I can barely sidestep the inevitable black eye, which is never a noticeable condition in my case.
“You!” he says, acknowledging my presence. “She must have gone already. Where?”
At that he marches right in and begins searching the premises as if I was not there and to be reckoned with. He does not even pause to give me time to answer, although I admit that I would not.
From the tumble of comforter he lifts the solitary monokini that Miss Temple had tried on in an inexplicable moment of craven feminine weakness. I cringe to have her minor moment of experimentation exposed to other eyes than my own.
He finds the crushed K-Wigs bag on the closet floor.
He stares at me as if he would like to wring an answer from my helpless esophagus (not knowing that he probably could), then turns and ransacks the rest of the apartment.
I follow at a discreet distance.
I fear no man, but I do recognize one at the limits of his patience. And I have seen the strength in Mr. Max Kinsella’s clever fingers. I would prefer for them not to be playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on my epiglottis.
So I tippy-toe after the human cyclone that Mr. Max has become.
He has searched the kitchen and living room and is now in the second bedroom, aka the office.
I hear a woman’s voice.
Has Miss Temple returned for something she forgot, like me?
No such luck. As I near the open door, I notice that the voice has a distant recorded quality. It is as husky as a bull walrus, but it is still a woman.
“Temple, honey,” she is saying again, on rewind. “Lindy. Sorry to miss you. I was wrong about that guy you were asking about. He’s not going to be where I said he was. He’ll be at Secrets tonight. I hope this call isn’t too late. Give me a buzz when you have my message so I know you’re all right.”
“Thanks, lady! All wrong, but at least she’s safe,” Mr. Max snarls at the answering machine as he bangs the button to stop the machine. “Temple, Temple, Temple…” He sighs before leaving.
He does not even notice my presence in the room, although I have assumed a position under the desk that would be extremely difficult to notice.
Still, he is the Mystifying Max, and one would hope he would be a little better than this.
I cogitate a bit after he leaves. I am sure that this call came through while Miss Temple was making like Gypsy Rose LeVine to that awful hubbub on the radio. I distinctly heard her murmur “Baby Doll’s presents….” Mr. Max is heading in the wrong direction, yet I am sure the action at Secrets will be particularly vibrant tonight when he goes there to find out who Miss Temple had a hankering to follow. I am now a totally free agent, as now I know my roommate has gone off somewhere completely safe.
I hop up on the desk. I have never gotten much into cyber-crime, but I am not ignorant of the possibilities. Besides, what I have in mind is more techno-crime. Thoughtfully, I rewind the message that Mr. Max so heedlessly left unreeled.
My big mitts suffer somewhat from what retired boxers call cauliflower ear. They have been bruised and battered by many months of hitting the pavement when I was a homeless dude. Still, these answering machine buttons are not beyond my manipulations. After some preliminary misdials and abrupt hangups, I manage to find and hit the autodial button that directs my call to Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s office at the LVMPD.
When her voice answers — and I do not know if it is real or recorded — I hit replay and let the message Mr. Max heard transfer to the lieutenant’s end of the line.
It will certainly be interesting to see who shows up at Secrets tonight. And when. And what they all do about it.
Of course I am heading that way myself.
Every catastrophe in the making deserves an impartial witness.
I am so glad my Miss Temple was headed in a different, utterly safe direction before that — shall I say, fateful? — message came through.
Diamonds or Dust
In the dusk Matt walked to the Strip, then took a bus.
He got off downtown and wandered the enclosed area, drifting into the open entries to raucous casinos, veering back onto the canopied concourse to gawk up at the sky-size Las Vegas version of a CineMax screen with the tourists. Images danced like the aurora borealis on crystal meth over them all. No one noticed him.
He caught a cab near the Four Queens and took it to Bally’s. He ambled through the hotel to the monorail and took it to the MGM Grand.
He walked through the miles of lobby and gaming areas there, then ducked out a side exit.
Then he hiked to the Goliath.
This was the night.
Act or be acted upon forever.
Do or die.
He killed a half hour in the Goliath lobby before he even approached the front desk.
He had seen no one who knew him.
No one who looked like Kitty in disguise with diamonds, though he’d seen a lot of diamonds in the shopping area.
Diamonds were made under immense pressure, built up for eons in the hidden center of the earth.
He understood that feeling. He knew that pressure.
Tonight it would be diamonds or dust.
Cover Story
Here it had begun.
Molina’s dead eyes took in the ersatz elegance of Secrets.
It was an upscale strip club, although that term was a contradiction in terms. Scratch a strip club, no matter how high-class, and you sniffed corruption and exploitation.
She had been laboring late on paperwork when the forwarded call had come through.
“Temple, honey.”
No need to guess on whose answering machine that rye-whiskey voice — almost mannish, almost female impersonator — had left the news that Secrets was the place to be tonight.
The first question was who had sent that message to Temple Barr, and why.
The second was, what was Barr doing club-crawling when single white females were the Target of the Month at places like this?
Trying to save the scruffy, shopworn soul of Max Kinsella, no doubt.
Molina’s head ached from the wig that clung to it like a mothballed barnacle, and the incessant smoke and noise.
The glamour of undercover work was way overrated.
This could be a trap or a diversion. Barr could have gotten the message and come here, or not. She could have notified Molina in this cryptic way, or not. Molina assumed not. Barr had a history of independent action, ill-considered or not. So, she herself could have been alerted by…Matt Devine, Good Neighbor Matt. Or not. Or by Max Kinsella. Bad Scene Max. Or not.
The whole evening, the entire charade was possibly key to the case. Or not.
She had to assume that Barr at least had the smarts to disguise her appearance.
So now Molina was on the lookout not only for a possible killer, but for a civilian trespassing on police turf.
Still, she wondered what Barr had blundered into. Her informant had the kind of smoky, boozy voice of someone who knew the strip club world inside out from the time of Moses to Madonna.
Who did Barr think she was tracking? A he, of course. If the killer was a woman, it would be a shocker. From the message, it was someone who was a repeat offender at strip clubs, a regular. That included a lot of customers.
Molina eyed the men standing, sitting, drinking, ogling.
The usual batch of losers and loners. Men whose shoulders slumped, whose jaws dropped, whose eyes were dead with unspoken hopes. And the muscle crowd. Not loners. Guys in gangs, loud, profane, obscene. Pack runners not likely to go beyond the pale in public parking lots, but don’t let them run into you alone on a lonely road.
Molina had seen them all, the types. So who didn’t you see? Who was conveniently invisible?
“See anybody who ought to be in pictures?” the bartender asked.
This model was female, but she had the same easygoing attitude of her male counterparts, as if Sister Wendy doing the shimmy on the bar wouldn’t turn a hair.
“Not yet. I’m really looking for places, not people.”