She realized she did not, absolutely not, want to give him her real name.
“Well, I wasn’t who you thought I was:’
“I get that.” He looked around. “This looks like your kind of crowd, the upscale pricks and princesses who live the chichi
life.”
“Oh, no, I’m just a working girl.” Wrong phrase. “I mean, an ordinary Jill who works for a living. I’m a … secretary. Sort of.” “What were you doing in the clubs, then?”
“It’s true, what I told you then. Sort of. My sister was involved. She danced a little and, with the Stripper Killer loose, I was worried about her.”
He nodded, coming to the conclusion she’d desperately been implying. “So you got the crazy idea of going undercover in the clubs? If you hadn’t been carrying that pepper spray, babe, you’da been strangled with your own spandex unitards.” “Hey, you know what they’re called. That’s pretty impressive?’
“I spend a lot of time in the clubs, doing security?’
“You did come along just in time to save my skin.”
“Yeah.” When he smiled his face lost some of its sinister cast. “What were you thinkin’? Little girl like you takin’ on the Stripper Killer. You went right over and sat with me before that. I was a strange guy. You ought to be more carefuclass="underline" ’ Yes, Temple had risked a lot to sit down and try to pump Rafi Nadir. He was the only man to instill fear in both Max and their bete noir in blue, figuratively speaking, homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina, who were the two most formidable people Temple knew. One she loved, the other she loathed. Not hard to say which was which!
“Anyway,” Rafi was saying, “you look a little harried. I guess they have you running your ass all over the place on opening night. You deserve a rest. Why don’t you sit down on this, uh”-he stared at an ostrich-pattern ottoman shaped like a giant mushroom-“leather thing and I’ll get you a glass of wine. Red or white?”
“Ah . white. Please. Thank you. Joe.”
“My name’s really Rafi. This is just a cover.” His thumb and forefinger flicked the name tag, dismissive. “They call me
Rd.”
“Thanks. Raf.”
Temple sat as directed, no longer harried, or worried, but amazed.
When opportunity falls into your lap, and comes bearing free wine in a plastic glass … you’d better play along and learn something.
“Won’t they miss you?” she asked when Rafi returned with the proper-colored wine.
“Nah. Tonight the security’s for show. What they’re really worried about happens when things are quieter.” “Really? What?”
“Can’t talk about that. So. What’s a nervy little secretary like you doing with a stripper for a sister?” “It happens in the best of families.”
“I did security for a lot of the clubs. Would I know her?”
“Maybe, but’s she’s back in Wisconsin now. That killer scare made her finally go home and make peace with the folks.”
He nodded. “Usually you can’t go home again, someone said. I sure can’t. Strippers don’t often make it. You must be a good example. Anybody cared enough about me to risk her neck in a strip club with a killer at large, I’d be real grateful. You’re a ballsy little broad.”
Temple tried hard not to blush at such heartfelt praise. All three words set her teeth on edge, although she did sort of
cotton to “ballsy.” Wait’ll she told Max.
Then again, maybe she wouldn’t tell Max that she was Rafi Nadir’s new poster girl.
“You know,” he went on, waving his hand at the crowd, “I can’t sit down, by the way. Duty-but, you know, it’s real hard to turn a stripper around. When I was a cop, you’d try to get them to testify on something, or report a DV, and they just wouldn’t do it.”
“DV?”
“Domestic violence. That’s why I burned out on police work. It was a losing battle, and even your fellow officers and the brass couldn’t do any good.”
Well! Rafi Nadir as a misunderstood knight in blue? It was just possible, Temple thought. She never liked to believe the Gospel according to Molina, and according to Molina, Nadir was a brute worth keeping away from twelve-year-old Mariah even at the cost of her mother’s career.
Poles. Positive and negative. His truth and her truth. Both possibly right, and right about each other?
“So why’d you leave police work?” Temple, the ex-TV reporter, asked. “Burnout I can understand. But it must have been something more.”
Rafi surveyed the crowd, more to avoid looking her in the eye than for surveillance purposes, Temple guessed.
“I had a partner. Not a job partner, a personal one. She, uh, was the right gender and the right minority. Went up like a helium balloon. I was the wrong minority and the wrong gender. I got sick of the hypocrisy. I left.”
“The job or the significant other?”
“Both.” He looked back at her. Shrugged. “I helped her at first. Built her confidence, clued her in. Didn’t see it coming.
Then it was Hasta la vista, baby. She split so fast and so totally I couldn’t even find her to ask why.”
Temple didn’t like the raw edge in Raf’s voice. It was angry and it was honest. He said. She said. The same old story, quest for love and glory. As time goes by. He was Bogart; Molina was Bergman. Not! Temple had an overactive theatrical imagination. She’d be the first to admit it.
“But that’s bygones,” Rafi said, smiling.
Smiling at her!
“You got an address?”
No, she lived under a Dumpster! Now what, ballsy little broad? she asked her nervier self.
Now Matt Devine to the rescue.
He had eased onto the scene like Cool Hand Luke. “Sony to interrupt,” he told Temple, nodding impersonally at Nadir.
“Some ceremony at the central atrium where the car is. They need you.”
Temple jumped up. “Sony,” she told Rafi. “Gotta run.”
His lips tightened, his expression saying thanks for reminding him that he was just scummy hired help and had no business talking to a woman whose life he had saved.
“I enjoyed talking to you,” Temple said in farewell.
And she had. She had really enjoyed learning that the Molina scenario might have another side.
Still, she was glad to go off with Matt.
“Who was that guy?” he was asking as suspiciously as Max would. “He sure was monopolizing you.” “Do they really want me anywhere?”
“Yeah.” Matt stopped now that Rafi Nadir was three vignettes behind them and out of sight. “I do. Here.”
“Really.” Temple wondered what a genuine ballsy little broad would say to a provocative statement like that.
Chapter 8
Hot Sauce
“This place gives me the creeps,” Matt said. “Not to mention the company you were just keeping.” He looked around the elegant, empty rooms. “Is there any place we can talk confidentially?”
“Any place that isn’t orange. That’s the fashion statement of the evening, and that’s where people congregate. Hey. There’s a green office vignette just next door. A designer named Kelly did it.”
“Good.” Matt took Temple’s elbow to usher her into the adjoining vignette. He urged her into a corner behind a huge entertainment center-in an office?
The nook was cosy and intimate and Temple could see that Matt was too upset to see just where he’d placed them.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“This place. The whole … mood feels wrong. Half the employees seem to be trolling around to attack the other half.”
“You’ve never worked for a large company, I see.”
“And who was that thug you were chatting up?”
“You didn’t give me time to introduce you. And I was hardlychatting him up. He waylaid me. Like you did just now. What’s really bothering you?”
Matt looked over his shoulder and shook his head. “I don’t know. I think I was just sort of hit on.”
“Well, it can’t have been me, or you’d have noticed. Janice? She looks like such a reserved lady…