cat in a crimson haze

by Carole Nelson Douglas

"No one sent me."

  "You're a real busy-body, Matthew. None of this is your business."

  "It's all of our business. I grew up Catholic, too."

  ''Aw, poor baby. Bet you were an altar boy, right?"

  Matt's nod felt stiff even to him.

  ''Hey, that's okay, Matthew. Somebody's got to get the gold stars on their school papers.

  Somebody's got to wear those little gilded halos."

  Matt set his teeth. He hated his full name enough in the correct form. Having a more common form constantly hurled at him was like being whipped with a dead snake. Maybe Bums wasn't so crazy to represent himself; he would be terrific in the courtroom.

  "You're creating an extreme to rebel against." Matt suddenly unleashed his own weapon, psychobabble. "Some people demonize the people and institutions in their past. You've sanctified them. I'm not this paragon you need to create just to tear down."

  "You're here, aren't you? Doing your good deed of the day for someone else? You have nothing to do with this, Devine. Why bother?"

  Matt decided to try candor. "Look. I was reared Catholic. Like you, I didn't have a perfect life, or perfect parents. I've had my own problems with the past. I just want to know the truth about your accusations."

  Burns was watching him with brittle, clever eyes. "You heard my whole sad story in that lady lieutenant's office."

  "I can sympathize," Matt said. "You had a rough upbringing: born out of wedlock, handed to a foster family who never stopped reminding you of your 'unworthy' origins. I'm not saying it was right. We're both products of a less enlightened time."

  "Listen to yourself! 'Products.' 'Less enlightened.' You're intellectualizing, Mr. Phone Shrink.

  You're dodging the bullet I caught in my teeth and spit back at the world. I bet you envy me.

  Matt barely stopped himself from pushing away his chair as if avoiding a spitball. ''You know what you hate," he conceded.

  Burns nodded, pleased. ''Most people, they get so confused by the idiocy they're taught when they're kids they don't even know that. I even looked like what they said I was: a bastard. I never grew much; maybe I wanted to stay small so no one would notice me and call me names.

  And it was worse when they didn't call me names. 'You! Come here,' my foster-grandwitch would yell, pointing her cane like the damning finger of God. And, God, it hurt when she poked me with it, hit me with it. Hit me with religion, over and over, with bad words. Yeah, it made me ugly." He looked up, eyes as corrosive as dry ice. "Nobody made you feel ugly."

  "Don't be so sure."

  "You sound like you mean that."

  Matt said nothing.

  "You still go to mass?"

  "Not . . . often."

  "Fallen away but unable to cut the apron strings to Mother Church, eh? Then why do you care if my charges against Father Hernandez are true or not?"

  "If they're true, they should be pursued."

  "Truth is the last thing anyone ever pursues, especially about themselves." Burns pouted his lips again. His forefinger traced an invisible pattern on the drab Formica tabletop. "Why wouldn't they be true? Why not?''

  "You were harassing the entire parish structure. You weren't a genuine obscene caller, you just mimicked one to upset the nuns. A lot of your tricks were diversions, so no one would guess your real target was Blandina Tyler. So, yeah, your blackmail of Father Hernandez could have been another smokescreen. It had the proper effect; it kept him away from the Tyler house."

  "He didn't run to the diocese with it, though, did he? Makes you wonder. Makes you in particular wonder, Matthew."

  Matt shrugged. "If it's true, and if you're as bitter toward Our Lady of Guadalupe and the church as you say, I wonder why you haven't produced any evidence yet.''

  "I got a few other things on my mind."

  "Or, you were just play-acting again, playing the blackmailer as you enacted an obscene phone caller, and as you aped a Satanist when you crucified the cat."

  "You think I was just play-acting that, huh?"

  "You tell me."

  ''I don't have to, Matthew. I'm free. You're not my prosecutor, or my parole officer or my shrink or my confessor. I don't have to even give you a hint. Besides, what would you do if you had any evidence?"

  "I'd make sure it was investigated."

  "By whom? The church? You know how they kicked everything under the cassock all those years. Years and years of innocent kids being abused, and all they did was send Father to some monastery to mumble penance."

  "They're cleaning house now."

  ''Because they have to! It's prime-time news. Hard copy. A current affair that happens to have a very long history. I know why you're here, not to uncover anything, but to hush it up. You make me sick. Whether it's an inconvenient kid on the way or an inconvenient kiddie diddler, you all conspire to sweep it under the rug. You hypocritical goodie two-shoes can't keep your noses out of telling everybody else what to do, but you never wake up and smell the shit you forgot to bury in your own back yards. And the women are the worst."

  ''Maybe that's because women have no power but the aura of superiority the church confers on them."

  "An aura's the same as a halo, isn't it? Blessed Virgin Mary-Blue-Gown with her eyes cast down, as blind as Old Lady Justice. The Law is just as crooked, and wouldn't you know it hides behind some woman's skirts for its symbol of integrity. Yeah. The church is a man's game, and the church knows power, but the church is over a barrel now, just like you are, not knowing what nasty scandal in their precious priesthood is gonna hit next. So watch and wait, Devine."

  His sneering paraphrase of Christ's instructions to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane--like Eden, another garden of betrayal--made Matt wince. Burns smiled and executed a lawyerly lunge for the verbal kill.

  "As for Father Raf-a-el Hernandez and whether my threats of exposure have any basis in evidence or act . . . guess!" he finished triumphantly.

  ''You're bitter, and have reason to be."

  ''Don't turn the other cheek. When I tried that I got my cheeks pounded. That's what they all did, used religion as a club, a cane. Baby Jesus this and the Advent windows opening every week before Christmas and endless stories of the Blessed Birth from the point of view of the Magi and the shepherds and even the damn donkey. Who was the child who was born on the outskirts of everything? I was the Baby Jesus, and there was no room in the inn."

  Matt once might have shuddered at such angry blasphemy. Now he had to admit that Burns had a point.

  "You loyalists with your plaster saint patience," the prisoner muttered, calming somewhat.

  "Don't underestimate me. I'm a product of Catholic schools, I've been . . . involved with the church all of my life."

  "Tell me about it, only I never fit in; I was always a walking, talking sign of sin. Hypocrisy is the hallmark of the church. Look at these aberrant priests, saying mass and seducing altar boys on the same Sunday morning."

  "That's just it; they are aberrant. You must remember many good priests and dedicated nuns from your school days."

  Burns snorted. "Is nothing bad enough to turn your stomach and vomit up the past? What does it take to make you angry, golden boy?"

  Matt answered without hesitation. "You don't want to find out."

  Burns looked into his eyes and finally shut up.

  ************

  But Peter Burns had made Matt angry. The interview had been like spending a long, dark night of the soul, not alone, but in dialogue with his own dark side.

  Once, young and impressionable. Matt the child had dreaded the church's bogeyman: he wondered if he could hear the Devil taunting him in his mind to do the wrong thing. Peter Burns had resurrected that primitive fear, for he was everything Matt had tried not to be: bitter, unforgiving, vengeful, exuding the pus of murderous rage until he threatened to infect everyone around him.

  Within half an hour of that jailhouse encounter, Matt was in his favorite place for psychic rest and recuperation, for me
ditation, if not prayer. He wasn't sure that he prayed any more, but at least he thought in peace.

  Around him sandy desert paths wound through a wilderness of cactus. The land was gently rolling, giving the illusion of mini-hills and valleys. Though groups of people wandered the sere landscape with him, at times he was alone. At other times, their chatter and their presence, as benign as that of squirrels, would confront him with the existence of the everyday.

  He did not quite have to eat locusts, but he was as far removed from reality here as anywhere in Las Vegas. And, like the others who enjoyed this private garden of thorns, he gained admittance for nothing.

  The Ethel M. Chocolate Factory was located on 2 Cactus Garden Drive south of Tropicana, Filing through the front doors for a tour of the pristine premises brought an instant release from the frenetic pressure to have expensive fun on the Strip. The people here were engaged in the benign business of making life sweet. If you wanted to buy their sweetness, gift-wrapped by the pound, they would oblige. They would give you one taste-bud-smothering sample for nothing.

  An extra attraction was the extensive cactus and botanical gardens out back, a low-pressure invitation to gawk at nature in an unnatural consolidation of its wonders.

  Tours of the gardens were ''self-directed." That meant you could get lost here, and no one would notice.

  Matt wandered the familiar paths, marveling at nature's stubborn survivability. Most cactus blooms lasted only a day, but hundreds sprouted. Cacti were the camels of the plant world, able to hoard water in the burning summer. They could survive the winter night's chill temperature plunge. These plain, often ugly growths' dead-green color seemed more a matter of camouflage than beauty, yet they could flash those spectacular, one-day-wonder blossoms. They wore their own crown of thorns, stabbing anything that blundered into their midst to the quick with inches-long quills.

  Today, each plant reminded Matt of Peter Burns. The cactus was twisted and thorny, yet superbly adapted to its hard-scrabble environment for those very reasons, just like Burns. Matt could see how, encountering a diatribe like the one Peter Burns had unleashed on him, priests in the old days would attempt to exorcize such perverse blasphemy. Nowadays, they more often needed to exorcise themselves.

  Seeing Burns had reminded Matt of the past, of a deeper and older injustice he needed to pursue. There was another man he needed to confront, for his own sake, the man who was his sole reason for relocating to Las Vegas in the first place. Matt knew why the business of earning his daily bread, of finding shelter had postponed his mission. Meeting Temple and getting drawn into her dangerous quandaries was another, unanticipated detour. Temple herself, and her attractions, had become a formidable distraction. . . . Maybe he had welcomed diversion from his real, ugly and difficult goal. Maybe vengeance was the Lord's alone. And maybe the long-gone man he sought was a mirage like so many other things in this city, this dry, hot indifferent desert.

  Matt sighed. With his fair coloring, he shouldn't linger in such unfiltered sunlight. But he liked the heat, the searing sun. It was cleansing and uncompromising. It would bleach the freshest bones as pale as the fangs of T.S. Eliot's three white leopards. It would, in the end, atone for everything.

  His mind, prickled by the thorny past, returned to the immediate problem. Burns would be no help with Hernandez, as Matt had expected, but he had needed to try. He would have to find other avenues. Molina was out; she was too closely connected to Our Lady of Guadalupe and would instantly suspect more than he wanted her to. So were other law enforcement representatives; they had their own rules to follow, as religious orders did, and did not discern any fine line between crime and punishment. Temple was out as well; she was too curious. But she had mentioned somebody once. . . .

  Matt waited until a nearby clot of tourists--men, women and children in wrinkled cotton bermuda shorts and t-shirts advertising an array of Strip attractions--passed through the small shop on their way out.

  Then he followed.

  No one was in the cool, narrow white room with the glass case displaying a bevy of chocolates like a toothsome Sleeping Beauty of Sweetness.

  The ladies behind the counter, their hair shrouded by white plastic caps, reminded Matt of certain nursing orders of nuns. Order: that is what one found at Ethel M's, and a pristine environment that did not feel prissy.

  Food for the soul. Matt bought two boxes while the women stole glances at him, giggling, as if he were a movie star that they did not quite recognize.

  He did not quite recognize himself either.

  Chapter 4

  Midnight Louie Saves His Soul

  The moment my ears hear the name "Crystal Phoenix" they stand to attention.

  The fact of the matter is, I am none too enamored of the Circle Ritz crowd at the moment--

  not that I have any quarrel with my delightful roommate, Miss Temple Barr, other than the nightly battle for prime snoozing space.

  I have mentioned other, less amenable tenants now among the roster of Circle Ritz occupants. I suspect that one is bombarding me with the feline equivalent of "good vibes."

  Often when snoozing I sense a purring not purely on this plane. The perpetrator of this psychic static, I suspect, is that high-flutin' feline priestess on the penthouse level, the ever-omniscient (at least in her own mind, which has apparently been handed down for generations through a process she calls reincarnation) Karma. No wonder she is so reclusive: I would not advertise my presence either if my little gray cells were mostly cast-offs from defunct users.

  As for the vexing matter of the young lady only one floor above me, Caviar, originally known as Midnight Louise, I suspect that between the do-gooder vibes from above and my own conscience, I am in danger of making an unnecessary confession that could be hazardous to my health. So far I have managed to keep the shell-pink interiors of her dainty little ears free from any whisper of my moniker, Midnight Louie.

  It seems that I have paternal tendencies, at least genetically.

  However, this little doll that Miss Temple rescued from a Humane Society cage in a weak moment sports a savage temper that is particularly directed to the absconding bounder that fathered her. Given her snazzy ebony color scheme and comparative youth, the odds are likely that I indeed did have some brush or other with her mother. In fact, I may remember mama--an ebony lady long-hair down on her luck who crossed my path an even unluckier year or so ago.

  So I could be slapped with a paternity suit--and a lot more, like four slashing shivs attached to an agile paw-- were Miss Caviar to discover my real name.

  Therefore, I live in fear of being found out, a position I am used to inflicting on others, particularly evil-doers. The claw pinches when it is on the other paw.

  Also, I have a lingering dissatisfaction with my role in certain recent religious ceremonies. True, I have spent some time of late around and about Our Lady of Guadalupe church and convent. This was purely in the performance of my usual duties--tracking down wrongdoers and murderers, protecting my naive roommate and saving the skins of cats everywhere. It was not in the nature of a religious conversion.

  So suddenly there I am, thrust once again into the portable cell and imported against my will into an environment that is not to my taste: a convocation of all creatures great and small, including far too many immature humans for my taste.

  Amid the parrot and goat droppings, the bray of the occasional donkey and the barking and yapping of an overpopulation of dogs, I am confined and subjected to unrelenting cacophony.

  I have not seen anything yet. Soon I am summarily hauled from my cage, by Miss Temple Barr yet, who owes me a good deal, if not several first-class meals for professional and personal services, and held up to public ridicule.

  While the sun bakes down on my unprotected head, I am the target of uninvited invocations in a tongue more suitable for ancient dudes who favor miniskirts. I suspect that I am being subjected to a "blessing," but it depends upon your point of view whether this is a good or a ba
d thing.

  For one thing, I am not Catholic. If I am any kind of Christian at all, it is a confirmed Copt.

  That term has nothing to do with law enforcement, despite my history. A Copt is a modern Christian version of a follower of ancient Egyptian rites. In fact, I do not even qualify as a Copt, since the only Deity I recognize is an obscure Egyptian goddess and head benefactress of the long-gone city of Bast, which bears her name. Speaking of this little goddess-doll's head, I believe it was exceptionally handsome as well as possessed of a supremely wise expression. You can see its likeness in every creature of my ilk that you come across. I do not know if Bast also had the impressive set of whiskers that I have, but these high-up Egyptian babes were often control freaks who would don false whiskers to lend authority to their appearance. At least they knew what counts.

  I do not know what Bast (may her whiskers increase!) would think to see one of her loyal adherents doused with drops of holy water in the hot sun, and muttered over In a strange tongue.

  I may have to make a pilgrimage to the banks of the Nile to erase this enforced baptism of sorts. It does not appear to have done me any permanent harm, but I am tired of spending so much time at Our Lady of Guadalupe when I am not a parishioner. Frankly, the churchy ambiance leaves me cold. I prefer scenes of a seamier nature, where I can put my nose to the groundstone and sniff out larceny, greed, lust and murder. Also carp.

  So when I overhear Miss Temple on the telephone scheduling a meeting at the Crystal Phoenix the next day, I figure it is time to investigate a new turf--in this case, a former venue.

  True, I left my previous and cushy situation at the Crystal Phoenix because of an interloper there--a crawling, squalling, bawling bundle of babydom spawned by two people of whom I am too fond to criticize for the quality of their offspring, Mr. Nicky Fontana and his wife, Miss Van von Rhine. (Being a career woman. Miss Van von Rhine does not answer to the epithet of "Mrs.")