Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 62

Deception, Lies and Audiotape

Matt parked and locked the Vampire, stepping away from the motorcycle and feeling the road vibration still thrumming through his frame.

That was a given effect of riding canned heat. That was the buzz motorcycle riders loved.

He could take or leave that disorienting aftershock, but something else far less physical, and therefore far more upsetting, shook his soul tonight.

He stood for a moment in the empty lot, studying the church's sharp prow of glass gleaming in the fading light. Distant gulls seemed to squeal over Lake Mead. The sun set behind the western mountains. It always disappeared before its own last rays, most evenings leaving behind it a flat, cold light that only a landscape painter could love.

How could you stand in the light and feel such a chill? Only if the thought of what you were about to try put your soul on ice.

He remembered the hectic, surreal twelve minutes he had spent on the phone with "Daisy."

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, all on account of you.

The Gay Nineties love-ditty rang in his mind with unromantic Grim Nineties irony. He had gotten what he needed out of a frantic, addled girl about to commit delusional murder.

Could he get what he wanted to out of a clever, twisted killer who had committed delusional murder and wanted to survive it?

Just how good was Mr. Midnight at his new job?

Time to find out.

The sun's last, icy light glared off the gilded glass, cut through the stained-glass cross like an arctic laser.

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

This time Mart regarded the bare, plain room with a different eye.

The lack of upholstery and curtains would bounce sound, add an automatic echo to every word said.

Best he sit tonight somewhere other than the usual spot. That would disrupt the circle; all people in groups commandeered a small, rote territory--the place first sat-in---and returned mindlessly there like lemmings heading for a favorite cliff into the sea.

Matt's moving would upset that natural order. Would upset the neat expectations of his target. Would be an advantage.

He claimed a sear one down from Nick, the group's unofficial center, and pictured how the others might adjust, especially Norbert, whose seat he had usurped. Norbert already felt an outcast.

Good. with Norbert unsettled at the outset, the tenor of the whole evening would be off-balance. Confession was only good for the off-balance soul that had to be honest despite itself.

Matt also knew the role he had to play. He had to seem the victim, not the perpetrator of tonight's revisionist arrangement.

He had the problem; he was not the problem.

When Nick came in, alone, Matt leaped up from his claim-jumped chair. "I'm glad you're early. I thought we could talk--"

But Jerry came in before Matt could establish anything more than his presence in someone else's seat, and a certain agitation.

"Sorry." Jerry stopped dead, his genial smile fading. "Am l interrupting something personal?"

"No," Matt said, too quickly. "Nothing personal. I'm just a little . . . upset."

"Well, that's what we're here for." Jerry smiled uncertainly, and joined Nick at the coffee um. St. Caffeine Minor, cousin to St. Nicotine the Greater. "Want some, Matt?"

"Huh? Uh, yeah. Coffee. Be great."

Jerry exchanged a glance with Nick that Matt hadn't been meant to see. Then he poured two Styrofoam cups full of India-ink black liquid.

"Creamer?"

"Huh?"

By now Paul and Norbert had come in together, having linked up in the parking lot. They stopped inside the door, sensing the disorder inside.

"Creamer," Jerry repeated.

"Uh, yeah." Matt didn't have to play at being distracted. He was. "Thanks." The two newcomers' eyebrows lifted at coffee being delivered to Matt.

They served themselves. Serving another suggested crisis.

They collected their own coffee cups and took their places one chair to the left without comment, respecting the unknown that had elbowed them out of their traditional territories.

Something was up.

Damien came in last, pulling off his lined raincoat and light wool gloves. "Getting cold out there. I don't know how Matt can take that motorcycle."

He glanced at the last empty chair to the left of Nick, the deserted coffee table, Matt in the wrong place, and frowned.

"Come on in." Jerry half rose from his chair (which used to be Damien's chair). "Put your things down; I'll get you a cup of coffee. Plain, right?" Damien nodded, picking up that the status quo had shifted for a reason. He tossed his outerwear on a folding chair near the door and joined the circle, in a minute, Jerry brought him the coffee.

They were about to begin.

"A prayer," Nick announced, low-key as ever.

Alcoholics Anonymous had made the Serenity Prayer famous in a paraphrased version as the cornerstone of its twelve-step program. American Protestant theologian Reinhold Neibuhr had created this most popular of generic prayers in 1934, but this Catholic group said it every session. "Oh, God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what should be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference." Matt bowed his head, feeling a traitor. He suddenly saw what undercover work was really about: deception, lies, and audiotape.

Nick wasn't one to dance around a problem. "What's the matter, Matt?"

Cue: answer.

"Nothing major, I guess." He let the words drag out of him, the tone belying the meaning.

He glanced at his audience. Confusion and concern in every face. Except Norbert's.

Matt allowed a pale smile to escape before he sipped his coffee. "You know that radio rescue I was in on! Yeah, who could miss it, with the newspaper and everything? I just didn't expect the fallout."

"Fallout?" Jerry prompted.

"Fallout. The calls questioning my motives, saying I was excusing the girl. I was just trying to save her!"

"Amen," said Nick. Count on Nick to be super-supportive.

"I guess it was just such a shocking situation," Matt went on. "You don't realize it at the time, while you're in it. You're just trying to think how you can save the situation. Do the right thing. I mean, who would imagine that a girl would call a radio counseling line while about to deliver a baby? I mean, she sounded so young and innocent--"

"They all do," Nick put in, about to say something more.

"It's not your fault," Damien said.

"No, of course not," Jerry added. "You did the right thing. It doesn't matter what other people think."

"I guess," Matt said, "that they think I was excusing what she was thinking she had to do, instead of getting her to do the right thing. Anyway, it's enough to make me sick of even trying.

I'm giving up this radio gig. It's too . . . morally ambiguous. It's just not clear what the right thing to do is anymore."

"Nonsense!" Nick sounded angry. "You're being way too hard on yourself. She's the one in the morally ambiguous position, not you."

"But isn't that blaming the victim?"

"There's way too much wiggling out of responsibility by calling it 'blaming the victim,' "

Damien said. "That's the trouble these days. The center cannot hold. No one can hold to the center. We're all a bunch of wishy-washy wanna-be do-gooders. We've given up on the eternal verities."

"What about eternal realities?" Matt wanted to know. He took a deep breath. "I was just trying to be unjudgmental--"

"That's just the trouble!"

Matt glanced up. Damien was furious with him.

"You . . . wimp! You can't take people at their least. You must demand their best. What is wrong with the world? She was an unwed mother! She was ready to destroy her child rather than admit her guilt."

"That's not as bad as being ready to destroy another adult human being rather than admit one's sense of guilt."

"You. You . . . child. You don't know what it used to be like when right was right and wrong was wrong. Everything's middle now. Wiggly, weaseling-out middle ground. No fasting for Lent, no mortal sin, no Penance in no Confession. Not even Extreme Unction. 'Sacrament of Reconciliation?' What kind of wimpy theology is that?"

Before Matt could answer, an eerie wailing drifted in from the hall.

"What is that?" Jerry asked.

Paul just got up and went to check it out.

"Maybe lost souls in limbo," Norbert added with a nervous laugh, "in need of some old-time religious intolerance."

The last thing Matt needed now was comic relief.