Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 28

Close Shave and a Haircut

"You're sure it was a bullet and not a razor?"

"Hurled razors. An innovative idea. Let you be the audience stooge in one magic show and you want to innovate the act. Ouch!"

"Alcohol stings." Nurse Temple winced in sympathy. "This could start a new punk hair style: a horizontal part from ear to ear. It's not bleeding much."

"Then I'm incredibly lucky. Scalp wounds are notorious bleeders. The white leather seats on the Trans Am are safe."

"You're incredibly lucky that your leather wasn't ruined for good. Where is Moby Dick, anyway?"

"I left it in the Caesars parking lot. It's history."

"You're not going to collect it later?"

Max shook his head, inadvertently scouring his wound on the cotton ball Temple held against it.

"Ouch, again! It's been identified. I'll notify the proper parties, who'll pick it up and drive it out-of-state. They'll leave something else for me."

"Darn! I never got a chance to drive it, either, especially with the top down."

"No more convertibles for me until we can prove my head is no longer a target for somebody."

"Somebody. That's a long list, I bet."

Temple, her ministrations done, tossed the rusty cotton balls in the wastebasket and turned to screw the cap back on the bottle of rubbing alcohol.

Suddenly Nurse Barr of the coolly competent quip under pressure was gone. The cap wouldn't turn on the neck's grooves and the opaque plastic bottle wouldn't fit into the curve of her hand.

It tilted, tipped, slipped. She grabbed for it, but it was Max who caught it.

"What--?" Temple hated being clumsy.

Max set the bottle down and took her hands. It was only in contrast to their steadiness that she realized hers were trembling.

"This is ridiculous!" Temple regarded her shaking hands as if they were alien appendages.

"You were the one who was shot at."

"Passengers nerves," he diagnosed with a smile. "The person who's driving when the car narrowly misses a collision at least can take action, has a sense of control. The hapless passenger just along for the ride feels totally helpless."

"We're not talking a fender-bender here."

"No. We're talking a near-miss with a lethal weapon. I could quote some cliches: a miss is as good as a mile, for one. But I'm not sure that I was meant to be hit; this could have been a warning shot that came a little too close as easily as a murder attempt that missed."

"How can you discuss it so calmly?"

"Your own peril is always easier to take than someone else's, because there you're really helpless. Call it a noble human trait."

"There's nothing noble in a coffin. Temple conceded the fact that her knees were wobbly and leaned against the counter.

The Welles/Randolph/Kinsella house had a truly palatial master bathroom, vast and dark and elegant as an Egyptian tomb.

Tomb. She didn't want to picture herself picking out a casket for Max.

"Hey," he said. "I'm all right, but you're a mess." He pulled her into an embrace that felt good but smelled too strongly of rubbing alcohol to ease her anxiety.

"Maybe if I'd been along, I'd have been better off."

"I told you. I have to do this on my own. It's confidential."

"It's hard to be left out of the loop."

"I really can't tell you the specifics, except that it's not a big deal."

"So what you were doing in L.A. bad nothing to do with the shot in L.V.?"

"Probably not."

"At least you're being honest."

"I've always been honest with you, Temple. I've just not always been thoroughly frank."

"Hair-splitter," she accused, then realized the reference was grotesquely apt.

"That's better," he said as she laughed in his arms. "I'd tell you if I could, but this one is really sensitive. I can tell you what I think about the shooter, though."

"Oh, great. I always want to know about shooters."

"The Synth."

"The Synth? That weirdo magician's group? Max, get real. Magicians play with scarves and doves and little white bunny rabbits

onstage. They don't shoot people."

"Anybody can shoot people. And don't forget the messages on the computer. They've been coming to this house longer than I've been back. Did you watch those Fox specials about how magic tricks are done?"

"No. Oh, I saw them in the TV listings, but I hate those instant specials: watch animals eat animals; watch people behaving badly; watch accidents happen. Inquiring people want to descend to the lowest common denominator."

"You're an admirable bastion of taste and integrity, Temple, but you are not the average TV-Watcher. Droves watched those shows."

"You mean those hokey tell-alls with the masked magician spilling the beans? Please!"

"Those shows resulted in death threats."

"Get real!"

"I can't get any more real than that. Listen." Max lifted her atop the black marble counter top, which iced her backside. But his eyes were so intense she forgot to complain. "Magicians have always patented certain tricks, certain devices that permit those tricks to be performed.

They can spend decades perfecting the perfect illusion. When they die, they will them to chosen successors. And they never tell how. If a magician becomes a tattle-tale, he threatens the brotherhood's very survival. It's serious business. Gandolph's zeal to expose false mediums came close to giving away trade secrets. My resolve to finish Gandolph's work threatens that magical secrecy. Houdini himself felt that push-pull: He hated cheats using our ancient and secret methods of entertaining to hill: trusting souls. But by exposing them he admitted that we all have trade secrets. Our very reason for being diminishes if everyone knows how it's done.

They can know it's a trick; they just can't know how we do it."

Temple leaned her forehead on his shoulder. "International terrorism. Magic. You're telling me that one is as much a matter of life and death as the other. That's . . . ludicrous. Even if you had never become involved in antiterrorism, you're telling me that finishing that poor old man's book could be as lethal as turning in an international mass murderer?"

"Everything's dangerous, Temple. It's just a matter of degree. What about what you've been getting involved in lately?"

"All right. I've been an amateur snoop, but before then, everything was so much safer."

Max pulled her away from him so he could look in her eyes.

"Was it? Was it really? I don't think so. It just seemed safer, like ail dream worlds. I know. I used to live in one until Sean died."

"When I grew up in the Midwest, worked there, nobody wanted to hurt you, though."

"No? What about your claustrophobia? Kids held you under a box, didn't they? Your older brothers."

"Little kids do things like that."

"Yeah, they do. And so do big kids. You told me about why you left TV news."

"It was that awful suicide-murder scene."

"In the double-wide in Mankato, l know. But did you leave because of that, or because you weren't getting the assignments you thought you'd earned, because of the in-fighting with the other reporters on staff?"

"Well, nobody took me seriously. It's because I wasn't tall enough and thin enough. And blond. Being blond would have helped."

"Really? From what you said. you did a good job. You got some real scoops. Why didn't they get you anywhere?"

"Because l didn't look right. Nobody took me seriously."

"Maybe they took you too seriously."

"What?"

"All the opposition you faced, from the male bosses, the other women reporters. You kept thinking it was something wrong with you. What if it was something right with you?"

"Huh?"

"People don't attack you for your weaknesses, Temple. They attack you for your strengths.

You went at news stories like you went at those crimes you stumbled across, didn't you? You were relentlessly inquisitive. You had certain verve, charm, charisma. People saw you cared.

They'd talk to you. They didn't need tall, blond, thin. They needed honest, genuine. Your peers blocked your career because they were jealous."

"Of me? Ever since l was in junior high and I realized l wasn't going to grow much higher, that l was going to be the Gidget of the eighties, l just sort of looked at those prom-queen girls and blinked. They were like goddesses to me. So tall and elegant, so sophisticated and smart.

They couldn't envy me; I envied them."

"Add to their motives your unending innocence. You didn't even appreciate your edge, which double-damned you in their eyes. You've told me about it, when we were in Minneapolis.

You've told me about it here, that artist's mistress who commandeered your hat because you had something individual, and she had to be the only individual thing around."

"Okay! So women can be spiteful, sabotaging snobs. I guess it is a danger."

"And guys can be violent, sadistic bullies. This is an equal-opportunity syndrome. You're worried and have trouble living with the idea of a few homicidal hit men who might want to shoot me. That's nothing compared to the danger ordinary kids face every day. The peer groups that demand you become a gang-banger or be the victim of them. Look at an abused kid like Matt Devine. It's obvious where his obsession with his stepfather came from. Every day, every hour in your own house, the screaming, the yelling, the quick fist or slap, the beating. Look at thousands of dogs, for God's sake. A dog who starts life as a happy, panting puppy just wanting to be part of the human pack, subservient to a two legged master, a dog neglected and berated and beaten until, broken, it crawls on its belly to anything human that will recognize it. Danger?

It's all around us. You, me, Matt Devine, Midnight Louie. Black cats have been hated and hunted and killed for centuries. And why do they attack us, these bullies? For our strengths, not our weaknesses. For our liveliness and talent and love and potential, which is a slap in the face to so many who have known only deadening days and nights of loss and hatred and failure."

"God, that's a scary assessment of the human race."

"Exactly. And once you see that you'll appreciate the heights the human species can reach.

For every two thousand Gottis, there's a Gandhi, for every Hitler there's an Einstein."

"For every Big Bad Wolf, there's a Rin Tin Tin?"

"No. But there's probably a Midnight Louie."

"Fun-nee," she said. It came out almost sounding like "Fanny." Chapter 29

Shooting Gallery

The knock on Molina's office door made her look up, then check her watch. "Right on time, to the minute."

"I know artists are supposed to be childishly free souls, oblivious to ordinary constraints, but not if you have two kids to support."

Molina nodded to her rather hard and unfriendly chair, and Janice Flanders came to sit there like an obedient schoolgirl. The closed oversize sketchpad lay across her blue-jeaned lap like a tray. Her laid-back Santa Fe style was attractive and reassuring.

"What a relief," Janice said. "I thought the computer simulations had made me obsolete to the police."

"Don't get overexcited. We need a sketch of a corpse."

"Ooh, my favorite."

"And. to sweeten the assignment, also of one very undead guy, only I need him aged about seven years."

"Only seven?" Janice glanced at the black-and-white photo Molina had handed her. "Looks pretty buff here."

"He's forty-one now; encroaching middle age should make a big difference. Most men show it sooner than women. And this man's gone down in the world, from respectable to seedy. Use your imagination."

"Looks like a physical fitness freak. Military, maybe?"

"Police. Not here in Las Vegas. He might have gotten more into pumping iron after his big fall. I don't know."

"A computer sim could run through the possibilities much faster, and cheaper, than I could."

"Yeah, but those things always have the personality of so-called Roswell test dummies. As l said, l want your imaginative touch. You've done so many mall portraits you've developed a sixth sense about facial planes, how they evolve and devolve."

Janice laughed. "Thanks. I think. Oh, and I also owe you thanks for steering that new customer my way."

"New customer?"

"Matt Devine."

"Oh. That's right. You did the Effinger job for him."

"I did, and with good results. He was an interesting subject."

"Effinger."

"Well, yeah, but I meant Matt too."

"He posed for you?"

"Not exactly. I did a quick sketch to warm up. I mean, who could resist those honest brown eyes? He's been a good customer, and I can always use the extra work."

Molina held back the two photographs of the Church Lot Lady she was about to show Janice, not wanting to interrupt this discussion of the living with the bare-faced fact of the dead.

"It sounds like an ongoing relationship," Molina noted.

"Yeah. I was surprised when he came back for another sketch, but, ah, it might be more of an ongoing relationship than you mean."

"Oh, really?" Molina was horrible at female small talk after all her years in law enforcement.

Now she wished she had a refresher course under her belt. But she had kept her tone innocent--and yet knowing enough, she hoped--to encourage Janice Flanders's confidences.

"I wondered why he wanted these pseudo-law-enforcement services. He swore he wasn't an ex-cop or a private detective. I couldn't figure it out, haven't yet, really. Except now that I know he's an ex-priest, it makes a little more sense. They're always out there doing good, right?"

"Let us hope so." Molina found her ordinarily nimble mind balking like a gate-shy horse at the mental leap to What Janice was implying.

"Anyway, how could this guy go wrong? I don't know how well you know him--" Holy cow! Who was trying to pump whom here? Molina smiled disarmingly, or what she thought was disarmingly. She hadn't had much practice in a long while. In fact, disarming smiles were a hazard in her business.

"He's visited in my parish," Molina said casually. "Our Lady of Guadalupe, where my daughter Mariah goes to school."

"That's right! She must he--"

"In sixth grade."

"Time flies. My two are in junior high now; teen-monsters-in-training," she added with enough fondness to undercut the truth of the remark. "You're so wise to keep your Mariah out of the public schools, but then I suppose you know more than I do what's going on there." Janice shuddered for effect. "That's where I put most of my child-support money, private school. So you know Matt socially," she added.

"As much as I know anyone socially. Between this job and keeping up with Mariah--"

"Say no more. The single-mom routine is the pits. I could use a break today. Or tomorrow. I was just wondering, since you're Catholic, if there's anything l should know about Matt, or some place where l could learn what to expect."

"Golly. I'm a lukewarm Catholic myself. All I can say is that you'd expect him to be pretty conservative about adhering to the church tenets."

"Like celibacy?"

Molina nodded.

Janice idly opened her sketchpad and began doodling. She seemed to think better with her fingers moving across paper. She grinned. "Then we have the same problem right now."

"Except for him it's not a problem. Not being celibate is a problem.''

"By problem you mean 'sin.' "

"In the strict sense, yes."

"Hmm. It's hard to believe a grown man in this day and age--and a good-looking one... but, hey, what am I complaining about? A perfectly safe man. Shrink-wrapped, you might say."

"Let's hope not too tightly. So what was his second assignment about?"

Janice rolled her eyes. "One centerfold-gorgeous female."

"Really? Red hair?"

"Black was the color. I hope it's not his true love, but l got the feeling that there was no love lost between them. Are you sure he's not doing investigative work? He sure acts like one of guys."

"Did he give you a name for the femme fatale?"

"Nope, but l could tell she gave him the willies. He seemed almost superstitious about my capturing her image on paper, like she was an evil spirit or something. Is there such a thing as an opposite-angel?"

"They're generally called demons, or devils, or were in the Middle Ages."

"I was reared by cheerful agnostics. All this religion mythology is pretty alien to me. I find it fascinating," she confided, leaning forward.

Oh, Lord, Molina thought.

Janice ripped the top sheet off her sketchpad with one broad, sweeping gesture and handed it to Molina.

"Warming up again."

Molina blinked at her own image. Unlike her official photos, which made her look like a Russian census-taker, stern and authoritative, Janice had caught her in a listening attitude: relaxed yet wary; analytical, with a hint of humor peeking through. She felt like Star Trek's Mr.

Spock placed in one of those four-photo quickie booths and forced to assume a uncharacteristically frivolous expression.

"Very nice," she told Janice. "Thank you."

"Oh, it's not the real you." Janice's warm smile made the white-streaked crinkles around her eyes into an asset rather than a signpost of early middle-age. "I'd never get down to that deep a subterranean level in the first try, but it's a start. Now. Are you going to let me see the photos of the corpse you've been guarding, or not?"