"I spend more time out here than in my rooms. Frankly, I don't have much there to see."
She looked away, to the pool, embarrassed. ''You swim?"
"Thirty laps every day. Terrific form of meditation."
She nodded, relaxing her posture in the chair. Matt blessed his institutional instincts. Molina used her brusque antisocial manner to maintain control. This pool party atmosphere would soften her hard edges and make it easier to tell her something he didn't want to tell anyone in the world, least of all the authorities. And, he saw now, she was madly curious about him.
She eyed the round, black marble bunker that was the Circle Ritz. "This place is quintessential Las Vegas! Neon and instant weddings out front; out back, the round residential building that's run like a zoning department's nightmare, half apartment, half condominium."
"I love the building. They still built quality in the fifties. And I'm lucky that Electra's flexible enough to take renters."
"Not to mention the interesting neighbors," Molina added laconically.
"This has nothing to do with Temple," he said quickly.
"Why so touchy?"
"You and Temple seem to have trouble relating."
"Trouble relating.' That's counselor talk for you. She has trouble telling me everything she knows about Mr. Mystifying Max, and I have trouble relating to that."
"I think she's told you everything that she feels is relevant."
"Police work thrives on what most people consider irrelevant, Mr. Devine. They aren't allowed to be the judge of that."
"They can be the judge of what they consider private."
"Like rooms? You know you've made me curious."
"Maybe you don't realize how touchy Temple is about Kinsella's disappearance,"
"Do you?" Her tone was challenging.
Matt realized that she was beginning to enjoy herself.
''She hasn't said much about him," he admitted.
''When a woman is mum about the former man in her life, she's interested in the man she's with. Beware, Father Matt."
He closed his eyes at her mocking tone, at her reminder of his special status, his former life.
"Sorry. That was . . . tacky." Her voice was brusque again, as she flicked a red thread from her skirt. "But I see you strolling in where devils fear to tread. I couldn't help noticing that you and Miss Barr were fairly cozy at the Blue Dahlia the other night. From the way she acts when I bring up Max Kinsella, he's a hard act to follow'. I don't know if you're up to it."
"I don't know if I'm in the running."
"Oh, she likes you."
"And I like her, but I don't know if I want to be in the running in the way you mean."
Molina shrugged. Clearly, she didn't believe him.
"You're a wonderful vocalist, by the way," he said.
"I sing a little."
"What you do isn't just singing, it's art."
"Thanks, but I don't have much time to rehearse and less time to perform. Most people don't know I do it,"
"Not even one of your co-workers?"
Molina's laugh was as rich as her contralto singing voice. "Cops could not care less about scat and all that jazz. The Blue Dahlia is the one place they'd never find me. But you've changed the subject, very smoothly. Since you're dictating the place for this interview, I'll direct the subject."
"What subject have I changed?"
"What it's like to be an ex-priest."
"That has nothing to do with this meeting,"
"Maybe not. But I'm the judge, remember? And I like to know milieus,"
"While keeping your own secret."
"Investigator's privilege"
"You grew up Catholic; you can guess what it's like."
"Guesses don't cut it in my game."
"Why are you so curious? It's almost personal."
Molina looked down, twisted the ring on her right hand. Matt noticed that it was the only jewelry she wore, that it was large and a trifle garish, though genuine gold. A class ring, meant to announce a school affiliation to all and sundry. Why was it so important to her?
"I'm divorced," she said abruptly. ''You know what that means. A failure. The Catholic Church doesn't allow for failures."
"And I'm a failed priest? Sorry, but I don't feel that way. God called me to the priesthood and God called me to leave. When I left, it was with laicization, if you know what that means."
"No. I never heard much about leaving religious vocations in grade school, only about entering."
Matt smiled. "Me neither. Laicization means that I was officially freed of my promises. I didn't just walk away one day. I went through the paperwork as well as the angst. Most ex-priests can't qualify to do that. They feel driven out, in a sense. I don't."
"Then you're bound only by what the average Catholic is?"
"Isn't that enough?"
"A joke." Molina noted his humor, but her smile was pale. "Not for me. I've got Mariah to think of. My ex-husband was a jerk. We're well rid of him. But to the church we're an irregular family."
"Are you so sure? Is anyone at OLG bringing it up to you?"
"No. No one except Pilar, the parish housekeeper. But my family is, in spades. You know how it is in ethnic Catholic communities, the parishioners pride themselves on being holier than the Pope. Every large family--and every family is large if they aren't using birth control--is supposed to provide at least one child for a religious vocation, a nun or a priest. In turn, all their married kids will be fruitful and multiply like lemmings. And stayed married."
"Supposed to's can strangle a person. Sure, I know what you're talking about. Irish, Polish, Hispanic, the dynamic is the same, I don't suppose"--Matt smiled at his inadvertent use of the word in question--"we'll ever see families like we grew up in again. I can't claim that I'm the child tithed to the church, because I was an only child."
"Why?" she asked in surprise.
"My father died when I was an infant."
Matt was treading close to the real point of this meeting, but for now he preferred to play counselor, to learn Molina's mental milieu, so to speak.
He wondered if she knew the tables had turned, if she realized that she was casting him in the role of priest, and herself as troubled parishioner. He could see that someone in her position could hardly unburden herself to her pastor, especially when that pastor was the starchy Father Hernandez.
"Your father died," Molina said softly. "I'm sorry. Sometimes my forever family drives me nuts, but at least they're there."
"Why do you call them your forever family?"
"They're always in your face, your life. They always know better, and there are so damn many of them. No Molina ever heard of the Pill except from the pulpit. Luckily, they're all in L.A."
"That's why you're in L.V."
''Maybe. And maybe, being divorced, and being a maybe-Catholic, I want to warn you. You say you're free. I presume that means free to marry?"
"If I would want to."
"Were you a bad priest?"
"No."
"That's too . . . bad."
"I don't think so."
"In other words, you didn't leave because you broke any vow, or were about to."
"No." He left it at that, and saw that she knew that's where it would stay.
"TelI me something." she asked with sudden animation."How can they do it? The bad priests? I was reared to respect priests and nuns, and I saw a lot of good ones. Some priests liked their liquor too much, or their food, but that was an understandable failing. I . . . we, people then, never suspected that we were sheltering priests who violated their celibacy with women, and men. And children."
"I could tell you that their unconscious needs are so great, and so garbled, that they deny the wrong in what they're doing, but you'd call that psychobabble. I think that some people who set themselves up as religious leaders suffer from a deep sense of unworthiness, of hypocrisy.
Some of them may feel compelled to commit sin so they'll be found out for what they think they are. Look at television evangelists. The abusers probably came from abusive families. How they can stand in church on Sunday and preach, or say mass, is a form of denial I can understand intellectually, but not from the gut. I never had to make that choice.''