Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 26

Matt's Off Night

Walking the Strip resembles being lost on a carnival midway. Like a moving sidewalk, the Strip gives the impression that the people are standing still while the earth moves beneath them. No matter how long Matt kept walking, he felt he would never reach the end.

It reminded him of Sartre's brilliant play, No Exit, and its rather cynical line that "Hell is other people."

Even when pedestrians deserted the sidewalk for a long trek toward the dazzling entrance facade of a major hotel-casino, Matt suspected that they soon recycled back onto the Strip's implacable length and unquenchable brightness.

Somewhere in this milling mass of Thursday-night humanity, Cliff Efftnger might be stepping on and off the merry-go-round like everyone else.

Matt studied the passing parade, mentally reminding himself of the facial features of the man he was looking for. He found it hard not to be distracted by the fascinating variety of fellow strollers.

Tourists, of course, made up the bulk of the walkers, their clothes casual despite the cooler night air. Walking is the economy class's favored mode of transportation. Those who can afford to taxi up and down the Strip do so.

Did that mean Cliff Effinger, seen on foot, was pinching pennies? Or hiding his loot from various scams? That was the trouble with supposition: every conclusion generated another legitimate possibility.

Matt saw fallen trashy magazines littering the sidewalk edges. Waiting men jammed fistfuls of the pulp paper at passersby. Never at women, only men, and never at a man alone.

Crushed underfoot, revealing photographs offered private dancers and total fulfillment.

Matt wondered whose grown-up little girls and boys these nakedly seductive people were, and what kind of people those parents were.

Not so easy to dismiss the seamier side of life nowadays, when the villain wasn't that easy-to-blame old devil Sin so much as dysfunctional family cycles. What fun was there in stoning someone who had to be analyzed unto the fifth generation backward in time?

Did Cliff Effinger have a grim family history to excuse his pathetic bullying? Was he more to be pitied than condemned? Matt felt his fists ball in his jacket pockets. No. Some people were just bad. Evil. In the power of that old devil Sin.

He veered onto the long, curving sweep of sidewalk that approached the mega hotel rising in the distance at an oblique, coy angle. The straightaway was for King Car, the contraption that had first made Las Vegas a feasible resort for Hollywoodites three hundred miles away.

Who would have suspected that the hoi polloi, not Hollywood, would make this desert gambling oasis rich? Even a lowlife like Cliff Effinger had come here to make his fortune.

Long walks were a form of meditation. Once inside a casino, meditation was not an option.

*****************

Noise and light bloomed around Matt like a migraine headache as he pushed through the darkened entry doors. The slot-machine jingle sounded like Christmas, but the spirit of Las Vegas' eternal gambling season was receiving, not giving. People, machinelike themselves, sat before clanking, gear-spinning mechanisms that spit back the occasional coin like bad change.

When Matt removed his gloveless right hand from his pocket, his palm was damp. But the plastic-laminated sketch of Cliff Effinger was impervious now to heat and moisture, preserved.

Matt wondered who to approach. Was he expected to tip for attention? If so, he'd be broke within days. Once more he mentally rehearsed his story. Lying, or even bending the truth, still took a lot of rehearsal. He was the opposite of a con man, he wanted to sell the truth even when he knew there would be no takers.

"Excuse me."

The waitress wore something shiny and slithery and scanty, but her face beneath the cheap, harsh makeup was even bleaker.

"Yeah, hon?" Bright tone, the better to cadge tips.

"I'm looking for someone. You might have seen him." Matt flashed the sketch in the insufficient light that was always bright but as tremulous as a firefly.

"Somebody cared enough to do a portrait," she commented. "Relative of yours?"

"My ... brother."

"You're a lot younger than he is, hon. A lot cuter too." Her blackened lashes lowered to the sketch, her comment a fact, not a flirtation.

"My mother ... married twice."

Her eyes rolled. "Mine too. And believe me, number two was no improvement. Hey! At least they married." She frowned at the shiny plastic. "That cowboy type is rare these days. They're up in Colorado now, all the Stetson boys. This guy looks a lotta years behind the times."

"He did . . . drop out of sight."

"Maybe. I mighta seen him, oh, couple months ago. Not a regular, though. Want a drink?"

She tilted her round glass-laden tray to him.

"Isn't that somebody else's?"

She shrugged. "I can get 'em another one of whatever you take where that came from.

They're all free in the gaming area. You look like you could stand some warming up. It's cold out there on the Strip tonight. Stay here and run the slots a while. I come by regularly."

Matt shook his head, closing his fingers over Effinger's too-good likeness. Should he ask someone else? Maybe.

The waitress had minced away on her Temple-like high heels. She was old for the outfit, and probably knew it. It was cold out there on the Strip.

Matt wandered away from the clattering slot machines into the blackjack and craps areas.

He couldn't envision Effinger playing baccarat. The dealers watched the cards, the cameras hidden in the ceiling above watched the dealers and the players and the pit bosses kept an eagle eye on everybody.

He'd talked to one before and found him forthcoming. Older men, seasoned in smoke-filled rooms clinking with ice in glasses. Heavyset usually. The casino's authority figures, not unlike bishops. On a chessboard, he remembered, a bishop could move diagonally. In the church, the bishop's only option was up . . .

If he thought of these men as bishops, he would get on with them better. But no "Your Reverences," only an inner air of respect. Perhaps that's what the heads of crime families expected too.

*********************

"Excuse me. Has this man been in here recently?"

The man eyed Matt, ruling out cop and P.I. with expert speed. "Lost relative."

"Right."

"We get a lot of those. And they appreciate it if we don't mention it even if we did see 'em.

That's why cameras aren't allowed in the casino area."

"The reason isn't security?"

"Nah. Not our security, anyway. It's theirs." He gazed out on his rowdy flock with a shepherd's satisfaction. "Don't want the folks back in Pineapple Junction to see 'em."

"This guy's a gambler, all right." Matt weighed his forthcoming lies, wondering which false tack would be most effective. "We lost track of him, and now Mom's gonna die. She's all we got left. And there's... a lot of money involved."

"And you're lookin' for him? I would think you'd want the lost sheep to stay lost."

"Oh, no. I'd never do that."

"What are you? Jehovah's Witness or something? You're way too straight for this town, kid."

"I know," Matt said with a sad smile.

The pit boss grabbed the sketch to hold it up to the light. He might also have been holding it up so a hidden camera lens could record it.

Matt's fingers itched to reclaim the likeness. Someone might want Effinger to stay lost.

But now he was stuck surrendering his passport to Effinger to some unknown factor. Maybe other people didn't think Effinger was dead either. Maybe someone still wanted him dead, if he weren't already.

"What's this guy's name?"

Matt shrugged. "I guess he would have used whatever worked. We're hoping if we can get him home, we can get him into a recovery program."

"Sure, sure. I get a finder's fee?"

"I'm sure . . . Norbert will be very generous when he finds out what's waiting for him at home."

"Norbert! They all have dumb names like that, the losers."

Matt flushed. He should have had a fake name on the tip of his tongue, not whatever his subconscious chose to dredge up. St. Norbert.

"Not your fault," the guy said, handing back the sketch. "Saw him a couple months ago, but he moved on. Used to get sloshed and talk about coming into big money. Lousy craps player, which is the way we like 'em. Ended up on the nickel slots. What a piker. Maybe when he gets home and grabs some of that moolah he'll come back and improve his rep around here. Try up the street at The Slottery. He was tapped out when he left here."

"Thanks."

Matt walked away through the crowds and the clatter, mentally repeating the key phrase like a sin that needed confessing. "Used to talk about coming into big money." If the big money wasn't Effinger's to come into, someone might have wanted to kill him. But why fail? Why plant Effinger's ID on a corpse close enough to his own physical description to confuse matters? And why hang around town when he was supposed to be dead? Even an imbecile would know enough to get out of sight and keep out of sight.

Matt felt like an imbecile himself. Maybes weren't good enough. Maybe he needed a new set of maybes, like maybe he needed something he didn't have: Cliff Effinger's rap sheet. Maybe Molina would let him see it, or at least sum it up. Matt stomped down the Strip sidewalk, finding his new boots clunky and clumsy.

The Hesketh Vampire was an evil influence. It was changing the way he dressed as well as the way he got around town. Maybe it would change the way he thought too. Maybe that wasn't so bad. He suddenly wanted the details of that rap sheet so badly he itched all over with impatience. He was a blind man, stabbing in the dark. If Molina was going to sic him on Effinger indirectly, he needed more than he had. Under the bright lights, his watch read 10:15 p.m.

Where would Molina be now? Home, probably.

Discouraged, he dragged his way back to the Vampire, blazing like irradiated platinum under the bright light it was parked beneath for security reasons, the presumption being that thieves wouldn't mess with such a visible target. Max Kinsella was right, maybe. Bold and noisy and brash is the best disguise in Las Vegas.

Matt finally knew where he should go, and unlocked the Vampire. The boots were tough enough to kick back the steel stand and come away unscuffed.

He knew where he was going now, and suddenly feared he might be too late. It was a long shot, but after all the tepid inquiries tonight, he suddenly felt lucky.

Odd that his arena of luck was so far from the Strip.

**************

The restaurant lot was half empty. A week night didn't keep people up at all hours, even in Las Vegas, and especially in the residential areas where the nine-to'fivers lived.

The Vampire was embarrassingly loud about its arrival, and Matt knew his usual relief in switching it off.

The neon sign still burned its pink-and-blue image into the night, a real standout here where the only lights were sodium-iodide street lamps that poured watery Mercurochrome shadows down on everything.

Matt studied the cars as he walked to the Blue Dahlia's entrance, wondering what Molina drove when she wasn't ensconced in a department Crown Victoria. Impossible to tell, although Temple would have made a game of guessing the car, and probably would have guessed right by now.

But this wasn't Temple's affair; it was his.

He opened the door and glimpsed the smoky dining room beyond.

The trio itself was smoking, running a hot riff out for a trial ride and then reeling that buggy back on home. Maybe . . . she wasn't on tonight. It had been a risk, a gamble, an impulse, everything Matt had never relied on.

"Table for one, sir?"

The hostess's long black crepe gown reminded him of an old Susan Hayward film. His nod rewarded him with a seat in the back where he could watch, unnoticed, the figure perched on the stool onstage.

He ordered a Coke and asked the waitress how long the set would last.

"Almost over. Sorry, sir."

"No problem. I want to see Carmen afterward. Could you let her know?"

She eyed him like he was suddenly suspect. "You have a card?"

Matt paused in digging out the ConTact-house card with his name handwritten at the top.

Instead he withdrew one of his laminated sketches of Cliff Effinger.

The waitress raised an eyebrow. "I'll see she gets it when she comes off."

The waitress thought he was weird, probably, but then the whole place was weird, a kind of time machine. The trio picked up the melody and then Molina --Carmen--joined in, her voice dream-dusky. He didn't know the song, but the words were sedately old-fashioned and the melody was deceptively sophisticated.

He felt he should be wearing a fedora and nursing a gin fizz. "Of all the gin joints in Las Vegas . . . ," that kind of thing. Matt leaned his head against the wall until all he could see were the shuttered black backs of the spotlights, and then he just listened.

The song had ended and the music had ebbed and died before he snapped out of his reverie. The Blue Dahlia was empty except for a couple lingering over their after-dinner coffees.

The hostess came around the corner to his table.

"You can go backstage now." She gestured to his half-full glass. "That's on the house; you can bring it with you."

Matt scooped it up as expected and followed her around the front again, and down a narrow hall. The restaurant's tortuous innards reminded him of a labyrinth; it must be almost as old as the era it evoked.

The hostess paused at a door and knocked. "Come on in, the water's fine, and the whiskey isn't too bad, either," a voice Matt didn't recognize called.

But the woman who waited inside, sitting at a Goodwill dressing table with delusions of Sunset Boulevard, was indeed C. R. Molina.

She spun on the bench, having just removed the trademark blue silk dahlia from her hair.

"You're a cheap date," she said, nodding at the Coke in his hand.

He noticed a plain glass, half-full of amber liquid, on the blue mirror-topped dressing table.

Perhaps the whiskey of her greeting. He backed onto some sort of chest and sat.

She nodded to something on the dressing table surface. "I like to wind down after a gig, but apparently you had other ideas. How'd you know I'd be here?"

"I didn't."

Her eyes met his, showing some surprise. "Took a chance, did you, Father Matt?"

"Not a very big one, Carmen."

Gone were Lieutenant Molina and Mr. Devine. Matt realized they had somehow fallen into a double-decker relationship, because of what their guarded, often-invisible personal lives had in common. A religion, an ethic, a burden.

"I almost feel I should smoke in this room," she said, eyeing the small space nostalgically.

"It would be bad for your health and your voice." He hesitated. "You would need a long enameled cigarette holder, of course."

"Of course." She smiled, then picked up the object on her dressing table.

Effinger's sketched likeness.

"How did you like Janice?" she asked.

"Janice? Oh, the artist. Fine. She was great at digging out all the little details." Matt felt an unfortunate flush coming on. He felt guilty, as if he sat before Mother Superior after having been caught writing mush notes to a fourth-grade girl.

"She's quite a psychologist, in her way. Well, this is a thoroughly unsavory character. Can I have a copy?"

"Sure. I should have thought of that." Matt leaned forward on the chest. "Actually, I'd like a copy of his rap sheet, or a description, if a copy is not allowed."

"Oh, Matt." Molina shook her dark head. "The police department is as riddled with bureaucracy as the church. I can sum up; I can't hand over. But you're used to limitations, are n't you."

"Maybe, and maybe not enough used to getting around them. I bet you are."

She looked at her watch, a slim band with a vintage look. "Look, I've got to get back to Mariah and let the sitter go." She sighed and picked up the blue silk flower. Her eyes met his in the big round mirror, and the indirectness of the look was oddly exciting.

"Want to follow me home? We can discuss this in more natural circumstances."

He stood. "I've ... I've got a motorcycle."

"A motorcycle, you?" Her eyes, which exactly matched the silk dahlia, widened. "You've got Max Kinsella's motorcycle."

He nodded. "Electra lends it to me. It's hers now."

"Bullshit! It was Kinsella's and I bet he'll have it again. He wouldn't let go of anythi ng that belonged to him."

Matt didn't argue.

"He know you're riding around town on it?"

"I don't know."

"I do. He doesn't miss much. Neither do I. So. You've got a motorcycle. I imagine it can roll right into Our Lady of Guadalupe's neighborhood."

"Not very quietly."

"It's not a very quiet neighborhood."

Molina approached, making him wonder why, then lifted the Coke glass from his hand and put it on the dressing table.

"Wait up front by the hostess station. I'll be out in a wink."

Matt doubted that, given the complicated cut of her vintage velvet gown, but he could wait patiently. That was the first thing he had learned in seminary.

"You're a friend of Carmen's," the hostess stated when he took up a post on one of the waiting benches.

"More like a business associate."

"What business are you in?"

"Counseling."

She nodded, tucking stray hairs into her blond French twist as she closed down the cash register for the night.

Not even Muzak drifted through the restaurant, just the distant clink of dishes being done.

For a moment, the place felt like a happy home after a big holiday dinner.

"That's the neatest thing about this job," the hostess commented.

"What?"

"Hearing the music from in there. Carmen sings like, I don't know, like something else."

"She has a lovely voice." He hated stilted comments, and most of all when they came from him.

"Thank you."

Molina was there, a garment bag draped over one crooked elbow, a knit headband holding back her short bob, in flat-heeled shoes, dark slacks and a sweater. Carmen had dissolved like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

Matt found himself on the brink of stammering with surprise. This was a halfway Molina he didn't know, and didn't know how to relate to. She looked normal almost, almost. . . casual.

He followed her out into the lot, the Vampire a diamond solitaire shining against the empty black asphalt. Molina went right to it, her car keys jingling like a winning slot machine in her hand.

She stood staring at the motorcycle, fists on hips, as if challenging it to a silent duel.

"I don't like it," Matt said.

"No, of course you wouldn't." She walked around it. "It's Max Kinsella's, all right." She flashed a glance over her shoulder. "You ever search it?"

"Search it? No! It's Electra's now, and none of my business. I'm only using it until I can afford my own car."

"Probably secondhand at that."

"I'm not used to better, and I certainly can't afford it."

Molina tore her attention away from the motorcycle. "Neither can I. That's mine."

She pointed to a well-used Toyota station wagon. "Perfect for hauling giggly eleven-year-old girls on all sorts of expeditions, but no beauty."

"Columbo did all right with his junker."

"Right. Call me Columbo. Okay. You know where the parish church is; I'm about four blocks northwest. Just follow my taillights."

Matt nodded.

Molina stopped halfway to her car and looked back. "You do have a helmet for that thing?"

"Of course." He mimicked her earlier words down to the tone.

Following a police officer is a nerve-racking task, Matt found. He kept straining to read the speedometer, fretting when she slightly exceeded the limit, gritting his teeth when she slowed down enough to make the Vampire snap at its figurative bit.

The neighborhood was only fifteen minutes away. The dark streets thrummed with t he high-volume bass of the occasional cruising low-rider. He wondered what this neighborhood would be like on a weekend, and how safe the Vampire would be here then. Already he was fretting about leaving it outside Molina's house.

She had anticipated him, pulling into the driveway but leaving space along the side for him.

The garage door elevated on vibrating rails while Molina got out and waved him inside.

She locked her wagon, then followed him into the attached garage, hitting the remote-control close button so soon that the door nearly clipped her as she walked in. She didn't seem to have noticed.

"Your bike is safer inside. Come on."

He followed her into a dark utility room and then into a kitchen lit by a pale overhead fluorescent light.

He sensed age and small spaces, just like at the Circle Ritz, but on a much more modest scale. Somewhere a television set blared through a closed door.

"Bedtime for you, young lady," Molina's voice ordered as she disappeared down the hall.

"We've got company for a little while. No, you don't need to see who. I'll be back soon."

She came back down the hall trailed by a stocky Latina girl with long, curly almost-black hair.

"Yolanda, this is Matt Devine." They exchanged nods. "How'd everything go?"

"Fine, fine. Mariah is such a fine girl. Muy sympatica."

" Gracias, " Molina bid her at the front door, presumably after an exchange of money.

She returned to gesture Matt to an easy chair, then moved into the s quare little kitchen.

"I could use a drink. Your unexpected arrival cost me half of my usual whiskey and soda. What would you like?"

Matt was, as usual, flummoxed by trying to anticipate what she'd have available.

"What you're having will be fine."

"Fine, fine," she mocked. "You and Yolanda are two of a kind, a good Catholic kind.

Everything is fine."

"No, it often isn't," he finally answered when she brought him a drink that was the twin to the one abandoned on her dressing table.

She threw herself onto a big Naugahyde recliner and took a generous swig of her drink before the ice could dilute it. Then she took Cliff Effinger out of her pants' pocket and slapped him down face up on an end table, like someone producing the Knave of Hearts.

"You can get me an original-size copy of the sketch?

"Yup."

"Is this a good likeness?"

"Uncanny, when you consider how long it's been since I saw him face-to-face."

"You're satisfied an ordinary observer could recognize him from this?"

"Are all police officers used to asking the same question six different ways?"

"Sorry." She grinned and leaned back against the recliner headrest. "I'm not used to subjects who are quick on the uptake. Good work. Have you tried it on anybody yet?"

"Some casino employees at the Stardust. Only--"

"Only what?"

"It isn't easy, to approach strangers with no special authority, to ask questions and get answers."

"Now you appreciate the dubious talents of your Circle Ritz neighbor."

"I've always appreciated Temple."

"Watch out that you don't get used to that. Kinsella's back in town."

"You make him sound like Mack the Knife."

"Isn't he? Used to dodging them at least--knives, that is, and the police. Seen him around?"

"No."

"I'm only trying to warn you. You've never known a man like him."

"No," Matt agreed, sipping the drink and finding it strong. He was used to watered-down rectory brandy and restaurant drinks. "But I'm beginning to, I think."

You? And Kinsella?" Molina cocked a bold black eyebrow. "Saints protect us."

"Kinsella certainly has enough saints' names to do the job for him."

"Michael Aloysius Xavier. Tricky, an acronym, MAX. Michael, the warrior archangel, was the only angel with any real guts, though. The rest--and the saints and martyrs--are wishy-washy window-dressing."

"I don't think any saint is window-dressing."

"I'm just trying to warn you. About Kinsella, and not as a police officer. He knows his way around women. Do you?"

"No, but maybe that's an advantage. Besides, I'm not in a contest for Temple's regard."

"You are if Kinsella's back, whether you want to admit it or not." She sat up and leaned forward, elbows on knees, her hair falling forward on her cheeks. "Just how good a priest were you?"

"Are you asking about the quality of my vocation and my commitment? Or are you asking if I could give an articulate sermon, or sing mass on key?"

"None of that. I'm asking if you were all you were supposed to be."

His jaw almost dropped. Molina was a policewoman, yes. She was used to asking people hard, invasive questions. But why him? He wasn't a suspect for anything. Then it dawned on him. Maybe he was a candidate. Maybe Molina wanted him to be the Judas goat that drew Max Kinsella into the open, and jealousy was to be the bait.

"I was faithful to my vows, yes. Though it's none of your business."

She suddenly smiled. "It wouldn't be any fun asking rude questions if it really were my business. You need help, Matthew."

"My given name isn't Matthew."

"That's right. Matthias. He who replaced Judas." She nodded, satisfied, then sipped deeply again from her glass. "I suppose, being so virtuous, you wondered that I even asked."

"I guess I did, and why."

"Still unused to my high-handed ways, huh? I need to get the lay of the land, for professional reasons. You're right; I'd love to have Kinsella in an interrogation room downtown. I wanted to know how big a threat you might be to him."

Matt turned his hardly touched glass in his hands, enjoying the cool condensation on his palms. It kept him alert.

"You don't understand, Carmen. I'm no threat at all. Temple and Max were all but married before he disappeared."

"That's a big 'but.' "

"Not to me."

"A priest says this?"

"A former priest. Theirs is the primary relationship in this whole mess, and I have to honor that."

" 'Honor.' " Molina stretched out long legs and crossed her feet at the ankles. Matt wondered if she wore a gun somewhere, maybe around an ankle. "That's a word you don't hear much nowadays, except among gang-bangers who use it as a synonym for 'macho.' If you worry too much about honor, Matthias, you ain't gonna get Cliff Effinger, and you ain't gonna get the girl."

"How did you get so cynical?"

"About honor, or about priests?"

"Both."

She shrugged. "I may be half-Anglo, but I grew up in a Hispanic culture. We don't sweat the small stuff, like sins of the flesh. A lot of the priests--most--I heard of in Mexico, and even in California, had a woman on the side sometime. It was no big deal. And it was better than boys."

Matt shook his head at her casual acceptance. "I've never understood it. This Mediterranean and South American indulgence of priests who break their vows. I know, I know . . . Americans are descended from Puritans, and are much more straitlaced than our Continental brethren, but still, a promise is made to be kept, not broken--"

"I'm sorry." Molina looked rueful. "I got carried away in my capture-the-crook scenario." She smiled. "It's nice to finally meet an honorable priest at least, even if he isn't a priest anymore. I guess if the good don't die young, they leave."

"I'm not that unusual. The vast majority of priests keep their vows and believe in their vocation. The ones that don't, make headlines."

"Listen. I'll show this sketch around to some of the patrol officers. They're on the Strip every night, so you won't have to bumble into casinos anymore."

"I'll still look. Maybe I'll even get better at it."

"Maybe you'll get better at other things too." She stood, finished her drink. "Go home. I've got to kiss my kid goodnight and get ready for a court appearance tomorrow. This sketch is one more nail in Cliff Effinger's empty coffin. We'll find him."

Matt wasn't sure if the "we" was the police department, or she and he.

"And Max Kinsella?"

"What would you do if he were out of the picture for a good long time?"

"What I've always done. Support what Temple decides to do."

"And if what she decides to do ... is you?"

Another below-the-belt question. Matt handed back his almost-full glass; Molina wouldn't want to waste it.

"Then I'll have to see what I decide to do. You can't play me and Max Kinsella off each other.

I don't know what evidence you have against him, but as far as Temple's told me, he's just a magician who did a disappearing act for a little too long. She apparently still has some faith in him, and that's a business I understand: faith when all the facts belie it. Now that he's back, I won't interfere. With Temple, or with him. I won't turn in Kinsella, Carmen. I'd never do that to Temple. Or Kinsella. Or myself. That would be the worst move for all of us."

"Not for me. Remember, triangles are the most volatile configuration of relationship on the planet. Pairs are tough to break up, but trios turn on each other like cannibals. I can always crack a case with three sides."

"Maybe we have more than a triangle here."

"What do you mean?"

She figured out his mathematics while he kept quiet. Her remarkable blue eyes glittered like man-made sapphires, hard and somehow counterfeit.

"You're getting better," she told him, "but don't let it go to your head."

Molina showed him out through the garage, turned on an exterior light and even waited in the open garage door until he had the Vampire started and drifting the driveway.

Matt couldn't decide on the way home if Molina were a mother superior in disguise, or Typhoid Mary.