Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"Possibly."

Molina narrowed her eyes, letting their electric blue diminish to two slits, like in an armored tank. "You're being fairly evasive for the good, honest ex-priest you are. What are you hiding?"

"Uncertainty."

"Yes, priests aren't trained to deal with that."

"Listen, Lieutenant. I'm not a priest any longer. I'm not hiding behind a clerical robe."

"I can see that." Molina eyed his gi with some amusement.

It made Matt feel like a twelve-year-old playing at martial arts. He understood that part of her interrogation technique was to juvenilize subjects so they would respond to her as an authority figure. He'd had enough of playing an authority figure, but guessed that if Molina wanted to go head-to-head with him in this mode, he could pull up enough experience to outgun her. She had gone to Catholic schools herself, after all.

"Lieutenant," he said, donning his parish-priest demeanor that cowed the faithful and drove the preteen girls wild, despite his best intentions, "you must understand that I cannot jump to hasty conclusions. My job is to help people, not hunt them down. I accept them for what they say they are, and we go from there. There was one repeat caller who had delusions of being Somebody. He was a sexual addict who hated himself for his addiction, as so many addicts do at times. It's possible he was this dead man. I'll just have to wait and see if he calls again, and since his calls have been so erratic, that may be quite a while."

Molina sat forward on the sprung cushion, oblivious to its discomfort. "Was your frequent caller suicidal?"

Matt nodded. "At times. He was older, had more at stake, including a marriage, his first. I referred him to three top psychiatrists, but he delayed contacting any of them. A common denial mechanism. He was using me as much as he used any woman; he's an inveterate manipulator, too hooked to stop."

"Hmm. Could be Darren Cooke. If we got a tape of his voice would you recognize it?"

"Maybe. It was distinctive, strong. But a lot of men with strong voices call me, and claim to be big winners or Somebody, and they're compulsives, all right, but gambling is their game, or drinking or drugs.

Our callers are really anonymous, given the huge base of troubled people here in Las Vegas."

"But he was suicidal?"

Matt nodded again. How many ways did he have to say it?

"Cooke's death certainly looks like suicide. Was your caller distraught enough about his addiction that he would have killed himself after having ... entertained a woman?"

"Very much so. He was trying to follow the straight and narrow, had a new wife and a baby daughter that he adored. All addicts build their fantasy worlds on a foundation of self-loathing. I hope I do hear from him again," Matt added in a burst. "I hope my man is not your man. That mine is alive and still has a chance to beat his addiction."

Molina nodded, picking up the ConTact card and slipping it back into her pocket.

"Why did this man keep calling you?"

"He said I helped him."

"You sound dubious."

"The trouble with all addicts is that they'll say anything to win the world over to believing that they don't have problems, or that they've got their situation well in hand. You must know that. Deception is their stock in trade. They're so used to it, they hardly recognize it as deception. It's called 'delusional sincerity' in the textbooks. They believe their own lies."

Molina nodded as she stood and walked toward the door. "I've dealt with a lot like that in interrogation rooms." At the door she turned back to him. "Listen, don't get your Catholic conscience in a wad over this guy. My guess is suicide will remain the diagnosis. But he's a famous guy and we have to investigate his last days just to be sure. You any good at martial arts?"

Her last question caught him off guard.

"I've studied for years, but I've never had to use it. So I guess I don't know. I like it for the mindset, the meditative quality."

"A pacifist to the core," she said, laughing.

"Maybe," Matt conceded sheepishly.

"Maybe not," he told the door after it had shut behind her.

Chapter 22

Flamingo Tango

The empty lot was a sea of that indescribable shade of pink called flamingo when Temple stopped by the first installation site in the morning.

She could hardly get near it for the rubberneckers slowing their cars to ten miles an hour to gawk at the latest imitation life -form to descend on the Strip.

Since it would take her at least fifteen minutes to come abreast of the driveway into the vast sandy parking lot the site was, she followed Mad Matt's example with the Hesketh Vampire and drove over the curb. An aging Geo Storm was not a motorcycle. Two sets of wheels jolted over the barrier, nearly knocking Temple's big plastic eyeglass frames off her retrousse nose and giving her a very French nosebleed.

She parked as soon as all four wheels were on sand, ignoring the indignant honks of people who had no business being there anyway.

By ones and twos, at close range, the plastic yard ornament was a cheap thrill. Two for nine ninety-five. You could see the manufacturing seams and the molded-feather shapes.

But here . . .

Domingo's plan was more than a two-dimensional layout on paper. He had made sure that certain flamingos were propped up higher than the rest, as if standing on hillocks, or walking on water, if one were paranormally inclined.

The effect was of waves of flamingos. Through the sun shimmer came an odd illusion that they moved, that feathers ruffled and long necks bobbed. Temple could sense what a real flock of thousands of flamingos would look like in the wild. There were few library books devoted to the subject. One ancient text--so old it was illustrated with black-and-white photos! --written by a British explorer who nearly lost his life pursuing the haunts of Great and Lesser Flamingo tribes in Africa, said that the sight was so overwhelming that he could hardly describe it. And considering his long and precise descriptions of alkaline mudflats, that was quite a concession to loss of words.

Now Temple glimpsed his awe. She actually was impressed by Domingo. If art was getting people to look at their world in a different way, he was a genius. There they bloomed en masse, like so many cactus flowers, unreal as anything around them, yet representing a form of natural life seldom seen in its glory.

The display both mocked and celebrated the artificiality that was Las Vegas. It looked as if all the half-million plastic flamingos sold in both the Americas every year had marched here in protest at being parceled off two by two. This was a flamingo convention, and surely not the oddest birds to descend on Vegas over the years.

"You like?"

Temple started to find Domingo beside her, his showman's arms lowered for once.

"It's... amazingly lovely," she said.

"Much that we do not look at closely is lovely." Domingo had no accent, but he phrased his words like someone foreign to the English language. Somewhere in that tone was flattery.

Temple tore her eyes from the flamingos--and it was an effort-- to view their assembler.

Domingo was smiling at her, looking far more human than she had ever seen him.

"Here is your hat. I understand it was forcibly borrowed the other day." He bowed (another foreign affectation) as he handed it back.

"I wasn't expecting it back."

"A shame. I have had a word with the ... mynah bird who took it. She will not trouble you again. Or me."

"Verina? But she--"

"She had attached herself to me. I rely on others to help me with my work. I had not looked closely at her. I work so long and see the results only infrequently." He began walking toward the installation, and Temple fell in step with him, amazed. "It is not good to have those around you who are more selfish than yourself. She is gone, back to where she found me. I am in love with my flamingos for the moment, anyway."