Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

And so Matt did what he did with the disembodied voices who called five nights a week to ask him for instant on-air advice and comfort. He imagined how sad Temple would feel if she thought every loyal bone in her body had been devoted for two years to a creepy secret stalker.

And, loopy or not, Matt did not, deep in his way-too-honest soul, want Max Kinsella to be a guilty man.

Riding Shotgun

“Hide-ho, honey!” Ambrosia greeted Matt as he stepped out of the glass booth at two A.M. She was lofting his cell phone like Perry Mason revealing Exhibit A. “This mockin’ bird don’t sing. Not one little ringy-dingy outa this cell phone. Daddy is not gonna get either one of us a diamond ring. No, sir. Is that bad?”

Matt reclaimed his cell phone with a sigh. “I’m probably taking this way too seriously.”

“You do have that tendency, sweet cheeks. Hey. Ambrosia’ll buy you a drink to wind down with.”

“Thanks. Another time. I’m sorry I kept you up so late. I need to, ah, gather my notes. I’ll leave in a bit.”

“You vant to be alone,” she accused in a dead-on Garbo voice. “Sure thing. Curtis here is putting ole WCOO on digital autopilot until morning. Don’t linger too long brooding, my man. It’s bad for the face. Trust me.”

Matt stood dreaming on the other side of the door to the waiting room long after Ambrosia had sailed out like Cleopatra’s Barge heading over to anchorage as a famous restaurant at Caesar’s Palace.

Talking to the people out there in Radioland had given him a sense of perspective. They were all trying so hard. Trying to stay afloat in this down-sizing economy. Trying to keep love in their lives. Trying to make sure their children didn’t feel the losses they had, although that was always impossible. No matter how much a parent tried to “make up,” there was always some new psycho-social stress to make kids’ lives hard. Tragically, it was often caused by the parents’ own anxiety.

Matt breathed deeply, and allowed as he didn’t control a single thing in his life and the larger world beyond it. Just let go of trying to insist that God—or the Fates if you were a secular person—would ensure that things would go your way.

By the time he stepped out into the tepid Las Vegas night air, he was at semi-peace with himself.

His fancy new silver car shone like a slick magazine ad under one of the parking lot lamps. All alone. It had the same sleek mechanical beauty of the Hesketh Vampire motorcycle that had originally belonged to Max Kinsella, but Matt would have pushed his new car off a cliff if he thought it would make Temple feel one sixteenth of a scintilla better about the ugliness Carmen Molina was about to drop on her.

Turned out he didn’t have to sacrifice his car.

A low, throaty growl drew his attention to something glinting outside the wash of parking lot lights. A motorcycle. Not the Vampire. Flashier but oh-so-familiar.

Matt edged over warily, like a kid to a high-end bike on Christmas morning. He knew that bike, that figure in glitzy leathers, that shining black helmet as round as a pumpkin on Halloween.

The rider revved the engine as his leather-gloved hands wrung the bike’s handlebars. Matt approached. The rider tossed him a helmet that had been tethered to the back.

“Rock or roll?” he asked with something of a Southern accent.

Matt shook his head, not sure if he needed to clear it or to derail a rueful laugh. This was the motorcycle that had shadowed him during those dark nights when someone sinister had seemed to be on his tail light, his motorcycle’s tail lights. When he’d ridden the Vampire he’d gotten from Electra after Max Kinsella had let her have it.

He’d had a shadow rider then. Two. One lethal, another riding ghost shotgun for him. That guy had looked and acted a lot like Elvis, who’d apparently called in to the Mr. Midnight show for a while there. An Elvis so real you thought you’d had breakfast with him one time that you couldn’t quite remember: a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs. Elvis had been Atkins before Atkins was Atkins.

One mystery was solved. A persistent mystery of streets and night and pursuit. The voice over the air waves was a different matter entirely. Much harder to impersonate.

Matt donned the safety helmet and gazed at the night and its lights through the veil of its smoke-Plexiglas visor, darkly. He mounted the elongated seat behind the rider, curled his hands around the chrome rods beneath the seat, pushed his heels onto the chrome rods over the rear wheels.

The cycle charged into the night, leaning, roaring, shooting like a star.

Being a passenger on a meteor’s tail took guts. Matt realized for the first time that he really, really wanted to be in control, not eddied along by his history, his inheritance, his losses.

The biker took the bike to a high point overlooking Vegas before his boot-heels dropped to asphalt and he let the machine tilt to a stop. All that massive weight, held up by a bike stand.

Matt hopped off, doffed the damn helmet. Waited.

The motorcycle man dismounted like a cowboy who loved his mount, fluid and easy. He took off the helmet.

“You were my guardian biker,” Matt said. Accused. Thanked. “My ersatz Elvis.”

“Maybe.” Max Kinsella hung his helmet from the handlebar. The full moon reflected in its dark side, kind embracing kind. “Sometimes. Maybe sometimes it was Elvis. Dude had an aura, you know. You don’t kill that.”

“I know. Still, masquerading as a motorcycle cop that time—”

“Me? Impersonate a cop? Don’t have that costume on tap. ‘Fraid not.”

Matt felt a chill trickle down his spine. That had been the guy who’d advised him to let the bike fly. If not Max, then who? Elvis for real?

“What did you need to talk to me about?” Max asked.

“You took me seriously.”

“I take Temple seriously.”

The words hung in the air, in their multiplicity of meanings. “Me too,” Matt said. “What about Molina?”

“What about . . . her?”

“She’s bound to get you for something.”

Max shrugged. “Let her try.”

“Fine for you, Mr. Invisible. Tough on Temple.”

“Temple’s tough. So, what’s Molina up to now?”

“It’s who’s up to what against Molina.”

Max walked to the overlook, trying to untangle that sentence. Las Vegas lay like a tea tray of white-silver glitz on the vast dark desert floor.

They were halfway up the Spring Mountains. Matt would have a long, exhausting walk back to civilization if he had to make it on foot power. How competitive was Max Kinsella, anyway? Very.

“You don’t like me. You really, really don’t like me.” Max surveyed the distant glitter of the city where he had once been an A-list star, a magician to reckon with. “You particularly don’t like me in Temple’s life. Or bed. Still. You want to warn me. Why?”

“Because I don’t like you in Temple’s life.” Matt made himself ignore the bed part. He felt guilty about being the other man. Given recent events, he was now supersensitive about beds and what did, or did not happen in them.

“That’s why when you call, I listen. But I don’t have a lot of time.”

“You don’t know how true that is.”

“Tell me.”

Max Kinsella never waffled around. Never shillied nor shallied. Matt admired that. He’d been reared to question everything, most of all himself and his motives. His motives here were pure, even selfless. Mostly.

“Carmen Molina’s had a stalker for several weeks.”

“Stalkers must be hard up.”

“Not funny. I had one, one handed down from you.”

“Stalkers must be hard up,” Max repeated with sardonic humor. He turned back to face Matt. “Molina’s a cop. Stalkers come with the territory. With her, I wouldn’t doubt that it would come more often.”