Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

Someone caught up with her.

“What’s going on?” A voice behind her.

She turned. “Larry. What’re you doing here?”

“Heard the buzz. Now that I’m off undercover, I can’t sleep nights. Did too much action then. So I listen to what’s going down on the police channels. Looks like a tragedy.” He nodded back toward the fallen girl.

“Sixteen? Yeah, a tragedy.”

He scanned the mall’s hulking profile, haloed by the city’s constant aurora of artificial light. “The most innocent public places are where the dirtiest deals go down. Malls. Hotel parking lots. No safe place anymore.”

“Not news.”

“You’ve got a kid. Is she too young for malls by herself?”

“Young,” she conceded, recalling the recent madcap shopping expedition with the trace of a smile. “And not `young’ enough for my taste.”

“That’s why you care. That’s why you came out personally.”

Molina shook her head, leaned against her car’s front fender. “No. That wouldn’t keep me up nights. It’s a case, that’s all.”

“Are you sure it isn’t personal?”

“Anyone killed on my watch is personal.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility, Lieutenant.”

“Goes with the job title.”

He leaned against the car beside her. He’d be sorry.

She recalled that it was dusty. Who had time to visit a car wash? Multitasking.

“I, ah, lost that sense of being personally responsible,” he said. “I miss it. I was responsible for living up to my false identity. Period. It took all my energy and all my cunning.”

“Cunning. I think of that as a criminal attribute.”

“Right. I needed criminal attributes.”

“Must be hard to drop.”

“The hours are. Let me follow you home, make sure you get there.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t drive this town at night alone, why have a firearm or a shield?”

“I’m trying to be a regular guy here.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I think you might have a regular girl in there somewhere.”

“Regular equals helpless?”

“Regular equals liking company.”

“Not now. I’m not a babysitter for insomniac narcs. I’ve got my own baby to sit.”

He backed off, literally. “Sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have come out. I’m just not used to being out of the loop, that’s all. Guess I just wanted to bullshit about the crime scene, whatever. Talk the talk. See a … friendly face.”

She could’ve sworn he was about to have said “pretty.”

Unbelievable! But maybe she was doing him an injustice.

Sensing her irritation, he shifted topics. “That guy you tried to con me out of. You know, the address the other night. I’m betting that he’s personal.”

“If he is, then it’s really none of your business.”

He ignored her warning. “Ex-cop. L.A. I see that’s where you came here from.”

“I see that you’ve been digging deeper into personnel records.”

“You did it first. Karlinski in Records mentioned it to me.”

Molina felt her face heat up, whether from annoyance or being caught, she couldn’t tell.

“Listen.” He came closer and lowered his voice. “Undercover cops know better than most that the lines between professional and personal can get blurred in police work. You wanted to take something from me without my knowing it. Think what a lot more you could get if you were up front about it. That Nadir guy is trouble, I can smell it, and he worries you. Accidents isn’t putting me to work 24/7, the way I used to work. I got a lotta free hours. I could help.”

“You’re volunteering? For what?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Why?”

“I’m bored.”

“Not what I need.”

“And I think you could use more of a social life.”

She pushed off her car. “What would give you that idea? That’s the last thing I want, need, have time for.”

“Case closed.”

“I don’t even like you.”

“Not a problem.” He grinned. “I’m still losing my street persona. I’ll get cuddlier.”

“Give it up. You are not my type.”

“Oh, you think you have a ‘type.’ That’s progress. Let me guess: tall, lean, and mean. Early Clint Eastwood, right?”

Molina felt herself flush for real. “You’re pursuing this, not me.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be, have you forgotten?”

“Maybe. And I like it that way.” She opened her car door, paused, considered, and said “Good-night.” He backed away to let her drive out of the parking slot, hands in the pockets of his nylon shell jacket, watching her with head lowered, a bit boyishly.

She headed into the maze of access roads that circled the mall.

Not her type.

But better than Rafi Nadir.

Although, who wasn’t?

At home, sweet home Dolores napped on the couch while early-morning TV blared. Molina hated to awaken her, but she knew Dolores would want to be home with her own kids and husband. So she saw her out and watched her cross the street to her own door and safely enter.

In the distance, low-riders grumbled like very disgruntled thunder. That was a negative of living in a Latino neighborhood, but in Anglo neighborhoods it would be costly car stereo systems cranked up loud enough to keep the canals on Mars awake. One way or another, the young bucks in the neighborhood have to make their presence known.

Mariah was sleeping hard in her room, face buried in a tangle of covers.

Molina went to her bedroom and deposited her weapons in the closet gun safe. She could never open the large metal cabinet without brushing against Carmen’s array of vintage velvet gowns. Velvet and steel. It sounded like the title of a supermarket romance novel.

Carmen hadn’t come out to sing and play at the Blue Dahlia lately. Maybe the on-premises body a few months back had accomplished that. Maybe Molina had just been too busy.

She started taking off her clothes … shoes kicked off first. She slipped out of her jacket and blouse, slacks, then sat on the bed to pull off the dark socks she wore with her working “uniform.”

Something slid into her back as her weight created a sinkhole for whatever was on the bed.

What was on the bed? Shouldn’t be anything. She kept a military-neat room, unlike her darling daughter, the mistress of mess… .

A box lay there on her grandmother’s patchwork quilt. A gaudy gilt-paper box. Had Mariah performed one of her random acts of preteen sweetness?

Molina opened it, not surprised by the array of fancy chocolates but by the unfamiliar handwriting on the tiny envelope inside.

She pulled the flap loose to withdraw the stiff note card. The same handwriting that had written “For you” on the envelope had written “Sweets to the sour” on the card inside.

She stood there staring at the black-ink block lettering in the dim light of the overhead ceiling fixture.

Was this some clumsy attempt at humor, or a threat?

Mariah, veering wildly in the bipolar state that was ‘tweendom, might be apologizing and complaining at one and the same time. Or …

This might be from someone else. Like Dirty Larry. Was he a colleague, a would-be boyfriend … or a stalker? He was the only new man in her life … or was this a calling card from a former man in her life?

Rafi Nadir. Now that they’d finally run into each other, he knew that she lived and worked here in Las Vegas. He had a lot of reasons to resent her. Sweets to the sour. The line reeked of bitter anger; was it for leaving him without notice? Like you’d mention to a strike-poised rattlesnake that you’d decided to back off.

Had he found her address after she’d visited him the other night without warning to give him a warning? Turnabout foul play?