2Golden garland

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "Do you teach?" She approached him with harsh, measured steps like a flamenco dancer just warming up.

  He shook his head.

  "The woman inside--housekeeper, I think--said I could find you here."

  "You were looking for me?"

  "You sound like no one ever does."

  "I guess I more often do the looking."

  He was looking now. He had seen women more beautiful, but none more arresting. Beauty's remote perfection repelled him, if anything. She didn't need it. The only thing medium about her was her height. Her Snow White coloring invited fairy-tale comparison: coal-black hair with a hard sheen that seemed lacquered, but wasn't. Skin white as department-store-window snow. Lips black-red, like a cherry split by its own ripeness, and not nearly as natural. Her eyes were the only compromised feature in her face, a changeable blue-green color that recalled the "aqua" eyes Temple raved about in Midnight Louie's lady friend, the Persian cat Yvette.

  This visitor obviously expected all action to stop while her bold palette of features was assessed. Her cool eyes returned the favor, but revealed no conclusions, or even presumptions.

  What she wore was a frame, no more. Matt was learning Temple's character-reading through accessories. A simple, expensive pantsuit in an exquisite shade of jade green underlined her unusual eyes. He was aware of pointy-toed, low-heeled boots or oxfords that gleamed with a halo of excessive cost. And though Lieutenant Molina might wear this rigorously gender-neutral suit, in this case Matt saw/sensed that it only added intrigue to a men's-magazine figure. She might be ten or fifteen pounds heavier than the ideal woman her height, but that was only another unfair advantage she had over her sex; an inescapable lushness lurked beneath the suit's severe lines.

  She didn't speak until she was close enough to extend her left hand, but not for an introduction. Something was in it.

  He reached for the expected business card, then froze. She held out one of the laminated sketches of his stepfather he had been plastering all over Las Vegas casinos for the past month. On the back he'd typed estimated height, weight and whereabouts, as well as his own name and phone number. But not his Circle Ritz address.

  "Friend of yours?" she asked.

  "Not exactly, Friend of yours?"

  Not exactly. But he's bought me a drink or two when he's won for a while, or just wants to feel like a winner. He doesn't stay a winner very long, because he never stops playing. I work at one of the Strip casinos." She had seen and answered the question that was forming in his mind, and maybe his mouth and eyes.

  "It's true." She laughed, as if the questions and reactions were always the same, and always in the same order. "I don't talk or dress like one of the sleazy sisterhood men expect to find working in a casino."

  "I have no expectations," he said abruptly.

  She studied him, her smile something she put on easily, like a jade-green pantsuit. "I guess you don't. You're not what I expected. And do you even expect to find him?"

  "Not really."

  "Still, you look."

  He shrugged. " 'A man's reach . . .' "

  She laughed, extending her right hand. "Kitty O'Connor."

  A heavy square ring impressed his fingers. He stared at the culprit, a huge emerald-cut aquamarine embedded in a rope-of-gold setting, as her pale hand withdrew.

  Ambidextrous, he thought, with the attention to detail a counselor brought to bear on all new personalities. Unusual in a woman. Wonder which hand she writes with.

  She considered the homemade wanted poster again. "I've seen him, should see him again."

  "And?"

  "And what?"

  "I didn't mention a reward."

  "I didn't ask for one, did I?"

  "I thought you might expect one."

  "You don't expect anything, why should I?"

  "Maybe you're more optimistic than I am."

  "Don't bet on it."

  Kitty's cool smile turned unexpectedly mischievous. He found himself grinning back, and resented the manipulation. "If you don't want anything," he suggested, "you might as well tell me where he's turned up."

  "Oh, darlin'. I just said I didn't want a reward. I didn't say I didn't want anything."

  She took a slow turn around the five exercise mats, a tour that would have honored sensitively placed sculptures in a Japanese garden.

  The "oh, darlin' " had that sleazy saloon sound Matt would expect from a woman who worked at a casino, but her speaking voice implied a foreign tinge. Maybe something as incongruous as finishing school, maybe just the theater.

  He realized late that her tour of the mats had become a turn around Matt, singular. He turned to confront her, meeting a gaze of such candid calculation that the sun-warmed afternoon blanched as if now aware it had come out without a coat in the dead of winter.

  "I'm not an Iscariot," she said, her smile and eyes as chill as blue aquavit, that thin Nordic firewater so strong it's served in tiny narrow glasses like test tubes.

  A Finnish-descent monsignor had held a New Year's gala: innocent rounds of northland hors d'oeuvres alternating with blue aftershave bursts of potent aquavit. Certainly helped the oily sardine sandwiches go down.

  "Iscariot," he repeated. "An odd expression. Most people just call him Judas."

  "I don't turn anybody--even a deluded old drunk--over to parties unknown until I'm satisfied as to why he's wanted."

  "He isn't wanted, that's the irony. Only I want him, and I hate his guts."

  Matt was beginning to find secular overstatement as effective as sudden anger on the exercise mats. It wasn't how he'd been taught to fight, but he'd never been taught to fight anyone but himself. He sensed that she required struggle, this furiously self-contained woman. She needed to regard him as a possible opponent for some reason, and he had to reassure her that he was up to her mettle, whatever that was.

  She could be a professional seductress. The lurid thought almost made Matt flush, not a good thing in this game of hidden moves.

  "What a great little hideaway." Now she was studying the apartment building as avidly as she had gauged him. "Nouveau Trendy."

  "Electra, the lady you took for housekeeper, owns it, by the way."

  "And the tacky wedding chapel out front?'"

  "And the wedding chapel out front."

  "Oh, come now. You're not going to defend pink and blue neon bows. Really."

  "You have no idea what I'd defend. I'm standing on royal-blue oversize place mats."

  "Yes. Dreadful color, for that material, at least. But I bet it keeps your feet warm."

  He nodded, tempted to bring her back to the subject, but resisting it. Women liked to shop. To see everything, and test-drive most of it. She hadn't pinched the produce yet.

  "If I'm going to turn a man over to you, I've got to know your . . . credentials. I can't have something . . . unjust on my conscience."

  "I can understand that."

  "Can you really?"

  "You sound incredulous, but I do understand."

  "Why are you looking for this Effinger man? You're not a policeman--"

  "I could always grow a mustache."

  She smiled at that, the unspoken facial badge of many young patrol officers, especially of fair-haired Anglo officers.

  "You can't pass as an urban cowboy," she objected. "You're not from these parts."

  "How did you know?"

  "I'd say Illinois. Chicago. The South Side. Out in the boonies. An immigrant community originally. I hear voices in your voice. A foreign trace. Don't look so startled, Mr. Devine. The name is Anglo-Saxon, but the voice says. . . German?"

  "Polish," he corrected unhappily.

  "Should have said my first guess! Effinger could be a German name."

  "I don't know the man's national origins, and I don't care. No blood relation, if that's what you're really getting at."

  "Sorry. I'm being circuitous again, aren't I?"

  The word "circuitous" evoked her slow tour around him. Matt realize
d that he was the object of her interest for some reason, and that her interest was usually, if not always, somehow sexual.

  He was used to straightforward women: nuns until now; now Temple the wayward public relations specialist, who always told the truth as best she knew it; Carmen Molina, the homicide detective who allowed no gender nonsense to compromise her professionalism or her single-parenthood.

  Kitty O'Connor was different. She played games, and she liked to win them. She was always testing, especially strangers, especially strange men.

  As a priest, he'd encountered lonely women, parishioners even, who were tantalized by the untouchable, who swooned over Mr. Spock of Star Trek or another woman's husband or even the friendly neighborhood Catholic priest. He'd come to recognize the type instantly, and to ignore its temptations no matter how attractively packaged.

  Compared to those sad, delusional groupies, decent women with compulsively self-destructive hankerings, Kitty was a pro. She knew something he was desperate to know (and she knew it). To gain her confidence, he would have to play on her field with her terms. He would have to tease, to flirt back. Not exactly taught in seminary.

  He thought of Max Kinsella, the Mystifying Max, blast him! Temple had said he was good with women. The magician. Max always acted as if he had a secret, and maybe it was about you. Always acted as if he knew more than you did. Maybe that had something to do with it.

  "I can't tell you why I'm looking for Effinger. The information isn't mine to give."

  She nodded, looking more interested. "Can you tell me a reason in general?"

  "Family business," he said curtly. He gave up the words with a wrench of self-disgust. It wasn't anybody's business but his. "I am about my Father's business" Not in this instance, although maybe his real father, his genetic father, would want this unworthy replacement dealt with too.

  Perhaps his emotions as much as his words reassured her, because she understood what he meant.

  "Family business is hell, isn't it?"

  He nodded, relieved. "And Purgatory thrown in for good measure."

  But once dealt with, it's the Heaven of a job well done, a job that needed doing."

  Their eyes were steady on each other now, as it they spoke the same unspoken language, with the slightly "foreign" accents of their lone, cautious outsider voices. Foreign to what?

  "This means a lot to you."

  She put her hands on her lips, sweeping the open jacket to either side, emphasizing the hourglass of her figure almost as a weapon.

  She reminded him of an Old West gunfighter with her pointy-toed boots in a wide-legged stance, her challenging eyes that were only green now and hard as laser light.

  "What would you do, if you found him?"

  The pass/fail question. He had nothing to fall back upon but his own bitter truth. "I don't know. Kill him, maybe."

  She was impassive. If she chose to shoot him down now, she would never help him, even if she was the only soul in Nevada who knew the creep's whereabouts.

  "The Gilded Lily. You'll have to look it up in the Yellow Pages under 'Dives.' Try about nine p.m. He likes to start in the bar."

  The capitulation left him breathless, confused. "You work there?"

  "Not as of tonight. You might give me a day or two before you come calling. Don't want to dash off the very day Mr. Effinger might have a big fall."

  Like Max Kinsella at the Goliath and the first casino dead man.

  Matt felt a dizzying sense of deja vu. He almost felt like Max, or a waxwork imitation of Max. He managed a knowing smile, a nice trick when he knew nothing.

  "And if I want to find you again? Tell you what happened?" he asked.

  "I'll know." She had turned and was leaving.

  He realized that she carried nothing--no purse, no sunglasses. Maybe she had been a visitation . . . from somewhere.

  Hard heels clicked the concrete. Beneath Matt's feet, the blue plastic felt damp. He had grown no mustache but his upper lip had materialized a dewy pencil-thin line of sweat.

  "I'll find you," she threw behind her in farewell.

  She sounded happy. No . . . content.

  He wondered . . . what a priest could . . . should never wonder.

  His hands were as cold as his feet were hot. He made fists to warm his fingers in the waning afternoon light. Nine p.m. Not a good time. He'd have to take time off, or change his schedule. Maybe change his schedule. Then he'd have an alibi.

  Dear God, why had he let her glimpse his raw vengeance? And, worse, why had that one factor, or failing, put whatever fears she had to rest? He hoped he never found out, never saw her again.

  He doubted that he'd be that lucky.

  Chapter 9

  Cat in a Gray Flannel Suite

  Despite the cavernous lobby downstairs, the offices were a maze of cubbyholes arranged along a wall of windows that looked out on other windows, in which small moving figures of worker bees could be glimpsed buzzing soundlessly in a concrete hive.

  A tall tawny-haired woman younger than Temple was waiting beyond the foyer door to greet her.

  "I'm Kendall Renaldi, and I see you have something to get o({ your chest."

  "I have twenty pounds of something to get off my chest."

  "So this is Midnight Louie. Love that name."

  "He came with it. I probably would have called him 'Blackie' or something totally unoriginal."

  "I doubt that, judging from the materials you sent us. You're in the same game as we are."

  "Well, we're kitting cousins, anyway," Temple demurred, flattered to have been symbolically accepted on Madison Avenue, the pinnacle of advertising; promotion and public relations.

  "We are it you work tin- hours we do," Kendall added, rolling her

  "You can unload Louie in my office."

  "What I'd most like to do is lose the outerwear for a while. It's best if I keep Louie close to my heart where he can't get into trouble."

  "But he's so big, and you're so small. If we did tour you, we'd have to send a handler along."

  "That's why I bought the baby-bag for cats. It's supposed to balance the weight. If only I could find a Papoose on Board' decal.

  " 'Don't Kitty Litter' would be a nice touch too."

  "If Louie's going to be a media cat, I suppose he'll have lots of messages to bear, poor baby."

  Once inside Kendall's office door, Temple demonstrated getting out of the carrier's waist and shoulder straps. "It's really simple if you get the hang of it."

  " 'Hang of it' is right. I'd really get hung up in all that harnessry."

  "Try it," Temple suggested. "Somebody has to hold Louie while I undress anyway."

  She slung her tote bag down on the paper-piled chair beside a small desk mounded by an avalanche of paperwork. Kendall's office was one in name only, Temple noticed as she struggled out of her down jacket and mukluks and put them on the . . . the--

  "There's a hook on the back of the door," Kendall suggested.

  Temple hung up what she could, then straightened the short fuchsia wool skimp dress she wore (very sixties) and rummaged in the tote for her shoe bag. She leaned against the desk edge while pulling on black suede chunky heels. Presto, from Nanook of the North to something a bit more citified.

  Kendall had managed to buckle Louie on sideways, despite risking her long, manicurist-abetted, bronze-enameled fingernails. She shrugged, but eyed Temple with approval. "Thank

  goodness the male ad execs didn't see you in that marshmallow outfit. They would have ruled you out as too fat to go on TV no matter what you looked like underneath."

  "Decisions are made that fast around here?"

  "Decisions are made like lightning. Good thing I was a rock-climber in college and learned to think on my feet and hands. That's why we're moving on this over the holidays. You do know that you and Louie are not the only candidates."

  Temple did not know, and did not like hearing about it now, but she kept a polite smile on her face and said nothing.


  "Maurice is still under consideration, and we do have a film pro who's anxious to take this on, although it's a bit awkward with what happened with her cat."

  "Film pro?" This is Christmas, Temple implored (and possibly, in her heart, threatened) whatever gods may be. Don't do this to me!

  All this way, and it was a beauty contest.

  "Don't worry. I've seen her, and you'll do fine. But, ummm .. ."

  Kendall's narrowed hazel eyes stared at Temple.

  "Yes?" Temple asked anxiously. Gosh, did she have a snag in her smile or something? A run in her fingernail polish? Her hose had to be all right because they were opaque black, so as not to show black cat hairs.

  "It might be to your advantage to meet everybody without an addition of twenty ugly pounds. You're so petite, why hide it? Why don't I tote Louie in this getup, and prove even a dunce can don a cat carrier? You know, the manufacturer might be interested in of-fering the carriers as a premium."

  Temple nodded. She was beginning to understand the corporate culture at Colby, Janos and Renaldi. Everything had an angle. Everyone was always thinking. Something positive. Something negative. She hadn't been under this kind of magnifying glass since high school gym class, when they'd been subjected to a harridan who was part marine drill sergeant and part Marquis de Sade. Everyone had a use. Everyone had no excuse.

  She eyed Midnight Louie, who eyed her right back.

  Act sharp, she told him mentally. This place may look disorganized, but so do shark tanks when the itty-bitty fishes school past.

  Louie blinked in that solemn way cats have. He was all eyes, and all ears. He acted as if he understood every word, but cats don't read minds. Do they?

  Temple appreciated Kendall's concern, but wondered why she was its beneficiary. Right now she was being shepherded toward the inner offices, being briefed on who was who in the firm's hierarchy.