Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

reason.”
    They each sipped from their drinks, gazing at the spectacular 180-degree view, then back at each other.
    “If you don’t want something,” she said finally, “and everybody does, why did you get me away from the office?”
    “What’s the worst I could do with what I know?”
    “Blackmail? But I don’t think so.”
    “No. Just exposure.”
    “I deny. I stop. Carmen gets paid in cash. She has no Social Security number. You could mess up my friends at the Blue Dahlia a little, but I could mess you up a whole lot more. And Carmen could fall off the planet. Officialdom would never notice.”
    “I would. Notice. I’d never do that, bum Carmen. She’s a class act. I oughta know. Acts, that is.”
    “Then... what do you want?”
    “Nothing. Everything. Just to get the cards on the table.”
    Molina stared at the tiny circle of plastic cocktail table holding their Art Moderne drink glasses. “What cards? What table?”
    “This one. Here. Now. Call it a social occasion with overtones of business.”
    She finally got it. “You think this is a date ?”
    “Yeah. I thought you knew.”
    Her jaw would have dropped for the second time that night, figuratively anyway, if she’d allowed it to. She looked away and found an irritatingly famous face in every direction. Holographic portraits imbued the place’s few interior walls, both hung on and burned into the wall. The Ghost Bar was a highly desirable destination in Las Vegas, and Dirty Larry had gotten them first-row seats.
    A frivolous woman would have been impressed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she told him, not happy.
    “Oh, yeah.”
    He grinned and knocked back a big swallow of Burning Bush. Maybe the name was also a political statement.

    The line for the elevator when they left a few minutes later was even longer, snaking through the casino. Lustful eyes followed them, envying their leaving a place most of them would never get into this night or even by four A.M. the next morning when the Ghost Bar closed.
    Dirty Larry had just shrugged when she beat him to the credit card draw and slapped her Visa down on the tiny table. Thirty bucks plus a high-rise tip for a view through Go Ask Alice’s rabbit hole and a little atmosphere. That was the New Vegas, converted from cheap everything to entice gamblers to overpriced everything to entice tourists.
    The parking lot was jammed but well lit.
    “So you have pull with the pit bosses,” Molina noted. “In which persona?”
    “Just as me.”
    “Who is?”
    “Just plain Larry Paddock.”
    “I like Dirty Larry better.”
    “Figured you might.”
    He followed her to her car. “Where are you parked?” she asked finally.
    He waved in a vaguely distant direction.
    “I’ll drop you at your car,” she offered. Insisted.
    “You don’t have to.”
    “You’re sure it’s safe out here with you bare-faced?”
    “Should be. People look but they don’t really see. That’s always been my edge.”
    “You sound like a magician.”
    “Not a bad comparison, but you sound like you don’t much care for magicians.”
    She leaned against the still tepid side of her Toyota. It took a load off her feet but also made their heights equal for a moment. She topped him by an inch or more.
    “So what do we have here—?”
    “Sergeant Paddock.”
    “Sergeant Paddock.”
    “We have a homicide lieutenant with a secret undercover role and a not very healthy interest in a drug-bust suspect, and we have a narc with a yen to play Joe Citizen for a while.”
    “Why play that role with me?”
    “Because I like your style.”
    “I don’t have one. Just a job.”
    “Right. That’s the style I like.”
    “And you want?”
    “Maybe I can help you with that Nadir guy. He was clean on this Maylords bust but something’s wrong with him.”
    “I don’t need help.”
    He grinned again. “That’s my girl.”
    “Do you know how long it’s been since anybody’s had the nerve to call me that?”
    “Too long?”
    She jingled her key ring and let out a disgusted sigh. “I don’t ‘date’ inside the department.”
    “No. You don’t date, period.”
    “It’s mandatory?”
    “No, but it might be fun.”
    “I outrank you.”
    “I’m a free agent. I make daily life and death decisions commanders don’t face. Rank doesn’t intimidate me.” She straightened. “I’m taller than you are.”
    “Rock climbing’s my hobby when I want to relax.”
    “I’m older than you are.”
    “Now how did you