She looked down at Louie and to the door.
On the dark floor on which they stood, the stilled, naked, no longer jewel-toned lights cast a path like a yellow brick road.
36
Command Performance
Molina felt like a green rookie on a stakeout.
She had plenty of reasons to be nervous.
She’d agreed to this “meet” without knowing the purpose.
She’d known the venue was fairly formal, so she’d worn the long black microfiber skirt with a discreet knee-length slit Mariah had whined for her to get for the Barr-Devine wedding reception.
In an act of rebellion against her fashion-obsessed daughter, she wore a bronze forties jacket with padded shoulders and black sequin cuffs and pointed collar. And her magenta suede platform forties shoes for when she moonlighted as the torch singer “Carmen”.
Mariah had tagged it a “Goddess” look and approved, although disappointed that it wasn’t Rafi she was dining with at the Paris Hotel Eiffel Tower restaurant. When she’d lied and said it was FBI agent Frank Bucek, Mariah made her “Oh, Mother” face. Frank was married. The man she was meeting was not.
Now Molina was shuffling forward toward the closed elevator door, as obviously unescorted as an inchworm on a maple leaf.
He appeared beside her just as she reached the brass pole end of the velvet rope and no one remained between her and the closed elevator door to the Paris Eiffel Tower restaurant and the valet who would usher her in. Her turn.
Suddenly “their” turn.
“Timing is everything,” Max Kinsella commented.
Sure was. He’d let her feel the embarrassment of an imminent “left at the altar” position. What a manipulator.
No one behind them grumbled about the last minute line-hopper. It was as if Kinsella had been invisible. Hardly. She flashed on his black shirt, black tuxedo jacket. More Oscar Red Carpet than stage magician garb.
“You look very ‘Midnight Louie’,” she said, as they turned together in the elevator to face the doors for an eleven-story ride to the elegant French restaurant.
“The highest of praise. I even filed my nails and washed behind my ears.”
“I’m not checking,” she said.
“Looks like you’ve done me one better; I’ve not glossed my lips. You’ve not been here before?”
“No. Tourist attraction. High-priced tourist attraction. Over high-priced tourist attraction.”
Max shrugged. “And on me tonight. I can understand your viewpoint. It’s hardly worth the cost unless you snag the one table at the very—point—the prow where the glass walls meet in a Vee.” His long tented fingers demonstrated. “Each person at that table for two gets an exclusive view of the Bellagio Fountains when they come on at eight and nine p.m. Sad. The fountain show and music used to play every half hour from dusk until midnight.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, “cost and conservation, I assume.” Someone had indeed buffed his nails, even more discreetly than Julio’s. To outdo a Fontana brother at being a Fontana brother was no small achievement.
He, meanwhile, was running his glance up from her shoes to her shoulders, where a large brandy-colored rhinestone pin perched on the shoulder pad of her vintage “Joan Crawford-style” power suit-jacket. It was the antithesis of anything Temple Barr could ever wear. Or maybe anyone other than Anjelica Huston or a cross-dressing football linebacker.
“Really high heels,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I like.”
“I don’t need to be unintimidating to you. You’re already cowed.”
He laughed, and she heard a new freedom in it. “Is that what they call it? I know a leader of men can’t ever be too much of an Amazon.”
“Not with some of the Neanderthals still on the force. The meteor has struck and they’re fading away, and still don’t know it. But let’s not talk work.”
“What else would we talk about, Lieutenant?”
“What you really want tonight.”
“I’m not that kind, I assure you,” he answered.
She laughed, skeptically. The hostess was heading their way. Molina had been scanning the room while they waited and chatted. “The corner table is taken,” she noted, raising an eyebrow. “I thought for sure you’d swing it.”
“Look again.”
She jerked her head around so fast her short bob whipped cheekbone on one side.
Empty. Reset. The previous couple abducted into the Twilight Zone somewhere. He’d invited her to look without doing that himself, as if prescient. The magician always had to surprise, not that she showed she knew it. Molina had needed to develop a shell beyond showing surprise, facing the dirty, tragic details of an endless parade of crime scenes.
The hostess waited before them, large menus cradled on one arm like a baby, to lead them to the desired corner table.
Seated, facing a view of the fountains that intersected with his somewhere in the black overlit Vegas Strip night, she wondered what she really wanted from Max Kinsella.
“Relax,” he said. “I can at last. You should try it.”
“Really?” She shook out the large white napkin to cover her black lap, to avoid looking him in the eye. They’d been…antagonists for so long. She hated the artificial, the imitation, the slippery.
She was armed. The dainty pistol at the small of her back. You never knew. Somehow, she still felt naked. Was that “relaxation”?
“Let’s just have dinner,” he said. “I feel I owe you a grand one, for the headache I’ve been.”
“I feel you’re right.”
She decided to go berserk. Appetizer for $28 Warm Lobster, Spring Onion Soubise, Basil Infused Peas.
“No Fois Gras?”
“The daughter is a member of PETA, no abused geese.”
“Don’t tell me! No caviar?”
She longed to make him pay the $290 price tag for a “Trilogy Osetra Caviar, Golden, Russian, Siberia”, but fish eggs were probably another daughter-forbidden food.
No one should expect her to avoid magnificent beef. She ordered “The King” filet mignon at $69.
He raised her to $79 with the Rossini filet mignon Fois Gras with Truffle sauce.
She frowned. “Don’t you know that ‘fois gras’ are force-fed geese livers. Brutal.”
“Yet beef is a more politically correct food than some others? All right. Being politically correct costs.” He topped her with $89 for a 22-ounce bone-in rib-eye with bone marrow.
“It’s hard to renounce being a carnivore,” she agreed, ordering a snappy peppercorn sauce while he stuck to lulling bordelaise. A steal at only 6$ each.
“Apparently,” he said later over a second glass of the smoothest red wine she’d ever tasted and must be sky-high in cost, “you’re intent on eating and drinking me out of house and home when that’s already been done.”
“You do owe me. I’ve dismissed all charges against you.”
“You can’t fool me. You can’t be bought. Not even by this magnificent dinner.” He looked beyond her. “Apparently the Strip is celebrating my innocence. The lighted fountains are flaring to life, right in time for dessert.”
Once one looked at the glorious golden rise and fall of the Bellagio fountains, which performed on an automated evening schedule, it always made viewers breathless, like viewing Fourth of July fireworks through a precious topaz lens.
Yet through the glass walls of the restaurant, it was a silent symphony in your head.
“It always reminds me of Tchaikovsky’s most popular work,” Max said, “used for fireworks displays, the 1812 Overture, celebrating the Russians thrashing Napoleon.”
“That’s a bit bombastic,” she said. “From the rhythm of the fountain highs and lows, it looks a lot more like popular music in this pantomime we see through the glass.”
“You would know, of course. Hmm. I’m thinking it might be Frank Sinatra’s ‘Luck Be a Lady Tonight’.”