Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

Speaking of thorny relationships, they were all surrounded with briar and rose combinations: Matt and Molina; Temple and Molina; Matt and Max; Temple and Matt … more than one modern woman could contemplate at a single sitting.

“So,” Temple told Louie, standing up.

The Leonard Cohen CD had long since played through and she had switched to the local golden oldies radio station, avoiding any temptation to dial in WCOO. It was only 11 P.M. anyway.

“You ruined Max’s interior upholstery,” she told Louie. “I thought you knew better than to sharpen your claws on furniture. You’ve left mine alone with not even an admonition.”

Louie shook his head and then licked busily at the hair just beneath his chin, a sure sign he was annoyed with her. Usually this gesture was only evoked by a fresh influx of Free-to-be-Feline in his bowl.

“I suppose your actions drew Max’s attention to his pursuer, but how and why on earth did you get into his car in the first place, and why were you at Neon Nightmare in the first first place?”

One of Louie’s ears flattened, and he sparred at it with a well-licked paw, as if to say, Can I really be hearing these inane questions?

Temple examined him a little more closely. His fur hadbeen licked up into cowlicks all over and the hairs stuck together in a punk rocker’s spiky look.

Louie had been off doing a major cleanup, which made her wonder what kind of mess he had gotten into. Could it be any worse than what Matt or Max had managed in the past few days?

Naw.…

Chapter 48

Night Music

“Sure. I’ll come early and catch your act. I do think you have something to croon about tonight, Carmen.”

“I hope so, Devine. You owe me that at least for my sterling dating advice.” Said sardonically.

Matt smiled after she hung up. For once he would be the bearer of good tidings.

“I’ve got,” Matt said into the phone, “a witness to Vassar’s death. Where do you want to hear about it?”

The line went dead for about half a minute. Then came a deep sigh. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“I can go anywhere now, see anyone. She’s gone. She left the planet.”

“Do not use that stinking ‘she left’ phrase. It’s connected to too many murders for my peace of mind.”

“This one wasn’t a murder.”

“Say you and your murky witness.”

“My murky witness will be your solid witness. Trust me. I’m no more in the mood for fairy tales at this point than you are.”

“A solid witness, you say.”

“We’re both off the hook.”

“Then ‘It’s a Grand Night for Singing.’ That’s a song title, by the way. Oldie but goofy. Come to the Blue Dahlia at ten-thirty. Think a half hour should get you to the radio station on time?”

Matt always found it amazing what people did to distract themselves from tension. He prayed. Temple bought wildly impractical shoes. Max Kinsella performed magic tricks. Lieutenant C. R. Molina sang.

And she did it very well.

Tonight she wore blue velvet, forties style. Her voice was blue velvet whatever she wore, dark, midnight deep, and plush.

The voice was a gift. Matt’s vocation as a priest had forced him to sing the mass, to intone responses. He had managed to execute that narrow-range singsong respectably, but that was all.

Secretly, he had visited Baptist congregations, wowed by the vigor, faith, and musical pyrotechnics of their choirs. Plain song would always hold a pure, medieval attraction, but the passionate musical joy of the black congregations struck a chord in him that maybe only Elvis would understand, now that Matt had been forced to understand Elvis.

Most torch singers caught the reflected sensual glow of the flames their lyrics celebrated. Molina was a cerebral singer. Her voice was something apart from Carmen the Performer. You couldn’t get a crush on her even while she crooned Gershwin’s “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” That made her an even more fascinating performer. The audience sensed something held back from them. Matt had heard that the secret of great acting was to always hold something back, leave the audience craving more. Something more to come, if only you can wait long enough, hold the applause, and … wait for the fireworks.

But even Molina’s vintage performing wardrobe was somehow didactic. This forties gown, that silk blue Dahlia above one ear perched on an out-of-period Dutch cut that was vaguely twenties decadent at the same time it was schoolgirl fifties. Her only makeup was dark lipstick, Bette Davis style. And Davis had been many things on the screen, all of them magnificent; sometimes the neurotic, but never the Vamp.

Matt ordered a deep-fried appetizer and a drink and gave himself the luxury that Molina never had given herself: thinking about her as a person, rather than a profession.

The trio behind her had suddenly become instrumental only.

Matt realized his dining-out Scotch was a drizzle of memory over ice cubes and Carmen was offstage. Time for him to “strike up the music and dance.” To her tune, of course.

Even at the Blue Dahlia, Molina was somehow in uniform.

Matt left a nice tip on the table and got up. He headed for the hallway and the second door on the right, straight on till morning, where her tiny dressing room was.

He knocked, and was invited in.

It was here she … they … had hatched the scheme of sending him to a professional call girl to lose the virtue that Kathleen O’Connor had wanted to capture for herself. As if one could acquire another’s virtue. As if virginity was a condition rather than a state of grace.

“Here we are again.” Molina acknowledged their mutual complicity in the call-girl scheme, gesturing to the round-seated wooden chair he had used before.

He watched her expression in the round mirror of the vintage dressing table. She hadn’t turned to welcome him, and he understood that. Guilt between even casual coconspirators was as much a barrier as the one between performer and audience. Every stage comes equipped with an invisible “fourth wall,” a division that is only in the mind of both performer and audience. A barrier.

“What do you have for me?” Molina had finally turned around, her workaday tone neutralizing the persona of Carmen.

“A way out. For both of us. Vassar accidentally fell to her death.”

“Says who?”

“Says the woman who was on the cell phone with her at the time, the woman she called after I left the Goliath suite.”

“Woman?”

“A volunteer counselor. I have her name, address, rank, cell phone number. She’s real, Carmen. She has a convincing explanation for Vassar’s death, and it wasn’t either of our faults.”

“Some woman? How did you find her?”

“She found me.”

“The radio station. Your show. That attracts nuts, don’t you know that by now?”

“So does your profession.”

“So be mad. I was only trying to help you.”

“Your advice was impeccably hard-headed. It was just wrong for me. And for Vassar, as it turned out.”

“What do you know about a call girl? There was semen in the body. If not yours, whose? Hookers, and especially high-end call girls, won’t lick a stamp without a condom these days. It does make one wonder about her previous stand. If things had gotten tight and you’d hadn’t been contacted by your convenient phone witness, I’d have had to ask you for a sample. Where does that fall on the spectrum of sin? Probably venial, compared to actual copulation. You didn’t even screw her, which was the whole point. Did you?”

“No. I didn’t even screw her. And that was the whole point. I was the first person who didn’t even screw her. Can you understand what that might mean to someone like her?”