Thanks for another vivid but depressing image, appropriate but discouraging.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Find the real killer. Make sure that Molina doesn’t overlook, or bury, that person in her zeal to cover her past with Nadir. I suppose you could regard her as an enraged rhino protecting her young.”

  “Stop! You’re going to make me snort with laughter. That’s so undignified. So…rhinolike! Talk about a vivid image.”

  “The trouble is, she’s out there herself, undercover, in the clubs, covering her tracks and Nadir’s. I run the risk of falling into a trap I can’t get out of. And then it’s her word against mine.”

  “And mine.”

  “You’re not a witness. Well, maybe a character witness. And even there you can hardly defend me. I’ve had to keep too many aspects of my life hidden, even from you. No, this charade is between me and her and whoever killed Cher Smith.”

  “If it’s Nadir and he’s working somewhere for the Synth, which you’re being really canny about not telling me where, he’s out of the strip club scene, from what you said.”

  Max shook his head. “He gets time off. Can’t stay away. I’ve seen him.”

  “Yuck. How could Molina ever have shacked up with a man like that?”

  “You still have some professional respect for her?”

  “Well, I like to see women making it in a man’s world. I like to think they can bring more sense and integrity to the bull pen, less posturing and selfishness.”

  Max blinked.

  “All right. I know women can be as corrupted by power as the next guy, but I like to think that I would have integrity and compassion even if I got a lot of power.”

  “There you go. You’re imagining what you would do in her place, but you didn’t have to go throug
h what she did to get to her place. It changes you, Temple, grappling with a corrupt system, and all systems are corrupt. You have to compromise somewhere.”

  “I have to admit that Molina always struck me as fairly uncompromising. That’s why she irritated me so much. A closed mind is a terrible waste. On the other hand, I never saw her taking the easy way out, or giving it to anyone.”

  “I warned you that you’d inadvertently overestimated her. She may not sell out for money or power, but she’s a mother. She’ll do anything to protect her kid.”

  Temple nodded. She could see that. Couple Mariah in danger with Molina’s inbred distrust of someone with a revolving-door past like Max, an elusive sort by profession, and you had ice and water in conflict. Enough ice could chill water to a lethal degree, but mobile, shape-shifting water could wear down ice and even stone all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It just took a lot of time.

  Temple decided she’d put her money on always-flexible water, but that ice had taken over a good part of North America in its day, and had trapped a lot of lost species in its path.

  “Don’t be glum,” Max prodded her, the performer in him incapable of letting anyone wilt in his presence. “I’ve handled much worse than Molina before. With Nadir somewhat removed from the arena, his presence will be easier to track.”

  “You almost had him at the last attack scene.”

  Max nodded. “I need to catch him doing something dirty somewhere that Molina isn’t policing.”

  “It blows my mind, Molina hooked up with a scumbag. Hey…maybe that’s why she’s never had any respect for my faith in you. She assumes all women hook up with scumbags.”

  “Thanks for the spirited defense. I think. I assume you mean that I am not a scumbag.”

  “Absolutely. Way too responsible to be a scumbag. ’Course, Molina doesn’t see you as responsible, but as irresponsible. You’d think a cop would be a better detective.”

  “I think you’ve been up too late, eating and drinking too lavishly. Time to head home.”

  “And where is that? Don’t say second star to the left and straight on to Ophiuchus.” Temple leaned her chin on the heel of her hand. She was feeling a little punchy.

  “Circle Ritz for you, where Midnight Louie will no doubt be waiting with a perfectly logical explanation of his eighteen-carat deposit.”

  “Not in his box!”

  “Not in his box, but on your bed. Then back to my lair for me.”

  “Or out joint-crawling?”

  “Whatever it takes, Temple. I have to find the one who’s been attacking strippers, or Molina will build a case around me. A non-metaphorical straitjacket.”

  “But going out there hunting makes you look more suspicious.”

  “She’s doing the same.”

  “She’s a cop. She’s not going to be suspected of anything except overwork.”

  “All I can say is, the next time we go head-to-head over a crime in progress, Molina won’t be crooning ‘The Man That Got Away’.”

  Matt checked his watch. Almost midnight. Almost time for him to take over from Ambrosia.

  He liked to come in early and watch Letitia work. Her voice was melted milk chocolate, and the words caught in the tide were pure caramel.

  “So you’re feeling bad, honey, that you didn’t trust the dude and let the relationship wither. Can’t go back. All you can do is admit what you lost and go on. We all do it. Every day. In every way.”

  Her Valium voice trailed off in a tone of regret that felt personal as she cued the song she’d selected, “The Man That Got Away.”

  Funny, Matt thought, that title could almost be a cops-and-robbers anthem.

  The content, though, was all bluesy self-torment. Matt saluted Letitia’s therapeutic instincts in letting the caller wallow in her regrets in such gorgeous style. Showed the feeling was classic, constant, human. Showed you could make art from misery, and warned that you could make misery into an art.

  The singer was one of the oldies, Jo Stafford or somebody, but Matt could hear Molina doing this song, if she’d ever subscribe to a song so hopeless, where the woman was so low-down and blue.

  It was a great ending to the show, but the clock was a few minutes shy of quitting time. Ambrosia whispered into the mike over the song’s closing notes.

  “Time for one more request. Once more with feeling. You out there, lonely and blue? Need a little soul music to go on? Come talk to Ambrosia tonight. The moon is full, and so is my song chart.”

  “I need a special song, Ambrosia,” a female voice whispered back.

  Matt stiffened to sense the barest lilt of a brogue in it.

  “I can’t remember the name of it. Can’t remember who did it. But I hear it in my head night and day, day and night.”

  “Maybe it’s Cole Porter, honey.” The smile in Ambrosia’s voice was its own kind of lilt, clean, honest.

  “No, something a lot more modern.”

  “Who’s it for, someone you lost?”

  “Maybe. Maybe more for someone I haven’t completely found yet.”

  “He’s special.”

  “Oh, yes. Rare, even. But rather elusive.”

  “The rare ones always are. So have you thought of the song yet?”

  “I can’t quite remember. It says something like ‘I know everywhere you go, I know everything you do’.”

  The soft, seductive voice on the phone had become a mean-business monotone. “What is the group that does that?”

  “The Police.” Ambrosia’s liquid voice curdled into hard candy. “I don’t play that one. It’s a stalking song. I don’t like to see anyone stalked, even a guy.”

  “I guess you don’t mind hanging onto someone else’s guy when you strut out into your own parking lot,” the voice taunted.

  That’s all it said, and the ominous words never made the air.

  In the control room, through the glass picture window, Letitia made a horizontal chopping motion, her model’s face a mask of fury.

  Matt nodded at her through the window. He had recognized Kitty’s cold, even tones. The trace of an Irish accent had only enhanced the sinister message. She whispered as if in a confessional, and her voice echoed in his ears though it had never reached the public, his audience.

  Letitia, no trace of gentle Ambrosia in her face or figure, stood and motioned him into her seat. They had only two minutes before he would take over.

  “That b-woman,” Letitia said. “She is beginning to get on my nerves.”

  He sat down, the leather chair was still toasty, and set up the earphones, the mike, his big glass of water. “My nerves have been gotten to for a long time.”

  “Well, we’ve got her vocal tone down. She won’t be able to call in here again.”

  “It’ll only make her meaner.”

  “You ain’t seen mean until you’ve seen me in action. Now forget her and do the show. Don’t let her rattle you. She’s just a spoilsport.”

  Letitia left the room but took up a post on the other side of the glass. Guard duty. Nobody was going to mess with the mind, heart and soul of her prize find, Mr. Midnight, late-night advice guru extraordinaire.

  “I’m so worried, Mr. Midnight,” came the shaky vibrato of a new female voice, a normal if neurotic female voice, through his headphones.

  Funny how uncertainty made a female voice supposedly seem “normal.” Kitty O’Connor had ditched the presumed normal female role. But she had messed with the wrong woman in Letitia.

  Letitia sat like an island idol on the other side of the glass. She no longer left after her stint as Ambrosia, the feel-good soothing music shrink, had ended. Instead, she sat guard over Matt and his callers, a grim powerful presence, more household god than producer, determined that Kitty should not mess up her concept, The Midnight Hour, or her on-air personality, Mr. Midnight.

  Matt was beginning to feel like an airwave Frankenstein, the misunderstood creation of both his inventor and his worst enemies. A puppet whose strings
were tangled between opposing forces. Even those who meant him well somehow became caught in a sick power struggle.

  The Lady of the House

  A quick scan of Miss Temple’s bedroom and her bedroom closet, both left in shocking disarray, tells me that she has decamped in full battle gear: high heels and Opium perfume. So I need not expect her back until near my midnight hour.

  I would love to knead my nails in the piles of delicate feminine fripperies, but my timetable does not permit a self-indulgent lingerie fest.

  So I rush to run a nail under the French door with the wiggly-waggly latch. In a jiffy it is sprung and I spring through the slit, pausing to pull the door shut behind me.

  I am balanced on the patio railing and about to leap onto my escalator to the ground below, the trunk of the canted palm tree, when I hear a hissing from above.

  I look around for snakes. Then I look up to see a familiar pair of red eyes gleaming down at me.

  Some see signs and portents in the heavens. Ophiuchus, say. I see Karma.

  Not mine. Miss Electra Lark’s. Karma is the name of her excessively self-confident Birman roommate.

  “Louie,” she cries from her distant perch. “Come up and see me.”

  Sometime! I want to spit back at her, but I have found it bad luck to ignore Karma.

  So I shinny up instead of down the rough palm trunk, and in a Las Vegas minute (which is about three, since people in Las Vegas lose track of time) I am hurling my fighting weight over her railing to land with an impressive thump.

  “Oooh! You should join Flab Ferrets, Louie. Methinks that you have been spurning the Free-to-be-Feline of late.”

  “It does not take a psychic or a Sacred Cat of Burma to figure that one out, Karma. I am not the health food type.”

  “Obviously.”

  She is a substantial lady herself, rather Victorian in her way, wearing a flounced ecru dressing gown and a set of snow white mittens and gaiters on her extremities. Her eyes are Prussian blue, but she is no Persian, despite her longish coat. The Birman is a very particular, I might almost say peculiar breed. A distant ancestor supposedly died to protect the life of a dalai lama, and they have never gotten over the honor. So the living ones like to lord it over inferior souls. Like me, for example. I am always handy as an example of an inferior soul.