Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

If progress was made tonight, if they could get closer to a chargeable suspect on the Cher Smith murder, the pressure would ease. The charade could stop, and she could go after the quarry she really wanted with brass knuckles: Max Kinsella, signed, sealed, and delivered for assorted felonies. Or Murder One would do. Maybe solving this case would take care of that matter for her at one and the same time.

The idea was so satisfying that she smiled.

The music stopped. Silence was more shocking than sound.

“Quick,” Molina said under her breath to Alch.

He heard her. The barefoot boy with mouth agape was gone, replaced by a canny investigator. Their quarry was momentarily accessible.

Together they burst like gangbusters through the small wooden door with its upper half all window.

“Police,” Molina said before the kid in the hot seat could do more than squirm.

He half stood, gulping like a guppy, trapped in his fishbowl of a booth, a place so transparent that almost nobody ever noticed it. She had.

“Police,” she repeated, aware of their plainclothes.

“Take it easy, son. This is just a routine inquiry.”

This was why she’d brought Morrie along. There was hardly a savage soul to be found in Las Vegas that his easygoing manner couldn’t soothe: antsy, acne-ridden, teenage DJs among them.

“This is Lieutenant Molina,” Morrie was saying. “My name is Alch. I know, it sounds like I’m burping. Just think of mulch or gultch. But you don’t have to think of anything but what you might have seen. Answer a couple questions and you’ll never see me — us — again.”

“Questions? I only get a five-minute break.”

“That might be against labor laws,” Molina said.

“So what?” the boy demanded. “You think I’d give up this cool job just for a longer break?”

“What’s so cool about it?” Morrie asked. “Besides the scenery?” His suited shoulder shrugged toward the empty stages.

“The music, man. I get to do it all. Next step is my own radio show.”

Molina nodded, leaning against the closed door. “Who picks the music?”

“The girls mostly. They have their routines worked out. Sometimes I get to suggest numbers, though. Depends on the girl.”

“Okay, son…say, what’s your name?”

A silence held that matched the unnatural sound of silence in the larger room beyond.

“First name,” Alch settled for.

“Tyler.”

“So, Tyler, what’s the attraction with this here job, other than cutting a career path to the top ten radio stations. Hours sort of stink. Nobody notices you much.”

“Are you kidding, man? The girls notice me plenty. They’d be lost without me. I miss a cue, they look stupid. Like I say, I help a lot of them with their routines. All the guys in my class would kill to have this job.”

“Just what class are you in?” Molina’s tone implied “underage.”

“Senior,” he said. Sneered. Didn’t like teacher types asking him to account for himself, big man like him. “I’m okay to work here, nights or whenever.”

“I wish I’d had a job like this at your age,” Alch put in, pulling the kid’s attention away from Molina. Teenage boys didn’t like female authority figures. It takes a few decades to get used to it. Did for Morrie anyway. Maybe kids today were faster studies. He doubted it.

He glanced at Molina, broadcasting his thinking.

She subsided, amused.

He didn’t often get a chance to take the lead with her. He was surprised that she didn’t care, but she didn’t. He realized that this was why she’d ordered him along. Male bonding. Sort of.

“I gotta admit,” Morrie went on, doing his Columbo imitation, “it’s pretty hard to hear the music out there. It’s all boom box, you know?”

“Yeah. It’s a generation thing. The point is the beat, the bass. That’s all there is. You’re not supposed to notice the lyrics or anything. We’re selling beat, bump, oomph.”

“Well,” Molina said, “we’re not selling anything, but we’d sure buy an ID if you can make one. We figure from your booth here you get a good view of the whole place, including the regular customers.”

“Yeah.” The kid nodded, glancing at the stage where a purple spotlight glared on empty wood flooring. He twisted a dial up, then down, but the sound system remained mute.

“See, Tyler,” Morrie said, “we’re counting on you having sharp eyes, even if you’re half-deaf from this music.”

“I hear fine.”

“I don’t. My little middle-aged joke. Don’t get like me.”

“Deaf?”

“Middle-aged.”

Tyler looked truly appalled at the thought. From zits to zip, not a happy notion.

“So,” said Morrie, “we brought some pictures. Could you eyeball them and tell me if you recognize anyone?”

“It’s about that stripper that was killed a while back, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. We’re not allowed to say exactly.” Morrie glanced at Molina like she was the one who had made the rules.

“Yeah. I’ll look. But make it quick. I gotta rev up these girls pretty quick for the next set.”

“Sure.” Alch produced the first of the papers Molina had given him: a full frontal photo of a powerfully handsome guy with that soft rot of something wrong in the character working its way out, the way Qaddafi had looked once, or the self-declared Reverend Jim Jones before he had served deadly Kool-Aid to the whole damn cult at Jonestown back before this kid was born.

This kid was nodding, as if in time to some music only he heard. “This guy’s Rafi, sure.”

“Rafi?”

“Not much weirder than ‘Alch’.”

“Got me there, Tyler. Kind of a bouncer, isn’t he, around the strip clubs?”

“Yeah. He got around. Worked ’em all: Kitty City, Baby Doll’s, Les Girls. Haven’t seen him lately, though.”

“Not lately,” Molina stressed, wanting to be sure.

“No.” Tyler shrugged. “Used to be around all the time.”

“When did he drop out?” Morrie asked.

“Don’t know. Haven’t thought about it. A couple weeks ago? Hey.”

“Hey what, Tyler.”

“After Cher Smith was killed, I guess. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Alch repeated, pulling away the photo.

He traded it for a piece of heavy, nubbly paper.

“This a police sketch?” Tyler asked, impressed.

“Naw. The person who drew it did police sketches in the old days, but we use computers now.”

“Yeah. I use computerized equipment too. It’s all digital, man.”

“We’re not digital yet. Funny, that used to mean doing it by hand. Anyway, this guy’s face ring a bell?”

Tyler frowned, squinted, visibly thought.

Molina said not a word.

“He could have been wearing something different, could have looked different,” Morrie put in so smoothly no one would ever know he’d been coached. Maybe not even Morris Alch. “Tall guy, I hear, way over six feet.”

“Now that’s something that’d stand out around here.” Tyler’s sneer was back. “Most guys who come in are on the short side.”

“Really? I’ve never heard that observation before.”

“Like you said, I get to eyeball the whole place. I’m here mostly for the music, but I notice things. Tall guy would stand out.”

“You look like you’re not missing any inches, so you mean most of the customers are like me.”

“Yeah.” Tyler stood up to stretch, showing off. Five nine maybe. “Not shrimps exactly, but no, uh, Schwarzeneggers.”

“You think Arnold’s that tall, really? Or just overbuilt?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not as tall as he looks in his movies. This guy, though? I haven’t seen him. He must be a bad dude, he gets his own police sketch. Computer too good for him?”