Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“Okay. I have an assignment for you.”

“You’re not my teacher.”

“I’m better than that. I’m sexy. You gonna listen to me?”

“Always.” Said with adoration. Jessica was getting a lot of time with Mr. Midnight.

“You write something you feel strongly about. You write an essay. Not like an assignment, like what you really feel and you’re not afraid of feeling.”

Silence.

“And then you show it to your parents. Yes, you do. Because it will be good.”

“Oh, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t have them going to the principal, outing me. It would be horrible.”

“Yes. But they’re not going to do that. You’re going to tell them you want to submit the piece to the Huffington Post.”

“Get outa here.”

“Did you know anyone can ask to submit a piece?”

“No! No way. No way they’d accept anything I wrote.”

“Why not? You’re a ‘Young Person’. The media world wants to hear from Young Persons nowadays. Your experience and hopes are as valid as those of any adults. Don’t abuse that chance on crazy, ‘sexy’, show-offing. Have gravitas, Jessica. I know you have it already.”

“You think?”

“Everyone your age does, you just get distracted from showing it. What have you got to lose? A rejection? But you will have been considered, and you can try it again.”

“It could backfire on me.”

“It could. That’s why your parents have to read it. Where do you want to make an impact? In high school? Or in the future?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, gravely.

She thought about something else during ten beats of radio silence.

“Gosh, Mr. Midnight, you’re way better than sexy.”

Matt smiled. “Thank you, Jessica. Thank you very much.”

The next voice was a world away from soft teenage girl doubt. It was deep, hoarse, male, and there was no doubt about it.

“Hi, there, Mr. Midnight. I’ve been around the block. I’m usually giving advice, not asking for it.”

Matt felt his throat tighten. No doubt, this was Woodrow Wetherly, the Molina-referred retired cop now turned creepy.

“And I’m usually not up this late, Mr. Midnight. Gotta admit I’d never tuned in your show until lately. My, those sweet little female fans you draw…nice work if you can get it.”

“You say you’re asking for advice—?” Matt waited for the name.

“Call me Old Bill. Old Bill come due. Heh-heh-heh-heh .” That long wheezing high-pitched laugh was more sinister than the man’s usual low rumbling voice.

“Bill will do,” Matt said. “We don’t need to age ourselves before our time.”

“You may not, but I am just darn old. You don’t sound that way. You sound young, sonny. Too young to be handing out advice.”

“You don’t have to take it. In fact, we’ve got a line-up of calls waiting, if you don’t—”

“Oh, no. No kiss-off. You gave that pretty little thing plenty of time. Just because I ain’t a fan is no reason to cut me off.”

“You need to state your problem, sir, or the moving finger of fate moves on in talk radio.”

“All right, all right. Keep your pants on. Or I guess you don’t have to since you’re on the radio.” Another wheezing laugh.

Dave was about to cut Woody off, when Matt shook his head “No” and the old man complied simultaneously.

“My problem is a lie, Mr. Midnight. Call me old-fashioned, and I already told you to call me Old Bill. What happens when someone you don’t know from Adam introduces himself nice and proper, comes with recommendations even, and you find out he’s a liar, and he’s got a whole lot more in mind than you know.”

“Are you talking about someone out to defraud you, sell you an insurance plan you don’t need? I can direct you to the Better Business Bureau or the Senior Services division of your local government…”

“Darn it! I want to know what you would say. If you were in my shoes.”

“I’d want to be sure he’d told me a lie. And then I’d ask him why.”

“Yeah, I could do that. But I only have his work number and I’m old-school, as I said. It’s not right to call someone up at his work number and hassle him. And if I found his home number and called him there, it might upset the family. Maybe they don’t know what he’s gotten himself into.”

“Bill—”

“No, wait. I got it now. Thanks. I’ll find another way to send him a message.”

“Old Bill come due” hung up and a woman’s voice wafted into Matt’s ears.

“Oh, Mr. Midnight, I’m so glad I got through…”

Matt looked at his watch. Like Temple, he liked the assurance of the time right there with second hands, but the multi-device wrist was here.

Stuck here for an hour and a half more, Woody’s threats running like rats on the treadmill of his mind. Stuck here trying to catch the caller’s problem. He pulled out his cell phone to dial Temple. It went to message. She always had her phone on. She was always in the condo at this hour. Had there been another intruder? Should he cut and run? Or had he let Woodrow Wetherly spook him?

“Yes,” he heard himself encouraging the caller to talk herself out while he figured what to do. What he could do.

Luckily, it was the usual lonely hearts call, and Matt could advise her by rote. He hated his own glibness, but she ate up every self-help cliché and hung up gushing thanks.

Dave’s bushy eyebrows raised along with his right forefinger. Signals that meant, Wow. A hot one incoming.

Matt sat up straighter, more than ready to hear the next caller. The show was dying.

It was another male caller, with a pleasant, deep, drawling voice.

“Mr. Midnight, I like what you said to that little girl. She needs to know she counts. She needs to know she’s treasured. I grew up with that, and it made all the difference. You are our Las Vegas midnight hero, local boy gone syndicated. Your voice has the right pitch to make the mic go and fall right in love with it.”

Matt felt a chill up the back of his head. “Did you grow up in Vegas, sir?”

“‘Sir.’ I like that. Real polite. You can never be too polite. Did I grow up in Vegas?” A deep rolling chuckle let the mic have its way with it. “You could say that, though I’ve been away for forty years. Hardly seems it. Forty years. On the other hand, you could say I did not grow up at all in my early Vegas moments, if you know what I mean.”

Dave signaled Matt frantically through the studio glass window, circling his forefingers to “keep going”. Matt got it. FBI guy and ex-priest Frank Bucek would signal the same thing if he were here. And Matt’s former seminary mentor just might be somewhere in Vegas. Matt had thought he’d glimpsed him once. Not in a good place. Outside the nudie bar where Wetherly had taken him in the name of research into Cliff Effinger.

Dave was tapping on the studio glass, frowning and waving.

Matt shook off that memory and saw all the phone lines were lit up.

“You ‘didn’t grow up in Vegas’?” He fought for time to adjust to a voice that seemed so familiar…to everyone. “What do you mean?”

“Aw, I was so young, wanted every toy I’d never gotten, every girl. So I did what they wanted and let ’em ‘market me’.” He dropped into an eerily spot-on Marlon Brando voice saying an iconic line. “I coulda been a contender. Done real movies instead of sappy stuff. I had every line in every part of my first movie memorized when I got to Hollywood. Man, if I hadn’t have let Colonel Parker demand first billing over Barbra Streisand on that A Star is Born remake… She had a heck of a voice and was a producer to boot. That would have been an A-1 acting job. I shoulda taken some heavy non-singing roles, like Frank.”