Cat In A Leopard Spot

She shut the door, hard.

A moment later the chain latch slid and the door opened enough to admit him.

Max dove into the stuffy atmosphere of food, cosmetics, and kid odors.

“How’d you and Raf end up?”

“We had words.”

She nodded and went to the shabby upholstered sofa, sitting on the corner near a tilting end table.

Max followed. “You were worried about one of us?”

Reno shook her head. She slumped into the corner of the couch and lit a cigarette from a matchbook on the end table.

“Moxie’s,” the cover read. Max had never heard of it.

“So you’re Vince,” she said, narrowing her eyes through the veil of smoke she puffed out on her first draw.

He shrugged.

“I suppose that Mandy never noticed you were too bad to be true.”

“Mandy was too drunk to notice much.” Max looked around, removed a stack of folded kid’s clothing from an armchair seat, and sat there. “That’s why I ended up getting her home.”

Reno took another deep drag on her cigarette.

“Why am I too bad to be true?” Max asked.

She laughed. “Disappointed? Listen, I’ve been studying sleazy guys since I started stripping when I was fifteen. You’re just too perfect.”

Max tugged at his stretch velour V-neck shirt. “I shop in all the worst places.”

“That’s just it. To me, you’re a little too sleazy. But I’m an expert on sleazy guys, believe me. What are you? I don’t smell undercover cop.”

He shook his head. “I’m nobody official, even unofficially.”

She nodded, no longer interested in any particular label now that she’d pegged him. “So why’d you take Mandy home?”

“Nadir was hassling her, and she wasn’t as good as you at handling him back.”

“He’s all bark.”

“You don’t think he killed her?”

“Why?”

“I interrupted him. He doesn’t like to be interrupted. And…I had to knock him down. It was too dark for him to ID me, but he wouldn’t like that. He didn’t know who I was or where I was from, but Cher—”

“You remind me of that PI that saw me yesterday.”

“PI?”

She nodded. “Now that she’s dead, everybody’s interested in Mandy. Or Cher. That was her real name. You know why strippers take stage names?”

“Privacy. It keeps the customers at a distance.”

“Yeah, sure. But for another reason. Most of us, we hate our real names. We heard them yelled at us since we could crawl. Maybe a slap came with it, or just more yelling, or…if we were real lucky, daddy or stepdaddy with a little game to play.”

Max nodded. “Makes sense.”

“So Mandy didn’t like to admit to the name Cher. But she told you. Why?”

“My honest face?”

Reno laughed with him. “No, you got to her. She acted like she’d been visited by the angel Gabriel the next day. And she did exactly what you said and went to a different club the next night. She was even going to call that radio shrink you mentioned when she got time. She was real happy when she died.”

Max closed his eyes.

He heard Reno inhale on her cigarette like a sigh.

“So it was mutual,” she said.

When he opened his eyes she was snuffing the cigarette in an empty Gerber glass jar.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll tell you what I told the PI. No one would want to kill Mandy but a freak. She was so harmless. That’s why we took her in here, same reason you brought her home. You aren’t the only softie left in Las Vegas, Vince. Ginger and I were real fond of Mandy.”

Reno teared up and looked away. “She was like a kid, still hoping things would turn out all right, just because. I guess she died quick.”

He nodded. “The police had a couple other women strangled about the same time, but there were markers at those scenes that weren’t there in Mandy’s case.”

“You do sound like a cop sometimes.”

“This PI. Who put him on the case?”

“Mandy’s family, I guess. That’s what she said.”

“She?”

“Yeah. There are lady PIs. I gotta say, the ones I’ve seen before were these little old dames all curlicued and mascaraed. You know, fifty-something types with bleached hair. This one was plain and simple, looked like she knew her stuff.”

“You get a name?”

“Sure, but I’m not sure I believe it. Vince. Vince?”

“It does have a certain sleaze factor, Reno.”

She laughed and reached for another cigarette. “That it does. Serious lady. Not like you.”

“How not?”

“You’re relaxed. She was edgy. Didn’t really show it, but I know edgy. I think she knows her stuff, though, that’s why I talked to her. I want the creep who did Mandy to pay.”

Max nodded. “What did she look like?”

“Mandy?” Reno asked with exaggerated innocence.

He waited.

“Tall, real tall. If I were that tall I’d make twelve thousand more a year. But like I said, plain vanilla. See, that’s what’s wrong with you, Vince, you stand out. She didn’t. Except for those Bausch and Lomb eyes.”

“Eyes?”

“Seriously blue. Unreal.”

Max nodded again. “A handicap for a PI if you don’t want to be remembered.”

“Now, your eyes are—” Reno leaned forward through her own halo of cigarette smoke to study Max’s face. “Now, yours are blue, but nice quiet sky blue. If you toned down the rest of your image, you’d be pretty forgettable.”

“Thanks.”