Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Matt got in and stretched out to swing the wide, heavy-metal door shut. ''How did you know I'd be walking this way?"

"I'm a detective, ain't I?" Eightball O'Rourke grinned into the rearview mirror. "Guess no one from the LVMPD saw that illegal turn. You always that easy to tail, and that relaxed about it?"

He glanced curiously at Matt.

"I wasn't relaxed," Matt said tightly.

Eightball nodded. "Good. It's not always bad to look easy, as long as you know better."

"Why didn't you contact me at a normal hour?"

"This is a normal hour in my line of work. And yours too, I reckon. Besides, I wanted to avoid calling at the Circle Ritz. I wasn't sure you'd relish Miss Temple Barr knowing your business."

"You're right. I should have given you my phone number at ConTact."

"No way. Ain't no way I'm gonna call one of those weepy lines. Might get mistaken for a wimp or something. Might get some soupy free advice."

"ConTact isn't like that."

"Sure. Maybe I'm not being modern about all this breast-beating and twelve-step stuff, but I'm from a generation that helps themselves."

''Helps themselves to a lot of things," Matt said with amusement.

''Will you forget those blasted silver dollars! That was what you call a youthful peccadillo."

"What do you call this crate?"

"A car, which is more than you have, Mr. Devine. Cars are important out here. I know Miss Temple lets you drive her cute little Storm hither and yon, but why don't you have your own wheels?"

"Because all my money is going to windy private investigators."

"Well, at least you get your money's worth." Eightball rotated the giant steering wheel in a slow arc, wallowing the car around a corner.

In minutes the scenery grew familiar. A block away, a stark canister of black marble hunkered like a World War II bunker in the dark, or a cemetery monument. The Circle Ritz.

Eightball pulled the car to the empty curb and shifted into park, turning off the engine.

Suddenly, the night was silent.

"You . . . found him?" When Matt finally asked that question, his voice was steady.

Eightball nodded, his face just visible in the pink puddle of another streetlight. The car's immense hood looked the color of cat vomit, an unappetizing combination of puke pink and pea green.

"Where?" Matt wanted to know.

"Around. He doesn't settle anywhere much. Keeps moving, like a man on the run. A man up to something. He's a bad sack of potatoes, but I 'spose you knew that."

"You mean . . . professionally."

"Professionally! Hah. This guy is about as professional as a wounded rattlesnake. Uses the name you gave me sometimes. Sometimes not. He's been seeing the wrong company, some out of town mob lookin' for an inside track on Vegas. Mean but not necessarily smart. He owed them money; now he owes them more. Half the time he's duckin' them; half the time he's huddling with 'em when they catch up with him."

"How ... is he"

"What do you mean? I just told you."

"What sort of . . . health is he in? How does he look?'*

"Looks like a man who's been pushing his luck for forty years ought to look. Wrinkled skin, wrinkled suits. Slack but beefy. Got a whiskey nose that W.C. Fields would envy. He looks the wrong side of sixty from the wrong side of the tracks. Women all over this town have sworn out assault complaints, then they usually drop 'em, and it isn't because he's been sending them posies, except to the chops. He's been in jail, but he's never done anything bad enough to keep too long. One thing's certain: he never keeps that prize-winning whiskey nose clean when he gets out again. He's trouble, Mr. Devine. If I were you, I'd forget about finding him. Losers are sometimes best off staying lost."

"I have to find him."

"Sure." Eightball leaned back in the bench seat and pulled a slip of paper from his pants'

pocket. 'That's where he's staying now. Araby Motel. I don't recommend it for your visiting Aunt Sarabeth. I don't recommend it to a nice, clean-cut young fellow like you. I don't babysit, neither, so what you do with that address is up to you."

Matt nodded. He couldn't quite read Eightball's scrawl in the streetlamp, but he knew the information would be accurate.

"What do I owe you?"

"Enough to keep you from getting a car for a while. I make it about eight hundred dollars, give or take a few minutes between friends. Come see me after you visit the Araby Motel and we'll tote it up."

"Aren't you afraid that I might not make it?"

"I don't believe in bilking the dead, Mr. Devine, but I don't believe you're ready for that yet.

Jest don't act too easy. This guy is a hard case to crack."

I know," said Matt, getting out of the car. 'Thanks for your . . . discretion."

''Discretion is my middle name."

Matt slammed the door shut--today's cars sure didn't sound like that. He remembered his stepfather bragging about the solid slam of his car door, a dirty bronze-green '69 Olds Cutlass F85 that Matt would never forget for its smoky, sour smell, for the constant presence of rancid burger wrappers and stale newsprint, for the sounds of yelling, arguing, slapping. ...

Eightball O'Rourke's car gargled off. Matt pushed the hand holding the slip of paper into his pocket, as if afraid that someone would see it--at three o'clock in the morning?

As if afraid that he would see it.

He had his quarry in the palm of his hand now. What would he do? Eightball must be wondering that, too. That's why he had postponed payment. He wanted to hear the end of the story. He wanted to know who would be left standing. He was a born detective. He wanted answers more than he wanted solvency.

Matt smiled as he finished his short stroll toward the Crystal Phoenix. He was looking forward to Caviar's inquisitive greeting, her warm, winding presence and wide, unblinking golden eyes. She welcomed him without asking any unwelcome questions.

He was looking forward to the peace and quiet of his half-furnished rooms. Soon it would be four a.m. Time for lauds. Time for a prayer of thanksgiving. He who was lost, is found.

Too bad that Matt was no longer a shepherd, and that the man he sought had never been a sheep, but a wolf.

Nobody much mourns lost wolves.

Chapter 11

A Thrush in the Bush ...

"I'm sorry," Matt said. "I know I've left you dangling lately; at least I feel like I have."

"Is that what the Ethel M candy and this is all about?" Temple glanced around the restaurant, a dimly lit place as cozy as the small brass lamps that warmed every table, even their intimate, for-two model. "An apology?"

Matt's smile was softer than the incandescent light filtered through their lamp's pleated, mauve chiffon shade. "And I might need some help," was his sheepish answer.

"That's what friends are for," Temple said briskly, unrolling a forest green linen napkin that covered her meager lap like a lawn.

Despite her delight at Matt's sudden invitation to ''a nice dinner," despite this slightly hokey, undeniably romantic atmosphere, she wasn't going to make the classic Casablanca mistake of expecting too much. A kiss is just a kiss, after all.

Especially one committed at a high school prom held on the high desert more than fifteen years too late.

Matt moved his knife and spoon into more perfect union with the fork opposite, so they bracketed the empty, white linen space like spit-polished pewter soldiers on parade.

The "Blue Dahlia" was truly a find beyond the normal reach of a social novice like Matt, Temple thought. How on earth had Max Kinsella--master discoverer of the underestimated asset--missed this gem? Maybe the restaurant was too new; Max was definitely old news now.

Matt, on the other hand, was a front-page item, at least to her. Tonight he wore a lightweight ivory blazer she had never seen before over an open necked pale yellow shirt. She was glad she had broken out her green silk Hanae Mori dress; tonight might be an occasion, after all.