Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Mum

Matt speed-dialed Temple on his cell phone before his Crossfire had left Molina’s curb.

She answered after five rings. Sounds of frantic activity buzzed behind her cheerful hello.

“I need to see Max as soon as possible.”

“Matt? Hello to you too. He’s not very accessible these days.”

“Just get to him and tell him to get to me, fast.”

“What’s this about?”

“Him and me talking.”

“About what?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can’t say? Now you’re sounding like Max.”

“Maybe. Just get me through to him somehow.”

“And you won’t say why?”

“I can’t say why.”

“It’s a secret?”

“Not mine.”

“Max’s?”

“Maybe.”

“Who else’s then?”

“I can’t say.”

After a silence, she said “Oh, that secrecy of the confessional thing?”

“Call it that. Call it ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I really, really need to see Max, Temple. You’ve trusted him through a whole heaping helping of thick and thin. I’m asking you to trust me just this once.”

“You know I’ll die of curiosity.”

“That might be better than the consequences if I don’t speak to Max, fast.”

More silence.

Then, “I’ll call him. Leave a message and your phone numbers. Your local answering service signing off.” The natural bounce had left her voice, and she hadn’t said good-bye.

Matt’s hold on the cell phone turned homicidal, then he realized he’d better not disable one of two thin threads of communication that linked him and Max Kinsella.

He hoped Temple would stress how important this was, how fast the contact needed to be made, before Molina got her “evidence” back, before Temple heard about this from the police. Before Max would be a seriously wanted man.

But the afternoon dragged on as he clung to his apartment at the Circle Ritz. The shadow of the lone palm tree in the parking lot elongated like a dark tightrope strung across the asphalt.

And nothing. Neither phone rang.

He heard the throaty little engine of Temple’s Miata over the air-conditioning. Rushing to the spare bedroom window that overlooked the lot, he was just in time to spy a woman with strawberry-blond hair running out on high heels to get in the passenger side. The Miata spurted out of the lot, off for the evening, Matt sensed. Girls’ night out. He grabbed his cell phone to call Temple, but . . . Max might call. He might miss it.

Matt tried to watch the TV news, some silly network programming. More news. The phone never rang.

The Miata wasn’t back by eleven thirty P.M. when he had to leave for WCOO. Listen, he told himself. One more day won’t make that much of a difference.

It was just the secret burning a hole in his pocket. He wanted to warn Max so Temple wouldn’t be hurt. He wanted to confront Max, so he could find out if the man had done something to hurt Temple, something beyond forgiving, that would make her forever give up on him.

His noble and ignoble motives rubbed together like two worn coins in his pocket. Sometimes he felt one under his fingertips, sometimes the other.

For Temple’s sake, he hoped Max had an answer, an alibi. For his own, and maybe Temple’s in the long run, he half hoped Max didn’t have an answer, an excuse. For once.

“Ooh, Mr. Moody Blue,” his boss and sister DJ Ambrosia crooned when he walked into the broadcast booth. “You look just like Leo or Brad or Jude getting a pout on when you don’t walk in smilin’.”

The commercial breaks between her show of schmaltzy oldies and his “Midnight Hour” of schmaltzy talk radio were running. He seldom cut his arrival that close. But he had thought Max might call.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m expecting an urgent call. You want to stick around and answer my cell phone off mike?”

Ambrosia’s brown velvet face managed an expression that was both surprised and agreeable.

“I do love to hear you work that mike magic on those call-ins. Sure, I’ll hang with you, bro.”

Matt sighed relief. “Sorry I was almost late. Thanks, Leticia.”

That was her real name, not her radio handle. Ambrosia was the scatwoman of the spoken word, soothing the airwaves with her voice and her songs for every emotion. Now she leaned into the foam-fat microphone to play one last number, her voice a low mesmerizing purr.

“I’m gonna leave you all to one last request, for a special colleague of mine. Don’t let it put you to sleep, babies, ‘cuz Mr. Midnight himself is right here, blinking his baby browns and getting ready to take over the seat I’ve kept warm for him all this time.

“Here it comes, ‘Sentimental Journey.’ Let me tell you, you will never go wrong taking a sentimental journey with Mr. Midnight.”

She slid out of the upholstered rolling chair that her three-hundred pounds of leopard-spot caftan had literally made into a hot seat and patted the fabric with a coquettish look.

Matt couldn’t help laughing.

“What do I do if your cell phone rings and a man answers?” she asked.

“Keep him on the line until the next break. I have to talk to him as soon as possible.”

She cradled his cell phone against her Mother Earth bosom. “Trust me,” she whispered before leaving the booth. “This will not be ‘The Man That Got Away.’ ”

Matt sat on the prewarmed chair, rolled it closer to the table, donned the headset, wiped his wet palms on his khaki-clad thighs.

He had to let his anxiety go. It would show in his voice, the tightness in his throat, and he was here to ease anxiety, not spread it. Mr. Midnight, the radio persona, settled on him like a gossamer cloak. His body slipped into a posture both relaxed and alert. He kept a notepad and pen at his right to jot down the callers’ names, issues, key words. That cool fat pen barrel between his fingers felt like an alabaster cigar. He doodled some loops. Temple’s first name. That was the usual. He kept and destroyed the sheets each night. If they married and she took his last name, she’d sound like a place of worship. Temple Devine. That didn’t strike him as out of place.

If they married . . . if Max had waltzed himself totally out of the picture with this last escapade—who was he kidding? Himself, of course. He wanted to talk to Max so badly because he needed to find out the man had done Temple wrong. Temple Kinsella just did not have the same ring as Temple Devine. Not that she’d take anybody’s name but her own. Still. He wrote the new combo. He was literally loopy over her, had been for months, but hadn’t felt free to feel it.

And so Matt did what he did with the disembodied voices who called five nights a week to ask him for instant on-air advice and comfort. He imagined how sad Temple would feel if she thought every loyal bone in her body had been devoted for two years to a creepy secret stalker.

And, loopy or not, Matt did not, deep in his way-too-honest soul, want Max Kinsella to be a guilty man.