Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Temple could have given her reasons. She could have quoted John Donne that “no man is an island.” She could have mentioned her knack for unraveling crimes.

Temple put down her empty martini glass too. The truce in Amelia Wong’s frenetic, singled-minded work style was over.

Wong had bodyguards enough to survive a shooting spree without quivering. But Temple had been among the innocent extras who could have been caught, fatally, in the crossfire. Pampered Amelia Wong wouldn’t understand that if fear didn’t kill you, it made you angry.

Temple decided in ending the interview to go for inscrutable and just smile.

Too bad her next social appointment-cum-interrogation was going to give her zilch to smile about. And then some.

Chapter 17

Hot Water

A cafeteria was an unlikely place to rendezvous with a big bad bogeyman from a homicide lieutenant’s past, Temple

thought, eyeing the joint.

But maybe the apple-pie ambiance was just the right unlikely setting for a “date” with Rafi Nadir. Temple spotted him already seated by a window, a brown tray serving as a portable place mat before his folded arms.

His swarthy looks and solo state made him look out of place among Wonder-bread families chowing down at all the surrounding tables.

She shuffled through the line in her turn, trying to quiet the butterflies in her stomach. Rafi Nadir was one bad dude. Everybody said so. He was a rogue ex-cop turned hired muscle for shady operators. He liked to hang out at strip clubs. His former significant other regarded him as the Great Satan even after thirteen years apart.

Temple was nuts to meet him alone like this, but he seemed to like her for some unfathomable reason. Temple, and the ex-reporter in her, could never resist an easy source, no matter how dangerous.

So she shuffled through the line in her summer espadrilles, too nervous to eat much, nailing the last lime Jell-O dish to accompany her red dye

3 barbecue-sauced pile of beef brisket. Her tray had an unseasonably Christmassy air, but it couldn’t be helped. Cafeteria food was not her favorite.

She filled a huge paper cup with a cataract of tiny ice cubes and watered them well before she joined Nadir.

Nobody she knew would approve of her coming within six tables of separation from him. But Temple suffered from congenital curiosity, a feline predisposition that sometimes manifested itself in other species.

Nadir looked up from an uninspired mound of ketchup-frosted meatloaf and nodded. She sat to deploy her dishes on the plastic veneer tabletop. If he got too frisky she could heave the plate of brisket at him … or season the encounter by drawing the pepper spray from her straw tote bag.

“Now I see why you’re so little,” he said.

Temple eyed her meat-and-Jell-O meal. “I’m on the go a lot. I got used to odd foods.”

“Why didn’t you want to meet on the Strip?”

“It’s so noisy and crowded.” And there’s too much chance of my being recognized there.

Nadir sipped his black coffee. “I’da figured you to want as many people around as possible. Why are you afraid of me?”

“Well … I don’t know any guys who hang around strip clubs.”

“You think you don’t know any guys like that.”

She didn’t argue. It would be too hard to explain that the guys she knew best included an ex-priest.

Temple shrugged and pushed the beef away after nibbling two slices. The Jell-O was more fun, and challenging, to eat.

Nadir shook his head. “I met you at a strip club, remember?”

“Yeah, but I was there on a mission of mercy. So to speak.”

“Maybe I was too.”

“You? I mean, you did help me out by decking the Stripper Killer, but that was just because you happened along.““Maybe

not.”

“You were following me-?”

“Not that way. Don’t get your Jell-O in a puddle. I’m an ex-cop. I’ve got a suspicious mind.” “So do I.”

“That’s good. Little girls who stick their noses in big messes should have suspicious minds.”

“Big guys who put down little girls who carry pepper spray should wear big goggles.”

“Jeez, women today have more chips on their shoulders than the Jacksonville Jags have shoulder pads.” He tore open a blue packet of Equal and poured the powder into his coffee, as if sweetening it would sweeten up Temple. “You weren’t making a name for yourself as Tess the Thong Girl in that club because your sister sells spandex by the Strip side. No way. And you’re not a cop, city payroll or private. And secretaries don’t rate the attention you get. So what the hell are you?”

“You heard last night at Maylords: a public relations consultant.”

“Now, that’s a job title that’s subject to interpretation,” he said with a semi-official smirk. “But that I believe. So why were you pretending to be someone else at the strip club? Don’t tell me that’s how you snag new clients.”

Temple sighed and pushed away the green Jell-O, which was melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I did PR for a stripper convention over a year ago and met some of the women. When they started getting killed, I talked to a few of my contacts and … I was a TV reporter years ago. I smelled a story, that’s all.” “I smell a story too. ‘Years ago.’ What are you? Twentyfour?”

“Thirty!”

“You won’t be so fast to give your age in a few more years, cookie.” He grinned. “So. You don’t trust me because you

found me in a strip club.”

“I don’t trust you because I don’t know you. And you sure rushed away before the police came. Why? You could have played the hero.”

“You sprayed the guy. I just made sure that he stayed down. But I can see your point. I look like a loser.”

“Not a loser-” Temple couldn’t stand to see anyone putting himself down. She realized that this was a bad habit, smacking of enabling. Every good deed had a diagnosis these days. Even Rafi Nadir lifted skeptical eyebrows. “You wrote me off as a loser. And a bad dude on top of it, maybe even-”

“The Stripper Killer, right. I was wrong there.”

“Apparently.” He laughed. “You’re a lot tougher than you look. Listen.” He leaned forward, his intensity fixing her to the spot. “Being a cop is like being in a secret club. The secret is that no one knows what it’s like except another cop. You’re a necessary evil twentyfour hours a day. Sure, citizens are glad to see you on a crime scene, but drive along the street and watch even the most innocent avert their eyes. You’re a cop. You could object to how they’re driving at any moment, pull them over. And you never know when you pull a traffic violation over whether it’s Miss Tess’s harmless aunt Agatha … or an escaped con with a concealed weapon. You gotta trust no one to be what they seem. Ever. So I’m not surprised even a nice, safe-streets little lady like you isn’t what she seems.”

“I’m sure it’s rough-”

“Cops aren’t that different from strippers, see? No one really knows much about their lives, except to avoid them or use them if they have to. That’s the way it gets with cops and crooks and strippers. We’re all on opposite sides of the law when cops are enforcing ‘community standards,’ but we’re part of the same club. On the inside.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

He grunted as he tucked into his meatloaf. “You never thought. So what did you want to know?”

“You said something funny was going on at Maylords,” Temple began.

He nodded again. “The management has an awful high level of anxiety for a furniture store. They kept some of us hired security guys on after the opening. I’d figured they were worriedabout that Wong woman. I can’t see why she would get death threats.”