Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Lucky you,” Molina muttered. She rested her head on one hand as she scanned the entrées, giving him sum-up time.

Fingernails: unpolished and clipped short, but filed smooth. Unlined olive skin except for vertical tracks between her black eyebrows, which were sweeping, strong, and unplucked. The frown lines flirted with forty, a prime age for a woman. An angle of serviceable bob the color of espresso brushed her knuckles. She pushed it behind one ear. No earrings, no rings.

She tapped the menu’s hard glossy edge on the tabletop before laying it down, for good. “You ready to order?”

A veteran waitress with a patina of perky overlaying tired eyes—and probably feet—had appeared like a magician’s assistant beside the booth. The Mystifying Max had always worked solo. He made up for lost time by skipping his eyes past entrées like meatloaf and pot roast … and sides of baked potatoes that would be small and tough-skinned … and desserts like banana pudding and chocolate cake. He surrendered.

“Cajun-style blackened steak; baked potato with bacon, sour cream, and chives; the house salad to start.” He skipped the vegetable sides, which would be watery with all the color leached out. No sense in ordering meat rare or medium here. Everything was cooked to death.

Molina jumped on the chuck wagon. “The grilled fish, salad, Italian dressing on the side, and the, ah, baked beans and green beans.”

Max rolled his eyes as the waitress left. “My treat next time. I just risked death six thousand miles away. I’m not going to be killed by cuisine in my home city.”

“What makes you think there will be a next time?”

“You said you have work for me. I don’t see you as a penny-ante copper. Given the fine line of legality you’ve been walking to protect your personal issues for far too long, you’re going to need a heap of help.”

“Hired help.”

“Yes, ma’am. I was going to add ‘even from a memoryless cripple.’”

She snorted as their small salad bowls arrived with saltines on the side, tabletop. “Playing the self-pity card, eh? Spare me. Why take my offer? You don’t need the money.”

“I need the exercise. Both the mental and the physical.”

She nodded. “That I buy.”

“So what’s next? Now that the Barbie Doll Killer and your unprofessional hiring practices have been exposed…”

“I suppose Miss Barr has been sharing my longtime low opinion of you—”

“And it is based solely on bias and my sleight-of-hand reputation. I’m flattered.”

“It was based on the fact that your act at the Goliath Hotel ended the same night a body was found in the surveillance passages over the casino area, and you disappeared that same night.”

“It was a magic act.”

“You bailed and left your loyal live-in squeeze to face the questions.”

“Doesn’t sound like me. I did hear recently you harassed my … then-fiancée for information she didn’t have about my whereabouts. For months.”

“Just doing my job. I don’t like material witnesses disappearing after a murder. They could be perps.”

“You don’t know for sure I witnessed anything. I don’t even know that now.”

“Innocence by absentmindedness. Not a plea you can cop.” She sighed. “Later events have convinced me you were more likely a target than a criminal.”

“You mean that Garry Randolph’s death at the hands of ex-IRA factions in Belfast last week convinced you that real bogeymen were after me in Las Vegas almost two years ago.”

“Don’t sound so bitter. Trust me, that’s no way to live.”

Max raised his eyebrows. “Trust, huh? So what’s happened to Dirty Larry Podesta, or whatever his surname really is.”

“Out of town, out of law enforcement, out of my hair.”

“I’ll give you credit. You played him as much as he might ever have played you.”

“Never, Kinsella. He never played me.”

“Is that a challenge, Lieutenant?”

Their wilted salads had been sampled and then set aside for a round of crisp dialogue. Now they had to shut up and lean back and away from each other as entrées descended on their place settings, a plastic mat surrounded by the Chinese New Year symbols and a color-crayon-ready blank-white center.

“Trust? Try it,” she said. “Meanwhile, your first assignment, should you choose to accept it, is looking into that Goliath murder you skipped out on.”

Max gazed at his plate, a piece of meat more charred than blackened and a small baked potato in its brittle brown jacket. His ancestors had starved by the thousands for the want of these commonplace root vegetables. Even his happy-to-be-back-in-the-USA appetite for kitschy food had picked up its paper napkin and gone.

“I don’t remember a thing about that place, that time, those people.” Max began picking at his meal. “I walk into the Goliath Hotel now and someone, a lot of staff probably, will recognize me and I won’t have a clue.”

She smiled, having eviscerated the fish into flaky bites of white non-taste. “Too proud to be ignorant, are we? That’s the beauty of it. Poking around the Goliath will prod your memory. It will take a smooth, prevaricating SOB to hide your disabilities. You can thank me when you make your first report.”