Cat On A Blue Monday

Chapter 1

Louie' s Dog-Day Afternoon

I like nothing better than playing the role of Sage in the Shade.

I am well suited to the part, particularly when I tuck my four limbs underneath me--l am the agile type, and double-jointed to boot. Then I let my limeade-green eyes narrow to inscrutable and attractively tilted slits. Just give me a Number One Son and a sackful of fortune-cookie sayings and on a clear day I'll find Judge Crater, or maybe even Jersey Joe Jackson.

So here I am, on a dog-day afternoon in August, lounging in the shade of the calla lily stand behind the Circle Ritz condominiums, doing what comes naturally: watching others work while I snooze.

My delightful roommate, Miss Temple Barr, is occupied by the pool with Matt Devine. For once, these two are sensible enough to stand in the shadow of the lone palm tree that dusts the ocean-blue Las Vegas sky while clouds swirl above like schools of succulent albino carp.

In fact, this pair is sensibly attired in what look like dust sheets you put on unwante d furniture in abandoned houses, possibly haunted. Normally my little doll takes care of her innate stature problem by balancing on three-inch heels, but today she is--for the first time in my acquaintance with her---out of doors and barefoot.

She does not act happy about this fact, moving her weight from one narrow tootsie to the other until she reminds me of those shilly-shallying hot-pink neon birds perched atop the front of the Flamingo Hilton like an avian chorus line. I must admit that I prefer a short woman. She has less tar to stoop to extend affectionate greetings and thu s does it more frequently. Also, being petite, she is less inclined to try to do what I abhor: pick me up. I am not your run-of-the-mill pickup. As for Miss Temple Barr, she finds her ow n lack of stature a shortcoming, so to speak. Me, I say you see a lot more interesting things closer to the ground and can smell out a rat--human or literal--in no time flat. Why do you think Sherlock Holmes was always scrabbling around on his hand s and knees looking for clues? He's t rying to overcome his height handicap, of course, not to mention a ge netic predisposition to insufficiency of the sniffer.

Right now the ground at Miss Temple and Mr. Matt's end of the pool is not good clue territo ry, being covered by thick mats, which in t urn are covered in an irritatin gly bright blue vinyl. I can smell the chemical perfume of pure plastic from here. Obviously, Mr. Matt Devine is about to give Miss Temple Barr a lesson in the ancient and oriental arts of self-defense.

This I cannot object to, despite the sloppy dress code and the vinyl mattresses defacing my view and foiling my olfactory skills. My little doll could use some beefing up in the self-confidence concession. '

Because of the intimate relationship I share with Miss Temple Barr, I have seen her sit bold upright in the night, ever since two dudes with ball bearings for knuckles did a number on her in the Goliath Hotel parking ramp a couple of weeks ago.

As I say, I will be snoozing with my usual concentration when she will lift up from the bed linens like a corpse about to take an unauthorized stroll in a horror movie. I awake at the slightest disturbance of the sheets, and cannot recline on wrinkles, being as sensitive in this regard as a princess to a pea.

At such times, I smell the slight tang of human sweat, which overpowers even the English lavender-scented dusting powder Miss Temple uses after her bath. (Unlike superior species, she must actually immerse herself in large quantities of water to keep clean; hence the need for powder afterward, so her clothes do not stick to her skin. I am a practicing nudist myself, and have never heard any complaints, especially from discriminatin g ladies of my kind--end others.

"Oh, Louie, " Miss Temple Barr will say a moment after jerking out of her slumber. She sounds glad to see me there, which she should be. When it comes to protectio n, I am nothing to sneeze at.

She curls her lacquered claws into the role of muscle at the back of my neck, which has me positively purring. Unlike a lot of ladies these benighted days, Miss Temple Barr has long, strong nails that she does not hesitate to paint in a carnivorous red color. This is not the least of her attractions for me, although her equal propensity for being up to her matching lipstick in crime and punishment is also encouraging. I love a mystery almost as much as I do a massage.

In f act, my own set of claws came in handy in apprehending the Stripper Killer at the Goliat h Hotel Rhinestone G-string Con test---incidentally saving my little doll from a dreaded death-by-Spandex.

A small La s Vegas Scoop it em in Crawford Buchanan's Broad side column described my late st foray into criminal apprehen sion----the criminal being the one who was apprehensive, not me, As usual. Buchanan put my feat in the most degrading light: "An alley cat around Las Vegas leaped into literal action last Friday when the Goliath Hotel serial Stripper Strangler went after local PR flack Temple Barr. The cat, an overweight, solid-blac k lay about named Midnight Louie, f ell from atop a costume cabinet where it was sleeping just as the Strangler was about to tie the luscious Miss Barr's neck into a double-Windsor knot. The sleeping puss proved unlucky to r the killer when its claws, ex tended during the plunge, accidentally raked the perp. Talk about a timely pussy foot. Must have been Friday the Thirteenth somewhere? "

Crawford Buchanan can mangle the truth faster than the Goli ath killer could strangle a stripper. My plunging to the rescue of my delightful roommate was no accident: I was buying time until Lieutenant CB. Molina could rush in with the cavalry from down the hall.

Of course, I am used to feats of derring-do, thanks to my back-alley days, now l ong behind me. Miss Temple Barr, on the other hand, is a tiny thing, though spirited. I fear that the shock of a severe beating followed by the Attack of the Stripper Strangler would m ake even the heroine of a Roger Corman movie a trifle overwrought.

She now keeps a flashlight beside her bed. This is a sinister implement, sheath ed in a black, rubbery material that would serve well as a weapon in addition to lighting up the darkness . It also stinks. If only human attackers were as sensitive to smell as I am, they would be knocked out.

Every time my little doll has one of these midnight misadventures, she performs the same routine. First she sinks her fingers into my warm fur, if I am there, which I usually am these days or nights, rather. I do have an escape clause: the open bathroom window. Miss Temple Barr's rooms are on the third floor and the window is small, so no felon larger than a midget is able to enter, although I can both enter and exit with the ease of a garter snake. Nowadays the domestic life suits my more laid-back style. I rarely t ake a nighttime stroll unless I have business of a crime-fighting or personal nature abroad.

Anyway, Miss Temple takes up her high-tech flashlight and l see the back of her Garfield T-shirt as she makes a tour of the premises, particularly of the French doors leading to the patio.

She returns, often with a granola cookie. This I keep strictly between herself and me: a lady's night time habits are no one's business but her own. I must adm it that I do not relish crumbs i n the bed, especially when they are the sort I do not personally find consumable, but l understan d my little doll's need for comfort after her attack, and at least she has not yet imported any crumbs of another sort entirely to her--and my--queen-'size bed. There is only one King of the Hill here and the name is Midnight Louie.

0f course, it is because of a dude before my time that Miss Temple was so rudely interroga ted by the pair of hoods in the Goliath garage. His name at lea st I approve of: the Mystifying Max. His game was okay also : magician. What was wrong with him was that he vanished--per manently, and without bothering to tell Miss Temple. I would not d o such a thing to a little doll like her unless I was road kill, w hich l fear is one of the theo ries that is bothering my lo vely roommate about her missing ex-significant other.

To tell the truth and speaking from my own experience around here, l cannot understand why a ny dude in his right mind would walk out on Miss Temple Barr, who has hardly any faults except f or her addiction to certain health foods, including a preparation called Free-to-be-Feline. That is h er only lapse in taste, and the Mystifying M ax could have put up with it. Af ter all, he did not have to eat anything worse than granola. I have managed to ignore the Free-to-b e-Feline for nearly a month now, with the result tha t I am getting a superb class of delicacies Iadl ed over the top as a temptation: smoked oysters, baby shrimp in Creole sauce and other appetizers that add up to a full-meal deal, a s they say on the television.

Perhaps there is one tiny inciden t I am not fond of, although it is understandable. After the att ack on Miss Temple, her helpful neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine, stayed the night. I hung around long enough to see him ensconced on the living-room hide abed ; then I comforted my little doll in the bedroom until she drifted off to a Tylenol-3 sleep before l skedad dled on errands of an investiga tive nature. All right, in this particular case I had a personal interest ----my lost ladylove, the Divine Yvette, had witnessed the first stripper murder.

All that is history as I sit here drowsing, humming along with the bees circling the calla lilies. The Goliath killer is in an institution for the criminally insane, and I am the victim of a criminally frustrated romantic entangl ement. The Divine Yvette has re tur ned to Malibu with her mistress, a so-called actress named Savannah Ashleigh.

Chapter 2

Nancy Ninja Strikes Again

"Where's Louie?" Temple stared toward the calla lilies', red and yellow blooms bright against large green leaves. "He was there just a minute ago."

"Probably got bored by how long it was taking us to get going," Matt said pointedly. "I thought you didn't want any witnesses."

"Right, I'm still not sure I'm cut out for this." Temple savagely jerked her waistline sas h tight. "I feel like Dopey the Dwarf in this outfi t."

She stared down at herse lf drowning in loose, white cot ton pajamas she wouldn't have worn to a junior-high slumber party.

The most disconcerting sigh t was her bare feet, flour-white against the blindingly blu e-vinyl mat they both stood on. Matt's feet were lightly tanned, at least, and therefore interesting instead of pasty, of course. Temple found everything about tall, blond and ha ndsome Matt Devine interesting, darn it. Matt remained o blivious to all but his lesson.

"This outfi t is called a 'gi'," he said, pronouncing t he word with a hard "g." Gee, Temple thought. Okay. She plucked unhappily at a gigantic sleeve.

"You'll get used to it," Matt said, "and it shouldn't feel too big. I got a child's size, after all."

Temple watched his w arm brown eyes grow dismayed as he realized that his intended reassurance had gone right for a sore spot with Temple: h er height, or--more precisely-- the lack thereof.

She shrugged fabric-swaddled arms, not used to making a hissing rustle with her every move. "Great. Teach Shirley Temple to do this, then; not me. She'd probably even sing something."

"This won't be so bad. I 'm not going to give you chapter and verse of any particular discipline, just some tricks that you can use if anyone attacks you again. Jack Ree showed m e the short-form women's defense stuff. Anyone can do it."

Temple eyed Ma tt, who looked as right in his g i as Robert Redford would, if ever RR would descend to doing a martial-arts movie. Maybe Matt's light tan and sun-gilded hai r made his gi look less like a fl our sack with a rubber band in the middle.

"I still don't know if I want to do it," she said. "I've never been good at athletic things. Balls always went over my head and team c aptains always picked me last." "That's the beauty of the martial arts," Matt insisted with an enthusiast's seriousness. "They all grew out of the peas ants' need to defend the mselves without the weapons the nobility took for granted. And Asians are a small people; any martial art is based on discip line and skill, not on size and brute force."

The last two words made Temple wince in memory . "Those two guys were brute force, all right, up close and personal."

Matt stepped nearer and lowered his voice. "Are you going to group?"

"Going to group! That's so California, Matthew." Temple looked up at Matt in the sh ade. This was defi nitely one way to get closer to Matt Devine, and she certainly wanted to do that, didn't she?

"Group therapy is not exclusive to California, and my name isn't short for Matthew." He sounded a little stiff, even a little miffed. Temple's sur prised silence forced a further revelation. "My name is . . . Matthias."

"Oh." Matthias was an odd name; was that why it both ered him? Temple decided to move past the issue. "It still shortens to 'Matt ' and couldn't I see a counselor solo?"

"Sure ." Matt relaxed into his usual good humor once back on neutral ground. ''But then y ou wouldn't hear the stories of people who've been through the same thing as you have."

"Most of them haven't ." Matt's smooth face roughened as he began to object. "I know they've been attacked," Temple said quickly, "but by muggers or husbands and significant others, however nasty. How many other people in 'group' are going to have to own up to getting creamed by a couple of professional thugs intent on beating information out of them? They won't bel ieve me. In fact, I have a hard time believing me."

Matt's smile was rueful. "I've never known anyone who was so outright embarrassed at being the target of a crime, but I 'l l bet there are a couple just li ke you in that group therapy session. That's why you need to put your own expe rience in perspective. And this is an all-women's group."

"I'll look like a crybaby compared to people who've been really abused. Rape victi m s--"

"Survivors," Matt corrected. "We're trying to get away from reinforcing the victim feeling. You're a survivor."

"Survivor, I guess if I can survive interrogations by Lieutenant Molina, I can survi ve playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with you. Okay, Coun selor. I'm ready. Let the games begin."

Matt's manner became all business, as if a screw at the top of his head had tightened. Temple, still sheepish about what she was trying to do and the costume she had to wear to do it, realized that the martial arts were serious stuff to him.

"First." he said. " Are you pretty much recovered physi cally? No sore spots?"

Temp le nodded. "Amazingly recovered, I can see how abused women keep hoping the abuse will stop."

"You don't have any old injuries, say, from high school , a broken wrist or anything?"

Temple shook out her arms in the long sleeves. "Not yet."

"You won't break anything here. That's why the pads. You said you wer en't at hletic in school. What about at home, in your family? Did you have any brothers and sist ers to tussle with?"

"Not in the physical way ." Temple let her head wag from side to side in resignation . "You sound like Molina during an interrogation. Yes, Officer , I had brothers and sisters; two each. And, no, we didn't go at it much, for fun or for fu ry, becau se I was--naturally--the youngest, and the littlest.

With eight years between me and the next youngest, obviously my siblings were too grown-up to have much to do with me --other than providi ng endless icky clothes to hand down."

"So you were almost an only child; that's interesting."

"To a counselor, maybe, to me, no, you know how they say parents over control the fi rst child and loosen up for the later ones? Well, I was such a tail on the dragon that my parents got neurotic all ove r again. In fact, my brothers and sisters all joined in, when th ey weren't bequeathing me cloth ing in lousy taste. Everybody knew what was best for me, except me."

"Sounds like you were the apple of the whole family's eye.

"Yup, My father called me 'Ladybug' till l left home. And when I flew away from home and left Minneapolis with Max--they went ballistic."

"They sound a little smoth ering. Try to direct your frus tration with your family in to what we're doing here. Redi rect the irritation into action. A nd remember, I 'm not going into the 'Kong F u' mystical s tuff. These are just some moves you can use to get an attacker off balance."

"Will I be able to throw you over my shoulder?"

"Eventually," he promised with a smile.

She sighed, looked around again for witnesses, found none, and then gr imaced. "Just don't call me 'Grasshopper.' "

Temple padded barefoot int o the Circle Ritz and up to her apartment. She hated to "pad. " It made her feel like a child who'd gotten out of bed to ask for a glass of water, like she had to ask permission of someone for whatever she wanted.

Matt had been right. She was more deeply irritated by her family's over protectivene ss than she knew. When she drew on that ancient annoyanc e, pretending to be Nancy Ninja didn't feel that weird. Not that she'd get to the stage of tossing him that quickly.

In her bedroom she fought the fabric knot and won, Round One for the lit tle lady in bare feet. When she shrugged off the--wha t was it, a uniform, a costume?--Gi, the unfurling fabric released th e scent of her own sweat, faint and plea santly pungent rather than reek ing.

Temple changed into aqua knit shorts and top, and then slid her bare feet into cork-soled wedgies two-and-a-half-inches high at the h eel. Did she feel more self-confi dent-- any more vindicated, or vindictive? Had she made a breakthrough in her slo-mo relationship with her attractive but elusive neighbor? Maybe.

She walked to the bedroom /off ice at the unit's other end, detouring through the kitchen to snag a glass of Ruby Red grapefruit juice. Visions of chopping a thug in the bridge of his nose with the hardened edge of one hand, then jamming the heel of the other hand under his nostrils so the presumably broken bridge bone would drive, splintering, into his brain, burned as gory-red in her head as the grapefruit juice in her hand.

Matt wasn't teaching her that maneuver, but she'd heard of it. Maybe going through the motions now, learning the moves that she hadn't known when the two men had attacked her, would restore something they had taken. Maybe, at her desk, a pale-pink Post-it note with the group-therapy phone number stuck out from the top of her computer screen like an anemic tongue.

She ripped it off, then lifted the phone and dialed. Maybe going through the motions of anything--even survival---wasn't enough.

Chapter 3

A Hiss in the Night

Midnight Louie was waiting for Matt Devine at the corner of the Strip and Charleston when he walked to work that evening.

Matt always walked to work. First and foremost, he didn't own a car; second, his job was to sit still and listen to whatever misery poured out over the phone lines from seven at night to three in the morning. Those were the hours that Las Vegas glistened at its most garish, when the most angst overflowed lowball glasses and lonely hotel rooms and human psyches.

Matt sometimes considered himself a silent butler, sweeping up the ashes of other people's lives.

"Hey, Louie," he said in greeting.

Not many black cats hung out in Las Vegas, which was a risky venue for a bad-luck symbol as old as superstition itself. Only one acted like he owned the place--any place he happened to be.

Of course Midnight Louie wasn't waiting for him. The cat was a roamer by nature and their paths had happened to cross this one time. Still, Louie must have recognized Matt, for he began trotting along behind him as if in search of a treat.

Matt glanced up at the cliff side of massive hotel facades set well back from the rush-hour Strip fl owing with eight lanes of hot, semi-stalled metal. He spotted the relatively modest outline of the Crystal Phoenix, its neon spray of the legendary bird glowing faint against a still sun washed sky.

Matt turned clown a street, appropriately named Shadow, into thinning crowds. Louie kept pace with a businesslike trot more common to dogs than to cats, but then, Louie was an uncommon cat. At least he seemed to think so.

"Temple will be worried to hear you were so far from home," Matt found himself telling the cat, as if it were a dog, as if people could really communicate with either species.

Matt was used to living alone, having even a silent partner to talk to was a nice change.

Down the block, a modest shopping center crouched only blocks behind the Strip's high-profile glitz. Matt sometimes thought the Las Vegas Strip was a gigantic Hollywood set, that all the hotel fronts were hollow behind, propped up by long aluminum poles, and that the people streaming into the lavish facades disappeared into a Twilight Zone where everything that happened was one long Technicolor, computer-enhanced hallucination.

Where he was heading was no hallucination. A homemade sign reading "ConTact" covered what had been a dry cleaner's until eight months before.

Louie was still running with him. Behind them, the sun burned Matt's shoulders even as it slipped beneath the rocky eleven-thousand-foot facade of Charleston Peak and its neighboring mountains. Maybe they were delusions, too. The desert was famous for mirages.

Matt opened the door, felt the air-conditioned coolness hush out at him. Midnight Louie bent to sniff the threshold.

"Corning in?"

The cat stepped back, shook its foot, and remained outside.

"Got company?" Sheila glanced up from her phone niche.

"Just a cat," Matt let the vaguely smudged glass door close behind him on its slow automatic swing so like a sigh. Louie regarded him gravely through the glass, then turned and trotted away. "It belongs to one of my neighbors."

"He lets it roam this far?" Sheila sounded surprised.

"Temple doesn't have much to say about it. The cat adopted her and apparently is used to keeping his own hours."

Sheila slid him a glance at the mention of "her." Matt had seen that look a thousand times before, the quick speculation whenever he mentioned a woman. And how did Sheila know how far away he lived?

Sheila Pulanski. She had a master's in social work and a bland manner that did nothing to overcome a personality as dishwater-dull as her hair, her slightly pocked skin, her resigned, rain-puddle-gray eyes. Yet she still wanted to know what women Matt Devine knew, and how, and how many, and what "she"--or they--were to him.

Those assessing glances always disappointed him, made him tense in some ancient form of defense, defense from what? Speculative glances? Women? Or just the damn predictability of it? He couldn't help what he looked like.

He went quickly to his own phone niche. Like all nonprofit hotlines, ConTact was an ever-needy organization. When a local high school donated part of an outmoded language-lab setup, the board of directors had jumped at it. So the office didn't look like much, no more than a boiler room telephone sales operation, with each counselor drawing a chair up to a table sheltered by a three-sided barrier covered in white, sound-absorbent tiles drilled with ranks of small, dark holes.

Matt pulled his chair close to the table and lifted his headset off the aluminum hook jammed into one of the convenient holes. The soft, gray-foam pads settled on his ears like a comforting muffler. He was connected to the night again, to the anonymous callers, to the surge and fall of need all around him, all around everyone if they would only listen for the constant, surf like hiss of agony pulling back and hurling forward in endless conflict: Help me. No, stay away! Just talk to me, please. No, don't tell me to leave, let go, escape, grow up, go to group. Help me.

Matt found his lips quirk ed into the smile that he least liked, a resigned smile that tasted of spoiled milk. Temple, for all her spirit, had shown the same push-pull indecision this very afternoon: afraid to admit that she could be hurt; needing assurance that it wouldn't happen again. He tried to help-- here and there this afternoon--but he couldn't even help himself. Helping is another form of addiction, he reminded himself, only more socially acceptable than most. He ought to know; he'd made a career of it. Sheila's silver-salted, wren-brown permanent bristled around the edge of the barrier. "We're it tonight. Two of th e volunteers have some kind of fl u."

He nodded. Six booths, three employees, three volunteers, Even the employees weren't paid much. Those in the helping professions aren't supposed to help themselves to much profi t, unless they're slick society shrinks or corporate consultants.

Still it was more than he'd made at his last . . . job.

The phone rang. I t, too, was donated, a humped, old fashioned model in Crayola flesh-color that felt stick ier than Silly Putty. As soon as Matt picked it up, he set the receiver on the makeshift rest o f a horizontal Rolodex fi le. All the calls here went through the earphones, misery in stereo.

"Hel-hello?" The voice was elderly, anxious and female.

"ConTact," Matt said. "Can I help you?" His voice, he knew, was Bing Crosby smooth and reassuringly male. He was used to reassuring everyone except himself.

"I'm so worried."

"About what, Ma'am?" He hated using the hackneyed address, but there was either Miss or Ma'am for women.

"I fi nally had to do something."

He waited. Usually people who reached the brink and actually dialed ConTact were like dam waters ready to over fl ow the concrete bunkers of convention that contained them. This woman still sounded uncertain, even regretful now.

"I . . . I don't mean to bother anybody. I just mind my business and live alone. But--"

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"They're walking around my house, trying to get in."

"Who?" Sharper,

"I don't know. They come a l ot lately. I know they're there, though l don't keep a dog. I'm . . . afraid."

"Ma'am, if it's intruders you're worried about , you'd better call nine-eleven. Or I can do it for you. What's your address?"

"Not . . . really intruders. Someone, Something, Maybe the doctor is wrong, and I need a hearing aid. Maybe if I heard better, I'd know it was just the meter man."

He listened hard, to her and to the background, trying to gauge if anything might be truly wrong, if her voice would suddenly sharpen into a shriek as the call became a human drama in action and he still didn't have the address. . . .

"You can hear me just fi ne. Where do you live, Ma'am?"

A pause, "I 'm not used to telling strangers that on the phone. Security, you know--"

"If someone is intruding, I need to know your address to send help."

"Yes, I know you do. But maybe no one is there. I t's just that it's happened before . In the evening, I hear noises."

"What kind of noises?"

She was silent again, her obviously elderly voice stilled with fear and shame. Being old, being alone, made for a lot of fear, and then shame at the fact of that fear, Matt knew.

Still, he wasn't ready for her answer when it came.

"Hisses," she said at last, reluctantly. "Angry, seething hisses."

Chapter 4

Cat Burglar

It is a terrible thing to be laid off, even if it is only from a self appointed position.

While everyone else is relieved that the stripper competition at the Goliath Hotel-- and its murderous complications -- is over. I find myself with mixed feelings. Perhaps my uncharacteristic malaise is caused by the Divine Yvette's departure, though it is unlike me to get down in the whiskers over a dame, no matter how heavenly.

Speaking of Devine, I am more than somewhat worried about our neighbor of that nomenclature. The Bard of Avon is almost as famous as Nostradamus for his rhyming couplets. and I recall something abou t "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."

Now, I do not have these opposable appendages, although I understand that they are highly regarded in some circles. However, I have a highly versatile appendage of my own, plus a full set of fairly agile digits at the end of all my limbs. I do okay. But it anything pricks when something wicked comes this way, it is the hair at the base of my tail, just where I cannot reach with anythin g, no matter how acrobatic I am, and I am a natural contortionist, among other things.

The base of my tail has been atwitter tor two days, and something tells me that Mr. Matt Devine will need my services in not too long a time.

After seeing him to his place of employment, I decide It is not much t o look at, although from Miss Temple Barr's reaction. Mr. Matt Devine definitely is. I wil l have to take her word on this, because folks other kind all look alike to me, or at least fall into certain readily recognizable types.

This is a little game I play . Miss Temple Barr, for instance, strikes me as a sprightly Somali named Cinnamon. (Somalis are long-haired Abyssinians ; besides a red-haired coat , they have a luxuriant foxy tail and are pretty foxy in other respects.) Mr. Matt Devine would be your cream Persian, pet rather than show quality. There is something effacing about Mr. Matt Devine that puzzles me. The Mystifying Max is not in the least effacing though I have never met the dude except via the poster Miss Temple Barr used to keep on the inside of her closet door. He is without doubt a Burmese. (This is a most mysterious breed, with sleek, dark chocolate-brown hai r and a hypnotic green gaze not dissimilar to my own.)

As for me, I am bits and pieces of the best of everything; the only proof positive of my superior--and haphazard-breeding is my divinely developed sense of curiosity, Flight now that itch in arrears is running rampant. By the morning of the next day, my bra in has gone full circle. I sit i n the hot cement by the Circle R itz pool--a momentary shock f or certain unmentionable part s--and stare up at the pleasing, curved shape of th is landmark so dear to my heart, or rather to my stomach. I can see Miss Te mple Barr's third-floor terrace, its potted oleanders undulating leafy green fingers over the black wrought-iron railing rather like landlady Miss Electra Lark waving "toodle-oo."

Speaking of which, I stare farther up. Two floors above my not-so-humble abode is Miss Electra L ark's penthouse, with a similar, though larger, terrace. Certain mysterious noises have emanated from the Landlady's premises since I consented to become Miss Temple's roommate two months ago. One can imagine how loud these bumps in the daytime--for I seldom hear them at night, which eliminates at least one theory, to Miss E l ectra Lark's credit--how loud these bumps must be to penetrate even my sensitive ears two floors below.

At least there is one mystery I can poke my nose into, and I intend to do it right now quite literally.

I bound to the ancient palm tree, whose curving trunk makes a long, gentle, beneficent arc over the Circle R itz. Forward motion, as the football commentators call it carries me up a bridge of super-tough bark, but these claws were made for climbing and that is what they are going to do. . . .

Momentum swings me down on a delicate palm frond. For a moment I sway perilously, so far above ground than even my fabled tour-point landing style will not save me. Then I leap into thin air and p lummet safely onto the Circle Ritz roof, five stories above the Big Splat.

I perch for a while, and preen while catching my breath, then loft idly down to Miss Electra Lark's patio. This is the most dangerous part of the venture. Her patio is crammed with bushes snipped into familiar-looking silhouettes, no doubt by an obsessive-compulsive with a large collection of manicure scissors . I land revoltingly near one silhouette teased into the shape of a poodle fresh from the groomer.

Yet I have no time to waste in critiquing the topiary. I brush against the French doors, testing for an unlocked door. A low rattle as the portal bows to my superior force , not to ment ion my nineteen pounds, tells m e that I have a prayer. I stretch up----far up. I am a long dude, as well as a bit long in the tooth, and my forepaw curls around the lever. Then I jerk, herd. The door springs ajar to my expert touch. I drop down to nose it open, sticking my puss into a room shrouded in shade, every m ini - blind drawn tighter than a m iser's line of credit.

I push into the soft, cool dark, lulled by the hum of the air conditioner that reminds me of my dear, departed mama. The open door admits a ba r of hot, bright light behind m e. It slants across an array of funky furniture that would do a garage sale proud. It reveals dust motes and sofa legs and vases so ugly they should be put in jail . It bounces off the lurid green glow of a watching eye from under the opposite sofa.

Before I can do anything, my sharp ears flick at the sou nd of another door being opened, deep in the apartment's interior, by a key.

Chapter 5

Calling All Cats

"Wait here in the entry, dear. I'll find that paper in a minute."

"Won't you need light?" Temple called after Electra's vanishing figure, her forefinger poised on the light switch to the right of the double entry doors.

Around her, in the fun-house glimmer of Mylar vertical blinds that lined the semicircular space and shimmied in the slow turn of a lazy ceiling fan, icicle-slices of her own image vibrated in the dim light.

"No," came Electra's fruity voice from the shadowed depths of the penthouse. "It's right here."

Temple was seriously tempted anyway. Electra's rooms were always kept dim, and darn few people saw them. One flick of her forefinger and she would satisfy a portion of her curiosity--at least about everything within range.

She could always pretend she hadn't heard. Temple took the plunge.

Nothing happened. Whatever light the switch had once controlled was gone, perhaps replaced by the ceiling fan, whose control box was on the other side of the door. Temple looked up. No light attachment, either. Double darn.

So she stood politely waiting, trying to look innocent and wondering if her flick of the switch had turned on something else in the place -- m aybe a coffee maker, or an iron, w ouldn't it be her luck? And the minute she and Electra left, the accidentally turned-on item would start to burn down the whole Circle Ritz. Guilt was a terrible thing, Poor Raskolnikov. Maybe when Electra returned, she should just cave in and confess.

Temple edged back to the wall and flicked the switch to its up position just as Electra's sandal-shod feet shuffled over the parquet floors.

Dazzling light flooded the entry area, as narrow and glaring as a sky-sweeping spotlight.

"Oops! Sorry," Temple said. How did a light switch that was off in the up position go on after being turned off again?

"Argh!" Electra complained, bustling over to the switch in a muumuu almost as brilliant as the light. She switched the lever down and the glare vanished as obediently as one of the Mystifying Max's magical objects. "That's for dramatic effect. at night."

"Where is it coming from?" Temple squinted against the sudden darkness. Her eyes fi nally followed Electra's pointing finger to an up light sitting on the floor.

In the room beyond the break in the blinds, something glimmered. Marble- round and as lurid green as a laser beam. Temple heard a muf fled thump as Electra took her fi rm upper arm in hand and ushered her from the penthouse.

Although the halls in the forty-year-old Circle Ritz building were not alleyways of illumination, the glow of wall sconces seemed daylight-bright compared to the secretive shadows in Electra's digs.

"I thought l saw--" Temple began.

"Oh, people are always thinking they see something in my place. It's all the junk I collect."

"I thought I heard--"

"This is an old building, dear, and the palm leaves scrape on the roof. Now here's the fl yer. I bet you can do something with this."

"I bet not." Temple took the popsicle-pink sheet over to a wall sconce's pale light. First she had to dig her glasses out of the bronze tote bag over her shoulder before she could read the too-fine print. "Cat shows are as common as fleas, Electra. Every Civic Center in the country has 'em in alternating months. All the advance publicity you can get is a photo of a funny-looking cat in the paper, and any amateur could manage that. Besides, what can they pay me in? Cat litter? Louie almost never sullies his box at home."

"Not this show; it's not common," Electra insisted, coming over to point a pudgy finger at various blocks of information, which gave Temple a chance to admire her Black Grape nail polish with silver stars arranged in various arcane constellations.

"Look," Electra insisted, "this is the mother of all cat shows. Every recognized breed will be represented, even curly coated Rexes. And there's a costume show; that ought to be newsworthy."

"Cats in clothes? That's silly; Electra, and probably the Humane Society would have a thing or two to say about it."

"Not a meow. These breeders are fanatics about cat care. They wouldn't do anything harmful. In fact, it's quite the other way around."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh--" Electra reclaimed the fiyer to stare at the obligatory facts of date, time and place. "My friend Cleo Kilpatrick, who raises Manx, says the Fancy Feline Club that's sponsoring this show has gotten some odd phone calls."

"Odd catcalls? Sounds like an ill-tempered audience. What kind of odd calls can a cat club get?"

"Peop le calling up and . . . hissing, or maybe it's real snakes. They can't tell."

"Someone is calling up a cat club and putting agitated snakes on the line?"

"Fascinating, isn't it? I thought you'd be intrigued."

"Intrigued! Why on earth would you want to involve me with these loonies?"

"Several of my friends are Fancy Feliners and they don't take these calls lightly. Lots of folks hate cats, for some reason, and these purebred cats are worth a lot of money. The cat people are real worried."

For answer, Temple dug again in her tote bag. She fi nally pulled out a slim case, from which she deftly extracted a pale m auve card with her medium-long fi ngernails, which today were varnished a tasteful seashell pink.

"Read my card. I t s ays 'Temple Barr, P.R.'--not 'P.I .' "

Electra shrugged generous shoulders even more generously shrouded in a howling Hawaiian jungle print. "Maybe it's not a bad idea to broaden your job description, the way you keep running into murders."

"You sound like Matt."

"Speaking of Mr. Devine, l saw you two playing out by the pool----"

"Working out, Matt's teaching me the fundamentals of self-defense. ' '

"How are you two getting along?"

"You're the one who sho uld be the P.I., Electra, Just fine, me student, he teacher. He taught me how to turn my wrist to break a handgrip and tried to talk me into thinking about how to push an attacker's eyes out."

"Yuck!" Electra's gray eyes, the only neutral thing about her, narrowed to revulsed slits. "That nice man knows ugly things like that?"

"Apparently we nice women should, too, if we're going to be safe on city streets. How about it? l promised Lindy I'd go over to Paradise and see the revamped Kitty City Club. Wanta go with me?"

Electra waved the pink sheet. "Trade-sies?"

T emple groaned. "Oh, all right. I 'll contact the cat people; I feel like I'm in a forties' horror movie already. Call me an old-fashioned girl, but I hate going to a stripper joint alone."

"Whatsa matter?" Electra chuckled as she locked her dou ble doors and stuffed the pink flyer into Temple's tote.

"Afraid you'll get mistaken for one of the acts?" Temple rolled her eyes. "Not likely. I'm afraid I'll get taken for having unnatural inclinations."

By then they had reached the elevator. Electra pushed the mother-of-pearl button. With a weary wheeze, the elderly car came creaking upward. Both women faced forward, contemplating the noises.

"I think making crank calls to a cat club is weirder than women going to a strip club," Electra said fi nally.

"Nowadays," Temple said, sasha ying into the wood paneled car fi rst, "probably."

Broad daylight made no bones about the purpose of the building at Paradise and Twain: "Strip joint" was written all over it in the rude graffiti that covered the boxy, windowless, stucco exterior. An u nlit neon sign loomed over the fl at roof like scaffolding abandoned by da Vinci and ceded to Peter Maxx.

"New name," Electra noted, impressed.

"New female management," Temple said. "'Les Girls.' I like it, much classier than 'Kitty City.'"

"I can't imagine why that greasy Ike Wetzel agreed to sell after all his shenanigans to blackmail his old dancers and control the strippers' contest."

Temple glanced at Electra. In broad daylight there was no overlooking the silver hair worn in a modifi ed Mohawk and streaked with stripes of royal blue to match the surreal palm leaves in her muumuu pattern.

"I doubt old Ike had much to say about it," Temple admitted. "The stripper murders brought up so much bad old business in his personal and professional life that Lindy was fi nally able to buy him out before someone drove him out. Let's go see what wonders worker-ownership can do for a strip club."

"'Whatever," Electra said, "it takes major money to run a place like this, however humble-looking. l don't see how a bunch of strippers managed it."

"Consort ium, Electra, consortium of ecdy siasts," Temple corrected her in airy tones as they strolled into this showcase of female fl esh. "You'll never make a P.R. person without the politically correct spin."

Dark as Hades, Still, Cold as an archangel's breathes . Still, Loud as a den of drummers, s till.

Temple and Electra stopped at the chill dark inside the door, waiting for their eves and their body temperature to adjust. Their ears were another matter. Rock music blared at concert pitch.

Temple leaned close to Electra. "Do you think it's a tad less loud?" she shrieked .

Electra nodded her two-toned head, her sliver streaks painted a glowing lavender by the ultraviolet lights above the stage.

A cocktail waitress--pert, blond and attired in something unbelievably brief and interesting, even to other women, merely from a technical point of view, like "How does she get into it without dislocating anything essential?" and "Can yo u wash it in a teacup, really?" -- ankled near enough to be perceived in the perpetual twilight.

According to the movement of her mouth, she was asking, "Drinks?"

"Lindy," Temple both mouthed and screamed back, hop ing that was not the name of something new and trendy and alcoholic, like a Lindy Hop, Or a Lite beer, maybe?

A pert blond nod and the two women were following a mostly unveiled rear to the front of the establishment.

Me n, alone and in twos and threes sat scattered at the tables. Now was the pre - noon hour, a predictable dead zone in the stripper business. Lethargic girls gyrated at poles distributed atop the bar, fanning themselves with their ghostly Seven- Year-Itch skirts (literal knockoffs of Marilyn Monroe's white, circle-skirted, halter-top dress immortalized in the hot updraft of a sidewalk grating and the camera's icy, ogling eye) . They left less to the imagina tion than Monroe had managed to do.

At a side table, Lindy Lukas was waiting wrapped in a cigarette fog. Strip palaces and their habitues were not wor ried about such wimpish concerns as secondhand smoke.

"Sit down," Lindy panto m imed with proprietary gestures of both hand and mouth. She lifted a glass afl oat with urine-colored liquid. Both Temple and Electra shook their head.

Lindy stood, smiled , and beckoned them across the fl oor, past the raised stage where a woman wearing a scant collec tion of glitter-dusted rubber bands was writhing to the shrill promise of "She Works Hard for the Money."

In moments they had ducked through a curtained door way----not the o ne used by performers to enter-- and were abl e to shut a door behind it and fi nd themselves in the plain- jane women's john: two cubicles and a sink.

"Ooh," Electra said, now that conversation was possible despite the bass t hump-thump-thump beyond the graffiti-deco rated door. "That costume on stage looks as if it would hurt!"

"It doesn't if you're in shape," Lindy said cheerfully.

She herself was retired from stripping and had gone hap pily to overweight and jogging suits adorned with outrageous say ings. Today's was "Get It Up Before I t Gets Up and Leaves."

Her dyed hair was as matte-black as the drugstore eyeliner choking her eyes into smoky slits. The cigarette rode her fi ngers like a favorite rin g, fogging her voice with world weary harshness. But her hazel eyes brimm ed with excite ment.

"Wait'll you see what we've done in the dressing room," she told them. "Don't ask any questions; just look."

She fl ourished another door open. Temple prepared her self for the long, dispirited all ey of facing mirrors, furniture - less space, concrete fl oor studded with cigarette butts, and battered lockers at one end.

"Oh. This is nice." Elec tra edged over the green indoor outdoor carpet like a pleasantly surprised realtor, "Very cozy. '

"Look." Lindy waved her cigarette hand at one wall, a magician drawing smoke away from an illusion.

A sign-in board had blanks for each performer's name and hours. Another board held an array of combination locks for the lockers, unheard of in the stripping business, where privacy was a bad joke from beginning to end. A third board, labeled "Miscellany," held tacked-up plastic baggies fi lled with safety pins, Band-Aids, tampons, sample perfume vials, dark makeup for tan marks, light makeup for bruises, nail fi les, run-stop-- everything the improperly attired stripper might need in a pinch.

"Neat." Temple studied the array, hunting ideas for her own travel kit-cum- tote bag. Then she looked down the once-naked facing count ertops flanked by mirrors. Light weight metal folding chairs painted in rainbow colors lined up along both sides, like would-be perches for Walt Disney butterfl ies.

"It could be any chorus girls' dressing room," Temple said in amazement, remembering the bus-station rest-room air that had haunted this dressing room the last time she'd seen it, when it was as if the women who used it were not worth a mom ent's convenience. No food stamps littered the floor like unused bus transfers. No dreary, gray functional pall draped everything like a spider web.

Lindy's beaming smile could only be called maternal. "You're right. Classy, Ike would have--" She glanced nervously at Electra's venerable silver hair.

"You remember 'Moll Philanders' from the Over-Sexty Divisi on of the contest," Temple said, "Black leather and the silver Hesketh Vampire ."

"--shit a brick. " Lindy, though shocked, suddenly relaxed. studying the now-demure Electra. "Hey, that was some bitchin' number you did with that motorcycle."

"Thank you, dear," Electra said modestly. "Not everybody has to go undercover by uncovering, but I managed. This is very homey."

"Yeah, thanks." Lindy whirled back to Temple. "Oh, and did you notice the Midnight Louie shrine?"

"Louie? A shrine? He would be pleased. What do you mean?"

"Well, he nabbed the strangler, didn't he, with his own personal claws? We hav e only one unlocked locker, and it's all his."

She pointed. One of the repainted lockers--royal blue--stood ajar, its bottom lined in turquoise crushed velvet, the kind usually found on overstuffed sofas in seedy furniture stores near downtown bus stations.

Lindy bent to pull out two bowls from under the locker, then gesture with a nicotine pointer to the locker's top shelf. "A variety of food in case he shows up."

Temple trotted over on her high heels to eve the stacked cans with suspicion. "He really should be eating Free-to-be-Feline exclusively."

Lindy shrugged and straightened up with an impressive joint creak. "Let the poor dude live a little."

"But I don't understand, Why the royal treatment for Louie?"

"How do you think he nailed the Goliath killer? He was here that day; he must have spotted the perp then."

"What day?"

"The day you , that prissy protester and I came over here to see what a real club looked like Afterward, one of the girls said she found a black cat slammed into one of the lockers. She let him out. He must have been stalking his suspect."

"I thought I saw a big black cat skedaddling as we left that day, but I figured Louie couldn't be way over here . . . though he does like chorus girls' dressing rooms, I hear."

"Anyway, we figured giving a locker to you would be kind of silly, and you wouldn't much care for the association, so we decided on the cat instead. And we like the company."

"He comes to visit?"

"Sure." Lindy tapped the top shelf. "This is primo cat crap; Doris got it with her food stamps."

Temple let her eyes roll. She could see the headline now:

"Destitute Stripper Lives on Cat Food." Thus do tabloid rumors begin. And meanwhile, Louie was living it up in every dressing room in town. She turned to Electra.

"You should have seen this room before."

"Not nice, huh?"

Temple and Lindy nodded in grim tandem.

"Well, it's real cheery now," Electra pronounced. "Makes me want to roll the old H esketh Vampire out of the shed and tune up 'Wild Thing.' "

"Hey," said Lindy, "you can do your act in my place anytime."

Electra managed a polite simper of demur, but she looked more pleased with herself than a woman of well over sixty should in a strip joint.

"So it's your entire place now?" Temple asked, "Me and the other girls--and our silent partners."

"Silent partners? They're not--"

"Nothing shady," Lindy said quickly. "Think we'd screw it up now after fi nally gettin g a club to run by ourselves? No way, Mae West! We found some guys with a little money and a lot of time to invest. They should be here by now. Come on, I want you to meet them."

Temple dragged the Plexiglas high heels of her black patent-leather Stuart Weitzman's as she followed Lindy and Electra back into the boo m-box atmosphere beyond the ladies' john. She didn't want to meet the sort of men who back strip clubs, and certainly not while she was wearing patent leather shoes! Much as she supported these women taking some control over their lives---and livelihoods--she still suffered qualms of political correctness at the whole idea of strippers. She had glimpsed too much of the life's ugly underbelly of use and abuse during the stripper contest and the preceding murders to like it. Love the stripper, hate the strip.

Oh, joy. The piped-in music was momentarily mute. Quiet was an assault of another sort, that made the stripped-down, functional architecture of raised horseshoe stage and bar, tables and chairs, seem perverse, especially the brass fi remen's poles shining here and there like something Faye Wray should be chained to.

A group of men sat at one of the big tables up front, right by the stage lip and overhead lights and sunken fans aimed to blow up hair and skirts--what there was of them.

Temple was shocked to recognize one of the men.

"Eightball?" She was even more shocked by how her voice rang out in the uncommon stillness.

"Eightball!" Electra roared with affection, descending on the slight old guy like a Hesketh Vampire, all silver and blue and raucous and revv ed up.

"How you been?" Electra asked, embracing him heartily.

"Hey, Wild Blue how goes the cloud chase?"

Another old gent nodded, and from where she hung back, Temple could still see how he got his nickname. Somehow he'd stolen Paul Newman's eves, and maybe even Paul wasn't the gritty youngster he used to be in old movies.

The introductions were a fl urry that left Temple aware of tan, seamed faces, of thin or absent-without-leave hair, of ears even bigger than Ross Perot's, of shy smiles and gnarled hands that gripped hers with surprising strength.

The names rolled by li ke a vaudeville cast: Eightball O'Rourke. Wild Blue Pike. Spuds Lonnigan-----really! Pitchblende O'Hara, Cranky Ferguson. Another name came up. The Glory Hole Gang.

"Yeah," said Wild Blue, sitti ng, as they all did, after drag ging chairs over for Temple, Electra and Lindy. Gentlemen of the Old School. "We run that ghost town out on Ninety-five, Glory Hole. We're the Glory Hole Gang ."

"You were a private detective," Temple accused Eightball O 'Rourke.

"Still am," he said. "And we still are a Glory Hole Gang.

See, we accidentally made off with some old silver dollars a fter W.W. Two, and then we lost 'em--it's a long story. Someone found 'em a couple years ago. We ended up ex onerated--a big word for a bunch of old guys--and our ghost town turned out to be a lucrative tourist attraction. We had a little jingle in our pockets to invest, and Lord knows, we spent enough lonely decades in the desert to appreciate an oh-ay -sis of civilization like this."

Here they all chuckled in concert, while Temple tried to fi gure out what a "consortiu m" of battered and fiercely inde pendent strippers had in common with a band of outlaws elderly enough to be their grandfathers. Maybe it was no e arthly use for each other, and in that absence of malice laid safety and a well of regrets lost beyond retrieving.

"You," Temple said suddenly. "I've seen you before."

She was not addressing private-eye Eightball O'Rourke, whom she certainly had met--and employed--during the ABA murder and cat-snatching escapade.

The small man of fi fty-something slid his straw fedora with the snappy madras-plaid hatband across the tabletop as if it were a shell in a street game before 'fessing up. "It wasn't here at Kitty City, where all these old guys play Walter Mitty."

"I kno w where it wasn't," Temple said, "but where was it? The Circle Ritz! You were feeding Midnight Louie pas trami!"

"Sure, I've been known to feed the kitty, at poker tables all over this city."

"Don't play coy with me. You're the one who brought news of Crawford Buchanan's heart attack. He's not one of the silent partners, is he?"

"W hat's with silence? Crawford wanted in. I just told him confl ict of interest's a sin."

Temple eased back in her cha ir. "I'm glad somebody's willing to point out the straight and narrow to Buchanan. The club columnist for the Las Vegas Scoop has no business having a fi nancial interest in any club." She eyed the man with a last suspicion. "Aren't you Crawford's bookie, and isn't your name Cosanostra or something?"

"Bookie I am, and that's no slam. But pardon me, Ma'arn, it's Nostradamus ," he answered with a small bow, "Glad to meet again the famous Circle Ritz's unsung shamus."

"You mean Midnight Louie, no doubt. After all, he's already got one 'sh rine' in his honor."

"To the contrary, my dear Miss Barr, Louie's not half the sleuth you are."

"Charming, " Electra directed a high-beam smile at the courtly bookie.

A motion behind the gla ss walls of the dj's booth indi cated that the blessed silence was about to be cursed with cacophony again. Temple slapped her hands on the table.

"Nice meeting you all, but l must head back to the famous Ci rcle Ritz." She eyed Electra. "I 've got to call a woman about a cat show. Coming?"

"You toddle on without me, dear." Electra's silver-starred nails made like c omets as they waved her away. "I 'll, uh, stick around with the guys for a while."

"But I'm taking the car ."

"That's okay. I'll hitch a ride with the boys. You must have some sort of wheels, right?" Her glance interrogated the circle of oldsters, who nodded as if they'd never heard of restricted licenses.

"I can always take yo u for a spin in my biplane," W ild Blue offered with a grin, "Out to Lost Camel rock."

This last reference caused everyone to laugh, leaving Tem ple in the dark, Must be a notorious Lover's Lane for the over-sixty set she thought. Probably they all parked out there and played Lawrence Welk tapes on their car audio systems and picked their false teeth in four-four time. On the other hand, given the way age stereotypes were collapsing nowadays, who could say what the zesty set was up to? Probably a lot more than she was these days.

The sound system kicked in with brass, spit and no polish. Temple back ed away from the companionable table-----folk s looking at each other instead of the stage, imagine that--waved good-bye to Lindy, and made fast tracks for the door. This was one time she couldn't hear the committed clip of her high heels.

Outside , in the glaring su nshine, a prickly wave of1oneliness fl ooded her. Nothing to do but go back to an empty apartment and call a woman she didn't know about some- thing she di dn't want to know about: a rinky -dink cat show and callers that hiss in the night. No rendezvous with the long-gone Max to contemplate, no one she loved waiting in the apartment she loved. Even Midnight Louie had vanished for the day on some feline mission or other.

Was Matt right? She wondered as she clicked toward the Storm's sleek metallic aqua sides, though not even that jaunty sight could lift her sudden malaise. Was she getting hooked on the odd nearby murder now that Max was out of her life? Did she c rave the excitement of a crime fi x? Did she like being the target of cra zed murderers and homicide Lieu tenant Molina's unending skepticism?

Or did she just have an uncanny talent for landing dead c enter of the scene of the crime?

She unlocked the Storm and gingerly pulled open the hot metal latch. Inside, the car was a shell of sweltering plastic surfaces and a genuine-fabric hot seat.

Temple stared at the collapsible cardboard shading her windshield: the Pink Panther in full feline stalk on both sides, coming and going. Somehow, a cat show couldn't c ompete with the five- course exhilaration of the American Booksellers Convention and a stripper's competition, both with a generous helping of murder on the side.

W ho'd want to kill a cat other than some deranged pit bull?

Chapter 6

Bad Karma

I cannot say that I am relieved when Miss Temple Barr and Miss Electra Lark exit arguing into the hall, leaving me in the penthouse, in the dark.

For one thing, my legendary skills at seeing in the dark are more than somewhat exaggerated. I am not one to pooh-pooh the notion that I possess heroic powers, but l must admit that there is enough wall-to-wall whatsitz in these rooms to make me long tor my look-alike, the black cat with the Eveready flashlight batteries. I could use some technological assistance.

Not having any at the moment, I opt for the next best thing: a bright idea. I jump up on a table studded with knickknacks, managing to land---by some miracle--straddling two scorpion paperweights and a lava lamp cord. Once at window height, I paw among the mini-blinds until I have bent a couple out of shape. A boomerang-shaped sliver of daylight slices the dimness like a machete.

I turn and regard all that I can see: the room I occupy, which appears to be accoutered for dining, and portions of adjacent spaces. Opposite me is the familiar dead gaze of a television screen on empty--only this one is inset into a blond box I have never seen the likes of before. And atop the television case sits a large green glass ball, held aloft by a sculpture that resembles a conga line of cockroaches.

I breathe a sigh of relief. Yes, even Midnight Louie has his anxieties. I was worried about meeting some mega size dude on his own territory, without a clue, in the dark. But now l spy the faint reflection off other glass balls here and there and realize that Miss Electra Lark is merely partial to shiny globelike objects, rather than keeping a secret menagerie of dogs--or, worse, demons.

I arch athletically down to the floor. Actually, it would have been an athletic arch had the lava lamp cord not snagged in my foot. l resemble an arch myself--just call my maneuver the St. Louie Arch--as I twist in midair lo extricate myself. Naturally, I do, barely pulling the lamp along the table more than three inches, and pounce lightly to tepid parquet.

Now that I am safely ensconced and at my leisure, and have a window-slit to see by, I decide to take a peek around. Obviously, Miss Electra Lark is a collector of sorts, and I am always interested in what people stock upon. Miss Electra Lark seems to have a taste for furniture styles that I have not seen since visiting the Ghost Suite at the Crystal Phoenix. Which dates--untouched- from the 1940s. I writhe in and out among various overstuffed pieces attired in fabric patterns so loud they sing the "Hallelujah Chorus."

Ceramic ashtrays almost as noisy squat on every tabletop, some with rhinestones embedded in their tree-form shapes. Bauhaus this is not. A pole lamp upholds a corner of the room, its various light bulbs wearing shades of maroon, forest green and chartreuse. This last chartreuse is an attractive color when it is on little green apples and in the eyes of a lovely lady of the feline persuasion, but on lamps it is a disaster.

I settle down in the middle of the room under a chrome dinette set whose chairs are upholstered in pearlized gray plastic while I mop my fevered brow. Actually, my brow cannot get fevered, since dudes of my ilk do not sweat, even under the most extreme pressure. But I am certain that I can get brain fever, at least, from exposure to such assertive furnishings. No wonder Miss Electra

Lark does not want anybody to see her place; I would not either, it I lived in a vintage junkyard . . . come to think of it, at times (bad times). I have.

At least that baleful slime-green eye is not upon me anymore. It must have been a reflection of the lava lamp in a chrome chair leg or one of the dozens of crystal balls scattered around the joint.

I tidy my whiskers. which look best when they are a snappy pure white against my best black suit coat, and make sure my tail has not snagged any dust that I may have inadvertently picked up on my unexpected slide across the tabletop. Midnight Louie does not descend to domestic duties, even by accident. The word "house," when attached to the word "work" or "cat." is not in my vocabulary, no more than that most obscene of terms. "pet."

I am gazing about the premises, wondering where to wander next, when I spot another orb of green, this one near floor level. No doubt this is the eternal gleam of some common household machine, such as a VCR, to show that it is on and ready to perform at the flick of a button, unlike myself.

On the other hand, it could be the eye of some uncommon household familiar. and given Miss Electra Lark's apparent fondness for the trappings of the occult, my speculations could run riot.

In fact, the more I think of it, I could run riot. There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than I care to meet in either place, or even dream of.

I pinch myself to make sure I am not in La-La-Bye Land. Sure enough, I draw blood. I have no alternative but to face off this unknown entity. I do not know the layout well enough to run, and would have to turn my back to the room while working on the French door lever. I do not intend to die with one paw jammed on a piece of foreign hardware.

What is up? I growl in a low, surly tone. I do not care to ask "Who is there?" just in case the eye I spy does not belong to a Who, but a What. No point in irritating a genuine What by miscalling it a Who. I figure.

My agile mind casts back on all the one-eyed beings ol my acquaintance, either first- or secondhand, including a few nasty deities from times gone by I have heard of. l mutter a plea for protection to Bast and shimmy forward on my belly over the smooth parquet floor.

I am as soft and slow-flowing as licorice syrup. Before you know it, l am up against a sola covered in cocoa-colored nubs interwoven with gold fibers. A cocoa-satin fringe undulates at my eye level, playing peek-a-boo with the one-eyed Jack, Jill or jinn lurking beneath the terminally ugly sofa. Could this be Veronica Lake's ghost I see'? I am open to any possibility.

Now is the time to make my move. l thrust my puss past the fringe, my whiskers twitching at this unpleasant contact. I repeat my interrogatory growl in a deeper tone of voice. I lash my tail back and forth behind me. I sneeze at the miasma of dust that rises both f ore a nd aft, thanks to my own efforts .

In the instant my vigilant eyes squeeze shut during my involuntary spasm ol reaction, something shifts. I am now staring into two hellish green gleams about an inch apart. Either Miss Electra Lark's VCR likes to hide under the couch and comes with dual warning lights, or something living is facing me.

"House security," I growl in my most Dobermanish voice. "Come out of there with your ears down and your mouth shut."

I hear no accommodating slither, instead, l hear a low, soft "No."

This is not a literal , "no," of course, but the message is unmistakable. l do not waste time arguing. l withdraw, then approach the sofa end. Taking a power stance, i dash at the arm with all of my nineteen pounds of macho might. The sofa lurches a few inches over the smooth wooden floor . Your average du de would not be able to do this, and I do not recommend trying this in your own home. It tends to aggravate the owners.

But this is an emergency. Con sider it a form of pest removal, even if the so-called pest could be a demonic being. I am not deterred. l rear back and launch my unbridled weight again. A screech of wood sofa legs on wood floor, an indignant and unearthly echoing yowl from beneath the sofa and--mission accomplished.

The lurker has ceased and desisted. l am now confronted by a spectral aura of bristling gold and silver. From the center of a dark face mask, two brilliant, perfectly round green eyes glare at me like twin earths it I were seeing double on the moon.

I have faced down many an evil eye in my day--feline, canine, human, even reptilian. I am not intimidated by the bigger, the meaner, the smarter or the sneakier. But now I have met my match. Never before have I encountered a stare of this magnitude, like indigo ice. I gulp and gather myself, not sure whether my best bet is to otter attack--or apology.

Even as I dither, which is most unlike me; an unseen wind lifts the aura that surrounds the surreal peepers. Something pushes me in the chest, hard. The next thing I know, I am head over tail by the pole lamp, which has kicked on at the impact. Six pools of relentless light pour down on my groggy form like interrogation-room lights from a Cagney gangster movie.

The eyes and the aura are stalking over to me on unnervingly noiseless feet. Four of them, l am alert enough to notice. That eliminates vegetable and mineral. But what kind of animal is this?

"How did you do that?" I gasp, untangling my various extremities.

"Karma," says the creature, stopping a whiskers breadth away.

I still cannot tear my gaze from the awful indigo eyes, though I notice that for all their unnatural roundness, they have a slig ht tilt, Could this bozo be a bozette'?

"Karma," I repeat, wondering i f it is some exotic form of martial art. I will have to observe Mr. Matt Devine's lessons with a more studious eye from now on. "You did not lay a glove on me," I add with a growl.

The low trill that comes from under the dark mask around the eyes is mocking. It I did not know better. I would describe it as a laugh, but demons do not laugh.

"l do wear gloves," my assailant points out in a deep, throaty voice that is oddly Tallulah. It waves two white fore extremities.

The silver-and-gold aura is settling down into a glimmering robe of soft fur. Flattened dark ears perk above the unblinking eyes. I realize, amazed, that I am staring at one of my own ilk, though I have never seen the like before.

"Karma, " I repeat, for lack of any stimulating repartee. I am not often off balance, but at the moment, my brain is screaming "Tilt!" like a broken pinball machine.

"That is my name," the creature says. "Yours is Midnight Louie." And it looks me over with a familiar stare. "l cannot claim the honor of your acquaintance."

"To my honor and your loss, I am . . . aware of your doings." I do not like the superior tone that is drenching me, so I struggle to a dignified seated position while I secretly check my physique for damage. "Just who--or what--are you?"

"I am a resident of these rooms."

"So you say you live here." I am getting my bearings now and use my best Lieutenant Molina snarl. "How come I never heard of you?"

"You have heard me," it answers with a hoity-toity smirk.

I narrow my eyes to their most laser like green slits. " You are responsible for those strange noises l hear two floors down in Miss Temple Barr's unit now and again."

"You have good . . . ears," it concedes, and in that moment I recognize it for a she rather than a he , A He would have been trying to pin back my ears by now, with m e at such a disadvantage. A She would stroll around and rub in the indignity.

"Just what kind of critter are you?" I ask.

"You mean my breed, or my nature?"

"They are the same thing."

"Only to the uninquiring."

"Listen, lady, I got as much curiosity as the next dude. Are you going to keep on making like a sphinx, or what?"

The brilliant baby-blues blink. Slowly, like the shutter on a very expensive camera. I can almost hear the mechanical sn ick as they slide apart and the motionless, blue-marble eyes fix on me.

"I was born a Birman," she says, as ii she has transfigured into something else since then, Yeah, sure.

"Birman," I repeat, playing for time. I have heard of a Burmese, on e of those many oriental breeds, but what is a Birman? I am never one to admit ignorance when I can play tight-Iipped and get informed for free.

I examine her in t he down-lights of the pole lamp, which cast unfortunate maroon, chartreuse and forest-green shadows on her pale fur . This is one big babe. I do not know yet how she swatted me without seeming to lay a white glove on me, but I can see she's big-boned, with a broad head as round as her intimid ating eyes. Come to think of it, she reminds me of Lieutenant Molina in that department. Even her whiskers are thick. Not Lieutenant Molina's--this character Karma's.

She has a long, massive body and sturdy legs with strong claws under those polite white gloves. The rest of her is creamy golden color shading to silver in the light, but her ear s, bushy tail and facial mask are as dusky as delta twilight. That mask is creepy; all th e better to see her big, bright, wolfish indigo eyes. I decide that it is no indignity to get sideswiped by this limousine of a lady.

"Listen," I say, licking my own gloveless paw apologetically.

"l did not know you were a legitimate resident. I am sorry if I messed up your furniture arrangement. I will replace it."

"Do not bother," she says, even as I look toward the sofa to figure how far I have to shove it back into place.

It is in place. I look to Karma, who is sitting there while her fur slowly settles. She does not look hall as fierce without her battle halo, but she is still one mysterious lady.

"I suppose you managed that the same way you knocked me into pole-lamp heaven?"

"Things are not always what they seem, especially when the primal brain has brought out the beast in one."

"You calling me intemperate?"

"Only . . . p rimitive." Karma brushes a long, spidery hair above her right eye. "You have many lives to traverse, Midnight Louie," she says sadly, " Before you can commune with the higher self."

"I would rather reach the h igher shelf than the higher self . That is where all the goodies are invariably kept."

Karma shakes her head as it dislodging an unpleasant flea from her left ear. " Life --and death--are more than the temporal attainment of physical possessions or pleasures, Louie."

"Temporary attainment and physical pleasure have been just line with me so far."

"So far," sh e repeats in a vague tone. "So f ar. . .

"I will leave now, " l say firmly, rising with my usual grace and dignity.

"You may leave, but you will not outrun your fate. You d o not have that many lives left Louie, and you are not an advanced enough soul to be assured of returning in a higher form. Be careful."

"l am a higher form! And I do not worry about returning when I h ave no intention of leaving. As for advanced souls, the only good thing I ever heard of that was advanced was a paycheck."

"l see death," Karma says so calmly she might be posing a s the Dark Dude himself in the f lesh.

" In . . . person?"

"I see death in a collective mode. De ath is collecting soon. Reaping, it bends close to you, close to those near to you."

"That is nothing new," I answer with as much swagger as l can muster; after b eing wrapped around a pole lamp that is not a great deal. "Danger is my middle name."

The blue eyes widen and deepen into lapis-lazuli pits. I swallow, seeing into them as Miss Electra Lark might gaze into her many crystal balls. They are more bottomless than the house drinks on the Strip and as honeyed an d cloying as ocean-blue Curacao, straight up.

"l see death in two places, on two levels. l see danger for those around you. I see you, Midnight Louie . I see Libra in the ascendancy. Beware Libra! I see many of our kind in danger."

" Libra?" l reply without a blink, "l do not believe in these horrorscopes. Besides, I am a Pisces myself. And how many individuals of the feline sort are in danger?"

"Many," comes the answer as a shudder shakes Karma's pale, silky form.

That is the difficulty with these purebreds: too neurotic, especially the reclusive kind. Even the Divine Yvette is a tad . . . skittish, no doubt the result oi being kept too often in a pink-canvas carry-bag. l understand that a certain shade of pink is calming to the human psychopath, but l believe that this same tint does nothing for felines except encourage them to become color-blind.

I yawn and ask again, "How many?" If I am going to sit still for predictions oi disaster, I want a precise body count.

"Dozens," Karma replies in a faint, keening voice.

"Dozens, huh? Sounds like a normal day at the animal pound."

Karma shudders again. Perhaps the air conditioning is kept too high, because I do not feel the urge to shake so much as a whisker.

"Do not mention that place of sighs and slaughter," Karma warns me in a doom-filled voice. "Why do you suppose I must sequester myself in silence and shadow? To keep the anguish radiating daily from that Place of Infamy from interfering with my sensitive apprehension of more specific and less common crimes against our species. I tell you that there will be chaos soon, that it will decimate our kind, an utter catastrophe."

"Dozens threatened with death, you say, but not at the pound?"

"Perhaps . . . a hundred or more."

"Where can sitting ducks of the feline stripe be found if not in the cages at the animal pound?" I muse aloud, inadvertently striking a rhyme just like my bookie pal Nostradamus.

"That is your job to find out." Karma growls softly. "l am a mere conduit, a receiver."

I tell her that l do not know why I should believe a word of this hokum. "Who made you Psychic Central?" I ask.

Karma sighs and settles into her haunches, forelegs tucked in so she resembles a mandarin on a rice-paper scroll.

"l am Birman-born," she announces at length.

"So I heard."

Another sigh, no doubt of exasperation with my ignorance -- or more likely, with my fail ure to be impressed by pedigree, "We are temple cats. "

"You mean like my pal Moshe the Mouser at Beth Israel?"

"A more Eastern temple than that," Karma answers with the usual disdain. These know-it-alls-i n-advance are always disdainful, "We are the Sacred Cat of Burma and companions to the priests of the Temple of Lao-Tsun, who worship a golden goddess with blue eyes named Tsun-Kyan-Kse."

"Recently?" I cannot help inquiring snappily. All these foreign words sound like the menu at a chop suey establishment.

"Time is a dream in the windowless eyes of an ancient house," Karma replies in a dismissive singsong.

Just what this means, I cannot say. Perhaps it is one of those pithy oriental poems called a haiku, which are not supposed to make sense.

Karma goes on to chant. "One day"-presumably in this Never-Never Land of Unaccountable Time--"evil men attacked the temple and killed the head priest as he meditated before the goddess."

I'd spend a lot of time meditating before a golden goddess with blue eyes myself.

"The priest's pure white cat, Sinh, put his paws on his dead master's body, defying the enemy raiders to defile the dead."

I recall a saying among veterinarians of my acquaintance: "if it is white, it will bite." and I must admit that my own experience bears out this aphorism, especially in the case of pit bulls.

Karma's voice continues, a growing purr rising under her voice like the three-hankie sound track on a Benji movie. "As he did this, his body f u r grew as golden as the goddess, while his paws remain ed as white as snow, for purity. His legs, lace, ears and tail became the color of earth, and his yellow eyes turned celestial blue. For seven days and nights, Sinh remained before the goddess, refusing all food until he died."

Oops. Sounds like this cross-dressing dude had a death wish, which would not be surprising.

Karma, however, cannot read my mind. Perhaps it is too close at hand, or perhaps she does no t deign to do so. She continues, much taken with the story of her supernatural ancestry. "Sinh took the old priest's soul to paradise with him. And when the other priests met to choose a successor for the head priest, the one hundred white temple cats marched into the main hall, assuming the image of changed Sinh as they came. They circled a young priest to replace the old one fallen. And since then, the Birman wears the golden coat of the godd ess, has her sapphire-blue eyes, bears the earthy marks of death and the pure-white paws of triumph over evil and death."

Karma lifts one of these prissy-gloved extremities for my inspection.

"Well." say I. "A touching story. My own forebears have a certain supernatural cache dating back to medieval times. We were persecuted for our color and suspected association with humans of a parapsychological persuasion. You Bir m ans had it soft in comparison. Purrsonally, I cannot see myself as the pampered companion of some priest. The contemplative life is not for me."

Karma shrugs. "That is obvious," she says in the Royal We tone of a Sacred Cat of Burma.

This chick is definitely living in the past, which does not speak well to her skill i n foretelling the future. Still, she is a cool old doll in her own ditsy, self-important way, and I decide it would not hurt to sniff out the Las Vegas scene and see if there is someplace besides the dreaded pound where a plentitude of cats abides, ripe f or the mass catastrophe this Karma doll is so fond of predicting.

Chapter 7

Sister Act

With just three of them there, it was inevitable that ConTact's phone lines would jingle like the nickel slots in the Sahara Hotel all night long. Sitting in the overhead fluorescent glare, watching the dots dance on the dingy acoustic tile and waiting for the luck of the draw in terms of incoming calls, was a lot like gambling, Matt often thought.

At least he found himself half-hypnotized by the unpredictable rhythm of it, the dullness of silence and murmuring voices around him interrupted by a shrill ring; then he was off to the races--thinking, talking, judging, guessing, persuading.

ConTact, being a generic hotline, took all comers.

At eight-fifteen, he convinced a rape victim--survivor, Matt grimly revised--to seek emergency-room attention after he reassured her by giving her some idea of what to expect. At nine, the Shoe Freak called. This well-educated sounding woman fretted in precise, academic tones about the worldwide conspiracy to ruin women's feet with high-heeled shoes. Her exhaustive personal surveys of podiatrists and fashion columnists proved her point, and she cited these experts monotonously.

Matt smiled when he recognized her voice. She was a "regular," and harmless, except for monopolizing phone time that could help someone who was out of control. The Shoe Freak was never out of control, which was both her problem and her salvation, in an odd way. She had found her obsessive hobbyhorse and could ride it to death without doing drugs or committing kleptomania or turning to any of another half-dozen pressure-releasing habits that are so destructive. Matt tried to shepherd her off the line as quickly as possible without refusing her a few moments' outlet. He smiled again as he thought of what would happen if he could put Temple on the line in his place some night.

"Brother John," the Shoe Freak was saying in her even, automaton voice, "you know that the reason men rule the world is because they don't destroy their arches in killer shoes."

"Do men rule the world?" he asked the smile still in his voice.

"It's nothing to smirk about. Certainly men rule the world." she began in a tone that promised a new and more predictable ax to grind.

"I'm sorry--another line is blinking like crazy. We're down on staff tonight."

"The only men senseless enough to cram their feet into these contemporary torture machines are transvestites, and my studies show that even they have shockingly high occurrences of bunions, hammer toes and fallen arches, despite the part-time nature of their high-heel wearing--"

"I really must hang up," he interrupted, worried now that someone at the end of his rope might be hanging figuratively from an unanswered telephone line.

"Of course," she said in haughty tones, as if he had be en the crank caller, not she. "I 'll send you a copy of my full thesis when it's written."

On that threat, he punched another button to an open line and braced for the next caller. "ConTact."

"Hello," began a doubtful, elderly female voice.

Matt tried to balance the usual preconceptions with the need to get an instant fix on the sex, age and emotional state of his caller. This one sounded like she was dialing a local pizza place and wasn't too sure of what she had reached. For a moment he wondered if this was a redial from the hesitant woman with the hissing problem.

"I don't suppose this is the ordinary call you get," the voice went on, gaining strength and purpose.

"None of our calls are ordinary," he put in gently as a bit of disarming humor, "and I can't tell yet about yours."

"But I imagine the rules of your vocation are pretty strict."

Something about the phrase rankled. His fingers reached for the pad on which he often doodled during his long hours on the phone with the naked and the damned. A psychiatrist would have had a field day with his free-form inkings in black, blue and red ballpoint, he thought as he made the first stroke.

"We're supposed to talk about you," he reminded her, again gently. Unlike many his age -- thirty-three -- he had eternal patience with the elderly. He'd had experience.

"I'm not the problem."

By now, the voice, though no younger, had grown wry and rueful. It had a personality. Matt found himself beginning to relax. Whatever she wanted, she wasn't on the brink of a pressing personal crisis. He began to grow curious.

"Your situation doesn't sound critical. Maybe you should try Ann Landers."

She sighed. "I'm trying to find someone."

"Or the police."

"Someone I haven't seen in . . . oh, eighteen years."

Matt was momentarily stumped. "How about a private detective?"

"I know where this person is."

"Oh, is it a relative?"

"Not at all."

"And if you know where he--she--"

"He."

"If you know where he is, why can't you approach him yourself?"

"I don't know where he lives. And where he works, he isn't reachable in the normal sense."

"Surely someone where he works can take a message?"

"I don't know, w ill you?"

"Me?"

"I imagine that in your line of work there are rules about not identifying yourself."

"Quite true, we use pseudonyms, just like the people you phone at the classified department of the newspaper. It protects our privacy, and the focus shouldn't really be on us, so we all have nicknames, if you will."

"What is yours, young man?" '

For the first time, Matt felt naked about giving his working name, as if even this false barrier was about to be breached. The ballpoint pens smooth plastic barrel clung to a palm suddenly slightly damp.

"Brother John," he said , A silence.

"Is that you, Matthias?" the woman's voice demanded with a note of suspicion and satisfa ction that tensed his mind and body with an ancient anxiety, and momentary paralysis.

He had to answer. You don't elude a voice like that, the imperious tone of an old and old-fashioned teacher wrapping the innocuous question with invisible barbed wire.

"Ye-es," he admitted, against all the rules, against his inclination. He'd been so relentlessly trained not to lie that even the polite--or protective---social falsehood froze on his lips and then the truth came stuttering through.

Matt hias, No one had called him that in . . . years.

His pen was still, the intersecting red and blue spirals on his notepad bleeding color in a crazy-quilt pattern. The pen, as if on its own, began writing the block letters in a deep, paper-biting childish fashion: M-a-t-t-h-i-a-s A-n-d-r-e-w D-e-v-i-n-e. M.A.D.

"Who are you?" he asked.

That wasn't against the rules. Callers were the ones who were supposed to reveal themselves in this counseling game, not him. Not Matthias, whom he hadn't thought about in a long time. Once he'd turned fourteen, he had made everybody call him Matt.

"Sister Seraphina O'Donnell," came the answer, one that made him both sigh in relief and clench the pen so tightly that he accidentally retracted the point with a snap.

The barrel end pressed the pad and left a tiny "o," like an invisible bullet hole.

"Sister Superfi ne!" he said in amazement before he could stop himself. lt was what all the kids had called her, and it was a kind of compliment.

"So they tell me," she said with a chuckle. "I'm sorry I made you break the rules, but I'm glad you answered my call. I'm too old to feel like a fool on the telephone."

"How did you know . . . I was here?" Surprise was giving way to other emotions: anxiety, even anger.

"You did get a recommendation from the Monsignor at Saint Stanislaus to get the job."

"Oh, that. I 'd forgotten. What can l do for you, Sister?"

There he was, back; back i n respectful, grade-school mode, but with a hard-earned adult confi dence giving an edge to his question.

"I need a . . . personal consultation."

"Are you in Las Vegas?"

"Don't sound so incredulous, Matth ias." A laugh in her voice modifi ed the arbitrary tone.

Sister Superfi ne, for all her popularity at St. S tanislaus Catholic grade school, had been a disciplinarian as unshakable as a drill sergeant. That's why the boys had all secretly loved her and the girls had feared her.

"Las Vegas," she was continuing in a schoolhouse voice, "has more churches per capita than gambling casinos. I've been transferred to a long established Hispanic church here, Our Lady of Guadalupe."

"That's a long way from a Chicago inner-city Polish neighborhood, Sister."

"WeIl--" Now she sounded pushed, cornered. "I ' m retired, Matthias." Forgive me, Father, for I have grown old . . . an unpardonable but inevitable sin, even in the church.

"Your kind never retires, Sister Seraphina," he said quickly. " That's why you called me. What's this private consultation?"

She laughed again, apologe tically. "We have a little problem at OLG. I was hoping you could come out to see us on your off--hours."

"Yeah, I could . . ."

"It wouldn't take much time, and I don't know where to turn."

Now, coming from super-competent Sister Seraphina, that was a startling confession.

"What about the pastor at our Lady of Guadalupe?"

A long pause, the kind Matt was used to getting on the ConTact phone. The closer the questions cut to the bone, the longer it took to get an answer.

"He's . . . part of the problem. Please, Matthias. I'll tell you when you come. I just thank God I thought of you, and found you."

He would go, of course. He would go even though the idea gave him the heebie-jeebies, and he didn't want to see this sad parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, with its freight of eternally poor parishioners, with its idle, retired nuns put out to pastures not heavenly but all too human, with its mysterious pastor who was a problem. He had been there, and it wasn't his problem anymore. Or was it? But you don't say no to an old nun, to an old, favorite-teacher nun, to an old, never forgotten nun who knows how to track you down. Do you? Matthias didn't.

The ballpoint drew a series of thin red lines through the name so painfully yet carefully printed amid the much-inked squibbles.