Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

“That’s what Letitia said.”

“Letitia.”

“My producer.”

“Oh, right. The Lane Bryant black Venus. You know, this Kitty woman is nuts. She really wants you.”

“Thanks.”

“No.” Molina leaned forward, elbows on her knees, a hoydenish posture for the elegant gown. She sipped premium scotch. “She’s dead serious about that. She wants you untouched by any woman. Weird. It’s not an uncommon attitude among abusive men, but women aren’t usually so…macho.”

“That biker outfit was plenty macho.”

“Why you?”

Matt wanted to shout, Because she can’t torment Max Kinsella. She can’t even find Max Kinsella.

But he couldn’t. He did have a few clues as to why he was the designated Kinsella standin, though.

“She likes to corrupt priests.”

“You know the answer then.”

He nodded. “Letitia laid it out for me, too.”

Molina sipped. Her electric blue eyes were softening to the color of natural blue topaz, Virgin Mary Blue, mild and misty. “You need an understanding woman who will remove that which Miss Kitty covets.”

“Who won’t get killed for the honor,” Matt added drily. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

“I don’t think so. She’s nervous. That’s why she’s darting around, threatening these women. Once the deed is done, you’re worth nothing to her. The whole house of cards falls down. Anticipate her, disarm her. Hell, sleep with her then, if you want to. It would kill her.”

“Carmen. I’m not like that. I don’t do these things lightly.”

“That’s where she’s got you! You want to be got, cling to your odor of sanctity. You want to live, do what you must.”

“‘And do it well.’”

“Huh?”

“A quote from a songwriter you’d never sing. Well, maybe you would.” Matt took a deep, burning swallow of scotch.

“Any candidates to predate Miss Kitty?” Molina probed, perhaps a bit too curious.

“Nobody I’m willing to endanger,” he said shortly, swallowing without the benefit of scotch, the afternoon’s interlude in the Circle Ritz hallway returning on aching waves of might-have-been.

“No volunteers?” she pressed. Matt noticed that her lipstick had left a red half-moon on the edge of her glass, decided through a veil of pleasant haze that they were both relaxing too much, discussing things too dangerous to act on. Guns and sex and psychosis. “A good-looking guy like you?

“Janice? Letitia?” She left one name hanging until he thought he’d strangle on it. Why had he ever thought Molina might become an ally? She was a policewoman. She always needed to know the full story.

“No woman strong enough to risk.”

“Ah.” She leaned back, elbows braced on the twin pillars of the dressing table, the drink glowing topaz against the black of her gown.

Molina?

God, he must be drunk.

But the idea started caroming through his brain. She was armed and dangerous. She just said she thought he was good-looking. Lots of people did, but Molina saying it…thinking it.

If he was caught in some sexless limbo because of his religious past, she was a single mother in a man’s world. What kind of personal life did she have? Did she dream, as Janice did, of an Invisible Man who would come through her window, a puppet with no strings attached, like Errol Flynn on a rope, and go away leaving no traces, no obligations, no guilt, like a dream?

But there were always hordes of swordsmen after Errol Flynn as Don Juan or as Robin Hood, and a dalliance with a wanted man always backfired on the woman, even if her ankle was armed. Molina was not invulnerable, just professional.

She was not strong enough to risk, but he didn’t dare tell her that.

“I can’t. I can’t involve any woman in this who might be the object of Kitty’s murderous attention.”

“Hmm,” said Molina. Carmen. Looking lazy and contemplative, looking pretty luscious, as a matter of fact, maybe because of what she was thinking. He was thinking it too. Where had his friendly neighborhood earth mother gone? Luscious? He must be deranged.

Matt set the half-full glass of scotch on the small table near the wall. He had to be on live radio in under two hours.

“I just came here for some professional advice.”

Her eyes suddenly focused in points like acetylene torch flames.

“Professional. From the mouths of babes. That’s it, Matt!”

“What?”

“You need a professional. Someone Kitty wouldn’t even notice. A pro.”

“With a gun?”

“No! Listen. This is Las Vegas. Las Vegas. You get yourself a six-hundred-dollar-a-night room at the Oasis. The Goliath. Whatever. You tip everyone in sight, and you ask the bellman to send up some private entertainment. Tip him a hundred.”

“Carmen!”

“Listen. I know this town. A hundred. You can afford it to save your virtue for the right wrong girl, right? Okay. For that you’ll get a thousand-dollar call girl. She’ll be beautiful, intelligent, gorgeously dressed, consider herself a sex industry professional, not some cheap, downtrodden hooker. She’ll argue her right to sell her services with such sophistication that you won’t have an answer. You’ll tell her your problem, not about Kitty the Cutter but your personal history. She will love helping you out. She considers herself a mental-health field worker and, besides, you’re not hard to help out. You will walk out of there much poorer, but not what Kathleen O’Connor wants: an innocent man. You will have endangered no one. The call girl will vanish from the hotel as she always does, with a great story to entertain another john. You will be absolutely…adequate, right? You will have taken advantage of no one, as talking to one of these awesome sexual entrepreneurs will convince you. They are nobody’s victims, believe me, and consider themselves worth every c-note. It’ll be Pretty Woman all over again, only with this strange role reversal all the way through. Make sense?”

“Carmen. No.”

“Why not? It’s brilliant. It’s a scam. You out-sting the stinger. Why not?”

“Because…it’s a sin.”

“So is caving in to a sexual blackmailer. So…confess it afterward. You believe in absolution, don’t you? Don’t you have to?”

“Yes. But —”

“‘Yes, but’ are the two most dangerous words in the language. Do it or pay for not doing it. Wait to see which innocent woman will pay. Maybe Temple Barr. This Kitty doesn’t sound blind, just demented.”

Matt fingered the key ring in his pocket, feeling the hard cold, gold circle of the snake ring spinning against his skin. He remembered how it had appeared in his apartment, with the equivalent of an Alice in Wonderland note: Wear me. The controlling Miss Kitty clandestinely invading his space again, claiming his attention.

It reminded him of Molina’s cold-blooded investigative strategy in keeping the whereabouts of Temple’s ring secret. In then sharing its whereabouts with him so he became complicit in her cruelty. He wanted to protest their conspiracy of silence he had only broken when Temple had figured it out. To accuse her, excuse himself.

But the damage had been done. To Temple, not to Kinsella, whom Molina really ached to hurt, nor to him, who had been the stooge, the patsy.

Temple’s ring was recorded history now. The ring Kitty O’Connor had forced him to install on his keyring was still a secret, still an issue, still lethal.

Still the eternal threat, the Worm Ouroboros, wanting to slip onto a finger like greased lightning and burn him, and never, ever come off.

…and Revamp

“I’ll think about it,” Matt said. He already had, far too long. “I suppose it’d be easy to lose Kathleen if I dodged into a megahotel.”