''We're getting together to honor Father Hernandez--" Matt's hesitancy at the falsehood sounded like mere shyness in the face of officialdom.
''I see. On the successful conclusion of the recent fund drive, you mean? How nice."
"Right." How nice. How nice and easy it was to deceive, how eager people were to think the best. 'I'm in charge of the entertainment. We're doing a 'This Is Your Life' program to surprise Father Her--"
''What a wonderful idea! How can I help?"
"We want to produce some surprise guests he hasn't seen in years, from his previous parishes."
"Oh, he will love it! And you need to know his previous assignments? How far back do you want to go?"
"To the seminary, I guess. Or . . . it'd be great to have someone from grade school too. His whole life."
A pause. Nothing holds its breath better than a dead phone line when you know somebody is on it. Had he gone too far? Should he backtrack and say that just Father Hernandez's former parishes would do?
"That might require some checking," the voice said, slow enough to sound doubtful.
"We'd really appreciate anything you can do," Matt said in a rush he instantly regretted.
"Oh, I can get all the information, but can you afford to import guests from too far away? I don't know Father Hernandez's record offhand, but I think the bulk of his service may have been way across the country."
So much the more suspicious. Matt thought. "Some of us have set up a special fund to fly in the special p-people from his past," he said with a slight stammer of enthusiasm, or,anxiety.
"We're going all out on this." Was he ever!
"How sweet. Sure, I can look that up. Or even mail a copy of his postings to you--"
"No! No mail. We don't want to alert Father Hernandez to the surprise. It's all hush-hush."
"Then I'll call you back when I look up the record, Mr ?"
"Peters," Matt said with a swift ironic twist of his mouth.
Why hadn't he invented a more believable phony name before dialing? Next time. He recognized the fandango his subconscious was performing: Peters as in Peter Burns, the parish betrayer, Peters as in Simon Peter, the first apostle and the first to deny Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter as in turncoat. Turncollar.
''No, don't call here. I'm at the office,'' he added in a softer, apologetic tone, "I'm not supposed to make personal calls. But I could call you back."
''Certainly. Give me fifteen minutes."
"And I should ask for . . . ?"
"Oh, I always answer the phone here, Mr. Peters. Madeleine McCafferty."
"Thanks, Miss McCafferty." She did not demur at the form of address, so he had hit it right on the head: a maiden lady dedicated to the church. "And I'd, ah, appreciate it if you didn't mention this to anyone. You know how word leaks back to the parish level."
"Of course I do, and of course I'll keep . . . mum. I wouldn't want to do anything to ruin Father Hernandez's day of glory. He is such a dear man."
Matt let the phrase replay in his mind as he hung up: "such a dear man." Not the way he would describe the touchy and proud pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but devout Catholics tended to crown their clergy with premature halos. No wonder they so seldom noticed any tarnish.
Chapter 9
Romancing the Drone
Phones didn't ring anymore. They yodeled.
Temple hated waking up to that piercing mechanical warble. She glanced at her beside clock--close enough, with red LED numbers big enough, to read without glasses.
Eight-thirty on a Saturday morning? What did the caller think? That she had no social life, no big Friday night out? As it happened, that assumption was humiliatingly correct, but unknown callers didn't have to rub it in.
Probably a wrong number anyway.
Should she bother stretching for the phone when all she was likely to get was the droning snub of a dial tone?
But those who live by the phone must always answer the phone. She was sure that motto was written in some profound but trendy tome, like the collected works of Kahlil Gibran.
Temple reached for the red plastic high-heeled shoe at her bedside, clamped the heel to her ear and chirped "Hello?" into its sleek toe. Too bad Agent 99 couldn't have used this up-to-date model on the old "Get Smart" spy shoe. Er, show.
"Temple?"
The basso male voice made the phone line sound defective. Who did she know with a bedroom voice besides Max Kinsella? The hair on Temple's forearms lifted with an unseasonable--and worse, unreasonable--chill as she sat up in bed,
"Yes?"
"I need your help."
"Who is this?" She hated to ask in case she got a shocking answer.
Both hands clutched the slippery shoe-phone now and her sweaty palms were developing static cling. Just like Max to show up in her life again as a disembodied voice on the phone. At least that would prove he was alive. Or . . . would it?
"Don't you know?" the man asked.
That was the problem, she didn't know and being reminded of this irritated her.
"Don't get coy, or I hang up," Temple threatened. "I've had enough of anonymous phone callers lately."
"Really?"
The deep voice sounded interested, even titillated. By now Temple knew it wasn't Max. He was never coy. Instead of being disappointed, or relieved, she was angry.
"I mean it about hanging up--"
"No, wait! God, T.B., I need a favor."
Oh. Crawford Buchanan and his matinee-idol basso. She should have known. Why on earth was he calling her?
"Try going to a party, C.B.-, if one will have you. Sometimes they dispense favors."
"Just hear me out. I'm in a pickle."
"You are in a crock, Crawford, as usual."
"I need you to write some stuff for the Gridiron."
"The Gridiron? I thought you were the whole show this year."
"The deadline's in two days, and I can't come up with enough skits. You churn out this lightweight fluff like it was pulling cotton candy."
"You were planning on mounting something heavy like Eugene O'Neill for the Gridiron?" she suggested tartly.
''You know what I mean. I need a cute, satirical touch.''
"By when?"
''Rehearsals start Monday night."
"Galloping Gridiron, Buchanan, that's damn short notice. If you hadn't have tried to hog the whole thing, you wouldn't be in a pickle in addition to your regular crock. I should let you stew in your own vinegar."
"I know, I know! I thought I could do it and then . . . my heart's been acting up."
"Putting on shows is a high-pressure gig. You should know that too."
"At least I know who to call when I'm in a jam," he put in with sly flattery and his deepest baritone.
"Who else have you put the squeeze on at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning?"
"No one," he admitted sheepishly. "Just you. I need a big closing number for the whole cast.
Something that says it all for Las Vegas this year. Danny Dove, the so-called director, says the show is cooked if we don't get the right closer."
How sweet it is. Temple thought, idly uncoiling her long red telephone cord with her long, freshly lacquered crimson fingernails. Should she leave Crawford twisting slowly in the wind--
she wound a length of cord around her forefinger, tight--or bail the dastard out?
"All right, but it's only for the good of the Gridiron. I could not care less if they opened and closed the show with a literal roast of you. I'll work up something this weekend and fax it to you Monday."
"No, no. You need to come down to my office at the Scoop to write it so we can . . . consult, if necessary. No one's in today, so there are plenty of available computers. I'll be here all day, and tomorrow too."
"You really think that I have nothing better to do than hang out with you all weekend?"
"We really need that number," he said.
"All right," she grumbled, hanging up without saying "goodbye."
Unfortunately, she would be saying ''hello" to Crawford all too soon.
The Las Vegas Scoop office was about as reassuring as a floating crap game site.
Temple had driven past it often enough, never failing to wrinkle her nose when she thought of Crawford Buchanan toiling here night after night like some pale-bellied black spider with soft furry legs--no, that comparison was unfair to spiders.
Temple considered herself open-minded, but she hated his daily *'Buchanan's Broadside"
column, and its leering tours of the lowest nightlife in Vegas. She hated the Las Vegas Scoop, a finger-smudging tabloid, dirty in more ways than one with its tawdry, full-page photos of
''escort" boys and girls, including private dancers of every sexual persuasion from vichyssoise to Brazil nuts.
Temple parked her freshly washed Storm in front of a sidewalk littered with dead sporting event stubs and the aforesaid escorts' faces wearing the imprint of size twelve shoes. Standing before the Las Vegas Scoop's narrow, almost clandestine doorway, she hated to touch the scratched doorknob.' The place reminded her of a porno movie theater; you always wondered who had been here, fingering what with what.
"I must be insane," she muttered.
But she did write a heck of a production number, and how nice to have Crawford come crawling to her for rescue, not that crawling was such an alien occupation for him!
The grimy front door was locked. Oh, great.
Temple jammed on her red-framed sunglasses again and glanced back at her car. She hated working away from her home office anyway, although she prided herself on versatility. Mostly, she hated collaborating. She who writes best, writes alone. Having Crawford close enough to collaborate with was not a happy thought.
The door opened and there he was, not wearing the usual pale, prissily tailored suit, which gave the Fontana brothers' signature look a bad name.
Crawford Buchanan wearing a pineapple-yellow knit shirt and--ugh!--white Bermuda shorts was a sight to make even sunglass-shaded eyes sore. Apparently equating him with a furry-legged spider had been eerily on target, Temple observed with a quick, distasteful downward glance.
'*You look . . . perky today, T.B.," was Buchanan's smarmy opener.
''Show me to the computers,'' Temple growled, brushing past him without brushing anything else obnoxious, such as a fingerprint-smudged doorjamb. One never knew when the police might require physical evidence.
The place was deserted, as advertised. For a moment Temple wondered if Crawford was going to try anything funny, anything funny being an unwanted pass, either verbal or physical.
He fancied himself a ladies' man, and no number of acid put-downs could disabuse his bottomless ego of the notion.
''We can work in my office," he said, turning to wend through a room crowded with desks, computer terminals, dismembered Las Vegas Scoops, overflowing aluminum ashtrays, and empty styrofoam coffee cups that looked as if they had all suffered the runs. The only thing missing was a disheveled dead body.
Temple inhaled stale cigarette smoke--and the super-sweet reek of more than one cheap cigar--deeply regretting the moment she had answered her kicky red phone to begin this descent into journalistic hell.
"You have an office?" she asked hopefully. Crawford himself was at least clean to the point of fussiness. It had to be better there.
"Sure," his deep, disc-jockey voice said cockily. "I'm a key columnist for the Scoop," The office even had a door on it, apparently another perk for a Scoop employee.
Temple edged inside, making sure her swollen tote bag never brushed the door frame. The furnishings were old, but dusted. Everything was organized, down to the two computers sitting back to back on the desk.
Temple raised a fire-engine-red eyebrow.
Crawford's shrug only demonstrated how much nature had shorted him on shoulders. "I moved another computer in here so we could consult. And I figured you could do without inhaling the cigarette halitosis of the city room."
" Thank you," Temple said, eyeing a neat pile of bond paper. "Are those the scripts for the show?"
Crawford nodded.
''Are they any good?"
"I wrote them all," he answered with irritation.
"That's why I asked."
Temple swung her tote bag onto a vacant folding chair. Let Buchanan try anything and he'd learn what self-defense tactics Matt Devine had taught her in the past few weeks. Plus, she was in group therapy. She was no pushover, despite looking no larger than a Munchkin.
''I don't know why I have to work here," she complained, pushing the power-on button and watching the computer screen perform its usual opening routine, while she fretted about the forthcoming task.
Come up with an instant closing number for the Gridiron ... what topics were worth shish-kebabbing this year in particular? Las Vegas's usual hyperactive civic bloat offered a surfeit of suitably large targets.
"Just work away and don't mind me," Crawford suggested with a simper from his perch on the desk edge. "Nice shoes, T.B."
Temple glanced up. He was eyeing her legs, not her shoes. Make that drooling. Surely her conservative beige Van Elis, the businesswoman's basic dress heel, wouldn't merit much notice.
Crawford begged to differ.
"I do like those hooker shoes."
"These are not hooker shoes!-Hooker shoes have heels four inches tall and are trashy. And cheap. These designer pumps will pump three inches of iron spike into your shin if you don't sit down and stick to business, whatever it is the sole author of the Gridiron does when he's short of scripts and begs for help."
He followed her suggestion with irritating slowness. "Don't mind me. I'm here to answer any questions, that's all. Pretend I'm a piece of furniture."
Temple stared at the cursor and typed ''wp'' for WordPerfect. The familiar program flashed up in amber characters. Imagining what piece of furniture Crawford Buchanan could be was distracting, but she settled on a Victorian model of water closet named after its inventor, a certain infamous Mr. Crapper, and smiled.
For a while she was only aware of the sharp clack of her long fingernails on plastic and the speedy chuckle of the computer keyboard under her fingertips. And the occasional turn of a tabloid page beyond the computer screen.
By the time Temple had a screenful of idea fragments to consider, half an hour had passed surprisingly painlessly. Why was Crawford being so good? She eyed him over the computer screen. Of course he wasn't doing anything, except skimming the rag he worked for and watching her work; it was probably all he did all day anyway.
"How about,'' she asked at last, **a production number on all the big new hotels and theme parks."
"We did skits on those projects as they came up in past years."
"Yeah, but this would be the Mother of all Modem Redevelopment skits: a Theme Park from Hell bigger than anything that has hit the Strip yet."
''It's hard to top reality in Las Vegas, T.B."
''That's why you brought me in on this, C.B."
"Try whatever you think. I'm final arbiter, though."
"Oh, great. You beg me to contribute something, then you're going to play judge and jury, plus impresario?"
"That's the show chairman's job. Life is full of uncertainty. I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion."
He leaned around her computer to leer in the direction of her legs again.
"You are disgusting, or hasn't anyone told you?"
Crawford smiled. "They tell me all the time, but flattery doesn't cut any ice with me."
"Nor does good taste," Temple said with a snarl, returning to the job that brought her here: creating a clever, fresh, workable script out of thin air while being ogled by the city's worst black sheep in Tom Wolfe clothing.
Chapter 10
Present Tense
Three o'clock in the morning wasn't really a bad time--if it was the end of your working day, so to speak. The Las Vegas air was cool, maybe sixty-five degrees. Street lights and stars sprinkled the black desert sky.
/> Matt liked the middle of the night. That was one of the things he had discovered while working for ConTact. Maybe he was a monastic throwback to a time and a tempo of life when monks heeded the canonical hours devoted to prayer around the clock.
Now would be lauds.
Las Vegas marked fleeting moments of meditation in its own inimitable way.
Hearing a hoarse roar in the distance. Matt let his fancy roam farther afield. Had the MGM
lion lived up to its own TV commercial and opened its gilded maw? Or maybe the Luxor's Sphinx had broken centuries of smug silence to unhinge its stony jaws for a good, noisy yawn. Or was it just Midnight Louie, taking a lauds stroll through the nearby shrubbery with his sizable stomach growling?
Matt knew what force really hurled the faint, howling challenge to the night: theme-hotel indigestion. The Mirage's volcano was preparing to belch its clockwork stream of ready-made fire.
Still, anything could happen in Las Vegas. Including crimes against a person who walked alone at night.
Matt always studied his surroundings on these long walks home. He wasn't particularly afraid, just cautious. Everyone knew the usual tourist pitfalls of the Strip--private dancers who performed the ever-popular routine called the Customer Shakedown, and that's all . . .
prostitutes who rolled high-rollers for high-dollar Rolex watches . . . creeps who sold dangerous designer drugs. The biggest danger in the city's neighborhoods was the same phenomenon that dogged all other large cities. Gangs. If you were unlucky enough to get caught in the sudden lethal spray of a gang shoot-out, it wouldn't matter whether you were walking or riding, or whether it was day or night.
So Matt felt a warning tingle at the back of his neck. A car was following him. A lone walker, a driver who perhaps was not alone. Businesses that opened at ten a.m. and closed at six--or ten p.m., tops--lined the street. ConTact kept the latest hours in this area. Its women employees were always escorted to their cars, a duty Matt often performed.
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