Unknown: 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

He wondered if he was still a little drunk.

Not that he’d been drunk last night … just high? High on anxiety.

He’d tried to forestall one woman with another and had ended up feeling both had cheated him somehow.

Trying to embrace the occasion of sin had become not … sin, just self-disgust.

The phone rang.

It was an hour of the morning when he was used to sleeping deep and hard, thanks to his night job. But he’d had the previous night off, so to speak, and had only hit head to pillow in the early morning hours. What time was it? Who could be calling him now? Didn’t matter. Drift away. Forget the night. Forget yesterday.

The ringing drilled into his consciousness. Wouldn’t stop.

He fumbled for the phone on his makeshift nightstand, giving his sluggish self mental marching orders. Lift the receiver, substitute a nagging human voice for the intermittent ring of the phone.

Wait. Wake up, even if you don’t want to. If that’s not the phone, then it’s the … doorbell?

Now he distinguished the mellow notes of the Circle Ritz’s fifties doorbell.

Someone is at his door.

No. Go away.

Come again another day.

That’s the rain. Right? The rain is ringing his chimes? He’s so tired. Tired of himself and his problems. As if he were the only one in the world….

Ring. Ring. Go away. Come again another day. It won’t.

He rolled off the narrow bed, surprised to find himself still clothed.

The door was many stumbling steps away. He was drunk on too little sleep, that’s all.

Finally. He opened the door.

Rain, rain, go away. Especially if your name is Molina. Carmen Molina. Lieutenant Molina. Mother Molina, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen. “You look like hell,” she said.

She didn’t capitalize it. He could always tell when people were referring to hell versus Hell. Not going there, just referring.

“Look,” he said. “I normally sleep until at least noon.Night hours, if you recall? Whatever it is, I’m in no condition to talk to you right now.”

“Tough.”

She brushed past him like a Las Vegas Strip Rollerblader. Rude.

Matt turned to find almost six feet of female homicide lieutenant adding no ambiance at all to his cozy fifties-vintage entry hall and adjoining kitchen. She wasn’t about to move any more than his heavy metal refrigerator was.

“I’ll put some coffee on,” he said.

“Good idea.” She had wandered into the living/dining room and was peeking into the bedroom.

He was surprised to find her being so obviously nosy, so unmannerly, but police people must come to think the world owes them a peep. Still, she’d always treated him more like a human being and less like some seedy suspect before.

He put a saucepan to boil on the stove top and pulled two mugs out of the cupboard, checking to see if dust or anything mobile had collected in them. Didn’t often have company for breakfast, like never.

“Hot water and instant coffee? You’re still living like a transient,” her voice came from behind him. “Planning to leave town?”

“The world is way too full of costly, trendy, one-task gadgets.”

“You’ve still got Rectory-itis. Father Frugal. First you reject labor-saving domestic devices as effete, then you get devout Catholic grandmothers to come in and do it all for you free.”

“You make frugal sound corrupt.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m a cop and tend to think everything’s corrupt.”

He turned. He’d never seen Molina with this particular edge and it wasn’t nice. “This isn’t a social call.”

“We’ve got to talk, and you’re lucky I can’t afford to do it at headquarters.”

“You can’t afford to do it here.” He glanced at the unit’s various walls and tugged at an earlobe.

She got the message instantly, having forgotten that Matt was possibly or even probably being bugged by his stalker, Kathleen O’Connor.

“Oh, shit!”

Matt stared. Molina had always been a lady, for a cop.

She motioned him into the hall with one finger, turning off the heat under the saucepan with the other. It was fascinating to watch a cop play hausfrau.

“You go get that book you loaned me from the car,” she told him. “I’ll watch the boiling water.”

Her gestures shooed him out into the hall. Through the ajar door he glimpsed her conducting a rapid search of his rooms. Max Kinsella had been the last person to hunt for bugging devices. Matt found it interesting that Molina followed virtually the same path: under furniture, inside tabletop items like the phone, up in lighting fixtures, and down in wall outlets.

After about fifteen minutes she circled back to the dc )r, did a double take, and zeroed in on something on his entry hall wall. The plastic-covered box for the door chimes.

Last was lucky. She pulled out a tiny object that instantly explained the name “bug.” In another moment she had put it in one empty mug and drowned it in tepid water from the saucepan.

Matt felt as invaded as if he accidentally swallowed a dead fly from his coffee cup. It’s hard to define the sense of revulsion you get from knowing that someone’s been listening to you every moment. And what was to hear? He lived alone, didn’t talk to himself, had only the occasional phone call or visitor. Sick.

Molina nodded him inside again and rechecked a couple sites, as if finding the one bug implied an infestation.

They mutually rejected the coffee without consulting. She walked into the living room, stood before the red sofa that was its biggest piece of furniture, and regarded it with her back to him, as if it suddenly was significant.“Did Kinsella check the doorbell unit?”

“No,” he said.

He could sense her smile even from behind. “But I didn’t see everywhere he went and everything he did,” he added.

“Isn’t that always the case with Mr. Kinsella?” She turned, and her face was as expressionless as he’d ever seen it. “For once I’m not interested in that slimeball. He’s not a suspect. You are.”

“Me? What could I have done?”

“That’s a very good question. You might as well sit down.” She gestured to his own sofa as if she was the hostess and he was a guest, an unwanted one.

Matt sat.

Molina didn’t. She began pacing back and forth the length of the long red sofa. She reminded him of a big cat in a cage. She was a tall woman, and she wasn’t slight. Not fat, just there. She was wearing one of the dark pantsuits she favored, even in summer, a look-alike for a man’s business suit. She never carried a purse, as if that sniffed of patent leather Mary Janes and other girly images. He knew there was at least one firearm on her plain-Jane person, and probably latex gloves, maybe a ChapStick, a nail file, and some keys, but that was about it, except for a shield and an ID tag.

Her dark hair was thick, straight, and cut chin-length, a non-style designed to affront any professional stylist. Maybe she wore some lip gloss. Maybe. Matt smothered a smile. She reminded him of a lot of nuns who’d had to give up wearing the habit and had settled on a “uniform” quite like this. It was a way of dampening sexuality, and Matt could see that a female homicide lieutenant would want to do that. It certainly made her look like she meant business, every day, every hour, in every way.

Only now it was 8 A.M. in his living room and he was apparently her business.

“What’s this about, Carmen?” he asked. They knew each other’s history. Didn’t much talk about it, but they had a few things in common: growing up Catholic, serving as role models, working in “helping” professions that encouraged or enforced a code of behavior.

“Lieutenant.” She articulated the word like a machine gun shooting staples.