I catch my breath. What Miss Louise is calling defunct is not the Synth magicians’ club, or the invading Darth Vaders from that recent meeting I was not privileged (or invited, I guess) to participate in. No, it is only the Neon Nightmare nightclub that is closed and defunct.
Louise does not know I was there much more recently with Miss Temple and Mr. Max, when my roommate’s speculations made it clear that some of the Synth members and wannabes are, um, dead, possibly by the hand of Synth recruiter Cosimo Sparks, himself now slain by person or persons unknown.
So here I am being asked to consider that one of the two masked leaders and predators who fed on the Synth’s thirst for revenge might now be dead at the morgue, his body bearing identifying marks of the Cat Pack attack on that night when Miss Louise and her minions swarmed to protect Miss Temple and divert attention from her undetected presence.
Whew. That is a lot of dead people, but then, Miss Temple’s Table of Crime Elements is longer than a grocery list for a reality TV cooking show.
I sit back on the pillow of my most operative parts, stunned.
For months and years, I have been protecting my main gal and her associated humans against renegade magicians, IRA terrorists, possible mob remnants, and a psycho serial killer.
Now, it could be likely the secret malefactors at the top of the pyramid of crime are possibly from out of this world.
Can it be that I am dealing here with murder most extraterrestrial?
Chapter 34
Law and Order: LVMPD
“What is the Circle Ritz these days?” Molina asked him the moment Matt identified himself on the phone. “The new home of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang?”
He was confused, maybe because he’d been mentally planning an approach to his problem.
Molina relieved him of answering that seemingly irrelevant question as her voice on the phone answered for him. “Your inventive fiancée has been showing up at bizarre sites all over town, messing up crime scenes.”
“Temple?”
“You think I’m talking about Lydia, the Tattooed Lady?”
“I’ve never met that entertaining individual, and don’t hope to,” Matt said, more confused than ever. He’d been too distracted to hear about any other crimes than the ones committed by Kathleen O’Connor.
Also, he was uneasy anyway about trying to pump Molina for information when he was secretly playing psycho cat-and-mouse with the most wanted suspect on her—and everybody’s—unofficial Wanted Lists.
“Temple’s trespassing on crime scenes? News to me.”
“The significant other is always the last to know.” Molina sounded dire. “A client of hers happens to own the crime scene property.”
Matt obviously needed to be brought up to date on his fiancée’s current events, but he wasn’t going to let a homicide lieutenant give him the first spin on what was going on.
“I just called to see if I could make an appointment to talk to you about—”
“Don’t tell me.”
Had she somehow found out about his nightly 3 A.M. “sessions” at the Goliath Hotel?
“UFOs,” her firm contralto boomed in his ear.
Curiouser and curiouser. “UFOs? No, I’m interested in another mythical Las Vegas apparition. Mobsters.”
“Hie yourself over to the three new mob museums or, better yet, to the Crystal Phoenix or Gangsters Hotels and convene a flock of Fontanas.”
“I’m not talking about the Beretta of brothers in the Fontana clan. They’re as much for show as those mob museums popping up all over. But … I wondered how seriously mob their uncle, Macho Mario Fontana, was? Is.”
“Before my day. Remember, I moved here from L.A. Are you serious?”
“I did say so. Aren’t there a few leftover elements from the bad old days still bouncing around town?”
Molina’s laugh was wary. “They’re all over at the Museum for Law Enforcement downtown, signing autographs.”
“I am very serious.” Matt was aggravated enough to sound like it. Serious and steamed. “Can we talk or not?”
“Sheesh. You Circle Ritz residents act like you have a private line to the police. If you’re that serious, visit me at the office. You know where Metro headquarters is located now?”
“Sure, it’s Temple’s second-favorite Las Vegas site to point out on jaunts around the Strip.”
“What’s our girl’s very favorite?”
“Grizzly Bahr’s morgue on Pinto Lane. That innocuous street address just cracks her up. Says it sounds like a pony ride.”
“Some days it is. That’s where you ID’d your dead stepfather after someone sank him at the sinking-ship attraction. Is that what’s got this new ‘mob’ fixation going?”
Matt sighed loudly enough so she’d hear him over the phone, then waited.
“All right. I agree that ugly incident had the whiff of an old-time whack job. Fifty minutes. My place. Just follow your fiancée’s ruby red slippers to South Martin Luther King Boulevard. I’ll have a visitor’s ID ready for you.”
* * *
The new headquarters, almost 400,000 square feet, had recently united departments housed in various leased facilities around town in two five-story blocks of dark gray stone with regimental square windows. It had reminded Matt of the supposedly impregnable Bastille stormed during the French Revolution.
Yet the soaring glass central structure had a slightly curved and raised roof that also reminded Matt of folded angel wings as he drove up to the main doors.
Tender little trees edging the parking lot resembled architect’s 3-D miniatures so prissily placed on model building sites. The mirrored central window-wall reflected the cloudless blue sky common to Vegas. That made the solid structure look like it was only a hollow gridwork on a Hollywood backlot, one you could see right through. Matt supposed that architectural “trick of light” was appropriate to a city built on illusion.
Matt parked the Jaguar near an oval of concrete holding the skimpy trees. He scanned the central glittering plinth for the entry doors, watching the sky reflection vanish as he got closer, until he met his reflection at a door, then pushed through … and straight into a waiting Molina.
She was, as always, tall and plainly dressed and sardonic. “Fancy car,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to valet-park it?” she joked.
“It’s not mine—”
“This a confession?”
“It’s a gift I’m not sure I’ll keep.”
She shook her head, causing her shiny brunet bob to shimmer. Was Molina doing a Hillary Clinton and letting her businesslike chop cut grow out?
“Relax,” she told him. “I know you’re a syndicated radio personality and all things pretty and perklike flow your way.”
“You think the car is pretty?”
“Gorgeous, but my Prius is greener. Mariah would swoon over your Jaguar, though.”
“Do teenage girls still swoon?”
“No, they text—dear Lord, how they text.”
She started walking and he fell into step beside her through a big modern space sprouting rows of sleek and skinny gray-upholstered visitors’ chairs. As they neared the office area, there was chaos, there was crowding, there was heat generated by computers and noisy phone calls, like in a newsroom.
Molina shut a door on them both. They were boxed into a small but slick private office.
“You’ve got something new, too, don’t you?” Matt asked. “Fancy private office instead of a cubbyhole.”
“You betcha.”
She sat in the desk chair, spun a quarter turn, and gestured at an angular guest chair. “Have a seat.”