Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Max found his most disinterested look. “Yes, but it sounds a little too bloodless and histrionic for the mob.”

“Agreed. But it was a message to somebody.”

“Why do you say ‘fake’ mob presence?” Max asked.

“This department and the FBI cleared the mob off the Strip and out of town in the early ’80s.”

“For real?”

“For real. Listen. You should contact Frank Bucek.”

“Frank Bucek?”

“Yeah, the ex-priest FBI guy.” When Max’s face remained blank, she realized she’d entered a memory-free zone and explained further. “He was an instructor at Matt’s seminary. He comes to town now and again.”

“Ex-priests seem to find interesting new occupations.”

“They have a lot to offer—intelligence, diligence, discipline, knowledge of human psychology.”

“From what I remember of grade school, the parish priests and nuns were pretty good cops, now that you mention it.”

“You remember that far back still?” she wondered.

“The oldest memories are the last to go.”

Max let his mind drift back to summer twilights in a grassy climate and ball games in the street, then snow and cold and hockey, the prick of ice skate blades slung over his shoulder through his down-quilted jacket. Sean’s ears scarlet under his stocking cap. They’d reddened when he was in Northern Ireland, drinking beer with him at pubs, two underage young guys behaving foolishly but harmlessly. Sean waving him off. Max felt the small soft hand in his, the girl bewitching and ripe and as easy to acquire as that illegal-in-the-U.S. Brit version of beer. Smiling, flirting, pulling him away from Sean, the beer, the pub to slake other thirsts at a private place she knew, for him to become a man in Ireland.…

Then the memory exploded.

“Whoa.” Molina caught the beer bottle before it crashed from his numb fingers to the coffee table top in front of them. “Brain crash?”

“Memory flash.”

“Not a good one.”

He nodded. “Mixed reviews, good and bad.” He placed the one-third-full bottle as carefully on the tabletop as he would if it were made of blown glass. “I just remembered I don’t drink beer if I can help it. Your hospitality has overwhelmed me, Lieutenant.”

“Me Molina. You Kinsella.” She picked up the bottle and left the room.

Max threaded his fingers, suddenly icy, together. This was a hell of a place to have a guilt attack, right in front of a homicide lieutenant.

A lowball glass with an inch and a half of amber liquid descended to the coffee table in front of him.

“It’s not the prime brand you keep at home,” she warned him, “but you need it.”

He did. He took a stinging gulp. “My legs are almost normal.”

“But not your head, yet.”

“Head and heart.”

“Regrets?”

He looked up. Her eyes were nonaccusing, and as blue as the Morning Glory Pool at Yellowstone. Memory, he thought, might hide in the depths of such eyes, eyes so like Kathleen O’Connor’s.

“Regrets? Do you mean about a certain engaged couple? No. Only that I’m the cause of a lot of the grief that people I’ve known have faced.”

“I hate to puncture your cozy, self-hating cocoon of ego and guilt, but you are not the cause. You are the mere pretext. The cause is this highly damaged and damaging psychopath you and your cousin had the bad luck to encounter.”

“So I’ll chase another will-o’-the-wisp. If I have a surviving psychopath, maybe Las Vegas is still haunted by vestiges of the mob, some greedy and retired old don who still wants to squeeze filthy lucre out of the trillion-dollar city.”

Molina sighed and sipped. “Vegas has indeed had an explosion of entrepreneurial interest in the mob,” she said. “There’s the forty-two million dollars of official civic museum in the same civil courts building that held Senate hearings to bust the mob in the ’50s. Now the Mob Attraction Las Vegas at the Tropicana is vying with the underground Chunnel of Crime that links the separate venues of the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters.”

“What is this fever for interactive attractions?” Max asked rhetorically. “It used to be that a magician inviting an audience member onstage to assist in an illusion was a biggie. Now people are expecting to see whole buildings disappear before their eyes.”

“Or elephants,” Molina said with a toasting gesture of her beer bottle.

“ Ahh, you’re talking about the elephant, the girl sitting on the elephant trunk, and the disappearing trunkful of prize money last week. I assume you got a report on that incident at the Oasis.”

“I got film, Kinsella. Not all of the street hucksters milling around that million-dollar giveaway were street hucksters.” She eyed him hard. “And you of all people know that from firsthand experience.”

Max took the fifth by not responding.

“The only thing I’m wondering,” Molina went on, “is if you and the Cloaked Conjuror switched places. You have the height to do it, and I imagine the Cloaked Conjuror might have enjoyed a few minutes performing out of his disguising carapace.”

“Carapace. Interesting word for a full head mask and a bulletproof padded costume that weighs sixty pounds. CC leads an insanely constricted life. I suspect someday he’ll take the money and run, never to be seen in Vegas again.”

“I’m guessing Matt Devine has the same hopes for you.”

Max shook his head. “I’m no threat. I’m not only crippled in mind and body, but I’ve got a brand-new girlfriend.”

“Lay off the ‘poor me’ stuff,” she was already saying, then exhibited the same indignant reaction as Matt Devine. “Wait a couple months or three. You’re performing in disguise as the Phantom Mage—the Cloaked Conjuror should sue you for that—when you get your bungee cord sabotaged and crash spectacularly. You’re spirited away to two months of coma and leg casts in a fancy Swiss clinic, end up on the run across Europe and Ireland, and come back here alive, crippled, and memory impaired. Yet you’ve replaced Temple Barr in your affections, presto change-o?”

“Yes,” Max said simply. “Want to see a photo?”

Before Molina could open her lips or shake her head to indicate “no,” he had his phone screen in front of her face. The first photo showed Revienne showing a lot of leg on a slot machine stool at the Paris. That was his favorite. He clicked through a couple of smashing portraits of her full face and in profile against the Paris’s beautifully lit balloon.

Molina sat speechless, a state that Max enjoyed more than he would ever let her see.

“That woman’s … a stunner,” she finally got out, “but I don’t see—”

“And überbright. Don’t let the façade make you underestimate the foundations. She’s a noted psychologist in Europe and here, works gratis on teenage eating disorders. Gutsy too. Went on the lam across the Alps in a Saint Laurent Paris suit and Charles Jourdan pumps. Hacked my casts off and begged food from Swiss farmers and other … necessary things for us.

“By the way,” he added, suddenly serious. “This is just a hunch from an accidental half-wit, but from what I’ve seen, no one could replace Temple Barr.” Max leaned back on the sofa, took a long satisfactory draft of whiskey, eyed Molina, and tapped the phone photo of Revienne. “I want you to run her through Interpol.”

“Okay. You have my jaw dropping. You must be very proud of yourself. And, meanwhile, you’re sleeping with this wonder woman?”

Max gave an affable shrug. “Or she’s sleeping with me. There’s a difference.” He turned the phone image to face him. “I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t believe in convenient escapes with bright, beautiful strangers. Remember The X-Files catch phrase: ‘Trust no one.’”