Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Carmen. I bet C. R. Molina despises that girly name.”

“She always did.”

“Whoa.” Max poured a bit more whiskey into Nadir’s glass. “Wait a minute. I was wrong. You can blackmail her. Don’t you get it? You don’t have to live up to her lie, but she has to live down lying to the kid.” Rafi nodded, seeing the light. “That’s something kids don’t understand and forgive. She needs you to cooperate and help her explain away that unforgivable breach of trust. No wonder she’s been such a mama grizzly. Hell, if that were a qualification, she could run for president on that platform. If I were you, I’d make nice and then nail her.”

“Are you suggesting I date her?”

“No, of course not. I’m telling you to. And getting her into bed would seal the deal.” Max laughed at the sight of Nadir’s struck-dumb expression. “You’ve said you get along with the kid—”

“Mariah.”

“—with Mariah already, since she and the always entertaining Miss Barr were competing in that teen talent reality show.”

“Yeah. It cuts like a knife to hear Mariah wants that media-perfect ex-priest to take her to the junior high Daughter–Dad dance. What’s he got that I haven’t got, besides looks and money?”

“I could say the same thing, since he cut me out with Temple.”

“You’ve got looks and money,” Rafi growled.

“Had,” Max said. “Had it all, and a live Garry Randolph.”

Rafi slanted a suspicious glance his way. “Kinsella, are you getting drunk?”

“Maybe so.” Max eyed the low level of Irish whiskey in his glittering glass and fixed that. “Not to go all metrosexual on you, but you’re a buff, decent-looking guy. You turned your life around. You really care about being in that young girl’s life. I say, use it. You and Molina had something going once.”

“You must be drunk.” Rafi sat staring into his glass, then grabbed the Jameson for a refill.

Yeah, Max thought. First had come the recent rerun of the Goliath episode he still didn’t remember. Now Rafi’s account of his almost-fatal Neon Nightmare plunge was bringing back haunting glimpses. Both incidents merited a good dose of anesthetic.

And … where would Max with a Memory be now, instead of drinking with Rafi Nadir? Maybe at the Circle Ritz, sleeping with Temple Barr. The idea seemed ridiculous at first, but she sure had known how to reintroduce a morose amnesiac to his own life.

“Come home, Max.”

Her parting words, sounding shell-shocked but game, would never leave his rebooted memory going forward. She had guts and grace, that little woman. And if Vegas still didn’t feel like “home,” nowhere did. Maybe the Circle Ritz could have. Maybe being with her again would bring everything flooding back.…

Max ended the maybes. That was the liquor nattering on.

He didn’t need to star in a romantic melodrama. He needed to find out who was out to kill him, and why so many innocents were being drawn into that murderous endgame.

For now, if he could sic Rafi on Molina, distract her from the remaining unsolved criminal matters that she obsessed about, he’d have a much clearer field of operations for his own investigations.

Once he was totally sober again, that is.

Chapter 14

Gossip Guys: Doing One’s Nails

Well, trim my toe hairs with a hedge shears!

Or just step on a crack and break my mother’s back, why not? She will make you pay, believe it. One does not mess with Ma Barker, and you do not tug on Superman’s cloak or Midnight Louie’s tail.

Here I have been trekked to Chitown in a designer carrier that gets me taken for a purse pooch and kidnapped, but I am still about to perish of boredom. Then I keep my ears perked and a nice, plump juicy family scandal plus a deranged stalker case gets tossed into my furry lap like a grenade.

Some would scramble to dodge falling family standards and potential bodies. Not Midnight Louie. I will be on the lookout for any malfeasance, not to mention bad actors.

Speaking of bad actors, my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt and Miss Matt Mama all do a lousy job of concealing the verbal bombshell Miss Mira has just let loose regarding her late demented hubby.

Cliff Effinger was the worst lowlife to hit Vegas and did not do a decent thing in his life, except draw Mr. Matt to my hometown to track him down.

I know the whole sordid story. It is as common in my world as in soap operas. In other words, it actually happens in real life but sounds too bad to be true. Seems Mr. Matt is the “product of sin.” Yeah, we hip cats on the street do not get those ugly labels. We are all just called superfluous.

He was actually the product of this sloppy Romeo and Juliet scenario humans like to sniffle over when they are not busy casting stones. My kind has often been the object of such schizo reactions too. As I understand it, She Who Is to Become Matt’s Naïve Young Mother is visiting St. Stanislaus Catholic Church near Christmastime to light a candle to the Virgin Mary. Watch out for that Virgin Mary! She is just a statue and may sometimes be asleep at the switch, as the Great Goddess Bast has been known to do for a century or two through her many millennia of worship.

Anyway, this young soldier going off to whatever war is the flavor of the moment is there to light a candle for his safe return, and zowie, powie. Human hormones strike, aka love at first sight. Believe me, I sympathize with the biological imperative. I have been blindsided by its pull a few dozen times myself.

It is the same old story as in my world. He is off about his business protecting territory for the feline race and she is left with a six-pack of kits … or just one if the leavee happens to be human.

You can imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the church choirs come the ensuing months. Jeez, you would think they could leave a lone cub in peace to be born, but Mr. Matt comes into this world everything a human kit should not be. Father unknown, mother shamed, and a family secret forever.

Follows the dumb, desperate marriage to whatever lowlife will take a fallen woman to wife. Enter the lazy, worthless, haranguing Cliff Effinger. At least Miss Matt Mama gives poor Mr. Matt a false surname, her one act of defiance, changing that into something new, not the old Polish “maiden” name, not Effinger’s, but something unique and Devine. Mr. Matt grows up with such lousy father figures except for the parish priest that he becomes one. Maybe his interior kit thinks he can redeem his mother’s “mistake.”

Me, I find life tough enough as a former homeless street dude. I cannot see adding on all this additional angst, but humans have over the centuries invented whole systems designed to make most things miserable.

Mr. Matt is a good priest; he has to be a perfect “father,” after all, but he finally wakes up and smells the candles and realizes he cannot make up for anyone else’s past. So he gets himself cashiered out as a civilian, but tells no one he wants to track down the Evil Effinger, who has long since left his mother for the dubious attractions of the criminal life in Las Vegas.

It could be Mr. Matt is primed to leave a lot of Mr. Cliff Effinger’s skin on the asphalt. Whatever, he has an epiphany and puts the brakes on his revenge, but some other dudes take out the miserable cur. Murder, they wrote. The rest is a long slow dance to reconnect with his mother and encourage her to bury the past and grow strong in the new soil that has accrued over it during all these years.