Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“No, you don’t?’ She tried to weave past but he held up a hand. She stopped rather than crash into it chest first.

This was the only man she had ever seen put the fear of the Lord into her own intrepid SO, Max Kinsella. And Max was a pro at skullduggery and derring-do. Temple was just a gifted amateur.

“I know you.” Nadir stared at her face, and glanced down to take her measure.

He was the creepiest guy she’d ever met, a cross between the mad guru Jim Jones, who’d poisoned all his followers in Guyana three decades ago, and Qaddafi. He had that same dark Mideastern handsomeness that age was melting into the face of a corpse laid out for viewing, something once good gone terribly wrong.

Molina had told Max, reluctantly, that Nadir was a rogue L.A. cop driven off the force. It took some doing to be driven off the L.A. force, from what Temple had heard. But Nadir had been turning up in all the wrong places in Las Vegas lately. That was especially bad news for Molina, who had hoped she and their daughter, Mariah, had vanished from his life years ago, before he even knew he had a daughter.

Nadir’s forefinger pointed at Temple’s naked face like a gun barrel. “Starts with a T.” “What?” Temple’s icky thoughts had scared her into a distracted state.

“Your name.”

How could he know her name? She had crossed paths with him when she was investigating the clubs in search of the Stripper Killer, but that guy had been caught-trying to abduct Temple-when she had laid him low with her pepper spray. Sure, Nadir had come on the scene and decked the guy after, but she had been wearing a long brown wig that, thankfully, had stayed firmly pinned on during the entire incident.

And she’d used a pseudonym in the clubs, posing as a seller of lingerie to strip off.

“Tess!” he said. “Tess the Thong Girl.”

Temple glanced around to see if any of her temporary bosses were within hearing distance. She’d thought that undercover persona of hers was safely history, along with the armful of stripper unitards that she sold by the spandex yard at the clubs while hunting the Stripper Killer. So had anyone heard this revealing challenge? Thankfully, no. Worryingly, no.

“That’s who you are,” he said. “I never forget a face, even if the hair over it changes.”

Temple decided to embrace the moment. “Yeah, but that’s not who I really am.” “Who are you, then?”

She realized she did not, absolutely not, want to give him her real name.

“Well, I wasn’t who you thought I was:’

“I get that.” He looked around. “This looks like your kind of crowd, the upscale pricks and princesses who live the chichi

life.”

“Oh, no, I’m just a working girl.” Wrong phrase. “I mean, an ordinary Jill who works for a living. I’m a … secretary. Sort of.” “What were you doing in the clubs, then?”

“It’s true, what I told you then. Sort of. My sister was involved. She danced a little and, with the Stripper Killer loose, I was worried about her.”

He nodded, coming to the conclusion she’d desperately been implying. “So you got the crazy idea of going undercover in the clubs? If you hadn’t been carrying that pepper spray, babe, you’da been strangled with your own spandex unitards.” “Hey, you know what they’re called. That’s pretty impressive?’

“I spend a lot of time in the clubs, doing security?’

“You did come along just in time to save my skin.”

“Yeah.” When he smiled his face lost some of its sinister cast. “What were you thinkin’? Little girl like you takin’ on the Stripper Killer. You went right over and sat with me before that. I was a strange guy. You ought to be more careful:’ Yes, Temple had risked a lot to sit down and try to pump Rafi Nadir. He was the only man to instill fear in both Max and their bete noir in blue, figuratively speaking, homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina, who were the two most formidable people Temple knew. One she loved, the other she loathed. Not hard to say which was which!

“Anyway,” Rafi was saying, “you look a little harried. I guess they have you running your ass all over the place on opening night. You deserve a rest. Why don’t you sit down on this, uh”-he stared at an ostrich-pattern ottoman shaped like a giant mushroom-“leather thing and I’ll get you a glass of wine. Red or white?”

“Ah . white. Please. Thank you. Joe.”

“My name’s really Rafi. This is just a cover.” His thumb and forefinger flicked the name tag, dismissive. “They call me

Rd.”

“Thanks. Raf.”

Temple sat as directed, no longer harried, or worried, but amazed.

When opportunity falls into your lap, and comes bearing free wine in a plastic glass … you’d better play along and learn something.

“Won’t they miss you?” she asked when Rafi returned with the proper-colored wine.

“Nah. Tonight the security’s for show. What they’re really worried about happens when things are quieter.” “Really? What?”

“Can’t talk about that. So. What’s a nervy little secretary like you doing with a stripper for a sister?” “It happens in the best of families.”

“I did security for a lot of the clubs. Would I know her?”

“Maybe, but’s she’s back in Wisconsin now. That killer scare made her finally go home and make peace with the folks.”

He nodded. “Usually you can’t go home again, someone said. I sure can’t. Strippers don’t often make it. You must be a good example. Anybody cared enough about me to risk her neck in a strip club with a killer at large, I’d be real grateful. You’re a ballsy little broad.”

Temple tried hard not to blush at such heartfelt praise. All three words set her teeth on edge, although she did sort of

cotton to “ballsy.” Wait’ll she told Max.

Then again, maybe she wouldn’t tell Max that she was Rafi Nadir’s new poster girl.

“You know,” he went on, waving his hand at the crowd, “I can’t sit down, by the way. Duty-but, you know, it’s real hard to turn a stripper around. When I was a cop, you’d try to get them to testify on something, or report a DV, and they just wouldn’t do it.”

“DV?”

“Domestic violence. That’s why I burned out on police work. It was a losing battle, and even your fellow officers and the brass couldn’t do any good.”

Well! Rafi Nadir as a misunderstood knight in blue? It was just possible, Temple thought. She never liked to believe the Gospel according to Molina, and according to Molina, Nadir was a brute worth keeping away from twelve-year-old Mariah even at the cost of her mother’s career.

Poles. Positive and negative. His truth and her truth. Both possibly right, and right about each other?

“So why’d you leave police work?” Temple, the ex-TV reporter, asked. “Burnout I can understand. But it must have been something more.”

Rafi surveyed the crowd, more to avoid looking her in the eye than for surveillance purposes, Temple guessed.

“I had a partner. Not a job partner, a personal one. She, uh, was the right gender and the right minority. Went up like a helium balloon. I was the wrong minority and the wrong gender. I got sick of the hypocrisy. I left.”

“The job or the significant other?”

“Both.” He looked back at her. Shrugged. “I helped her at first. Built her confidence, clued her in. Didn’t see it coming.

Then it was Hasta la vista, baby. She split so fast and so totally I couldn’t even find her to ask why.”

Temple didn’t like the raw edge in Raf’s voice. It was angry and it was honest. He said. She said. The same old story, quest for love and glory. As time goes by. He was Bogart; Molina was Bergman. Not! Temple had an overactive theatrical imagination. She’d be the first to admit it.