All the employees had cars, except Matt, though nobody at ConTact had noticed. He arrived on time, left on time, and always came back the next night. A man wasn't stalker-bait as women were. Nobody worried about him, including Matt. He knew he was always armed by the-formidable depth of his unhealed rage.
Still, a car was following him, creeping down the street about a hundred feet behind at an idling speed unnatural to anything made in Detroit.
Matt managed to kick a discarded Dr Pepper can, stumble, then turn as he regained his balance. He glimpsed a barge as broad as a boat, a late seventies Monte Carlo. Gang-bangers liked all that macho metal from Old Detroit, liked to keep their rust buckets in surprisingly good running order.
Yet this car did not broadcast the low, throaty growl of a souped-up street bomb. It crawled along with a discreet cough, fatigued tires hissing as the elderly rubber peeled over the asphalt.
Matt wasn't surprised that somebody was following him. He'd been tossing out so many lines of inquiry that one could have snagged anyone: a concerned but truculent supporter of Father Hernandez; Molina or one of her minions, annoyed that he had imitated Temple by playing amateur investigator; an aggravated associate who had heard Matt was looking for a man who wanted to stay missing.
Or it could be that man himself.
That thought stopped Matt's breath for a moment. Rage surged so strong that it felt, for a moment, like fear. Neither emotion was useful now. Matt calmed himself, tried to think.
If he had stirred up this kind of interest, he was on to something, in either area he was investigating. He could learn from his stalker. He could teach his stalker that a man walking alone at night is not always a target. Sometimes he is a mobile trap.
Ahead of Matt and the car a semaphore was blinking its timed changes: red, amber, and then green. Matt paced himself to arrive at the intersection when the light was red. He would be forced to stop. So would the car.
This bare, deserted corner offered no place to hide. Matt scanned ranks of locked shops with eerily ill lit display windows. There stood a cheap furniture store, its window infested with scabrous lamp shades. Here was a mailing center flaunting empty cardboard boxes. Next door a low-rent liquor store's windows were papered with hand-written specials on unrecognizable brands.
Matt buried his hands in his pockets and pretended to watch only the red light, waiting for it to change.
What changed was the discreet trailing behavior of the car and its unknown driver. With a squeal of protesting tires, the vehicle made a huge sloppy circle-turn in the empty intersection.
The big old car zipped up to the curb by Matt, its showroom sheen as much of a memory as its original olive-green color faded now to pale chartreuse.
The windows were tinted up-to-no-good, double-dark charcoal, but the driver leaned across the wide seat to roll one down.
Matt waited, ready to bolt, drop to the street, or dive in, whichever was called for.
''Need a ride, counselor?"
The light across the street turned green. Matt grasped the pitted chrome handle and yanked the massive door open. A sodium iodide streetlamp bled soft pink light onto an expanse of cracked vinyl upholstery. It also cast shadows into the lines that seamed the driver's face.
Matt got in and stretched out to swing the wide, heavy-metal door shut. ''How did you know I'd be walking this way?"
"I'm a detective, ain't I?" Eightball O'Rourke grinned into the rearview mirror. "Guess no one from the LVMPD saw that illegal turn. You always that easy to tail, and that relaxed about it?"
He glanced curiously at Matt.
"I wasn't relaxed," Matt said tightly.
Eightball nodded. "Good. It's not always bad to look easy, as long as you know better."
"Why didn't you contact me at a normal hour?"
"This is a normal hour in my line of work. And yours too, I reckon. Besides, I wanted to avoid calling at the Circle Ritz. I wasn't sure you'd relish Miss Temple Barr knowing your business."
"You're right. I should have given you my phone number at ConTact."
"No way. Ain't no way I'm gonna call one of those weepy lines. Might get mistaken for a wimp or something. Might get some soupy free advice."
"ConTact isn't like that."
"Sure. Maybe I'm not being modern about all this breast-beating and twelve-step stuff, but I'm from a generation that helps themselves."
''Helps themselves to a lot of things," Matt said with amusement.
''Will you forget those blasted silver dollars! That was what you call a youthful peccadillo."
"What do you call this crate?"
"A car, which is more than you have, Mr. Devine. Cars are important out here. I know Miss Temple lets you drive her cute little Storm hither and yon, but why don't you have your own wheels?"
"Because all my money is going to windy private investigators."
"Well, at least you get your money's worth." Eightball rotated the giant steering wheel in a slow arc, wallowing the car around a corner.
In minutes the scenery grew familiar. A block away, a stark canister of black marble hunkered like a World War II bunker in the dark, or a cemetery monument. The Circle Ritz.
Eightball pulled the car to the empty curb and shifted into park, turning off the engine.
Suddenly, the night was silent.
"You . . . found him?" When Matt finally asked that question, his voice was steady.
Eightball nodded, his face just visible in the pink puddle of another streetlight. The car's immense hood looked the color of cat vomit, an unappetizing combination of puke pink and pea green.
"Where?" Matt wanted to know.
"Around. He doesn't settle anywhere much. Keeps moving, like a man on the run. A man up to something. He's a bad sack of potatoes, but I 'spose you knew that."
"You mean . . . professionally."
"Professionally! Hah. This guy is about as professional as a wounded rattlesnake. Uses the name you gave me sometimes. Sometimes not. He's been seeing the wrong company, some out of town mob lookin' for an inside track on Vegas. Mean but not necessarily smart. He owed them money; now he owes them more. Half the time he's duckin' them; half the time he's huddling with 'em when they catch up with him."
"How ... is he"
"What do you mean? I just told you."
"What sort of . . . health is he in? How does he look?'*
"Looks like a man who's been pushing his luck for forty years ought to look. Wrinkled skin, wrinkled suits. Slack but beefy. Got a whiskey nose that W.C. Fields would envy. He looks the wrong side of sixty from the wrong side of the tracks. Women all over this town have sworn out assault complaints, then they usually drop 'em, and it isn't because he's been sending them posies, except to the chops. He's been in jail, but he's never done anything bad enough to keep too long. One thing's certain: he never keeps that prize-winning whiskey nose clean when he gets out again. He's trouble, Mr. Devine. If I were you, I'd forget about finding him. Losers are sometimes best off staying lost."
"I have to find him."
"Sure." Eightball leaned back in the bench seat and pulled a slip of paper from his pants'
pocket. 'That's where he's staying now. Araby Motel. I don't recommend it for your visiting Aunt Sarabeth. I don't recommend it to a nice, clean-cut young fellow like you. I don't babysit, neither, so what you do with that address is up to you."
Matt nodded. He couldn't quite read Eightball's scrawl in the streetlamp, but he knew the information would be accurate.
"What do I owe you?"
"Enough to keep you from getting a car for a while. I make it about eight hundred dollars, give or take a few minutes between friends. Come see me after you visit the Araby Motel and we'll tote it up."
"Aren't you afraid that I might not make it?"
"I don't believe in bilking the dead, Mr. Devine, but I don't believe you're ready for that yet.
Jest don't act too easy. This guy is a hard case to crack."
I know," s
aid Matt, getting out of the car. 'Thanks for your . . . discretion."
''Discretion is my middle name."
Matt slammed the door shut--today's cars sure didn't sound like that. He remembered his stepfather bragging about the solid slam of his car door, a dirty bronze-green '69 Olds Cutlass F85 that Matt would never forget for its smoky, sour smell, for the constant presence of rancid burger wrappers and stale newsprint, for the sounds of yelling, arguing, slapping. ...
Eightball O'Rourke's car gargled off. Matt pushed the hand holding the slip of paper into his pocket, as if afraid that someone would see it--at three o'clock in the morning?
As if afraid that he would see it.
He had his quarry in the palm of his hand now. What would he do? Eightball must be wondering that, too. That's why he had postponed payment. He wanted to hear the end of the story. He wanted to know who would be left standing. He was a born detective. He wanted answers more than he wanted solvency.
Matt smiled as he finished his short stroll toward the Crystal Phoenix. He was looking forward to Caviar's inquisitive greeting, her warm, winding presence and wide, unblinking golden eyes. She welcomed him without asking any unwelcome questions.
He was looking forward to the peace and quiet of his half-furnished rooms. Soon it would be four a.m. Time for lauds. Time for a prayer of thanksgiving. He who was lost, is found.
Too bad that Matt was no longer a shepherd, and that the man he sought had never been a sheep, but a wolf.
Nobody much mourns lost wolves.
Chapter 11
A Thrush in the Bush ...
"I'm sorry," Matt said. "I know I've left you dangling lately; at least I feel like I have."
"Is that what the Ethel M candy and this is all about?" Temple glanced around the restaurant, a dimly lit place as cozy as the small brass lamps that warmed every table, even their intimate, for-two model. "An apology?"
Matt's smile was softer than the incandescent light filtered through their lamp's pleated, mauve chiffon shade. "And I might need some help," was his sheepish answer.
"That's what friends are for," Temple said briskly, unrolling a forest green linen napkin that covered her meager lap like a lawn.
Despite her delight at Matt's sudden invitation to ''a nice dinner," despite this slightly hokey, undeniably romantic atmosphere, she wasn't going to make the classic Casablanca mistake of expecting too much. A kiss is just a kiss, after all.
Especially one committed at a high school prom held on the high desert more than fifteen years too late.
Matt moved his knife and spoon into more perfect union with the fork opposite, so they bracketed the empty, white linen space like spit-polished pewter soldiers on parade.
The "Blue Dahlia" was truly a find beyond the normal reach of a social novice like Matt, Temple thought. How on earth had Max Kinsella--master discoverer of the underestimated asset--missed this gem? Maybe the restaurant was too new; Max was definitely old news now.
Matt, on the other hand, was a front-page item, at least to her. Tonight he wore a lightweight ivory blazer she had never seen before over an open necked pale yellow shirt. She was glad she had broken out her green silk Hanae Mori dress; tonight might be an occasion, after all.
"After all you ... did for me," he was saying, "I feel that I've been derelict--"
"You're the world's worst delinquent all right, Devine," she interrupted. *'Listen: you didn't have to wine and dine me in retaliation for my makeshift prom night on the Big Sandy. That was just an experiment; me being a bit madcap . . . wild, impulsive creature that I am."
Her nonsense didn't break the ice, for there was none, but it broke through the thin skin of self-justification that was draping Matt like a cocoon. Temple hated apologies, especially when they were unnecessary.
Maybe her tactic worked, for Matt decided to quit tiptoeing around the reason for this evening out like a wild duck waddling around the dangerous puzzle of an ice-fishing hole. He inched his spoon a trifle closer to the knife--now was that a Freudian slip or what? Temple speculated--took a visible breath and began.
''I didn't end up in Las Vegas by accident. Temple."
She refrained from saying, too bad, and adding that she had always figured him to be a member of Gamblers Anonymous on the run from a cabal of mob accountants in New Jersey.
"I'm , . . looking for someone," he said.
She refrained from saying that almost everybody is.
'I'm . . . looking for a man."
Oh, no! Was this true confession time? Had Matt discovered that he was gay, after all? Well, hell, a thoroughly modern woman could use a good gay friend or two, of either sex, but it helped a lot if she didn't find them physically attractive. Temple sipped from her water goblet, trying to keep the ice cubes from clicking against her teeth. They were sexy, crystal- clear ice cubes, too, probably made with distilled water. Oh, well. The Blue Dahlia made an ideal romantic rendezvous, but there was no point in being flattered now.
"I've never been here before." Matt had noticed her looking around. ''I hope it's all right."
'Terrific." Temple resisted the urge to let a cold cube slide into her mouth so she could crack her teeth down on it and see if het fillings held.
''He's my father."
"Huh?" Temple was startled enough to scan the room again.
"The man I'm looking for," Matt said patiently.
Temple prided herself on not letting any relief show, although underneath the table her toes uncurled against the satin-smooth purple leather lining her best Kelly-green high heels. "Why the big secret, then?"
Matt wasn't quite listening, at least to her. "He's my stepfather, actually."
She nodded. This was going to be a complex night, given how Matt was leaking vital information at 33 1/3 speed. Laser disc, lightning-fast he was not.
That meant this information was important to him, that and the shamed way the word
"stepfather" sidled out of his mouth like a mud-spattered dog peeking from under the best couch. It also told Temple that this was not to be the romantic evening out that she might be inclined to hope for.
She wriggled her tootsies free of the confining toes of her shoes. Thanks to an old-fashioned floor-length tablecloth, no one could see her informality. No one could see her play footsie with Matt, either, because it wasn't going to happen, at least not tonight.
One thing that was going to happen tonight had her second-most-primitive urge polishing its pistons, though: curiosity. Matt was finally going to squeeze out some details about his family.
Temple slid her knife to line up with the tines of Matt's meticulously placed fork opposite her. ''Is he a good stepfather or a bad stepfather?'' she asked carefully.
Matt sighed again, a short, frustrated huff of air. ''Maybe okay by some people's lights. Bad by mine."
She nodded, not surprised.
Having gone this far, Matt must have decided to plunge in with both feet. His eyes and fingers fussed at the arrangement of the tableware while his voice and mouth rattled off a messy cornucopia of facts.
"My real father--odd expression, isn't it?--left my mother while I was still an infant. I don't know why, and she would never say. I knew her as a single mother, working all day and worrying all night. I guess finding a man to take care of her answered half of that unhappy equation. They got married, of course. I wish they hadn't; then he wouldn't have been real, my fake father. But they did. No big ceremony, but a church wedding. Marriage was it for women in St. Stanislaus parish, even as recently as the liberating sixties; that, the single life, or living in sin, which was as good as the streets for a Catholic woman. So she married him, and then we were all stuck. For eternity."
"You got away," Temple observed.
"Escaped, you mean. You're probably right. Into the neighborhood when I could, later into school. Finally into the seminary."
"What was wrong with him?"
"He drank. Just beer. Mom said at first, but 'just beer' can drown even a dr
y alcoholic, and he was a career beer-drinker. That's what men did in poor, working-class neighborhoods in Chicago. They drank. They still do. Only with him, the hard stuff came later."
"Did you have brothers or sisters?"
Matt's head shake was a gesture so abrupt and tight it resembled a tiny shudder. No, thank God, it seemed to say.
"After my real father left, there were no others. I think--"
Temple waited, beginning to understand what it must have been like for Catholic priests in the old days, behind their dark wooden confessional doors, listening and waiting and wondering when to speak, when not to speak.
Matt looked up, his expression both guarded and searing. "I think when my mother found out what my stepfather was really like, she made sure there were no more children." His eyes shut. ''It would have been a sin, of course. A mortal sin. She didn't go to confession much after he came along."
''Is your mother . . . still alive?"
"Sure." He seemed surprised by her question, which was natural, since everything he spoke of seemed steeped in the bitter dregs of days-gone-by. "She still lives in the parish. Retired.
Goes to confession now. He left, years ago, but after I did. She was a . . . beautiful woman."
"How many years ago did he leave? How old--"
"Was I?" Matt's mouth stretched clothesline tight before he spoke again. "When he left?
Sixteen. It was before I went into the seminary. I never would have left her alone with him."
"So . . . why do you want to find him now?"
Matt shook his head. "I was just a kid then. Maybe I'm still just a kid in a lot of ways. I don't .
. . understand. I need to understand that before I can understand"--his pale hands spread in the lamplight, over the empty place setting, as if offering an unconscious blessing on ...
nothingness--"this."
"Where you are today, you mean?" she prompted.
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