2Golden garland

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "Leave that for the cops," she said as she hefted him into her arms.

  The Client had taken the four front-row seats nearest the exit and farthest from the scene of the crime.

  "Miss Barr," one of the women called softly.

  Temple tiptoed across the carpet, not wanting to disturb those sober, drooping faces of family watchers in the front row. An instant had transformed the festive conference room into a bizarre funeral parlor: the corpse on display without the concealing grace of a coffin, the mourners dressed more for Mardi Gras than the Service for the Dead.

  Temple slipped into a vacant seat alongside The Client, beside the woman with a graying bob whose name tag read murielle koslow, promotions.

  "Did your cat really sense something was wrong?" Murielle asked, patting his sagacious head.

  "Possibly, Louie has a talent for that." Temple looked down to find a flake of white defacing her velvet skirt. Probably litter from Louie's paws. She picked it off. Then, not wanting to, uh, litter the floor, put it in her skirt pocket. If you wear black so black cat hairs won't show, trust the contrary species to leave a pale dandruff of litter well. "Or," Temple continued in light of Louie's latest cat trick, "this big lug may have just been acting like a cat, climbing for the challenge of it or to serenade the lady kitties from the nearest thing to a rooftop. Why?"

  Murielle sighed, a gesture that lifted each Client's chest in turn. "I wondered if we had paid attention ... if that might have made a difference. Someone getting to him sooner."

  Temple knew what bothered her, and almost everyone in the room who had taken time to think about it. A man had not only died before them, but had probably taken a while to do it, the entire struggle hidden by a painted chimney and abetted by a complacent audience anticipating the next "special effect."

  "The fall and the tightening noose could have snapped his neck," Temple said. "Death might have been instant."

  "Oh. I suppose that would have been better."

  Down the line, the senior Client leaned his torso into Temple's view. "How will the police deal with so many witnesses? Can they do it without keeping us all here until tomorrow?"

  "Maybe they can't." Temple watched four strained faces tighten. "Usually, in a crowd scene like this, they question everyone and let the least likely suspects go. That's why I suggested the others go to the other conference room. It'll speed things up."

  "You mean we're suspects?"

  Janette, the older woman next to Gerald, spoke with appalled realization.

  Temple shrugged. "We're the current account on the docket. A death like this could be a freak accident, or murder with a motive ranging from soup to nuts."

  "And we're the nuts?" The Client number three was named Arden Hoyt. She had a round figure with curly hair to match and looked like she'd be a lot of fun under better circumstances.

  "More likely the appetizer," Temple reassured her, and them all. "We're out-of-towners. What are the chances of one of us blowing into Manhattan and deciding to commit Murder One?"

  "You mean--" The Client, senior, leaned forward in his seat again, to speak in a stage whisper. "You mean that if the death wasn't accidental, the murderer has to be either family, or a business associate?"

  Temple glanced around to ensure that no one else could hear her. "And this being a family business--"

  "It could be both," The Client number four, Janette, added with a sober nod.

  Temple shrugged again. The less she committed herself, the more her stock rose in their eyes. She began to understand why the police were so tight-lipped on a sensational case. Better to say nothing at all than to stick your neck out and be wrong.

  Temple rose and went to Kendall. Louie was there too, nosing her slack, curled hand that hung near the floor. Kendall's other arm curved along the chair's metal back, that hand fisted as well, and her face rested on the wrist's wet surface.

  Her eyes lifted to follow Temple's arrival. "Daddy was so disappointed about our divorce. We never really tried, he said. In his day, people tried." She blinked, not to disperse tears, but in an attempt to refocus her entire point of view, to see the past in the light of this dramatically different future. "Maybe he was right. We kids never did understand why the partners were so tight. A war we hardly heard of didn't seem to be enough reason. But that was his generation. They were loyal. We're yuppies, young urban have-it-alls . . . fast-faders."

  "Maybe." Temple sat wearily on the next chair, facing the front of the room. "It's hard for women to understand men and war. Guys have a love-hate relationship with conflict. Maybe, like sports, it's one of the few places men can form deep friendships without the fear of being labeled homosexual."

  "Why does it take violence to make men friends?"

  Temple shook her head. She didn't feel like analyzing anything right now. She got up and plodded to the wake at the front of the room. Where were the police? Granted, New York City had a tad more traffic and a few thousand more streets than Las Vegas, but....

  The conference door opened, making a mousy creak that hit the silent huddle of people like a shotgun blast.

  Someone filled the opening, haloed in the hall light.

  Behind them all, Kendall wailed. "It's D-D-Daddy!"

  As the only surviving relative, she bravely had stood to greet the officials, yet all she could blurt out was the victim's name, a poignantly childish call for Daddy.

  Temple braced herself, ready to take over at this difficult time. That was what public relations people were for, even if the relations were with the police.

  The male silhouette stood framed in the doorway, its form lumpy and bloated. As the man stepped forward, the room's perimeter down lights resolved the visual ambiguities. He was not what they had expected: a New York City uniformed officer or detective. Not unless the officer had gone undercover for the holidays in ... a Santa suit.

  Everybody stared, speechless, at the dead man's macabre twin.

  Santa realized that something was very wrong. His hands lifted to peel off his jolly bearded disguise. The puzzled, smooth-shaven face beneath was frowning, frowning at the room, at Kendall Colby Renaldi. Santa's cap, hair and beard wilted from his hands like Spanish moss.

  "What's wrong? Where is everybody? I couldn't pass through the kitchen without grabbing a cup of coffee to revive me for the end of the evening. Sorry I kept you all waiting. What's going on here? Kendall, baby?"

  At that, Kendall Colby Renaldi burst into hysterical laughter.

  The newcomer was Brent Colby, Jr., in the flesh.

  Chapter 19

  No Way Out

  Matt kept his fingers rolled in the greasy scruff of Effinger's jacket collar while he patted himself down for the quarter that would kick start his captive down the road to justice. Maybe.

  Nine-one-one didn't seem appropriate, so Matt dialed nearby police headquarters. He didn't expect to find Molina in, not this late and this close to Christmas, but he knew domestic violence boiled over at such socially heated times of year. The department's number

  was easy to remember.

  Effinger fidgeted in Matt's grip but didn't try to bolt. Must be a shock to see a pip-squeak kid from your past come back like Eliott Ness.

  "Molina available?" he asked the first human voice that answered.

  "That depends. What's the problem?"

  "I've got someone she's very interested in getting a hold of." Effinger weaselcd out of his jacket some, so Matt slammed him up against the motel wall and dug an elbow into his stomach.

  "Call tomorrow."

  "Can't, I literally have the guy in custody, and I can't hang on to him all night."

  "What did you say your name was?"

  Matt gave it, fearful of being taken for a crank caller otherwise. Lord knows he got enough of that breed at ConTact. And so did the police.

  "I don't see what I can do for you, Mr. Devine."

  "Look. The guy in my hands right now is supposed to be dead and buried on Clark County's tab. He may be
involved in a couple of murders."

  "I'll call Molina, but she won't be crazy about this. Citizen's arrest isn't what people think it is. I assume your so-called suspect is not sticking with you voluntarily. He could press charges against you."

  "The only thing he's going to be pressing in the near future is his jailhouse baggies."

  "Okay, okay, desperado; where can the lieutenant reach you?"

  Matt sighed. That meant they'd have to hang by the outside phone, freezing and looking obvious. He strained to read and repeat the pay-phone number in the faint light, absently twisting one of Effinger's arms tight when Matt sensed a break for freedom in the making.

  "You can't do this! I'll sue."

  Matt hung up. "It's a friendly family misunderstanding. Holiday tensions and all."

  "What're you gonna do? Who'd you talk to just now?"

  "Someone who wants to see you in the worst way."

  "She ain't here in Vegas?" Fear touched Effinger's sullen voice.

  "She?"

  "I ain't telling you nothing. I ain't telling the police nothing, and I certainly ain't gonna tell a defrocked priest nothing."

  "I'm not defrocked. I left with blessings and a small stipend."

  "Stipend. Blessing. I ain't heard nice-nelly words like that since I got the hell out of that Polack neighborhood in Chicago. Worst place I ever been in."

  "We agree on that. Why'd you stay, then?"

  Effinger's shrug loosened Matt's clutching fingers. They were starting to go numb.

  "I got smokes in my pocket. Okay if I dig 'em out?"

  "Which pocket?"

  "I sure don't want your fingers in em."

  "If you want a smoke, you're going to get them."

  "Left front jacket. You was such a wimpy kid. How'd you grow up to be so hard-nosed? They don't teach that in the seminary."

  "I was never wimpy. I was just a whole lot smaller than you were. I thought about killing you every day, back in Chicago."

  Effinger held still as Matt jammed an unfiltered cigarette into his hand in the near dark. "I'll keep the matches," Matt said.

  "Sure did practice those Jap moves, though. You caught me by surprise that day. I'da never gone down if you hadn't jumped me."

  "But you did go down. And you're going to go down again. The cops in this town are mighty interested in you, dead or alive."

  Effinger laughed as Matt struck a match head against the thin brown striker line. A Gilded Lily matchbook. The sulphur smell was warm and rich, like gourmet coffee grounds. Effinger's crumpled cigarette trembled as he inhaled, cupping his hands around the spark of red warmth.

  That impromptu shower wasn't doing either of them any good in this cold night air, Matt thought, hating to share even discomfort with this man. And where was Molina, besides off trying to have a life?

  "Why'd you move in on us?" Matt asked.

  Effinger inhaled, letting the wall hold him up, either resigned or waiting for a chance.

  "Your ma wasn't bad-looking in those days. And I wasn't such a poor specimen myself. She had a house, and you were just a little kid. I figured you were like a pet rat or something. No trouble." His upper lip curled over the cigarette moving up and down with his mumbling lips.

  "She wouldn't leave the old neighborhood," Effinger went on, blowing out memories with his cigarette smoke. "They treated her like shit, but she wouldn't leave. Didn't want you to grow up without 'family' Family! Big dumb Polacks who disowned her the second you were born, a stye in God's eye. I was raised Cath'lic. I know the drill. You're a bastard, Matthias. Fact is, I'm the only legitimate father you've ever had, or ever will have. And she wouldn't say word one word about the guy that done the deed. Oh, my, no. That got to me. Like he was too good to mention to the likes of me. I needed to get out of the family stuff, sneerin' but not lettin' go. Sneerin'. Even she and you started sneerin'. So ... I took off for Vegas. Lived my own life. Finally left for good when the little yellow-haired ingrate jumped on me like he was playing Godzilla."

  "You didn't just leave. You hung around for years, yelling and cursing, drinking and hitting. You only left when I made you."

  "Yeah, you'd think that." Effinger blew smoke out his lower lip, so it streamed upward like the ghost of a burnt offering.

  "Face it, kid. You makin' me kiss linoleum wasn't why I left. I was more'n ready to go. I'd made connections here in Vegas. The chorus girls were younger and gamier than your ma had ever been. So I split, and if you wanna think you was man enough to make me, well, I guess the last fifteen years have shown you you're not even man enough to be a skirt-swishing priest."

  Matt almost wished he could smoke. Could inhale acrid air and spit it back out as toxic fumes. But he wasn't angry, not now.

  "You know why you're standing here talking to me, Effinger? Even though you don't know who I called and who might be coming, and that makes you nervous? Because, finally, you can't get away. You can't hide behind a corpse, or my mother, or the years. I saw it in the motel room. You're such a little man. In every way. You're not worth my anger. I'll never forgive you for what you did to my mother, and I'll see you in prison or in hell, that I know. But I don't have to be there. I don't have to pull the plug or hit the switch. I just have to know how really insignificant you are. I think the people you're working for now know that too. I think they're waiting until your usefulness fuse fizzles out. And then you'll be another truly unidentified body that dropped out of nowhere on the way to home, sweet hell."

  "You hate me, kid. You still hate me as bad as you did then. And you can mumble all the 'Hail Mary's' you want to, but hate's a big sin. If that's all I did, show you that hate and hurt make the world go round, then I'll take the final drop to whatever, satisfied. Why should you have a life, Mister fair-haired pretty boy that mama dotes on and daddy left behind to bug some poor guy who ain't no relation to no fussing kid?"

  Matt was starting to see what a pawn and an anchor one small child could be, that he had been, when the phone squealed beside them. He collared Effinger again, jerking the cigarette butt from his mouth and crushing it out on the damp asphalt, as if tidying up the school scum for an appointment with the principal.

  "You're developing a gift for timing that rivals that of our Miss Barr." Molina's deadbeat voice hummed over the line at its most sardonic, but a glimmer of genuine curiosity leaked through. "So you got him. The real live Cliff Effinger. Why the heck during Christmas week? I'm supposed to be making illuminaria tonight out of lunch bags, not doing paperwork on a guy everybody'd rather see dead. He still in one piece?"

  "And talkative too."

  "Damn. Okay. I'll have to stop by the office first. Might be half an hour. You can baby-sit him until then without committing a misdemeanor or a felony, right, kemosabe?"

  "Yes Ma'am," Matt said, adding the name of the motel and the room number.

  "Not your kind of people there, padre. Watch them, if not Effinger. I'll be as fast as I can be."

  He marched Effinger, like a truant kid, down the line of battered doors to Door Number Three, feeling the unexpected bliss of total control. For all his spit and bluster, Effinger had been no physical threat since Matt had fought back and knocked him to the floor in Chicago. Too bad it had taken Matt a wrong vocational turn and sixteen-some years to see that.

  "She coming too?" Effinger asked nervously.

  "In a while. Meantime, you and I can reminisce in your room."

  "What kind of room you ever had?" Effinger asked when they returned to his ugly little unit. "You priests like to put on a show that you're holier than us, with your second-hand cars and your first hands on the altar boys and girls."

  "You know, Cliff, first you say priests are sissies, then you say they're satyrs. Which is it going to be?"

  "Satires? Yeah, they're a joke, except it ain't funny. They're everything bad, and the old women listen to them like crazy, the mothers and the grandmothers, and the young babes with their knees Super glued together. I bet you didn't see a lot of
that. A guy with your looks. You grew up real pretty, I'll give you that. I shoulda fixed that better."

  Matt laughed, surprising himself as much as Effinger. "I bet you're really dying to know. I should realize by now that meanness always comes from envy. You really are a sorry excuse for a human being. I bet whoever's using you to cover up what's going on wished that could have been you hitting the craps table at the Crystal Phoenix. Don't worry; you'll get your turn in the spotlight. I'm sure of it."

  "I wanta watch TV." Effinger stared straight ahead at the now-dark, dusty rectangle.

  "Sure. Whatever station you want, Cliffie."

  A sly smile crossed the wizened face. "Channel forty-eight."

  Matt went to the TV to tune out the interference. A blizzard of snow whitened the screen and its electrical howl muffled dialogue.

  "I could use a drink too. It's in the bottom bureau drawer."

  Calling the busted piece of furniture a "bureau" was a gentility Matt couldn't endorse. A bottle half full of smoked amber liquid rolled over like a corpse when Matt jerked open the stiff drawer.

  Effinger slumped on the rumpled bedspread, gazing slack-mouthed at the sleazy snow. Not about to run. Then Matt tuned in on what the television was trying to show them. Porn movies. A woman with grotesquely large breasts blurred in and out of view, and a man was pleading and promising . . .

  Matt lifted the bottle from the drawer. He'd never seen a pornographic movie. Maybe it was about time, and besides, the reception was virtually a shield against sin. And the Blue Lady guarded above.

  Keeping an eye on Effinger, he went to the bathroom, where the showerhead still dripped mournfully. A glass white with a wake of toothpaste sat on the old-fashioned pedestal sink. Matt ran the left faucet until hot water came. Then he washed the glass with his fingers in the boiling water, until it was clean and clear again.