They danced around her imagination now, her half-brothers and -sisters, black-haired, black-eyed sprites with adorable faces…that needed constant wiping by her of food and tears, depending on the day or the occasion.
She loved them all…and it would be a cold day in hell before she would want to shepherd more than one kid, Mariah, to adulthood again. She’d been a mother most of her life. When she’d become the first in her family to go to college, a two-year college, it was more a betrayal than a cause for celebration.
Molina…Carmen…sat on the bed, gun and shoes sitting beside her, symbols of everything that had gone right and wrong in her life.
She so seldom had time to think. To remember. Now, even shattered images of Rafi Nadir washed over her in the dead quiet.
She couldn’t seem to control the memory flood. Was she drowning? Drowning in guilt? Or just stranded tired and alone for once? Sitting on the dock of the bay, on the tree above the flood, waiting to be rescued.
No. She rescued herself. Always had. She didn’t sit around waiting for anything. For anybody.
She started singing counter to the living room radio, softly, in harmony. It was odd hearing her own voice without accompaniment, without the boys in the band behind her.
She sighed. It had been too long since she’d dropped in at the Blue Dahlia to add the words to their music. Dolores was always available. She should do it again soon.
Sittin’ on the dock of the bay. Something, something away.
She saw Vassar spread-eagled on neon, stripped and dissected on stainless steel, a twelve-hour transformation, from pinned butterfly to laboratory frog.
She shook her head, shook the image away. There was no reason she couldn’t contact her family now, though it had been so long.
Except that Rafi would have known, and he wasn’t about to let her go. And maybe, maybe, she was just as glad he’d forced her to run away, start a new life alone. With Mariah when she arrived.
She had been mired in her own unhappy history. Always the half-breed. Her mother’s one unforgivable mistake, that she’d tried to undo eight times until she had died of it.
By then Carmen had been in place, knowing she was a mistake, apologetic enough to make up for it, tending her mother’s whole-breed brood, loving them, hating herself.
She shook her head. That was so long ago. Why was she thinking of it now?
Of course. Rafi. He was like the recurrent nightmare in a slasher movie, Michael or Jason, never quite dying, always popping up to revive the terror. A franchise attraction.
Molina stood up. She was a big girl now, in every respect.
If Matt Devine had anything to do with Vassar’s death, she would find out and arrest him. If Rafi found her and Mariah, he would be sorry. If Max Kinsella crossed her path again, in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’d stop him no matter what it took. If Temple Barr was in mourning for the two men in her life, let her weep and wail.
If she, Carmen…no, Molina, had to destroy her career to bring down a murderer, so be it.
She went to her closet, opened the door, drooped her shoes on the floor, moved to turn the tumblers on the safe.
Something elusive and soft brushed her wrist.
She started to push it aside.
It was velvet. Midnight blue velvet, a limp, 1930s evening gown, Depression era; sleazy and soft and irresistible.
Molina frowned at the Blue Dahlia side of her closet with its meager column of vintage gowns. Carmen wasn’t here anymore, but her wardrobe was.
Blue velvet? God, she was losing it. She’d forgotten buying that one.
Or did she just want to forget? Not only the ancient past, but the recent one, all the way up to encouraging Matt Devine to make a date with destiny.
Chapter 28
…A League of Her Own
Matt had spent his working life on a phone for over a year now: first at the hot line and now at WCOO radio.
He was used to calls being urgent, to surprises, to communicating well despite the distance and the lack of face-to-face contact.
Now he was hanging on hold, waiting for the phone to be picked up again after a long, frustrating attempt to make contact.
He supposed calling the FBI might be like that.
“Matt!” boomed a confident and somewhat superficial voice.
“Frank,” Matt echoed, determined to control this conversation.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m afraid I still need information on that woman terrorist, Kathleen O’Connor, only this time it might involve murder.”
“I came up dry last time.”
“I know. I believe in try, try again.”
“What’s the murder case?”
“Mine.”
“What?”
“Well, it cuts two ways, if you recall how Miss Kitty introduced herself to me a few months ago.”
“Humor does help, Matt. Yes, I remember. She cut you. Razor, wasn’t it? Odd weapon for a woman.”
“She’s an odd woman. She’s been stalking me.”
“Why?”
“Because I was there? All I can glean from what she’s said, which I don’t entirely believe, is that she has a grudge against priests.”
“You’re an ex-priest.”
“So I told her. It doesn’t seem to matter to her.”
“I know she’s been a thorn in your side for some time. What’s happened to escalate matters?”
“First, she started physically threatening my friends and acquaintances. Women, girls, old women, it didn’t seem to matter as long as they were female.”
“You are talking major-league obsessive.”
“Yes.” And Matt hated doing this sort of talking on the telephone. Despite a bug-free apartment, he still had the slimy sensation that someone was listening. It could be a hangover from his radio talk-show history, or just knowing that the FBI probably recorded everything.
“I wish we could talk in person.”
“Can you come out here?”
“Not right now.”
“Then shoot. If it’s not a matter of national security, this is a safe line.”
Matt grimaced. That wasn’t much of a guarantee, but he needed solid answers, not speculation. Besides, he had confessed so often to Father Frank Bucek when they were both in seminary, Frank as instructor, Matt as acolyte, that pulling back now seemed foolish.
“Okay. This woman made it plain: my virtue, or their lives.”
“Nasty. I assume you took measures.”
“I tried to. I got as much advice as I could—”
“From whom? You didn’t ask me.”
“I’m…sorry, Frank. Guess I was embarrassed.”
“What? That some woman was so infatuated she’d blackmail you into submission? You and Brad Pitt. Don’t be an ass, Matt. It’s like that out here in the real world. There are guys who would envy you.”
“That’s like telling an eighty-year-old woman she’s lucky to be raped.”
Silence on the line. Long silence. “You’re right. I was being cynical. It gets that way, if you see enough. Sorry. It works both ways. Stalking is stalking. So what advice did you get?”
“It was clear she wanted to destroy what I had taken out of the priesthood, my celibacy.”
“Odd fixation. Odd woman.”
“I know. So, my…friends…all urged me to lose my virtue and thereby my value to her.”
“It makes sense, but this is a senseless woman.”
Matt nodded, even though Frank couldn’t see the gesture. “The solution they came up with was that I take advantage of Las Vegas’s reputation as ‘Sin City.’ I was to take a circuitous route along the Strip, get a room for cash and then change the number, at an upscale hotel, and hire a high-class call girl to do the job, make me unfit for my stalker.”
Frank chuckled. “Surely an expensive way to go. Did it work?”
“Yes…and no.”
“I’m on tenterhooks.”
“I bet you are, you old married man. I bet you love hearing my odyssey of unwanted sex.”
“Maybe. It’s an interesting theological question: for love of your fellow man, should you submit to carnal knowledge, once-against your vocation, and now against your free will and inclination only? If you were a woman, say St. Maria Gorretti: virgin, rape victim, and martyr, the answer would be a resounding yes. But the Church is a bit more ticklish about male self-sacrifice.”
“Apparently not in seminaries.”
“Whoa! Where did that come from?”
“A former St. Vincent’s alumn who approached me. That’s not what I meant to call about, but he says there was a lot of abuse back when we were there. Was there, Frank?”
Another silence. “God, I hope not.”
“You don’t know? You were an instructor, a confessor, a mentor.”
Silence. “I…honestly don’t know. Did you see it?”
“Maybe. But I didn’t know enough to recognize it.”
“You never—?”
“No. I’m told I was fairly unapproachable by then.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Angel-face iron man. Not unapproachable, really, just closed like a work-in-progress freeway. I knew you were chewing on family issues. I respected that. Leaving you alone to do it seemed the best course. That work out?”
“Eventually.”
“Good enough. So you came through unscathed.”
“I thought so, but if others didn’t, then there’s no honor in that, is there?”
“No. It’s hard enough to outgrow your childhood and your past, then you learn that it was all corrupt. I wasn’t, Matt. I was as shit-faced innocent as you were then. That’s no excuse.”
“Yes, innocence never feels like enough of an excuse. She’s dead, Frank.”
“Whoa again. We’re out of the seminary here. Who?”
“My…salvation. The invulnerable Las Vegas call girl. She fell to her death in the hotel atrium after I left.”
“Fell.”
“Archangels fall. She could have been pushed.”
“And you take the fall. Well, my money is on your stalker. She would be the kind of jealous bitch to teach you both a lesson for trying to get around her.”
“That’s why I need you to dig deeper, Frank. I know this woman was an IRA operative. She may have been very clever, very undercover, but she was loose in northern Ireland as Kathleen O’Connor about seventeen years ago. She had a second career squeezing money out of very wealthy Irish-Hispanic men in South America after that. She must have left some kind of trail. With the emphasis on foreign infiltrators now, surely you can find something on her. She isn’t a ghost.”
“No. I remember running a search already. Are the police on your tail for this call girl death?”
“Yes…and no, I think. Remember Molina?”
“Sure. Good cop.”
“Well, she was one of those who advised me to take the call-girl route.”
“No kidding. She must be sweating it now.”
“She won’t let me get away with murder if she thinks I did it, no matter what.”
“I know. Good cop. Got a few hang-ups too, but, hey, it’s what makes us all interesting. So…you join the mile-high club with that call girl?”
“Mile-high—?”
“Those Las Vegas megahotels are said to be halfway to heaven.”
“Frank.”
“I know. None of my business. You do see, though, don’t you? If you hadn’t made a fetish out of chastity, if you’d failed like a billion men and a few thousand priests before you, you wouldn’t be in this mess. You wouldn’t have had anything to lose.”
“You really believe that now?”
“Yeah. For women and for men. It’s a form of control, don’t you see, Matt? And no one can control you if you can control yourself.”
The paradox had Matt’s head spinning.
It was trying to control himself that had gotten him into this out-of-control situation, after all.
“You’re reasoning like a Jesuit,” he complained.
“Come to think of it, being an FBI agent is a little like that. Anything else I can help with?”
Matt shook his head, then realized he was on the phone and needed to say something.
“No. Not for now. Just find out something—anything—on Kathleen O’Connor.”
Chapter 29
…Glory Days
The glossy photo Alfonso slapped down on Molina’s desk made her blink for a moment.
What did she want with a vintage photo of Dolores Del Rio?
“Fuentes,” Alfonso explained without being asked. “About forty years ago. A looker.” He pushed the highly colored portrait aside to reveal a full-length black-and-white cheesecake shot beneath it. “Her calling card was her legs, though, not that face. She did a lot of product posing in L.A. before she ended up in Gandolph the Great’s magic act.” Another photo: gorgeous Gloria with an ordinary-looking youngish guy who was already showing a little too much chub for the camera.
“Were they friends, lovers?” Molina asked.
“Coworkers. Barrett dug up a bunch of old-time magicians. They’ve got this old folks club going at the local barbecue now. Meet every Tuesday, only we got a membership list and made some rounds. Everybody said Gandolph—real name Garry, two R’s, Randolph as in Churchill—”
“Again your easy erudition amazes me, Alfonso.”
He shrugged modestly. “I try to know things that might come in handy, and you never know what might come in handy in our line of work. Anyway, they were colleagues. Buddies. That’s all.”
“She didn’t outlive him by much,” Molina commented, moving the glamour photo front and center. The body on the autopsy table with the words “she left” scripted under her rib cage hadn’t even hinted at such past glory as this. Dish to dust.
“Now that might be funny,” Alfonso said. “Old Gandolph dead under uncertain circumstances on Halloween, his former assistant strangled to death only months later in the parking lot of a church. Odd part is, she wasn’t church-going, the ex-neighbors in the apartment building were sure of that. It was kind of an unofficial retirement home for ex-performers, that place: cheap, a little rundown like they were, kind of a community, though, and they kept an eye on each other.”
“Is this stuff in the original reports?”
“Some. Some Barrett and me made up.” He grinned.
Molina knew he was referring to the Abies’ mysterious ways of squeezing new facts out of old cases.
If they could wring some fresh suspects from the Fuentes case files, it would create enough of a flutter in the department and the media to let Vassar die a natural death in the news.
“So how did she get to a church parking lot?” Molina asked.
“Someone was trying to look her up a few days before she died. A mysterious stranger.”
Alfonso enunciated the final phrase with relish as he sat on the plastic shell chair in front of Molina’s desk. Plastic wasn’t supposed to groan like wood under massive weight, but this chair managed at least a squawk. Maybe the steel bolts were giving.
“Any description of this mysterious stranger? Was he tall?”
“Got someone like Barrett in mind, Lieutenant?” Alfonso flipped pages and shook his head. “ ’Fraid not. Middling kind of guy: middle-aged, middle-height, middle-weight, but dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and loose running pants, light gray, like he had come from the gym. Kept his hood on too, so he could be bald as an eagle or as hairy as Elvis on top. Wore sunglasses, so his eye color is a mystery too.”
“Just asking for her?”
“She had an unpublished number, so her address wasn’t in the phone book. He was asking for her apartment, but nobody would tell him. They look out for each other at the Iverton Arms.”
“The place sounds like a time warp.”
Alfonso nodded. “Retired performers live in the past. You should have seen the old ladies fawning over me, inviting me in for pastry an
d a photo-album session of their clippings from the days when they were cuties instead of Medicare patients. Not so many old guys in residence. Guess my gender isn’t in it for the long run.”
“Maybe too many cigarettes and pastries,” Molina suggested.
“Always the diplomat, Lieutenant,” Alfonso said blithely.
Three ex-wives and a series of police doctors hadn’t gotten him to change his habits or his profile in thirty years. One remark from her wasn’t going to do it now.
“That’s more than we got on Fuentes the first time around,” she noted approvingly. “You and Barrett keep on it.”
“And what about that call girl, Vassar?”
“Alch and Su are backgrounding her. It’s a little tougher. Rothenberg’s employees don’t offer the police pastry and photo albums, more like zipped lips and the bum’s rush.”
“I thought you softened her up yourself.”
“The city attorneys haven’t softened her up in fourteen-years. What makes you think I could do it?”
“I thought maybe woman to woman—”
“Sisterhood means zilch when you’re on opposite sides of the long lean line of the law, Alfonso. I just wanted to know what she thought about the death.”
“And?”
“Oddly complacent. More concerned about making a point that it was unlikely for a seasoned call girl to get hurt, or underestimate a john with designs on throwing her off an atrium railing. She’s all politics.”
“Want Barrett and me to do some digging there?”
“Higher placed minions of the law than you and me have done that for years and came up with harassment suits and ACLU press conferences. Besides, the Goliath death is iffy, at best.”
Alfonso stood, taking a stab at pulling his belt up over his ballooning belly. “If the words ‘she left’ show up on this Vassar’s corpse, though, let me know.”
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