A cafeteria was an unlikely place to rendezvous with a big bad bogeyman from a homicide lieutenant’s past, Temple thought, eyeing the joint.
But maybe the apple-pie ambiance was just the right unlikely setting for a “date” with Rafi Nadir. Temple spotted him already seated by a window, a brown tray serving as a portable place mat before his folded arms.
His swarthy looks and solo state made him look out of place among Wonder-bread families chowing down at all the surrounding tables.
She shuffled through the line in her turn, trying to quiet the butterflies in her stomach. Rafi Nadir was one bad dude. Everybody said so. He was a rogue ex-cop turned hired muscle for shady operators. He liked to hang out at strip clubs. His former significant other regarded him as the Great Satan even after thirteen years apart.
Temple was nuts to meet him alone like this, but he seemed to like her for some unfathomable reason. Temple, and the ex-reporter in her, could never resist an easy source, no matter how dangerous.
So she shuffled through the line in her summer espadrilles, too nervous to eat much, nailing the last lime Jell-O dish to accompany her red dye #3 barbecue-sauced pile of beef brisket. Her tray had an unseasonably Christmassy air, but it couldn’t be helped. Cafeteria food was not her favorite.
She filled a huge paper cup with a cataract of tiny ice cubes and watered them well before she joined Nadir.
Nobody she knew would approve of her coming within six tables of separation from him. But Temple suffered from congenital curiosity, a feline predisposition that sometimes manifested itself in other species.
Nadir looked up from an uninspired mound of ketchup-frosted meatloaf and nodded. She sat to deploy her dishes on the plastic veneer tabletop. If he got too frisky she could heave the plate of brisket at him . . . or season the encounter by drawing the pepper spray from her straw tote bag.
“Now I see why you’re so little,” he said.
Temple eyed her meat-and-Jell-O meal. “I’m on the go a lot. I got used to odd foods.”
“Why didn’t you want to meet on the Strip?”
“It’s so noisy and crowded.” And there’s too much chance of my being recognized there.
Nadir sipped his black coffee. “I’da figured you to want as many people around as possible. Why are you afraid of me?”
“Well . . . I don’t know any guys who hang around strip clubs.”
“You think you don’t know any guys like that.”
She didn’t argue. It would be too hard to explain that the guys she knew best included an ex-priest.
Temple shrugged and pushed the beef away after nibbling two slices. The Jell-O was more fun, and challenging, to eat.
Nadir shook his head. “I met you at a strip club, remember?”
“Yeah, but I was there on a mission of mercy. So to speak.”
“Maybe I was too.”
“You? I mean, you did help me out by decking the Stripper Killer, but that was just because you happened along.”
“Maybe not.”
“You were following me—?”
“Not that way. Don’t get your Jell-O in a puddle. I’m an ex-cop. I’ve got a suspicious mind.”
“So do I.”
“That’s good. Little girls who stick their noses in big messes should have suspicious minds.”
“Big guys who put down little girls who carry pepper spray should wear big goggles.”
“Jeez, women today have more chips on their shoulders than the Jacksonville Jags have shoulder pads.” He tore open a blue packet of Equal and poured the powder into his coffee, as if sweetening it would sweeten up Temple. “You weren’t making a name for yourself as Tess the Thong Girl in that club because your sister sells spandex by the Strip side. No way. And you’re not a cop, city payroll or private. And secretaries don’t rate the attention you get. So what the hell are you?”
“You heard last night at Maylords: a public relations consultant.”
“Now, that’s a job title that’s subject to interpretation,” he said with a semi-official smirk. “But that I believe. So why were you pretending to be someone else at the strip club? Don’t tell me that’s how you snag new clients.”
Temple sighed and pushed away the green Jell-O, which was melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I did PR for a stripper convention over a year ago and met some of the women. When they started getting killed, I talked to a few of my contacts and . . . I was a TV reporter years ago. I smelled a story, that’s all.”
“I smell a story too. ‘Years ago.’ What are you? Twenty-four?”
“Thirty!”
“You won’t be so fast to give your age in a few more years, cookie.” He grinned. “So. You don’t trust me because you found me in a strip club.”
“I don’t trust you because I don’t know you. And you sure rushed away before the police came. Why? You could have played the hero.”
“You sprayed the guy. I just made sure that he stayed down. But I can see your point. I look like a loser.”
“Not a loser—” Temple couldn’t stand to see anyone putting himself down. She realized that this was a bad habit, smacking of enabling. Every good deed had a diagnosis these days. Even Rafi Nadir lifted skeptical eyebrows.
“You wrote me off as a loser. And a bad dude on top of it, maybe even—”
“The Stripper Killer, right. I was wrong there.”
“Apparently.” He laughed. “You’re a lot tougher than you look. Listen.” He leaned forward, his intensity fixing her to the spot. “Being a cop is like being in a secret club. The secret is that no one knows what it’s like except another cop. You’re a necessary evil twenty-four hours a day. Sure, citizens are glad to see you on a crime scene, but drive along the street and watch even the most innocent avert their eyes. You’re a cop. You could object to how they’re driving at any moment, pull them over. And you never know when you pull a traffic violation over whether it’s Miss Tess’s harmless aunt Agatha . . . or an escaped con with a concealed weapon. You gotta trust no one to be what they seem. Ever. So I’m not surprised even a nice, safe-streets little lady like you isn’t what she seems.”
“I’m sure it’s rough—”
“Cops aren’t that different from strippers, see? No one really knows much about their lives, except to avoid them or use them if they have to. That’s the way it gets with cops and crooks and strippers. We’re all on opposite sides of the law when cops are enforcing ‘community standards,’ but we’re part of the same club. On the inside.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
He grunted as he tucked into his meatloaf. “You never thought. So what did you want to know?”
“You said something funny was going on at Maylords,” Temple began.
He nodded again. “The management has an awful high level of anxiety for a furniture store. They kept some of us hired security guys on after the opening. I’d figured they were worried about that Wong woman. I can’t see why she would get death threats.”
“She’s a lifestyle Nazi,” Temple said promptly. “Nothing hits as close to home as that. Some people swear by her and some people hate her house-remaking guts. I’d bet the death threats come from true believers, though, who think her advice somehow done them wrong.”
“Maybe. All I know is the Maylords management is playing amateur G-men, trying to catch what they say is a furniture-stealing ring.”
“The management? Kenny Maylord himself?”
“Nah, that lard-ass manager, Mark Ainsworth. Acts like a little J. Edgar Hoover. Probably as much of a fairy too.”
Temple had idly tried another mouthful of lime Jell-O and almost spat it out. “Sexual persuasion shouldn’t matter—”
“Around Maylords it does. That place is crawling with queers.”
“Look. I’ve worked in the arts field and I don’t like you calling some of my friends names.”
“I’ve been called a raghead.”
“Didn’t like it, though, I bet.”
“Most people say all sorts of things in their living rooms they wouldn’t say on the street.”
“At least they know enough to keep it shut in public.”
He pushed away the meatloaf dish, now only a bloody smear of ketchup. “I call a spade a spade. You don’t like it, don’t ask me questions.”
“All you’re seeing at Maylords is that gay people are often very creative and they’re drawn to the decorative arts.”
“Why are they so damn creative? Isn’t that labeling them in another way?”
“Well, some observations hold true, by and large.”
“Right. Only mine aren’t worth anything because I come flat out and say it, is that the idea?”
“I didn’t come here to argue political correctness with you.”
“Why did you come here?”
“The Maylords opening is my baby. I’m responsible for things going smoothly. I need to know if any more bad-news surprises are in store.”
“ ‘In store.’ That’s good.”
“So what do you think of that explosion of gunfire?”
“Either sicko kids or a disgruntled former employee trying to throw a scare into the party. None of those shots was meant to hit anyone, or they would have. We were all in a freaking fishbowl.”
“But those shots could have hit someone. Who’d take a chance like that?”
“Someone who was drunk or high.”
“Only one person could do all that shooting?”
“With the right weapon, yeah. Or a gang of kids. I’m not the fuzz here, but I’m betting this was malicious mischief, not a gangland hit. So. Did you take this job because you’re still thinking I might be up to something illegal, or just because you wanted to see me again?”
“No way! How would I know you were there? Running into you again was an accident.”
“Most good things are.”
“That’s a pretty negative view of life. And I’m not so sure this is a good thing. So are you going to be working security there all week?”
“Maybe longer.”
Temple raised her eyebrows. She’d heard via Max’s recent undercover work that the lovely and charming Rafi Nadir had hooked up with a “big outfit” that was going to earn him “real money.” This couldn’t have been Maylords.
“You wouldn’t want to work for them full-time?”
“With all the . . . uh, creative types running around? No way. I have a semiregular gig for another outfit, but it’s not working out the way they promised.” He picked up a square of unused paper napkin and began pleating it.
His fingernails were completely clean, she noted with surprise. There was some core of self-respect there.
“What else would you do? Doesn’t sound like police work—”
He snorted at the mention and tore the folded napkin in half.
“I suppose you could . . . I don’t know how official your leaving the L.A. police was, but maybe you could get into private investigation.”
“Private dick? They’re such sleazy bastards.”
Temple kept quiet, just lifted her hands with an I’m-off-the-subject gesture.
Nadir’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what you think I am? So much for my saving your ass. Man, that’s low. A private dickhead.”
“Maybe whatever you did to get taken off the force wouldn’t let you get a license or whatever anyway.”
“Nah. I took myself off the force. I got tired of the political correctness do-si-do. Anyway, they never had anything on me.”
“Boy, is this reassuring.”
“Private cop stuff? I could do it in a heartbeat. If I was dumb enough to want to starve to death doing spousal surveillance.”
“This is Las Vegas. I bet there’s a lot of higher-level private security work around here than strip joints and furniture stores.”
“They all have computer degrees nowadays. And the big joints go to big firms.”
“That’s why I pictured the lone operator. One man, one room, and one ex-stripper as a girl Friday.”
“No wonder you’re always getting your nose in a vise. You don’t live in a real world, girl. ”
“What’s my motive and opportunity for that?”
He laughed softly. “So. You picked as much of my brains as you can stand for the moment?”
“I wasn’t—”
He stood up, held out a hand.
Temple looked perplexed.
“Your tray. I’ll bus it. Maybe that’d be a good job for me.”
She decided that there was nothing she could say that would make her or him look better, so she handed him the tray.
He glanced at the paltry little dishes. “You don’t eat much. Maybe I make you nervous. Wonder if there’s a career in that.”
If so, Matt Devine was moving right into it.