Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“Here it is. Rafi Nadir. Made sergeant in L.A., for about one month. I’ll call down there to check his story.”

Molina scanned the familiar form, memorizing the only two facts she needed. “Looks like a loser,” she commented. “If we can use him, that’s good enough.”

“Right.” She stood. “Don’t stay up too late. You could use a beauty sleep.”

Dirty Larry Paddock laughed as she eased out the door. She heard the one-handed typewriting resume while she paused, repeating the numbers over and over to herself.

Address and telephone number. That was all she needed. Not what she wanted, but what she needed.

Chapter 55

Same Old Song

The apartment was like a million buildings in a thousand Sunbelt cities: three stories, pale stucco, rust stains running like tears from the window air-conditioners.

Dogs barked ceaselessly in the distance, always three streets over and five doors down. Not quite traceable, so no one could call the cops, who wouldn’t come anyway.

Molina always thought that owners who staked their dogs out and left them to bark ought to be staked out and left to whine for at least three days. Minimum.

But she was in a bad mood now, and nothing about this shabby neighborhood did anything but exacerbate her anger. And fear. Where goeth anger, there always goeth fear.

This was the last thing on earth she wanted to do, and the first thing she had to do to take steps to protect her world from

the asteroid heading right for the heart of it.

Molina slammed the car door of her aging Toyota shut.

For a moment the lost dogs paused in their chorus, then their raw, mechanical barks resumed.

No one listened to them anymore. No one heard. She could have been an ax murderer and no one in this neighborhood would peek out.

The apartment lobby was six steps up and paved with brutalized mailboxes. No Social Security check would rest safe here.

She checked the apartment number she’d read on the Maylords employee sheet. Listed in fading pencil to an R. A. Reed.

Right.

She went up eight more stairs that bent and wound up another eight steps.

The hall rug was sculptured pea green poly, disfigured by an ancient eczema of stains.

A fire door led to a dingy hallway with bug-dotted brushed glass light covers.

At 2C she rang the buzzer.

And waited.

Not long. The occupant had been up late. Oh, yeah.

He pulled the door almost all the way open, challenging whoever had the guts to call at this early morning hour. He hadn’t expected her.

The door swung partly shut again, before she stuck her sturdy loafer in it.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Rafi needed a shave. He had needed to shave twice a day anyway when he was regulation. Now, after a postmidnight

interrogation, he looked like a Kabul terrorist.

“Why not before?” he said. “You were there.” - She didn’t bother denying it. “I don’t like to be recorded. Do you?”

“I might, if you were there.”

“Won’t happen. My middle name is ‘Off-the-record’ on this.”

” ‘This’ is me, right? My life.”

“I am armed and dangerous. Are you? I think they took your toy gun away.”

“That Colt wasn’t mine. I’d never carry a pussy gun like that.”

Molina raised her Mr. Spock eyebrow. It had always drivenRafi nuts. “It was in your hands in the Maylords lot. Picked up from right beside you.”

“How’d you know that?”

She was a desk jockey now, an expert at scanning reports in a few seconds for the meat, that was how. But she had more clout if she didn’t say so. She was beginning to understand the weasley Kinsella modus operandi.

“I’m working the Maylords murders. They don’t look like drug hits.”

“No, they don’t. They aren’t. At least I don’t think so.”

“Oh, were you hired to think?”

“I thought enough to see the drug smuggling going down.”

“Yes. Rafi Nadir, Boy Scout snitch. Quite a change.”

“Me change? Hell, Carmen, you changed first and biggest.”

“I won’t talk about the past.”

“Too bad. That’s all I’m interested in.”

“Your problem. Just tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Here? Living, if you can call it that.”

“In Las Vegas.”

I-k shook his head, shrugged. “All roads lead to Las Vegas. I follow all roads. If I’da known you were here, I’da been in

Reno.”

“Wouldn’t we have been lucky?”

“I’m not leaving. I like the place, even though you’re here.”

“You may not have a choice. If the drug task force doesn’t like you, you can be sure they’ll make you leave.”

“They let me go, Lieutenant Chief Petty Officer Carmen, Sir. I know the routine. They had anything, they’d have kept me.

They can’t prove I did anything but call in the Maylords action.”

“And the gun?”

“Not mine. One of those wussy Wild Bunchette guys dropped it at my feet like a bouquet.”

He was looking intolerably smug about something. It had to be more than his knee-jerk disdain for anyone not macho. Something about the Colt story was dead wrong, but Molina didn’t know where to find the lie. Meanwhile, he was continuing to justify himself, and his presence at last night’s incident.

“Wasn’t I right to arm myself in that shooting gallery? Had a nice talk with the narcs about all the drug action in L.A. Who we knew in common. I’m one of the boys still, Carmen. You’re just an uppity woman taking some guy’s job.”

She expressed her anger by pushing past him to eye the premises.

Living room, eating bar between that and a tiny kitchen, a short hall probably leading to one bedroom and a bathroom.

Everything was neat and in its place, despite the shabby surroundings.

For a minute she felt the room was rocketing away from her. She was standing someplace else, on a different planet, in an apartment they’d shared in L.A. In the bathroom. Holding a diaphragm up to the light. Revelation through a pinhole. Mariah.

Her daughter should know about this man, and this apartment? Alch was nuts. Never.

“You look a little queasy,” someone was saying. “The way you always did before singing. Sit down. The bedbugs won’t bite. I Raided them out.”

Someone had thrown a blanket depicting dog breeds over a chair. Molina perched on that, aware of the paddle holster

digging into her right rear hip.

Rafi Nadir passed a palm over his face, as if hoping to wipe it clean of fatigue and anger. “I didn’t do anything wrong

tonight. Nothing illegal. I’m not afraid of the drug guys. I’m clean. You, though, I’m afraid of.”

“You? Afraid of me?”

“Well, leery maybe. I got some Sprite. Settle your stomach. You want some?”

The Sprite didn’t surprise her. The offer did.

“You can drink it out of the can, all right? Only the rats and the cockroaches in the grocery store stockroom ran over it.

Untouched by my hands. Pop your own top.”

The last comment was inciting, but she was too tired to take it up.

Instead, she took the refrigerator-chilled can of soda he brought back, sweating with icy condensation.

“Everything went wrong tonight,” he was saying. “Youthink you’re worried about me? I’m worried about that little gal the biker took hostage. The narcs shot their clips and got into rounding up the gang, and me. Her, they didn’t give a shit.”

“Little girl?” Molina parroted, thinking about Mariah despite herself.

“Ballsy little broad. Red hair. I helped her out at Secrets and she’s got some sort of nerve for a squirt.”

Molina stood, the Sprite can’s contents baptizing the apartment’s hopeless carpet.