Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Kinsella never moved, despite the puddle of water inching toward his tennis-shoed feet. No wonder Matt hadn't heard his approach.

Matt sat dripping on the pool's edge, unhappy and not too worried about showing it. He hated having to leave the protective overcoat of the water, the self-immersion in amniotic fluid, the cover for his almost-nakedness.

That's what he relished about the Circle Ritz. Almost none of its tenants used the pristine but out-of-date pool. No witnesses to his moment of leaving the water, a time when flashes of vulnerability would wring him like cramps. In high school he had avoided gym, using whatever subterfuge he could; he had avoided eyes and questions. Now, he no longer had body bruises to hide, but the habit had transferred to a shame of his body. No matter how much he understood that none of the old pain showed, or how much he was beginning to believe that his body might be a source of pleasure and admiration, he still hated revealing himself. Perhaps his pride feared pity, but no one could see the long-invisible wounds. Perhaps his fear dreaded pride.

Kinsella unbent with a dancer's fluidity. Matt couldn't hear a knee creak, but hastened to rise with him, as if to keep them on the same level, despite the considerable height difference. His usual self-consciousness in situations like this had another, nastier overtone. With Temple it took the form of sexual shyness. Now, Matt felt insufficient in another way, in strength and size. He was eight years old again, and helpless against a man's height and anger. At almost six feet, he had pretty much shaken that inner shrinking sensation, but Kinsella was unusually tall.

"You're quite an athlete," Kinsella commented as he turned a gaudy back on Matt to walk to the table and chairs Electra kept by the pool.

"Not really. I swim some." Matt grimaced at his automatic self-deprecation, grabbed his towel from the foot of an ancient lounge chair and followed. "I don't consider the martial arts work athletics."

"Discipline, then."

Matt shrugged, not bothering to mention his favorite term, meditation.

"I don't see that we have much to talk about," he said. Then he sat, dripping and dabbing at the rivulets sprinting down his face, wishing he could don his clothes.

Kinsella's dubious look seemed practiced. A magician was an actor as much as anything.

"We have something in common," Kinsella said. "Not," he added speedily as Matt maintained a cool so effective he could feel his face freezing, "Temple."

"I wasn't thinking of Temple," Matt answered just as quickly.

"Shame on you," Kinsella suggested smoothly. "She's worth thinking about. Even when she's on retreat."

"Is she on retreat, or in retreat?"

"Probably both. Not that I blame her. Look. You don't know me ... or, rather, you don't know anything about me that isn't misleading. But we have more than Temple in common."

"Such as?"

Matt suspected that he was watching a master of deception at work--on him. Kinsella must thrive on putting other people off balance and keeping them that way. Why had Temple taken off, leaving them--him--alone to confront each other? Matt suspected that she and Electra had skedaddled together, and knew he shouldn't begrudge her a temporary escape. But the last thing on earth he wanted to discuss with Max Kinsella was Temple, especially with their most recent and most intimate evening still lingering on his mind like an uncertain sin.

"So what is our common bond?" Matt inquired, assuming his most nonjudgmental confessional tone but bracing for more surprises.

"Dead men," Kinsella reported with gusto and a flash of cat-green eyes.

"Dead men in general?" Matt asked, still wearing his parish priest mask, though Kinsella had no reason to know of its existence. "Or special dead men?"

"How many dead men do you know?" Kinsella shot back.

"A few. And I guess all dead men are special."

"Hmm. You've heard about mine, I suppose."

"I don't think so."

"Temple didn't tell you about the man that was found dead in a custom cubby-hole in the ceiling above the Goliath gambling tables? Found dead the very night I vanished, never to be seen again ...

until now?"

"You may find your own disappearance astounding, but some of us don't."

"I bore you. Pity. I'm out of practice, I see."

"What did you do while you were missing in action?"

"None of your business." With a charismatically mischievous grin.

"Neither are my dead men."

"There's where you may be wrong, boyo. I think our late unlamented' deaths may be connected."

"How do you even know about the one that was related to me?"

"Would the name Molina mean anything to you?"

" She's talking to you?"

"She?" Kinsella sounded startled.

"She," Matt confirmed. "She wants to interrogate you in the worst way; you haven't obliged her?"

"Not yet, but if she is a viable conduit of information, I'm back now. Shall we say that proximity is everything."

"In that case, I can see why you're a suspect in the Goliath death."

"Not that kind of proximity," Kinsella said. "Dead men." He tilted back until the white plastic chair balanced at a gravity-defying angle. "Think about it. Mine at the Goliath five months ago; yours at the Crystal Phoenix last week."

"Mine? Yours? Death doesn't recognize the possessive."

Kinsella let the chair's front legs snap to the concrete. "Figures of speech are relative. Your dead man is more yours than mine is mine. Yours was a relative."

"How did you--?"

"Temple dropped an allusion; I picked it up and followed it to the morgue."

"Not technically a relative."

"A lot of people we have to live with aren't technically relatives."

"A ... stepfather."

"Close enough to count. Stepparents can be sore points."

"He wasn't a parent to anything but his own indulgences."

Kinsella's quicksilver features hardened with some emotion. Perhaps it was chagrin. "Sorry. I didn't know the connection was that close."

"It wasn't. I hadn't seen him in years."

Kinsella nodded, no doubt calculating the unspoken facts and weighing whether to bring them up or not.

"You never will see him again, as it turned out," he mused a bit morosely.

"But I did. After his death. Maybe."

Kinsella perked up like an Irish setter at the mention of quail. "Why 'maybe'?"

"I hadn't seen the man in seventeen years. In fact, I couldn't really identify him. Time had been hard at work, and death finished the job. He seemed a ... stranger. Death had changed him, his face.

Standing there in the morgue, in that ludicrously Spartan viewing room, I couldn't be sure who it was. "shed the job. He seemed a . . . stranger. Death had changed him, his face. Standing there in the morgue, in that ludicrously Spartan viewing room, I couldn't be sure who it was."

Kinsella mulled that, his long fingers flexing on the shaded plastic table, as if miming a magic trick.

"To be or not to be . . . Cliff Effinger. At least yours has a name and face."

"You didn't know the dead man at the Goliath?"

Kinsella shook his head.

"You still could have killed him."

A pause, then a nod.

"Did you?"

"No." With a slow, sad, sweet smile that acknowledged what such denials were worth on the open market. "Did you kill your stepfather?"

"Unfortunately, no. I don't think so. And no one else is asking, anyway."

Kinsella didn't pursue Matt's odd uncertainty. "What about this Lieutenant Molina?"

"She doesn't give up. She'll still be looking for you."

"Maybe."

"What does that mean?"

"Why did she ask you to identify the body?"

"Because I finally confessed my . . . relationship to Effinger."

"So?"

"She had a dead man in the morgue and she needed someone to confirm his identity."