Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 14

Partners in Crime

"I am never," Temple told Louie when she returned to her condo and peeled out of her Hollywood-brunch garb like a snake shedding a particularly loathsome skin, "going to involve myself in possibly criminal matters again. And you can quote me."

Louie blinked to indicate that the message had been received. He then watched wide-eyed while Temple disappeared into the bathroom for an unprecedented midday dip. She left behind a trail of knee-high hose, a tangle of shed leggings and a tent of white shirt.

Also two tipsy shoes leaning against the wall, black with extremely pink and fluffy feather arrangements on each toe. Feathers, oh my. Louie jumped down to the floor.

The bathroom door opened.

"And leave my shoes alone, you unreformed feather freak!"

Temple snatched the heels into the bathroom with her, shutting the door with an emphasis that was second cousin to a slam.

Louie sniffed the place where the prey had been, hunting that indefinable avian essence, then lumbered out into the main room, where he presumably could pursue predatory thoughts without being subjected to ESP.

Beyond the closed bathroom door, up to her neck in hot water, as usual, and up to her nose in mounds of bubbles, Temple regretted taking out her bad temper on Louie. Poor little guy had worked hard the past two days, then when he craved a little feather-sniffing, she had treated him like a pervert.

Temple often turned to baths as her own private think tank, especially in this old fifties tub that was deep and wide enough to float in. Thoughts somehow grew as airy and improvisational as the sudsy coverlet of clouds that shifted on the water's warm surface.

"Might as well have tried to help Crawford Buchanan with his sulky stepdaughter," Temple addressed the admirably echoing tile walls. "At least I would have known enough to just say 'no'

in his case, under any circumstances. But Darren Cooke was a star, he really needed some nobody's encouraging words and savvy insight into human behavior. Savvy, huh! Insight, huh!

Suckered again."

Temple grabbed the barge of Ivory soap that obligingly floated as advertised, and smashed it on the water. Tile walls wept tepid tears. "What a skunk. That guy will use any excuse to hit on a female. I can't believe that I thought he possibly could care about anything besides the notches on his Calvin Kleins! I hope the Daughter from Hell chases him from here to Pago Pago."

Of course no one could hear her fine denunciations; nothing could view them except the mirror above the sink, and it was fogged over. An apt symbol, Temple thought, for her recent perceptions. Well, nothing had been lost except a tiny remaining strand of illusion and a couple hours of a Sunday morning. Getting back to work with Domingo tomorrow would be a refreshing contrast. At least he flaunted his mistress, so he was hardly about to try anything tacky with Temple. Right?

Imagine, using the letters from that poor demented child to gain female sympathy as a preseduction ploy!

Temple rose from her steamy cleansing ritual, wrapped herself in a huge white bath towel and pattered across the black-and-white tiles to the bedroom, which was empty and cool. She stashed her retrieved shoes in the closet, safe from tooth and claw... and, even worse, saliva.

Then, still wrapped like a mummy in the ankle-length towel, she decided to raid the refrigerator, given how few of the buffet's expensive tidbits she had been able to eat.

Louie watched her from the sofa, the unread Sunday paper beside him and now beneath a proprietary paw.

"That's mine when I come back," she warned him.

Cats made excellent company. They received comments with grave attention but no overreaction. They were rarely anxious or milling underfoot, like dogs. Instead, they surveyed matters with supreme calm from a lordly or ladylike distance, which is why some people disliked them.

Temple was not in the mood for catlike detachment at the moment. After she made a mug of instant hot chocolate, she skittered out the kitchen's other end to the spare bedroom/office, where her answering machine was set up.

Sure enough, the little red Rudolph-nose button was winking, blinking and nodding. Her finger hesitated over the playback lever. Did she want to hear from somebody unwelcome today? Did she really want to know about something she would have to do tomorrow? Did she care to tend to any kind of business at all?

She shrugged and pressed the button.

After some rewinding and squeaking, the thing settled down and replayed . . . Matt's voice.

Thank God. The intonation of calm and reason. "Temple," it said, "I've got something important to show you. I know it's early Sunday morning, but could I drop by later?"

Early Sunday all right, only 11:30 a.m. Matt's call must have come after she'd left at nine-thirty. What was he doing up so early on a Sunday, other than habit? If she'd been at church like other good Las Vegans, she would have avoided the debacle at the Oasis. Temple picked up the receiver and dialed Matt's number, pleased to realize she now knew it by heart.

He answered on the second ring, completely amenable to cocoa and cinnamon rolls. Fifteen minutes.

Temple scrambled to claw the packaged rolls out of the freezer, then ran to dig culottes and a knit top out of her bedroom closet. She even had time to read the funny papers before he arrived.

And he arrived bearing another roll of paper: naked newsprint in the bland, oatmeal color of pulp.

"What is it?" Temple asked. "Not a treat for Louie?"

"If it becomes one, I'll have his ears for it," Matt announced gravely. "It cost me a lot." The second sentence was even grimmer than the first. He glanced at Temple to make sure she was fully awake. "Sorry I called while you were asleep. I was pretty anxious to show you this."

"Wasn't asleep, silly. Was out."

"Out? Already? What's happening in Las Vegas before noon on Sunday besides gambling and church?"

Temple shook her head. "You forgot the other part of Las Vegas's trinity of ete rnal verities, even on a Sunday: food. Obligatory brunches. Cocktail wienies instead of sausages, caviar instead of coarse-ground pepper on your scrambled eggs, mimosas instead of grapefruit juice."

Matt made a face, before sitting on the sofa with Louie. Actually, right beside Louie. In fact, so close that Louie struggled upright and moved down a foot. Matt edged right into the empty spot, so he sat dead center on the sofa. He laid the rolled paper on the coffee table, then waited for Temple to come stand beside him for the unveiling.

She sat beside him instead. "Well?"

He unrolled the top, setting the crystal ashtray that was never otherwise used on one corner. Then he unfurled the rest like an old-fashioned parchment window shade, turn by turn, so the face drawn on the paper appeared inch by inch.

Temple held her breath from the top of the western hat to the dented collar points on the western shirt at the bottom.

"Is that really him?" she asked.

"Close enough for discomfort." Matt shook his head at the likeness. "I don't know whether to tape it on the wall and heave rotten eggs at it, or what."

"Shoot it down in size on a copier and make flyers, even a few laminated 'wallet-size' copies you can flash in person. Then start asking people if they've seen the party in question. So this is Cliff Effinger."

"In disguise," Matt cautioned her, "and aged by an artist's guesstimate."

"Who's the artist and how did you get onto him?"

"Her," Matt corrected swiftly. He kept his eyes focused on the sketched face floating above the clutter.

It must be like looking down at a body in the morgue viewing room, Temple thought.

"Molina called me yesterday, out of the blue, appropriately, and suggested I try a police artist."

"You barely glimpsed the figure you saw on the street."

"But I never forgot the man he used to be."

"And this is the result. Does it look ... right?"

Matt nodded slowly. "A remarkable job. She's really very good, this woman. Makes you remember things you didn't even know you'd forgotten, like a bump on a nose."

"That is some hokey getup."

Matt nodded. "Hokey like a chameleon maybe. Didn't your friend Max say that extremes are a disguise in Las Vegas?"

"Friend Max said that naked was no disguise in this town, only noisy was; loud clothes, loud pose. This dated urban-cowboy getup does it. You remember the hat and the sideburns more than you do the man under and behind them."

"If I hadn't known him from before, I'd have been hopeless at providing a description. Janice aged him to the right degree after I'd described all his features."

Temple clasped her elbows and nodded as she studied this likeness of a dead man walking.

Cliff Effinger was not a savory customer, no matter what he wore or whether he were dead or alive.

"At least you accomplished something this weekend. I got sidetracked and, boy, am I sorry."

"What happened?"

"My brunch was more like a 'crunch,' and I was the main course. I'm still kicking myself for going."

"What could happen at a brunch?"

"Darren Cooke."

Matt finally looked up from the pinched, sketchpad face he couldn't tear his eyes from.

"That name sounds familiar."

"He's a quasi-movie star. A comic actor who's done road shows and now is headlining the new Gangster's revue about Las Vegas's colorful past, that is, the criminal elements we love to sentimentalize once they've safely rubbed each other out."

"That's right! I saw a placard when we came in to the place. So you had brunch with this guy? Why?"

"Because of Savannah Ashleigh. You've heard me mention her?"

"Have I ever. Mother of Louie's Persian playmate and she-devil of Hollywood."

"Well, Ms. She-Devil apparently bad-mouthed me to Darren Cooke."

"Why?" Matt sounded indignant that anyone would bad-mouth Temple.

"She's an ex-fling of his--he's as famous for flings as for his throwaway lines--and apparently the competition was too much with me around the A La Cat commercial. It's being partially filmed on the Darren Cooke set."

"I see," Matt said, looking confused.

"So she called me 'Nancy Drew' to Darren Cooke, which got him wondering why. When he realized that I had been involved in a . . . situation or two, he decided he needed my expert assistance."

"But you don't really ... do anything. You just happen to be front and center at crime scenes."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I thought I actually had some insight. So when he sat me down in an Oasis-penthouse suite, I was prepared to do what I could."

"What was his problem?"

"Pretty personal. I don't want to betray his confidence. Lord, I sound like a priest! Anyway, he beat his breast with remorse for his past wicked ways, then ended up propositioning me."

"On Sunday morning?"

"The day of the week isn't the point! The point is that his distress call was only an elaborate ploy to hit on another female victim ... me!"

"You mean his problem wasn't real?"

"Oh, he may be genuinely disturbed about it, but the man is such a knee-jerk Romeo that even his weaknesses become a pretext for chasing some new female on the scene. Any new female on the scene. I can't believe I fell for it."

"What did he do?" Matt looked like he really didn't want to hear.

"Nothing overt. He didn't have to. Made a veiled suggestion I saw right through, at which point I gathered up my Sherlock Jr. mail-order detective kit and left in a fairly discreet huff."

"So now you'd like to see his head on a platter at Hush Money's?"

"No, you can't blame a human hyena for having carrion tastes. If he exposed his tomcat ways, I exposed my own stupidity. I really do think I can solve people's problems. That idiotic Savannah Ashleigh isn't half wrong. I do think I'm Nancy Drew. I told him it was a police matter. I begged him to have it looked into professionally, even if he has to use some pricey Hollywood agency. He lost interest because the object of the game had never been his problem daughter.

He uses everything to excuse his promiscuous social life."

Matt was looking at her oddly.

"What? You're surprised that I could be such a self-important fool?"

"No..."

"Thanks, counselor."

"I'm thinking, if this man is as famous as you say, he could be the one who calls me."

Temple slapped a hand over her mouth in shock, which did no good, because she managed to talk through it anyway. "Ooh, I never thought of that. I was so caught up in my part in the prewritten drama, I couldn't see the sex addict for the Stardust. You're right! He's exactly the kind of guy who could be calling you. Thanks a bushel and a peck, Ned."

"Ned?"

"Never mind. I feel a lot better now that someone else has profited from my little walk on the wild side. Do you know when you got his calls?"

"We keep a log at ConTact, yes, but this guy even called from out of town. The dates wouldn't necessarily jibe with Darren Cooke's Las Vegas schedule, even if it is he."

"There must be some way to check it out."

"I'm sure you'll have some insight into a method any second now."

She looked hard at him to make sure he wasn't razzing her, but he was smiling, so she did too.

"You've had a banner weekend," she said. "First you nail Cliff Effinger to the wall in oatmeal-and-charcoal and then you figure out I've been brunching in Bluebeard's castle."

"It's been quite a weekend, yeah."

Matt's smile had faded. Temple picked up her tepid mug of cocoa. "I'd better microwave those rolls, and a cuppa chocolate for you."

As she rose, Louie picked that moment to make an imperious change of position. He lofted himself onto the coffee table atop Cliff Effinger's preciously recalled features.

"Lou-ie!" Temple screeched, tilting her cocoa and almost adding chocolate freckles to the already mottled Effinger mug.

Matt jumped up to corral the cat, but by then Louie was showing them the underside of his tail as he darted to the floor and out of sight.

"Is it all right?" Temple babbled. "How much did it cost? Can she do it again if need be?"

"Looks okay." Matt shifted the drawing away from Temple's mug. "Couple hundred. And I don't want to see her again if I don't have to."

"Oh, gosh, the paper's separating." Temple felt the sick feeling of any hostess whose guest's goods have been damaged in her house. "Matt, I'm sorry. Louie almost never makes sudden moves like that; he's just too big."

Temple fingered the peeling corner, and saw the paper curl back. "Wait! It's only two sheets on top of one another. The drawing's okay. Worthy of any post-office wanted wall. See?"

She carefully held up the top sheet to demonstrate. Then she spotted the portrait under it.

"Hey. It's you!"

Matt moved her cocoa mug to the coffee table's far side. "Apparently."

Temple sat again. "A real drawing, not a sketch. Good too. Not signed, though."

"She did it to warm up," Matt muttered. "She said. I didn't even know she was doing it."

"And she just gave it to you?"

"Well, I paid two hundred for . . . him."

"Matt, this drawing bugs you. Why?"

"I feel like the Native Americans, I guess. It's a stolen image. I don't know what to do with it."

"Frame it."

He frowned. "I've got better things to do with my money."

"And send it to . . . your mother."

"For Christmas or her birthday--" He visibly brightened at the idea, so Temple guessed that he was always at a loss for an appropriate present. "Maybe --"

"Or--" she went on. He waited hopefully for her next good idea, and she couldn't resist.

"Give it to a girlfriend to frame."

"You don't really want it?"

"Why not? It's obvious that you don't, which means you won't take very good care of it, and it's too nice to waste. She really did a fabulous job for an off-the-cuff session. Even caught that cute little worry line at your left eyebrow. Come on, Matt, you have to feel a little bit flattered!

You look mah-velous! I bet she thought so too."

He reached for the paper. "I don't want it--"

Temple kept it in custody.

One corner tore off.

She stopped smiling and he suddenly sat back on the sofa, far from the two pulp-paper portraits side by side on the coffee table.

"I haven't had a photograph taken since I left St. Rose of Lima. I'm not used to seeing myself.

Or to seeing how other people see me."

"You need to get over that," Temple said seriously. "You can't know somebody else until you know yourself. You really need to be a teensy bit vainglorious about being so handsome. It's only human."

"I know that. I know what I look like. But I don't like seeing what it does. It's not just the portrait, it's the . . . context."

"What happened?"

"Nancy Drew is right. You know something happened. You're worse than a mother or a ... a nun."

"Thank you. Actually, after my almost-close encounter with Darren Cooke, it's rather reassuring to be compared to a mother or a nun. I was beginning to think I was a bimbo."

"What did you really resent about that, Temple? That he thought you were cute?"

"Aha, that's just it. I didn't have to be cute, I didn't have to be me, I just had to be female and to be there."

"So if Darren Cooke had fallen instantly in love with you, it would have been all right."

"Well, better. But he didn't, and it wasn't."

"How do you know he wasn't genuinely attracted to you?"

It was an honest question. Temple thought about it. "His reputation. His lack of constancy."

"But that can change."

"Not for him. He's a confirmed womanizer. Woman, generic term. Not me, not Savannah, not his lovely wife. Who, by the way, is a famous model."

"How do you know? How do you know what someone is feeling, and why and how genuine the emotion is?"

Temple spread her hands. "From living and watching, and trying to sort out the fake from the real in yourself as well as in others. From being a fool sometimes, and being too afraid to be a fool other times."

Matt nodded at his portrait. "You think she liked me."

Temple studied it more intently. "I think she was attracted to you. That's why you shy away from the evidence. She made you look a little too sexy for your own peace of mind."

"But not yours."

Temple grinned. "Never. So who, or what, is she? And what did she do to you?"

"Nothing, I imagine, which only makes it worse. Do I get any of that cocoa or not?"

That sent Temple to the kitchen to warm up her now-cold cup and make a second mug. By the time she came back, the two drawings were rolled together, both safely out of sight.

"I mean it, Matt. I don't want you abusing that drawing. Most of us never get captured in pen and ink."

"Maybe it's just as well. It's funny. You know what she said her business consisted of? Family portraits and criminal reconstructions. Pretty extreme, huh?"

"It's like Chekhov said about happy families: they're all alike. I bet she enjoys putting criminals on paper more."

Matt looked at the rolled drawings. "Speaking of extremes, we both have had similar reactions to extremely different situations. Maybe you should tell me about life and love and sex in the secular world. I think I'm ready."

Temple tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "It'll be what I think, what I've seen, and there won't be anything religious about it."

Matt nodded. He knew what prescription he needed when he heard it.

Temple grinned. "You're not really ready, but you never will be if you don't figure this out.

Okay."

She sat forward in her usual presentation posture: outwardly composed, professional, possibly even a tad perky. Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show had hated perky almost as much as he had hated spunky, but what was a single working woman to do but put a bright face on an uphill struggle?

Recalling that show brought back memories of her and Max, bad ghosts to haunt a serious discussion with another man in another place and time.

Temple took a deep breath. "Look at us. We're both unmarried, relatively young--will you grant attractive? Me, at least?"

"Oh, yeah! You're fine .. . you're ah--"

"And you're searching for words other than 'cute.' "

He made a defeated face. "You are pretty cute."

"Okay, but I don't have a face that would launch a thousand magazine ads, that makes people stop dead in their tracks. On a scale of one to ten, maybe a seven. You, whether you like it or not, are a nine and a half."

He made another distasteful face, but waited for her point.

"So here we sit, free to be anything but celibate, and what are we whining about? Being surprised by unexpected sexual overtures. Why? We ought to be at least flattered. And maybe tempted. We certainly shouldn't be surprised. What is the matter with us?"

Matt frowned as if trying to get a tough test answer right. "These were ... spur-of-the-moment situations with virtual strangers. We're not that casual."

"Why not?"

"My background, religious and social."

"Obviously. But I don't have your background. So ignore yours for a moment. You said you liked this artist. You admit you found her attractive. You almost admitted that you might have liked the idea if you hadn't been so shocked."

"I can't ignore the fact that it doesn't seem right--"

"But it did seem a little exciting?"

He was silent for a while. "It showed me a world I'd never thought about. Nice people meeting and moving right to the bedroom. Ordinary people. For a moment that looked easier, maybe even more romantic than going through all the stumbling steps of building a relationship."

"Instant attraction. Instant love affairs. It's in all the movies. And it's out there. You haven't seen it because your vocation was a shield."

"Not from everything. Women were always trying to flirt with me."

"But. . . now you're noticing that you can flirt back."

"You mean, before I never would have noticed what she was implying? No, I'm just a vain fool. I must have imagined the undertones."

"No. Darren Cooke only had to say, 'You could stay,' in a certain way, and I saw the whole scenario from beginning to end. You can't build a court case on body language, or tone of voice or unsaid messages. But anyone who's been around a while, who's available, will notice them.

It's only natural."

"I've never thought of myself as available. But you were going to make a point about being available and not being available."

"Yes. Anyone who's really committed to someone--or something--else won't hear or see the signals. You won't be looking, so people will sense that and won't look at you that way. Even if they still indicate an interest, you'll deny it, dismiss it, show surprise. Because you really aren't in the market. Happy longtime paired couples are like that. Priests and nuns make vows to be like that. And then there's everyone else."

"So why were you as surprised as I was, even offended?"

"Were you offended?"

"No." He thought again. "Scared."

Temple laughed. "Someday you won't be scared anymore, and then what will you do?"

"You're dodging the issue of Darren Cooke."

"I suppose. Maybe it's because girls are hit on by guys they'd never date, much less sleep with, at an early age. Maybe it's because in the working world, women are still considered fair game. We get touchy. We demand sincerity. We just want to do our jobs and not get hassled.

Most of us tune out to sexual feelings on the job.

"I have to admit that I was flattered to be invited to Darren Cooke's Beautiful People brunch, that I was flattered to be consulted by him. I thought I was being taken at face value, not Face value. So I was angry at his sexual suggestion, and the fact that his way of life relies on using women like facial tissues, one snatched from the box after another, then discarded.

"If he's your caller, and even if he isn't, he's a sexual addict. Anyone involved with suc h a person becomes a victim. I don't like being singled out as a potential victim. He's a sick man, and part of his sickness is that he's so charming about it."

"You don't criticize Janice like that."

Temple shrugged. "That's different. Personally, it annoys me, but what happened, or what you think almost happened, is understandable."

"Understandable? You walk into a woman's house, and two hours later she's ready to sleep with you?"

Temple sipped cold cocoa. It was hard to give sex-education talks to a man you were attracted to. It made her feel like a big sister, at least. She could see where parents went white at the idea. Ethics and realism had to blend, and the result couldn't help but be confusing.

"Look at what you told me about her. She's divorced, probably had a decent financial situation before, but now is struggling to keep up the house and take care of the kids she got custody of in the divorce. Maybe her husband was well-off, but a jerk. Maybe he was a nice guy but they changed in different ways. Maybe he abused her. You can't know. But she's attractive and spending all her time being Mama and Artist. Maybe she can't consider a serious relationship because of the kids and the ex-husband and bad examples. So the kids are away at computer camp for once, right? And in walks this nice guy, nice-looking too, and maybe the physical type that pushes her buttons, which are getting a little rusty. So ... she could do worse; what would it hurt?"

"Leave out the morality, what about disease? She didn't know my background. The risk--"

"--was maybe worth it to her. And from the persnickety house you described, you can bet safe sex would have been practiced. She's not crazy, just lonely. Maybe she hasn't had sex in a year. Or two. Or more. And there you are, looking like the angel Gabriel."

"But, why me? Why not the delivery man, or an old friend?"

"Different social class, or maybe her old male friends are all married. Look at your hands. No rings. Besides, most men your age have developed some line or another, something slightly false to get through. You're absolutely honest. Oh, baby, you are the answer to a maiden's prayer."

Temple tented prayerful fingers. " 'Course they don't know you've got some growing-up to do."

"Is that why you ... showed an interest in me? Max was gone and you were alone, and I was there, this naively honest fool?"

"Partly. I felt guilty about being attracted to you. Yes! Non-Catholics feel guilty sometimes too. I felt disloyal to Max, even though he'd disappeared without a word, which is fairly disloyal behavior in a relationship. But there's that third factor, besides opportunism and personal emptiness. There's Mother Nature's little elixir: hormones, infatuation, inexplicable instant rapport.

"Society says it should operate only under certain conditions for certain available people, but it doesn't.

"And," she went on, "because it's always there, we could all be playing with fire all the time.

People like Darren Cooke get hooked on the built-in excitement of the first time so much that their first times are also always the last times. Then it's always the hunt and the capture and surrender, then the next game. That way everyone is a challenge, everyone strikes sparks, and these people are always in a state of sexual anticipation. It dominates their lives like cocaine.

They need more and more, and end up emptier with every hit. It's a fun fantasy, but a bad trip in real life."

"I don't know if I want to live in real life," Matt said glumly. "The choices are worse than I imagined, even in the confessional back at St. Stan's."

"Worse in what way?"

"Not clear-cut."

"No-no's are always clear-cut. It's saying yes to life that's sticky."

"You and Max . . . have you--?"

"No. I've thought about it. He says he was faithful when he was gone. I believe him about that."

"That's trust."

Temple nodded solemnly. "That's what we had, before."

"And now?"

"Now ... something valuable's lost."

"That's sad."

"Yes, it is. And every relationship is that delicately balanced."

"About my ... encounter. It occurred to me I might be able to get it over with easily, with no second thoughts or stricken conscience until afterward, and that it would be worth it to be on equal footing with him, with you. To not be this . . . freak anymore."

He finally looked up at her, worried.

"You really considered sacrificing yourself to this woman for me?" Temple was rhapsodic.

"That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. But sex is much too good to ever just 'get it over with.' Or to spend on an uncaring stranger. You're being human, Matt. Insecure and anxious and a little competitive. That's a very good sign."

"If this is progress, I may not survive it."

"Teenagers do."

"Are you and Max surviving it?"

That one she couldn't answer.