The biker took the bike to a high point overlooking Vegas before his boot-heels dropped to asphalt and he let the machine tilt to a stop. All that massive weight, held up by a bike stand.
Matt hopped off, doffed the damn helmet. Waited.
The motorcycle man dismounted like a cowboy who loved his mount, fluid and easy. He took off the helmet.
“You were my guardian biker,” Matt said. Accused. Thanked. “My ersatz Elvis.”
“Maybe.” Max Kinsella hung his helmet from the handlebar. The full moon reflected in its dark side, kind embracing kind. “Sometimes. Maybe sometimes it was Elvis. Dude had an aura, you know. You don’t kill that.”
“I know. Still, masquerading as a motorcycle cop that time—”
“Me? Impersonate a cop? Don’t have that costume on tap. ‘Fraid not.”
Matt felt a chill trickle down his spine. That had been the guy who’d advised him to let the bike fly. If not Max, then who? Elvis for real?
“What did you need to talk to me about?” Max asked.
“You took me seriously.”
“I take Temple seriously.”
The words hung in the air, in their multiplicity of meanings. “Me too,” Matt said. “What about Molina?”
“What about . . . her?”
“She’s bound to get you for something.”
Max shrugged. “Let her try.”
“Fine for you, Mr. Invisible. Tough on Temple.”
“Temple’s tough. So, what’s Molina up to now?”
“It’s who’s up to what against Molina.”
Max walked to the overlook, trying to untangle that sentence. Las Vegas lay like a tea tray of white-silver glitz on the vast dark desert floor.
They were halfway up the Spring Mountains. Matt would have a long, exhausting walk back to civilization if he had to make it on foot power. How competitive was Max Kinsella, anyway? Very.
“You don’t like me. You really, really don’t like me.” Max surveyed the distant glitter of the city where he had once been an A-list star, a magician to reckon with. “You particularly don’t like me in Temple’s life. Or bed. Still. You want to warn me. Why?”
“Because I don’t like you in Temple’s life.” Matt made himself ignore the bed part. He felt guilty about being the other man. Given recent events, he was now supersensitive about beds and what did, or did not happen in them.
“That’s why when you call, I listen. But I don’t have a lot of time.”
“You don’t know how true that is.”
“Tell me.”
Max Kinsella never waffled around. Never shillied nor shallied. Matt admired that. He’d been reared to question everything, most of all himself and his motives. His motives here were pure, even selfless. Mostly.
“Carmen Molina’s had a stalker for several weeks.”
“Stalkers must be hard up.”
“Not funny. I had one, one handed down from you.”
“Stalkers must be hard up,” Max repeated with sardonic humor. He turned back to face Matt. “Molina’s a cop. Stalkers come with the territory. With her, I wouldn’t doubt that it would come more often.”
“She’s got a right to be angry. The stalker has been breaking into her house. She has a young child there.”
Max chuckled. “From what I heard went down at the Teen Idol reality TV show, that kid is hitting puberty big time. Maybe it’ll keep Mama off my tail.”
“I don’t think so. This latest visit, the stalker left a trail of rose petals to Mariah’s bedroom as well as hers.”
“That’s really sick! No wonder she’s unhinged.”
“And she’s convinced you’re the stalker.”
For once, Matt had rendered Max Kinsella speechless.
“Me?” Kinsella said. Then frowned. “That’s crazy.”
“That’s what I thought. At first.”
“I don’t care what you think. What has this got to do with Temple? That’s all I care about.”
Matt kept himself from saying “Me too.”
Max was still on a tear. “Let Molina rant and roar and chase a phantom. She can’t touch me.”
“Maybe not. Maybe this time . . . yeah, maybe. But she’s already touched Temple.”
Kinsella’s motorcycle boots crunched desert shale as he stalked back over to Matt, looming at six four with two added inches of boot heel.
Matt felt enough bottled fury, and a nasty edge of guilt, to take him on and take him out if he said anything dismissive about the threat to Temple.
But Kinsella never satisfied in that way. He cared about her as much, maybe, as Matt did. That knowledge was as bitter as an arsenic pill in his throat, but it was also why Kinsella was the first, and last, person he’d gone to about this.
“What did Molina do?” Max asked.
“Barged into Temple’s place at the Circle Ritz”—Max didn’t correct him on that. A magician was, above all, a realist, but it had once been theirs, that place, his and Temple’s. “Took something likely to have your fingerprints still on it.”
“Took? Without a warrant? Why didn’t Temple—? Never mind. It was a lightning raid, wasn’t it? What did Molina take?”
“A CD.”
“Damn. Temple never did share my tastes, or like to run the VCR or even the multiple-CD player. So. Molina is now the only cop in the Western World with possible fingerprints on me. So what? She has nothing to compare them too.”
“That makes anything she finds on that CD all the more likely to be yours. She already printed Temple way back when.”
“I’m going to swear, Devine. You can put your fingers in your ears if you want.”
“Go right ahead. On that I’m with you.”
Max sighed, not a weak sigh, more like the hissing sound a weight lifter makes during ultra-heavy reps. “That damn . . . woman . . . will not leave well enough alone. If she had a decent sex life, she wouldn’t have to mess with mine so much.”
Matt shut his eyes. He didn’t want to hear about this. Think about this. “That’s what she said you told her in the parking lot of Secret’s. That’s why she thinks you’re obsessed with her.”
“Me. Her? Obsessed? Get a life! That’s what I told her in that damn parking lot, while she was trying with all her might to keep me from going where Temple was in fatal danger. How has she explained her stupidity in fixating on hogtying me when a major capture of the Stripper Killer was going down with Temple playing the next victim?”
Max had grabbed his sleeves, was shaking Matt in agitation.
“Hey!” Matt slapped Kinsella on the leather lapels, forcing him to back off. “That wasn’t me standing in your way then, pal. Molina did give you a chance to fight her for your freedom from what she said.”
“Couldn’t shoot me cold. I wasn’t carrying. Yeah, she had the guts to go hand-to-hand with me, risky considering how frantic I was about Temple. Guts were never her problem. She’s not a lightweight. She’s been trained. I finally had to play possum; live to fight another day, and get her in a situation where I could win without wasting time: handcuffed in her car. You know about magicians and handcuffs. Anyway, I let her grind my face into the asphalt, cuff me, and lead me away like Mary’s little lamb. What more does the woman want?”
“That’s all it was? Her not daring to shoot you dead? You two mixing it up? You letting her ‘win’ so you could escape faster to race to Temple’s defense? Her hung up on catching you and losing you?”
“That was it. She’d got me cuffed and in her Crown Vic. I was already working on the handcuff’s release mechanism when the call came over the radio that the cops had nailed the Stripper Killer while he was attacking a certain Miss Barr masquerading as a club costume seller. The minute I heard Temple was safe, Molina was wearing her own cuffs attached to the steering wheel and I was outa there.”
“Interesting,” Matt said.
“This stuff we’re talking about is way more important than ‘interesting’.”