“I’m just replaying it. You’re Molina’s prisoner, then she’s a police professional handcuffed to her own steering wheel, and not only that, wrong about you being the Stripper Killer.”
“It might freak her out,” Max said, a smile in his voice.
“It might freak her so far out that she’d violate Temple’s space and her trust to take you to the cleaners.”
“You know what I think?” Max’s voice had lowered. It sounded dangerous in the dark. “You and Molina are a pair. You’ve got that blind Catholic standard that makes everyone else substandard.”
“You were reared Catholic.”
“I got over it.”
“She said—”
“He said. It’s a draw.”
“Molina said you came on to her. She said you said all she needed was a—I guess you might be kinda conceited—’good screwing.’ ”
Kinsella laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Not that it might not be true. I don’t know what I said, did. I was fighting for my freedom to go and protect Temple. You might know what that feels like, someone you love in mortal danger. You might know what that felt like for me.”
It was Matt’s turn to keep silent. He did, way more now that he and Temple had become . . . closer.
“Carmen distrusts you,” Matt said at last. “I guess she hates you. She might take whatever you said or did to get free of her as the God’s truth. That you would have screwed her to make her let you go. That you thought she would have liked it.”
It was Max’s turn to be silent. “Maybe that’s true,” he said. “Maybe I found her weakness and it was me. Hate is fear, and sexual fear hides unadmitted desire. If that’s what it would have taken. As it happened, I preferred to let her grind my face into the ground and feel she’d beaten me physically. Pride isn’t worth a penny if someone you love is at risk.”
“Nope,” Matt agreed. That’s why he was here, warning Temple’s lover, instead of letting Max go down so he could have Temple all to himself.
“So,” Max said. “Now your face is asphalt dust. Maybe you’ll have to screw Molina to get her off Temple’s case. No sacrifice too harsh.”
“You can laugh. I guess it’s a kind of defiance. But if Temple thinks you’d ever thought of betraying her with Molina—”
“Oh, shit,” Max said. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit.”
“Did you?” Matt asked, because he had to and because he actually enjoyed asking it way too much.
Matt couldn’t believe how much he relished the idea of Max being unfaithful, how down and dirty he could get, for the right wrong reason.
But he had to know.
“Because, if so, I’m going to have to warn Temple, to tell her something. I’d like to include your self-defense.”
“Sanity? Look. Why would I? I don’t need this right now. I have no idea where this nonsense came from. And I don’t need some do-gooder John Alden playing go-between for me and Temple. Even you should know by now you want her.”
Matt felt a flush. Why? It was the truth.
Max threw up his long, bony hands, always clever, always strong. “That was a low blow. Sorry. I suppose you are a professional mediator of sorts. Mediate this.”
“I won’t use this against you with Temple. Or for me.”
“Use it. I won’t surrender Temple to anyone without the balls to take her.”
Matt felt the old blinding rage he thought he’d buried with his stepfather surging into all his muscles. He stepped forward, balanced for martial arts moves. Max was more expert, he knew, but Matt had the fire in the belly in this case. It would be a long, bloody draw probably.
Max stepped back. “Pax, priest. Us tearing at each other will only hurt Temple more. That’s one thing we’re agreed on; the less damage to Temple the better.”
“Is there anything you can say to defend yourself, to counter Molina’s charges?”
Max had nothing printable to answer.
Free to Good Home
I have pretty much figured out this whole murder-theft ring and given my Miss Temple the credit, or the main ideas, at least.
Now would be a good time for resting on my laurels, and this is exactly what I am doing in my crib at the Circle Ritz when I hear the scrabble of pointed nails, i.e., claws, on the French door–opening mechanism.
I am too worn out from my recent intense cerebral labors, not to mention the late hours I have been keeping, to do more than cock one peeper open. Sure enough, a furry snake slides under the crack in the frame. In a moment, the door pops open as sweetly as if my own supple touch had cracked it.
Much to my surprise . . . not! . . . Miss Midnight Louise ankles in.
“Sawing timbers in the Pacific Northwest, I see,” she says.
“Who, me? Not on your life. I am for saving the forests. What I am doing is resting up my muscles after serving as a counterweight to three females of my acquaintance the other night.”
“Big deal, Daddy-o. All you had to do was throw your weight around, which should come naturally. But that is why I am here.”
“Oh, really. It is not because you wish to check up on the health of the senior member of the team?”
“Oh. We are a ‘team’ now?”
“Well, I mean that we are Midnight Inc. Investigations, which is a firm, and since there are only two members of said firm, I suppose in a loose sense we are a . . . team. But nothing personal.”
She sits and tucks her long, luxuriant black train around her dainty forelegs. Show-off!
“Whatever,” she says in the irritating manner of the younger set. “We still have a problem in the flies at the New Millennium.”
I frown. “The show has been closed down for now, and even the police are through dusting the area with a mouse-hair brush and going over it with a flea comb.”
“That is part of the problem.”
“Tell me.”
“I think you should see for yourself”
“Jeez, Louise! That is a long pad across some pretty hot turf, not to mention the climb at the end. I need to preserve my strength.”
“On Miss Temple Barr’s cushy sofa, of course.”
“So. You want one, find your own sugar daddy.”
“I do not need a keeper, but I admit I am an exception.”
“You admit something. Hmmph. All right. I guess I can go and survey the scene of my latest exercise in crime deduction. Miss Temple has seen that the authorities know all about who was in on what and why and how.”
“Exercise is the key word in all that hot air. You need some. Up and at ‘em, Pop, before I sic Ma Barker’s gang on you.”
This opens my other eye and gets me up on my feet and humming “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“The gang is here?”
“Right. And your next trick will be letting the residents of this Building That Time Forgot realize they better put some grub and water out for them.”
“I must see my troops.”
“Forget it. No time to say hello, good-bye, you are needed first and foremost at the New Millennium.”
I suppose it was Miss Louise employing the word “needed.” I respond to necessity. I suppose I caved.
She manages to spur me away from the Circle Ritz without looking around to spot and welcome the feral gang. I mean that “spur” literally. Her foreclaws are as sharp as Ginsu knives on a three A.M. infomercial.
Of course, Las Vegas is the second City That Never Sleeps. We dodge traffic and tourists, but in due time trot our way back to the New Millennium. I am about to show her my secret entryway six floors up on the neon solar system, but she taps me on the shoulder—ouch!—and leads me to the service entrance.
Here we are greeted like old friends, or she is.
“Ah,” says a slim dude of Asian appearance dressed all in white like a bride, or more likely, a cook. “The little lady with the Canton palate. And a gentleman friend. Some wonton soup this evening? Oh, you wish to study the menu?”