Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Had she somehow found out about his nightly 3 A.M. “sessions” at the Goliath Hotel?

“UFOs,” her firm contralto boomed in his ear.

Curiouser and curiouser. “UFOs? No, I’m interested in another mythical Las Vegas apparition. Mobsters.”

“Hie yourself over to the three new mob museums or, better yet, to the Crystal Phoenix or Gangsters Hotels and convene a flock of Fontanas.”

“I’m not talking about the Beretta of brothers in the Fontana clan. They’re as much for show as those mob museums popping up all over. But … I wondered how seriously mob their uncle, Macho Mario Fontana, was? Is.”

“Before my day. Remember, I moved here from L.A. Are you serious?”

“I did say so. Aren’t there a few leftover elements from the bad old days still bouncing around town?”

Molina’s laugh was wary. “They’re all over at the Museum for Law Enforcement downtown, signing autographs.”

“I am very serious.” Matt was aggravated enough to sound like it. Serious and steamed. “Can we talk or not?”

“Sheesh. You Circle Ritz residents act like you have a private line to the police. If you’re that serious, visit me at the office. You know where Metro headquarters is located now?”

“Sure, it’s Temple’s second-favorite Las Vegas site to point out on jaunts around the Strip.”

“What’s our girl’s very favorite?”

“Grizzly Bahr’s morgue on Pinto Lane. That innocuous street address just cracks her up. Says it sounds like a pony ride.”

“Some days it is. That’s where you ID’d your dead stepfather after someone sank him at the sinking-ship attraction. Is that what’s got this new ‘mob’ fixation going?”

Matt sighed loudly enough so she’d hear him over the phone, then waited.

“All right. I agree that ugly incident had the whiff of an old-time whack job. Fifty minutes. My place. Just follow your fiancée’s ruby red slippers to South Martin Luther King Boulevard. I’ll have a visitor’s ID ready for you.”

*   *   *

The new headquarters, almost 400,000 square feet, had recently united departments housed in various leased facilities around town in two five-story blocks of dark gray stone with regimental square windows. It had reminded Matt of the supposedly impregnable Bastille stormed during the French Revolution.

Yet the soaring glass central structure had a slightly curved and raised roof that also reminded Matt of folded angel wings as he drove up to the main doors.

Tender little trees edging the parking lot resembled architect’s 3-D miniatures so prissily placed on model building sites. The mirrored central window-wall reflected the cloudless blue sky common to Vegas. That made the solid structure look like it was only a hollow gridwork on a Hollywood backlot, one you could see right through. Matt supposed that architectural “trick of light” was appropriate to a city built on illusion.

Matt parked the Jaguar near an oval of concrete holding the skimpy trees. He scanned the central glittering plinth for the entry doors, watching the sky reflection vanish as he got closer, until he met his reflection at a door, then pushed through … and straight into a waiting Molina.

She was, as always, tall and plainly dressed and sardonic. “Fancy car,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to valet-park it?” she joked.

“It’s not mine—”

“This a confession?”

“It’s a gift I’m not sure I’ll keep.”

She shook her head, causing her shiny brunet bob to shimmer. Was Molina doing a Hillary Clinton and letting her businesslike chop cut grow out?

“Relax,” she told him. “I know you’re a syndicated radio personality and all things pretty and perklike flow your way.”

“You think the car is pretty?”

“Gorgeous, but my Prius is greener. Mariah would swoon over your Jaguar, though.”

“Do teenage girls still swoon?”

“No, they text—dear Lord, how they text.”

She started walking and he fell into step beside her through a big modern space sprouting rows of sleek and skinny gray-upholstered visitors’ chairs. As they neared the office area, there was chaos, there was crowding, there was heat generated by computers and noisy phone calls, like in a newsroom.

Molina shut a door on them both. They were boxed into a small but slick private office.

“You’ve got something new, too, don’t you?” Matt asked. “Fancy private office instead of a cubbyhole.”

“You betcha.”

She sat in the desk chair, spun a quarter turn, and gestured at an angular guest chair. “Have a seat.”

“This is big,” he said, eyeing the horizontal file cabinets, a sideboard with a single-shot coffeemaker, a photo of Mariah in the uninspiring annual-school-photo style.

“Comparatively small, but mine own. It’s new. It’ll get that used look fast.” Molina nodded at her computer, all screen and no visible tower. “So what do you want to know about mob remnants in Vegas?”

Matt started to answer, but she interrupted him.

“I should say, first, why do you want to know?”

“That’s the key question. Why would some aging mobsters out of a Danny DeVito movie stalk my mom in Chicago? They ended up kidnapping and holding Temple’s cat for ransom while we were in town last week.”