Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“You remind me of that PI that saw me yesterday.”

“PI?”

She nodded. “Now that she’s dead, everybody’s interested in Mandy. Or Cher. That was her real name. You know why strippers take stage names?”

“Privacy. It keeps the customers at a distance.”

“Yeah, sure. But for another reason. Most of us, we hate our real names. We heard them yelled at us since we could crawl. Maybe a slap came with it, or just more yelling, or…if we were real lucky, daddy or stepdaddy with a little game to play.”

Max nodded. “Makes sense.”

“So Mandy didn’t like to admit to the name Cher. But she told you. Why?”

“My honest face?”

Reno laughed with him. “No, you got to her. She acted like she’d been visited by the angel Gabriel the next day. And she did exactly what you said and went to a different club the next night. She was even going to call that radio shrink you mentioned when she got time. She was real happy when she died.”

Max closed his eyes.

He heard Reno inhale on her cigarette like a sigh.

“So it was mutual,” she said.

When he opened his eyes she was snuffing the cigarette in an empty Gerber glass jar.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll tell you what I told the PI. No one would want to kill Mandy but a freak. She was so harmless. That’s why we took her in here, same reason you brought her home. You aren’t the only softie left in Las Vegas, Vince. Ginger and I were real fond of Mandy.”

Reno teared up and looked away. “She was like a kid, still hoping things would turn out all right, just because. I guess she died quick.”

He nodded. “The police had a couple other women strangled about the same time, but there were markers at those scenes that weren’t there in Mandy’s case.”

“You do sound like a cop sometimes.”

“This PI. Who put him on the case?”

“Mandy’s family, I guess. That’s what she said.”

“She?”

“Yeah. There are lady PIs. I gotta say, the ones I’ve seen before were these little old dames all curlicued and mascaraed. You know, fifty-something types with bleached hair. This one was plain and simple, looked like she knew her stuff.”

“You get a name?”

“Sure, but I’m not sure I believe it. Vince. Vince? ”

“It does have a certain sleaze factor, Reno.”

She laughed and reached for another cigarette. “That it does. Serious lady. Not like you.”

“How not?”

“You’re relaxed. She was edgy. Didn’t really show it, but I know edgy. I think she knows her stuff, though, that’s why I talked to her. I want the creep who did Mandy to pay.”

Max nodded. “What did she look like?”

“Mandy?” Reno asked with exaggerated innocence.

He waited.

“Tall, real tall. If I were that tall I’d make twelve thousand more a year. But like I said, plain vanilla. See, that’s what’s wrong with you, Vince, you stand out. She didn’t. Except for those Bausch and Lomb eyes.”

“Eyes?”

“Seriously blue. Unreal.”

Max nodded again. “A handicap for a PI if you don’t want to be remembered.”

“Now, your eyes are—” Reno leaned forward through her own halo of cigarette smoke to study Max’s face. “Now, yours are blue, but nice quiet sky blue. If you toned down the rest of your image, you’d be pretty forgettable.”

“Thanks.”

“How do you know about these other women who were strangled? The PI didn’t mention that. You got an in with the cops?”

“Yeah. I cheat.”

“I believe you do.”

“You have any letters of Mandy’s? Any information on her friends, where she came from?”

“They never come from here, do they? Me neither. And I didn’t come from Reno, that’s for sure. No. The PI went through her things. You can too.”

Max stood. “Did she take anything?”

“Only notes. I see you don’t.”

“I’m looking for things that aren’t worth noting.”

Reno stood, sighed. “Well, that was Mandy, alive or dead.”

“Not true,” Max said.

“I guess we tried, huh?”

He didn’t say anything more.

“Not enough.” Reno turned and led him down the cramped hall.

Chapter 26

Polishing Off the Past

Matt pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of his down jacket. He felt like he had alighted from a time machine instead of a taxicab. The scene before him proved his problems were half a continent away. He savored the view: a snow-whited sepulcher of night in a city that counted wind chill factors instead of chips. Chicago. Safe at home. Kathleen O’Connor left behind in a lukewarm land of neon nightmares.

He dodged dirty mounds of slush, giant steps taking him from the cab to the restaurant’s huge wooden double doors. His bare palm grasped icy wrought iron and pulled one door open. Outside, the weather was cold enough that the hot, rushed atmosphere inside Polandski’s felt as welcome as a warming house on a January ice rink.

And it was already March in Chicago.

He watched waiters dressed in embroidered vests over white shirts careen to and fro, overloaded serving trays hoisted above their heads like little islands of pottery perched on the crack of a tectonic plate.

The constant balancing act was unnerving as the waitstaff sailed between tables crowded together, and crowded with customers. The noise level was a roar. To his chilled nostrils, the mingling scents of discreet sweat, hot sausage, and cold beer was narcotic.

“Sir?”

“I’m meeting someone.” Matt’s eyes panned the overpopulated room once more. It was embarrassing not to spot your own mother. “Mira—” What last name was she using now? He didn’t have the vaguest idea, even more embarrassing. He’d have to ask sometime.

“Oh, you’re Mira’s son!” The woman hostess was as rosy cheeked as a grade-schooler in December, despite being in her sixties. “Right this way.”

Her broad, embroidery-vested form tunneled a path through the chaos to a rear table for four.

His mother sat there fiddling with her silverware and keeping an eagle eye on the service transpiring at adjoining tables.

“Matt!” She leaped up when she belatedly saw him, smiling.

“Mom.”

They hugged over an intervening wooden captain’s chair.

“You look great,” Matt told her, pulling a heavy chair over the rough-tiled floor to sit at right angles to her. She had posted herself to see the door, but the intervening traffic had made him invisible.

“It’s these fancy clothes.” She modestly touched her fingertips to the shoulders of the aqua blue blouse he had bought her for Christmas.

But it wasn’t just the blouse, or the blue topaz earrings, also a gift from Matt. Her hair had been cut and fluffed into a cloud of blond intermixed with gray, a totally natural effect that somehow seemed expensively colored. God was still the best hair stylist around.

She looked at least ten years younger than her fifty-three years. Matt noticed that adjoining diners were still eyeing them speculatively after overhearing their greeting. He didn’t look over thirty himself, so mental math was being frantically done at all the surrounding tables, much to Matt’s amusement. If they only knew his history, and hers.

“You look,” he said, sincerely amazed, “like a new woman. Is it the new job?”

“Partly.” Her expression as she glanced around mixed caution and pride. Her voice lowered. “Serving as hostess at a famous place like this requires a little more maintenance than I needed at Thaddeus’s Café in the old neighborhood. The Polandsky is a big tourist attraction. We even get movie stars in. Kevin Costner.”

“Well, you look fit to escort a movie star, Mom.”