Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

Herbie jerked his head, loosening taut neck muscles. “It’s a pretty good job. I meet some very interesting people.”

“But you really get tipped for what you don’t do,” Alfonso insinuated. By now he was smirking like a fellow transgressor.

Wolverton glanced at Su. “I don’t get it … ‘what I don’t do.’ “

Alfonso rested his forearms on the table and leaned inward, taking up more than half the surface, edging into Wolverton’s space.

“A happy fellow, a good citizen, would report solicitation instead of profiting from it. Las Vegas ain’t no chicken ranch down the highway. That stuff is illegal here.”

“Everybody does it. Why are you on me about it?”

“Because you’re lying,” Su finally interjected. “What red-blooded male could forget what room Vassar went into and who was in it? The tip for placing her with a customer must have been big.”

“Su,” Alfonso remonstrated, “you’re forgetting one thing. Maybe Herbie here isn’t a red-blooded male.”

“Hey, I’m as red-blooded as any hunk of meat out there. But it’s a business, see. Faces come and go in Las Vegas like everybody’s on a merry-go-round. There’s no point in remembering something you’ll never see again. Besides, I dig girls, not guys. Why would I take inventory of just another john?”

Alfonso leaned closer. “Haven’t you had any famous checkins?”

“Yeah. Ah, Mel Gibson one time. And Rod Steiger before he died. But they didn’t want call girls, I remember that. Most other people are pretty anonymous.”

“Why do you use Judith Rothenberg?” Su asked out of the blue.

“Why not? Her girls are clean and classy. You never have trouble with a Rothenberg girl.”

“Until now,” Sue pointed out. “Is that it? Are you paid to keep quiet if anything goes wrong? Is Rothenberg taping your mouth and your memory shut?”

“Naw, she wouldn’t have enough pull to make me risk my skin.”

“Who would?” Alfonso asked.

“Nobody. Nobody’s bribing me, I swear it. I got a good deal here. I make enough to get along, and if you don’t like how I get my biggest tips, face it; it’s just business in L.V. Even you guys have to hype yourself up to make a periodic hooker roundup, and then you go for the street types.”

“We don’t do that,” Alfonso said softly. “We don’t mess with any of that. We are homicide detectives, Herbie. I don’t think you get how big this case is.”

Sweat was glistening on his forehead now, Molina noticed, but the boyish blue eyes remained bulging and defiant.

It wasn’t treats that made this dog go; it was threats. Someone had scared the shinola out of him.

Su’s narrowed eyes announced the same conclusion.

“She’s got it,” Alch murmured with satisfaction.

“Got what?” Barrett asked, annoyed. “This guy responds to force. Look at how Alfonso’s got him crowded half off his own chair. As nice a job of creeping intimidation as I’ve seen in a while.”

“Exactly,” Molina said. “So what force is big enough to shut him up even when facing that kind of intimidation?”

“Money,” Alch said. “A lot of money.”

“Someone with more force,” Barrett said.

“Right, Barrett.” Molina threw Alch an also-ran smile. “This guy has seen Godzilla. Otherwise he’d be squealing like Randy the Rat. Money wouldn’t keep him mum on a murder case, if we’ve got one.”

“And he’s scared enough to make me think we do,” Barrett said.

Now Su was leaning into the table, but only slightly, her shoulders tilted, her air just a trifle big sister. “You were the only one, Herb. The only one to peek into the room where Vassar’s assailant waited. I know a big tip wouldn’t keep you from making the guy. I know you called Vassar to that room, that you take your job seriously and you wouldn’t want anyone messing with some classy lady you had sent up to her death.”

“Shuddup!” Wolverton clapped his hands over his ears. “I didn’t see no monster lurking behind that door. Nothing to remember. An ordinary guy, all right! I forget faces like that eight days a week. One ride up and down in the elevator and I couldn’t remember my own mother’s mug. You don’t know what it’s like. Faces, faces, hands, hands, bags, bags. Even hundred-dollar bills get to look like ones. I’m telling you the truth. Nothing registers.”

“Except johns who want high-dollar suites,” Alfonso pounced, “so they can abuse high-dollar call girls.”

“Maybe, but I read the paper too. You guys didn’t find any marks of violence on the body. Maybe the woman fell, huh? Maybe she just fell.”

“Or jumped,” Su put in.

Herb Wolverton jumped at the suggestion. “Yeah. Who knows how these broads really feel about what they do? I mean, sometimes I gotta tote and haul for some arrogant prick that makes me feel two inches tall. It goes with the territory, but the turf can be pretty mean. I shrug it off, but someone like Vassar, whose services are more … personal. It might get sick, you know what I mean? She might … get driven into something she hates herself for. So, yeah. She could have jumped. But I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“And you don’t know where you weren’t, because you can’t remember the room number she went into on her last visit, or a thing about the looks of the guy who opened the door.” Alfonso’s tone was scathing.

“No. I can’t.” Wolverton was not caving into anything, intimidation or angst.

“The mob, do you think?” Barrett asked Molina on the other side of the window glass. “Vassar could have been some godfather’s favorite, and it could have gotten ugly, like Wolverton says. He doesn’t look like a guy who’d cross organized crime.”

“Organized crime is so corporate in this town nowadays,” Molina objected. “And if he’d had the bad luck to really tread on some old-time neanderthal toes, he’d be buried in the Mojave by now.”

“Yeah.” Alch stood and turned his chair back to face the two-way mirror. “It doesn’t make sense: Wolverton `forgetting’ every detail and still being here to not tell the tale. Something scared him, and it wasn’t mob, or muscle. It was worse.”

“I agree,” Molina said, standing too. She caught both their glances and didn’t let go. “Your partners did a great interrogation job, but they’re up against something that’s got this guy whammied. We’ll watch his bank account for a bribe, see if he does anything unusual. Or if … he really does have a lousy memory.”

The men filed out, discouraged, meeting their partners in the hall for mutual head-shaking.

Molina went next door, shut it, and confronted Herb Wolverton.

“My name is Molina. Lieutenant. You know something we should. So whatever you’re afraid of, be more afraid. We’ll be on your case too. You owe money, you’re afraid of goons. Be more afraid of us. You owe Mr. Big a favor, you’re afraid of a grave in the sand. Be more afraid of us. There’s something else out there that gives you the heebie-jeebies. It’s not anything to worry about. Worry about us.

“That’s it. You can go now. Back to the Goliath and the happy fellah job. If you really want to.”

Wolverton took a few moments to think over standing up. When he did, his eyes took in her Amazonian measure. He edged to the door, and Molina opened it.

He looked up, and up, at her.

And then he made his last stand.

“Vassar was about your size, Lieutenant. And she’s dead.”

He scurried into the hall. Molina stepped out to watch him run the gauntlet of her unhappy homicide detectives.

He avoided eye contact and hastened to push the elevator button, visibly fidgeting while it creaked its way to their floor.