Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Well, Mariah, for one.” When Molina winced, Temple went on. “I’m getting to be gal pals with Matt’s mother. Not so much his lovesick younger cousin. Electra is a girlfriend. And a couple media women in town. And, oh, I mustn’t forget my aunt Kit, who’s hardly like a relative at all. And now that she’s married Aldo Fontana, I’m some kinda crazy in-laws to the ten brothers.”

“Aldo Fontana is married? To your aunt? You’re right. That is vaguely … incestuous. And you’re asking me about mobsters?”

“You know the Fontanas are … vestigial mobsters. Mock mobsters.”

“And that truly is all that’s left of the mob in Vegas. The Metro Police and the FBI cleaned up the town in the ’80s. Our big problem now is ethnic gangs.”

“Couldn’t there be a few vestigial made men hanging around town? That body dump on Paradise is very Jimmy Hoffa.”

“What makes Hoffa a mystery is that his body was never found. This Paradise guy was old, though.”

“Like the Glory Hole Gang? Those eighty-something rascals who heisted silver dollars in their youth and run a restaurant at Gangsters?”

“About that age. We don’t see too many elderly murder victims.”

“I suppose age takes people to a point where the usual motives—lust, envy, and vengeance—don’t matter much anymore. Except for greed. That seems ageless.”

“True. The Glory Hole Gang were holdup artists, not mob.”

“Whoever killed Cliff Effinger was probably mob,” Temple said. “Effinger was in on something. He knew something that got him killed. When Matt and I visited Chicago, someone was shaking down his mother for some old personal items Effinger had left behind.”

“Really? What kind of items?”

Temple was not going to reveal the strange history of the constellation Ophiuchus and secret magicians’ circle called the Synth. If Molina found the names of the outlet mall’s various areas “New Age,” she’d find all the Synth mumbo-jumbo, with bodies arranged in a constellation shape, too outré for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

“We don’t know,” Temple said, guilty about lying. “Just that there was a fireproof locked file box full of memorabilia, and somebody wanted it enough to threaten and stalk Matt’s mother—”

“Another stalking situation?” Molina’s squinting eyes reduced her electric blue irises to high-intensity narrow beams. “That’s … a coincidence too many.”

“Her apartment was broken into and Midnight Louie taken to force her to surrender the box and its contents. The Chicago police went to the warehouse Louie had escaped from and found two ‘minor crime figures’ with Italian surnames in somewhat shaky condition.”

“That’s ethnic profiling, Red.” Molina was sensitive about her half-Hispanic origins.

“Go to the mob museum if you want to see ethnic profiling spelled M-a-f-i-a.”

Molina leaned back in the plastic chair, her meal and beverage dispensed with. And probably her patience. “I’ll look into the Farnum character’s company, but as far as we yet know, that dumped body was a murder in search of an unrelated site to be found in. The only prints around the location indicate the presence of rats. And cats,” she added with a forbidding frown.

Temple knew when to pull back. “You can’t have one without the other or else you get bubonic plague,” she pointed out.

“The victim hasn’t been identified, but I’d doubt he’d have mob connections. His hands were callused from heavy labor. I’d suspect the building trades.”

“Shovels. Pickaxes. Maybe he knew where other bodies were buried.”

“Will you get off this Jimmy Hoffa theme?” Molina was annoyed enough to make a speech. “With all the undreamed-of construction on the Strip in the past twenty years, any hidden bodies would have come to light. This is not a Big Crime case. It could be someone who welched on a bet at an illegal street gambling site. It could be someone who was bribed to use substandard building materials and was going to ‘squeal’ in the language of the gangster movies you favor.” Molina rose, ready to go.

Temple would love to know what the woman kept in her pockets; she never carried a purse. “I agree that this was man-on-man violence, not some old lady going crazy with the family revolver after fifty years of unhappy wedlock.” Temple gathered up her tote bag and stood as well.

“Stay put,” Molina ordered. “I’ll find my own way out. Maybe you should forget crime-solving, after all, and stick to what you know best. Shopping.”

Molina had gone too far too fast for Temple to think of a snappy comeback. While she picked up the lunch remnants and consigned them to the trash barrel, she considered that she’d at least learned the official police position on the dead body on Paradise.

And that Molina was behind the times. A woman could work both sides of the street these days: career seriousness and self-expression.

Just to prove it, Temple would not stop in at the Juicy Couture 80 percent off sale on the way out.

Chapter 19

Honeymooners

“You and Matt make such an adorable couple!” Aunt Kit pronounced that evening.