Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

Molina nodded seriously, but her eyes narrowed. “We’re all taking that pretty seriously nowadays. How do you know about her international terrorism history?”

Matt wasn’t about to blurt out, “Max Kinsella.” He flailed for a logical dodge that would still salve his Catholic conscience for truth at all costs. “Ah, Bucek. Frank Bucek at the FBI. He was in seminary with me. We’ve talked on the phone a little. He looked her up.”

“Bucek looked her up for you when he couldn’t give me diddly?”

“Fellow ex-priests…”

“Fellow guys, you mean.”

Before Molina could wind up some feminist rant, someone knocked on the door. “Bar call,” a man’s jovial voice caroled.

Molina looked inquiringly at Matt.

“Scotch on the rocks,” he finally thought to say. She yodeled a double order of same through the door.

“Sit down.” She pointed to one of those round-seated wooden chairs with the bentwood backs that was stained so dark it looked like it had been sitting here awaiting him for decades. Probably had.

Matt took the seat, though it was uncomfortable, and Molina finally sat in a matching chair placed before the dressing table.

She shook her head at herself, her face as sharp-boned as Lauren Bacall’s in the time-spotted mirror. “Sometimes I expect Bogey to stroll in here asking about Maltese falcons. Those were the days: treacherous greedy crooks, psychopaths disguised as cheap hoods, and manipulative dames. Okay.” She scraped the chair legs on the concrete floor to turn her back to the mirror.

As she braced her elbows on the matching pillars, Matt was startled to see in the mirror the black velvet curtain of her dress part in back from neck to waist. She couldn’t have been wearing, well, anything under it. This was not something he wanted to think about here and now, or anywhere at any time, really.

A knock at the door.

“Enter!” Molina called out grandly.

The barman came in carrying one of those small, round, scuffed brown trays that have held drinks since Methuselah was a wine steward.

“Thanks, Steve.” Molina watched him set the tray on the opposite drawer pillar like an offering. “I love to impress company with my lavish backstage perks.”

Steve, a toothy guy with receding gray hair, grinned. “Courtesy of the management. We’re glad to have you back.”

He winked at them both in the mirror as he left.

“They pay you for this?” Matt asked suddenly.

“Yeah, they pay me for this.” Molina sounded indignant. “I wouldn’t do an amateur gig. Lots of cops moonlight. This is less conflict of interest than most.”

“I didn’t mean…what I meant is they’re happy to pay to have you back.”

She leaned forward to hand him a lowball glass richly amber with about three ounces of scotch. He sipped. Johnnie Walker Black. Very happy to have her back.

He sipped again, feeling tension drain down his arms like a blood-letting. “This is the first time I’ve felt out of that woman’s reach for two weeks.”

Molina lifted her own glass in a distant toast. “Happy to hear that. What’s the reason?”

“A bodyguard?” he said, laughing.

“You aren’t kidding.” She crossed her legs.

The motion would have been coy in another woman clothed in floor-length vintage black velvet, but now it simply revealed the small, lethal-looking gun attached to her ankle by some industrial-strength black holster of nylon webbing.

Matt almost choked on a quarter ounce of scotch too good to spray on the concrete floor. “Do you always do that?”

“Always,” she said. “Nobody’s going to die because I was in a Luby’s Cafeteria with my gun in the car.”

He nodded, remembering the case, another massacre in a public place by a single psycho gone ballistic. And that brought them back to Miss Kitty. “I can’t carry a gun. I can’t shoot her. So that makes me a perpetual victim?”

Molina nodded while she savored her drink. “This ought to oil the old pipes for the next set. You are keeping me up late tonight, Mr. Midnight.” She twisted to check a small clock on the dressing table.

“No problem. I’m not due at work for a couple of hours.”

She glanced at his glass. “Can you drive —?”

“I had a heavy meal.”

“Then enjoy. I imagine you haven’t enjoyed much lately. Back to your…bête noir? Is that better than ‘nemesis’? Here’s the deal. Here’s what every woman with an abusive ex on her tail finds out. Nothing and nobody can help you. If you were a woman, I’d advise you to get a gun and shoot the guy the next time he showed up. No, I wouldn’t. I can’t. But that’s the only defense they’ve honestly got, a lot of them. I am so damn sick of picking up the phone and hearing some woman was blown away in the parking lot of her office, or a grocery store, or a fast-food joint, or a day-care facility, or a school by some maniac man who can’t let go because he can’t live without a victim.

“And it’s always just when the woman finally gets a little starch and tries to get away, when she’s defending her kids where she couldn’t defend herself, when she’s being a heroine instead of a whipping girl, and then they kill her.

“Enough about my job frustrations. Now, about yours. Your job is to foil this woman . You can’t give her what she wants.”

“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 stand-in, 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?