Cat On A Hyacinth Hunt

Chapter 5

New Year's Irresolution

Temple stared into the mirror over the bathroom sink, looking like a hungover detective from a vintage film noir.

Her small, nineteen-fifties bathroom mirror was made to enhance that effect. It covered a built-in medicine cabinet, and was lit from above by a flickering, buzzing wand of blue -white fluorescent bulb.

Knowing this, Temple never looked in her bathroom mirror. She used the incandescent-lit looking glass on the bedroom wall above her bureau-cum-makeup table. But she needed to pass critical muster tonight, and figured that the only mirror on the wall that would judge her camouflaging makeup job as "fair" enough was this one.

The brutal downlight aged her ten years and even then she barely looked twenty-five. Cruel shadows played pocket-pool with her facial planes, but she still only resembled an unmade bed, not an assault victim.

Temple nodded at herself. Her head no longer ached at such violent movements. Good.

Even under this pitiless light she passed for healthy. The only sign of Efftnger's attack two days ago was a tendency to mumble. Her cut mouth and sore jaw refused to let her tongue tap-dance at its usual articulate speed.

But this was New Year's Eve, right? They would be eating (mush for her) and drinking, right?

She wouldn't be expected to sound like an elocution student with a fistful of glass marbles in her mouth spewing out consonants with spitball precision.

Temple glanced at the dainty bangle of evening watch on her left wrist, blinking while the temporary soft contact lenses floated like dead jellyfish skins over her eyes. The optometrist had said they were close enough to her forthcoming prescription to do everything but drive with, and she was not going out for her gala New Year's Eve date with Matt Devine (during which she would have to confess that she and Max were an item again and good-bye except for some neighborly schmoozing now and then) wearing those groady eight-year-old round frames: yuppie plastic tortoiseshell. How had she ever been hyped into choosing the East-coast owl look? Stupidity of the sweet bird of youth (probably an owlet), she guessed, as opposed to the stupidity of young single adulthood.

Temple stopped her antsy mental monolog, stopped moving. This was all an act, like dressing for the performance of a play. Concentrating on hiding the results of his stepfather's attack from Matt kept her from thinking of the emotional assault she would make sometime tonight on Matt himself: admitting that she and Max were together again. Their own recent relationship had been unspoken, but warm and even tender. Now that would have to stop. She didn't want to reject or hurt Matt, and she knew he didn't approve of Max, just like her family.

She put cold fingers to her warm cheeks, feeling like Scarlett O'Hara not wanting to think about it until tomorrow. Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn. I'd give up Tar a not to have to. . . .

Temple rushed back to the bedroom, grabbed her quirky little evening bag (Temple owned two sizes of purse: huge and lilliputian) and paused before the bedroom mirror. Of course, the brittle Cosmo Girl's number-one ground rule for telling a guy that everything was kaput was to look especially fabulous. The eat-your-heart-out look. But Temple had no need, intention or desire to have Matt cannibalize his cardiac organ. She just wanted to exit from his personal life on an optimistic note, not like a beaten puppy. And she certainly didn't want him feeling guilty about Effinger turning on her, when she was the guilty one for letting any relationship flower between them when her heart, body and soul were still mortgaged to the Mystifying Max Kinsella.

The soft-focus bedroom mirror told her that the foundation caked on her left cheek and eye socket as thick as burn camouflage worked like gangbusters. She practiced a smile. The left side lagged behind the right, but in a dim-lit restaurant that would only look like dramatic lighting.

Otherwise, she was up to snuff: the same silver-beaded dress Matt had seen before, so he wouldn't have any illusions she had, like, gone out and bought something special for this evening to remember, poor man . . . the Midnight Louie heels flashing their Austrian crystal brilliance everywhere, except on the glittering black silhouette of a green-eyed cat atop each high heel.

Temple twisted her torso to view as much of her rear as possible. Silvery gray panty hose covered her bruise-tattooed legs, but too bad she wasn't wearing hose with seams. The way the cat's front paws reached up the back of the shoes, Louie could almost be construed as straightening invisible seams. So forties noir. Too bad Louie couldn't straighten the seams in people's emotional lives. . . .

The real Midnight Louie, in the all too, too solid flesh and fur, lay stretched out horizontally, not vertically, on the bed's Zebra-pattern coverlet.

Temple blinked again. Not tears. No tears. Her sensitive eyes were tolerating the lenses better than they had earlier unsuccessful attempts at wearing soft contact lenses, but she was having trouble focusing through these Saran-wrap windows.

Louie yawned, displaying so much deep pink mouth and tongue that she couldn't miss the gesture.

"I won't be back until late, Louie. Real, real late."

She checked her watch again and grimaced. Eight-thirty. A nine p.m. dinner reservation at New York-New York Hotel and Casino, then hanging out until midnight to see the New Year in.

After that, Matt wanted her to stop and view the red sofa in his apartment. She'd said she'd be too rushed before, that they could do it after. So that would be the scene of the coming crime: his place, in the wee hours of the New Year. She would tell him that she was once again previously engaged. Sort of.

"I am a worm!" she told Louie in heartfelt tones.

He did not disagree.

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

Despite her physical and mental preparations for the coming ordeal, Temple still jumped when her mellow doorbell chimed.

She clattered to the front door over the parquet floor, pausing to look through the peephole first. No more surprise carry-out boys for her!

The tiny convex glass conveyed a travesty of fuzzy, foreshortened image, but there was no mistaking that butterscotch-blond head.

Temple flung open the door, always prone to overreact under stress, and prepared to chatter away despite the risk of revealing her mandibular difficulties. Instead she was struck dumb.

Well. Wow. What could she say? He stood there looking like the perfect prom-date-cum-Greek god, wearing some sort of bronze-sheeny jacket over an ivory turtleneck that turned his hair to spun gold and his warm brown eyes to the richest, smoothest, most self-destructive chocolate mousse you ever wanted to drown in.

And she had thought Max had a certain stage presence.

But it wasn't just the clothes or Matt's always enthralling looks. Matt was different, very different. Somehow, he had changed more than she had over the Christmas holidays, during their separate missions.

He stepped in without being asked. "You look fabulous," he said, as if on cue, and with sincerity.

"Oh, this old thing. You've seen it before. I wore it to the Gridiron dinner."

"It looks even better now."

"Look who's talking."

"Maybe this is a bit much." He glanced disowningly down at his brandy velvet sleeves.

"No. Perfect. But you reminded me. It is January, or almost January. I need a wrap. Rats. Be right back."

Temple retreated to her bedroom to root through her closet. All the best-laid plans of mice and Minnies, and she had forgotten to find a suitable evening wrap. ... A loose-knit black wool capelet went flying over her shoulder to drape Louie. Too casual. A sheer jacket of black chiffon hit the bedspread next. Too cool.

Finally she pulled out a black velveteen bolero and tore back to the foyer.

Matt wasn't there.

The door was now closed. Had he been kidnapped by his evil stepfather? Had he fled?

Where? What?

She turned in a circle while wrestling her aching arms into the jacket. And saw him standing by the French doors to the patio, studying the eternal aurora borealis of the Las Vegas Strip.

"Now I'm ready," she said, joining him.

"Chicago's so cold, narrow, dark. In the winter, at least. Even the streets with the snow piles at the curbs seem to be hunching their shoulders. But Las Vegas is like Camelot in the song from the musical: the weather is wonderful by decree."

"By decree of the corporate entrepreneurs who would pay the sun to shine if they had to; luckily, they don't."

Matt turned from the window, a small wrapped package in his hand. "Merry Christmas."

"Christmas, but that's... history. You ... I didn't get you anything."

"You overlook the sofa-hunt."

"But... I only got you to spend money."

"You sure did. I've been on a real jag. It was kind of fun. But it stops here."

He looked a little anxious. Temple finally realized that he had probably never bought a woman a present before, other than a nun or his mother. She desperately hoped she would really like it, although she would like it even if it were a weenie beanie baby from McDonald's.

The soft contact lenses softened even her closeup focus, as if she viewed everything under very clear water. A long thin box said jewelry; her conscience said, please, nothing too expensive. Her conscience had also said to leave off the opal and gold ring tonight, so her hands were bare as she wrestled off the elastic gold cord and the jewel-tone paper and finally had no option but to open the box.

"Oh! Wherever did you find it?"

"I thought it might go with the shoes."

"Oh, it does. Thank you." Temple blinked. "Damn these new contacts! I can't f-focus on anything. It feels like my eyes are watering all the time. Are they watering?" she added, not looking up from the box.

"They look a little dewier than usual. Do you really want contact lenses?"

"I suppose so. Why?"

"Well, you look kind of. . . different without glasses."

"Better, right?" .

"No. Just different. Like a stranger. I guess it'll take me a while to get used to the new you."

Was he righter than he knew! Temple lifted the delicate gold chain from the box, elevating the central figure of a cat in crushed black-opal inlay, collared in tiny diamonds, with winking emerald-green eyes.

It would go perfectly with Max's ring.

"It's wonderful, Matt! Perfect." She undid the tiny clasp and lifted her arms to fasten it behind her neck. Of course, her muscles screamed, "no fair!"

He mistook her pain for some confinement of the dress and took the chain ends from her fingers.

"Never done this in my life, but I think I know how it works. There."

He sounded proud of himself, but Temple skittered away to the foyer mirror, avoiding one more compromising moment, not that a lot of them weren't forthcoming.

Poor Matt was jumping every gate like a steeplechase champion; he just didn't know that the winner of the race had already been announced.

Temple positioned the exquisite charm in the hollow of her throat and swallowed hard to keep from bursting into tears. Probably they would float the treacherous soft lenses straight onto the floor as she shrank from shame like Alice into Tiny Alice, at risk of drowning in her own saltwater mess.

"Lovely," she managed to get out as she snatched her purse from the hall table and opened the door.

Matt followed, looking bemused, as if she had really chameleoned into a semi stranger.

The mechanics of getting to the New York-New York complex distracted them both from awkwardness, although Temple couldn't restrain a small shudder as they approached the parked Storm.

"Not as cold as New York?" Matt commented, momentarily wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

It hurt, but she dared not wince.

He saw her into the passenger's seat, then got behind the wheel and backed out of the slot.

Every ordinary action, and reaction, was pure torture for Tern-pie. Why had she thought she could let Matt down gently? That leading him on was kinder than letting him down from the first? Women were conditioned to feel responsible for everybody's hurt feelings, especially men's. They were either too hot or too cold, too encouraging or too chilling. They were supposed to figure out what they themselves really wanted and needed, all the while taking the emotional temperature of every soul around them and trying to soften blows and ease reality.

Max had been right. She wasn't here tonight because she needed to prolong the agony. She needed to delay the moment of truth.

Matt finally spoke, his face illuminated like a medieval angel's by the unholy halo of half-light from the dashboard. "I really can't thank you enough, Temple, for what you've done for me."

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea Maxima culpa . . . and she wasn't even Catholic! She wasn't even a good Unitarian, although she was suddenly thinking of entering the convent.

"Oh, yeah?" As if she were saying, "How interesting."

"Yeah. That's what I wanted to tell you tonight. I bet you're dying to hear how I tracked down Effinger, but that was just the beginning. Going back to Chicago was a revelation."

"So tell me," Temple said, getting a grip on her paranoia and deciding to relax back into the passenger seat.

This is what she was really here for: to listen, to understand. Matt's quest had become more entangled with her life than either he or she would like, but it was, had become, a tandem journey. That, Effinger had proven in the Circle Ritz parking lot not two days ago. That, nothing could change, not even Max. And he knew it. Sort of.

"First, I want to explain the plans for the evening." He glanced at her as they glided under a brilliant swath of street light.

Temple wished her face didn't feel as if it were wearing a plaster of Paris mask.

"I thought New York-New York might be fun, since you haven't been there yet and you're fresh from the real thing. They had this New Year's Eve package ... a before-dinner drink at the New York Bar at Times Square, dinner at a steakhouse--Gallagher's-- and an after-dinner drink at a place called Hamilton's, finishing with a midnight champagne cocktail back at the Times Square Bar."

"We should be finished by then, all right."

"I know it sounds kind of touristy and hokey--"

"It sounds like fun.... and what isn't touristy and hokey in Las Vegas. Drive on, MacDuff."

Matt seemed to relax now that she had accepted the evening's program. At least the novelty of visiting New York-New York would distract them both from any misgivings.

Naturally, the hotel loomed on the horizon, its skyscraper skyline lit up like an old-time switchboard on crack cocaine.

Matt parked in the MGM-Grand lot across the street. "I thought walking over would be the best way to see it. Can you walk this far in the Midnight Louie heels?"

"Can a stork stride?" Temple scrambled out of the car before Matt could come around to assist her. "This is so much better than real life. Even for Christmas, Manhattan is granite-gray drab. They should get with the mauve and verdigris buildings."

"Mauve and verdigris, huh? I took them for pink and pale green."

"Well, the green is the aged-copper color of the mock Statue of Liberty. Also the color of money. A very subtle reference in its own screaming way."

Crossing Las Vegas Boulevard was made simple by escalators up to the Brooklyn Bridge, whose light-draped spans glimmered like golden garlands against the night sky.

"Now that does look like the real thing," Temple said.

An escalator on the other side glided them down to the street level and the reflecting pool that surrounded the Lady with the Lamp.

They joined the random current of people bearing left past the Statue of Liberty to the hotel's main entrance. The front of the long porte cochere was a neon litany announcing "New York-New York" against a spiky crown motif borrowed from Lady Liberty.

In fact, a bed of flowers basking in the lurid neon glow repeated the tiara design. Across the driveway, stationed before the brassy row of entrance doors, pulsated a string of stretch limos painted Broadway yellow and striped with checkers to emulate New York City cabs.

Matt nodded to the limos and their vanity plates, which read NY NY 1, 3 and 4. "Wonder how Gangster's likes that?"

"You can't copyright ideas, especially in this town," Temple answered. She looked up at the glittering gold tiara above her, and the gilt art-deco fountain designs of the entrance facade.

"Cool."

Matt pulled a glossy brochure from his jacket pocket. "We're due at the Bar At Times Square for a predinner cocktail. I've got a map here--"

"I bet you do. This outing must have set you back a mint."

They pulled on Lady Liberty's torch-shaped door handles and entered the icy, dark interior of the hotel casino.

"It was nothing, compared to the second-hand sofa."

"And the necklace," Temple added in a spasm of guilt (or was that spelled "gilt" in the glittery ambiance of New York-New York?). Her fingertips traced the small feline figure at her throat.

Beneath them, marble inlaid floors sketched out another gigantic version of Lady Liberty's headgear. Around them chinked and chug-chimed and electronically yodeled dozens and dozens of slot machines. Ellis Island this was not.

They followed a marble-paved path past some upscale shops to the Central Park area.

"Oh." Temple paused.

Despite the eternal night sky of the casino interior, they were positioned to enter what she considered a Chinese plate scene: weeping willow trees, autumn trees half afire with fall colors amid the green leaves of summer, stuffed birds beside artistically arranged nests, a bridge over the untroubled waters of a small in-door lake.

And always the undying chatter and whoop of the flocking slot machines.

They crossed the-bridge to the Bar at Times Square, its lit red apple poised high above the crowds, ready for the traditional New Year's Eve dip at midnight.

They found a free cocktail table for two, and squeezed into the seats.

"Cozy," Temple observed.

"I'd say crowded. And noisy."

A waiter slouched over with true Manhattan nonchalance.

Matt flashed a green chit and the waiter was gone as fast as he had come.

"The drinks are built in," Matt said. "No choice."

"Another authentic touch of Olde New York."

"You sound a bit jaded."

"Maybe lugging Midnight Louie around Manhattan can do that. So tell me about the Great Manhunt here in Las Vegas."

"Effinger. What a bust. For Molina, anyway."

"She couldn't hold him for anything."

"How did you know?"

"Oh, guessed." Temple wasn't about to admit that she'd seen Effinger on the loose.

Some women, she supposed, would use Effinger's attack as an excuse to stop seeing Matt.

But telling Matt that he was too dangerous to know, and then hanging out with Max Kinsella was hardly consistent. Not with Max's shady connections having brought a much worse attack down on Temple months before. She suddenly remembered that Effinger was linked to Max as well as Matt. Lieutenant Molina suspected Max of involvement (in other words, murder) with the two dead men found in the casino ceilings of the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix Hotels months apart. The second body had borne Effinger's ID, although it was later proved a decoy when Matt tracked down the real Effinger. Effinger . . . Matt. . . Max, an eternal triangle, but what did it mean? Her thoughts stopped at Matt's continuing commentary on Effinger himself.

"... pretty funny, I guess. Me trailing dear old stepdad through off-Strip dives and finally nailing him at the Blue Mermaid Motel. I kept remembering you met the flamingo guy there.

Blue mermaids and pink flamingos. Only in Las Vegas."

The waiter materialized beside them, whisking two wide-mouth cocktail glasses floating maraschino cherries to the tabletop.

They both leaned over their mystery drinks, puzzled.

"Ah." Temple cracked the case first. "Manhattans, what else?"

Matt sipped his, then frowned. "Kind of. . . sweet. What's in them?"

"Ed Koch only knows! But you can put the cherry aside so the stem doesn't tickle your nose."

"I sampled a lot of strange and undrinkable concoctions on my pilgrimage."

"So what finally gave Effinger away?"

"His drinking habits. Boilermakers. Bartenders remember people's taste in liquor."

"Boilermakers? Yuck."

"I agree. Anyway, I waited at the motel until some guy showed up who was wearing a cowboy hat, and I followed him home."

"Wasn't that risky? Nevada's a western state. Lots of guys could wear cowboy hats."

"Well, the first one to come along was Cliff Effinger."

"So you . . . what? Approached him outside his door, asked him to come along to see the nice policewoman?"

"Not exactly. I, uh, invited myself in. At that point I wasn't sure what I was going to do. That room was such an incredible dump. And Effinger wasn't the ogre I thought he was. What? You look . . . skeptical."

"Tell me about it," Temple said swirling the cherry in her sweet, murky drink. She needed to know what had happened between Matt and his stepfather so she could understand why the man had come for her.

"It's not exactly edifying information for a New Year's Eve gala." Matt made a face as he sipped his Manhattan. "But nothing I have to report about my Christmas vacation is what you could call edifying. So. There's Effinger not believing it's me, and me not believing he's Effinger.

Such a scruffy old creep. Then he tries to run. Suddenly, I'm Tarzan. I feel like I could fling him around like Cheetah. I cool him off in the shower, haul him out to the pay phone by the manager's office and call police headquarters for Molina,"

"That's it? He was just a rag doll?"

Matt nodded soberly, thanks to the foreign taste of the Man-hattan. "He just didn't seem so big and dangerous any more. And he was really, really disturbed that I found him."

"Disturbed?"

"Ah, guess I should use the EI. lingo. Pissed. I never said that to a lady before. Never said that to anyone."

"Heard it, though, I bet. So Molina was duly grateful."

"Not really. She didn't have enough grounds to arrest him, but they kind of... coaxed him into going downtown for an interview. Then Molina lectured me for involving myself. I thought that was that, until she called me just after I got home and asked me to come in to watch his interrogation."

"Watch? Like behind one of those two-way windows?"

Matt nodded. "I'm not sure who she hoped to learn more from: Effinger, or me. Molina's tricky. She's always thinking of something you haven't gotten to yet."

"That's just the impression she wants to give. Carmen the Omniscient, always in control."

"Speaking of control--" Matt rotated his wrist. "We're due for dinner now."

"Nice watch."

"Huh? Oh. Christmas present from my mother. That's where the real mystery was solved. In Chicago."

"And I have to wait until we shift tables and settle down again to hear that." Temple struggled upright in the crowded bar and joined Matt on the fringe of the huge, echoing central casino. "Where to next?"

"Uh. Yon butcher shop, I guess."

"Oooh, someplace gruesome to discuss buried secrets." His, she devoutly hoped.

Not hers.