Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Just about the usual suspects. They were interested in the photo guy. I noticed you wrote his name and address down from the stamp on the back of the picture. And there’s the deejay, Tyler. Just a kid, underage, but I didn’t tell the cops that. Loves music, likes to watch naked girls dancing. All pimple-faces do. And he doesn’t have to pay for it.”

“He ever bother any of the girls?”

“All he knows how to bother people yet is by playing his tapes too loud, although you can’t possibly do that at a strip club. Naw, he’s a good kid, and the bartenders and bouncers, they’re just regular guys. You’d be amazed how boring it is to be around women shedding their clothes after the shock wears off. That’s why we move so much from club to club. I just don’t see any of these guys going berserk and offing a girl. Why?”

“You like the idea of an outside stalker better?”

“Yeah. Maybe it was her old man. Stepdad. Those are the kind who can diddle their own kids and then get mad when the kid grows up and goes off and lets someone outside the family do it. Maybe it’s that Hannibal freak, huh? Most of the guys who come to strip clubs are pussycats. That’s why we love doing it, putting a smile on their pussycat faces while they stuff our G-strings with cash money.”

Trifari started banging a plastic assembly toy on the floor, and Reno jumped down to take it away. “Come on, honey. Save that toy for next time.”

Molina had noted down the names of Secrets’ male workers. The detectives’ reports would cover all of them.

“Only one guy from Secrets came anywhere near Cher away from the club,” Reno said as she straightened up. “That guy she met her last night there.”

“The day before she was murdered.”

“Right.” Reno shivered as she sat again to sip strong, cooling coffee. “I think I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been at this a long time. Too long. But the money’s good and I come and go when I want, and I’ll be free days to go to my little girl’s school stuff when she’s older. When she’s in the school play, right, little star? If I hold up.” She laughed. “I look pretty good for my age, don’t I?”

Molina smiled. “I don’t know. What’s your age?”

“Guess.”

“Twenty-eight or nine?”

Reno preened. You could almost see a spotlight on her. “Add ten, honey.”

“Really?” Molina was honestly surprised. Reno was in great condition.

“I get in another ten years, I’ll have this kid in junior high and a nest egg for college. Then I can do nails at the Goliath or something.”

If, Molina thought, shutting her notebook, nobody ever caught her in a parking lot alone.

Chapter 5

Magic Act

The widening vee of seats unfurled like a fan. The audience filled the seats, a hydra-headed monster in miniature. Tiny pale faces glimmered beyond the spotlights like pearlescent fingernails.

From the front-row red-velvet chairs that curved into a smile to match the stage’s dark, grinning lip, the seating section lifted and expanded, making the faces dim into distant painted figures on a Chinese vase.

Most of the audience could never know that, to the performer, the seating section of a theater resembled a chasm, in time as well as in space. The spectators themselves became ignored attractions, mere curiosities, creatures trapped beyond the invisible “fourth wall” that every stage possessed: a cellophane curtain, a psychic force field.

The audience, by virtue of its assembly and its conspiracy of silence, its expectation of witnessing something, was not a mass of individuals anymore, but that ancient Greek-chorus embodiment of society at large. It was also the same thumbs-up, thumbs-down monster that had circled the gladiators in a Roman coliseum.

That ancient Roman audience had expected blood.

This contemporary Las Vegas one merely thirsted after amazement.

But even modern times were quickly reaching the point where blood was the only amazement left. At least in live performance.

And this performance was designed to amaze. The man who moved in the laser shafts of spotlights that raked the dark stage like dueling light sabers was tall, dark, and masked in sinister spots that resembled arcane tattoos in the theatrical lighting.

Unlike an actor, he could shatter the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience. That didn’t mean they were any more intimate to him, that ocean of whitecap faces bobbing gently now and then to cough or address a seat partner.

Such signs of inattention were not encouraged.

The man stepped into the upright coffin behind him, a carved and polished box fit for a vampire. A red velvet curtain lowered over it.

The masked man stepped through a breakaway back panel just as the curtain whisked up again to reveal an empty box.

He stepped through to confront an eerily similar figure to himself, a man in black everything, except for the mask. This man’s face was painted black. The smell of greasepaint hovered like a halo over the almost mirror images.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the intruder murmured.