This was getting way too complicated. How could he get Molina off the night beat and back into her office where she belonged?
Nail Cher’s killer, that’s how. And nail Van Burkleo’s killer while he was at it. This was getting to be too big a job even for Superman.
A flare of smoke and music spat into the clean night air, the burst as shocking as the spray of a machine gun.
When the single front door to Baby Doll’s slammed shut, Rafi Nadir was out in the darkness with Max.
He stalked over.
“You the PI who was bothering the customers and girls in there?”
“Me? Man, I’m PE. Presley, Elvis, suh! Yes, suh, Colonel.” Max ran up a mock salute.
“You sure are a moth-eaten Elvis, man, now that I look at you. Sorry. I’m the house police, and I heard some private dick was hassling the customers. You got another coffin nail?”
“Shore.” Max tapped out a cigarette and provided a match for it, watching Nadir’s bloated features swell into focus while the match flame and the cigarette’s terminal ember flared. “Naw, I’m jest a country boy tryin’ to make a buck in the Big City. Quite some place.”
Nadir leaned against the building, took a deep drag. “Yeah. Cheesy town. Nothing like L.A. In L.A. you got your black and your yellow and your Mexican side of town. Big-time. Not the so-called ’hoods they have around here. It’s an industry there, man. This place is like a studio back lot. All show and no go. All front and no real action behind it. Like, even the Mob’s gone corporate. Trading stocks instead of bullets. There’s no real action anywhere here anymore.”
Max nodded. “I get yah.”
“Well, I’ll be outa this penny-ante bouncer stuff soon. There’s still something goin’ on I can latch onto. Maybe make a big buck or two while I still know how to spend it. Aw, whata I care whether some PI is nosing around, asking about some hopeless stripper who got herself throttled?”
“Throttled, huh? How’d you know that?”
“Word’s all over the strip clubs. The stupid whores are wearing dog collars to deter the Strip-joint Strangler, can you believe it? Nobody’s more superstitious than strippers and whores. They all think luck is what’s gonna save ’em. You see that rotten PI around here, son”—Rafi Nadir thumped Max several times on the chest with a stiff forefinger—“you send ’im to Rafi Nadir for a talking-to. But only tonight. I’m gone after tonight. I got a brand-new gig. With a classy outfit. I’m on my way back up. That’ll show…whoever. When next you see me, I’ll be a customer with bucks to burn. I’ll be able to buy this place and use the profits to light my cigar.
“Here.”
Nadir stuffed a twenty-dollar bill in Max’s cigarette-cupping hand. “Here’s some money to burn, Elvis. You remember Rafi. You’re gonna hear about him again.”
Chapter 32
Animal Wrongs
“You look tired, Lieutenant.”
Morey Alch’s voice floated over Molina’s head like a dampened volcano of rumbling concern.
“What are you, my mother?” she growled back. He didn’t retreat.
He stood at her office door, knowing enough to keep his distance. He usually knew better than to get her back up by suggesting she was doing too much. Today he was right: she was too pooped to overreact.
“We’ve got a lot of cold cases to solve,” she went on mildly. “And then this nutso leopard killing—”
“Definitely nutso. You eyeball that woman?”
“I think it’s a woman.”
Alch had poured two mugs of coffee—overbrewed sludge—at the big urn near the door. Now he nodded and transversed the long, narrow office walking like a man on a tightrope. He set one mug down at her place before settling at the other side of her desk. His own white mug was artfully decorated with dried-coffee drips of various lengths and intensity. He tossed her packets of creamer and sugar and ripped into his own duo.
Molina sighed. “You and Su getting anywhere on the likely suspects in that case?”
“Besides the leopard, you mean.” He looked up quizzically from his coffee ritual.
She laughed, as he had intended. “Right. The Leopard Man did it. You ever see those old black-and-white movies when you were a kid? You know, the African cult that dressed up in leopardskins and clawed their victims? Am I hallucinating, or does this Van Burkleo case smack of jungle drums, my friend?”
“The White Zombie,” Morey declaimed. “Movies like that. Great stuff. The leopardmen in those movies wore these, uh, you know, gloves, with claws in the fingertips. Reminds me of my trip to England. Me and the wife, before…well, before. Anyway, I got into the Black Museum at Scotland Yard. Only me. Only pros. Don’t let spouses in, which was just as well. Anyway, they got Jack’s letters there. The Ripper. And they had all these confiscated weapons, and I’ll never forget, a Freddy Krueger glove.”
“Freddy Krueger Goes to Blighty?”
Alch sipped and nodded. “This crude canvas glove with razors for fingernails. Thing is, the Brit coppers found blood on the blades. Human blood. Never found who it came from, though, or who wore the gloves. Said it was time a little censorship got put into play.”
“That’s the trouble.” Molina sipped, shook her head. “There is no such thing as ‘a little’ censorship. So what did you find out about Maison Van Burkleo, overlooking the animal-rights activists for now?”
Molina stopped him before he could answer by looking steadfastly over his shoulder. “Come in, Su. We’re comparing notes.”
Merry Su paused at the coffee urn, shook her head and minced past it on high chunky heels, those Minnie Mouse oversized Mary Janes so popular with the young and kicky set. Temple Barr would look ludicrous in those gunboats, but somehow the equally petite Su didn’t. She dragged a side chair next to Alch’s.
“That stuff’ll kill you,” she pronounced, drawing a bottled water from the low-slung bag at her side with as much slow satisfaction as if it were a gun. “You’d be better off drinking straight whipping cream and cyanide, given the chemicals in those innocuous packets. Corporate murder.”
“Alch was just about to run through the Van Burkleo suspects,” Molina said.
“Before Morey does his old professor act,” Su said, “I’d like to raise an issue. We all know that the animal people are right and Van Burkleo was probably running a high-dollar hunt club there.”
Nods. “That’s not our jurisdiction,” Molina pointed out.
“I know. But…if the leopard didn’t do it, like animal-amok stuff, what about who used to own the leopard? Maybe somebody found out and didn’t like where it had ended up, playing pincushion for some would-be he-man bow-and-arrow hunter. If my Bichon ever ended up like that, I’d go hunt some two-legged game myself.”
Alch, taking notes, stopped on a pen point. “Your what? A bison?”
“Bichon. Bee-shown B-i-c-h-o-n. My Bichon Frise.” Bee-shown freeze-ay.
Alch was awe-stricken. “My God, it’s a hairstyle as weird as her eyebrows,” he told Molina.
“It’s a dog, dummy.”
“That’s verbal abuse,” he noted with both tongue and pen.
“Children.” Molina leaned her head on her hand. “Su makes an interesting point. But, as I understand it from the animal-rights people, and I believe they know the chapter and verse on this, the animals that Van Burkleo offered to target shooters—okay, target mis-shooters—were either raised for it, like the hooved animals, or the big cats were obtained from private owners who couldn’t handle them or caring for them anymore, or zoos who had old or excess animals they needed to get rid of.”