Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“Even ex-priests?”

“Even ex-priests. There aren’t too many innocent men out there anymore.”

“Tell me about it. Women, either.”

“So…she’ll hurt any woman I have anything to do with. Anything, anyone! My landlady who’s sixty-something. A pre-teen daughter of a friend.”

“Unless —”

He nodded.

“So you need to sleep with me first.”

Silence.

“But you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to be coerced into sleeping with anyone.”

“I get you. I was there once. Yeah, I was a virgin. Everybody was. Almost everybody gets over it, one way or another.” She poured some more wine in her glass, her face softening under the makeup. “There was a guy I dated, my freshman year in college. Big, gorgeous guy, football player. Said I was a prick tease one night. Maybe I was, maybe I was just a virgin. I wasn’t after that night.”

Her eyes of no color were black holes.

“Date rape?”

“Didn’t have the phrase all over the newspapers then. I believed that I’d got what I deserved. It’s true. I wanted a boyfriend, but I didn’t want to sleep with him. Not yet. I didn’t know what it was about. I wasn’t ready.” She smiled over her glass rim. “That’s why I’m so good at my job. I can tell the guys who aren’t ready from the ones who’ve always been ready.

“I’m sorry, Thomas, but you’re not ready.”

“I’ve got to be. This woman is dangerous. I’ve got to disarm her. I’ve got to take away the thing in me that she covets.”

“You can sleep with me but you won’t lose your innocence.”

“You think so? She doesn’t really care about innocence, just the fact of it. Did I mention she was insane? Someone told me to try this. There’s no way she could suspect that you were in my life, no way she could hurt you. You’re the only safe woman in Las Vegas for me.”

“Now you’ve gone and made me feel my work is a duty. I’ve gotta save you from a date rape. I don’t know, Thomas. I work better when the goals are more crass. Orgasm, power, money. Sure, I can handle the insecure. But you’re not insecure, just…inexperienced. And you don’t want to do it. That’s kind of insulting. It doesn’t exactly turn me on, and I work better when I’m turned on.”

“You actually…enjoy your work?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re in control?”

“How can I be in control? I’m bought and paid for.”

“Oh, come on. You’re leading the willing sheep by the fleece.”

“We call it short hairs in the business.”

Matt shook his head. Apparently sexual transactions allowed for no dignity. “You’ve got to admit I’m an interesting client.”

“Unique.”

“So, now that you know my problem, can you do anything about it?”

“It takes two. You’ve got to be willing and able to hold up your end of the bargain. I’m a very sexy lady, but if you really don’t want to get into it, I can’t make you. How have you managed to remain celibate anyway?”

“I’ve been looking for the right woman.”

“How right does she have to be?”

“Not involved with anyone else.”

“And you found one who was.”

He shrugged. He didn’t have to tell her about Temple.

“So there is one woman somewhere you’d have no trouble sleeping with.”

He nodded. “If we were married.”

“Married?”

“Married. But…I realize that’s a high qualification. I believe that I could slip off the straight and narrow if I weren’t careful.”

“Okay. You have a libido.”

He nodded, cautiously.

“Then I can help you.”

“I don’t seem to be cooperating tonight.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“No, and it’s because you sensed that my heart isn’t in this. You’re not used to dealing with reluctant clients. I don’t blame you for feeling insulted. I would be in your shoes.”

“If you were in my shoes, honey, you wouldn’t be here.”

She’d expertly slipped into a vaudeville drag-queen twang that he couldn’t help smiling at, even as she waggled a foot in the outlandish high heels.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, “to be such an atypical client. I was looking at you as a means, instead of a person.”

“That’s the way I’m generally looked at.”

“How do you stand it?”

“I’m a very desirable, high-paid means. Look at what you’ve spent on me already.”

“True.”

“Let me show you I’m worth it.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“I still get my money, right?”

“Right…”

At that instant Matt realized that he had invested too much, in every respect, in this evening to chicken out. Or maybe the wine he had drunk realized it.

Vassar had become a person for him in the last few minutes. She was funny, she had a history, she was willing to take him on. And she was a paid professional. At least one of them would know what she was doing.

Max: Gloves Off

“Police shootings of unarmed men these days,” Max said as he raised his empty hands, “even white guys, get more bad press these days than they’re worth. Suspension. Internal investigation.”

“Like you’re not armed.” Molina’s tone was scoffing.

“I’m not. Ever. Once in a blue moon maybe, but when have you last seen a blue moon over Las Vegas?”

“What about police woundings?”

He was silent.

“I’m saying you’re wanted for questioning and by God this time you’re going to come downtown and sit in an interrogation room and call a lawyer or sweat bullets or whatever you want to do, but you are coming in.”

Max finally turned, very slowly, to face her, just as a car’s departing headlights pinned him in a moving spotlight glare like a man caught fleeing across a prison yard. “It really messes up an investigation to have a police lieutenant playing undercover agent.”

“You’re a pro?”

“Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it. It messes up your plans, you mean.”

“Are you pursuing a case, or protecting your ass?”

“My integrity is none of your business.”

“And mine is yours?”

“You don’t have any.”

“What if…what if, Lieutenant, in this case I had more integrity than you?”

She laughed. “Is that how you snooker Temple Barr? Pretending to some mysterious higher moral ground? I am not Little Miss Mischief. This is a nine-millimeter Glock, buddy. It, and I, mean business. And if I have to punch a hole in your kneecap to keep you here, I will. Try doing your usual vanishing act with a knee brace, Mr. Moto.”

“Mr. Moto wasn’t a magician,” Max said, as if they were having an idle conversation that required minor corrections.

He had already examined the parking lot for unexpected quick exits and found himself caught disgustingly out in the open. Could it be that Molina had planned her approach that well?

Meanwhile, the sense that Temple was in danger was ticking like a maddened metronome in the back of his head, where migraine headaches start.

Of course, the more he worried, the less he dared show it, feel it. If he lost this game of cat-and-mouse here, he wouldn’t be free to rush to Temple’s rescue anywhere.

“This isn’t the end of the world, Kinsella.” Molina neared, the weapon still raised. “All I want to do is talk.”

“You want me to talk.”

“Well, talking usually is a two-way street.”

She was using the cajoling tone of interrogation-room cops the world over, a condescending parental teasing: you want to be a good boy, don’t you?