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

"I appreciate the warning, Danny, but I'm afraid I have to do it."

"You are inserting yourself into another life-and-death situation." He was speaking of more than the pose-down. "Why?"

"Lieutenant Molina asked me to tell her the lay of the land."

"Lieutenant Molina did not mean undercover investigation."

Temple sighed. "Cheyenne wanted to talk to me the night before he died. I didn't take him seriously, but I think he had suspicions."

"Why would he come to you?"

"I'm good at figuring things out. Except I didn't figure out that he wanted to speak to me about something important. He never got another chance.

Danny shook his head. "I'll try to assign you the contestants with the least resemblance to King Kong, but I can't control everything." He thought. "And I don't want another murder. Especially yours."

"You think that there might be one?"

"Don't you?"

"I don't even have a full suspect list for this one yet." That reminded her that Danny was the perfect person to ask about something that had been bothering her, if only she had the nerve.

"Was Cheyenne bisexual?" Temple asked bluntly.

Danny hesitated for a long time. "Sexual preferences aside, I'd say he had a universal soul. He was soft inside, if you know what

I mean, with a very thin protective shell. He meant well. He had charisma, but it was built on deference. He wanted to be . . . useful to people. Maybe that was all kinds of people in all kinds of ways.

Maybe that meant being used at times. He wasn't a user, though."

"You liked him."

Danny nodded. "I thought he was too nice for this game. I guess I was right." He glanced at Temple.

"What do you think of these Incredible Hunks? As a woman, I mean."

"Me? I'm the undercover investigator. I don't have an opinion."

Sure you do." Danny crossed his arms and grinned.

"I don't even read romance novels. Well, I didn't until I got here and had a few thrust upon me.

There's such a range in the books, from embarrassing adolescent drivel to extremely sophisticated literary sagas. I notice the same range in the cover models. Some seem all muscle on the outside, the equivalent of the ever-popular female bimbo, with hair mousse for brains and the sensitivity of a moose--north woods variety. Others are accomplished, attractive, well-rounded performers. They all have a public persona, though, that one would do well not to take too seriously."

She sighed and joined Danny in leaning against the wall. "I did that with Cheyenne. He approached me for a drink the night before he died, and I brushed him off. My friends were teasing me, and I didn't want to be taken for a vain, silly woman with a flattery threshold of zero. I think he wanted to talk to me because he was worried about something. He was on the scene when I meddled in the stripper killings.

You know, I underestimated him because he looked too good to be true. And now he's dead."

"Hey!" Danny shook her arm. "You're not superwoman. One chat wouldn't have stopped a murderer." He looked amused suddenly. "Are you always so contrary with the opposite sex?"

"You mean Matt. That's right, you met him. He's too good looking to be true, too, but he is. It's me I distrust, not them. I don't want to be hooked by the shallow."

"Then move out of Las Vegas, honey! Nothing on the Strip is more than skin deep, not even the skin."

"You didn't answer my original question. Was Cheyenne bi- sexual? I'm not just being nosy. If true, it would enlarge the cast of suspects, and the range of motives. Lieutenant Molina asked me to background her."

"The Dragon Lady of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is taking hints from amateurs?"

"She's keeping an open mind. What about Cheyenne, bisexual or no?"

"Probably." Danny shrugged. "I didn't pay much attention to the daily do-si-do. Some people--gay and heterosexual--do like the edge of being with someone who cuts both ways."

"Even in the age of AIDS?"

"Especially in the age of AIDS. You forget that gays aren't the only ones who run on self-loathing. The promiscuous lifestyle isn't 'gay' in the old sense, or glamorous and knowing, or even smart. If being gay can be hell, I imagine that being bisexual nowadays can be purgatory."

"I'm surprised. I would have thought you, of all people, would be comfortable with your orientation."

He laughed, as if to say, "Oh, you kid!"

"Look, darling girl. The flagrant act is a kind of bravado, and a kind of defiance. Even straight theater people spread around the easy affection, because we all graduated from the same Odd Duck School.

We're family, all of us in the sweetie, dearie, darling set, who assemble and disperse for temporary shows, temporary togetherness. There's both an intimacy and an eternal isolation.

"High school was hell, and being openly gay was suicide in my day. You barely begin to guess who you are at that age, sexual preferences aside, except that you know you don't fit in a thousand ways."

"Who does fit?" Temple wondered suddenly. "Do all the supposedly cool kids really feel so sure behind the facade?"

"A few are cursed with no self-doubts. That's why the supercool kids in high school never amount to much afterward. That was it. Their peak. At least the ugly ducklings are still waddling toward swanhood later in life."

Danny leaned against the homely concrete wall by the back-stage phone. With its graffiti of phone numbers, it reminded Temple of a set from West Side Story .

"Anyway," he went on. "I knew as soon as I hit high school that my social life was going to be non-existent. I was already being called queer for taking dance lessons, then I realized that I wasn't going to be any Adonis, or any taller than five and a half feet. Kids like me back then usually found an older guy outside high school who would use us, or we might use them. Which was which wasn't always clear. But I still had to ask some poor girl to the high school prom, and sweat it that she'd turn me down, or--

worse--think that my invitation meant something. After I got out, I stumbled into the underground gay scene. And then I did it all, took all those risks, too soon and too long. And I developed my front-fag, my swish and bravado just so everybody would know where I was coming from, especially me. Hey, it keeps women from getting the wrong idea, heaven forbid. Well, I guess heaven wouldn't want to forbid that, a gender-preference conversion, but it ain't gonna happen. I'm so gay that I don't understand bisexuals."

"Me neither," Temple agreed. "Sometimes I think celibacy is the simplest answer."

"You?" Danny mocked her. "Miss Hot Redhead of the nineties? Besides, do you know any happy celibates?"

"Maybe. At least they're disease-free."

"And emotionally empty, I've got to believe. At least I was when I was celibate. I don't believe in taking physical risks, but emotional risks are always necessary."

He paused, regarding Temple with a stark serious face that made carefree Danny Dove look like his own worried older brother. Even his happy, curly hair seemed to have straightened.

"I'm not the gadabout gay you think. I have a partner," he said, still in a sober mood. "We've been together--monogamous--for seven years. He had HIV when we met, but he's hanging in there. Safe sex, of course, which is a bore but better than regret after the ball is over, so to speak." Danny's bawdy laugh deliberately broke the mood. Temple suspected he seldom allowed anyone to see his serious side.

"Seven years. That's . . . great." Like all supportive murmurs, hers was vague and somehow inadequate. Even Temple wasn't sure whether she referred to the duration of Danny's relationship or the duration of his partner's survival. But Danny didn't care about the quality of her cue lines; he was reciting from his life story.