Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 48

Working It Out

Max faced the various apparatuses in the comer of Gandolph's den with the trepidation of a heretic being confronted with the torture instruments of the Inquisition.

There was nothing medieval or even magical about this gear: a gleaming steel jungle-gym arrangement of weights, pulleys, and hand grips. A home workout center.

He could tell by a hitch in his shoulder, a strain in his leg, that the months of inactivity since he had deserted the fanatically fit condition of a practicing magician were beginning to show. No more shrugging off an attacker without feeling it afterward. It was only sensible to prepare for more of same.

Still, this was a momentous occasion: For the first time in his life, merely keeping busy doing what he did wasn't keeping him in shape. Like all sedentary' people in their mid-thirties, he would have to work at it.

Max sighed, aimed the remote control at the big-screen TV across the room, and zapped it with enough oomph that he might as well have been shooting at it. Being forced to consider exercise for its own sake made him want to shoot at something. But, no, he would make like a traveling executive in a hotel exercise room and blend the morning news with his morning routine.

Max began fiddling with settings and weights, trying to decide where to begin. He had heard enough about working out with weights that he felt confident enough to avoid the ignominy of a local health club. Besides, he needed to keep out of sight as much as possible. He had found Garry's workout sweats in a closet, and though his late mentor had been a much bulkier man, the gray shorts tied with a cotton string adjusted to any width.

Now. All he had to do was get some sweat on the sweats.

Max sat down on the bench and began with arm presses, three sets of ten, breathing in on the out-stroke, out on the in-stroke.

The president, a perky female newscaster was informing him, had made headway during trade talks with Korea. The perky male newscaster came on soon after to narrate footage of a celebrity golf tournament at Caesars Palace.

You would think these were still the Reagan years.

Max rearranged himself facing away from the TV to do some leg lifts. After the first couple of lifts, he paused to add an extra twenty pounds of weight.

"Another death overnight . . ." the male anchor was droning. ". . . the dead stripper--"

Max turned so fast to face the TV that he felt the sudden burn of a neck spasm. Wouldn't you know he would get a sports injury watching television---

". . . has been identified as Cher Smith. She was making her first appearance at Baby Doll's last night when she" was killed."

The screen flashed the color photo from Cher's driver's license.

Max stared at the TV long after the cheerful female anchor's impeccably made-up face had replaced the pathetic assembly-line photo of a face he had first seen only thirty-six hours ago.

He knew his hand was absently massaging his twisted neck, but he couldn't feel anything, pain or relief, only numbing disbelief.

And then anger.

He got up so fast the suspended weights crashed to ground zero like a freight train hitting a metal wall.

Even the harsh sound couldn't penetrate his almost self- hypnotic state.

Furious, and thinking furiously, he only knew he needed more information--fast. He had always needed more information, he realized with the sick certainty of hindsight, and Molina, damn her, had not seen fit to give it to him.

"She would now. Whether she saw fit or not.