Her eyes flared wide. This was territory she knew how to manipulate: sex and priests.
She rolled over onto her back and crossed her legs in the air, posed like the cover of a cheesy airport novel.
He sat behind her in the classic Freudian position of alienist and patient, only nowadays everyone knew a lot more about psychological kinks than Freud had.
Matt hoped what he knew was enough.
Chapter 15
Slugfest
Lieutenant C. R. Molina stood in the hot sun, staring down at the corpse planted under a bit of rubble in a deserted lot. It wasn’t concrete that had killed him, but a .38 slug that had missed being an earring by two inches.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” a voice said behind her. “What you got?”
“A bad feeling.” She slid her eyes behind the sunglasses to Morrie Alch’s tanned and seamed face. “You’re old enough to remember mob hits in this town.”
“As a kid, yeah.”
“This guy’s no kid.”
“Pushing seventy before he stumbled, I’d say. He’s sporting the mob-approved execution-style ventilation, all right. But, uh, dumping a body in public like this? It’s just bad taste nowadays. Looks amateur. The mob is finally being recognized as the down-and-dirty influence on the making of Vegas with the official museum, the competing attraction, the Ocean’s whatever-number ‘son of Frank Sinatra’ Vegas heist movies a few years back.”
“Nothing ever dies here but people,” Molina commented. “Certainly not the notion of mob activity.”
“A cheesy body-dump like this looks small-time. Any remaining hoods would rather fling it than flaunt it.”
“So that dead face doesn’t populate a Ten Most Wanted list? There’s something familiar about it to me.”
Alch braced his hands on his knees and semi-squatted for a better gander at one dead goose. “Older guys all start to look alike.”
“Not you, Morrie. It’s that Justin Bieber hair of yours.”
Alch snorted as he rose. He did have a handsome mop of hair, but it was the iron gray of an aging Scottie dog. “I know some CIs who are pretty senior. I’ll ask around.”
Molina nodded. “Actually, some leftover mob hit would be a nice change of pace on cases.”
“Yeah?”
She produced her most sardonic face and voice. “This is nothing involving crazy public relations events or … critters. Old dead guy shot execution-style. Plain as dirt.”
“Oops. Not quite, Lieutenant.”
Alch pointed at a shadow near the large building construction.
Something was moving in it and vanishing.
A rat.
Molina raised an eyebrow over the upper sunglass rim. “Grizzly Bahr at the morgue will be glad our vic avoided being lunchmeat for the rat pack and losing any body parts that might be evidence.”
Alch nodded. “That was a piece of luck. These empty lots attract a lot of vermin. Maybe this guy was a literal rat.”
“A snitch, you mean?” Molina reflected. “Either that or a drug dealer or even a gambler who welched on a bet. Empty lots attract a large clientele of human vermin.”
They backtracked in their crime-scene booties to let the tech team have its way with the body.
Chapter 16
Dead on Paradise
“Guess what?” the cheery voice cackled in Temple’s ear way too early in the morning. She’d been inhaling coffee mug steam to clear her sinuses.
“Who is this?” Brain cell number 100,030 kicked in. “Silas T., is that you?”
“What’d you call me, chickadee? ‘Silas T.’? I like it.”
“I don’t like ‘chickadee.’ Don’t call me that again.”
“If you say so, Miss Barr, but whatever I call you, you are a tip-top publicity genius. You’ve done it again.”
“Done what?”
“Once again, a body has been found on the scene of your client’s new attraction. Hip, hip, hooray!”
“I have found myself in a crazy phone conversation. What are you saying?”
“Better click, click, click those fancy high heels over here to Paradise. I came by to check the site, and the authorities and their yellow ticker tape were all over the place. TV vans are lining the curb.”
“Oh my lost ruby red slippers! I’m still in Oz. Your construction project has unearthed a corpse?”
“Even better, the scene looks rather mobbish. Ties right in with the latest trends in Vegas hot spots. I couldn’t be happier if you had killed him yourself to make the buzz happen.”
“Silas T. This is bad publicity. You are a bad, bad, bad client. Keep your mouth shut from now on or I’ll … I’ll do something drastic. I’ll be there ASAP.”
Temple wished she could “click, click, click” her red-shimmer slipper heels—ballet flats for around the condo—and get back home to a day earlier, in a past where she had declined to take a ride on Farnum’s “stunt publicity” hurricane.
Before she left the condo, she looked around for Louie, but she hadn’t seen him since he plopped on the bed a few hours earlier for an out-of-character purr-fest. He’d slipped away to some favorite condo haunt after that. Not to worry. He often knew what she was doing better than she did.
* * *
In record time, she and the Miata slipped into a just-right-size sloppy space left by two askew parked media vans. This was a “hot” scene, all right.
She’d worn her sturdiest shoes, black patent leather closed-toe pumps, and crunched across the rough bare ground toward a clot of what looked like the monsters from the Alien films, but were only media men and women bearing videotape cameras high on their shoulders to focus on the victim in their midst.
A mental mantra drummed in time to her steps. I hope it isn’t, I pray it isn’t, I can’t believe it is …
“Here she is!” a voice from the ravening crowd of media monsters announced.
They turned, the cameras’ mechanical eyes recording her.
“Mr. Farnum says you told him to ‘keep mum.’ What do you know about the body that was discovered on your client’s property this morning?”
“I’ve just arrived, and I merely advised him not to speak about a crime scene that the Metro Police are just now handling,” Temple said, not recognizing faces with a sinking feeling. She had contacts among the media, but not so much on the hard news side.
“We hear a dead body was recently discovered at another site where you were representing the attraction. Are you a jinx?” a tall guy with a soul patch asked.
Someone pushed to her side. “Now, don’t you pick on the little lady.” Farnum squeezed her elbow so vigorously, she almost lost her balance on the ridged ground.
They made quite a pair. A flashing image of him in a coral-striped seersucker suit with a yellow bow tie was emblazoned on her putt-putting brain. She’d never take on a client who wore straw boater hats again. He’d look like a carnival huckster on camera.
“Neither myself nor my client will be giving any statements,” she said, “until we know what’s going on and have been released to comment by the police.” At the same time, she mulled how the police might just love the site’s owner and operator mouthing off to the media unsupervised.
“And here the police are,” said a voice from on high she recognized down to her balancing toes.
The noose of media people loosened and melted away. Temple was glad to know Molina had that effect on her newshound peers too. The woman who was tall, dark and commanding. Not fair, thought petite Temple.
She turned and looked up. “I’m sorry. We’re sorry. They intercepted us.” Temple frowned. She knew Molina was more hands-on than most homicide lieutenants, but what about this abandoned lot was so interesting?
Eerily, Molina was delivering an answer to that very internal question. “Mr. Farnum arrived here practically with the uniforms. A partying couple from the Cabana Club was wandering around the premises, trying ‘to see the moon.’”