Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Where? What?

  She turned in a circle while wrestling her aching arms into the jacket. And saw him standing by the French doors to the patio, studying the eternal aurora borealis of the Las Vegas Strip.

  "Now I'm ready," she said, joining him.

  "Chicago's so cold, narrow, dark. In the winter, at least. Even the streets with the snow piles at the curbs seem to be hunching their shoulders. But Las Vegas is like Camelot in the song from the musical: the weather is wonderful by decree."

  "By decree of the corporate entrepreneurs who would pay the sun to shine if they had to; luckily, they don't."

  Matt turned from the window, a small wrapped package in his hand. "Merry Christmas."

  "Christmas, but that's... history. You ... I didn't get you anything."

  "You overlook the sofa-hunt."

  "But... I only got you to spend money."

  "You sure did. I've been on a real jag. It was kind of fun. But it stops here."

  He looked a little anxious. Temple finally realized that he had probably never bought a woman a present before, other than a nun or his mother. She desperately hoped she would really like it, although she would like it even if it were a weenie beanie baby from McDonald's.

  The soft contact lenses softened even her closeup focus, as if she viewed everything under very clear water. A long thin box said jewelry; her conscience said, please, nothing too expensive. Her conscience had also said to leave off the opal and gold ring tonight, so her hands were bare as she wrestled off the elastic gold cord and the jewel-tone paper and finally had no option but to open the box.

  "Oh! Wherever did you find it?"

  "I thought it might go with the shoes."

  "Oh, it does. Thank you." Temple blinked. "Damn these new contacts! I can't f-focus on anything. It feels like my eyes are watering all the time. Are they watering?" she added, not looking up from the box.

  "They look a little dewier than usual. Do you really want contact lenses?"

  "I suppose so. Why?"

  "Well, you look kind of. . . different without glasses."

  "Better, right?" .

  "No. Just different. Like a stranger. I guess it'll take me a while to get used to the new you."

  Was he righter than he knew! Temple lifted the delicate gold chain from the box, elevating the central figure of a cat in crushed black-opal inlay, collared in tiny diamonds, with winking emerald-green eyes.

  It would go perfectly with Max's ring.

  "It's wonderful, Matt! Perfect." She undid the tiny clasp and lifted her arms to fasten it behind her neck. Of course, her muscles screamed, "no fair!"

  He mistook her pain for some confinement of the dress and took the chain ends from her fingers.

  "Never done this in my life, but I think I know how it works. There."

  He sounded proud of himself, but Temple skittered away to the foyer mirror, avoiding one more compromising moment, not that a lot of them weren't forthcoming.

  Poor Matt was jumping every gate like a steeplechase champion; he just didn't know that the winner of the race had already been announced.

  Temple positioned the exquisite charm in the hollow of her throat and swallowed hard to keep from bursting into tears. Probably they would float the treacherous soft lenses straight onto the floor as she shrank from shame like Alice into Tiny Alice, at risk of drowning in her own saltwater mess.

  "Lovely," she managed to get out as she snatched her purse from the hall table and opened the door.

  Matt followed, looking bemused, as if she had really chameleoned into a semi stranger.

  The mechanics of getting to the New York-New York complex distracted them both from awkwardness, although Temple couldn't restrain a small shudder as they approached the parked Storm.

  "Not as cold as New York?" Matt commented, momentarily wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

  It hurt, but she dared not wince.

  He saw her into the passenger's seat, then got behind the wheel and backed out of the slot.

  Every ordinary action, and reaction, was pure torture for Tern-pie. Why had she thought she could let Matt down gently? That leading him on was kinder than letting him down from the first? Women were conditioned to feel responsible for everybody's hurt feelings, especially men's. They were either too hot or too cold, too encouraging or too chilling. They were supposed to figure out what they themselves really wanted and needed, all the while taking the emotional temperature of every soul around them and trying to soften blows and ease reality.

  Max had been right. She wasn't here tonight because she needed to prolong the agony. She needed to delay the moment of truth.

  Matt finally spoke, his face illuminated like a medieval angel's by the unholy halo of half-light from the dashboard. "I really can't thank you enough, Temple, for what you've done for me."

  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea Maxima culpa . . . and she wasn't even Catholic! She wasn't even a good Unitarian, although she was suddenly thinking of entering the convent.

  "Oh, yeah?" As if she were saying, "How interesting."

  "Yeah. That's what I wanted to tell you tonight. I bet you're dying to hear how I tracked down Effinger, but that was just the beginning. Going back to Chicago was a revelation."

  "So tell me," Temple said, getting a grip on her paranoia and deciding to relax back into the passenger seat.

  This is what she was really here for: to listen, to understand. Matt's quest had become more entangled with her life than either he or she would like, but it was, had become, a tandem journey. That, Effinger had proven in the Circle Ritz parking lot not two days ago. That, nothing could change, not even Max. And he knew it. Sort of.

  "First, I want to explain the plans for the evening." He glanced at her as they glided under a brilliant swath of street light.

  Temple wished her face didn't feel as if it were wearing a plaster of Paris mask.

  "I thought New York-New York might be fun, since you haven't been there yet and you're fresh from the real thing. They had this New Year's Eve package ... a before-dinner drink at the New York Bar at Times Square, dinner at a steakhouse--Gallagher's-- and an after-dinner drink at a place called Hamilton's, finishing with a midnight champagne cocktail back at the Times Square Bar."

  "We should be finished by then, all right."

  "I know it sounds kind of touristy and hokey--"

  "It sounds like fun.... and what isn't touristy and hokey in Las Vegas. Drive on, MacDuff."

  Matt seemed to relax now that she had accepted the evening's program. At least the novelty of visiting New York-New York would distract them both from any misgivings.

  Naturally, the hotel loomed on the horizon, its skyscraper skyline lit up like an old-time switchboard on crack cocaine.

  Matt parked in the MGM-Grand lot across the street. "I thought walking over would be the best way to see it. Can you walk this far in the Midnight Louie heels?"

  "Can a stork stride?" Temple scrambled out of the car before Matt could come around to assist her. "This is so much better than real life. Even for Christmas, Manhattan is granite-gray drab. They should get with the mauve and verdigris buildings."

  "Mauve and verdigris, huh? I took them for pink and pale green."

  "Well, the green is the aged-copper color of the mock Statue of Liberty. Also the color of money. A very subtle reference in its own screaming way."

  Crossing Las Vegas Boulevard was made simple by escalators up to the Brooklyn Bridge, whose light-draped spans glimmered like golden garlands against the night sky.

  "Now that does look like the real thing," Temple said.

  An escalator on the other side glided them down to the street level and the reflecting pool that surrounded the Lady with the Lamp.

  They joined the random current of people bearing left past the Statue of Liberty to the hotel's main entrance. The front of the long porte cochere was a neon litany announcing "New York-New York" against a spiky crown motif borrowed from Lady Liberty.

 
In fact, a bed of flowers basking in the lurid neon glow repeated the tiara design. Across the driveway, stationed before the brassy row of entrance doors, pulsated a string of stretch limos painted Broadway yellow and striped with checkers to emulate New York City cabs.

  Matt nodded to the limos and their vanity plates, which read NY NY 1, 3 and 4. "Wonder how Gangster's likes that?"

  "You can't copyright ideas, especially in this town," Temple answered. She looked up at the glittering gold tiara above her, and the gilt art-deco fountain designs of the entrance facade.

  "Cool."

  Matt pulled a glossy brochure from his jacket pocket. "We're due at the Bar At Times Square for a predinner cocktail. I've got a map here--"

  "I bet you do. This outing must have set you back a mint."

  They pulled on Lady Liberty's torch-shaped door handles and entered the icy, dark interior of the hotel casino.

  "It was nothing, compared to the second-hand sofa."

  "And the necklace," Temple added in a spasm of guilt (or was that spelled "gilt" in the glittery ambiance of New York-New York?). Her fingertips traced the small feline figure at her throat.

  Beneath them, marble inlaid floors sketched out another gigantic version of Lady Liberty's headgear. Around them chinked and chug-chimed and electronically yodeled dozens and dozens of slot machines. Ellis Island this was not.

  They followed a marble-paved path past some upscale shops to the Central Park area.

  "Oh." Temple paused.

  Despite the eternal night sky of the casino interior, they were positioned to enter what she considered a Chinese plate scene: weeping willow trees, autumn trees half afire with fall colors amid the green leaves of summer, stuffed birds beside artistically arranged nests, a bridge over the untroubled waters of a small in-door lake.

  And always the undying chatter and whoop of the flocking slot machines.

  They crossed the-bridge to the Bar at Times Square, its lit red apple poised high above the crowds, ready for the traditional New Year's Eve dip at midnight.

  They found a free cocktail table for two, and squeezed into the seats.

  "Cozy," Temple observed.

  "I'd say crowded. And noisy."

  A waiter slouched over with true Manhattan nonchalance.

  Matt flashed a green chit and the waiter was gone as fast as he had come.

  "The drinks are built in," Matt said. "No choice."

  "Another authentic touch of Olde New York."

  "You sound a bit jaded."

  "Maybe lugging Midnight Louie around Manhattan can do that. So tell me about the Great Manhunt here in Las Vegas."

  "Effinger. What a bust. For Molina, anyway."

  "She couldn't hold him for anything."

  "How did you know?"

  "Oh, guessed." Temple wasn't about to admit that she'd seen Effinger on the loose.

  Some women, she supposed, would use Effinger's attack as an excuse to stop seeing Matt.

  But telling Matt that he was too dangerous to know, and then hanging out with Max Kinsella was hardly consistent. Not with Max's shady connections having brought a much worse attack down on Temple months before. She suddenly remembered that Effinger was linked to Max as well as Matt. Lieutenant Molina suspected Max of involvement (in other words, murder) with the two dead men found in the casino ceilings of the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix Hotels months apart. The second body had borne Effinger's ID, although it was later proved a decoy when Matt tracked down the real Effinger. Effinger . . . Matt. . . Max, an eternal triangle, but what did it mean? Her thoughts stopped at Matt's continuing commentary on Effinger himself.

  "... pretty funny, I guess. Me trailing dear old stepdad through off-Strip dives and finally nailing him at the Blue Mermaid Motel. I kept remembering you met the flamingo guy there.

  Blue mermaids and pink flamingos. Only in Las Vegas."

  The waiter materialized beside them, whisking two wide-mouth cocktail glasses floating maraschino cherries to the tabletop.

  They both leaned over their mystery drinks, puzzled.

  "Ah." Temple cracked the case first. "Manhattans, what else?"

  Matt sipped his, then frowned. "Kind of. . . sweet. What's in them?"

  "Ed Koch only knows! But you can put the cherry aside so the stem doesn't tickle your nose."

  "I sampled a lot of strange and undrinkable concoctions on my pilgrimage."

  "So what finally gave Effinger away?"

  "His drinking habits. Boilermakers. Bartenders remember people's taste in liquor."

  "Boilermakers? Yuck."

  "I agree. Anyway, I waited at the motel until some guy showed up who was wearing a cowboy hat, and I followed him home."

  "Wasn't that risky? Nevada's a western state. Lots of guys could wear cowboy hats."

  "Well, the first one to come along was Cliff Effinger."

  "So you . . . what? Approached him outside his door, asked him to come along to see the nice policewoman?"

  "Not exactly. I, uh, invited myself in. At that point I wasn't sure what I was going to do. That room was such an incredible dump. And Effinger wasn't the ogre I thought he was. What? You look . . . skeptical."

  "Tell me about it," Temple said swirling the cherry in her sweet, murky drink. She needed to know what had happened between Matt and his stepfather so she could understand why the man had come for her.

  "It's not exactly edifying information for a New Year's Eve gala." Matt made a face as he sipped his Manhattan. "But nothing I have to report about my Christmas vacation is what you could call edifying. So. There's Effinger not believing it's me, and me not believing he's Effinger.

  Such a scruffy old creep. Then he tries to run. Suddenly, I'm Tarzan. I feel like I could fling him around like Cheetah. I cool him off in the shower, haul him out to the pay phone by the manager's office and call police headquarters for Molina,"

  "That's it? He was just a rag doll?"

  Matt nodded soberly, thanks to the foreign taste of the Man-hattan. "He just didn't seem so big and dangerous any more. And he was really, really disturbed that I found him."

  "Disturbed?"

  "Ah, guess I should use the EI. lingo. Pissed. I never said that to a lady before. Never said that to anyone."

  "Heard it, though, I bet. So Molina was duly grateful."

  "Not really. She didn't have enough grounds to arrest him, but they kind of... coaxed him into going downtown for an interview. Then Molina lectured me for involving myself. I thought that was that, until she called me just after I got home and asked me to come in to watch his interrogation."

  "Watch? Like behind one of those two-way windows?"

  Matt nodded. "I'm not sure who she hoped to learn more from: Effinger, or me. Molina's tricky. She's always thinking of something you haven't gotten to yet."

  "That's just the impression she wants to give. Carmen the Omniscient, always in control."

  "Speaking of control--" Matt rotated his wrist. "We're due for dinner now."

  "Nice watch."

  "Huh? Oh. Christmas present from my mother. That's where the real mystery was solved. In Chicago."

  "And I have to wait until we shift tables and settle down again to hear that." Temple struggled upright in the crowded bar and joined Matt on the fringe of the huge, echoing central casino. "Where to next?"

  "Uh. Yon butcher shop, I guess."

  "Oooh, someplace gruesome to discuss buried secrets." His, she devoutly hoped.

  Not hers.

  Chapter 6

  Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot ...

  Gallagher's steak house had an impossible -to -miss gimmick: its window-glass facade displayed massive hunks of meat in the process of aging, perhaps visibly, while you watched.

  Temple swallowed, but not in anticipation.

  How on earth was she going to chew steak in her condition, even if it was from the five -

  week-aged tender, flavor-intensified king- size cuts on raw display here? Oh, what a tangled web we weave, wh
en first we practice to deceive. Robbie Burns knew about a lot more than true love and red, red roses.

  They passed under the red-brick apartment building facade that reminded Temple of Rudy's rent- controlled building, only that dump didn't have three red awnings over arched windows.

  But the side was trellised in black metal fire escapes. She could almost see a black cat sitting high on some gridlike balcony.

  Temple felt as if entering Gallagher's was like stepping into her bathroom mirror: serious forties noir. The wooden floors flowed into dark wood dadoes, with creamy upper walls framing huge black-and-white photo-portraits of long-gone stars: Bogie and Bacall and Barrymore and Bergman.

  Diners at the hundred or so tables glanced up at them. Temple realized that she and Matt were the Yvette and Solange of the New Year's Eve crowd, an accidental metallic symphony in silver and gold. Except for her red hair. Always the bad-luck sign.

  The maitre d' led them to a table beneath Bette Davis and Paul Henreid smoking the farewell cigarettes from Now, Voyager, a fitting placement, Temple thought. Bonjour, Tristesse.

  When the waiter brought the menu, Temple glanced with trepidation through the entrees listed between aisles of famous faces.

  Matt unhesitatingly ordered the dry aged New York sirloin.

  Temple hesitated.

  "You're entitled to any entree except the King Crab legs, ma'am," the waiter prompted her.

  "It's just that I... went to the dentist today. I guess the ... red snapper."

  The dinner included soup or salad. Temple settled for the gum-mable beef barley soup; Matt ordered the Caesar salad. Temple took her potatoes mashed; Matt his French fried.

  Soon after their orders were given, the waiter returned with glasses of New York wines; red for Matt, white for Temple.

  "I thought you sounded a little slurred," Matt mentioned. "I hope the dentist wasn't too bad."

  "Actually, making an appointment for between the holidays was the smartest thing I ever did."