Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

''Dead,'' Matt finished for her, his tone as grim and final as this ultimate in four-letter words.

She nodded. "Maybe you'd be better off if he was."

"I'd be better off knowing that's for sure."

"Can I ask one . . . personal question?"

"You will anyway."

"Why not look for your . . . real father?"

Matt looked dumbfounded. "He's not real to me. He's not the one who--"

Temple hung on every word, recognizing the importance of this answer, above all the others.

Matt must have recognized it, too. He suddenly grew silent, leaving her to twist slowly in the weightless vacuum of his unfinished phrase. " The one who ..." Who what? Hung the moon?

Killed the goose that laid the golden egg? Made a priest out of young Matt Devine?

"Was your stepfather's last name Devine?" she asked,

"No. That was my birth father's name. Mom went back to it after he left. I had never taken his name."

"Then your mother must account for the Polish in you."

"Yeah. Kaczkowski. I swear to God," he added, smiling. "Devine, I don't know. Might be Gaelic."

Gaelic? Like Kinsella? Oh, no! "Hey," Temple said, recovering, "at least your real father left you a pronounceable last name; that's something."

He nodded, lost again in his quandary.

"As for your stepfather, from what I've seen of Las Vegas regulars, they stay pretty faithful to the old town. What are you doing, checking the casinos and hotels for his name?"

"Yeah." He hesitated. Temple suspected that he was coming to the issue that really troubled him, and that more was troubling him than his family history. ''And lying a lot." "Why?"

"Can you get information from unsuspecting people without lying a lot?"

While Temple considered that question, a cocktail waitress in a gathered skirt about a centimeter longer than the control-top line on her off-black pantyhose sauntered by to offer them menus and take drink orders.

Matt kept his nose in the eyebrow-tall menu and his eyes on the entrees, though Temple noticed that the waitress's skirt was just the right height to scratch his nose, were it or she so inclined.

Temple always wondered why the taller the woman, the shorter the skirt; on her this ebony ruffle would be nearly knee-length. Glancing around, she saw that the serving staff were all dressed in sophisticated black-and-white. Maybe Central Casting had sent them over from the nightclub set in a forties movie. The men wore tuxes and pencil-thin mustaches. The women wore lots of abbreviated black with pencil-thin white-lace ruffles in all the right places, from bustier to bustle, including the black satin pillbox hats tilted over their right eyebrows like vintage bellboy caps. Caaall for PhilUllip Moooor-ris the, Cat , perhaps? Hot-cha-cha . Where is Jimmy Durante when you really need him?

Matt emerged from his menu only when the waitress had sashayed away. He leaned across the snowy linen to Temple. He spoke sotto voice , despite the growing buzz of other diners.

"This place was supposed to be quiet and have some good food." Matt frowned. "I didn't know about the, er, ambiance."

''I suppose all this black-and-white is a rather perverse reminder of your past," Temple couldn't resist commenting.

Matt remained unruffled, despite the environment and despite suffering from the recent embarrassment of revealing a past. ''Most of the religious I knew were post-habit days," he said to quash her sense of mischief. ''I was referring to the noise level."

Temple noticed only then that a trio had appeared in a dim corner lanced by needles of spotlight. A tenor saxophone was running up and down its liquid metal trills, while a snare drum in the background emulated a soft, rhythmic rattlesnake. A piano's bluesy, throaty tinkle underlay it all like a smoker's cough.

''Isn't it odd," she said, "that they're making all these nun movies--like Sister Act and Nunsense --only now that nuns wear civilian dress?"

"Now it's safe. Less chance of offending a habit-wearing hardliner these days."

"I guess people have always been fascinated by priests and nuns," Temple mused. "First there's the distinctive uniform; then there's the celibacy mystique."

"I've never heard celibacy called a 'mystique' before," Matt said dryly, leaning back to make room for the waitress and her lethal ruffled hem. She deposited a lowball glass and a long-stemmed, slow sip of leg before him at one and the same instant.

"What's that?" Temple stared at the dark, murky drink in front of Matt, not having noticed his order.

"A Black Russian. What's yours?" He nodded at her long-stemmed glass.

"A White Lady. I felt like something . . . elegant. At least we're in tune with the color scheme."

They laughed and lifted their glasses. Then they sipped their drinks and began to talk of more important things, like themselves.

Matt had another confession to make. "I'm glad that you like the place, and that you could come tonight. I was worried that you might think I was avoiding you."

"I know you've got commitments. Matt. Besides, I've been busy too."

"So I noticed. With what?"

"Oh, it's fabulous." Temple's natural optimism loved an audience to bubble over on. 'The Crystal Phoenix has hired me to reposition the hotel for the new family market. That's like playing Tinkerbell with a whole, real little world, a magic kingdom without Disney's capital letters, or capital investment. And then I was roped into working on a Gridiron skit-- you know; the annual political satire show like in Washington. Awful Crawford is show chairman this year and got writer's block on a production number, so I've invented the most outrageous, unbelievable Theme-Hotel-from-Hell. Trying to out Vegas is a real challenge."

"I bet, but why bail out Buchanan? Isn't he your bete noir ?"

"Black beast' is too good a phrase for the lowlife! Bargain-basement bastard is more like it."

Temple settled down, not wanting to ruin a lovely evening. '*But my skit is lots of fun. Maybe you, uh, might want to go to the Gridiron. With me. To see it performed, I mean."

''Sounds great. If . . . my exploits as an amateur P.I. don't require me to be elsewhere."

Temple nodded her understanding, already planning what she would wear to the Big Event.

She'd never had a date for a Gridiron before. Not in Minneapolis, and not even here. Last year, Max had a conflicting show at the other end of the Strip; even a professional magician couldn't be in two places at once. Temple winced to recall that less than a year ago, she and Max had still been together.

In the background, a torch singer was tuning up the vocal chords. Temple let a few seductive riffs of sound coil around her blue mood like the cigarette smoke nicely absent from the restaurant. In seconds, she was back in the present, and pleased to be there. Umm, this place was a genuine find. So romantic. Matt was looking soulful, thanking her again for being understanding.

"I'm so lucky that you live at the Circle Ritz, too," he was saying. "It's like I was . . . guided . . .

there. Mrs. Lark, Electra, has been so supportive, and you, you're my 'open sesame'--"

Temple's tootsies curled again, sans shoes but with pleasure, as if they were the turned-up toes on an Arabian Nights slipper.

''It's amazing,'' Matt went on, ''how many doors you've opened for me. To the past, and to the future."

The music had assumed a familiar rhythm. You must remember this. Temple told herself. A kiss is just a kiss. A new day is just another sunrise. Don't blow it. Don't fixate on old news.

A woman's low, dusky voice had joined the sax's soulful whine. Burgundy dark and deep, it moved from times gone by to singing of the man that got away. Then came the drums'