Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

“Use a phony name. Pay cash at the front desk like a big winner. Take one room there and then call down and change it. Find something wrong. Somebody smoked in a nonsmoking suite, that kind of thing.”

“You’ve got some tricky ideas.”

“Not me. Everybody I’ve ever arrested. So.” Molina’s wild-blue-yonder gaze softened with scotch and satisfaction. “You gonna take my professional advice?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

He stood, took one last sip of the very fine scotch and left.

In the hall he could hear the trio killing time until Carmen’s next set with jazzy crescendoes. He kind of liked this place, right here. Alone in the hall, between the dressing room and the stage, the public. Ignored, invisible.

He moved along, wove through the clotted round tables, arranged to be intimate and now in the way.

It was a weeknight. He had dragged Carmen in for a half-empty house, but she probably appreciated warming up with only chairs to hear her rusty voice. Most of the chairs were empty now.

So was the parking lot when he pushed open the big door with the round porthole window. Round windows seemed so decadent, as if blocking out a sinister subaquatic world.

He homed on the familiar tilted shape of the Hesketh Vampire, appreciating its sleek lines from a distance, savoring a fondness you’d feel more for a horse than a vehicle.

A nondescript black car sat between the faded white lines a few spots away. That was all. Matt knew the staff parking lot was on the other side of the building. This lot was for customers and, a few weeks ago, the dumped body of a dead woman.

He winced a bit to recall her. Killed for not being quite Catholic enough in someone else’s warped view, when he might be killed for being too Catholic.

Why dumped here? Because the killer had associated The Blue Dahlia with nightlife and corruption.

He reached in his pants pockets for the cycle keys, eyed the waiting helmet, almost craving its anonymity, its implied safety.

A small click in the night.

Maybe the touch of a high heel on the asphalt.

Maybe the snick of a switchblade.

Maybe the mechanism of an opening car door.

Maybe all three.

Matt whirled to face the dark car with its windows black-tinted like a limousine’s. It was a boxy, anonymous vehicle. He couldn’t even name the model and maker.

It looked like a cut-rate hearse to him.

Someone was stepping out of it.

Stepping out with my baby…

A woman.

…a face in the misty light…

No, not Laura from forties film noir…just Kathleen. Kitty. Any haunting songs written for such a common name or nickname? Only raucous Irish ditties and a soulful Celtic ballad or two.

I’ll take you home again, Kathleen…

She wore something long, dark, and glittering. It hung from rhinestone straps on her shoulders. She was done up like a disco prom queen. Her high heels clicked on the pavement as she approached. Scarlet rhinestones dripped like blood from her earlobes. Not rhinestones maybe, rubies…

She clutched not a gun but a small, bejeweled purse shaped like a kumquat. The innocuous bag was more suggestive, more chilling. What was in it? A folded razor? A tiny automatic pistol? A lipstick case? A vial of poison? Or of holy water?

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” she said. “The Midnight Hour is still a lifetime away.”

He was alone this time. He didn’t have to worry about her hurting anybody else. He moved toward the motorcycle again. It could outrun any car.

“You’ve come here before,” she called after him, softly as a song. Her voice still held the faintest musical lilt of Ireland, a siren’s lure. “I was wondering why.”

He didn’t pause.

“Actually, I was wondering who.”

He turned, stopped, spoke. “What a small world you occupy, Kathleen O’Connor. There is not always a why, or a who. Sometimes there’s a what. Not for you, though. You’re hooked on whys and whos. That’s what makes you so ignorant.”

“Me! Ignorant? I’ve lived all over the world, visited casinos that make Las Vegas look like Disneyland for the double-wide set. I’ve drunk the finest wines, worn designer jeans that cost more than that whole damn motorcycle —”

“Impressive,” Matt said without stopping or turning.

“If you really want to be impressed, maybe you should peek in the backseat of my car.”

Her voice wasn’t musical anymore, but raw, as metallic as a zipper slowly opening, grating. Kitty was sure that what she was about to reveal was raunchy but irresistible.

Matt knew it was a mistake not to resist, but her voice had become so smugly threatening…

He turned. Kitty O’Connor cut a sophisticated figure in the blue-green parking lot glow. The car behind her was a shiny black box. He remembered sensing it as a hearse. Whose hearse?

He started toward it, she spinning and clicking on those high heels to reach it first, as if now they were in a race. Her staccato steps reminded him of Temple, but he didn’t want even her name crossing his mind in the presence of Kitty O’Connor.

The woman had paused by the back door on the driver’s side of the four-door sedan to unlatch the hard little jeweled bag. She brought out something black and oblong. A remote control. The car’s rear window opened with a can-opener whirr.

It sliced open on a band of red hair. Matt’s heart stopped, but the window kept descending until a third of the way down. He saw frightened eyes and a duct-taped mouth, like a robot’s featureless silver orifice pasted onto a human face.

Matt’s heart throbbed like a jungle drum as he recognized not the fractured face but the mane of red hair: the teenaged fan from last night at the radio station parking lot.

The window was rising again like a dry dark tide, obscuring the terrified eyes and obscenely cheerful red hair. Had Kitty chosen the girl because she had been there, or because her hair was red?

“She’s just an —” he began.

“Innocent bystander?” Kitty tucked the remote control back into her purse as casually as if it was a cigarette case. “My favorite kind. Besides, I don’t buy your assumption that anyone is innocent. Even you.”

“I never claimed I was.”

“You claimed you were a good priest.”

“A good priest isn’t innocent. A priest needs knowledge of evil.”

“You must be an even better priest now,” she said, slithering forward like vamp on a nighttime soap opera.

“A priest needs knowledge of evil,” he repeated, “like a seductress needs a touch of innocence to be believable. Seducing me won’t work.”

“Just remember the girl in the backseat. Next time she might be somebody you really know.”

He choked back his anger at her constant threats, her theatricality. Did she need to be the star of her own show this much? Apparently. And what did that tell him about her?

“Relax,” she was saying. “I’ve planned a quiet evening for just the two of us. And” — her dark head jerked over her shoulder toward the closed window — “she can’t see us. No one inside the car can see out except the driver. Aren’t you wondering who the driver is?”

He hadn’t considered that. If Kitty was not alone tonight, if she had a hostage, she might also have an accomplice. An accomplice was needed for what? Chauffeuring? Ferrying captives…carrying bodies?

“A quiet evening —?” he repeated to gain time.

“Sure.” She walked around to the car’s front passenger side.

He heard the heavy metal door open, then Kitty began unloading objects onto the car’s long black hood. Two champagne flutes. A silver ice bucket. A green bulbous bottle of Perrier-Jouët twined by painted art nouveau flowers.