Cat In A Golden Garland

"It's the wine talking. Want some more?"

"Umm ... just a little. I think I see what you're saying. Thanks to AIDS, women have a chance to say no to exploitation."

"If they'll take it. And I don't think being scared too silly to live is an answer either."

"Then what is?"

"Women making sure that sex is safe. I do respect the longevity of your arrangement with Max. But it wasn't a marriage, Temple. He left, you're free to love again."

"Nothing's ever really free." Temple looked at her glass, surprised that it had refilled almost to the brim. She sipped it down to below the spill level. "Kit, I probably wouldn't tell you this without having had the wine ..."

"Yes?" Kit looked politely out of focus at the couch's other end.

"And I'm only telling you because you live on the other side of the country and you'll probably never visit Las Vegas again, or meet any of the principals."

"Principals? Are you talking like a lawyer, Temple?"

I'm hedging like a lawyer, because I'm about to break a confidence, and I wouldn't do it, except I don't know what to think and I could use some advice from someone who doesn't know anybody who's involved . . . personally, that is. Except for me, of course."

"Of course," Kit assured her in far too well enunciated syllables.

Temple had committed the impossible and didn't notice. "You see, the reason Matt's such a dicey romantic partner--"

"Yes?"

"--is he's a priest. Or was until very recently."

"Priest. The Power and the Glory kind, not the pleasant chap in England with the collar and the manse and the wife and kiddies?"

"You always go to plays. Yes, the Graham Greene Catholic kind, only he doesn't drink. Except socially a little. And not as much as this," Temple added, squinting at the contents of her glass because the claret color looked so much richer a little out of focus.

"Or do anything, if I've got the religion right." Kit carefully set her wine glass on the cocktail table and put her hands on her akimbo knees. In the long caftan, she resembled an Eastern guru a bit, and Yoda from Star Wars a bit. The hiccup was just a small distraction.

"You are telling me that the man is a virgin."

Temple nodded.

"And looks like that?"

Temple nodded.

"Wait a minute! He is heterosexual?"

Temple nodded.

"But he never--?"

Temple nodded.

Kit leaned back and sighed. "How can you be sure of all the afore -saids?"

"I've been around a little, in my modest post-sixties way."

"Then grab him."

"It's not so simple, Kit, as you were just reminding me a while ago. What brought him to this position has to be dealt with. Then, he's still Catholic, and if you think about what that religion doesn't let you do ... if I married Matt I could have fifteen kids! Easy."

"That's right. No birth control." Kit leaned forward. "You could be sterile."

"I think the- word for women is 'infertile,' and I wouldn't bet on it."

"He could be infertile."

"I think you mean sterile. And I wouldn't bet on that either"

"Does he want fifteen kids?"

"I don't think so, but he'd have to abandon his entire faith, not just the priesthood, to have anything like a normal sex life. So all is not gold that glitters."

" 'All that glisters is not gold,' " Kit corrected her absently.

Temple recognized the corrected quote from The Merchant of Venus . . . Venice!

"All right." Kit grew stern when she drank. "Basics. Who do you love?"

"I loved Max madly . . . until he left without a word."

"And, and ..." Kit's left hand flopped in circles, but no name came. "And the other guy?"

"I like him tremendously. I respect him." Kit's face was growing grim. "And I'm madly attracted to him."

"Hmmm. If I were to cut one in half, which would you prefer?"

"That old Solomon trick doesn't work with two objects of affection, Kit. Do you want me to make some coffee?"

"And ruin our wonderful session of girl talk? No way. Let's see. If Max came home to stay and wanted to get married and didn't want to have fifteen kids, could you be happy with him?"

"Probably, but--"

"Then it appears to me that what Matt needs is right in this room."

"I beg your pardon? I thought I was happily married to Max, who no more will roam?"

"You are. But I have the perfect solution to Matt's problems."

"You do?"

"Sure. Me."

"You?"

"Too old to get preggers, dear. Just what the poor lad needs. Nice experienced menopausal lady with ambition. Not too over the hill. I even look a little like you. What more could he want?"

Temple picked up her fallen bedroom slipper and heaved it at Kit.

Unfortunately, it hit Midnight Louie, who started awake and tore off the couch and across the cocktail table, which overturned Kit's carefully placed glass, which spilled its red, red wine all over Kit's handsome area rug, which Kit and Temple spent the next half hour soaking and soaping in this vale of tears.

Whether they were tears of rue or tears of laughter only the wine remembers.

Louie had retreated someplace secret and invisible where cats go when people are too below them to notice.

Chapter: Letter to Louise, Part 1

Being the Meditations of Midnight Louie in New York City

Ancient history is only interesting when it is one's own. I cannot tell you how many son-of-a son-of-a's have strutted their hour upon the stage of life during the thirty-something years my two little dolls had under discussion recently.

I mean, when I say I go way back, I go way back to Egyptian times, but only thanks to the intervention of countless generations between then and now.

It is so unfair. My species is superior in many ways, but has definitely been short-sheeted in the longevity department. There are even some spiders that live as long as our eldest examples, big hairy black spiders too, like tarantulas. There are birds even, who outlive us by decades. I refer to the parrot family, which not only hangs around obnoxiously long, but are prized for their aping of human speech. This does not mean that they have the brains to shell a peanut, only an ear for idiocy and the knack of repeating it, which is how some very respectable human careers got started, if you pause to think about it.

But I am in a sober mood after lying about absorbing the sturm und drang Miss Temple Barr and Miss Kit Carlson are slinging and sloshing around. Perhaps the Christmas season produces reflections of a nostalgic and familial nature.

Me, I thought the point of the holiday was getting time off work, a chance to collect lots of presents and an excuse to eat oneself into a stupor. And look at me, I have been uprooted and transported to a city so big that I must be carted about from pillar to post for my own physical and sanitary safety ... I am engaged in the most crucial competition of my new-born performing career,... and I am not offered so much as a saucer of wine sauce after my long hard day at the office.

So I slink off when the opportunity arises, which it does pretty soon after Miss Kit uncorks her shockingly mediocre bottle of wine. I retreat to Miss Temple's and my room, which, in addition to the presence of a nice queen-size bed for the both of us, features a computer setup by the window.

Despite myself, I am in a reflective mood, so I hop up to inspect the keyboard. It is the usual expanse of letters and numbers interspersed by arcane keys bearing such titles as "Pig Up" "Pig Down" and "Esc," which must be short for escalator and "Alt," which must be short for Altitude, because there are a bunch of F keys with numbers next to them, like F7 et cetera, and I believe those are designations of fighter planes or some such.

Many are the mysteries of the computer, but I do not sweat the small stuff. I know my ABCs and I know where the turn-on buttons are.

In this case the critter is only dozing on low power, so I give the big round mouse ball a bat or two, and the screen--a tasteful arrangement of flying toasters that I am tempted to have some fun with--is replaced by an image I well recognize: lines of words.

This is my mode, although I do not use the excessive number of exclamation points I see before me. Miss Kit Carlson's newest novel must be stalled in the middle of either an action scene or a sex scene. Only sex and violence merit this plethora of exclamations, in my experience, vicarious as it may be when it comes to human variations of such basic instincts.

So I paw the keys until the smeary or smoochy stuff is off the screen and I have a fresh expanse of gray.

It is hard to get up to writing speed on a foreign keyboard, but I soon get the hang of it and my agile pads are pounding out whatever crosses my mind, which is a letter to my ingrate offspring, Midnight Louise.

"Dear Daughter," I begin.

Well, it is a literaryative, but I am not sure I want to give the chit a legal claim on my worldly goods, especially now that I am on the brink of a media career breakthrough. Midnight Louise is likely to take a mile when she is offered an inch.

"Dear Miss Midnight Louise,"

No. Sounds submissive.

"Dear Distant Relative,"

Too cool for Christmas.

"Dear Girlie,"

That will get me four sharp ones across the nose.

"To whom it may concern,"

There, a nice lawyerly approach, no admissions, no obligations.

"I am here in the nation's most impressive metropolis for the holidays, and thought I should kill occupy some time by sending a post card without a picture. You know what I look like and you can always look up New York City in the library if you want pictures.

"Now that 'tis the season for reconciliation and all that mush, it has occurred to me that perhaps we do not understand each other. You do not seem fully impressed by my new (involuntary, it is true) state of reproductive restraint, and still seem to blame me for your presence on this planet.

"Frankly, I agree that the planet might be better off without you, but times change and even a surly, accusatory offspring who has snared her own (possibly) daddy's old job has a role in the overall plan, no doubt.

"I know that you are bitter because you believe that I deserted you and the other litter lice, not to mention your mama, at a bad time. What makes you think that I even knew you were a mote on the Mo-jave desert's vast sandbox under the sky?

"Your mama could have kept the advent of you and your siblings hush-hush, you know, for reasons of her own, such as not wanting to tie down such a magnificent specimen of feline free spirit as myself. Perhaps she saw that I was destined for greater things than wiping snotty little noses with these talented mitts.

"Whatever the reason, I have now had sufficient time to figure out who your mama was, and I think it is her you should ask a few key questions of. Like is she sure just who your daddy is? Not that I cast any aspersions her way (though I believe that there was a touch of Persian in her ancestry; I always was partial to a female who does not shave her legs). But you know that life on the streets does not encourage the exchange of visitors' cards in these matters. You may have been barking up the wrong dude all this time. Also, why do you not track down your dear old mama and ask her how it is that she seems to have vanished from your life? Perhaps you put too much stake in mere blood kin. In my experience as a master crime-solver, I have seen that the family that stays together, slays together. There is something to be said for an early and independent lifestyle, such as you and I have had.

"Frankly, I agree that the planet might be better off without you, but times change and even a surly, accusatory offspring who has snared her own (possibly) daddy's old job has a role in the overall plan, no doubt.

"I know that you are bitter because you believe that I deserted you and the other litter lice, not to mention your mama, at a bad time. What makes you think that I even knew you were a mote on the Mojave desert's vast sandbox under the sky?

"Your mama could have kept the advent of you and your siblings hush-hush, you know, for reasons of her own, such as not wanting to tie down such a magnificent specimen of feline free spirit as myself. Perhaps she saw that I was destined for greater things than wiping snotty little noses with these talented mitts.

"Whatever the reason, I have now had sufficient time to figure out who your mama was, and I think it is her you should ask a few key questions of. Like is she sure just who your daddy is? Not that I cast any aspersions her way (though I believe that there was a touch of Persian in her ancestry; I always was partial to a female who does not shave her legs). But you know that life on the streets does not encourage the exchange of visitors' cards in these matters. You may have been barking up the wrong dude all this time. Also, why do you not track down your dear old mama and ask her how it is that she seems to have vanished from your life? Perhaps you put too much stake in mere blood kin. In my experience as a master crime-solver, I have seen that the family that stays together, slays together. There is something to be said for an early and independent lifestyle, such as you and I have had

"I mention these things only because I have nothing better to do at the moment, and I wish you would get off my case. I am a normal dude. I just went my way and did my thing, and I think you owe me a little more respect, especially now that I am no longer in a position to produce disgruntled offspring like yourself. The buck stops here. You do not see me carping about my missing parents.

"So, in the spirit of the season, I wish you no in-grown claws or whiskers in the coming year, and a little mercy toward your fellow creatures, especially us poor reviled guys, who may be better than you think.

"Sincerely, your maybe-relative,

Midnight Louie, Esq.

Then I save the whole thing under the file name of "spitfire."

Chapter 12

Unwelcome Matt

Visitors to Las Vegas would find it hard to believe, but some of the city's zillion casinos weren't rip-roaring success stories.

The Gilded Lily was one of these lower nightlife -forms. The minute Matt entered he heard the telltale sluggish ring of too few coins hitting slots. True, it was only Thursday night. Luckily, his regular night off coincided with the first day that fit Kitty O'Connor's time line.

The dark interior struck him as under lit to save on electric bills, not as intriguingly dim on purpose. The low lighting also disguised a worn carpet, he discovered, tripping on a tear in the busy pattern underfoot. Curious and curiouser.

People moved as slowly as the money inside this Twilight Zone gambling den. Cocktail waitresses cruised like airliners in a holding pattern: aimless, lumbering, remote in the skimpy crimson uniforms so common to their calling. Matt couldn't envision the woman who had visited him masquerading in one of these saloon-girl getups: limp red satin ruffles edging drooping hems and framing sagging shoulders. Nothing about Kitty O'Connor had drooped or sagged, least of all her attitude.

"Drink?" One of the red satin girls had blocked his path with a tray of smudged gas-station glasses.

She hadn't really looked at him; instead she eyed the half-empty casino for more candidates, customers who had entered, then paused to reconsider.

Under one of the few bleary overhead lights, the drinks showed their true watered-down colors through the dingy glasses: these freebies were straw-colored hybrid freaks, a thimbleful of scotch to six fingers of soda, probably flat.

No, thanks," he said with no regrets. "But maybe you could check out this ID. You ever see this guy in here? Last name is Effinger, first, Cliff."

"Honey, in Las Vegas the only names that count are on the games of chance, and you see everybody everywhere at some point. Jerry Lewis even came in here once. 'Course, it was years ago, before he had his big Broadway revival and this place hit the skids. No, I don't remember this here guy, but I don't look much anymore, you know? And I guess I don't have to."

She glanced up finally, as her restless eyes stopped their weary evasions.

"Whatever name he uses, that guy's your typical low-rent loser. They all look alike. You, though--"

"Kitty been in lately?" He didn't expect her to know that name. Now that he'd seen the place, he couldn't see Kitty O'Connor working here, not even long enough to earn thirty pieces of silver.

"She quit."

"She did?"

"Don't sound so surprised. We'd all quit if we could get jobs at anyplace other than this dump."

But he was surprised, so taken aback that he forgot to resent the sudden speculation in her tired eyes. She was maybe forty-one passing for forty-eight, with the underfed, slightly bucktoothed look of a lot of not-quite-pretty women who end up slinging hash and dipping at the knees to place paper cocktail napkins on damp tabletops while avoiding punches and worst.

He was thinking of moving on, when he realized he'd never gel anywhere at the private-investigation game if he didn't play the cards he had. It she thought he was the best looking customer who'd come in a blue moon, so be it. Amen. Use it, brother, use it.

"I don't know if they allow you to sit down, but I'd buy you a drink if--"

"Listen. They let us do anything that sells booze or poker chips." She sashayed ahead of him to the almost-empty lounge area, ruffles swaying.

Barrel chairs upholstered in dirty-orange crushed velvet sat at inhospitable angles to each other, pulled away from tables as if all the Gilded Lily's customers had decamped in a mass panic not long before.

"Verle." She threw herself into the chair nearest a table. Crossed legs showed off fishnet hose with one visible hole. She worried a pack of cigarettes from under a once-puffed red satin sleeve. "Got a match? Hey, I don't mean personally, honey. Obviously no one in this place, and a lotta other ones, can't even come close to you. I mean, can you light my fire?" By now, an unlit filtered cigarette was attached to her lips like an albino leech.

Matches, Matt noted. Something no investigator of the back alleys of life should be without. That and a strong stomach for rotgut.

He shook his head, but she was already beckoning the waiter. Or an albino leech seller. Matt smiled. If Temple could see him now.

"George," Verle wheedled. "You still got that Zippo lighter of yours outta hock? Hit me. Thanks." She sank back into a contrail of her own fresh smoke, coughing. "The usual, and see what Pretty Boy Floyd is having."

"Black Russian," Matt said quickly. Whatever brand passed for vodka at the place, they couldn't fake Kahlua. He hoped. He also hoped that the coffee liqueur would overpower any untoward tastes.

"You work here for long, Verle?" Matt asked pleasantly.

"Six years, off and on. I come and I go."

"Did Kitty come and go?"

"Nah. She was here for a few months, then she quit suddenly. You know her?"

"Not well. I heard about her, you know?"

"Yeah, well, she's gone, Little Boy Blue."

"Too bad." Matt had pulled out his wallet and now fingered the greasy sketch of Cliff Effinger. "I heard she might know something about this guy."

"What if she did? She's been gone eight months or so now. She's not the one who could tell you about this Effinger guy, if he was here lately."

Verle had picked up the portrait like a card dealt to her in a game, maybe even a lucky card. Her lukewarm brown eyes flicked at his.

"You want to find this guy bad?"

"I'm looking, aren't I?"

"You're not a cop. You a private dick?"

He shook his head.

"I didn't think so. This isn't your scene, is it?"

He shrugged, spread his fingers, and wondered if he should search for a lie, realizing that he had no good story ready. And Kitty? She had left too long ago to be the woman at the Circle Ritz. Kitty was a good name for a lot of women in Las Vegas.

When George returned, Verle grabbed the drinks from the tray before he could set them down. Matt paid, and handsomely. He had seen George's glance narrow at the tiny image of Effinger face-up on the table. Verle, he figured, had done him all the good she could, but now he was stuck for at least half an hour, easing her out of his way without hurting her feelings. He supposed Sam Spade would just smash her cigarette into her buckteeth and leave.

Verle puckered her lips into a wrinkled O to exhale a blast of blue smoke. "God, you are a breath of fresh air in this place. What's your name?"

"Matt."

"Matt. Good name. I get taken for Pearl a lot. Now I ask, do I look like a Pearl to you?"

He eyed her dry, bleached tangerine hair, her long artificial nails covered in a milky-blue polish that had chipped along the thick, uneven edges.

"Not a Pearl. Maybe an Opal."

"Oooh, an Opal. I like that. Fire opal, maybe." She waggled the cigarette, now sporting a half-inch of ash, between her long fingers.

Matt turned Effinger's face toward himself. "Maybe somebody else saw him."

"Sure. I got a distracting job. Some people just sit and wait on their ashcan all day." She glanced over a satin-edged shoulder at George behind the bar. "How many women bartenders you see in this town?"

"I'm not the best person to ask. I usually work nights."

"So do I, sugar. I do some of my best work nights. Or used to." Her drill-sergeant nails played "Taps" on the tabletop. "Anyway, there's more dough in tending bar, at least the tips. I saw what you handed George, and I'm the one who's talking to you."

Matt felt mild panic. He couldn't just throw some bills at her, but she was definitely hinting she wanted consideration. What to do? He sipped the Black Russian that was more black than Russian, and more coffee than vodka. It didn't even taste like a Red Russian.

"It's pretty important that I find this guy. Family matters."

"You mean people still have those?"

"Families? Yeah. Sure. You can't get rid of relatives, you know."

"Oh, I can. And if I were you, I'd get rid of this Effinger fellow too." A long, ragged nail tapped his nose. "Trouble, if you want my guess. I can see his kind coming a mile away. Wants some celebration honey when he wins, which is pretty unlikely, and even then his cash dries up as soon as you've let him check out your chips, if you know what I mean." She snorted in a strangely ladylike way. "But you don't. You're way out of your league here. Forget it. Forget Cliffie-boy. And forget Miss Kitty . . . oh, yeah, I can see she made quite an impression on you, probably belly to belly at some jamboree or other. You don't want that drink? Leave it, hon. I'll drink it for you."

She waved him away with fingers as flaccid as her tired ruffles.

He left a five on the table anyway as he reclaimed Effinger's likeness. "Cigarette money," he mumbled, retreating to the bar.

George held court behind a mirrored circular hulk that winked like a carousel from Hell. Gold streaks through the mirror tiles reminded Matt more of varicose veins than a mother lode of glamour. Stacked cocktail glasses and bottles of booze reflected fragments of the tawdry scene, including himself as he sat on a barstool.

"You got away faster than most," George said, jerking a head to Verle at her table, now stuffing his five-dollar bill up her sleeve. At least she didn't use a garter.

"I'm here on business. I'm looking for this guy."

"Yeah, I seen him here. Recognized him right away. You're not the law, and I can't see you working for broken-down dames like that, so you're not a PI."

"I'm a relative." Matt lowered his eyes to the sketch to hide his self-disgust at the admission. Maybe someday his mother would explain herself.

"Daddy dearest?" George's damp linen towel stopped swiping at rinsed glasses.

"No, but my mother sure would like to know where he is."

"Uh-huh. The old lost step-daddy routine. Hey, I say something wrong?"

"No. I was just startled. We don't use that expression where I come from. Yup, he's my stepfather."

"Your ma as good-looking as you?"

"She used to be, I guess."

"Yeah. Take some advice. Get out of here. Forget this guy. He's been trouble for someone all his life. Why you, now? Huh? I see a lot from behind these walls of booze and lousy tips. You don't want to find this guy. Nobody wants to find this guy but a landlord he owes or a loan shark whose pearly whites need a little exercise."

Matt smiled at the mention of "Pearl" again.

"But if you gotta be an asshole"--George leaned close, his breath ripe with onion--"ask the bartender at the Brass Rail down the street. Ole Cliff has developed a pattern in his old age. Moves on down the line, casinowise, every couple of weeks. He was here, but not no more. Try the Brass Rail behind the Goliath."

"Thanks." Matt fished for a twenty of thanksgiving, but George slapped the damp dishtowel over his hand resting on the bar.

"You paid enough in here. Just watch you don't get hurt when you find the guy. I sure got sick of his ugly face; maybe you can rearrange it." George's smile somehow morphed into a snarl. "Don't plead innocent with me. That might work on the half-hazed ladies, but not on me. You're out for blood, not money, and I'm glad to point you on down the road, so I don't get a mess on my pristine Formica slate bar-top here. Besides, that Effinger guy stiffed me on one boilermaker too many."

"He drinks boilermakers"

"Say, you're pretty fast for an amateur. Yeah, that's the best way to ask for a guy at a bar, by what he drinks, not by his face or his handle, That's all we remember, what they drink and what they leave us."

Matt took the hint and left .mother twenty behind. A bargain, given the going priCEU for professional counseling these days.

"Down the street" was far enough to take the motorcycle.

Any map of the Las Vegas Strip looked checkerboard-simple. Just a few main roads, a few major intersections. Only when you stood on the spot, you realized that the blocks between intersections were made for seven-league boots and three -story-tall MGM Grand hotel lions.

Matt always had a moment of anxiety when returning to the Hesketh Vampire in the parking lot. One time, he expected, it would be gone. It was bright as polished sterling, obviously rare. It begged to be stolen. But it wasn't, this one more time. He was always torn about following anticrime tips and parking under a light. The light might give away a thief trying to hot-wire it, but it also would spotlight something worth stealing.

He settled for the solution the morally compromised so often take. He had it a little bit of both ways: near enough a light to be seen, not too near to flash like heat lightning.

The helmet and the motorcycle roar in his ears, the rush of cold night air, did nothing to tamp down his loose thoughts. Only flashing by the soon-to-open site of New York-New York did that: Temple was coping with the real thing this Christmas, right now. She was moving on up, to the Big Time, on a whisker and a hair and a hank of tail.

He was heading deeper into the lower depths. The Brass Rail was stuffed between a strip joint and something sleazier that offered wares Matt couldn't quite determine. Strip joints always kept their windows boarded up, as if passersby would try to peek for free. He couldn't imagine cozying up to those grimy windows and doors or even to the nerveless naked skins of the women behind them.

Entering the seamy Brass Rail seemed like a refuge. He ignored the lackluster gaming tables and chimefree slot machines to head for the bar at the back. Another slow night in Silver City.

Matt sat on a barstool without hesitation.

"What can I get you?" The guy who slouched over was young, with thick curly hair and a mustache out of the previous century.

"Boilermaker."

"Bad night?"

"No, George up the way just said you did a good business in boilermakers." Matt listened to himself, amazed. He was learning.

"George sent you, huh? How is old George?"

"Fine as he ever gets, I guess. He gave me some good advice, though."

The guy was moving all the time they talked, wiping off the ledge, pulling out the whiskey and the beer. "I hope you were properly grateful."

Matt nodded. The shot glass filled up to the brim. The beer glass barely foamed. Both containers hit the bar top in tandem, slopping a little of this and a little of that over their rims.

Matt suddenly realized he didn't know which one to drink first. He must have seen this on television at least a dozen times: was it beer/booze, or booze/beer? His newfound pride in exploring the darker side of night-life evaporated.

So he reached for his wallet and pulled out a twenty and the sketch of Cliff Effinger.

"George thought you might know this guy. If you do, there's another one of this guy--" He tapped . . . General Grant on the bow tie! Shhhhoot. He'd pulled out one of the two fifties that he used at the grocery store. Too late to retract. "There's a twin of him if you can tell me where the other guy is." Might as well go for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question at this point.

"I like your brand, bud. Grant's always been good enough for me. Don't know this geezer's name, and I couldn't tell you if he's right-or left-handed, but I do happen to know where he hangs out. Signed an IOU right at this bar on the back of a Blue Mermaid Motel rate card. I'd know that piss-ant ugly shade of aqua-blue anywhere."

"When was this?"

The bartender eased both Grants off the slick bar into some out-of-sight cache. "Couple nights ago. Better hurry. People who pay less well than you have been lookin' for him too."

"What do you mean 'pay less well'?"

"I mean their money is all in their knuckles, knocking on your door. You pay, they stop. They don't ask after guys like this, they tell you to spill your own guts before they do it for you."

"Did you tell them what you told me.'"

"They didn't ask hard enough yet, but they'll get there."

Matt nodded and stood.

"Don't you want your drink.'"

"Nope. Lost my taste for it."

"Don't worry. It's on the house."

Matt left, wishing he'd had a swig of something. A hundred dollars, when he could probably have bought the information for forty or fifty. Stupid move. Or . . . maybe smart. Maybe big enough to shake something loose from that guy. He'd decided to tell what he knew before someone came along and made him do it for free, hadn't he?

Matt inhaled the crisp night air, ignoring the lowlifes slouching at doors on either side of the Brass Rail. The Blue Mermaid. He roughly knew where it was. Downtown. Not far from the police department. Temple had told him all about it, raving about the huge plaster mermaid figure that had reared its sinuous curves over the motel since the thirties. Next thing he'd get for his living room would be a big blue mermaid to lounge on his huge red sofa. Right.

Tacky place, he thought next. She hadn't said a lot, but he'd read that between the spurts of her enthusiasm for the blue mermaid figure, for the wacky artist Domingo and his million flamingos. The place had stunk, even if it had an artsy mermaid for a hat.

Matt walked down the side street to the Goliath lot, where he had parked the Vampire in a halfway point between light and darkness. He remembered standing outside the Araby Motel at the Strip's opposite end near McCarran Airport not many months ago, watching a door that Cliff Effinger might exit, or enter. Guard duty had put him into a kind of temporal trance that night. He couldn't say how long he had stood there, or if he'd slept standing up, like a horse, or had dreamed, like a dope fiend. The past and its buried emotions always took him by the throat like a watchdog and choked until he couldn't tell real from false, present from past, right from wrong.

What would he do when he finally found Effinger?

He had no idea. He had never even stopped to wonder what Effinger would do when he saw Matt again.

Chapter 13

Auditions Can Be Murder

Temple would never have thought it possible for the huge conference room at Colby, Janos and Renaldi to look crowded, but today it did. Five new faces sat around the large oval table, and one of them was feline.

And the tension level felt even higher, perhaps because "the client" was present.

Actually, the four new humans present were from Allpetco, but the advertising agency personnel referred to them in singular form as "The Client." Temple found that as absurd as referring to the Marx Brothers en masse as "The Comic."

The client was officially the company itself, so Temple supposed it made sense, but the frequently used phrase kept reminding her of the John Grisham book and movie. She kept looking over her shoulder for rogue lawyers.

"The client wants to watch you and the other candidates do their stuff on camera/ Kendall had said the moment Temple reported to her office, dress bag; tote bag and bagged Midnight home hanging off different parts of her person

"The client? I didn't realize we'd have an audience."

"Now that you've had a day to get used to the surroundings, everyone should be relaxed. The client makes the decision, we just present the possibilities. Want me to hang that dress bag on my door?"

"What would we do without backs of doors?" Temple had wondered as her bag vanished onto a hook behind the open door.

So now Temple again made a dramatic entrance to the conference room, Midnight Louie in his purple sack fastened to her chest like some protective life vest.

By now she had affixed names and faces to the agency people. It was easy once you understood the family, and ethnic trees. Colbys were medium in every respect--height, coloring, vocal tones. Placid, happy, humming WASPs like Kendall, despite her Italian last name, for Temple had discovered in the agency brochure that Kendall was Brent Colby's daughter.

Janoses were intensely brown in coloring and choleric in temperament, Middle European to the toes of their sensibly sturdy wing-tip shoes. Renaldis were either as tall and elegant as Respighi pines or, conversely, as round and black as olives, both species intense in a deceptively laid-back way.

Stereotypes didn't hold across all members of a particular family, but they helped Temple grasp the essential character of each of the three "tribes" she must deal with.

"The Client." Now that was no neat familial or ethnic union. The Client was one man and three women. She had no idea what position these four had with the company. She hoped someone would explain that to her before the day had much advanced, but no one seemed inclined to, although introductions had been made, too hastily to take root. In the meantime, Temple would do as she had always done when meeting new people: assume that they were fair-minded, intelligent and friendly until they proved themselves otherwise.

Temple the TV news reporter had used that basic technique with everyone from multimillionaires to homeless transients, man or woman, adult or child. Cynical reporters--and she had discovered that not only was the stereotype true, but that there were far too many of them for the good of truly unbiased reporting because cynicism cuts both ways--ended up not respecting certain stories and certain people. They also ended up getting lousy stories, and missing many good ones that way.

Call her a cockeyed optimist, but Temple had learned early that overestimating yourself and underestimating other people was the worst mistake you could make in professional matters. Or personal ones.

Her musings stopped. Midnight Louie's whole body had stiffened against her. This feline alarm was as startling as a dog's sudden bark. If Louie had been a dog, heaven forbid, he would have been a pointer at that moment.

Temple followed the direction of his glassy, fixed gaze, and saw that everyone in the room (except her, of course, who had been insight-gathering) was staring in the same direction. Was something wrong?

She steeled herself to view the usual dead body. What was new? Death by staple gun, perhaps, this time. Caffeine poisoning. Nicotine fit. This was New York. What she saw instead was a new furry face in the room.

This animal was indeed remarkable. A beautiful dark-blond Persian cat sat full-length on the table, like a demure, fluffy sphinx, her long golden forelegs casually crossed.

Her earth-toned coat was a melange of dark, foxy red-gold down the back and incredibly full tail, then caramel on the long, flowing sides. Cream frosted her dainty chin and luxuriant bib. Her green eyes gleamed mossy, like agates in an old-gold frame, and her nose was the same rich brick-red as the paler twin's: Yvette.

One was sun, the other moon.

And Midnight Louie was mooning at the sun!

Temple shook his carrier, trying to break the golden cat's spell. No such luck. Louie wasn't the only one struck to stone. No one spoke, or stirred, for at least a full minute.

"Magnificent," Brent Colby, Jr., declared, reaching out his Rolex-banded wrist to stroke the creature's head as if touching a golden object.

"Fabulous doming." One of the women from the foursome known as "The Client"

Spoke with a hush in her voice.

Temple had heard that expression before about purebred Persians. What the heck was doming, besides a furry forehead? And who cared anyway? Louie didn't need doming; he had brains and initiative. Or he had used to have them. Temple twisted her neck around, trying to catch Louie's bright emerald eye. No use. He was as transfixed as the rest of them.

"This is very good," a low voice commented into her left ear.

Temple turned on Kendall, suppressing a snarl.

"What's good?" Temple asked with resentful stage-mother vehemence. "That gilded lily taking the spotlight from Louie?"

"She's golden. He's black. Maurice, if you recall, is yellow-striped."

It took half a minute for Temple's old television instincts to kick in. "Maurice too closely matches the color of this one. Louie doesn't."

Kendall nodded, never dislodging a scissor-snipped strand of her Fifty-seventh Street haircut.

And then Savannah Ashleigh clip-clopped over on her platform heels. "Isn't she divine? Solange is Yvette's sister."

Temple wasn't going to put up with misrepresentation. "How can she be? Aren't purebreds supposed to all be the same color and have the same markings, give or take minor variations? Yvette is a shaded silver Persian. And this is... a horse of quite a different color, though the darker markings are the same."

Savannah sighed dramatically, doing much to reinforce Dr. Mendel's shoring-up and -out operations on her bust. "I don't understand it myself. Something to do with genetics. But I think Solange is a missing link. A throwback. A recess of Jean." Savannah frowned at her last expression. "I don't know what Jean has to do with it. Maybe she was an important breeder who took frequent time-outs."

The moment Savannah had begun speaking in her pneumatic voice, overemphasizing her esses until she sounded like an oversexed air hose, everyone's attention had reverted to Solange.

The woman from Allpetco rolled her eyes at Savannah's interpretation of "recessive gene," but went on talking as if she had never been interrupted.

"I'm by no means an 'important breeder' like Jean, yet I do know that the shaded silver Persian is basically a white cat with brown tabby markings: black tipping the hairs. Of course, early shaded-silver litters threw up some kittens with brown tabby coloring. Those poor 'throwbacks' were brushed off and sold as pets. Eventually, some breeders recognized that, once in a harvest moon, an anomaly shines through human concerns about controlling color and breeding true, and deserves its own spotlight. Thus you have shaded golden Persians like Solange. Some people breed them exclusively, and now we all recognize that it is truly impossible to say which is the lovelier shaded Persian, the silver or the gold. It's not uncommon for silver litters to produce golden siblings. Although"--here she frowned--"it is exceedingly odd for a shaded silver like Yvette to produce what are essentially 'red,' which can be yellow or orange, tabby kittens."

Savannah stirred. "Are you saying that the lousy Maurice can't be the father of Yvette's babies? Oh. It must be a virgin birth, then. This changes everything. This means good tabloid coverage. Yvette is redeemed!"

"I'm afraid not. Before I'd buy spontaneous regeneration, I would suspect a tarnish spot on the mother, which would mean that Yvette is actually a shaded tortoiseshell."

"Yvette? My sterling silver sweetums?" Savannah waxed highly indignant again. "A tortie? Look at her! A symphony in platinum. There is nothing red about her but her little red nose and tongue."

The woman smiled tolerantly. "To carry the red strain, she would only need two red hairs somewhere, anywhere, on her body. Perhaps between a toe--"

Savannah shrieked. The notion of Yvette secreting unauthorized foreign-colored hair was too unspeakable to address further.

Besides, advertising agency personnel had no interest splitting cat hairs and paternity issues.

"Getting back to practicalities," young Andrew Janos interjected. "This blond cat. . . er, red cat. . . er, sister Solange, she has no performing experience, though?"

"No," Savannah admitted, still pouting at the latest assault on her darling Yvette's reputation.

"And we know," said a young adwoman in a navy Anne Klein II suit, "that Yvette and Midnight Louie work together like . . . sugar and spice, sweet and sour, cream and Kahlua." She seemed ready to go on forever, oxymoronically speaking.

"It's too early for lunch," Kendall interjected with smooth good humor, "but you must he hungry already. Maybe we should see how the boy-cats react to this girl-cat. Has Maurice met Solange?"

"Only a hissing acquaintance," Savannah put in cattily.

"I see," said Kendall, well pleased by Maurice's ill manners. "Shall we let Louie take a good look at her?"

She supported the weight of his carrier while Temple loosened her bonds and shrugged out of the contraption. All eyes were on her and Louie. She felt like Houdini performing an escape.

Only ... as she let Kendall hold the carrier and loosened the neck drawstring to give Louie a little more freedom of movement... he took a lot more freedom of movement. .. by leaping to the ground, leaving the bag behind as Kendall's tightened grip helped him squeeze out like a large boneless black furry lump of Silly Putty . . . and then Louie bounded over the sleek industrial carpeting while women squealed and brave men frowned and ordered: "Stop him!"

But no one did, because he was atop the conference table and nose-to-nose with the Divine Solange before Temple could race after and corral him before he did something foolish.

Louie bent his head to touch noses with Solange, then he paced toward her rear as they sniffed tails. He returned again to touch his matte-black nose to her deep dull-red one. Solange's whiskers, black and spidery, mingled with Louie's striking white facial vibrissae.

It didn't take an advertising genius to see that this was kitty chemistry at first sight.

A plaintive mew issued from the pink canvas carrier that everyone had forgotten about on the floor. Temple, having stopped at the table edge to let nature take its course, cast the carrier a sympathetic glance

"This is great," the senior male member of The Client said, nodding sagely. "Film it."

So Andrew Janos picked up his camcorder and filmed.

Another mew emerged from the pink carrier, but this time not even Temple noticed.

If only, Temple thought about four hours later, sitting in the dark around the conference table, they had confined the day's filming to Louie and Solange.

But, no, they had to reshoot Temple and Savannah, various cats in hand, in endless mock interviews. After this orgy of amateur filming (and interviewing, in Temple's opinion), invisible minions were sent for trays of coffee-to-go in giant Styrofoam cups and two pizzas that arrived cold and congealing. Not even Louie, connoisseur of alley bonanzas, would touch the cold circles of oven-curled pepperoni sausage floating pools of hardened grease like miniature terracotta birdbaths filled with frozen ice water.

Besides, Temple was too nervous to eat by now, and one more cup of black, syrupy coffee would have her on the ceiling.

Before her queasy eyes, the film ran, paused, retracked, fast-forwarded and moved frame by frame at the request of various experts in the room: the agency creative directors, the agency senior members, the agency young turks, the agency gofers... The Client's lead member, The Client's one-minded female triumvirate who always disagreed with the lead member . . . Maurice's handler the animal-behavior expert, Savannah Ashleigh the actress, whose bubbly monologue pointing out her own strong points often continued into Temple's segments, where she found only flaws.

Temple no longer felt very civil. She had noticed when she held him on camera that Louie's claws, both fore and aft, were slightly extended at all times by the later sessions. In fact, Savannah Ashleigh had complained of this long and loudly during her last tandem "interview" with Louie, and had writhed in her chair in considerable pain apparently ... or under the misconception that the writhing human female form can sell cat food.

Now if Solange had writhed . . . but Solange was a lady to her gilded rocs. Poor Yvette seemed listless and diminished her few times on camera--what ragged-out new mother could compete with that corona of sun-bright fur shining in the Spotlights?

Maurice was brought out, but, next to Solange's sable-blond aurora borealis, his American short-hair yellow stripes looked like a cheap suit bought in Times Square.

Louie was gracious to both ladies of the feline persuasion, a lamb when with Temple, and a lion when with Savannah. But he never crossed the line to out-and-out misbehavior.

Although Savannah accused him during one film session of "leaking" on her best Ultrasuede skirt, no spot could be found, even by the agency art director, who examined it thoroughly. The group conclusion was that the warmth of Louie's considerable weight had felt like a "leak" to her.

Temple feared that Savannah's running critique of Temple's failings had struck home and mentally agonized over how to compensate for them:

Savannah's Slams-----------Temple's Fixes

Toothpick legs---------------Calf-Length skirts

Bony Ankles------------------Boots

Squints at camera----------Glasses (no, contact lenses)

A Midwestern accent------A French accent

Red Hair----------------------A blond wig

Speaks too fast-------------A molasses mouthwash

Waves hands too much---Handcuffs

Of course, by the time Temple had actually corrected all the supposed flaws Savannah had mentioned, she would be unrecognizable and quite literally unspeakable.

The replay session ended with actual film of the recent Las Vegas commercials done at Gangster's casino and surrounding attractions. Temple was not in these segments, so could settle down to watch Louie's shenanigans with unselfconscious pleasure. Among the chorus line of pastel zoot-suited gangsters in lime-green and flamingo-pink fedoras, his nimble black form stood out like a flea on a tie-dyed cat. He certainly could cavort down onstage stairways faster than Marilyn Miller at full tap, swim harder than a sinking hamster on an exercise wheel in the Mirage's volcano pool, and leap over Gangster's thirties-vintage car seats with a single bound, she thought proudly.

Finally the room's peripheral down lights came on and the huge built-in television screen went black for the last time.

"Most instructive," said the lead client, whose first name was Gerald.

The foursome now wore sticky name labels pasted to their left chests. Temple wondered why people always affixed such labels right where their hands would rest over their hearts when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school.

She was too exhausted to worry about what the verdict was, and suspected that none of them would know until Monday.

Chapter 14

"... A Creature Was Stirring"

Nothing is more annoying than home movies. Even if you happen to be one of the stars.

Luckily, I have established myself as a free spirit, thanks to Miss Temple's innovative carrier. I never thought I would come to appreciate that embarrassing sling of purple nylon straps attached to a drawstring baggie, or looking like a couch potato. It simply does not befit a media star in the making.

However, it is a snap to get in and out of when no one is looking. And no one is looking when they can see the likes of myself on the silver screen. (All right, it is a black screen until it is turned on. But my personal style is silver screen. Just give me a cravat and a pencil-thin mustache and I would be Ronald Colman. All right. I have a pencil-thin mustache already. It just does not show to good advantage amidst all this hair.)

I must say that the Sublime Solange does show to good advantage on camera. The Divine Yvette is most cast down by this reversal of fortune. I, however, have obligations to the entire project and cannot show favoritism. Besides, has she never seen A Star Is Born? As one goes up, another may go down. I hope that this is not the case between Miss Savannah Ashleigh and my little doll. I do all I can to provoke Miss Ashleigh to unleash her most vixenish characteristics.

But she is so relentlessly competitive that I fear she has done Miss Temple irreparable harm.

Then, again, perhaps my little doll should consider toning down her hair color. And her figure is not of the Rubenesque proportions the Sublime Solange illustrates so well. I am not too sure who this Rubens was. Perhaps he invented the sandwich of that name, which I understand can really pile on the pounds, containing as it does so many healthful items from the four major human food groups: fatty protein (corned beef), salty vegetable (sauerkraut), fatty dressing (Thousand Island), bread (which is for the birds), and fat fat (whatever else you put on it).

Now that I am as good as a spokescat on matters nutritional, I believe I should not hold back in criticizing the human diet. Nutrition, after all, is a cross-species issue.

But a dude can only take so much self-adulation, so I paw open the conference door so narrowly that no one notices, and slip out into the well-lit hall. I am never at ease until I know the lay of whatever landscape I inhabit. I begin to sniff around discreetly.

What I notice first off is that this is not a place that welcomes any but human visitors. The only interesting scents I detect are Miss Temple's shoes, the airborne essence of three felines, two of them female, and it does not take a genius to figure out that these individuals are all present and accounted for and in the conference room.

So I amble down the hall, hearing the halfhearted buzz of distant employees whose immediate supervisors are otherwise and other where occupied. Since I know what areas are sure to be mostly unoccupied, I head to the back and the windows. Sure enough. The hallways widen, the carpet thickens, the piped-in Muzak gets tonier.

I nudge open a wide door of some exotic wood and find myself in a handsome outer office. I push onward and inward to forbidden territory. The dude's desk is the size of a Ping-Pong table, but much classier. The wood-paneled walls smell of lemon wax, which does nothing for my taste buds. I am not a citrus kind of guy and thank Bast that I was not born in Florida. I can just see my old man lolling on some boat called the Bastet Royal Flush, snagging marlin and sailfish with one mitt while dolls in thong collars come calling with sickening regularity. My old man is more than somewhat old-fashioned.

I, however, embrace the coming millennium. I am all for high technology and cyberspace cruising. I have been known to tap-dance on a keyboard or two in my day. So I hop atop the desk and take a gander at the screen. I have glimpsed screens with glowing letters the color of my eyes, and Miss Temple had a Karma-blue background on her computer screen, with white letters. But then she got a new one and it all comes up plain old black on white, which is not a bad combination once you think of it. And this is the kind of screen I see here with rows of black letters.

Now I can read the writing on the wall, and this office has the same boring bank of wooden plaques with gold lettering and framed certificates as the other executive offices. Why does having a big office make dudes think they must tack up every piece of paper they ever collected in life?

Me, if I had an office like this, I might go for trophy specimens. Like a gopher. Or maybe that record-quality blue and white koi I snagged from under Chef Song's meat cleaver at the Crystal Phoenix when I first blew into town. There are a few rats I could display, but why upset the visitors?

And of course I would have framed photos of all the glamorous tootsies in my life, feline and human.

And could I curl up on this emerald carpet and make a pretty picture! In fact, I am considering artfully allowing the Big Boss--Brent Colby, Jr.--to catch me in just such an irresistible circumstance when I hear voices down the hall and must vacate the locale lickety-split.

The other back offices are nice, but not as big. After a hurried scramble, I manage to zip into a maintenance closet someone has thoughtfully left ajar. I am hoping nobody sees me who might return me to the matinee of tedium down the hall.

I manage to paw the door almost shut, so it is coal-cellar dark within, except for a pinstripe of light. The voices are coming closer, which is the only reason I can understand what they are saying. Both speak in cautious whispers, so I cannot tell whose voices I hear, or even what gender they are.

"Will they not miss you in the conference room meeting?" I hear one voice ask.

"Not in the dark," is the sardonic answer. "You sure that no one saw you come in today either?"

"Not even a mouse," says the other person with a chuckle. "As you suggested, it is going to be a big surprise. I can hardly wait for the unveiling afterward, when the others figure out who I really am. Will that blow them away!"

"Please! That phrase might bring back some bad memories."

"All my memories are bad ones, which is why it is so great we ran into each other again. Nothin' like old friends gettin' together and talking over old times. I bet some of us have forgotten more than we remember. Except me. I may not have a pot to piss in, 'scuse that phrase, but my memory's A-one. Hey, I even recognized you first. Imagine that, running into each other by coincidence in a great big city like New York. I bet that now that has happened, you will be seeing me again. And again. That is the way it goes. And I, uh, appreciate your doing something extra special for the Christmas kitty. You were always a big-spender... especially when the money was not yours."

"Whatever, whatever. We do not want your cover blown now. Better duck out of sight for the duration. Then you can hit the scene on cue. Got a glow-in-the-dark watch?"

"Hell, I think I still glow in the dark from the old days. Orange. Okay, I am outta here. See you later. I can hardly wait to see the others' expressions, afterwards."

"I guess you could say you are bringing them some extra holiday presence."

"Presence, spelled like presence? Pretty good. You were always clever. Well, why sure I am gonna give 'em the Christmas surprise of their lives. I am supposed to be a jolly old soul."

At that point, somebody laughs, not a nice laugh at all.

I sigh in my closet, waiting for the parting rustles to subside. That is when I realize that I have been so intent on hearing this conversation (for I am nothing if not curious, to a fault), that I have been derelict in scouting out my refuge.

In fact, I realize that the background sound that was making my ears twitch now and then in annoyance was not the distant drone of some heating unit, but was a soft, rhythmic subsonic hiss like . . . breathing. Whoops! I am not alone. Something is in here. With me. In the dark. Making not a peep, like it does not wish to be detected either.

Too bad I do not have one of those bowser-quality snouts that can scent anything from garbage to Garbo at fifty feet. My sniffer is pretty sharp on a certain range of odors, mostly animal and vegetable, but I am not a tracker by profession. If I cannot tell who is my closet-mate, I am also not sure what is confined with me.

I hear the rustle of motion behind me. The odors of turpentine and lemon oil clothe the intruder in a miasma of mystery. This could be a tiny little Manhattan house mouse, for all I know, or Jurassic Alligator.

I am trying to decide if it is worth my while to find out which when an aluminum pail comes sweeping down over me like a bell, doubling the darkness and caging me with an overbearing scent of Mr. Clean.

I loathe any kind of involuntary confinement, so I bolt out from under the descending metal prison at the last instant. I head for the spaghetti-thin line of light where the door do-si-dos with the door-jamb. In my haste, I manage to go dancing in the dark with one of those old-fashioned string dust mops that is all cotton-twist tendrils dripping oil and allergens. I am about to sneeze, and the floppy mop part is hanging over my head like a wig.

I hate being in the dark.

So I lose the dust mop and bust the door open without looking back to see what creature is stirring behind me. I also loose a big sneeze as I head back toward the home movies, where I know what I'm keeping company with in the dark, feeling as if a herd of demonic reindeer were behind me. Down the hall, I dart into the first ajar door, under the mistaken impression I will be greeted by my own lovely mug up close and personal on a big-screen TV.

Have I taken a wrong turn!

I am in a conference room, all right, but every light in the place is blazing and a lot more that do not normally belong here, even though this is New York City and they do a lot of things that are not normal here all year long. Some people think that my hometown is a bit unreal, but they have never explored the outer limits of this toddling town, let me tell you.

Anyway, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer?

They are hanging high on the wall, just under the ceiling, and Rudolph's nose is blinking like a big red stoplight. (I wonder if Rudolph is any relation to that chef, Reuben?) Beneath this poster paint stands this awesome 3-D chimney, all red brick and dripping cottony snow from the top as if it had the sniffles.

I think fondly of the chimney through which I made my dramatic but sooty entrance at the Halloween seance to revive Houdini. Perhaps I can manage such a trick tonight. That would impress Solange, the ad people and The Client. Maybe even Miss Temple, but I doubt it. She does not seem to be surprised by anything I do any more.

Just call me the Mystifying Mr. Midnight.

I trot over to investigate the scene of my next transportation triumph.

I pass a real live Christmas tree in one corner, smelling like pine room deodorizer. It is decked with golden garlands and little glass . . . well, I will be a monkey's uncle, but only if one of my relatives has gotten into something kinky! Tiny glass cats hang all over the tree, dangling from golden cords around their translucent necks. I edge over to investigate, and recognize statues of Bast, upright, with her front legs straight as columns and a twenty-four-carat gilt ring glimmering in one ear. I shiver a hair. Actually, several hairs. I could stand a little less Bast in my life of late.

But I am immediately distracted by a swath of wrapped presents under the tree. Dozens and dozens. Here and there I scent the real smell of Christmas . . . exotic, imported catnip!

I can hardly restrain myself from snicking out my shivs and tearing into that primo stuff.

But I am applying for a job here. It would be best not to display any addictive habits until the position is in the bag. Or I am.

My eyes narrow. I know that rat Maurice has been waiting to make his move on me. I wonder if I can turn the tables on him before he even knows we are talking furniture.

At least I have a preview of the treats to come. I study the empty folding chairs, the long table lined up against a wall with an empty punch bowl on one end. Enough of the media feeding frenzy in the other conference room, folks! I have had my hour in the spotlight, and am now ready to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we vie. Again.

"Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on Donner and Blitzen!"

I can hardly wait to meet those naughty-but-nice girls, Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, and having Cupid in there does not hurt a bit when it comes to Christmas merriment. Then we can all get Blitzened.

But for now I slip back into the darkened conference room, where all present are gazing raptly at my onscreen pirouettes, unaware that I was not merely performing but running for my very life from a lurking assassin ... and have likely just done so again!

What they do not know will not hurt them, or my film career. What a pro I am! At both of my professions. I pussyfoot up to the familiar form, scent and foot of Miss Temple Barr. She was not loitering anonymously in any closets, and she will have no notion of my recent close encounter. When the lights come on, I will be sitting meekly beside her, ready for shoveling into whatever distasteful means of confinement and transport she finds necessary in the Big Apple.

But inside I am a free spirit.

Party on!

Chapter 15

Claus for Alarm

Deck the Halls with . . . pigtails and coveralls.

Everyone escaped the conference room at six- something that evening. Despite the massive quantities of coffee consumed, they lurched blinking like zombies from the still- dark room into the well lit halls.

While they'd been closeted within their media cocoon, the outer world of Colby, Janos and Renaldi had altered dramatically. The exiting people couldn't evade it, since they all nearly tripped over the major change in personnel. An unlikely addition.

Toddlers, tots, tykes and preteens ran, roared and raised heck up and down the halls, all dressed like Santa's elves in green and red (some rebels in green or red), imps clothed in plaids, paisleys, velvet, corduroy and velour, in holly and cat-angel Christmas prints.

Halfheartedly chasing the escapees were harried parents from knots of chatting wives or joking husbands.

Andrew Janos, obviously coveting a Golden Globe award, never stopped running his camcorder but came charging from the dark, the camera's light blaring like a steam locomotive's single warning headlight.

The din, of course, was many times the normal hubbub of hyped-up ad people stepping on each other's sentences and building molehill notions into media-campaign mountains through a round robin of creative one-upmanship.

Temple hadn't bothered donning Louie's Cat Aboard in the dark, so she toted him and it before her, no hand free to shelter her ears from the shocking howls, squeals, giggles, bleats, bellowed orders, whines and assorted, and mostly ineffective, parental pleadings.

"Duck into my office," Kendall suggested in Temple's ear. "You can change there. I don't think you or Louie would much care for the rest room at the moment."

Temple watched a young mother squat before an adorably dressed little girl, struggling to comb a tangled ponytail. The child's protesting screech would have deafened a bat, or Batman.

Temple nodded yes to the suggestion, clutched Midnight Louie as close as his girth would permit and made for Kendall's crowded office.

"Did your father really mean that the cats were not to be confined for the party?" Temple asked Kendall as they arrived at her office door. "I mean, all those strange kids wandering around. Uh, not that the kids are strange, inherently, only that they're unknown to the cats and the cats are unknown to them and someone could step on someone's toes or tail and someone could claw or bite someone."

"Colby, Janos and Renaldi kids don't claw or bite," Kendall said with a firm smile. "I think Dad's looking for how the cats react to crowds, unleashed. There'll be pet store openings to attend, and the spokescat has to be mellow enough to roll with the punches."

Temple eyed Midnight Louie, lolling with flattened ears in the bosom of his cradle. "Mellow" was not a word she would use to describe him.

"But... if there is an incident, and kids can tease animals without meaning to--"

"We want to know if there will be an incident. If one occurs here, our employees are less likely to sue for a cat scratch than the public at large. Better to know now. What's the matter, are you afraid that Louie will be ninja cat outside his carrier? He was a pussycat on the conference table."

"But the people sitting around it were adults, not kids."

"Don't be too sure about that," Kendall said sardonically, shutting the door.

The message was clear: the Christmas party was another "test" for the animals as well as the people. "Don't hiss, scratch or bite," Temple admonished Louie. "And don't snag my velvet dress or anybody else's."

She swished her black stretch-velvet turtleneck dress from the door hook, and changed clothes with a nervous eye on some still-lit offices in the opposite skyscraper--a cleaning guy waved. Once the dress was on, she waved back, then topped her velvet neck and shoulders with a red-beaded openwork shawl. Trust Las Vegas for the latest experiment in instant, portable glitz. Her plain black Stuart Weitzman pumps sported red Austrian-crystal lips that were either cheeky or surreal, depending on interpretation. They certainly looked Christmassy. She was afraid to trust the fully spangled Midnight Louie Austrian-crystal shoes to such a big, toe-stepping, punch-spilling crowd.

"Too bad you're fussy about wearing anything off camera, Louie. That flamingo fedora you wore in the Las Vegas ad footage was tres chic, but would be sadly out of season here and now. And I guess you'd snarl at a red bow tie on a collar."

Louie, who had leaped atop Kendall's desk to bat the red fringe that draped from Temple's bodice, withheld comment. But not his claws.

"I hope you used your conference-room box recently," Temple admonished her bored darling, wishing she'd had the foresight herself to manage a rest-room visit earlier.

In minutes she had extracted her small purse from the bottom of Louie's carrier, a great place to carry valuables like credit cards, and slung it over one shoulder. She picked up Louie, sans carrier, and managed to open the office door. First, she peeked into the hall.

The Tiny Tot Parade had assembled elsewhere by now, but the Children's Chorus came loud and muffled from deeper within the suite of offices.

As if following a latter-day Pled Piper's audible trail, Temple found It passing the darkened conference room. Something moved within. Someone. Someone wearing red. The motion stopped the moment it attracted her sideways glance.

Louie chose that instant to decide that he was no longer a carry-cat.

Four dangling legs flailed. Temple, fearing snags in her expensive new velvet dress, held his weight away from her. She had an invisible opponent. Gravity grabbed Louie's leaden mid-section and pulled until it pooled like mercury in his tail-section. Louie ended up falling/jumping to the floor.

Being a cat and instinctively recognizing the least convenient place for him to go at any given moment, he immediately darted though the ajar door into the darkened conference room.

"Lou-ie!"

Temple felt like the harried mother of a delinquent tot. She dove into the dark after him, her hand slapping the wall inside for light switches.

Her palm found only smooth flannel paneling. Such oversized rooms as this usually featured multi-switch installations, not near the door like a normal switch plate, but someplace discreet and unexpected . . . and far away. Still, Temple thought, one guiding light switch must be near.

She fumbled in the dark, wondering whom she had seen lurking in here. "Lurking" was the only word to describe the darting, shy almost-motion that she had glimpsed. Now, the vast dark room was silent except for her own clumsy thumps and shuffles. Louie, naturally, could navigate this dim expanse as quietly as a snowfall.

Temple's fingers finally found a single light switch four feet from the door, and flipped up the lever. One wan light winked on, revealing Louie in Halloween-cat pose, back arched, on the conference table, facing off with . . . Santa Claus.

Then Temple remembered. Brent Colby, Jr., always played Santa at these company Christmas parties. He had to change and hide out somewhere until he made his entrance. Thanks to Louie, she had stumbled into his dressing room. Great move.

Louie clearly nonplussed Santa, and he seemed equally startled to see Temple. He had backed away from the open door's sight line. His mouth remained frozen into a round, jolly little O, as if he wanted to speak to her but had thought better of it.

She wondered if, like the tin woodman, he needed a little oil at the jaw joints. Then she noticed a costly crystal lowball glass beside him on the table.

Performance anxiety. And she wasn't helping by barging into his pre-appearance retreat.

She hotfooted over to collect Louie. By then Santa had found a traditional twinkle for his eye and had raised a forefinger to his lips.

Temple nodded, happy to comply with the holiday deception she had almost messed up. Santa glanced down to her shoes, frowned, and then winked.

Temple tucked Louie under her arm, despite velvet-raking possibilities. Cost of doing business.

"No claws!" She hissed the command to him under her breath. She shrugged apologetically at Santa Claus and hefted Louie higher. "You know the kind of claws I mean," she told the man in red.

Then she rushed out without a backward look.

Down the hall thirty feet she stopped beside an identical door, also ajar. This door leaked light and noise like a festive sieve. Entering, Temple found herself the last guest to arrive. Everyone from the conference room was installed here now, along with triple their number in children and significant others.

Even Yvette's pink and Solange's chartreuse carriers had made the relocation, sitting side by side and looking like anemic holiday decorations. All the cats were free to roam, except Maurice, who was on a leash.

Temple didn't know what would happen if she let the felines mix it up, but Louie weighed a ton. Though he had not flailed since they had left the other conference room, he had steadily slipped down her side. He now hung at hip level. One notch lower, and he'd be on the floor again.

She let him drop, realizing that the cats had wonderful chaperones anyway: kids of all sizes and ages, eager to surround them with curiosity and affection. The kitties, perhaps, would not welcome pats from sticky hands attached to high-pitched voices and sudden, jerky movements.

Temple was in the same beautiful pea-green boat with her one pussycat as every other woman in this room was with her one-plus offspring: she had a charge to watch every minute so that no one did it damage, and it did damage to no one. All Temple really longed for was a long; hot soak in a bathtub somewhere quiet.

"Though that went well."

A Colby cousin, a blond guy her age that Temple would have thought handsome if she had never seen Matt Devine, had edged over with a cup of ruddy wine punch. Since his other hand held a glass of harder stuff, Temple took the wine.

"Thanks. I actually needed this. Did the audition session really go well?"

"Absolutely. Vote's not in, and The Client hasn't spoken, but, ah, you certainly have my vote. That's off the record."

"Of course. And thanks for the support."

"I'm behind your alley cat one hundred percent too. Not that they haven't done well with Maurice, but your Louie combines streetwise charm with a certain elegance."

"I think so too. And the lucky lady cat?"

His flaxen head shook. "Pity about the petite silver. Bad break. Still, no client wants a tabloid appearance, not even for a cat. Besides, that sister of hers is a standout filly. Never even heard of the breed, but she films like a brandy Alexander goes down. Don't you think?"

"I do. Perhaps Yvette could have a cameo role."

His pale head shook. "In this business, you're either top cat, or no cat."

"So Maurice's career is--?"

"You've heard of the dodo?"

"As in . . . dead as a doornail?"

He nodded. "I must mingle. No one should suspect a preference."

With that he ambled away ... to the side of Savannah Ashleigh.

No doubt, Temple thought, too weary to temper her newly acquired Las Vegas cynicism, he would tell Savannah that she had an edge in his opinion. But he didn't carry her any libations. Perhaps he preferred her hands free.

The wine punch was too strong for Temple's burgeoning headache, but nothing from the bar interested her, and the kids were all drinking something dark green, which would probably be super-sweet and sticky.

Midnight Louie, she noticed, wasted not a second in sprinting away from the kiddie corner, where Solange and Yvette were cornered back to back, ears flattening as dozens of sticky fingers patted them right on that prize-winning doming.

Savannah Ashleigh was doing nothing to protect the Persian siblings, having changed into something less comfortable but more befitting the season--a white leather jumpsuit festooned with star-shaped silver studs. No doubt the super large star rather lewdly studding her right breast was supposed to represent the one that had led the Wise Men to the manger.

Temple trailed Louie, nervous about the havoc his alley-cat habits might wreak among such delicacies as a Christmas tree decorated with Venetian glass ornaments with a mini-mountain of exquisitely wrapped presents beneath it. This was Louie's first Christmas indoors, as far as Temple knew, and she had no idea how civilized he would be.

Much to her surprise, he avoided this tempting pile of twinkling lights, fragile decorations and beribboned, bright papers begging to be pounced on, torn, crushed and then pursued.

"Worried about your pal?" Kendall asked.

Temple's statuesque guide looked truly elegant in burgundy velvet, much more the yuppie boss's daughter that she was.

"Just watching. He seems fascinated by the chimney. Maybe it's those eight tiny reindeer atop the roof. They look kind of mousy from here."

"Don't let our art director hear you! That's his creation."

Kendall smiled fondly, and Temple realized that she must have attended these parties as a child herself.

"Daddy adores these hokey events. Sophisticated New York adman, and yet he insists on playing Santa Claus every year. I shouldn't give the surprise away, but pretty soon Santa will come sliding down the chimney--there's a little hatch into the kitchen next door--and it's ho-ho-ho time and presents for all. Then Santa goes back up the chimney and the party's over for another year."

Kendall sighed. "We've all told Daddy it's not necessary any more, and rather undignified, at his age and weight, to keep donning cotton batting and less padding every year to go wriggling up and down that chimney. He could just appear at the door like every other homemade Santa in town.

"But it's a tradition, and Daddy just loves family traditions. They all do, Colbys, Janoses, Renaldis." Kendall's nostalgic look soured.

She ripped her martini, a big enough sip that the floating olive barged into those perfectly aligned Scarsdale teeth. "That's probably why so many of us intermarry; as kids we see each other early and often. Not always a good idea. That's my ex over there. Carlo. He prefers Carl."

Her nod singled out an attractive, dark-haired man in round, horn-rimmed glasses, a Renaldi who was neither olive nor Lombardy poplar tree. "Even after a divorce, there's no getting away from one another."

"Did you have children?"

"Not us. Not married long enough. But we would have, I suppose, if Carl could have torn himself away from his sports cars long enough."

Louie had paused before the faux fireplace, sizing up the wall-board chimney. Temple kept an eye on him, but her mind was meandering elsewhere.

"You know, Kendall, what you say reminds me of the Rothschild family."

"The Rothschild family? You know them?"

"Not the current generation, or their ancestors. But that's how they became the premiere banking family of Europe, despite being Jewish at a time when most Jews were confined to ghettos. The Rothschilds had lots of sons and daughters, and those had lots more sons and daughters. So the first cousins married each other when they grew up to keep the business in the family. Outsider sons-in-law were drafted into banking too."

"We're not that bad!" Kendall looked alarmed. "The Colbys, Janoses and Renaldis are hardly related. It's quite a tribute to Daddy, setting up shop, so to speak, with army buddies from a very different side of the social street way back in the sixties."

"I can understand it. Common military service forges strong bonds. Were they stationed overseas, or what?"

"Vietnam," Kendall said ominously, in low tones. "The older generation doesn't like to talk about it. We weren't around then, but I understand the worst trauma was afterward, coming home, when the peaceniks had turned the country around and returning vets were called baby-killers to their faces."

"Really!" Temple, shocked, recalled her aunt Kit telling her how much she didn't know about the sixties just last night. She'd have to check some books out of the library.

Kendall nodded. "Not that Daddy served in an enlisted man's unit. He was attached somewhere else, but he must have crossed paths with the other men at some point. All the older men in that war were scarred somehow. Dad and Tony and Victor never talk about it. That must have been especially hard on Victor and Tony, they were second-generation Americans, gung ho to serve their country. Then they come home and they're treated like criminals. Nobody in your family was involved in Vietnam?"

Temple frowned. "I'm the youngest of five. I guess Dad was a family man. Were men actually being drafted then?"

"Oh, yes. Daddy's generation doesn't talk about it, but they were so hush-hush we kids actually got curious enough to look it up. The demonstrators were hippies who claimed that the draftees were all poor guys, while kids from wealthy families got college exemptions. When I heard about that, I became even prouder of Dad. He's never said it, but he didn't have to go to Vietnam. That's why Victor and Tony are so loyal to him. Apparently, he was higher in rank, but he stood by them."

Temple nodded. All this was Greek to her. It was scary what you didn't know about your parents' pasts, as if you assumed they began when you did and you both accumulated only common memories. Was one of her brothers or sisters a Vietnam baby, conceived simply to get a deferment? She didn't know what the rules were then, but they could have shaped her entire life, and she would never even know it. The sixties was such a crucial decade. She did know that. What were her parents like then? Maybe nothing like she thought.

"Your cat's gone," Kendall said.

Temple looked again at the chimney. Not even the dangling stockings were stirring, and Louie was nowhere in sight.

"Look!" a childish voice halloed. "Lookie. Kit-ty, Mom-my!"

The real "Mommy" looked up. Temple followed her example. Oh, Great Marley's Ghost! Louie wasn't gone. He had just sprouted wings. He now perched atop the cotton-batting simulated snow edging the chimney top, black as a lump of coal dropped from the cardboard Santa's pocket as he sat laughing in his sleigh above it all.

The eight tiny reindeer looked much bigger now in comparison to Louie's silhouette, and their glitter-dusted hooves seemed ready to kick Louie off Santa's territory.

"Louie get down."

An adult chuckle sounded in the quiet room at Temple's command. "That cat is just a natural center of attention."

The speaker was Gerald, the senior member of The Client, but Temple's business instincts had decamped for the moment. How was Louie going to get down? And would he? Cats were notorious for scaling neighborhood Mount Everests like Sherpa guides, then stalling at the top until the fire department sent a ladder unit to get them, which most fire departments wouldn't do nowadays.

No firemen were in attendance here, and admen did not strike Temple as a particularly athletic breed.

"Louie, you come down," Temple ordered, fire in her eyes and voice.

He looked at her, then considered the assembled humans staring up at him and found the size and awestruck quality of the audience good. So, he promptly obeyed her.

"Amazing!" The Client, all four, spoke as one the moment Louie vanished down the chimney.

All eyes now fixed on the painted black hearth. The room was so still, despite the children, that everyone heard a discreet thump as Louie's four feet touched floor. He ambled out, looking right and left, as if noting the presence of subjects.

He finally stopped at Temple's feet, looked up with sober green eyes, and meowed plaintively.

"Aaaah," said the crowd.

She wanted to strangle him, but there were too many witnesses. So she picked him up and patted his head, which probably suffered from mediocre doming, but neither Temple nor Louie would know, and neither would care.

"You could have fallen," she said, infected by the maternal concern radiating like winter heat all around her.

He responded with his most contemptuous look. So much for the power of parental love. Now she knew how mothers of teenagers felt, especially in public.

The din and festivities were resuming. Glasses clinked, children whined for Santa and every third one seemed to be dropping a glass. Luckily, the glasses were all made of plastic, but the green stuff was as sticky as Temple had surmised when she joined some other women in bending down to blot it up with cocktail napkins.

As soon as she was done, she collected Louie again, who had remained beside her. She shifted his weight to glance at her watch.

Only two more hours to go before this command performance was over. Two hours!

Louie watched her with a wrinkled brow. Then he glanced back to the scene of his most recent attention-getting device.

"You've done chimneys before, Louie," Temple whispered. "I'm surprised at you, repeating an effect. That's hardly professional. Max would never do it."

Louie growled softly and pushed away with all four feet, effecting his release. He stalked to the corner where the Ashleigh cats were still attracting too much attention. Louie's arrival diverted their fans. While Solange and Yvette repaired mauled ruffs and tails, Louie sat like an offended sea cow and allowed the children to run their sticky fingers over his shoulders and pull his tail. He flashed Temple a wounded look.

Now what was that all about? she wondered. But not for long. The Client was descending on her en masse, begging to hear about Louie's reputed crime-fighting exploits.

Temple wanted to be at Aunt Kit's. She wanted a bubble bath and peace and quiet. She actually wanted to be home in Las Vegas, where it was warm and where the only hubbub to interrupt tranquil days of desert sun and forty million tourists breezing through town was the occasional nearby murder . . .

But this was Showbiz and Louie was her baby. She gritted her teeth and recounted his adventures, embroidering shamelessly.

Midway through a riveting account of the Houdini seance during which Louie had performed his first chimney trick, the room's lights flickered, then dimmed.

A buzz of speculation interrupted Temple's tale. She looked around. Louie was nowhere to be seen, but of course there was a crowd of wall-to-wall people in the room.

On the Santa wall, a spotlight illuminated the painted hearth and mantel. Bells rang out, not deep-throated church bells, but the tin-selly jingle of horse-bridle bells. Poe's bells of "crystalline delight" that "tinkle, tinkle, tinkle in the icy air of night." Kind of reminded Temple of Yvette out for an evening on a New York sidewalk.

For a moment it did feel cooler in the room, then a bent, red-garbed figure came bounding out of the fireplace, his false basso laugh booming good cheer.

"Well! What a fine convention for Santa! And what a splendid tree. Shall we see who's been naughty and nice this year? Have you got a chair for these old bones . . . and a cup of cocoa and maybe a cookie?"

"Oh, yes, Santa," crooned the children, running to the buffet table to scoop up fistfuls of cookies.

Santa sprang, most lively, to the stuffed armchair positioned near the tree.

"Now, girls and boys, I need an elf, or maybe several, to bring me the booty under yonder tree, aye, my hearties?"

Temple blinked. The line had begun as if intoned in the biblical richness of John Huston being particularly hammy and had ended on a note of Long John Silver.

Amateur actors! She was surprised that a man as dignified and aristocratic as Brent Colby, Jr., had secreted so much ham under that French-bread baguette exterior of his.

She began to agree with his daughter Kendall that he was a remarkable man. Courageous enough to ignore the considerations of class and enter into business with men from blue- collar backgrounds: hard-working, bright men no doubt, but in the sixties, of which she realized she knew nothing, were such alliances that common? Maybe they were after the chasms in custom the Vietnam protests had created.

Hadn't a movie star whose image then wasn't much different from Savannah Ashleigh's now--Temple knew old movies, if nothing else--become a lightning rod for in-your-face Vietnam War protest? Jane Fonda, now a corporate wife.

Temple shook her head. She would need to read a lot of contemporary history books to understand the earliest of the three decades of her lifetime.

Meanwhile, the party went on without her, and Louie. Names were called, beguiling little elves handing out presents with childish self-importance--how nice that the kids were not just the getters, but the givers. Temple was jolted from her reverie only when her own name rang out. Shortly after, a waif in baggy red tights and a Rudolph the Reindeer jumper toddled up to offer her a package, after being directed all the way by helpful adults.

Temple opened the wrapping, aware of everybody watching for a few seconds ... Inside the signature-blue Tiffany box (that oddly insipid pale blue that verged on turquoise), she found a vermeil black-cat pin with emerald eyes.

She smiled a thank-you toward Santa on his homely throne. And saw something odd about his eyes behind a mask of good cheer and spirit-gum wrinkles, beneath cotton-batting eyebrows, eyes that held a nagging question in them that only she could answer . ..

What question could Brent Colby, Jr., have for her, a humble maybe-employee under consideration?

Another name was called, Savannah Ashleigh. Another tyke proffered a gift, another pin in the saccharine-blue box, age-old sign of elegance. Two cats, two sets of gemstone eyes winking topaz and aquamarine in the light.

And then, before the guests of honor could get their minds on current events, Santa was done. He sprang up, energy incarnate, red and white, larger than life, bluffer, heartier, to the fireplace.

"A Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

Up Dancer, up Dasher! Up Donner and Blitzen and Louie and Vixen --.' The figure lifted stubby arms in the single spotlight, then vanished upward.

Spotlights brightened on the cardboard cutout of Santa and his eight reindeer atop the chimney, but they seemed what they were, cardboard, even Rudolph's rhythmically blinking nose.

For a moment, Temple knew the ache of a child who could no longer believe in Santa Claus, no matter what she held in her hand.

She looked around. Children were gazing up, to the pale sky of a whitewashed ceiling, believing in fairies, ready to clap for Tinkerbell. They expected Santa to emerge up top from the chimney and dash off behind his eight tiny reindeer.

The hearth spotlight dimmed and went out.

Above the cardboard Santa and sleigh and reindeer glowed an ever-increasing light.

"This," said Kendall's breathless voice beside Temple, "is when he appears at the chimney top, blends with the Santa in the sleigh, and then all the lights go out . . ."

But Santa never exited the chimney.

And the deer did not disappear in a triumphant flash of glitter strewn hooves.

And the children who had seen this before were silent as the night.

And the children who had not seen this before were puzzled, thinking something was missing.

And the adults who had seen this before were as still as death.

And the adults who had not seen this before were . . . worried.

Finally, before the lights had dimmed on the cardboard Santa in his cardboard sleigh drawn by his cardboard deer with one red-lit nose, something appeared at the chimney mouth.

This was no North Pole apparition, but a coal-black cat. Here he had stood before and here he stood now and yowled, long and loud, so that finally, someone ... everyone ... understood that something was very wrong.

And all the lights went out.

Chapter 16

Virgin Mary Blues

A baby-pink spotlight aimed a direct hit on the Blue Mermaid's tail fins, making her look more like a blue whale, or a '59 Cadillac.

The figure was huge, maybe twenty feet high. The Blue Mermaid had stylized curly yellow hair, and wore a strapless dress that resembled jersey more than scales. Matt recognized that it was exactly the shade of blue that George at the Gilded Lily had tried to describe.

Matt stared past the overblown figure into the starless night. Las Vegas outshone mere starlight. The sky showed no constellations, only a flat black velvet backdrop for the neon aurora borealis haloing the Strip.

He had recognized George's despised shade instantly: VMB. Virgin Mary Blue, a bright, cloying blue sweeter than denim and darker than baby blue. Mary, the Mother of God's, signature color, duplicated on millions of gilt-edged holy cards and thousands of plaster statues now relegated to church attics.

Sometime it shows up in strange places. An elderly devout Catholic usually of eastern European descent, will suddenly paint his entire house blue, or will slather VMB on the inside oi an upended claw-foot bathtub-shrine, place within a statue of the Virgin wearing VMB, and become the talk of the town.

Matt wondered what the paint-makers called the color.

This VMB blue, though, was chipped in places down to dirty white plaster. And if the Blue Mermaid was not a vamp in the modern style, like the bold women in assorted harnesses he'd recently seen pictured outside the sexually oriented businesses, she did remind him of Mae West. A larger-than-life female fertility idol, all dressed up with nowhere wet to go within four hundred miles, except Lake Mead.

Matt knew one thing: the man who painted this effigy sixty years ago had been Roman Catholic. Only Catholics like VMB, out of lifelong conditioning.

He passed the motel's vestigial front office, where a faint incandescent light gleamed and a scent of stale sweet-and-sour hung on like olfactory heartburn. He supposed he could ask after Effinger there, but what man who moved from casino to casino ahead of the jaw-breakers of the world would register under his own name?

And what if this man he held in his hand in a sketch he couldn't quite see in the dark, what if this man was only an Effinger look-alike? It happened. Maybe Effinger was really a-moldering in the grave, in whatever public three-by-six the city had dumped him. And, if not, which dead-end room here was his?

Matt stuck his hands, and the sketch, into the pockets of his faux sheepskin jacket and slowly toured the motel's interior U-shape. A sign by the office offered rooms by the day, the week or the month. That made the Blue Mermaid a next-door neighbor to a flophouse, one that bled the helpless, unwanted poor of enough money to pay for a far more decent rental unit in a better neighborhood. But they'd never be accepted there.

Few units had vehicles parked outside. Either the renters were out, or too broke for wheels in this mandatory-mobile society. The figured curtains in the quaint, narrow windows were all drawn as tight as their sagging folds would permit. Some were safety-pinned shut. Raucous voices rose as Matt passed, reaching that point of futility when they're too loud to understand. Once he whiffed the pungent sour breath of marijuana smoke. His shoe brushed something on the asphalt... a used hypodermic needle. Discarded condoms shone sickly pale among the blown-in refuse like stranded, dead jellyfish.

He knew about all these things as an academic knew about gin-drinking in eighteenth-century England. The Blue Ruin, gin was called then, and it mostly ruined the already discarded, the penniless, the poor. Why was it easier to consider impoverished people as one great unwashed mass, no capital letters necessary? The poor. Too large, undifferentiated and inhuman a problem to address. As "the rich" were too faceless to envy and overthrow, "the poor" were too vague to do anything for or about.

But the tenants at this motel under its mantle of Virgin Mary Blue weren't only unfortunates. Some were criminals. Molina could probably spot signs of a lot more than drugs and sex, were she here. Drugs and sex happened in the best of parishes nowadays, and priests weren't quite the unworldly shepherds that they had been a couple generations ago. If some priests and preachers had abused children in the recent past, they had done it in the Iron Age. Still, holy innocents had abounded in the good old days. Matt had known and admired many of them, who would be shocked and saddened by his presence here, by his purpose here.

And what was that purpose? If he found Effinger, he would find out. When he found Effinger, he would find himself.

In the dim light, he paused to jot down what numbers remained on the doors. Some rooms were obviously unrented. Some were just empty, occupants out, or only there for a couple of the twenty-four hours paid for. Some units sounded like whole slums in a bottle, fussing children, whining adults, whimpering animals competing with the scratchy blare of a television set tuned to some show as unhappily hyperactive as they were.

Matt settled against a dim doorway near the street with a view of the entire U. One thing. Effinger's western getup made him a silhouette to remember. Maybe another urban cowboy or two roomed here, but not a whole herd of them.

The night wasn't cold for a Chicago native, thirty-something degrees. He braced a hip against the doorjam, kept his hands in his empty pockets and blended into the ambience. He remembered glimpsing his face in the smoky bar mirrors. Why the mirrors, anyway? To see other people come in, or to make sure one's self was there?

He couldn't deny his outer aspect now, his conventional good looks. But what should he do about them? He recalled T.S. Elliot's famous poem about J. Alfred Prufrock, a man as indecisive as his era. Like Prufrock, Matt found himself dwelling on minor decisions more than major ones.

Should he do something different with his hair? Grow it longer, cut it shorter in the monk-cut so popular among the trendy but ignorant young punks? Spend his hundred bucks on a haircut rather than a bribe for a bartender in a sleazy joint? Should he buy motorcycle boots to go with the Hesketh Vampire? Maybe enroll in a photography class. Subscribe to a magazine, but which one? Go into group therapy? He had preached enough to Temple about group therapy, and there was one for ex-priests, called Corpus. The next word that came to mind nowadays was "delecti." And how should he accessorize his new red couch the length of Long Island?

In his old life, he had few personal choices. He worried about values, not minutiae.

What did he hope for from Effinger? Because, no matter how much young Matt still hated the man's guts, not-so-young Matt must still need something from him. Confirmation of his worthlessness? Whose? Effinger's or Matt's, the failed priest so unfit for a secular world? Closure. The truth.

Just plain revenge?

Matt winced as the cold sank into his bones, and wished for a boiler-maker. It didn't matter which part you drank first, he decided. They both would be bitter medicine.

Something shuffled over the refuse. Crushed aluminum cans scraped along the concrete. Papers hissed as they were scuffed along.

Matt's head drooped, his eyes were shut. He was the next thing to sleeping upright, but the sound had awakened a memory from the past. A fact seen and heard then, and not noted.

But now ... That loping walk, the hip, affected shuffle of a fifties high-school hoodlum with cleats on his shoes. Click, shuffle, click, click. Ducktail greased. Short T-shirt sleeves (and they were white message-less undershirts then) rolled around a soft cellophane-wrapped pack of Camel cigarettes. Jeans tight and sagging low. Engineer boots with cleats. Click, shuffle, clickety-click.

Matt could still hear Cliff Effinger coming home, no cleats in the seventies, but the gait always threatened cleats, moving past the living-room rug and then echoing dully on the pitted kitchen linoleum. Matt had stared at that linoleum a lot, a graphic tenement of little windows, a Mondrian pattern boiled down to its cheapest, ugliest incarnation, only Matt hadn't known Mondrian from Matisse then.

His head lifted. His breath held.

A figure shambled toward a dark door across the way.

It wore a hat.

Hats were still worn in the sixties, by some. Fedoras shaded Sinatra's lean and cunning cinematic face. Age had filled in Sinatra's hungry angles, softened his flesh into a moon of Dutch cheese, all runny and forgetful. Like Brando's godfather, about as benign as a tumor. Las Vegas had been his beat, he ran with the Rat Pack here. The mob ran Las Vegas then. Not now. But somebody was dumping dead men in the ceilings of major hotel-casinos. If not that old-time religion, who?

Maybe he should ask Effinger.

Matt lurched away from the wall like a drunk. His ankle had gone to sleep.

He had to stop and wait for the pins and needles to jab the bloodless flesh to life. Waiting on pins and needles. And above, the Blue Mermaid, watching in her saccharine-blue gown.

Blessed Virgin Mary, star of the sea. Matt moved slowly so he didn't shamble like the man he was following. It was all too easy to turn into what you hunted.

Effinger fumbled at a door midway up the U's opposite upright.

Holy Virgin Mary, rose of memory.

Matt was catching up. Quietly for a lame man.

The door creaked ajar.

Most Holy Virgin Mary, rose of forgetfulness.

A light weaker than a drink at the Gilded Lily pulsed on.

Blessed art thou.

The man in the Western hat pushed the door open farther, paused, lit a Cigarette. A spark cursed the darkness and went out.

Full of grace...

Smoke, acrid and pure nicotine.

Now and at the hour of our death...

The door was shutting, the room closing, the Bible falling shut, the confessional door unlocked but inescapable.

Matt's hand and foot wedged between door and frame.

"What?" someone asked irritably. "I don't owe you a thing."

Amen.

Matt was shutting the door behind him, searching for the light.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Who the hell are you?" Matt demanded in turn.

The face under the wide western shadow said nothing.

Matt took the hat off.

"You're crazy, man! You're on something. I ain't got no dough, no way."

The voice was... not loud and roaring. Matt tilted his head to see the face at a different angle.

The skin wasn't so much wrinkled as scored. Too much sun and sin in Las Vegas.

And he seemed . . . shrunken. Small. So small.

"Oh, Lord! Holy shit! What're you doin' here? You're gone. You're as good as dead."

"I'm not dead, and I'm not as good as I used to be."

"Look. I was a prisoner in that damn town. Damn icebox. I hada get outta there, all right? I did, didn't I? Didn't I go? Like a lamb when you got ugly. What's your gripe after all this time? You're supposed to be in some Holy Roller place, wearin' black like a damn nun. You're not here. Naw. Can't be here. Who the hell are you?"

"Who do you think, Cliff?"

"That's not my name. I'm Clint Edwards. Got that?"

"Yeah, I got it."

Matt moved around the cramped room, turning on every light switch he could find. Under its tilted shade, the table lamp by the door had only a forty-watt bulb. A bathroom cubicle tiled in stained white shone sickly under a buzzing fluorescent bulb that flickered like a strobe light above the tiny mirrored medicine chest. The outer room boasted only one more light, whatever would leach from the screen of a battered black-and-white TV opposite the lumpy double bed.

Matt turned the TV on too, and turned up the sound knob, so the passionate late-movie voices argued in the room like real people. A woman crying and pleading. A man yelling. It sounded just like home.

"Whatcha doin', you goddamn little freak, always lookin' at me with those big googly eyes! Always watching me. I told you to keep that TV down or off! This is my place--"

"No, it was our place. And then you came."

"Why shouldn't I have? Your ma thought it was a-okay. Don't like that, do you, kid? Your ma wanted more than a squalling brat to look after. I fit in real good."

"Why aren't you dead?"

"What--? What the hell you talkin' about? You want me dead, is that it?"

"No, Mr. Effinger. I can't want you dead. I'm a good guy in a black skirt, remember? I'm just wondering why you aren't dead when your ID was cramming the pockets of the dead guy they found at the Crystal Phoenix a few weeks back."

Effinger backed toward the bathroom, his face as white as the streaked tile. "I don't know nothin' about that."

"You have to. It was your ID."

"I lost that. At the bus station."

"And the dead guy looked a lot like you. Same age, same general physiognomy, same build."

"I don't care what his physiogomectomy said, I don't know some dead guy at the Phoenix from Adam."

"They think they buried you, Effinger. Doesn't that make you feel safe? The police think they buried you, but I don't."

"You're nuts. A priest shouldn't act like this. I knew you were a bad one when you knocked me down on the kitchen floor. You were just a punk. I could have wiped up the linoleum with you, but I didn't want to hurt your ma."

"But you did! You hurt her a lot. I heard it. I saw it. And I'm not a priest anymore."

"You can't quit that. They don't let you."

"A little like the . . . mob, isn't it?"

"What mob? No mob in Vegas these days. You're nuts. I'm gettin' outta here."

He ran like a rat for every exit.

The door, but Matt was there first. The window, where he tore at the torn curtains and slammed his palm on the glass

Matt pushed him back.

Effinger looked for something to hurl at Matt, but the TV was bolted down, the lamp was a flimsy joke and ... he ran for the bathroom.

Matt thought of a high narrow window like Midnight Louie's escape hatch from the Circle Ritz, and of a narrow, ratty man shimming through another window like that.

He made the bathroom in four giant steps, and slammed the door behind him.

The fluorescent light buzzed warning like an angry hornet.

"Get away from me," Effinger squealed, backing into the tub edge, the tiles bouncing back his voice.

Once his voice had been thunder, Matt recalled, and his footsteps earthquakes. Clickety-click, stomp!

Cleats. Clint. Wanting to be somebody, and always being Cliff.

Effinger was standing in the tub, clawing at the tiny frosted glass window above it.

"They'll kill me, you stupid kid! All that old stuff was nothing compared to what I'm into now. For now, they like me alive, but later, who knows? You're gonna be the death of me."

Matt seized Effinger's cheesy western jacket by the shoulders, and dragged him back from the window.

Effinger reached up behind him, fingers clawing for Matt's face. Matt jumped into the ancient bathtub and kicked Effinger's foot from under him. The man folded onto his knees on the yellowed porcelain. Rust trailed down from the ancient water spigot like old, dry blood.

"You're gonna kill me!" Effinger's voice ran hot and hysterical.

Matt yanked the right faucet until the pipes screeched, and pulled up the porcelain lever in the wall. Cold water trickled from the tinny shower head. Effinger was screaming as if under boiling steam as Matt hauled him up into the icy baptism of rusty water.

"Blood. You're killing me. I don't deserve it. I'm a victim. They got me by the short hairs. You stupid, stupid punk--"

The water spat on Matt's face and ran down his forearms. It was going to ruin his faux suede jacket.

Finally, Cliff Effinger sagged in his hands like wet wool. His water-soaked clothes reeked of unlaundered urine and hard liquor.

Matt pulled the guy up again until the ragged stream of water from the shower head ran down Effinger's face like spittle, into his closed eyes and chattering teeth. He was small, so terribly small, after all.

"Listen," Matt said. "You aren't worth hurting back. Calm down. I'm not going to touch a hair on your mostly bald head." That was why the hat, not disguise. Vanity.

"You're ... not?" Effinger hiccoughed like a spent, hysterical kid.

Matt jerked him out of the piddling shower stream and shook him until the water beaded off his clothes.

"No." Matt held Effinger against the cracked tile with one hand while he turned off the water.

"What you gonna do?"

"Nothing personal."

"Huh?"

"Brace yourself for a touch of cold air."

"What? We going outside? I'll freeze in that night air."

"It's nothing like the Chicago air that January you locked me out all night."

"Hey, I was hot-tempered then. Young and hair-trigger, you know?"

"No, I don't know." Matt had him at the unit door. He opened it and looked out. Deceptively deserted.

"Where we going?"

"There's a public phone outside the office. If you keep your mouth shut, the manager won't even know we're there, and that you messed up his bathroom."

"Huh? Who you gonna call?"

Matt's smile was grim.

"Ghostbusters."

Above them, the Mermaid loomed like a Virgin Mary Blue blimp.

Chapter 17

Raising Saint Nick

Sometimes I live up to my reputation. I am one unlucky black cat for somebody.

Here I stand, the focus of all eyes (which is as it should be), but my presence on this ersatz roof is very bad news for somebody. Not that anybody puts two and two together.

I have not liked the layout of that chimney since I first saw it. I liked it even less when I took a second look only minutes before and saw that what I did not like before, I liked even less now that somebody had changed it.

Now there is somebody in the chimney, and nobody knows but eight cardboard reindeer and me.

Are you getting tired of all these "bodys"? Somebody, anybody, nobody ...

Well, get used to it, because there is a body in the chimney and it is not me.

"Where is Santa?" somebody yells out.

Good question, dude. Why do you not take a look up the flue?

Finally somebody is smart enough to examine Santa's escape route. The woman named Kendall who has been shepherding Miss Temple Barr about walks over on brisk heels, bends down to look up the chimney and screams.

The first one is a scream pure and simple, and works pretty well. The second one is a word, and it finally gives all the dumb-bunnie nobodies an idea of what is up, in this case up the chimney.

"Dad-dy," she screams.

Now I am a daddy myself (though not intentionally, but that is never taken into account). It does give me a chill to hear that note of panic and disbelief in Miss Kendall's wail.

Miss Temple, upon hearing it, rushes over. Now we are in good hands.

She does not have to bend far to peer up the chimney.

"Lights," she orders. "Bring the camcorder. It has a light that will fit up this chute. We need some slight men who aren't afraid of heights or close quarters, fast! From what I can see, it might not be too late to get him down."

Janos Senior is the first to respond. He and the cameraman son arrive at the same time. Andrew Janos, who has been tirelessly shooting the party as he has tirelessly shot banal events all day, points the lens up the flue.

"Colby?" Janos senior calls up the dark tunnel.

I look down, my eyes slitting to the width of a straight pin at the direct light. That way I can see perfectly, and it is as I expected. Just below me, Santa twists slightly in the chimney, creating an eerie scraping sound. His booted feet hang loose of the wooden ladder nailed to one side of the chimney. A golden snake shines in the fractured light from below, circling the uppermost rung of the ladder. It extends down to lose itself in Santa's curled white beard, beneath which it has no doubt tightened on his neck.

A chain of gold. My own fur brushed against it on exiting the chimney the second time tonight, when my ladder was not wooden rungs, but a red velveteen suit.

I watch Janos senior's harried face block the light as he scrambles up the ladder. "Oh, my God."

He must shimmy past the dangling Santa suit, and it was not an easy task for me. But he is a wiry little guy. Somehow he manages it and wriggles out onto the narrow roof ledge near me. I do not expect him to balance on the two-by-four chimney rim like the foot sure dude I am.

"Tony!" Victor Janos yells to Renaldi senior in a voice that would start a parade. "Get in the chimney and lift up his feet. He's . . . caught on something. I'll try to release him here."

The watching crowd whispers and rustles. Some hang-up, they think. Some glitch. A few men head for the bar and mothers bend to rub paper napkins over sticky chins.

Miss Temple does nothing of the sort. She keeps her place at the crowd's forefront, needing to be there just to see, and keeps a steady eye on the action. Tall, uneasy Kendall follows her, glancing at my little doll nervously.

The men are grim, shouting and grunting only at each other. Brent Colby, Jr., was no lightweight. Or do I give something away? Surely no one of any brains who has been modestly attentive, like my little doll, can have failed to realize that what we have here is no overweight Santa wedged in his escape route, but a dead man hanging in a chimney by a golden chain.

I give that Janos senior credit. You can tell he has been in a war zone. That plucky fellow manages to pull up Santa by his suit shoulders enough to loosen the chain. It thuds against wood.

"Tony!" Janos senior shouts sharply.

And below Tony grunts, but catches the freed weight. The chimney is narrow enough that it will brace the corpse if Tony can keep it from crashing to the floor, which he does. Beside me, Janos senior lets himself over the chimney side, hanging by his hands, and jumps lightly to the carpet below.

I do not follow his derring-do example. Not that I could not, you understand, but I wish to examine the inside of the chimney now that the unfortunate victim is not obscuring the murder weapon. The police will not like having Janos senior's fingerprints on it, but did they expect me to make like a Russian sailor and yo-ho heave-ho to the "Volga Boat Song"? Manual labor is not something I am made for.

"Did he pass out?"

I watch Miss Kendall hurry to the supine Santa the two partners pull from the blackened hearth. Even I wince before I turn and jump down onto the first telltale rung. The police will not like my pad prints on the wood, nor my claw marks, but tough tooters.

The chain hangs in a long straight golden tail, like a plumb line.

When last I saw it and the last that Brent Colby, Jr., saw it, the chain was arranged in an open coil like a basketball hoop from the second-to-top rung. I think back to my alley-running days to figure how it happened. Probably much as my pal Mumblety-peg met his end on a loop of jump rope left hanging from a jungle gym. As this dude Colby climbed, the victim tripped some mechanism that released the gold chain to fall on his shoulders. Startled by the unexpected weight, he backed down, too late. The chain tightened and choked, and his hasty retreat only caused his feet to miss the narrow rungs. He swung free, to his death.

Below me I hear the piercing cries of Miss Kendall, who now knows the obvious and the worst.

But I am not quite ready to desert my observation post. Yes, something is still here, and even stronger now, although it is disembodied: the faint whiff of a relative of my favorite stimulant, catnip.

Some call it cannabis, but I have more often heard people call it marijuana.

Is it possible that Mr. Brent Colby, Jr., was dying for a smoke?

Chapter 18

"... Hung by the Chimney with Care"

Temple was amazed by how fast the festive conference room had cleared of all but essential personnel.

Gone were the children in their gay attire. Gone were the mothers with their hankies and Handiwipes in hand. Gone were most of the Colby, Janos and Renaldi copywriters and junior account executives.

They would all have been banished to the other conference room, but Temple had reported seeing Santa waiting to make his entrance in there. The police might want to examine the room without it having been trampled by dislocated Christmas party emigres.

"What won't the police want to examine?" Victor Janos burst out, running arthritis -swollen fingers through his hair. He winced at the gesture, and pulled his hands away. "I must have strained my hands." His face was almost as flushed as the corpse's.

Tony Renaldi no longer looked lithe and dapper. He even stooped a little to show his fifty-some years. But he laid a hand on the smaller mans shoulder.

"You did good," he said, lapsing into the talk of the barracks, the polished overlay of the boardroom lost for the moment. "You got in there quick and we got him out as fast as we could. It was just too late, Victor. You know what that's like."

Victor shook his head. With his suit jacket gone, and his white shirtsleeves rolled up, he looked younger despite the strain on his face.

"And you, young lady." Renaldi summoned a shred of charm. "You thought pretty fast. You and your . . . terrifying cat."

Renaldi had been the first to pull himself together and summon the police. "I'll call the precinct," he had said, rushing out. "Too bad it's a weekend," he had added.

Now Temple wondered what a holiday death by misadventure meant in New York. Fewer police on duty, slower response? Las Vegas was the opposite case. She glanced again at the supine Santa. He resembled a department-store mannequin abandoned on the chic gray industrial carpeting.

She understood what Tony Renaldi was saying. Louie had tried to draw their attention to the chimney. When he had perched up there the second time, he seemed to be saying: why didn't you listen when I tried to tell you something was wrong?

It was too close to the parody of the Lassie films: "I think she's trying to tell us something." Animals often are trying to tell us something: that they're lost or homeless, or hungry or want affection. Why couldn't they try to tell you something more subtle as well?

Brent Colby would never know that a cat had played a key role in the discovery of his death.

He looked disturbingly alive even now. His face was flushed and swollen beneath the thick white whisker-frosting, a look in keeping with the popular representation of Santa Claus, but hideously altered from the pale, blandly patrician features of Brent Colby, Jr.

Kendall sat alone on a folding chair, her body angled away from the gruesome scene by the chimney.

Savannah Ashleigh and cats, as well as Maurice and handler, had vanished along with the party-goers.

Temple had not been allowed to leave, not since The Client had pointed out her experience in what they called "the murder line."

Midnight Louie remained by default, and because his paw prints were probably all over the crime scene. Temple wondered what Lieutenant C. R. Molina would say about that, happy that she and Louie had no history as suspicious characters in Manhattan. Yet.

Janos and Renaldi had shown their executive mettle, though, from the tense moments of rescue to the realization that came when they laid the body on the floor and stared down at the scarlet face of their dead partner in its gruesomely jolly guise.

"Was it a freak accident?" Renaldi asked again.

"Coulda been." Janos's cigarette, lit minutes before and forgotten, did a slow burn between his first two fingers, building a precarious smokestack of ash.

"The chain?" Janos again.

"Maybe Brent wanted an extra prop, wanted to make a jingling sound as he exited the chimney, I dunno. Coulda been a last-minute inspiration he concealed up there before the party got started."

The partners' wives and adult children occupied the first two rows of circled chairs, as ordered, their grim faces oddly contrasting with the rich colors of their expensive holiday best. Temple suspected that their role in the death investigation would be what it was in real life and the company brochure: photogenic but anonymous moral support.

Colby had been a single parent with one child, Kendall, the only member of her immediate family present. She sat alone, facing the back of the long room, sobbing quietly. Temple wondered why no one comforted her.

"Where are the goddamn police?" Janos's usual staccato style was seasoned with unusual profanity.

Despite his quick, cool action during the attempted rescue, he was clearly the over excitable partner.

Renaldi shook his head. "I called only a couple minutes ago, Vic; it only seems longer. This is a weekend before a major holiday. We can't expect instant response."

"We are an important firm," Janos said, temper flaring. His tone implied that he cared less about the firm's high standing than its usefulness in getting speedy official response. "God. Poor Colby."

Among the accidental audience on the folding chairs, a woman smothered a sudden sob.

"Can't we . . . cover the body?" Renaldi asked Temple again.

She was used to being consulted about public relation policies, not police matters.

"Ah, I don't think so. Anything that disturbs the victim or the area hampers the crime-scene technicians. Remember, that was an issue at the Nicole Brown Simpson crime scene. Taking him down was a major disruption, but we had to try to revive him."

"Even in 'Nam we could cover the . . . bodies," Janos muttered.

Temple could guess what adjective he had edited out at the last minute, an adman to his bones now, but still a grunt in his soul.

"Nobody there cared about how or when; they knew," Janos went on. "I thought it was cruel then, but this is crueler."

Janos and Renaldi exchanged a mute glance of shared memory. A look that was also wary, Temple noticed. Cautionary. Like a Santa Claus putting a finger to his lips. Was she watching men who had fought in war together reverting to battlefield discipline? Or murderous partners putting on a good show for the survivors?

Louie lingered by the chimney. When she went to collect him, he was batting something around in an utterly catlike way. She bent to find a small dark screw, wood fibers clinging to its curves.

"Leave that for the cops," she said as she hefted him into her arms.

The Client had taken the four front-row seats nearest the exit and farthest from the scene of the crime.

"Miss Barr," one of the women called softly.

Temple tiptoed across the carpet, not wanting to disturb those sober, drooping faces of family watchers in the front row. An instant had transformed the festive conference room into a bizarre funeral parlor: the corpse on display without the concealing grace of a coffin, the mourners dressed more for Mardi Gras than the Service for the Dead.

Temple slipped into a vacant seat alongside The Client, beside the woman with a graying bob whose name tag read murielle koslow, promotions.

"Did your cat really sense something was wrong?" Murielle asked, patting his sagacious head.

"Possibly, Louie has a talent for that." Temple looked down to find a flake of white defacing her velvet skirt. Probably litter from Louie's paws. She picked it off. Then, not wanting to, uh, litter the floor, put it in her skirt pocket. If you wear black so black cat hairs won't show, trust the contrary species to leave a pale dandruff of litter well. "Or," Temple continued in light of Louie's latest cat trick, "this big lug may have just been acting like a cat, climbing for the challenge of it or to serenade the lady kitties from the nearest thing to a rooftop. Why?"

Murielle sighed, a gesture that lifted each Client's chest in turn. "I wondered if we had paid attention ... if that might have made a difference. Someone getting to him sooner."

Temple knew what bothered her, and almost everyone in the room who had taken time to think about it. A man had not only died before them, but had probably taken a while to do it, the entire struggle hidden by a painted chimney and abetted by a complacent audience anticipating the next "special effect."

"The fall and the tightening noose could have snapped his neck," Temple said. "Death might have been instant."

"Oh. I suppose that would have been better."

Down the line, the senior Client leaned his torso into Temple's view. "How will the police deal with so many witnesses? Can they do it without keeping us all here until tomorrow?"

"Maybe they can't." Temple watched four strained faces tighten. "Usually, in a crowd scene like this, they question everyone and let the least likely suspects go. That's why I suggested the others go to the other conference room. It'll speed things up."

"You mean we're suspects?"

Janette, the older woman next to Gerald, spoke with appalled realization.

Temple shrugged. "We're the current account on the docket. A death like this could be a freak accident, or murder with a motive ranging from soup to nuts."

"And we're the nuts?" The Client number three was named Arden Hoyt. She had a round figure with curly hair to match and looked like she'd be a lot of fun under better circumstances.

"More likely the appetizer," Temple reassured her, and them all. "We're out-of-towners. What are the chances of one of us blowing into Manhattan and deciding to commit Murder One?"

"You mean--" The Client, senior, leaned forward in his seat again, to speak in a stage whisper. "You mean that if the death wasn't accidental, the murderer has to be either family, or a business associate?"

Temple glanced around to ensure that no one else could hear her. "And this being a family business--"

"It could be both," The Client number four, Janette, added with a sober nod.

Temple shrugged again. The less she committed herself, the more her stock rose in their eyes. She began to understand why the police were so tight-lipped on a sensational case. Better to say nothing at all than to stick your neck out and be wrong.

Temple rose and went to Kendall. Louie was there too, nosing her slack, curled hand that hung near the floor. Kendall's other arm curved along the chair's metal back, that hand fisted as well, and her face rested on the wrist's wet surface.

Her eyes lifted to follow Temple's arrival. "Daddy was so disappointed about our divorce. We never really tried, he said. In his day, people tried." She blinked, not to disperse tears, but in an attempt to refocus her entire point of view, to see the past in the light of this dramatically different future. "Maybe he was right. We kids never did understand why the partners were so tight. A war we hardly heard of didn't seem to be enough reason. But that was his generation. They were loyal. We're yuppies, young urban have-it-alls . . . fast-faders."

"Maybe." Temple sat wearily on the next chair, facing the front of the room. "It's hard for women to understand men and war. Guys have a love-hate relationship with conflict. Maybe, like sports, it's one of the few places men can form deep friendships without the fear of being labeled homosexual."

"Why does it take violence to make men friends?"

Temple shook her head. She didn't feel like analyzing anything right now. She got up and plodded to the wake at the front of the room. Where were the police? Granted, New York City had a tad more traffic and a few thousand more streets than Las Vegas, but....

The conference door opened, making a mousy creak that hit the silent huddle of people like a shotgun blast.

Someone filled the opening, haloed in the hall light.

Behind them all, Kendall wailed. "It's D-D-Daddy!"

As the only surviving relative, she bravely had stood to greet the officials, yet all she could blurt out was the victim's name, a poignantly childish call for Daddy.

Temple braced herself, ready to take over at this difficult time. That was what public relations people were for, even if the relations were with the police.

The male silhouette stood framed in the doorway, its form lumpy and bloated. As the man stepped forward, the room's perimeter down lights resolved the visual ambiguities. He was not what they had expected: a New York City uniformed officer or detective. Not unless the officer had gone undercover for the holidays in ... a Santa suit.

Everybody stared, speechless, at the dead man's macabre twin.

Santa realized that something was very wrong. His hands lifted to peel off his jolly bearded disguise. The puzzled, smooth-shaven face beneath was frowning, frowning at the room, at Kendall Colby Renaldi. Santa's cap, hair and beard wilted from his hands like Spanish moss.

"What's wrong? Where is everybody? I couldn't pass through the kitchen without grabbing a cup of coffee to revive me for the end of the evening. Sorry I kept you all waiting. What's going on here? Kendall, baby?"

At that, Kendall Colby Renaldi burst into hysterical laughter.

The newcomer was Brent Colby, Jr., in the flesh.

Chapter 19

No Way Out

Matt kept his fingers rolled in the greasy scruff of Effinger's jacket collar while he patted himself down for the quarter that would kick start his captive down the road to justice. Maybe.

Nine-one-one didn't seem appropriate, so Matt dialed nearby police headquarters. He didn't expect to find Molina in, not this late and this close to Christmas, but he knew domestic violence boiled over at such socially heated times of year. The department's number

was easy to remember.

Effinger fidgeted in Matt's grip but didn't try to bolt. Must be a shock to see a pip-squeak kid from your past come back like Eliott Ness.

"Molina available?" he asked the first human voice that answered.

"That depends. What's the problem?"

"I've got someone she's very interested in getting a hold of." Effinger weaselcd out of his jacket some, so Matt slammed him up against the motel wall and dug an elbow into his stomach.

"Call tomorrow."

"Can't, I literally have the guy in custody, and I can't hang on to him all night."

"What did you say your name was?"

Matt gave it, fearful of being taken for a crank caller otherwise. Lord knows he got enough of that breed at ConTact. And so did the police.

"I don't see what I can do for you, Mr. Devine."

"Look. The guy in my hands right now is supposed to be dead and buried on Clark County's tab. He may be involved in a couple of murders."

"I'll call Molina, but she won't be crazy about this. Citizen's arrest isn't what people think it is. I assume your so-called suspect is not sticking with you voluntarily. He could press charges against you."

"The only thing he's going to be pressing in the near future is his jailhouse baggies."

"Okay, okay, desperado; where can the lieutenant reach you?"

Matt sighed. That meant they'd have to hang by the outside phone, freezing and looking obvious. He strained to read and repeat the pay-phone number in the faint light, absently twisting one of Effinger's arms tight when Matt sensed a break for freedom in the making.

"You can't do this! I'll sue."

Matt hung up. "It's a friendly family misunderstanding. Holiday tensions and all."

"What're you gonna do? Who'd you talk to just now?"

"Someone who wants to see you in the worst way."

"She ain't here in Vegas?" Fear touched Effinger's sullen voice.

"She?"

"I ain't telling you nothing. I ain't telling the police nothing, and I certainly ain't gonna tell a defrocked priest nothing."

"I'm not defrocked. I left with blessings and a small stipend."

"Stipend. Blessing. I ain't heard nice-nelly words like that since I got the hell out of that Polack neighborhood in Chicago. Worst place I ever been in."

"We agree on that. Why'd you stay, then?"

Effinger's shrug loosened Matt's clutching fingers. They were starting to go numb.

"I got smokes in my pocket. Okay if I dig 'em out?"

"Which pocket?"

"I sure don't want your fingers in em."

"If you want a smoke, you're going to get them."

"Left front jacket. You was such a wimpy kid. How'd you grow up to be so hard-nosed? They don't teach that in the seminary."

"I was never wimpy. I was just a whole lot smaller than you were. I thought about killing you every day, back in Chicago."

Effinger held still as Matt jammed an unfiltered cigarette into his hand in the near dark. "I'll keep the matches," Matt said.

"Sure did practice those Jap moves, though. You caught me by surprise that day. I'da never gone down if you hadn't jumped me."

"But you did go down. And you're going to go down again. The cops in this town are mighty interested in you, dead or alive."

Effinger laughed as Matt struck a match head against the thin brown striker line. A Gilded Lily matchbook. The sulphur smell was warm and rich, like gourmet coffee grounds. Effinger's crumpled cigarette trembled as he inhaled, cupping his hands around the spark of red warmth.

That impromptu shower wasn't doing either of them any good in this cold night air, Matt thought, hating to share even discomfort with this man. And where was Molina, besides off trying to have a life?

"Why'd you move in on us?" Matt asked.

Effinger inhaled, letting the wall hold him up, either resigned or waiting for a chance.

"Your ma wasn't bad-looking in those days. And I wasn't such a poor specimen myself. She had a house, and you were just a little kid. I figured you were like a pet rat or something. No trouble." His upper lip curled over the cigarette moving up and down with his mumbling lips.

"She wouldn't leave the old neighborhood," Effinger went on, blowing out memories with his cigarette smoke. "They treated her like shit, but she wouldn't leave. Didn't want you to grow up without 'family' Family! Big dumb Polacks who disowned her the second you were born, a stye in God's eye. I was raised Cath'lic. I know the drill. You're a bastard, Matthias. Fact is, I'm the only legitimate father you've ever had, or ever will have. And she wouldn't say word one word about the guy that done the deed. Oh, my, no. That got to me. Like he was too good to mention to the likes of me. I needed to get out of the family stuff, sneerin' but not lettin' go. Sneerin'. Even she and you started sneerin'. So ... I took off for Vegas. Lived my own life. Finally left for good when the little yellow-haired ingrate jumped on me like he was playing Godzilla."

"You didn't just leave. You hung around for years, yelling and cursing, drinking and hitting. You only left when I made you."

"Yeah, you'd think that." Effinger blew smoke out his lower lip, so it streamed upward like the ghost of a burnt offering.

"Face it, kid. You makin' me kiss linoleum wasn't why I left. I was more'n ready to go. I'd made connections here in Vegas. The chorus girls were younger and gamier than your ma had ever been. So I split, and if you wanna think you was man enough to make me, well, I guess the last fifteen years have shown you you're not even man enough to be a skirt-swishing priest."

Matt almost wished he could smoke. Could inhale acrid air and spit it back out as toxic fumes. But he wasn't angry, not now.

"You know why you're standing here talking to me, Effinger? Even though you don't know who I called and who might be coming, and that makes you nervous? Because, finally, you can't get away. You can't hide behind a corpse, or my mother, or the years. I saw it in the motel room. You're such a little man. In every way. You're not worth my anger. I'll never forgive you for what you did to my mother, and I'll see you in prison or in hell, that I know. But I don't have to be there. I don't have to pull the plug or hit the switch. I just have to know how really insignificant you are. I think the people you're working for now know that too. I think they're waiting until your usefulness fuse fizzles out. And then you'll be another truly unidentified body that dropped out of nowhere on the way to home, sweet hell."

"You hate me, kid. You still hate me as bad as you did then. And you can mumble all the 'Hail Mary's' you want to, but hate's a big sin. If that's all I did, show you that hate and hurt make the world go round, then I'll take the final drop to whatever, satisfied. Why should you have a life, Mister fair-haired pretty boy that mama dotes on and daddy left behind to bug some poor guy who ain't no relation to no fussing kid?"

Matt was starting to see what a pawn and an anchor one small child could be, that he had been, when the phone squealed beside them. He collared Effinger again, jerking the cigarette butt from his mouth and crushing it out on the damp asphalt, as if tidying up the school scum for an appointment with the principal.

"You're developing a gift for timing that rivals that of our Miss Barr." Molina's deadbeat voice hummed over the line at its most sardonic, but a glimmer of genuine curiosity leaked through. "So you got him. The real live Cliff Effinger. Why the heck during Christmas week? I'm supposed to be making illuminaria tonight out of lunch bags, not doing paperwork on a guy everybody'd rather see dead. He still in one piece?"

"And talkative too."

"Damn. Okay. I'll have to stop by the office first. Might be half an hour. You can baby-sit him until then without committing a misdemeanor or a felony, right, kemosabe?"

"Yes Ma'am," Matt said, adding the name of the motel and the room number.

"Not your kind of people there, padre. Watch them, if not Effinger. I'll be as fast as I can be."

He marched Effinger, like a truant kid, down the line of battered doors to Door Number Three, feeling the unexpected bliss of total control. For all his spit and bluster, Effinger had been no physical threat since Matt had fought back and knocked him to the floor in Chicago. Too bad it had taken Matt a wrong vocational turn and sixteen-some years to see that.

"She coming too?" Effinger asked nervously.

"In a while. Meantime, you and I can reminisce in your room."

"What kind of room you ever had?" Effinger asked when they returned to his ugly little unit. "You priests like to put on a show that you're holier than us, with your second-hand cars and your first hands on the altar boys and girls."

"You know, Cliff, first you say priests are sissies, then you say they're satyrs. Which is it going to be?"

"Satires? Yeah, they're a joke, except it ain't funny. They're everything bad, and the old women listen to them like crazy, the mothers and the grandmothers, and the young babes with their knees Super glued together. I bet you didn't see a lot of that. A guy with your looks. You grew up real pretty, I'll give you that. I shoulda fixed that better."

Matt laughed, surprising himself as much as Effinger. "I bet you're really dying to know. I should realize by now that meanness always comes from envy. You really are a sorry excuse for a human being. I bet whoever's using you to cover up what's going on wished that could have been you hitting the craps table at the Crystal Phoenix. Don't worry; you'll get your turn in the spotlight. I'm sure of it."

"I wanta watch TV." Effinger stared straight ahead at the now-dark, dusty rectangle.

"Sure. Whatever station you want, Cliffie."

A sly smile crossed the wizened face. "Channel forty-eight."

Matt went to the TV to tune out the interference. A blizzard of snow whitened the screen and its electrical howl muffled dialogue.

"I could use a drink too. It's in the bottom bureau drawer."

Calling the busted piece of furniture a "bureau" was a gentility Matt couldn't endorse. A bottle half full of smoked amber liquid rolled over like a corpse when Matt jerked open the stiff drawer.

Effinger slumped on the rumpled bedspread, gazing slack-mouthed at the sleazy snow. Not about to run. Then Matt tuned in on what the television was trying to show them. Porn movies. A woman with grotesquely large breasts blurred in and out of view, and a man was pleading and promising . . .

Matt lifted the bottle from the drawer. He'd never seen a pornographic movie. Maybe it was about time, and besides, the reception was virtually a shield against sin. And the Blue Lady guarded above.

Keeping an eye on Effinger, he went to the bathroom, where the showerhead still dripped mournfully. A glass white with a wake of toothpaste sat on the old-fashioned pedestal sink. Matt ran the left faucet until hot water came. Then he washed the glass with his fingers in the boiling water, until it was clean and clear again.

He poured three fingers into it and joined the rapt Effinger in the other room.

The on-screen lovers were grunting now, like pigs in pig heaven, if that happened to be a blizzard. Matt leaned against one wall, between Effinger and the door, and watched the interference perform its acrobatics to what sounded like the "Anvil Chorus."

Effinger glanced at him resentfully. "That's my booze."

"Thank you." Matt toasted with the glass and drank. Rotgut was rotgut; he was beginning to appreciate the wonders of brand-name liquor. Still, this was a celebration. He was free, finally free. He didn't even care if Molina could hold Effinger on any charge. It was enough to know he finally had to answer to something. The past was just the past, and needed to be settled somewhere other than here, at some future date. Future. Matt had a future.

Matt's thoughts unrolled, drowning out the television sound effects. He glimpsed bodies in conjunction now and then, but he felt no sense of sin, only of liberation. The Halloween monster had taken off his mask, and he was just Jack Nicholson. The joker. The joke.

Matt drank again, feeling the fire chase down to his stomach and hang there like an internal vigil light. What had Effinger said? About Matt being a bastard? Matt had never thought of him, the other father, the real father, the faceless sire who had paled after the arrival of his substitute. Temple had implied once that the identity of that man was the true corrosive secret in Matt's personal non-history.

Temple. Wait until she heard--!

The knock at the door was so discreet that Matt feared one of Effinger's friends, or at least an associate, had arrived.

Effinger grasped at that wild hope too, sitting up and tearing his eyes from the dubious on-screen action.

"Huh-huh-huh," someone grunted in muzzy living sound.

Matt went to the door. No peephole, like in respectable motels, and little light outside to see anyone by in any case. At the Blue Mermaid, you took your chances.

He took his for the last time that night and cracked the door.

"Police," came Molina's jaded contralto.

He opened the door wide, noticing her hand came away from beneath her open jacket. At the Blue Mermaid, Lieutenant C. R. Molina took no chances.

Effinger tensed on the bed, then sagged again as he took in Molina. He looked back at the TV.

Molina approached him. She looked to Matt like she always did, a blank slate in a tailored pantsuit. A competent career woman who carried no briefcase, and no purse. Who wore no shoes worth noticing. And a gun even more low-profile. She stood between Effinger and the TV screen and looked him over.

"Yup, this is the guy. I guess congratulations are in order. You'll have to tell me how you did it sometime." Not tonight. "You check his ID?"

"Uh, no. I mean, I knew who he was."

"But who does he say he is now?" Molina pulled Effinger upright. She was a physically impressive woman, almost six feet tall in low heels, but Effinger didn't look that small in contrast. Matt frowned. Was the smallness he sensed in the man purely spiritual? He had felt like Goliath hauling around an unworthy David all night. But Effinger was his size really. Why had Matt felt so confident? Why had Effinger caved so easily, besides the fact that all bullies are cowards?

Molina glanced at the liquor glass. "Better put that on the bedside table, if you can call it that. Don't want our John Citizen to look like a lush."

He obeyed as Molina went to the ajar door and called someone outside. "This is the right guy. Come on in and play patty-cake. I don't want to get lice under my manicure."

Matt glanced at her fingertips, startled. The same short, unpolished blunt fingernails as always.

"Professional joke," Molina said, quick to catch his glance. "Lieutenants don't have to don latex except at crime scenes."

The plainclothes detective came in, hands ghostly in surgical gloves.

Matt still wasn't used to masked and gloved dentists. He'd never thought about the police having to dress more formally for the job in this age of AIDS.

The detective had Effinger lean his hands against the wall, and soon was tossing a few belongings on the bedspread.

Molina picked through them with a ballpoint pen from her coat pocket. "Look at this AARP card. Harvey Kittelman. Poor old Harvey's probably missing a lot more too. Las Vegas is a candy store to you guys, isn't it, Effinger?"

"I'm not answering to that name. I'm not answering anything."

"Why not? Didn't I hear him volunteering to come in for a polite police interrogation?" Molina asked her partner.

"Absolutely."

Matt watched, a fascinated observer of a television cop-show scene. Effinger performed like a trained seal who knew the routine by heart.

"Mind if we cut off your reception?" Molina asked ironically.

Matt didn't realize she was talking to him until the silence grew awkward.

"Huh?" He glanced at the television set, which had responded to fresh body heat in the room by resolving into perfect focus. He saw . . . knees, elbows, buttocks, breasts in impossible juxtaposition, threes and sixes of everything ... no wonder-- "No. I mean, yes. Please."

Molina's tall form already blocked the screen. The sound died abruptly.

"It wasn't tuned in and I wasn't watching," Matt added lamely in the sudden silence.

"This motel is mainly a passion pit these days," she said with academic dispassion. "Perfect hideout for Mr. Effinger."

"You have nothing on me." The guy was still truculent.

"Probable cause for a lot of things," she answered, taking a slow turn through the room. "Starting with a citizen's arrest."

For a confusing moment, Carmen Molina reminded Matt of Kitty O'Connor. Or maybe the actress on the TV had, the brunette on the bottom with--

"You can go now." Molina was peering into the bathroom. "Kinda messy in here." She stopped by Matt as her partner hustled Effinger outside. "Looks like he'll have a bruise or contusion or two. Nothing serious, or actionable. How are you doing?"

"Fine." Matt started for the door. His joints resisted movement. Maybe his struggle with Effinger had been more strenuous than he felt at the time.

"I'll call later with any news," Molina added, "but don't cancel Christmas on my account. By the way, where's your cohort?"

Matt turned, a question on his face.

"Las Vegas's Nancy Drew. I was sure she'd be in on this."

"Temple's out of town for the holidays, until New Year's."

Molina nodded. "Out-of-state relatives. I'm surprised she'd leave you languishing over the holidays. And look what you got yourself as a present!"

"She's visiting a relative," Matt corrected. He resented Molina's put-downs of Temple. "I think you met her aunt, Kit Carlson, during the romance-convention fracas."

"New York? She's visiting her aunt in New York? Just for fun?"

"Some people do have that, Lieutenant."

Her cobalt eyes, definitely too dark for Virgin Mary Blue, glimmered with unsaid response to his gentle gibe.

"And," Matt added, rubbing salt into the wound for the absent Temple, "it isn't just a family visit. Temple is meeting with a Madison Avenue advertising agency. She and Midnight Louie are under consideration for an assignment as spokes...people, I guess, for a major pet products company.

"You mean I might be able to turn on my TV and get the dynamic duo live and in color in my off hours too? I'd rather watch bowling."

"If this came through, I imagine Temple--and Louie, of course-- would be doing a lot more traveling."

"Thank God for small favors." Molina came abreast of Matt at the door. "Speaking of which, thanks for the collar. You did a good job finding Effinger. Did you enjoy it?"

"Not as much as I thought I would."

Molina nodded. "That's good. Because you don't ever want to try a vigilante act like that in this town again."

"Unless I happen to run into Max Kinsella."

"That would be worth seeing; you making a citizen's arrest on Kinsella. Better keep your hands off him; I want that collar. As for Effinger's arrest, remember: just one to a customer, and only because you're such good friends with Miss Temple Barr."

Molina grinned and left, leaving Matt to close down the motel room. He did it slowly, methodically, searching the tiny square closet with a few crinkled garments slumping on wire hangers, checking under the bed and finding only dust, food stamps and parking chits, and a business card for a private-dancer service.

Matt dusted off his hands when he was done, and killed the buzzing light in the bathroom. He shut off the table lamp just before pulling the door closed.

Sighing, he pushed his hands into his pockets again. So long to get here, so little to show for it, not even the indulgence of a fit of anger. He couldn't believe he hadn't made mincemeat out of Effinger.

He had a long walk back to the Showboat parking lot for the Hesketh Vampire. Like reputedly real vampires, revenge was turning out to be mostly a pain in the neck.

Chapter 20

The Ghost of Xmas Past

First came the Seventeenth Precinct squad, two uniformed police officers who saw immediately the unfortunate facts: this was a complicated death scene at a high-profile location with a nobody-victim. Before they began interviewing the sixty-some witnesses, they called for reinforcements.

She arrived in ten minutes, with a male detective in tow. It seemed the lead cop on the Santa Claus case would be a female detective -lieutenant who had done weekend duty as all good workaholic up-and-coming women should. Her last name was Hansen.

Lieutenant Hansen stood about five feet one, was as blond as Scandinavian furniture, had delft-blue eyes, a winter-red nose like Rudolph and spoke with a LaVerne and Shoirley accent. You know, New Joisey.

She also kept looking at Temple, because Temple kept looking at her.

As soon as Lieutenant Hansen had sized up the situation and the population in both conference rooms--she had called for reinforcements.

She tossed her long black wool coat on a chair back, along with the yellow angora muffler, beret and matching gloves, then strode to the front of the room on her low-heeled red boots that exactly matched her nose.

Were it not for the nose, which she was blowing into a wad of tissue at the moment, she would have been pretty. Her black suit was indeterminate beyond that.

"Is there any place else that could hold this many people besides the other conference room?"

"My office?" Brent Colby offered the suggestion from where he sat, beside his relieved but emotionally burned-out daughter.

"And you are--?" She eyed the Santa suit with disbelief.

"Brent Colby, Junior. The Colby in the partnership Colby, Janos and Renaldi."

"And the erroneously supposed victim?"

He nodded gruffly.

"Where did you wait out this second Santa-appearance thing?"

"My office."

Her flaxen head shook its disapproval. "Nope. We'll want to inspect that scene too."

"My office is a 'scene'?"

"Anyplace is that a major player was, or was supposed to be, at the time of the death. Other suggestions for relocation?"

"My office," Tony Renaldi said quietly. "It's almost as big as his. I'm Tony, the Renaldi of Colby, Janos and Renaldi."

"Is Mister Janos here too?"

Victor Janos held up a hand.

"Good. Let's go."

Everyone in the room rose, then paused like third-graders in search of a class leader. Colby, Janos and Renaldi headed for the door, Colby sweeping his daughter along as if she were in their protective custody.

As they filed out, Temple made sure she was last by fussing with Louie and his carrier. Lieutenant Hansen was marshaling her forces at the door, a trio of intent men, two in uniform. She pointed to the Christmas scene and its sad centerpiece, dead Santa Claus.

"If we don't want to be here all night, we'll have to separate the sheep from the goats fast. I'll take the nearest and dearest. You handle the extras and see if you can get any leads on who really died here. Unless he arrived in the red long Johns, the victim's gotta have street clothes somewhere. You lose something, miss?"

Her tone was unchanged as she whirled on Temple, well aware of her eavesdropping. This one-woman computer of crime's outer casing was 180-degrees different in style, but the operating system was SGM--Solid Gold Molina.

"Just getting the cat back into the bag," Temple said. "He's the one who discovered that something was wrong, you know."

"No!" Hansen didn't even look at Louie, or heed Temple's words. "Quite a Christmas tale. You know where Mr. Renaldi's office is?"

"No."

"Follow the yellow brick road." She pointed to the hall, and Temple hastened to duck out the door.

Behind her the lieutenant's ratchet-rough voice resumed, outlining and assigning procedures. "How many kids? First, we have to get the youngest ones off-scene. I'm afraid our on-call clown has other holiday engagements. Any other ideas?"

Temple found the right office by following the low thrum of speculation that emanated from it like the drone of bees from a hive. Now that their leader was not the victim, the employees and associates of Colby, Janos and Renaldi busily buzzed with speculation about the possible murder--and possible murderer--in their midst.

As Temple entered the standing-room-only event, Colby was attempting to calm them down, his well-manicured hands sketching a conductor's grave gestures on the smoky air.

"I know this has been an emotionally trying night," he was saying, soothing. "I'm pretty bowled over myself. I'm sorry if I misled you. But, look; I'd finally listened to my daughter, and others, and decided to forgo scaling a cramped chimney this year. So I hired a pro. How he happened to get himself killed, I don't know. One thing I do know: I was never in that chimney, or going to be in that chimney, so I was never in any danger."

"But no one knew you weren't going to be there, Brent," Janos's dark baritone put in. "You miss the point." A small chrome implement Janos was using to groom under his fingernails slipped. He cursed silently and shook his hand.

"The point is," Colby explained with paternal patience, addressing everyone in the crowded office, "that because it happened here, everyone assumes I was the intended victim. It's far more likely the Santa substitute was. I mean, we know nothing about him."

"You must," Temple noted as she took a vacant spot along the wall. "You hired him."

"I interviewed him, briefly. Not a very substantial-looking man. A bit rough-edged, frankly. But he'd done this Santa gig often before, even at Macy's, and insisted he could handle the chimney-climbing bit."

"Where'd you find him?" Janos asked sullenly, still digging at the invisible dirt under his nails.

"One of the employment agencies, where else? But, ah ... I hired him on the side."

"Why?" Renaldi sipped a demitasse of coffee from his office espresso machine. The fine china cup was as translucent as the half-moon on one of his perfect fingernails.

Colby shifted in Renaldi's white leather executive chair. Renaldi and Janos sat in the comfy visitor's chairs. The others crowded on the couch or held up the walls.

"Why hire someone under the table?" Colby asked back. He loosened the thick black belt holding his stuffing in place. "I finally bought the arguments that I was too old for the stunt, but I didn't want to make the fact public. The ersatz Santa was supposed to disappear as I always did, come and tell me the act was up, leave, and then I'd appear in my regular Santa suit to accept the usual congratulations for my feat."

"Where did he change?" This question came from the Little Dutch Girl look-alike in the office door, in brisk tones.

"Executive washroom." Colby glanced quickly at his partners. "I couldn't have him seen in the men's room, now could I?"

"We need the key." The lieutenant held out a small, pale palm.

All three partners dug uneasily through their pockets. Only one produced a key. Renaldi.

"I gave him my spare," Colby said, "to keep the switch secret."

Lieutenant Hansen walked over for the key. "He hung out in the executive washroom for how long?"

"He arrived at seven p.m. as agreed. I got him set up."

"He bring his own costume?"

"As I said, he'd done this before. That was the deal. A ready-to-go Santa."

Silence filled the room as the ironic implications of "ready-to-go" reverberated among this word-conscious advertising crowd.

"And he appeared in the chimney at--?"

"Eight," Kendall said. "I was always anxious about Daddy doing this, so I was very time conscious."

Lieutenant Hansen nodded. A bun of blond braid big enough to choke a Central Park horse coiled at the back of her head. Her fine, embroidery-thread-satin hair, Temple thought, must be long enough to reach her fingertips. Not exactly Molina's style. Fascinating.

"He wasn't always in the bathroom," Temple put in.

All eyes switched from Kendall to her.

Lieutenant Hansen swaggered Temple's way. "You saw him someplace else?"

"Lurking in the media conference room. Hey, he did lurk. The room was dark and I was passing when Louie ran in, so I had to go in and retrieve him."

"Louie?"

Temple patted the black cat head protruding from the carrier hitched to her torso. "Midnight Louie."

This time Hansen took in the entire setup. "What's a cat doing on the premises?"

"He's auditioning for a cat-food commercial contract."

"I see." Lieutenant Hansen clearly did not see, but she wasn't going to admit it. "So you saw a Santa Claus in the conference room. When was this?"

"I was the last one to enter the party room, so I'd say about seven forty-five."

"What was he doing there?"

"Not much. Never said a word. Just put a finger to his lips like a jolly old elf. I see in retrospect that he was hiding out until it was time to make his entrance."

"And how did he do that?" Hansen turned back to Colby.

"A small kitchen adjoins the conference-room wall where the Santa chimney is installed. There's a heating vent we modified to lead into the 'chimney' years ago, when this tradition began."

"How many years ago?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant. It's something I've done so long I've forgotten when it began."

"When I was six," Kendall piped up with an odd, childish eagerness.

Colby nodded. "She's twenty-six now. So it was twenty years ago."

"All right." The lieutenant eyed the crowd scene until she spotted Victor Janos. "You have an office? Where?"

"Next door."

"Fine. We'll interview you there, separately, starting with those least related to the incident."

The process took two hours, occurring simultaneously in the big conference room down the hall and in Tony Renaldi's office. The Client was the first group to be dismissed, en masse, as befitted their unified front. Wives and children, except for Kendall, left next. Employees trickled out one by one.

By the end of an hour, Temple's turn came.

Victor Janos's office was a model of masculine simplicity: brown, leather-accoutered and uncluttered.

Lieutenant Hansen, seated behind the massive mahogany desk, gestured Temple to a chair, but Temple declined.

"With the cat attached, standing is easier."

"It must be rather like being pregnant," Hansen agreed, already jotting disconcerting notes in her book.

First came the deadly predictable routine questions. Temple recited name, address, phone number both in Las Vegas and here in New York City, when she had arrived for the party, where she was between then and the Santa Claus appearance. She also explained her relationship to the partners of the firm.

Then Hansen got down to the nitty-gritty.

"Apparently you're the one who split the onlookers into the group sent to Renaldi's office and the crowd kept on the crime scene. Why?"

"To get the children out, number one, before Santa's death traumatized them, or before they milled around enough to mess up the death scene."

"Good thinking." The New York lieutenant said it the way Molina would, as if she meant the exact opposite. "Nothing like saving the police time and trouble on a major crime scene. Why were you playing traffic cop?"

"I have . . . experience."

"As a school crossing guard, or what?"

"I've been present at other crime scenes," Temple said. "By accident."

"Most people present at crime scenes are usually there by accident. Unless they're accessories to the murder. Are you?"

"No. I'm just an experienced witness. You can ask the Las Vegas police."

"We will. Who?" Pen was poised.

"Lieutenant C. R. Molina, crimes against persons unit."

"Molina. One l, one n?"

"And one o, one i, one a."

Hansen glowered up at her. Up at her. Yes! And Temple bowed over by a twenty-pound cat.

"I should get the cat's name, I suppose."

"Midnight Louie. That's 'midnight' with a capital m, and Louie--"

"As in'Louie, Louie'?"

Temple nodded, and then she was free to go. For now, Hansen added with a dire flourish.

Temple paused at the office door to read an elegant blue-enameled clock on the bookshelf: 11 p.m. Only 7 P.M. in Las Vegas. Lieutenant Hansen might actually reach Molina if she called soon. That would be a conversation worth eavesdropping on.

Temple wondered if she should call Molina to warn her. No. The minute she hit Aunt Kit's, she was going to be in a warm bath and Louie would be whisker-deep in a big dish of milk with a little shot of creme de cocoa.

Gosh . . . Kit! She had expected Temple home at least an hour earlier. Was a cab catchable at this late hour? Probably, but maybe she should train Louie to run them down like mice, to leap on their hoods and hang on. That would get their attention, even if she couldn't.

Temple collected her clothes in Kendall's empty office, dumped them in the tote bag and trudged to the hall elevators in her high heels, too weary to change.

Going down the hall, Temple remembered the sinister, cadaverous figure she and Louie had followed only yesterday morning, on their first visit to Colby, Janos and Renaldi. He had vanished down the hall like the ghost of Jersey Joe Jackson at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel in Las Vegas. Maybe he had been an omen of bad things to come. Truly the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Watching the elevator floor-indicator inch toward her position, Temple yawned and shivered at the same time. The head he-Client had hinted that she and Louie had his vote for the job, if the three clones didn't vote otherwise, she assumed. Maybe that was good news, but now it seemed trivial compared to what had happened.

Even Old Saint Nick wasn't safe when Temple, the bad-luck bearer, was on the scene. Wait until Kit heard that Santa Claus had been the death of the party!

Chapter 21

Thanks for the Memories

Matt had barely got home to the Circle Ritz when Molina called.

"Something happen?" Matt knew he sounded anxious.

"Not yet. But I'm inviting you to the interrogation, after all, as an unseen observer. From what little conversation we've had with Mr. Effinger so far, he's got a whole smorgasbord of answers I thought you might be able to detect some of the smoked sham-on-rye he's handing out."

"I'm . . . honored."

"Don't be. It's my way of saying thanks for keeping me on overtime during my kid's Christmas break. Seriously, this is my one free crack at him--yours, too, unless you want to push a deep personal interest over the legal line into Stalking, and I don't think you do. I want this round to count."

"Ditto."

"Get here as fast as Max Kinsella's motorcycle will take you. Don't speed, though, not noticeably, and don't expect too much."

Matt hung up, understanding that one low-level interrogation was small stuff. Still, he and Molina had a big stake in what Effinger would say, would give away. What was Effinger to her, and she to Effinger, that it mattered so much? Maybe a promotion. Maybe a bigger crime to be uncovered. Maybe Max Kinsella to hound and hunt down for something concrete, instead of just nagging suspicions.

Help Molina, help himself and help Max Kinsella right out of Temple's life. Molina would tell him that was in Temple's best interests, but Matt had always found doing things for people's own good a form of dictatorship. He could only think of Temple's searing disappointment if Max proved to be criminally involved.

Effinger.

Trapped. In a room. With Matt behind a one-way mirror, watching him for lies. Justice? Or for just another foolish attempt at erasing a painful past with a vengeful present?

Matt checked his watch. Not even 8 p.m. Lucky he had the night off.

At 8:30 a uniformed officer escorted Matt by elevator to the proper floor. The young, stoic guy gave no indication of what he thought of Matt's presence or mission. Probably nothing.

Molina met him in her long, narrow office, as cramped and dysfunctionally functional as usual, and led him to a string of small, nondescript empty rooms.

"We're interviewing him in there. We gave him a coffee break." She led Matt through a different door to another room as antiseptically devoid of decoration as the one indicated. "You'll look and listen from here. I'll leave the interrogation room if I want to confirm what he says with you. Just sit down and get comfortable."

Matt eyed the oak armchair that belonged in a courthouse anteroom. It was no red suede sofa. He couldn't help smiling.

"Coffee?" Molina's tone was as warm as the Stewardess from Hell's.

"Yeah. I brought a notepad and pen."

"Aren't you the Boy Scout, always prepared?"

She shut the door, giving him an instant tinge of claustrophobia, which was ridiculous in the face of the huge picture window framing the adjoining room. She returned soon, butting the ajar door open to enter carrying two plastic cup holders and their filled cups.

Matt accepted one and sat down, watching the blank window. Imagine, viewing Cliff Effinger like a specimen bug in a plastic box. If only he had glimpsed this day years ago.

Matt felt like someone watching an ill-produced early TV show.

The Spartan setting--a wooden table and metal folding chairs-- was as stark as The Honeymooners' apartment in the Jackie Gleason classic skits, and remained empty.

Could people live with so little as the Kramdens had in New York City of the fifties? Matt had wondered that the first time he'd viewed retrospectives of the early TV show. Now he wondered, could the police do much with so little? A bare room and a few questions, with a peephole -turned-picture -window that everyone recognized for what it was.

Finally the door with the chicken-wire-sandwiched window glass opened into the next room. A mustached man in a beige shirt and pants showed in Effinger. Molina came last, coffee cup in hand. Every click and rustle and scrape of their motions transmitted to the room Matt occupied.

Molina spoke. It was her show. "You know your rights," she told Effinger and the tape recorder. "You've waived the presence of your attorney."

"What's to wave at?" Effinger's upper lip writhed in an Elvis-curl. He waved at the window, and Matt flinched. "I don't have an attorney and I'm not going to answer much."

With his hat off, he looked worn and seedy, but his age-seamed face still had the mean under bite of a junkyard dog.

"Just wanted to know your whereabouts on September twenty-ninth of last year."

"Like I keep a Day Runner."

"Think."

"I wasn't even in Las Vegas around then."

"Where do you go?"

"Places. L.A. Chicago."

Molina nodded. "Any witnesses see you there?"

"No! I visit places, not people."

"In LA.?"

"The track."

"In Chicago?"

"The dogs."

"Always gambling. Why travel for it when it's all here?"

"Variety."

"What do you know about this man?"

From his observation post, Matt could see a black and white photo of the corpse that fell from the Crystal Phoenix ceiling last fall, the corpse that had carried Cliff Effinger's ID, but not his finger-prints. What had anyone hoped to gain from that?

"What do I know about this guy? He's dead?" Effinger offered with a shrug.

"Why did he have your ID on him?"

"Was it my ID? Probably he stole it."

"What about the ID you're carrying now?"

"What about it?"

"It's not yours."

"Prove it."

Molina got up, walked to Matt's window, folded her arms and kept her back to Effinger. "We don't have to prove it. We can get your fingerprints. The inkpad tells all."

"Not all. People can have their fingerprints altered."

"To match yours! Why on earth would anyone want to be taken for a petty crook like you?"

Effinger shrugged.

Molina turned back to the table and skated two more photos from the folder toward him. "Know these guys?"

Effinger's glance was cursory, but Matt saw something tighten in that indifferent face. He'd always done that when he was preparing to lash out, or to lie to someone's face.

"Nope. Never saw them."

Molina eyed the photos with certain ruefulness. "Well, that doesn't surprise me, Cliff. Seems no one's seen these two Vegas eyesores for a few months. My guess is that someone quietly took them out."

Effinger grew even stiller.

"You have any idea who might want to do that, hmm? They're ugly customers, as they used to say, but small fry, really. What do you think? Did someone run or buy them out of town, or just drive them out on the desert?"

"Like you said, Lieutenant. They're not worth the cash or the gas. I say they took off for greener pastures."

"Like L.A.? Or Chicago?"

Effinger shrugged.

Molina packed her folder and picked up her empty coffee cup.

"Coffee anyone?" she inquired in a tone that didn't encourage a yes, not even from her so-far-silent interrogation partner.

She left the room and Matt braced himself.

A moment later his door opened.

She slapped the folder down on the table, then leaned on the table edge.

"We'll get zilch from him. At least directly. What did you notice?"