Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

"Oh, no. I'd never do that."

  "What are you? Jehovah's Witness or something? You're way too straight for this town, kid."

  "I know," Matt said with a sad smile.

  The pit boss grabbed the sketch to hold it up to the light. He might also have been holding it up so a hidden camera lens could record it.

  Matt's fingers itched to reclaim the likeness. Someone might want Effinger to stay lost.

  But now he was stuck surrendering his passport to Effinger to some unknown factor. Maybe other people didn't think Effinger was dead either. Maybe someone still wanted him dead, if he weren't already.

  "What's this guy's name?"

  Matt shrugged. "I guess he would have used whatever worked. We're hoping if we can get him home, we can get him into a recovery program."

  "Sure, sure. I get a finder's fee?"

  "I'm sure . . . Norbert will be very generous when he finds out what's waiting for him at home."

  "Norbert! They all have dumb names like that, the losers."

  Matt flushed. He should have had a fake name on the tip of his tongue, not whatever his subconscious chose to dredge up. St. Norbert.

  "Not your fault," the guy said, handing back the sketch. "Saw him a couple months ago, but he moved on. Used to get sloshed and talk about coming into big money. Lousy craps player, which is the way we like 'em. Ended up on the nickel slots. What a piker. Maybe when he gets home and grabs some of that moolah he'll come back and improve his rep around here. Try up the street at The Slottery. He was tapped out when he left here."

  "Thanks."

  Matt walked away through the crowds and the clatter, mentally repeating the key phrase like a sin that needed confessing. "Used to talk about coming into big money." If the big money wasn't Effinger's to come into, someone might have wanted to kill him. But why fail? Why plant Effinger's ID on a corpse close enough to his own physical description to confuse matters? And why hang around town when he was supposed to be dead? Even an imbecile would know enough to get out of sight and keep out of sight.

  Matt felt like an imbecile himself. Maybes weren't good enough. Maybe he needed a new set of maybes, like maybe he needed something he didn't have: Cliff Effinger's rap sheet. Maybe Molina would let him see it, or at least sum it up. Matt stomped down the Strip sidewalk, finding his new boots clunky and clumsy.

  The Hesketh Vampire was an evil influence. It was changing the way he dressed as well as the way he got around town. Maybe it would change the way he thought too. Maybe that wasn't so bad. He suddenly wanted the details of that rap sheet so badly he itched all over with impatience. He was a blind man, stabbing in the dark. If Molina was going to sic him on Effinger indirectly, he needed more than he had. Under the bright lights, his watch read 10:15 p.m.

  Where would Molina be now? Home, probably.

  Discouraged, he dragged his way back to the Vampire, blazing like irradiated platinum under the bright light it was parked beneath for security reasons, the presumption being that thieves wouldn't mess with such a visible target. Max Kinsella was right, maybe. Bold and noisy and brash is the best disguise in Las Vegas.

  Matt finally knew where he should go, and unlocked the Vampire. The boots were tough enough to kick back the steel stand and come away unscuffed.

  He knew where he was going now, and suddenly feared he might be too late. It was a long shot, but after all the tepid inquiries tonight, he suddenly felt lucky.

  Odd that his arena of luck was so far from the Strip.

  **************

  The restaurant lot was half empty. A week night didn't keep people up at all hours, even in Las Vegas, and especially in the residential areas where the nine-to'fivers lived.

  The Vampire was embarrassingly loud about its arrival, and Matt knew his usual relief in switching it off.

  The neon sign still burned its pink-and-blue image into the night, a real standout here where the only lights were sodium-iodide street lamps that poured watery Mercurochrome shadows down on everything.

  Matt studied the cars as he walked to the Blue Dahlia's entrance, wondering what Molina drove when she wasn't ensconced in a department Crown Victoria. Impossible to tell, although Temple would have made a game of guessing the car, and probably would have guessed right by now.

  But this wasn't Temple's affair; it was his.

  He opened the door and glimpsed the smoky dining room beyond.

  The trio itself was smoking, running a hot riff out for a trial ride and then reeling that buggy back on home. Maybe . . . she wasn't on tonight. It had been a risk, a gamble, an impulse, everything Matt had never relied on.

  "Table for one, sir?"

  The hostess's long black crepe gown reminded him of an old Susan Hayward film. His nod rewarded him with a seat in the back where he could watch, unnoticed, the figure perched on the stool onstage.

  He ordered a Coke and asked the waitress how long the set would last.

  "Almost over. Sorry, sir."

  "No problem. I want to see Carmen afterward. Could you let her know?"

  She eyed him like he was suddenly suspect. "You have a card?"

  Matt paused in digging out the ConTact-house card with his name handwritten at the top.

  Instead he withdrew one of his laminated sketches of Cliff Effinger.

  The waitress raised an eyebrow. "I'll see she gets it when she comes off."

  The waitress thought he was weird, probably, but then the whole place was weird, a kind of time machine. The trio picked up the melody and then Molina --Carmen--joined in, her voice dream-dusky. He didn't know the song, but the words were sedately old-fashioned and the melody was deceptively sophisticated.

  He felt he should be wearing a fedora and nursing a gin fizz. "Of all the gin joints in Las Vegas . . . ," that kind of thing. Matt leaned his head against the wall until all he could see were the shuttered black backs of the spotlights, and then he just listened.

  The song had ended and the music had ebbed and died before he snapped out of his reverie. The Blue Dahlia was empty except for a couple lingering over their after-dinner coffees.

  The hostess came around the corner to his table.

  "You can go backstage now." She gestured to his half-full glass. "That's on the house; you can bring it with you."

  Matt scooped it up as expected and followed her around the front again, and down a narrow hall. The restaurant's tortuous innards reminded him of a labyrinth; it must be almost as old as the era it evoked.

  The hostess paused at a door and knocked. "Come on in, the water's fine, and the whiskey isn't too bad, either," a voice Matt didn't recognize called.

  But the woman who waited inside, sitting at a Goodwill dressing table with delusions of Sunset Boulevard, was indeed C. R. Molina.

  She spun on the bench, having just removed the trademark blue silk dahlia from her hair.

  "You're a cheap date," she said, nodding at the Coke in his hand.

  He noticed a plain glass, half-full of amber liquid, on the blue mirror-topped dressing table.

  Perhaps the whiskey of her greeting. He backed onto some sort of chest and sat.

  She nodded to something on the dressing table surface. "I like to wind down after a gig, but apparently you had other ideas. How'd you know I'd be here?"

  "I didn't."

  Her eyes met his, showing some surprise. "Took a chance, did you, Father Matt?"

  "Not a very big one, Carmen."

  Gone were Lieutenant Molina and Mr. Devine. Matt realized they had somehow fallen into a double-decker relationship, because of what their guarded, often-invisible personal lives had in common. A religion, an ethic, a burden.

  "I almost feel I should smoke in this room," she said, eyeing the small space nostalgically.

  "It would be bad for your health and your voice." He hesitated. "You would need a long enameled cigarette holder, of course."

  "Of course." She smiled, then picked up the object on her dressing table.

  Effinger's sketched likeness.
r />   "How did you like Janice?" she asked.

  "Janice? Oh, the artist. Fine. She was great at digging out all the little details." Matt felt an unfortunate flush coming on. He felt guilty, as if he sat before Mother Superior after having been caught writing mush notes to a fourth-grade girl.

  "She's quite a psychologist, in her way. Well, this is a thoroughly unsavory character. Can I have a copy?"

  "Sure. I should have thought of that." Matt leaned forward on the chest. "Actually, I'd like a copy of his rap sheet, or a description, if a copy is not allowed."

  "Oh, Matt." Molina shook her dark head. "The police department is as riddled with bureaucracy as the church. I can sum up; I can't hand over. But you're used to limitations, are n't you."

  "Maybe, and maybe not enough used to getting around them. I bet you are."

  She looked at her watch, a slim band with a vintage look. "Look, I've got to get back to Mariah and let the sitter go." She sighed and picked up the blue silk flower. Her eyes met his in the big round mirror, and the indirectness of the look was oddly exciting.

  "Want to follow me home? We can discuss this in more natural circumstances."

  He stood. "I've ... I've got a motorcycle."

  "A motorcycle, you?" Her eyes, which exactly matched the silk dahlia, widened. "You've got Max Kinsella's motorcycle."

  He nodded. "Electra lends it to me. It's hers now."

  "Bullshit! It was Kinsella's and I bet he'll have it again. He wouldn't let go of anythi ng that belonged to him."

  Matt didn't argue.

  "He know you're riding around town on it?"

  "I don't know."

  "I do. He doesn't miss much. Neither do I. So. You've got a motorcycle. I imagine it can roll right into Our Lady of Guadalupe's neighborhood."

  "Not very quietly."

  "It's not a very quiet neighborhood."

  Molina approached, making him wonder why, then lifted the Coke glass from his hand and put it on the dressing table.

  "Wait up front by the hostess station. I'll be out in a wink."

  Matt doubted that, given the complicated cut of her vintage velvet gown, but he could wait patiently. That was the first thing he had learned in seminary.

  "You're a friend of Carmen's," the hostess stated when he took up a post on one of the waiting benches.

  "More like a business associate."

  "What business are you in?"

  "Counseling."

  She nodded, tucking stray hairs into her blond French twist as she closed down the cash register for the night.

  Not even Muzak drifted through the restaurant, just the distant clink of dishes being done.

  For a moment, the place felt like a happy home after a big holiday dinner.

  "That's the neatest thing about this job," the hostess commented.

  "What?"

  "Hearing the music from in there. Carmen sings like, I don't know, like something else."

  "She has a lovely voice." He hated stilted comments, and most of all when they came from him.

  "Thank you."

  Molina was there, a garment bag draped over one crooked elbow, a knit headband holding back her short bob, in flat-heeled shoes, dark slacks and a sweater. Carmen had dissolved like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

  Matt found himself on the brink of stammering with surprise. This was a halfway Molina he didn't know, and didn't know how to relate to. She looked normal almost, almost. . . casual.

  He followed her out into the lot, the Vampire a diamond solitaire shining against the empty black asphalt. Molina went right to it, her car keys jingling like a winning slot machine in her hand.

  She stood staring at the motorcycle, fists on hips, as if challenging it to a silent duel.

  "I don't like it," Matt said.

  "No, of course you wouldn't." She walked around it. "It's Max Kinsella's, all right." She flashed a glance over her shoulder. "You ever search it?"

  "Search it? No! It's Electra's now, and none of my business. I'm only using it until I can afford my own car."

  "Probably secondhand at that."

  "I'm not used to better, and I certainly can't afford it."

  Molina tore her attention away from the motorcycle. "Neither can I. That's mine."

  She pointed to a well-used Toyota station wagon. "Perfect for hauling giggly eleven-year-old girls on all sorts of expeditions, but no beauty."

  "Columbo did all right with his junker."

  "Right. Call me Columbo. Okay. You know where the parish church is; I'm about four blocks northwest. Just follow my taillights."

  Matt nodded.

  Molina stopped halfway to her car and looked back. "You do have a helmet for that thing?"

  "Of course." He mimicked her earlier words down to the tone.

  Following a police officer is a nerve-racking task, Matt found. He kept straining to read the speedometer, fretting when she slightly exceeded the limit, gritting his teeth when she slowed down enough to make the Vampire snap at its figurative bit.

  The neighborhood was only fifteen minutes away. The dark streets thrummed with t he high-volume bass of the occasional cruising low-rider. He wondered what this neighborhood would be like on a weekend, and how safe the Vampire would be here then. Already he was fretting about leaving it outside Molina's house.

  She had anticipated him, pulling into the driveway but leaving space along the side for him.

  The garage door elevated on vibrating rails while Molina got out and waved him inside.

  She locked her wagon, then followed him into the attached garage, hitting the remote-control close button so soon that the door nearly clipped her as she walked in. She didn't seem to have noticed.

  "Your bike is safer inside. Come on."

  He followed her into a dark utility room and then into a kitchen lit by a pale overhead fluorescent light.

  He sensed age and small spaces, just like at the Circle Ritz, but on a much more modest scale. Somewhere a television set blared through a closed door.

  "Bedtime for you, young lady," Molina's voice ordered as she disappeared down the hall.

  "We've got company for a little while. No, you don't need to see who. I'll be back soon."

  She came back down the hall trailed by a stocky Latina girl with long, curly almost-black hair.

  "Yolanda, this is Matt Devine." They exchanged nods. "How'd everything go?"

  "Fine, fine. Mariah is such a fine girl. Muy sympatica."

  " Gracias, " Molina bid her at the front door, presumably after an exchange of money.

  She returned to gesture Matt to an easy chair, then moved into the s quare little kitchen.

  "I could use a drink. Your unexpected arrival cost me half of my usual whiskey and soda. What would you like?"

  Matt was, as usual, flummoxed by trying to anticipate what she'd have available.

  "What you're having will be fine."

  "Fine, fine," she mocked. "You and Yolanda are two of a kind, a good Catholic kind.

  Everything is fine."

  "No, it often isn't," he finally answered when she brought him a drink that was the twin to the one abandoned on her dressing table.

  She threw herself onto a big Naugahyde recliner and took a generous swig of her drink before the ice could dilute it. Then she took Cliff Effinger out of her pants' pocket and slapped him down face up on an end table, like someone producing the Knave of Hearts.

  "You can get me an original-size copy of the sketch?

  "Yup."

  "Is this a good likeness?"

  "Uncanny, when you consider how long it's been since I saw him face-to-face."

  "You're satisfied an ordinary observer could recognize him from this?"

  "Are all police officers used to asking the same question six different ways?"

  "Sorry." She grinned and leaned back against the recliner headrest. "I'm not used to subjects who are quick on the uptake. Good work. Have you tried it on anybody yet?"

  "Som
e casino employees at the Stardust. Only--"

  "Only what?"

  "It isn't easy, to approach strangers with no special authority, to ask questions and get answers."

  "Now you appreciate the dubious talents of your Circle Ritz neighbor."

  "I've always appreciated Temple."

  "Watch out that you don't get used to that. Kinsella's back in town."

  "You make him sound like Mack the Knife."

  "Isn't he? Used to dodging them at least--knives, that is, and the police. Seen him around?"

  "No."

  "I'm only trying to warn you. You've never known a man like him."

  "No," Matt agreed, sipping the drink and finding it strong. He was used to watered-down rectory brandy and restaurant drinks. "But I'm beginning to, I think."

  You? And Kinsella?" Molina cocked a bold black eyebrow. "Saints protect us."

  "Kinsella certainly has enough saints' names to do the job for him."

  "Michael Aloysius Xavier. Tricky, an acronym, MAX. Michael, the warrior archangel, was the only angel with any real guts, though. The rest--and the saints and martyrs--are wishy-washy window-dressing."

  "I don't think any saint is window-dressing."

  "I'm just trying to warn you. About Kinsella, and not as a police officer. He knows his way around women. Do you?"

  "No, but maybe that's an advantage. Besides, I'm not in a contest for Temple's regard."

  "You are if Kinsella's back, whether you want to admit it or not." She sat up and leaned forward, elbows on knees, her hair falling forward on her cheeks. "Just how good a priest were you?"

  "Are you asking about the quality of my vocation and my commitment? Or are you asking if I could give an articulate sermon, or sing mass on key?"

  "None of that. I'm asking if you were all you were supposed to be."

  His jaw almost dropped. Molina was a policewoman, yes. She was used to asking people hard, invasive questions. But why him? He wasn't a suspect for anything. Then it dawned on him. Maybe he was a candidate. Maybe Molina wanted him to be the Judas goat that drew Max Kinsella into the open, and jealousy was to be the bait.

  "I was faithful to my vows, yes. Though it's none of your business."

  She suddenly smiled. "It wouldn't be any fun asking rude questions if it really were my business. You need help, Matthew."