Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

Max. And Matt. Together. Over a friendly glass of … something? What could they possibly have in common to talk about? Besides her.

“You’re not coming over,” she asked, “with news I’m not going to like, are you?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, that Molina has eloped with Russell Crowe, or that Rafi Nadir is an undercover agent for the IRS, or that you’re going into the priesthood.”

“Would Molina eloping with Russell Crowe be good news or bad news, in your opinion?”

“Half and half. He is a major movie star, but he’s also spoiled and cranky and immature. Actually, it would be a heck of an entertaining match: Gladiator vs. Xena the Barbarian Princess Cop.”

“Sounds like a play card for the World Wrestling Federation. No, nothing that worthy of Access Hollywood. And why would I enter the priesthood at this scandal-ridden time?”

“For the surprise factor?”

“I’ve got enough surprises right now that I don’t need to go looking for trouble. And I’ve got a bottle of very good Irish whiskey, mostly full.”

“Max! You’re not driving with an open bottle! If the police—”

“Relax. My car is right in your very own parking lot and nudging up next to an extremely curvaceous little red Miata with its top disappointingly up.”

Temple ambled to her French doors and slipped out onto the patio, from where she could see her parked car, which was why she tried to park it there. A prized new possession needed to be always within easy view.

She glimpsed a new black car beside it, wondering how long it had been there. A while, if he had been visiting Matt. Why go back to the parked car to call her? she also wondered.

Max was in his favorite element now, the dark, and leaving other people in the dark too.

“Are you going to come up in the elevator like a Real Boy?” she asked.

“Of course. I’ll even knock.”

“No, ring the doorbell. It’s a lovely chime. I don’t hear it enough.”

“You might want to put some Leonard Cohen on.” Uh-oh. That was Max’s brooding black Irish music. They closed the conversation quickly. When Temple went back into her living room, Midnight Louie had pulled a Max and sat still as a statue in the middle of her coffee table, looking as if he had been there for generations.

She smoothed his black-satin head as she went to the kitchen and rooted out the heavy Baccarat crystal glasses suitable for premium Scotch, Irish whiskey, and terminally spicy Blood Mary mixes, yum-yum. Max didn’t call her his Paprika Girl for haircolor reasons only.

The doorbell rang through its leisurely melody. Like the era of the building, the fifties, it had time to slow dance through even a practical purpose. That was an era when women in high heels waltzed through domestic chores with vacuum cleaners and single strings of pearls around their necks.

Domestic chores didn’t have that quaint glamour anymore, but Temple swept open the door with the panache of that decade’s leading ladies, Loretta Young or Donna Reed.

Max leaned against the doorjamb. Like many really tall men, he favored the disarming slump. Tonight, though, he just looked tired, not insouciant.

“I’ve got the best glasses down,” she told him.

He swung through the door, planting the whiskey bottle on a nearby countertop. “We don’t have to drink this.”

She eyed the four inches ebbed in the bottle. “You and Matt did that much damage? I guess I deserve an equal crack at it. You wouldn’t have brought the medicinal stuff if you didn’t think I’d need it.”

“I need it,” he said shortly.

“You don’t ‘need’ anything addictive. Never have.”

“Never have been where I’m standing now.”

“Then sit down. I’ll pour. Neat, I presume, the way the bloody British take it.”

He nodded as he passed her the bottle and she uncapped it, pouring the ruddy-amber whiskey three fingers deep in each elaborately etched glass. It glistened like amber, and Temple supposed that many once-living things had been entombed in more than one glass of hard liquor. Entombed and resurrected.

“How can I sit down?” Max demanded.

She came bearing a glass in each hand, and peered past his indignation-stiffened form to Midnight Louie sprawled like the world’s biggest Rorschach inkblot on her pale sofa.

“We move the cat. He was sitting on the coffee table just a minute ago.”

“He must have known I was coming,” Max complained, taking the glasses as Temple bent to lift Louie in her arms and return him to his tabletop post. “I don’t know if I much like him listening in.”

“It’s not like he cares what we say, Max. He’s a remarkably sensitive animal, but I doubt that English is his second language.”

Max stared silently at Louie in answer. His stare was returned in kind: intense, challenging, immobile.

Temple had the oddest feeling that man and cat could talk to one another, but that the relationship was decidedly wary.

The staring match ended when Louie rose, jumped to the floor, and stalked off into the office.

“He knows when he’s not wanted.” Temple went to the portable stereo to let Leonard Cohen’s monotone bass throb through the room. She shook her head. “If your stare didn’t do it, that music would have. Not exactly anything to cuddle up to.”

Max sat dead center in the sofa and claimed one glass for a hasty sip.

“So how,” Temple asked, sitting beside him, “was Matt?

Is he getting over that poor woman’s death at all?”

“He’s got other things to think about now. So do I.”

“The bad news you said was only half bad.”

“It depends on how happy you are to hear someone is dead.”

“Someone … I know?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Not just Vassar.”

Max shook his head. His hand didn’t shake as he lifted the glass to his lips again, but Temple sensed that it might have if he had allowed such a thing.

“Who? Max, tell me now. I can’t stand this waffling around. It’s so unlike you.”

“She’s gone. Kathleen O’Connor. Dead.”

“Kitty the Cutter dead? Not possible!”

“Believe it. Devine ID’ed her for Molina this morning, and besides, I was there when it happened. She’s in cold storage at the medical examiner’s facility, waiting for next of kin to claim her. There won’t be any. Only enemies.”

“Dead? After making all our lives so miserable? People like that don’t just … die.”

“Effinger did.”

“Yes, but you’re sure it’s her? Both you and Matt? And Molina buys it?”

“The medical examiner buys it. It’s undeniable. Even your Midnight Louie witnessed the accident.”

“Louie! He was out earlier, but … when?”

Max shook his head. “Not today. Two nights ago.”

“And no one told me?”

“Not our fault, Temple.”

“You speaking for Matt now, too? Mr. Zipped Lips?”

“Not our fault,” he repeated. “We had a lot to do. I had to call emergency personnel from a phone that couldn’t be traced to me, dump the Maxima, and stay low. Devine had to answer Molina’ s summons and go stare at the dead body. We haven’t much felt like talking to anyone human in forty-eight hours, or like explaining ourselves.”

“Or how you feel about this,” Temple added shrewdly. “Dead. For you guys it must be like … the twin towers falling. No. More like the upside-down world turned right-side up again, like gravity has reversed itself.”

“Yeah,” Max held the whiskey glass in both hands before his face, as if it were a fire capable of casting warmth and light. “Her evil pull was like some counterforce I was so used to fighting that I’ve lost all energy to stand on my own. She was out there somewhere. I’d sensed her hatred for so long, it almost seems unnatural to live without it in the world.”