cat in a crimson haze

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Obviously, just the whisper of trouble at the Phoenix is enough to eat into our operation. In the meantime, I'll have my brothers look into it."

  Temple must have looked less than impressed. Nicky abruptly ran a hand through his dark hair, then cleared his throat. ''And ... I, uh, might lean on my Uncle Mario for some backup too.

  So not to worry."

  ''Don't you worry, either," Matt said pointedly to Nicky, sounding flatteringly possessive.

  "We've got her now."

  Nicky's seasoned glance dropped from Matt's face to his arm at Temple's waist, holding her weight off her feet.

  "So you have," Nicky agreed. He nodded at Electra. "My big brother would kill for that earring. Really radical."

  Then he was again vaulting into the low car without benefit of door. The engine thrummed as if uttering a challenge to the bridled Hesketh Vampire motorcycle shut up in its storage shed.

  The next instant the Corvette was a smooth silver streak peeling around the corner without so much as a squeal.

  "What a nice young man," Electra observed in tones that were hardly maternal, her forefinger giving the Harley Hog earring in her right ear a swing.

  "He's married," Temple said, as much for Matt's benefit as Electra's. "Ouch."

  Apparently that was Matt's cue to scoop up Temple and head for the bunker like bulk of the Circle Ritz. She was always getting into these post-bridal positions with Matt, Temple reflected, at least as far as crossing thresholds went, without benefit of any engagement, not to mention foreplay.

  In the sleekly bare lobby, Electra deposited the tote bag on Temple's elevated lap with an apologetic smile. Louie twined himself among the legs still touching the floor, which did not include Temple's.

  "I've got a wedding at three---two soap opera stars," Electra said with zest. "Guess who?

  Lorelei from 'Heaven's Heights' and Brando, the hunk from 'All My Sins,' are getting married! I mean, the actors who play them, whoever they are, are getting married, not the characters. I don't want to start any irresponsible rumors. I'm going to surround the bridal arch with

  'champagne bubbles' of clear balloons. It will be soooo cute, I'll check on you later, dear." She glanced at Matt. ''Much later, of course."

  Temple shook her head as she watched Electra glide away in the usual eye-dazzling muumuu. ''Aren't you playing the organ for the ceremony?" she asked Matt.

  His answer came disconcertingly close to her ear, which was unblessed by any radical earrings.

  "Soap opera isn't in my musical repertoire." He paused by the elevators while Temple did her part and pressed the call button. " 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' doesn't lend itself to a wedding march, not even on an instrument as ponderous as an organ, I suppose I could play

  'Whispering Hope.' "

  " 'Whispering Hope,' " Temple repeated nostalgically. "I didn't know people even remembered those old songs, like 'Silver Threads Among the Gold' and 'Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.' They were rather obsessive about hair color then, weren't they?"

  "There wasn't much of a music selection in seminary," Matt said dryly, stepping into the elevator with Temple, tote bag and all.

  Not until she had produced her keys and was borne to her living-room sofa did Temple feel like someone who could stand on her own two feet again, even though she sat.

  Something had changed in the weeks since she was attacked by thugs desperately seeking information about Max. Maybe the change had come since she had arranged her ersatz prom night with Matt. The remote hope of intimacy between them had become less remote and less of a hope than a . . . threat. They had a fledgling relationship now: anything that pushed it into a new configuration could be as much loss as gain.

  She felt clumsy again, and awkward, and as if even that were her fault.

  "Guilt," Matt said, taking the word out of her mind if not her mouth.

  "What?"

  "Guilt makes people apologize for something negative happening to them. It's a bad habit." He vanished into the kitchen. Temple heard him wrestling ice cubes from the dang plastic twist-trays that she could do nothing with . . . except break fingernails on them. She winced at the wrenching squeak when the cold little devils popped from their plastic condominiums into the warm, cruel world where they would shortly melt into oblivion.

  Matt had no such problems over empathizing with ice cubes. Her ankle was soon collared in a damp towel lumpy with ice.

  Matt moved a pile of newspapers on the oversized ottoman and sat in the vacancy.

  ''How are you feeling, really?" he asked.

  Temple's head wagged from side to side in the gesture that meant "so-so." She suspected that her congealing bruises were beyond counting, but she had sustained no major hurt. Her ankle's aching and burning had eased already. Her pride was still in a touchy, tender state, though.

  "Electra will spend the evening with you," Matt said. "This is my shift. What can I do?"

  "Nothing for a while. I just want to sit and think about it."

  "The accident?"

  "The maybe-accident. Nicky seemed pretty serious."

  "Who's his Uncle Mario?"

  "I was afraid you'd ask. I'm afraid that I know: 'Macho Mario' Fontana. Once upon a time, when the mob still ran this town, Macho Mario was a big wheel over all the little crime cogs in this town."

  "And you work for his nephew?"

  "Nicky's the white sheep of the family, honest. With the Gaming Commission eyeing every transaction, nobody in Las Vegas could get away with crime connections now."

  "I see. So elves murdered my stepfather."

  "I'm talking about organized crime, not the usual freelance round of lust, larceny and murder. Las Vegas's dicey reputation gave it a kind of hard-edged glamour in the old days.

  Poking fun at it is like teasing a paper tiger nowadays. Heck, even my Gridiron skit plays on all the paranoid conspiracy theories that grew up around this town. I created a secret stash of mob money under the new Scarab theme hotel, affectionately known as 'the Scab' only the underground area is also a clandestine government nuclear testing site, where they've hidden all the aliens that landed at Nellis Air Force Base, and there are thousands of those. It's a send-up of the excessive, spooky stuff that gets said about this city."

  ''Sounds weird enough to dazzle even Las Vegans."

  "You should see the set they're gonna do! Danny Dove was showing me the plans just before I made like Jill-up-a-hill. So spectacularly garish--that isn't easy to achieve in this town."

  "And here you were worried because your arch-rival Crawford Buchanan was show chairman. Sounds like it turned out okay."

  "Okay ... as long as I don't see much of Crawford. And as long as he doesn't mess with my production number. Oh, and they persuaded Johnny Diamond to sing my Las Vegas Follies medley; he is such a powerhouse! Listen, can you go to the Gridiron? I mean, with me?"

  "My investigations have reached a dead end, so I suppose I can get the night off if I ask in advance." Matt paused to pick up a section of the Las Vegas Sun. "Sure. Will Lieutenant Molina be doing a solo too?"

  Temple's good mood plummeted. "Only around the Crystal Phoenix crime scene."

  She leaned forward to adjust the towel on her ankle. Matt leaped up to help, ruining her attempt to buy time while she decided whether or not to tell him something personal.

  Before Temple could lean back, he had stuffed a couple of supporting pillows behind her.

  Solicitation made her nervous. Anything that made her feel helpless did.

  "One thing my tumble taught me," she began.

  He waited, unaware that this was not what she was going to say originally.

  "I think I'm less afraid of being hurt. Not that I'm getting masochistic, but since I've been attempting martial arts, I see myself as less fragile. I know I can get hurt and that I'll heal."

  "That's good. If you feel durable, you'll act that way. When it shows, people are less liable to mess with you. And if they do, you're more resilient.
That's the trouble with our sexist society: women are so afraid of getting hurt that they let their lives be scribed by that fear."

  "Men don't?"

  ''Maybe men don't let on. That's what we're supposed to learn in team sports: how to get hurt. . . and go on . . . and not let on. Men fear getting hurt in other, less tangible ways."

  Temple nodded. ''So do women. Your stepfather's murder--"

  Matt kept still, even when Midnight Louie leaped atop the newspapers covering half of the huge ottoman. After some comfy pawing and paper-crackling, his big black paws tucked into each other. Temple was reminded of a mandarin innocently slipping his long-nailed hands inside his robe sleeves for warmth and security. Now Midnight Louie was listening, too. Temple hated broaching a mutual sore spot in public, but she had to do it.

  "Molina's on the case now."

  "I thought you said it was some other homicide lieutenant."

  "It was. It is. But Molina's got an open file that ties into the Effinger death. That file just happens to involve Max's disappearance."

  Matt's listening posture stiffened. In a way. Temple was glad that mention of Max Kinsella made him as nervous as talk of his late and definitely unlamented stepfather. Maybe it substantiated his innocence.

  Temple finally plunged in where Molina would never fear to tread.

  "A man was found dead above the Goliath Hotel gaming area the same night that Max disappeared. The corpse, which was never identified, was wedged into a cubby-hole fashioned from the air-conditioning duct. Molina figures an ace magician would be a natural to set up that spy-hole."

  "Why?"

  "Who knows? Not me. Not Molina. But, coupling the man's sudden death with Max going AWOL that night, Molina is convinced that something was rotten at the Goliath . . . besides the body odor in the air-conditioning duct.''

  "Do you think Max is capable of shady dealing . . . even of murder?"

  "No. But I didn't know then what I know now."

  ''What?" His eyes met hers for the first time since she'd brought up his stepfather's death.

  Temple squirmed on the sofa. At least Matt stayed put now, instead of jumping up at her every move.

  She bit her lip. ''Molina found an old record on Max. Nothing much, an Interpol file. Max was still a teenager then, but he was suspected of IRA involvement."

  "Figures," Matt said promptly. "Kinsella's an Irish name. Tons of Roman Catholics are Irish, and more than a few succumb to backing the IRA."

  "Don't you think I'd know if I were living with an international terrorist?"

  "Don't get agitated; you'll hurt your foot."

  "Forget my foot! Just figure the likelihood that Max was some sort of undercover agent."

  "Didn't he travel a lot?"

  "Magicians do. They have to go places to perform."

  "Out of the country?"

  "What are you? Junior detective?" The ache was no longer just in Temple's ankle. "Sure, out of the country, and all over it."

  "I can see Molina's point." Matt looked annoying calm. "He traveled, and I assume he was clever at deceiving people?" Temple nodded glumly. "Physically fit?" She nodded again. "Molina is not incompetent, however much you'd wish her assumptions were wrong."

  "You're right. See! I don't wish everybody to be wrong. The point is, with your stepfather dead, killed in that place and particular way, I don't know what to think about the first death anymore. I even wonder if this second killing means that Max is . . . back. But then that makes him a murderer, and I won't believe that I lived with a murderer."

  Matt kept silent, pleating a corner of the newspaper he'd held since the conversation had taken this turn.

  ''You don't believe that you loved a murderer," he finally corrected her in a subdued voice.

  '*We can love terrible people, Temple, even people who behave terribly to us."

  ''Your stepfather?" she suggested quickly.

  He shook his head. "He was too cruel, too alien. And he hurt my mother, too. But she . . . put up with it. She saw no other answer. Her family, the church, the way society thought about abusive men then certainly encouraged her to play the martyr, even to relish the role. His violence became her secret crown of thorns. She would win honor in heaven by forgiving it, and him, by enduring it, and him, by being the perfect doormat. She became his silent partner. I knew, even when I was still pretty young that she had sold us out, but I loved her anyway, though I didn't understand."

  "You're saying that if you ever at any time had a decent relationship with someone, you have a big stake in believing that they didn't use you, didn't abuse you. You become a little blind."

  He nodded, then tossed the mangled newspaper aside.

  "Why should you listen to me? Why should anyone listen to me? I've figured out my own case down to the finest point. I've sat with counselors and shrinks and worried my own past to shreds, until I thought I had turned into cerebral stone. 'The Thinker' as boat anchor. I've learned exactly why I became what I became, am what I am now. I just don't know how to change it."

  "Maybe it's too soon," Temple pointed out. "Does your underlying motive mean you fear relationships because they were so painful to you? Are you afraid to be disappointed, to be hurt?"

  Matt shook his head. "That would be simpler. I suppose there's an element of that; there always is. But my monster wears its hide inside out. I'm not really afraid of being hurt; I'm afraid of hurting."

  Temple sat up, away from the comforting pillows. She looked at Matt as if she had never seen him before. She had never felt the need to look at Max Kinsella that way. Perhaps she should have.

  "You think . . . you would have killed Cliff Effinger, if you had found him before someone else did?"

  Matt regarded the floor. Louie, moved by some mysterious feline impulse, merowed impatiently and twitched his tail, as if urging Matt to 'fess up.

  Matt looked up with dead-serious eyes. "I would have hurt him, Temple, if I could have. I don't know if I could have stopped myself."

  "What if he was still bigger, and meaner? He could have hurt you, killed you, had you entangled again."

  Matt shook his head. "Not now. He's not . . . wasn't . . . dangerous to me anymore.

  Knowledge is power, and power is temptation. I've thought of finding him, confronting him for so long now, and so much more lately, I even wonder if I . . .if I did."

  "Matt . . . you'd know."

  "Would I? Denial is a magic cloak. Only it doesn't make you invisible, it makes things you don't want to see invisible. I remember a tragic case at my first parish, a newborn infant found in a toilet at the grade school." He shut his eyes at her gasp of shock, but didn't look up when he opened them again. "Umbilical cord attached. Dead, of course. Drowned at birth, perhaps during birth. It was a several-cubicle facility, children were coming and going in gangs of thirty.

  Certainly, she was in there at the same time, the mother. The scandal was hushed up. The church was better at that in those days. They finally found the mother, the murderer, the victim.

  One of the youngest nuns. She had no memory of the act, or any act that led to it. No memory.

  All of it was so foreign to her religious commitment that she blotted it from her mind. She couldn't blot it from her body. Call it a form of hysterical psychic blindness. Apparently a lot of clergy are capable of that. Something about trying to be holy blinds one to ordinary evil. Look what I did to my apartment. I barely remember doing that."

  "That, but not your stepfather," Temple broke in, horrified. "You're not delusional. Matt, and neither am I. I know you didn't do it! You didn't kill him."

  Matt smiled, wearied by his self-examination, yet amused by her defensive nature.

  "Tell that to the skeptical Lieutenant Molina. She'll point out that you didn't know Kinsella was an IRA terrorist, either."

  Chapter 19

  Phone Alone

  Matt sat by the telephone, home alone.

  The phrase 'days off' meant more to him now. Working nights mad
e every day an ''off'' day, in a sense. It freed normal business hours for his abnormal pursuit of the truth--the truth about Father Rafael Hernandez and perhaps about himself.

  He had been derelict. His personal life and the crazy way his past and present was intersecting--Temple and the Gridiron hi-jinks at the Crystal Phoenix, his stepfather's shockingly odd death in the Phoenix casino, so bizarrely reminiscent of the Mystifying Max's dramatic exit--had distracted him from this unpleasant mission. No more.

  Now the phone receiver was pressed to his left ear again, while his right hand--hardly knowing what it was doing-- scribed circles within circles on his note pad.

  "Who did you say was assistant pastor when Father Hernandez was at Holy Rosary? Frank Bucek. How could I reach him? I know it's been a long time. ... St. Vincent Seminary. Indiana.''

  Matt dutifully repeated the information. Pretend, Pretend that he was writing it down, dealing with unfamiliar syllables.

  He wasn't. He most decidedly wasn't, which was why his insides cramped in a cold, iron grip.

  Father Frank Bucek. Once upon a time, long ago, assistant pastor at Holy Rosary in Tempe, Arizona. And many years after that. . . Matt's spiritual advisor at the Indiana seminary.

  An image of the man floated on the pale blank wall of Matt's bedroom. A spare man in a black cassock with knife-keen gray eyes and a receding hairline. Devoted, energetic, another apparently perfect priest. And, long before the seminary, he had been Father Hernandez's assistant pastor in Tempe. The trail from Our Lady of Guadalupe had led right back to Matt's own ecclesiastical roots.

  Father Furter, the older guys in seminary had called Bucek. Matt didn't know why until later; the nickname came from Frank N. Furter, the cross-dressing protagonist of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, These days. Matt knew what that film was about, sort of, from popular repute. He suspected that the Legion of Decency would have condemned it back in the fifties. Now, it was a cult film precisely because it was naughty, not nice.