"No, Mr. Effinger. I can't want you dead. I'm a good guy in a black skirt, remember? I'm just wondering why you aren't dead when your ID was cramming the pockets of the dead guy they found at the Crystal Phoenix a few weeks back."
Effinger backed toward the bathroom, his face as white as the streaked tile. "I don't know nothin' about that."
"You have to. It was your ID."
"I lost that. At the bus station."
"And the dead guy looked a lot like you. Same age, same general physiognomy, same build."
"I don't care what his physiogomectomy said, I don't know some dead guy at the Phoenix from Adam."
"They think they buried you, Effinger. Doesn't that make you feel safe? The police think they buried you, but I don't."
"You're nuts. A priest shouldn't act like this. I knew you were a bad one when you knocked me down on the kitchen floor. You were just a punk. I could have wiped up the linoleum with you, but I didn't want to hurt your ma."
"But you did! You hurt her a lot. I heard it. I saw it. And I'm not a priest anymore."
"You can't quit that. They don't let you."
"A little like the . . . mob, isn't it?"
"What mob? No mob in Vegas these days. You're nuts. I'm gettin' outta here."
He ran like a rat for every exit.
The door, but Matt was there first. The window, where he tore at the torn curtains and slammed his palm on the glass
Matt pushed him back.
Effinger looked for something to hurl at Matt, but the TV was bolted down, the lamp was a flimsy joke and ... he ran for the bathroom.
Matt thought of a high narrow window like Midnight Louie's escape hatch from the Circle Ritz, and of a narrow, ratty man shimming through another window like that.
He made the bathroom in four giant steps, and slammed the door behind him.
The fluorescent light buzzed warning like an angry hornet.
"Get away from me," Effinger squealed, backing into the tub edge, the tiles bouncing back his voice.
Once his voice had been thunder, Matt recalled, and his footsteps earthquakes. Clickety-click, stomp!
Cleats. Clint. Wanting to be somebody, and always being Cliff.
Effinger was standing in the tub, clawing at the tiny frosted glass window above it.
"They'll kill me, you stupid kid! All that old stuff was nothing compared to what I'm into now. For now, they like me alive, but later, who knows? You're gonna be the death of me."
Matt seized Effinger's cheesy western jacket by the shoulders, and dragged him back from the window.
Effinger reached up behind him, fingers clawing for Matt's face. Matt jumped into the ancient bathtub and kicked Effinger's foot from under him. The man folded onto his knees on the yellowed porcelain. Rust trailed down from the ancient water spigot like old, dry blood.
"You're gonna kill me!" Effinger's voice ran hot and hysterical.
Matt yanked the right faucet until the pipes screeched, and pulled up the porcelain lever in the wall. Cold water trickled from the tinny shower head. Effinger was screaming as if under boiling steam as Matt hauled him up into the icy baptism of rusty water.
"Blood. You're killing me. I don't deserve it. I'm a victim. They got me by the short hairs. You stupid, stupid punk--"
The water spat on Matt's face and ran down his forearms. It was going to ruin his faux suede jacket.
Finally, Cliff Effinger sagged in his hands like wet wool. His water-soaked clothes reeked of unlaundered urine and hard liquor.
Matt pulled the guy up again until the ragged stream of water from the shower head ran down Effinger's face like spittle, into his closed eyes and chattering teeth. He was small, so terribly small, after all.
"Listen," Matt said. "You aren't worth hurting back. Calm down. I'm not going to touch a hair on your mostly bald head." That was why the hat, not disguise. Vanity.
"You're ... not?" Effinger hiccoughed like a spent, hysterical kid.
Matt jerked him out of the piddling shower stream and shook him until the water beaded off his clothes.
"No." Matt held Effinger against the cracked tile with one hand while he turned off the water.
"What you gonna do?"
"Nothing personal."
"Huh?"
"Brace yourself for a touch of cold air."
"What? We going outside? I'll freeze in that night air."
"It's nothing like the Chicago air that January you locked me out all night."
"Hey, I was hot-tempered then. Young and hair-trigger, you know?"
"No, I don't know." Matt had him at the unit door. He opened it and looked out. Deceptively deserted.
"Where we going?"
"There's a public phone outside the office. If you keep your mouth shut, the manager won't even know we're there, and that you messed up his bathroom."
"Huh? Who you gonna call?"
Matt's smile was grim.
"Ghostbusters."
Above them, the Mermaid loomed like a Virgin Mary Blue blimp.
Chapter 17
Raising Saint Nick
Sometimes I live up to my reputation. I am one unlucky black cat for somebody.
Here I stand, the focus of all eyes (which is as it should be), but my presence on this ersatz roof is very bad news for somebody. Not that anybody puts two and two together.
I have not liked the layout of that chimney since I first saw it. I liked it even less when I took a second look only minutes before and saw that what I did not like before, I liked even less now that somebody had changed it.
Now there is somebody in the chimney, and nobody knows but eight cardboard reindeer and me.
Are you getting tired of all these "bodys"? Somebody, anybody, nobody ...
Well, get used to it, because there is a body in the chimney and it is not me.
"Where is Santa?" somebody yells out.
Good question, dude. Why do you not take a look up the flue?
Finally somebody is smart enough to examine Santa's escape route. The woman named Kendall who has been shepherding Miss Temple Barr about walks over on brisk heels, bends down to look up the chimney and screams.
The first one is a scream pure and simple, and works pretty well. The second one is a word, and it finally gives all the dumb-bunnie nobodies an idea of what is up, in this case up the chimney.
"Dad-dy," she screams.
Now I am a daddy myself (though not intentionally, but that is never taken into account). It does give me a chill to hear that note of panic and disbelief in Miss Kendall's wail.
Miss Temple, upon hearing it, rushes over. Now we are in good hands.
She does not have to bend far to peer up the chimney.
"Lights," she orders. "Bring the camcorder. It has a light that will fit up this chute. We need some slight men who aren't afraid of heights or close quarters, fast! From what I can see, it might not be too late to get him down."
Janos Senior is the first to respond. He and the cameraman son arrive at the same time. Andrew Janos, who has been tirelessly shooting the party as he has tirelessly shot banal events all day, points the lens up the flue.
"Colby?" Janos senior calls up the dark tunnel.
I look down, my eyes slitting to the width of a straight pin at the direct light. That way I can see perfectly, and it is as I expected. Just below me, Santa twists slightly in the chimney, creating an eerie scraping sound. His booted feet hang loose of the wooden ladder nailed to one side of the chimney. A golden snake shines in the fractured light from below, circling the uppermost rung of the ladder. It extends down to lose itself in Santa's curled white beard, beneath which it has no doubt tightened on his neck.
A chain of gold. My own fur brushed against it on exiting the chimney the second time tonight, when my ladder was not wooden rungs, but a red velveteen suit.
I watch Janos senior's harried face block the light as he scrambles up the ladder. "Oh, my God."
He must shimmy past the dangling Santa suit
, and it was not an easy task for me. But he is a wiry little guy. Somehow he manages it and wriggles out onto the narrow roof ledge near me. I do not expect him to balance on the two-by-four chimney rim like the foot sure dude I am.
"Tony!" Victor Janos yells to Renaldi senior in a voice that would start a parade. "Get in the chimney and lift up his feet. He's . . . caught on something. I'll try to release him here."
The watching crowd whispers and rustles. Some hang-up, they think. Some glitch. A few men head for the bar and mothers bend to rub paper napkins over sticky chins.
Miss Temple does nothing of the sort. She keeps her place at the crowd's forefront, needing to be there just to see, and keeps a steady eye on the action. Tall, uneasy Kendall follows her, glancing at my little doll nervously.
The men are grim, shouting and grunting only at each other. Brent Colby, Jr., was no lightweight. Or do I give something away? Surely no one of any brains who has been modestly attentive, like my little doll, can have failed to realize that what we have here is no overweight Santa wedged in his escape route, but a dead man hanging in a chimney by a golden chain.
I give that Janos senior credit. You can tell he has been in a war zone. That plucky fellow manages to pull up Santa by his suit shoulders enough to loosen the chain. It thuds against wood.
"Tony!" Janos senior shouts sharply.
And below Tony grunts, but catches the freed weight. The chimney is narrow enough that it will brace the corpse if Tony can keep it from crashing to the floor, which he does. Beside me, Janos senior lets himself over the chimney side, hanging by his hands, and jumps lightly to the carpet below.
I do not follow his derring-do example. Not that I could not, you understand, but I wish to examine the inside of the chimney now that the unfortunate victim is not obscuring the murder weapon. The police will not like having Janos senior's fingerprints on it, but did they expect me to make like a Russian sailor and yo-ho heave-ho to the "Volga Boat Song"? Manual labor is not something I am made for.
"Did he pass out?"
I watch Miss Kendall hurry to the supine Santa the two partners pull from the blackened hearth. Even I wince before I turn and jump down onto the first telltale rung. The police will not like my pad prints on the wood, nor my claw marks, but tough tooters.
The chain hangs in a long straight golden tail, like a plumb line.
When last I saw it and the last that Brent Colby, Jr., saw it, the chain was arranged in an open coil like a basketball hoop from the second-to-top rung. I think back to my alley-running days to figure how it happened. Probably much as my pal Mumblety-peg met his end on a loop of jump rope left hanging from a jungle gym. As this dude Colby climbed, the victim tripped some mechanism that released the gold chain to fall on his shoulders. Startled by the unexpected weight, he backed down, too late. The chain tightened and choked, and his hasty retreat only caused his feet to miss the narrow rungs. He swung free, to his death.
Below me I hear the piercing cries of Miss Kendall, who now knows the obvious and the worst.
But I am not quite ready to desert my observation post. Yes, something is still here, and even stronger now, although it is disembodied: the faint whiff of a relative of my favorite stimulant, catnip.
Some call it cannabis, but I have more often heard people call it marijuana.
Is it possible that Mr. Brent Colby, Jr., was dying for a smoke?
Chapter 18
"... Hung by the Chimney with Care"
Temple was amazed by how fast the festive conference room had cleared of all but essential personnel.
Gone were the children in their gay attire. Gone were the mothers with their hankies and Handiwipes in hand. Gone were most of the Colby, Janos and Renaldi copywriters and junior account executives.
They would all have been banished to the other conference room, but Temple had reported seeing Santa waiting to make his entrance in there. The police might want to examine the room without it having been trampled by dislocated Christmas party emigres.
"What won't the police want to examine?" Victor Janos burst out, running arthritis -swollen fingers through his hair. He winced at the gesture, and pulled his hands away. "I must have strained my hands." His face was almost as flushed as the corpse's.
Tony Renaldi no longer looked lithe and dapper. He even stooped a little to show his fifty-some years. But he laid a hand on the smaller mans shoulder.
"You did good," he said, lapsing into the talk of the barracks, the polished overlay of the boardroom lost for the moment. "You got in there quick and we got him out as fast as we could. It was just too late, Victor. You know what that's like."
Victor shook his head. With his suit jacket gone, and his white shirtsleeves rolled up, he looked younger despite the strain on his face.
"And you, young lady." Renaldi summoned a shred of charm. "You thought pretty fast. You and your . . . terrifying cat."
Renaldi had been the first to pull himself together and summon the police. "I'll call the precinct," he had said, rushing out. "Too bad it's a weekend," he had added.
Now Temple wondered what a holiday death by misadventure meant in New York. Fewer police on duty, slower response? Las Vegas was the opposite case. She glanced again at the supine Santa. He resembled a department-store mannequin abandoned on the chic gray industrial carpeting.
She understood what Tony Renaldi was saying. Louie had tried to draw their attention to the chimney. When he had perched up there the second time, he seemed to be saying: why didn't you listen when I tried to tell you something was wrong?
It was too close to the parody of the Lassie films: "I think she's trying to tell us something." Animals often are trying to tell us something: that they're lost or homeless, or hungry or want affection. Why couldn't they try to tell you something more subtle as well?
Brent Colby would never know that a cat had played a key role in the discovery of his death.
He looked disturbingly alive even now. His face was flushed and swollen beneath the thick white whisker-frosting, a look in keeping with the popular representation of Santa Claus, but hideously altered from the pale, blandly patrician features of Brent Colby, Jr.
Kendall sat alone on a folding chair, her body angled away from the gruesome scene by the chimney.
Savannah Ashleigh and cats, as well as Maurice and handler, had vanished along with the party-goers.
Temple had not been allowed to leave, not since The Client had pointed out her experience in what they called "the murder line."
Midnight Louie remained by default, and because his paw prints were probably all over the crime scene. Temple wondered what Lieutenant C. R. Molina would say about that, happy that she and Louie had no history as suspicious characters in Manhattan. Yet.
Janos and Renaldi had shown their executive mettle, though, from the tense moments of rescue to the realization that came when they laid the body on the floor and stared down at the scarlet face of their dead partner in its gruesomely jolly guise.
"Was it a freak accident?" Renaldi asked again.
"Coulda been." Janos's cigarette, lit minutes before and forgotten, did a slow burn between his first two fingers, building a precarious smokestack of ash.
"The chain?" Janos again.
"Maybe Brent wanted an extra prop, wanted to make a jingling sound as he exited the chimney, I dunno. Coulda been a last-minute inspiration he concealed up there before the party got started."
The partners' wives and adult children occupied the first two rows of circled chairs, as ordered, their grim faces oddly contrasting with the rich colors of their expensive holiday best. Temple suspected that their role in the death investigation would be what it was in real life and the company brochure: photogenic but anonymous moral support.
Colby had been a single parent with one child, Kendall, the only member of her immediate family present. She sat alone, facing the back of the long room, sobbing quietly. Temple wondered why no one comforted her.
"Where are the go
ddamn police?" Janos's usual staccato style was seasoned with unusual profanity.
Despite his quick, cool action during the attempted rescue, he was clearly the over excitable partner.
Renaldi shook his head. "I called only a couple minutes ago, Vic; it only seems longer. This is a weekend before a major holiday. We can't expect instant response."
"We are an important firm," Janos said, temper flaring. His tone implied that he cared less about the firm's high standing than its usefulness in getting speedy official response. "God. Poor Colby."
Among the accidental audience on the folding chairs, a woman smothered a sudden sob.
"Can't we . . . cover the body?" Renaldi asked Temple again.
She was used to being consulted about public relation policies, not police matters.
"Ah, I don't think so. Anything that disturbs the victim or the area hampers the crime-scene technicians. Remember, that was an issue at the Nicole Brown Simpson crime scene. Taking him down was a major disruption, but we had to try to revive him."
"Even in 'Nam we could cover the . . . bodies," Janos muttered.
Temple could guess what adjective he had edited out at the last minute, an adman to his bones now, but still a grunt in his soul.
"Nobody there cared about how or when; they knew," Janos went on. "I thought it was cruel then, but this is crueler."
Janos and Renaldi exchanged a mute glance of shared memory. A look that was also wary, Temple noticed. Cautionary. Like a Santa Claus putting a finger to his lips. Was she watching men who had fought in war together reverting to battlefield discipline? Or murderous partners putting on a good show for the survivors?
Louie lingered by the chimney. When she went to collect him, he was batting something around in an utterly catlike way. She bent to find a small dark screw, wood fibers clinging to its curves.
2Golden garland Page 16
