Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

“Maybe.” Said sourly. Molina was clinging tight to her professional distance. Compassion was an enemy to a cop.

“So what’s the latest story on Vassar’s last gasp?”

“You and that coroner. Always cynical. Always laughing at Death in fear of Death laughing at you. I’ve got good news. At least to me and my conscience. Vassar was happy, okay? She didn’t regard me as a flop. We made talk, not love, and sometimes talk is better than sex. I felt better for talking to her. Apparently she felt better for talking to me. She called this counselor she’d been avoiding right away. Deborah Ann Walker. She came to WCOO to find me and tell me that. Nice lady. Like Vassar. They were both classy ladies. The hooker and the reformer. Not so different, after all. Maybe the lady lieutenant figures in there somehow. Carmen, I know you tried to help me. I tried to do what you said. I failed. I chickened out. And that seems to have made all the difference. To Vassar anyway. And to me. I didn’t need to ‘lose’ anything about myself. I needed to give something more to someone else.”

A knock on the door. The barman with a tray. Two Scotches on the rocks.

Molina waved him in and him out again. She drank from her glass before resuming the conversation.

“This Walker woman was on the phone with Vassar after you left her at the Goliath?”

“She was on the phone with her just before Vassar fell.”

“Then where’s the frigging phone?”

Matt outstared her sudden fury. “That’s your job, to find it. My job is to tell you the truth you don’t want to hear. You didn’t do me any favors with your advice. But it worked out in a strange way, after all. I’d give right now what I was so desperately trying to keep Kathleen O’Connor from getting to get Vassar back, but I can’t be sorry I met her. I can’t be sorry I … failed to be a good customer. I’m glad I was a better friend.”

Molina pushed a hand through her unmussable hair. “You and Vassar, making fools of us all. Kathleen O’Connor and me. You’re right. I was fighting O’Connor through you and Vassar. I had convinced myself that this would heal everybody’s ills, you and the call girl. I wasacting like a goddamn social worker instead of a cop. Here’s the hardened call girl. I send her an ethical man. Here’s the beset ex-priest who actually cares. I send him to a woman who regards sex as richly rewarded therapy. A marriage made in Heaven, right? Except I no longer believe any marriage is made in Heaven.”

“That’s where you went wrong.”

Carmen/Molina glared at him, saying and singing nothing.

“You were right. Vassar and I were very good for each other. That’s what Deborah’s testimony tells me. We were both better off for meeting each other.”

“Deborah.” Molina pulled the fake blue Dahlia from her hair, tossed it onto the dressing table. “That’s the name of a judge in the Old Testament, isn’t it?”

Matt nodded.

“And she’s your witness to Vassar’s last words?” Matt nodded again.

Molina sighed, rested her head on her hand, which was braced on the dressing table pillar. “Don’t you see why I interfered? Kathleen O’Connor was every sexual predator I never caught. You were my … Mariah. My innocent daughter who’s growing into the real world that hides scum like that, whatever the gender. I wanted to see you safely through adolescence, Matt. Maybe the means were cynical, but the intent was … honest.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Sure. You and me, we’re dinosaurs. True. Our work, our vocations, require us to live up to public images, rigorously honest, severe, sexless, perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Recognize the dogma? Except we’re human. We want to preserve what’s innocent in us, but we can’t afford to live by it in the real, ugly world.

“So I know where you’re coming from, Carmen. Strict Hispanic Catholic family. Or Polish Catholic family. High standards. Impossible standards. Still, if you don’t go for the top, you’ll settle for the bottom. That’s the problem with religious absolutism: there’s either bad or good. Perfect or imperfect. You either sin or you don’t. No middle ground. No gray. That’s not what Jesus preached in the New Testament. His bottom line was compassion, which abolishes the black and white and leaves only the gray and the benefit of the doubt. That’s why they killed him.”

“Abolish black and white from the law enforcement profession and anarchy would reign.”

“Maybe so. Maybe not. I’m just saying we can both be thankful that nobody killed Vassar, not even us. It was a stupid accident. I left her standing by the railing overlooking the atrium. Deborah heard her cry out and then the cell phone clattered and buzzed, but it didn’t shut off.”

“Someone still could have come up behind her and pushed her.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so. Deborah says she was exhilarated, hyper. She more likely … turned around to lean against the railing, lost her balance on those high-rise heels.”

“You realize what you’re telling me? That a call girl was deliriously happy because you didn’t sleep with her. Not much of a personal advertisement.”

“Do I care? I’m deliriously happy I didn’t have to act against my conscience myself. Can’t you accept the gift of a free conscience? That doesn’t come along every day.”

“No.” Molina turned to the mirror to wipe off Carmen’s camellia mouth with a tissue. She turned back to lift her glass toward him. They tapped rims and sipped.

“I have to play Devil’s advocate so I don’t buy every fairy tale I might want to believe. I’ll have that atrium scoured for the cell phone. Of course someone could have spotted and taken it by now. Still, if this Walker woman’s testimony holds up then we’re both in the clear. My career and your freedom. We were gambling for pretty high stakes.”

Matt nodded and sipped again, feeling relief tingle all the way to his fingertips.

“Only two things bother me,” she added.“Two things?”

“Rafi Nadir and Max Kinsella.”

“Kinsella and Nadir? Who’s Nadir?”

“Ah—” Molina waved a dismissive hand. “A pickpocket around town. Different case. Anyway, I personally checked the Goliath videotapes. They show you checking in. And they show Kinsella hanging around the registration area about the same time.”

Matt knew his face showed utter, unfeigned shock. What was Max doing there? Right then?

He was so shocked that he only vaguely understood that Molina the cop always had to have the last suspicious word.

He was very glad that he had not mentioned Kinsella’s presence on the even more recent death scene of Kathleen O’Connor, which had not yet entered Molina’s official radar.

But it could, if anyone had seen both Kinsella and O’Connor at Neon Nightmare.

Chapter 49

Melting

Temple was curled up on her couch with Midnight Louie, watching a really bad Boris Karloff movie. Karloff, of course, was never bad, but some of his later films were.

She couldn’t sleep.

Hi-ho the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.

She had actually broken out the Midnight Louie shoes, which really didn’t go well with her Garfield T-shirtcum-nightgown.

Glittering white crystal high heels with the image of a black cat on the heels were not the done thing to wear with cotton knit, although almost anything went in Las Vegas.

She gazed down at her bare insteps surrounded by the elegant dazzle of Stuart Weitzman custom pavé shoes. Elegant, gorgeous, even improbable shoes invariably made her feel better.

High heels were a little girl’s stepping stones to adulthood. Maybe adulthood was something as simple as losing a shoe and gaining a prince, or accidentally killing a witchand gaining a magical pair of red sequin pumps. Then killing one on purpose later.