Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"Temple's card. Marked with the ritual seal of successful seduction." Molina smiled conspiratorially at Matt. "Is our little Miss Temple as innocent as she would have us think? She has a nasty habit of withholding information from the police. See the Mystifying Max."

Temple jumped in. "I never knew where Max was or why he might have been gone."

"But now that he's returned . . . don't you know more?"

Temple hesitated. "Not enough," she muttered.

Molina hit the flat of her hands on the desk in dismissal.

"I've made what notes are relevant. Miss Barr, if we find that missing manila envelope, I'll have to ask you to identify the contents. Mr. Devine, I presume your hot line doesn't have caller ID?"

He shook his head.

"Why didn't you simply refuse this tiresome sexual addict's calls?"

"I didn't have the heart to cut him loose. He was genuinely troubled, and trying to find a way to help himself, albeit falteringly."

"Albeit. An old-fashioned term. Bet you learned that in seminary." Molina nodded. "Okay, youse two disreputables can go. Frankly, I don't think either one of you concealed anything worth spit, but don't do it again."

"Yes, ma'am," Temple said.

"Thanks," Matt added with a slow smile

They left, both feeling quite virtuous.

"Confession is good for the soul," Temple said en route to the parking garage.

"That's what I was brought up to believe."

"I'm glad she took it so well."

"That's because she doesn't think that what you saw and what I heard are important, thank God. I hope that this doesn't turn out to be one of your murders."

"What do you mean, 'my murders.' "

"Only that you are a verifiable murder magnet. Suicide would be a nice change of pace; though, speaking from a religious point of view, it's the far more tragic death."

"Can't go to heaven, and all that? That's the Holy Roman Catholic Church for you; kick even the dead when they're down."

Matt stopped under the low, dark concrete beams. "The sin of suicide is in the enormity of denying God's will in your life by taking your own life. A great sin. Granted, the suicide himself is a pathetic soul, often under the influence of severe depression."

"Then why punish him after death? In absentia. Seems cowardly to a mealy-mouthed Unitarian like me."

"We'd have to go into about two years of theology to examine all the issues."

"That's it. Why can't religion be more accessible than that? Why can't mercy be the operating system, instead of right and wrong as written down somewhere by self-proclaimed holy men who are afraid to let women and children and suicides speak?"

Matt shook his head as he buttoned his jacket. "I'm not going to argue theology with you; it's too darn cold. Better bundle up for the trip back."

Temple suddenly produced a wicked grin. "I will."

The Vampire coughed before the engine released its full power and took the motorcycle by the throat.

Temple donned Electra's helmet and hopped aboard, only wincing slightly at the stretch.

This time she wrapped her arms all the way around Matt until they met in front.

If he found their riding arrangement more claustrophobic than before, he couldn't say a thing over the warming engine's roar. They swooped down the corkscrew exit ramp, Temple wanting to scream as if she were on a roller coaster. She caught her breath while he paused to pay the ticket. Matt got the financially short end of the deal. Temple, clinging like a leech for the chilly ride home, couldn't get to the money she had jammed in her jacket pocket when leaving her trademark tote bag behind.

Outside, stars gleamed high in the sky. Except for a red lashmark along the horizon, the sun had vanished, letting the lights of Las Vegas perform their nocturnal magic.

Temple did feel she was on a roller coaster as streetlights streaked by. Passing cars became greased lightning as the wind pulled and pushed the Vampire to top speed.

Matt didn't go straight home, but headed into the dark desert, where the highway eventually became a road that swelled up and down, that curved right and left. Temple's bare fingers stiffened in the brunt of the wind, but that only locked them tighter into position, and pressed her closer to Matt, thigh to thigh, chest to back, warm cheek to chill faux sheepskin.

Not being able to talk over the wind rush and the Vampire's lonely howl in the wilderness underlined the ride's strange intimacy. After only a few minutes, the Vampire etched a semicircle in the empty, sand-dusted highway. In front of them, the lights of Las Vegas now beckoned on the horizon like an electrified bonfire.

The Vampire sped straight for that tropical, topical warmth. Temple no longer considered the motorcycle a machine under human control, but an animate, metaphorical beast, a steed ...

a warhorse or a dragon or something so old that nobody alive knew its name anymore.

She knew that Matt had not known where they were going when he had headed into the darkness, that neither he nor she could say where they had been and that even the Vampire didn't need to know how to get back home. Click your heels, close your eyes and follow t he Strip's bright afterimage searing through your lids. The road became arrow-straight as they neared the city. Cars came crowding around again, like moths hungry for the Vampire's pale, gleaming silver skin and hypnotic howl.

Watch out, she thought. Vampires bite!

A more mundane mob of cars, vans, trucks and taxis finally slowed the Vampire to a docile speed. When they arrived at the Circle Ritz, Temple felt as if she had been trapped in an icy, crystal-clear bell jar amid a maelstrom of sound and speed, unnaturally alone in a vast natural world and yet not alone. Maybe this was how the Biblical prophets had felt when they saw God in mountain peaks and fiery bushes.

She dismounted, disoriented, to rejoin still, solid ground, and let Matt put the Vampire to bed alone. When he came out and locked the doors, she turned with a smile.

"That was scary, but it scared away all the anxiety too. Have you ever driven out into the desert like that, Matt? Just for fun?"

"I've never done anything just for fun," he said. "But I might be up for trying it."

"I'm sorry I criticized your religion's positions. They just seem so set in cold, hard stone."

"Don't be sorry. Maybe that's what religious positions are for: to be questioned, ridiculed and sometimes thrown out."

"Goodness! I think that's exactly what happened to us in Molina's office tonight."

After a pause of agreement, he laughed.

Chapter 25

Under the Volcano

I am beginning to chafe at my lack of freedom.

The Divine Yvette, of course, is used to being cooped up for her own good. I am used to being out and about for my own bad.

Also, I am concerned about the welfare of my other little doll, Miss Temple Barr. It has not missed my astute observation--despite being aswamp in the trappings of stardom and its ensuing problems, such as fratricidal envy--that Miss Temple has been not only unusually busy, but rather blue lately.

For this I blame myself.

I have been neglecting her and her trivial concerns. In my rejoicing at the recent absence of the Mystifying Max, I have not considered that another individual might actually miss the Mr.

Question Mark. Although I spot traces of Mr. Matt Devine (namely a certain scent unmarked by any bad habits on the living-room loveseat--pardon me, sofa), I also scent that Miss Temple has been out and about in new terrains with new people. It can mean only that she is on a case, nose to the trail. Yet how can I help her out if I am chained to my cameras and my crew?

I decide to disrupt the proceedings in such a way that shooting will stop for a time, and the only possible path to this goal is one that involves a mishap to the Divine Yvette. If my darling should so much as crack a razor-sharp nail, her mistress will scream and carry on and remove DY