Cat In A Neon Nightmare Part 38

"It will be a challenge. And it will be a good Catholic interment, priest and all." He savored the idea like aged whiskey. "Perhaps I can find her something white and bridal to wear, like a Communion dress. She would have loathed it. Thank you, Temple, for suggesting a ritual of closure for her, and for me."

"Are you going to invite Matt?"

"The less he dwells on her, alive or dead, the better. Ihate to say this, but be gentle with him, Temple." She eyed him incredulously.

Max shrugged. "He was naive and he got nothing but well-intentioned bad advice. I didn't help him as much as I could have and I can pity anyone who's been the object of Kathleen's distilled ill will. It's an inbred poison, like any venomous serpent's. He wouldn't let me say I'm glad she's dead, but I am relieved she is. A lot of lives will go easier now, and who knows who would have attracted her lethal attention in the future."

"I'll let you say you're glad she's dead. Some people are destroyers. They're just evil, like serial killers. And a lot of them are running around loose in society like ordinary people, poisoning reputations and spreading gossip and lies. I guess we can't kill all the liars and sociopaths, but we don't have to pretend they add anything to the world but unnecessary pain."

"Granted. Kathleen was a disease, and she's been cured. She must have been scaldingly unhappy to have caused so much hurt. That's why I can be glad she's dead. She's better off that way, I'm sure."

"Someone too ill to live, I'm not sure Matt would ever accept that."

"He has to, because she is dead now. She's gone, Temple. I can feel it, as I've never sensed it before. That era is over."

"And so, where does that leave you?"

"Personally, I'm not sure yet. Professionally, as a provisionary member of the Synth."

"You mean you can concentrate on finding out what role they've played in the column of murders on my table? Max, they could be as dangerous as Kitty."

"Of course, but they'll never have the ancient hold on me that she did. Sean is finally at rest. His murderer lies in the same dark, cold ground, the universal ground of planet earth. We are left to walk upon it until our turns come. I plan to make the most of mine."

* * * Louie only ventured out from the office when Max had left, leaving the whiskey bottle for long-term interment in Temple's liquor cupboard, which boasted one half-empty bottle of Old Crow, a vastly inferior brand.

It was like the old English ballad of the briar and the rose, Temple thought, setting the new bottle next to the resident one. Two opposites united. Like Max's macabre and touching image of his young cousin Sean sharing Mother Earth with his conniving murderer by proxy, the youthful Kathleen O'Connor.

Speaking of th.o.r.n.y relationships, they were all surrounded with briar and rose combinations: Matt and Molina; Temple and Molina; Matt and Max; Temple and Matt ... more than one modern woman could contemplate at a single sitting.

"So," Temple told Louie, standing up.

The Leonard Cohen CD had long since played through and she had switched to the local golden oldies radio station, avoiding any temptation to dial in WCOO. It was only 11 P.M. anyway.

"You ruined Max's interior upholstery," she told Louie. "I thought you knew better than to sharpen your claws on furniture. You've left mine alone with not even an admonition."

Louie shook his head and then licked busily at the hair just beneath his chin, a sure sign he was annoyed with her. Usually this gesture was only evoked by a fresh influx of Free-to-be-Feline in his bowl.

"I suppose your actions drew Max's attention to his pursuer, but how and why on earth did you get into his car in the first place, and why were you at Neon Nightmare in the first first place?"

One of Louie's ears flattened, and he sparred at it with a well-licked paw, as if to say, Can I really be hearing these inane questions?

Temple examined him a little more closely. His fur hadbeen licked up into cowlicks all over and the hairs stuck together in a punk rocker's spiky look.

Louie had been off doing a major cleanup, which made her wonder what kind of mess he had gotten into. Could it be any worse than what Matt or Max had managed in the past few days?

Naw.. . .

Chapter 48.

Night Music "Sure. I'll come early and catch your act. I do think you have something to croon about tonight, Carmen."

"I hope so, Devine. You owe me that at least for my sterling dating advice." Said sardonically.

Matt smiled after she hung up. For once he would be the bearer of good tidings.

"I've got," Matt said into the phone, "a witness to Va.s.sar's death. Where do you want to hear about it?"

The line went dead for about half a minute. Then came a deep sigh. "I haven't the slightest idea."

"I can go anywhere now, see anyone. She's gone. She left the planet."

"Do not use that stinking 'she left' phrase. It's connected to too many murders for my peace of mind."

"This one wasn't a murder."

"Say you and your murky witness."

"My murky witness will be your solid witness. Trust me. I'm no more in the mood for fairy tales at this point than you are."

"A solid witness, you say."

"We're both off the hook."

"Then 'It's a Grand Night for Singing.' That's a song t.i.tle, by the way. Oldie but goofy. Come to the Blue Dahlia at ten-thirty. Think a half hour should get you to the radio station on time?"

Matt always found it amazing what people did to distract themselves from tension. He prayed. Temple bought wildly impractical shoes. Max Kinsella performed magic tricks. Lieutenant C. R. Molina sang.

And she did it very well.

Tonight she wore blue velvet, forties style. Her voice was blue velvet whatever she wore, dark, midnight deep, and plush.

The voice was a gift. Matt's vocation as a priest had forced him to sing the ma.s.s, to intone responses. He had managed to execute that narrow-range singsong respectably, but that was all.

Secretly, he had visited Baptist congregations, wowed by the vigor, faith, and musical pyrotechnics of their choirs. Plain song would always hold a pure, medieval attraction, but the pa.s.sionate musical joy of the black congregations struck a chord in him that maybe only Elvis would understand, now that Matt had been forced to understand Elvis.

Most torch singers caught the reflected sensual glow of the flames their lyrics celebrated. Molina was a cerebral singer. Her voice was something apart from Carmen the Performer. You couldn't get a crush on her even while she crooned Gershwin's "I've Got a Crush on You." That made her an even more fascinating performer. The audience sensed something held back from them. Matt had heard that the secret of great acting was to always hold something back, leave the audience craving more. Something more to come, if only you can wait long enough, hold the applause, and ... wait for the fireworks.

But even Molina's vintage performing wardrobe was somehow didactic. This forties gown, that silk blue Dahlia above one ear perched on an out-of-period Dutch cut that was vaguely twenties decadent at the same time it was schoolgirl fifties. Her only makeup was dark lipstick, Bette Davis style. And Davis had been many things on the screen, all of them magnificent; sometimes the neurotic, but never the Vamp.

Matt ordered a deep-fried appetizer and a drink and gave himself the luxury that Molina never had given herself: thinking about her as a person, rather than a profession.

The trio behind her had suddenly become instrumental only.

Matt realized his dining-out Scotch was a drizzle of memory over ice cubes and Carmen was offstage. Time for him to "strike up the music and dance." To her tune, of course.

Even at the Blue Dahlia, Molina was somehow in uniform.

Matt left a nice tip on the table and got up. He headed for the hallway and the second door on the right, straight on till morning, where her tiny dressing room was.

He knocked, and was invited in.

It was here she ... they . . . had hatched the scheme of sending him to a professional call girl to lose the virtue that Kathleen O'Connor had wanted to capture for herself. As if one could acquire another's virtue. As if virginity was a condition rather than a state of grace.

"Here we are again." Molina acknowledged their mutual complicity in the call-girl scheme, gesturing to the round-seated wooden chair he had used before.

He watched her expression in the round mirror of the vintage dressing table. She hadn't turned to welcome him, and he understood that. Guilt between even casual coconspirators was as much a barrier as the one between performer and audience. Every stage comes equipped with an invisible "fourth wall," a division that is only in the mind of both performer and audience. A barrier.

"What do you have for me?" Molina had finally turned around, her workaday tone neutralizing the persona of Carmen.

"A way out. For both of us. Va.s.sar accidentally fell to her death."

"Says who?"

"Says the woman who was on the cell phone with her at the time, the woman she called after I left the Goliath suite."

"Woman?"

"A volunteer counselor. I have her name, address, rank, cell phone number. She's real, Carmen. She has a convincing explanation for Va.s.sar's death, and it wasn't either of our faults."

"Some woman? How did you find her?"

"She found me."

"The radio station. Your show. That attracts nuts, don't you know that by now?"

"So does your profession."

"So be mad. I was only trying to help you."

"Your advice was impeccably hard-headed. It was just wrong for me. And for Va.s.sar, as it turned out."

"What do you know about a call girl? There was s.e.m.e.n in the body. If not yours, whose? Hookers, and especially high-end call girls, won't lick a stamp without a condom these days. It does make one wonder about her previous stand. If things had gotten tight and you'd hadn't been contacted by your convenient phone witness, I'd have had to ask you for a sample. Where does that fall on the spectrum of sin? Probably venial, compared to actual copulation. You didn't even screw her, which was the whole point. Did you?"

"No. I didn't even screw her. And that was the whole point. I was the first person who didn't even screw her. Can you understand what that might mean to someone like her?"

"Maybe." Said sourly. Molina was clinging tight to her professional distance. Compa.s.sion was an enemy to a cop.

"So what's the latest story on Va.s.sar's last gasp?"

"You and that coroner. Always cynical. Always laughing at Death in fear of Death laughing at you. I've got good news. At least to me and my conscience. Va.s.sar was happy, okay? She didn't regard me as a flop. We made talk, not love, and sometimes talk is better than s.e.x. I felt better for talking to her. Apparently she felt better for talking to me. She called this counselor she'd been avoiding right away. Deborah Ann Walker. She came to WCOO to find me and tell me that. Nice lady. Like Va.s.sar. They were both cla.s.sy ladies. The hooker and the reformer. Not so different, after all. Maybe the lady lieutenant figures in there somehow. Carmen, I know you tried to help me. I tried to do what you said. I failed. I chickened out. And that seems to have made all the difference. To Va.s.sar anyway. And to me. I didn't need to 'lose' anything about myself. I needed to give something more to someone else."

A knock on the door. The barman with a tray. Two Scotches on the rocks.

Molina waved him in and him out again. She drank from her gla.s.s before resuming the conversation.

"This Walker woman was on the phone with Va.s.sar after you left her at the Goliath?"

"She was on the phone with her just before Va.s.sar fell."

"Then where's the frigging phone?"

Matt outstared her sudden fury. "That's your job, to find it. My job is to tell you the truth you don't want to hear. You didn't do me any favors with your advice. But it worked out in a strange way, after all. I'd give right now what I was so desperately trying to keep Kathleen O'Connor from getting to get Va.s.sar back, but I can't be sorry I met her. I can't be sorry I ... failed to be a good customer. I'm glad I was a better friend."

Molina pushed a hand through her unmussable hair. "You and Va.s.sar, making fools of us all. Kathleen O'Connor and me. You're right. I was fighting O'Connor through you and Va.s.sar. I had convinced myself that this would heal everybody's ills, you and the call girl. I wasacting like a G.o.dd.a.m.n social worker instead of a cop. Here's the hardened call girl. I send her an ethical man. Here's the beset ex-priest who actually cares. I send him to a woman who regards s.e.x as richly rewarded therapy. A marriage made in Heaven, right? Except I no longer believe any marriage is made in Heaven."

"That's where you went wrong."

Carmen/Molina glared at him, saying and singing nothing.

"You were right. Va.s.sar and I were very good for each other. That's what Deborah's testimony tells me. We were both better off for meeting each other."

"Deborah." Molina pulled the fake blue Dahlia from her hair, tossed it onto the dressing table. "That's the name of a judge in the Old Testament, isn't it?"

Matt nodded.

"And she's your witness to Va.s.sar's last words?" Matt nodded again.

Molina sighed, rested her head on her hand, which was braced on the dressing table pillar. "Don't you see why I interfered? Kathleen O'Connor was every s.e.xual predator I never caught. You were my ... Mariah. My innocent daughter who's growing into the real world that hides sc.u.m like that, whatever the gender. I wanted to see you safely through adolescence, Matt. Maybe the means were cynical, but the intent was ... honest."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Sure. You and me, we're dinosaurs. True. Our work, our vocations, require us to live up to public images, rigorously honest, severe, s.e.xless, perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Recognize the dogma? Except we're human. We want to preserve what's innocent in us, but we can't afford to live by it in the real, ugly world.

"So I know where you're coming from, Carmen. Strict Hispanic Catholic family. Or Polish Catholic family. High standards. Impossible standards. Still, if you don't go for the top, you'll settle for the bottom. That's the problem with religious absolutism: there's either bad or good. Perfect or imperfect. You either sin or you don't. No middle ground. No gray. That's not what Jesus preached in the New Testament. His bottom line was compa.s.sion, which abolishes the black and white and leaves only the gray and the benefit of the doubt. That's why they killed him."

"Abolish black and white from the law enforcement profession and anarchy would reign."

"Maybe so. Maybe not. I'm just saying we can both be thankful that n.o.body killed Va.s.sar, not even us. It was a stupid accident. I left her standing by the railing overlooking the atrium. Deborah heard her cry out and then the cell phone clattered and buzzed, but it didn't shut off."

"Someone still could have come up behind her and pushed her."

"Maybe. But I don't think so. Deborah says she was exhilarated, hyper. She more likely . . . turned around to lean against the railing, lost her balance on those high-rise heels."

"You realize what you're telling me? That a call girl was deliriously happy because you didn't sleep with her. Not much of a personal advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"Do I care? I'm deliriously happy I didn't have to act against my conscience myself. Can't you accept the gift of a free conscience? That doesn't come along every day."

"No." Molina turned to the mirror to wipe off Carmen's camellia mouth with a tissue. She turned back to lift her gla.s.s toward him. They tapped rims and sipped.

"I have to play Devil's advocate so I don't buy every fairy tale I might want to believe. I'll have that atrium scoured for the cell phone. Of course someone could have spotted and taken it by now. Still, if this Walker woman's testimony holds up then we're both in the clear. My career and your freedom. We were gambling for pretty high stakes."