Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"Perhaps he--or she--will go public when you least expect it."

'True."

"The police would be your better bet," Matt said.

"Go to Lieutenant Molina? Never."

"Pride goeth before a fall, to be sanctimonious. Besides, this isn't a case for a homicide lieutenant."

"She would learn of it."

"Probably, but forget your image in the eyes of a parishioner. Lieutenant Molina is also a professional, and professionals don't buy what every anonymous crank might charge. The police investigate this sort of thing all the time and are well acquainted with anonymous letter-writers. They might give you more benefit of the doubt, and they certainly would investigate quietly. If they leaped to conclusions and filed false charges, they can get sued."

"What you're saying is that the church, my church, to which I have devoted most of my life, is more likely to persecute me than to defend me."

"Now, given the political climate on this issue, it has to avoid any appearance of favoritism, of sheltering anyone."

"So they will crucify me, with a mockery of a trial, as was done to Christ. We priests claim we walk in Our Lord's footsteps, or try to, but confront something like this, Matthias, and say then that you are prepared to face the Crown of Thorns from the hands of your own bishop and the whips and the scourges of the press."

"I believe your innocence," Matt said. "I do believe you, Father Hernandez. And if I do, so will others. Yet I see your point. Why pull down disaster upon yourself? Still, the pressure will draw attention to you in any event."

"You mean this?" He lofted the two-thirds-empty bottle. "I try, but my thoughts run around and around like mice on a wheel. Who? Why? When will the attack escalate? How?"

"That's why the good news of Miss Tyler's bequest hardly seemed to matter to you."

"Money." He shook his silvered head. "It is the means to a good end, one hopes. It is essential to life and bureaucracy. I wish the cats had gotten it, do you understand? No one would accuse the cats of misconduct."

"Father, we both should know more than most that false accusations are a terrible cross to bear. You, too, should ask our Father to take this cup from your lips." Matt pointed to the bottle. "Whatever happens, that is the first bridge to cross."

Father Hernandez shrugged and ran his fingers through his elegant hair, turning it into a ruffled halo. "I'll try. Harder."

"And I'll think about this letter-writer. It could be the same person who called Sister Mary Monica, and who tried to crucify the cat. We could be dealing with a truly demented individual."

Father Hernandez looked up, and actually smiled. "Thank you for that 'we.' That is more than I was willing to grant you when we first met. Forgive me."

Father, forgive me, for I have not sinned. . . .

Matt ran that ironic phrase through his mind as he left the rectory. His watch read, by the candle still burning in the kitchen window, five-thirty in the morning.

Dawn was a vague, teasing lightening of the dark along the eastern horizon. He jammed his hands, cold hands from tension felt but not shown, into his pants pockets and began walking back to the Circle Ritz.

Daylight would begin to shadow him soon, and he was not afraid of the neighborhood. He was not afraid of anything he might encounter on Las Vegas's stirring streets. He had spent two hours staring at the face of true, spiritual fear, and ordinary fear would never look the same again.

Chapter 29

Trespasser and Transgressor

After my fruitless explorations at the cathouse next to the convent, I pad my weary way back home. Interrogating some threescore possible witnesses--or do I mean witlesses?--I am eager to lay my considerable length on the cool black-and white tiles of the kitchen floor and contemplate the full bowl of Free-to-be- Feline while I decide which of Miss Temple's food stores I should raid instead.

Actually, the challenge of finding a suitable substitute for this odious health food has added a piquant character to my several daily meals at the Circle Ritz, providing an element of uncertainty reminiscent of my untrammeled days on the streets and sidewalks. I need to keep my survival skills sharp, just in case my current cushy situation becomes too confining.

I scale the buildings outside along my usual, well-worn route, lofting from patio to patio to decorative cornice ledge to open bathroom window in the twinkling of a private eye.

My street-worn tootsies make a four-point landing on the bathroom's cool ceramic tiles. Ah, home, sweat-free home, after a hot day on the job.

I hightail it for the kitchen, partly because the tiles there are cool, too; partly to indulge in my daily stare-down with the unbanishable Free-to-be-Feline.

I crouch before the elegant glass-footed banana-split dish that my attentive companion has seen fit to heap with Free-to-be-Feline. There it sits, an army-green mountain of pellets that would serve equally well entering--or exiting--a rabbit. I have seen more appetizing vitamin pills from the health food store.

I will, of course, not touch one crude pellet. I contemplate busting into the lower cabinet for a raid on Miss Temple's hidden stock of Finny Flakes, a toothsome, sugar-coated cereal product thoughtfully shaped into the miniature likeness of our piscine friends. Yum. I can put away whole schools of these little nibbles.

Then I notice a new variation in the unspoken food war that has been waged between us ever since my usually sensible roommate saw fit to introduce the foul Free-to-be-Feline to my menu.

Another bowl--in fact, a pink Melmac saucer from the upper cupboard--of the questionable comestible sits beside mine, this mound of pellets surmounted by a suggestive valley at the apex. Has some intruder been at my rejected food? My rear extremity swells to irritated proportions as I growl to myself, "Who's been eating my Free-to-be-Feline?"

The usual suspects come quickly to mind: the invasive mouse (but my alert presence alone would banish any vermin of that persuasion); the rapacious insect (but even the largest cockroach could not dispose of the apparent amount of missing FtbF); the unexpected visitor (but neither Mr. Matt Devine nor Miss

Electra Lark has previously shown the slightest inclination to snack on my food, whether I favor it or not).

There is, of course, one party so depraved, so predictably greedy, so . . . unclassy as to vacuum up any foodstuff to be found on a floor. I refer, naturally, to the domesticated dog.

I have become lax on my own turf, I realize, and did not sniff for intruders before bounding to the buffet. I lift my head and sniff for dog. Actually, dogs possess an overbearing scent that I should have noticed even in my mad dash for the eats.

I do not sniff dog. Instead, I detect a delicate scent of an unknown nature, not unpleasant, but not native to this environment. I press my sniffer to the floor near the second bowl of FtbF and reel at the flagrant trail of a foreign feline.

Now that I am alerted to the intruder, I race into the living room . . . to find a stranger ensconced on the off-white sofa, fast asleep.

My proprietorial instincts have given way to something quite different. Both my nose and my eyes are right on target: the individual who has been tastelessly filching my Free-to-be-Feline is a dainty, nubile number who is not hard on either of my prime senses, who is, in fact--free, black and female!

In an instant, I bound up beside her, anticipating a most enjoyable interrogation.

In the same instant, she is awake and transformed into a hissing banshee with a croquet-hoop back, bushy tail, poisonously slit golden eyes, bristling silver whiskers and as many sharp white teeth--all showing--as a barracuda with an overbite.

"Whoa! Wait a minute, Miss," I soothe in my best growl, which is only slightly intimidating.