Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

I wonder if Miss Temple knows that he goes wandering around at night without her.

I suppose she does. She is a very modern lady. She certainly knows that I do, and what is good for the Tomcat is good for the Maxman.

Frankly, I am pretty impressed by Mr. Max’s savvy and nerve. He is a lot bigger and thus easier to spot than I am.

I decide to follow his lead and pour myself up the stairs like a sinuous Slinky toy defying gravity and going up, not down.

No one notices Mr. Max, and Mr. Max does not notice me.

That is the way it should be.

If only Miss Midnight Louise was not a loose cannon somewhere in the vicinity, I would not have a thing to worry about.

Not that I ever worry.

Vamp…

Shaken by the imagined lethal consequences of his own scenario, Matt dialed Molina’s office as soon as he got back to his apartment.

She had said “later.” Now was later. Maybe too late.

“I’ve really got to talk to you privately right away,” he said as soon as she answered, skipping the usual greetings, not even saying who he was. He sounded more like her than himself, but none of the usual social chatter seemed necessary anymore. “Right away.”

“That’s obvious,” she said. “Where? You’re apparently too freaked to tolerate a police station meeting.”

“Freaked.” The word made his mind speed down emotional dead ends like a rat navigating a maze of brain tissue. “I guess you could call it that. Some place where no one could draw the wrong conclusions. Some place…happenstance.”

The other end of the line went silent. Finally: “One of the hotels?”

“No, a lot of bad stuff has happened in the hotels around here.”

“You’re not kidding.”

“How about —?” He knew she wouldn’t like it, but he did. “The Blue Dahlia.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t shown up there in ages.”

“Why not?”

“Because…none of your business.”

“Because a woman’s body was dumped in the parking lot, and it became your business, that’s why. You really need to get back on that particular horse, Carmen.”

“You’re telling me what I need? You’re the one with a stalker who won’t let you breathe without looking in your rearview mirror.”

“They must miss you at the club.”

“I always came and went when it suited me. That was part of the deal.”

“Part of the charm. You don’t want to lose that outlet.”

“Singing?”

“That, and being unpredictable.”

“You think I’ve been predictable?”

“Lately? Yes.”

A long silence on the phone. It wasn’t just that being predictable was insulting. In her line of work it was dangerous.

“You oughta be a psychologist, Matt, anybody ever tell you that?”

“My guidance counselor in high school, and look where it got me.”

“Okay, Mr. Midnight. Carmen rides the high C’s again. The Blue Dahlia. Tonight. After nine. Watch your back.”

Matt was smiling as he hung up. He felt the same satisfaction as when sweet reason had encouraged a radio caller to take a baby step past some personal stumbling block.

He understood why Lieutenant C. R. Molina needed to moonlight as the semianonymous jazz singer Carmen. No last name. Molina always said she sang because she could, and she was right: her voice was a terrible thing to waste, a smoky contralto born to carry ’40s torch songs to the Casbah and back. But there was much more to her clandestine singing career than that.

Somewhere, far in the past, young Carmen had died a necessary death, resurfacing as the gender-neutral C. R. The only time her birth name came out to play was on the tiny stage of the Blue Dahliaand only when Lieutenant Molina decided to loosen the leash. Carmen showed up when she showed up. The trio that backed her knew that, and most often played sans vocals. The Blue Dahlia management knew that. The customers knew that.

And they all liked it that way. In her fashion, Molina was a magician, appearing when and where least expected, then vanishing again. It was odd she so detested Max Kinsella, since they had that arbitrary magical showmanship in common. But sometimes Like loathes Like just because it recognizes itself through a fun-house mirror darkly.

Matt found his thoughts jerked back toward the woman he really had to worry about: Kathleen O’Connor. Did he detest her because somehow, in some way, they had too much in common?

It made his skin crawl to consider such a hateful soul akin to his in any way, but the years as a priest had shown him that evil was almost always a distortion of good. Evildoers always had a self-justification. And so did inveterate do-gooders. Which made them closer relatives than either would care to admit. Killing and kissing cousins.

Matt decided it was time, a little late in fact, to search his rooms again for listening devices. Every time he left home, Kitty the Cutter could pay him a surreptitious visit. Would she have bugged Temple’s hallway? The notion seemed ludicrous, but what would she do if she had heard, or seen, that surreptitious scene? Matt studied his sparely furnished three rooms, hunting hidden cameras. Having a stalker was like having a ghost for a roommate, a malign, murderous ghost with a license to kill in physical form.

THE BLUE DAHLIA.

The words were etched like acid on the black-velvet Las Vegas night: on the classic, cursive, lurid neon sign that made every bar in every podunk town across the country a little Las Vegas for the evening.

If Matt loved anything about Las Vegas, it was its neon. And the Blue Dahlia owned the epitome of the art form: a lush magenta blossom arching over the cool blue words like an orchid corsage from a long-ago prom, a 1940s prom, when girls wore shoulder pads and their hair rolled high at the sides to match, and guys wore fedoras and boutonnieres.

The parking lot asphalt should have been rained into patent-leather slickness to complete the film noir setting, but this was Las Vegas, the desert Disneyland. The best it could do for any atmosphere was ersatz everything.

Matt parked the Hesketh Vampire near but not under one of the glaring security lights. He hadn’t ridden the motorcycle in weeks, but he wanted any pursuer to dismiss this as a solitary outing. A man on a motorcycle traveled solo. Miss Kitty had shown a disconcerting interest in anyone he might pair up with.

Inside, the hostess, a wispy nineteen-year-old, mounted on those clunky Minnie Mouse platform shoes they all wore nowadays, showed him to a small round table for one. His chair faced the token parquet dance floor in front of the tiny stage. A trio as classic as a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou occupied the tiny stage: a bassist, a saxophonist, and an electric keyboarder.

The music broadcast the relaxed yet jazzy insistence of updated Bach by Louis Armstrong. Be-Bach. You could let it be background Muzak, or get lost in the fascinating rhythms.

Matt used the oversize menu as a cover to study who was already there. He ordered a scotch on the rocks while he apparently dithered over the menu. His watch read 8:45 P.M.

No one had come in after him and only a scattering of customers littered the tables on a weeknight.

The quiet made him edgy. Expecting someone dangerous was more nerve-wracking than seeing him — her. It wasn’t Molina’s entrance that was the question mark but whether Miss Kitty would show up. And she might not look exactly as she had the last time he had seen her. He’d hope not! She’d worn motorcycle leathers then, like a punk London messenger boy. Before that…he’d always remember the day he’d first seen her at the Circle Ritz poolside, immaculate in a green silk pantsuit that matched her eyes, her Snow White coloring as startling as a billboard of a chorus girl in its high-colored photogenic perfection.