"I could always grow a mustache."
She smiled at that, the unspoken facial badge of many young patrol officers, especially of fair-haired Anglo officers.
"You can't pass as an urban cowboy," she objected. "You're not from these parts."
"How did you know?"
"I'd say Illinois. Chicago. The South Side. Out in the boonies. An immigrant community originally. I hear voices in your voice. A foreign trace. Don't look so startled, Mr. Devine. The name is Anglo-Saxon, but the voice says. . . German?"
"Polish," he corrected unhappily.
"Should have said my first guess! Effinger could be a German name."
"I don't know the man's national origins, and I don't care. No blood relation, if that's what you're really getting at."
"Sorry. I'm being circuitous again, aren't I?"
The word "circuitous" evoked her slow tour around him. Matt realized that he was the object of her interest for some reason, and that her interest was usually, if not always, somehow sexual.
He was used to straightforward women: nuns until now; now Temple the wayward public relations specialist, who always told the truth as best she knew it; Carmen Molina, the homicide detective who allowed no gender nonsense to compromise her professionalism or her single-parenthood.
Kitty O'Connor was different. She played games, and she liked to win them. She was always testing, especially strangers, especially strange men.
As a priest, he'd encountered lonely women, parishioners even, who were tantalized by the untouchable, who swooned over Mr. Spock of Star Trek or another woman's husband or even the friendly neighborhood Catholic priest. He'd come to recognize the type instantly, and to ignore its temptations no matter how attractively packaged.
Compared to those sad, delusional groupies, decent women with compulsively self-destructive hankerings, Kitty was a pro. She knew something he was desperate to know (and she knew it). To gain her confidence, he would have to play on her field with her terms. He would have to tease, to flirt back. Not exactly taught in seminary.
He thought of Max Kinsella, the Mystifying Max, blast him! Temple had said he was good with women. The magician. Max always acted as if he had a secret, and maybe it was about you. Always acted as if he knew more than you did. Maybe that had something to do with it.
"I can't tell you why I'm looking for Effinger. The information isn't mine to give."
She nodded, looking more interested. "Can you tell me a reason in general?"
"Family business," he said curtly. He gave up the words with a wrench of self-disgust. It wasn't anybody's business but his. "I am about my Father's business" Not in this instance, although maybe his real father, his genetic father, would want this unworthy replacement dealt with too.
Perhaps his emotions as much as his words reassured her, because she understood what he meant.
"Family business is hell, isn't it?"
He nodded, relieved. "And Purgatory thrown in for good measure."
But once dealt with, it's the Heaven of a job well done, a job that needed doing."
Their eyes were steady on each other now, as it they spoke the same unspoken language, with the slightly "foreign" accents of their lone, cautious outsider voices. Foreign to what?
"This means a lot to you."
She put her hands on her lips, sweeping the open jacket to either side, emphasizing the hourglass of her figure almost as a weapon.
She reminded him of an Old West gunfighter with her pointy-toed boots in a wide-legged stance, her challenging eyes that were only green now and hard as laser light.
"What would you do, if you found him?"
The pass/fail question. He had nothing to fall back upon but his own bitter truth. "I don't know. Kill him, maybe."
She was impassive. If she chose to shoot him down now, she would never help him, even if she was the only soul in Nevada who knew the creep's whereabouts.
"The Gilded Lily. You'll have to look it up in the Yellow Pages under 'Dives.' Try about nine p.m. He likes to start in the bar."
The capitulation left him breathless, confused. "You work there?"
"Not as of tonight. You might give me a day or two before you come calling. Don't want to dash off the very day Mr. Effinger might have a big fall."
Like Max Kinsella at the Goliath and the first casino dead man.
Matt felt a dizzying sense of deja vu. He almost felt like Max, or a waxwork imitation of Max. He managed a knowing smile, a nice trick when he knew nothing.
"And if I want to find you again? Tell you what happened?" he asked.
"I'll know." She had turned and was leaving.
He realized that she carried nothing--no purse, no sunglasses. Maybe she had been a visitation . . . from somewhere.
Hard heels clicked the concrete. Beneath Matt's feet, the blue plastic felt damp. He had grown no mustache but his upper lip had materialized a dewy pencil-thin line of sweat.
"I'll find you," she threw behind her in farewell.
She sounded happy. No . . . content.
He wondered . . . what a priest could . . . should never wonder.
His hands were as cold as his feet were hot. He made fists to warm his fingers in the waning afternoon light. Nine p.m. Not a good time. He'd have to take time off, or change his schedule. Maybe change his schedule. Then he'd have an alibi.
Dear God, why had he let her glimpse his raw vengeance? And, worse, why had that one factor, or failing, put whatever fears she had to rest? He hoped he never found out, never saw her again.
He doubted that he'd be that lucky.
Chapter 9
Cat in a Gray Flannel Suite
Despite the cavernous lobby downstairs, the offices were a maze of cubbyholes arranged along a wall of windows that looked out on other windows, in which small moving figures of worker bees could be glimpsed buzzing soundlessly in a concrete hive.
A tall tawny-haired woman younger than Temple was waiting beyond the foyer door to greet her.
"I'm Kendall Renaldi, and I see you have something to get o({ your chest."
"I have twenty pounds of something to get off my chest."
"So this is Midnight Louie. Love that name."
"He came with it. I probably would have called him 'Blackie' or something totally unoriginal."
"I doubt that, judging from the materials you sent us. You're in the same game as we are."
"Well, we're kitting cousins, anyway," Temple demurred, flattered to have been symbolically accepted on Madison Avenue, the pinnacle of advertising; promotion and public relations.
"We are it you work tin- hours we do," Kendall added, rolling her
"You can unload Louie in my office."
"What I'd most like to do is lose the outerwear for a while. It's best if I keep Louie close to my heart where he can't get into trouble."
"But he's so big, and you're so small. If we did tour you, we'd have to send a handler along."
"That's why I bought the baby-bag for cats. It's supposed to balance the weight. If only I could find a Papoose on Board' decal.
" 'Don't Kitty Litter' would be a nice touch too."
"If Louie's going to be a media cat, I suppose he'll have lots of messages to bear, poor baby."
Once inside Kendall's office door, Temple demonstrated getting out of the carrier's waist and shoulder straps. "It's really simple if you get the hang of it."
" 'Hang of it' is right. I'd really get hung up in all that harnessry."
"Try it," Temple suggested. "Somebody has to hold Louie while I undress anyway."
She slung her tote bag down on the paper-piled chair beside a small desk mounded by an avalanche of paperwork. Kendall's office was one in name only, Temple noticed as she struggled out of her down jacket and mukluks and put them on the . . . the--