Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"Don't blame yourself. Catholics always blame themselves too much. I told you that none of us even saw our own situations then. Remember Mary Lou Zyskowski?"

"Oh, that impossible red-headed girl! Always in trouble and so sullen and stubborn about learning."

"I ran into her again--at a therapy group. She was sexually abused by her older male cousins all through grade school."

Sister Seraphina was too numb to wince. She just shook her head.

"None of us noticed, student or teacher," Matt assured her. "She didn't even understand then what was wrong herself."

"We never dreamed families could go so wrong back then. And the Family, the Father, was sacred. You didn't ... meddle."

"Too many people still feel that way. She remembers you kindly, by the way."

"Me? How did I come up in a therapy session?"

"You nagged her into going to the convent for summer reading lessons after sixth grade, remember? She screamed and kicked all the way, but says now that if she hadn't gotten good enough at reading to survive in high school, she would have never made it."

"Well, we tried. Sometimes we gave extra attention to kids from large families who were ignored, or railed at. And I suppose even we suspected some unbearably ugly truth beneath the facade. Some children were accident prone, always bruised, always bruising themselves. One did wonder and try to be as kind as possible."

"What about the kids who never showed anything," Matt went on, "whose parents were too cagey to paste them in the mouths? The kids who feel impelled to protect their parents from the physical evidence that these mothers and fathers don't know how to love? Then, when the kids finally recognize and admit the abuse, they are disbelieved. They have become their own worst witnesses."

"Kids can live amazingly bitter lives and say nothing, can seem to be paragons of behavior,"

Seraphina said, nodding her head. "Who would think that Mary Lou Zyskowski appreciated those lessons she came to with dragging feet and sour temper? And the child can go in an opposite direction, pretend to a perfect life. In fact, one would almost think--"

She looked at Matt, really looked at him.

He had come here to learn something from Sister Seraphina that she didn't know. Instead, she had discovered something she had always known, and never acknowledged. Her hands covered her mouth even as she spoke, as if hoping to deny the words, the understanding, so long in coming.

''Oh, dear God--now I see what I never could bear to face then. Dear God."

No doubt about it. Matt thought with the kind of wry relief honesty between friends always brings. He had the makings of a good priest, but a lousy detective.

Chapter 7

Koi Sera, Sera

There are those who claim that they never forget a face.

In my business, faces come and go. I never forget a place.

So I am strolling again through the ersatz tropical gardens of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel, surrounded by such an aura of nostalgia that you could bottle it and sell it to passenger pigeons, (if there were still any passenger pigeons around; I understand that these unusually useful birds are now extinct. I--I am happy to say--had nothing to do with It, and the carp population seems firmly prolific.)

Ah, carp. It is a homely little word of one syllable, but sweet to me. Whether one says "carp"

or uses the fancy Oriental term of "koi," they are both goldfish to my mind, and splendid eating.

I circle the pond where I was once wont to wander and wonder, as lonely as a clod. My Walden. My wellspring. My floating buffet.

No one can accuse me of picking on the helpless. Some of these colorful fish are the size of pit-bull pups. When they are nudging fins at the waterline while jousting for gobbets of Tender Vittle-Iike treats you can see how muscular these fish are.

For Midnight Louie to land such a beauty is similar to a millionaire snagging a blue marlin off Florida. And I always eat my tasty prey, rather than tastelessly exhibiting it on my walls. I picture Miss Temple Barr's reaction were I to return home with a glittering trophy skin of my fishing prowess. She would shudder at the least, and accuse me of depraved appetites, but then, it is not the first time that I have stood so charged and it will not be the last, if I have anything to say about it. Depraved appetites are the last to go, being the most fun.

A soft desert breeze riffles the big, shiny leaves on the canna lilies that surround the pond. I am reminded of harem fans swishing gently to and fro, not that I have ever been in a harem, but a dude can have aspirations.

At my feet, a large blue-and-white carp executes a swishy turn and flays my toes with a lash of water drops. Uppity fish, these Imperial koi.

I settle quietly under the shade of canna lily leaves. Let them cavort like the orca act at Marine World. I have heard the merfish singing, and It Is for my supper, not their own.

But supper is a long way off and I can afford to wait. I drowse to the accompaniment of a circling bomber-bee high above. Even the shrieks of gamboling children in the distant pool do not disturb my contemplative frame of mind. My nose imbibes the odor of recently sprinkled dirt and the slight fishy bouquet of the carp next door.

Then a shadow crosses my face. My eyes flash open as round and wide as a green traffic light. Go!

The shadow is still there, moving languidly between me and my carp pond. All serenity shatters as I draw my lounging form into an irritated huddle that any sensible being would know better than to irritate.

But the interloper is no sensible being. It is the girl upstairs known as Caviar.

"What are you doing here?" I hiss.

"The same thing that you are," she answers calmly, brazen enough to come nose-sniffing close. "Enjoying the view." She arches her neat little head to gaze into the trembling waters.

"Overripe," she sniffs. "These fish are all flash and no flavor. The best carp should be no longer than a bobcat tail."

"Since when are you the expert?"

She shrugs, a gesture that emphasizes her well-honed shoulder blades. This kid could use a decent meal, but if she is too hoity-toity for well-fed fish, it is her problem.

"What are you doing here?" I ask, showing my teeth.

"I could ask you the same thing. As it happens, I heard that my so-called father used to hang around this place."

I gulp. "Why are you looking for him?"

"Oh ..." She stretches lazily, arching her lithe belly to the flagstones and hoisting her pert hindquarters in the air.

This display would be a lot more enticing did I not immediately notice a certain absence of scent in the petite Caviar. You might say that she has an "altered" air about her. Since we last met, she has been transported to the House of Dr. Death for a spaying operation.

I sigh in tribute to things not to be. I tell you, in this day and age it is getting downright difficult to encounter members of the opposite sex who have retained any gender at all. I am all for preventing unwanted kits, but it does look like the simple act of reproduction is getting a lot more difficult to indulge nowadays.

"He looks a lot like you."

Her considering tone flashes past me like the performing cleaver of a Japanese chef and my blood runs as cold as it can when the temperature Is eighty degrees in the shade.

"So do a lot of dudes," I growl.

She blinks bored carp-gold eyes. "Oh, do not worry, Gramps. You are too old and out-of-shape to be my rotten, kit-deserting father. My mother was still sweet on the bounder and described him to ail us kits ad nauseam : black coat shiny as tar on a long, muscular frame; white whiskers and eyebrows, not from age but birth; grass-green eyes; sharp, clean white teeth. A Hunk of the Month, apparently. I am sure that this smooth operator did not have to descend to removing aged fish too slow to flash a fin from hotel ponds."