Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

Matt put the luxury car in gear, glad he was slinking away unseen in the dark of pre-midnight. He could put a few miles on the odometer and still return it as a loaner.

The Jaguar prowled into smooth street speed like its animal of origin, and Matt made WCOO’s parking lot in record time. Also unnoticed, since the lot was pretty empty as local programming switched from Ambrosia’s show of classic comfort songs and her down-home style of advice to the lost and the lovelorn.

The Midnight Hour, his advice show, which was all talk, ran two hours now due to the continuous callins, but the producers clung to the magic of the original name.

Both he, aka Mr. Midnight, and Ambrosia, whose real name was Leticia, were profitably syndicated. He grinned as he whooped the gift car locked, thinking of her reaction when she came out into the parking lot after ceding him the mic tonight. He’d given her the “Blue Suede” Elvis VW Beetle he’d won, and she loved the headroom, but this glittering Baked Alaska of a car would really rev her engines.

Inside the small building with the big radio tower he passed the lit but empty reception room and went to the studio, watching Ambrosia coo into the mic as she dished out solace and songs.

She sounded like an exotic siren escaped from some noir movie. Maybe she played the sultry big-band singer, her voice soothing as melted caramel.

“Now, baby, don’t you get down. Tonight is the turn of a new day, and I’m going to play a little traveling music just for you while you’re waiting for Mister Midnight to warm up my hot seat for a while and for your chilly little hearts to lift with more sage advice than should be slung by a young, hot guy like him. So hang on this dial, girls and boys, and prepare to be inspired.”

Leticia nodded as the commercials began and doffed her headphone muffs.

“Here’s my man,” she greeted Matt as he came through the door. “Great to have you back. Your superlarge sparkling water awaits, along with all those adoring ears out there. You already had a fan asking me for a song in your honor.”

“A fan?”

“Called herself your ‘biggest fan,’ but she was forgettin’ about me, baby.”

Leticia shimmied her red zebra-striped three hundred pounds out of the broadcast chair to give him a hug. “Welcome back from Chi-Town. The phone lines are already lighting up.”

“No rest for the wicked.” Matt slipped into the upholstered swivel chair. Yup, it was still warm. Leticia was his literal mother hen.

“Wicked?” She made a skeptical face. “You? About time.”

“Eyeball my new car when you leave.”

“You just got new wheels a short while back.”

“Not gratis like this.”

“What could be foxier than that silver Crossfire? It’s even a limited edition now.”

Matt shook his head and smiled, settling into the “cockpit” of headphones and mic and lighting call-in lines. He felt as alone as a soloing pilot once the show was running on, night voices in the unseen distance.

Leticia poked her head back in, bead-decorated black plaits rattling just before airtime. “I’m waiting around for a ride after, believe it,” she warned. “And to see if Miss ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ from my program shows up on yours.”

Matt felt the frown lines forming. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” He hoped Ambrosia’s guest wasn’t anyone with delusions of being Elvis. That would-be King caller last year was eerily accurate. Not even the FBI voice techs could say it wasn’t the Memphis Cat himself.

He also felt a figurative shiver. Max Kinsella as good as back from the dead, and now intimations of Elvis were resurrecting at WCOO-FM radio?

Naw. Matt just wanted to marry the woman he loved, do the right thing in the job market, and get along with her ever-present alley cat and his own sort-of namesake, Midnight Louie.

*

“Where were you the past week?” asked the caller.

Matt stirred uneasily in his adjustable chair. Lots of callers had already said in the show’s first hour that they’d missed him for the last week. None had asked him to account for his whereabouts. Not that anybody couldn’t tune in to The Amanda Show on their Internet connections. Usually radio listeners liked the call-in intimacy but didn’t cross the line.

“I ask the questions,” Matt said. “Don’t I get a vacation?”

“From me, Mister Midnight? No. Never. I’m your biggest fan.”

“I appreciate loyal listeners,” he said, “but I don’t think of you as ‘fans.’ More like fellow travelers in life.”

“Night fliers,” she said.

“Like night owls?” He tried to reference the cliché, because her tone had gone deep and seductive and dangerous.

“Yes. Hunters of the night.”

Oh, great. One of those vampire groupies. He’d done this gig long enough to recognize the occasional crazy.

“We’re all birds of a feather,” he said, switching to another lit line. “‘The Midnight Hour,’” he intoned into the mic. He’d learned to speak softly and be wary of kooks.

“Oh, Mister Midnight, I’ve been waiting a week to ask this. What can we adults do about school bullying? If a parent intervenes, it can make it worse for the kid. What’s the matter with kids today?”

And that launched an evergreen topic, with the call-board lighting up. For a moment Matt flashed back to his bad moments at the Dancing with the Celebs local reality-TV program, when he’d been bowed over a light board bleeding, alone in the dark in the wee hours, at the mercy of a masked attacker.

“Mister Midnight, did you hang up on me?”

The vampire groupie, back again. Was that so surprising? No.

She rolled on without pause. “That’s not polite. I just wanted to know if the rumors were true.”

He thought of his major TV offer and wondered how this creepy call-in knew about it.

“Are you really going to be doing a razor commercial on television, Mister Midnight?”

“I’m not getting or taking any commercial offers.”

“But you’re so good at bleeding.”

The air silence was Matt catching his breath, wondering how she knew he’d been stabbed by a sword recently.

“Bleeding heart,” her mocking voice continued.

And not so recently as well. Months earlier. More memorably. By a razor.

For the first time he’d detected the whisper of an Irish brogue in the voice, on the word heart.

And his blood ran cold. That cliché was true.

A diet-scam commercial blared in his headphones, so loud his pulse spiked with shock.

Leticia’s face appeared in the studio window, her expression furious.

Matt felt like he was in a movie like The Matrix, everything happening in fast, dislocating film cuts.

Then Leticia burst through the door and his senses snapped back into real-time and real-place mode.

“I am babysitting the technician until this show is over, Matt honey.” Her anger seemed to add ozone to the stuffy studio air. “I will make sure that crazy bitch doesn’t get through again. Don’t say a word. Save everything for the real callins. You the man. We talk after.”

Matt checked his watch. Forty minutes to go. For once, he was looking forward to the usual problems—dumped lovers, backstabbing co-workers, adoptive children seeking birth parents, unwed mothers seeking and sought by lost children, drug-addict brothers—all-American dysfunction with a capital D.

Leticia was right. He couldn’t let a crazy stalker make him blow the show. Especially not now. He gave her a faint smile and took the next call, welcoming a dose of ordinary, home-grown angst.

*

“Love, love, love the Jag,” Leticia said as she led him out of the station like a defensive lineman obscuring a quarterback. “It’s so you. Of course, you’re going to take me out for a drink in it.”