She knew what she was and she knew what she wore: low-heeled oxfords. Espresso-brown pantsuit. Oxfordshirt, faintest baby blue, open at the collar. Semiautomatic in a paddle holster at the small of her back, steel blue. Talk about fashion coordination. Supermodels had nothing on a modern female cop.
They entered the usual jam-packed, ultra-airconditioned smokehouse of a Vegas casino, an atmosphere lit by blinking slot machines that broadcast bling-bling bluster and the clatter of coins spilling into metal troughs.
In the craps area, Larry stopped to schmooze a pit boss who passed him some VIP comps. Comps papered the town, if you knew who to ask. The passes sent them to the head of a line that had formed even though the Ghost Bar had just opened, then onto an express elevator. Eerily, once aboard, all sound suddenly stopped, the casino’s endless clatter replaced by the customary silence of half-pickled strangers packed together like kippered herrings in a tin.
The Ghost Bar perched fifty-five stories above all the hustle, a tourist attraction of the first water. Three of the four walls were glass and the view was jaw-dropping. Inside, the place was a 2001: A Space Odyssey sixties wet dream of blue neon, streamlined silver seating pieces, and lime green accents. Icy in color and exclusive in attitude.
Molina took it all in with the same cool distance she used at crime scenes. She checked out the VIP clientele already seated as well as the ambiance and spotted several vaguely familiar faces. It took a moment to realize that they were stars, actors and singers, not escapees from Most Wanted lists. Odd, the jolt of false familiarity you could get from a household face.
“What do you think of the place?” he asked.
“Playboy, Penthouse, circa nineteen sixty-five.”
“You talking the magazines or improper pronouns?”
“Both.”
Posh or Mosh the Spice Girl wannabe did the waitress dip to lay two cocktail napkins on their sleek tabletop. Bowing to the power of the chichi, Molina surprised Dirty Larry, and herself, by ordering a pepper vodka martini. Larry ordered something called a Burning Bush.
Molina let her lifted eyebrows do the talking.
“Black Bush whiskey with peach, lime, creme de cassis, and a dash of cranberry juice for health.”
“Gack,” she said.
“It lives up to its name on the tastebuds. You can try a sip.”
He nodded at the twelve-foot-high glass walls.
“On the balcony, you can stand on a Plexiglas rectangle and look down fifty-five stories, if heights don’t make you nervous.”
Molina stood, uncoiling her own impressive height, almost six feet. “Shall we dance?”
Seconds later they balanced on the ghostly plastic platform over nothing. A rectangle of aquamarine sparkled four thousand feet below, almost a mile, overrun by what looked like small brown bugs.
“The Skin Pool Lounge,” he said.
“Not a glamorous name but a literal one?”
“Skinny dipping is only on Tuesday nights.”
Tuesday was the weakest night for customers, hence flashing the flesh. “Only in Las Vegas.”
They savored the glittering swath of the Strip’s massive hotels, laid out like jewels on black velvet or, more apropos to their profession, a glitter-dusted body on an autopsy table.
Take that, T S. Eliot, Molina thought. You and your “night anaesthetized like a patient on a table.”
“Shamelessly hokey but a must-see,” Larry said.
“Hokey should be shameless. I like it. That surprise you?”
“Yes and no. I’ve been to the Blue Dahlia. That’s shamelessly hokey too.”
She drew a breath, ready to retort, defend, deny. Instead she shrugged. “So?”
“So let’s sit down and talk shop.”
“Strange place for that.”
Their cocktails were waiting in glassware as kooky as the retro-modern furniture. The classic triangular bowl of Molina’s martini glass was supported by an off-center curve of crystal. His drink was served in a rectilinear tower of modernist glass.
He lifted it, not for a toast, but to offer a taste.
This was a way-too-early intimacy but Molina took him up on it. Dirty Larry had a challenging edge but she could match it. The bizarre ingredients produced a sizzling effect that explained the cheeky name that referenced both the religious and the obscene.
“So what was the Blue Dahlia crack for?” Molina asked after rinsing her palette with a swallow of clean, sharp vodka martini.
“Odd you should use that expression. Dirty Larry did a cocaine deal there once.”
Molina frowned. He tended to refer to his undercover persona in the third person. Weird.
“A one-off,” he went on. “Nothing habitual. The client had a thing for you.”
“Oh, great.”
“People get their kicks where they can.”
“And here I think I’m singing for dedicated vintage music lovers. Listen—”
“It’s okay. My lips are sealed. Your pseudonymous singing habit is safe. Everything I do undercover is off the record unless it involves criminal charges.”
“You’re not undercover now.”
“I take … vacations. R and R. It messes your mind to play an undercover role too long. I’m doing accident investigations for a while.”
“From drug traffic to traffic? Isn’t that a bit tame?”
He nodded. “That’s the idea. Nice quiet beat. After the fact. Fascinating, really. The evidence of a crash and burn but nobody there to threaten you or haunt you. Only evidence. Nice inert, cool evidence.”
“People die on the streets from vehicular accidents too.”
“But I’m not down in that pit with them. Biggest risk to undercover agents? Not gettin’ fingered or found out. Not getting killed. Getting hooked.”
“So why am I the receptacle of all this useful information from the opium den?”
“Just explaining where I’m coming from and going to.”
“Going to. Which is?”
“One more big score. There’s a funny ring operating. Dirty Larry can’t get near it. I’m going to have to come back as someone else and try again. Meanwhile, I detox on Traffic Accident detail. But the instincts don’t turn off.”
“And … ?”
“And I never bought your act the other night with the report on that Nadir guy. I can read upside down and backward in my game too, Lieutenant. That address pan out?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Why would you think you could con an undercover guy?”
“Because I had to.”
He nodded. “Good reason. Why did you ever think you could keep Carmen a secret?”
“Because I want to.”
“Better reason.”
They each sipped from their drinks, gazing at the spectacular 180-degree view, then back at each other.
“If you don’t want something,” she said finally, “and everybody does, why did you get me away from the office?”
“What’s the worst I could do with what I know?”
“Blackmail? But I don’t think so.”
“No. Just exposure.”
“I deny. I stop. Carmen gets paid in cash. She has no Social Security number. You could mess up my friends at the Blue Dahlia a little, but I could mess you up a whole lot more. And Carmen could fall off the planet. Officialdom would never notice.”
“I would. Notice. I’d never do that, burn Carmen. She’s a class act. I oughta know. Acts, that is.”
“Then … what do you want?”
“Nothing. Everything. Just to get the cards on the table.”
Molina stared at the tiny circle of plastic cocktail table holding their Art Moderne drink glasses. “What cards? What table?”
“This one. Here. Now. Call it a social occasion with overtones of business.”
She finally got it. “You think this is a date?”
“Yeah. I thought you knew.”
Her jaw would have dropped for the second time that night, figuratively anyway, if she’d allowed it to. She looked away and found an irritatingly famous face in every direction. Holographic portraits imbued the place’s few interior walls, both hung on and burned into the wall. The Ghost Bar was a highly desirable destination in Las Vegas, and Dirty Larry had gotten them first-row seats.