“I can’t ask Matt to step aside for you showing up in our lives again.”
“Try. He’s a compassionate guy.”
“He’s not a saint, and it would take the patience of one to stand for this.”
“I’m emailing you a photo of Sean and Deirdre, his wife.”
“I am not going to be emotionally blackmailed into going AWOL from Vegas to Racine, Wisconsin, of all places.”
“Sure you will. You’re a compassionate guy, too.”
“I’m not looking at the photo if you send it. You cannot guilt me into putting Matt second again.”
“Listen. Tell Matt that helping me settle the Kelly and Kinsella family matters is the surest way to get me out of the picture.”
“Kelly and Kinsella. Sounds like a law firm.”
“Or a string of Irish B and Bs.”
“You retired? Impossible.”
“You not curious? Impossible.”
“Okay. I am curious. Where is Kitty the Cutter in all this?”
The pause was ominous. “She’s confined to Ireland at the moment. We observed her grown daughter at a distance and then toured a Magdalene asylum so she could vent her spleen on an old nun, me, and God.”
“Grown daughter? My God. You believe in living dangerously more than ever.”
“Think about it, Temple. Racine won’t be dangerous, just exhausting. The ends of stories always are. I need you.”
And then he hung up.
Well, dang and a worse word for emphasis. She didn’t need him. Not anymore. Last thing she needed. Her renegade thumb had brought up the photo. She’d expected Max Jr., but Sean Kelly’s graying mahogany-red hair and freckled face spotted with specs of what must be shrapnel startled her.
Deirdre had a long, thick bushel of curly red-gold hair and a Sean O’Casey face, naturally strong and handsome. Temple had loved to recite the Irish playwright’s dialogue in playwriting class in college. Had Temple’s red hair been a main attraction for Max? Had Max’s Irish heritage attracted her? Had both of them been drawn to unsuspected traces of their pasts, although Max’s had been bred in the bone and the blood, and hers only in the imagination?
Temple looked at the phone screen, the photo. Time to turn the page. Close the book.
She’d ask Matt to write the last chapter. He deserved it.
45
Last Acts
The day after the night he’d stormed Electra’s new building, been released by Molina to make his midnight radio show just in time, and had come home to Temple’s place for a fervent and fevered reunion after they’d had a double dose of the aphrodisiac of danger, Matt stood in a small lot near a busy, cheesy Vegas corner staring at a motley assortment of older-model cars.
He’d lived such a straight and narrow life as a priest he had mounted up few regrets. Maybe not strangling Cliff Effinger was still one of them, given how deeply the man had impacted his, and also Temple’s, life even after his nasty end.
Now he regretted sacrificing Electra’s Probe to storming her new building’s front doors. A sincere regret, but one also selfish. Now he had to buy a replacement car for undercover work, ASAP, and be discreet about it. He’d never had a father to teach him to drive or to buy a car.
There’d been nothing for it but to call the man standing next to him, a man less than ten years older. When he’d reached Rafi Nadir at the Goliath Hotel, he hadn’t known how to describe what he needed.
“Hey,” Rafi had responded jovially. “What you need, my man, is a Tote-the-Note place. What kind of credit can you come up with?”
“Solid.”
“Or better yet. Cash?”
“How much?”
“You’re the wheeler-dealer. Tell me.”
“I was a priest for many years. I saved the little I earned.”
“Priest? You’re not doing badly with the redhead for all that.” Before Matt could take offense, Rafi said, “Sorry. I’ve run into some Catholic chicks in my time. Okay. Grab a cool five grand cash in small enough bills to haggle with, and meet me where I tell you. Four p.m. I’m on night shift. I’ll pick you up.”
“Uh, thanks. I think. Last time you picked me up was kind of a downer.”
Rafi chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’re going to enjoy this.”
Rafi had been optimistic. Rafi had enjoyed it. They had played good cop/bad cop—guess who was which ?—and Matt left in a 2001 gray Chevy Impala LS, rear spoiler, dickered down to thirty-nine hundred and ninety-five.
“It’s sort of dull,” Matt had told Rafi while the papers were being processed.
“That’s the idea. Be unnoticeable.”
So Matt drove his new old car to Woodrow Wetherly’s place, learning the vintage dashboard layout as he went.
This was a different encounter. Now Matt had seen what had been in the trunk of the beater car that had gone from Wetherly’s place into the desert and back.
The car and the trunk that had been waiting outside Electra’s hulking new building…
…while the lethal chandelier had emitted its last rays of electrified light before being later disconnected, disassembled, and taken away, like Leon Nemo, Punch Adcock and Katt Zydeco.
…while Matt had seen the driver he’d followed to Red Rock Canyon and back finally leave the Chevy and slip around to the back of the building.
…when Matt had left the Probe carrying its jack and sneaked up to the Chevy trunk to find out what buried desert treasure occupied its trunk. He’d hardly needed the jack to break in, the locking mechanism was so flimsy.
He had been braced for bones.
What he saw in the dim light from the street lamp was worse.
When he’d pulled off the bulky canvas covering, he’d found the bulky, battered old 35-pound jackhammer powering a long thick chisel spike, its angular steel pointed like a pencil that had been sharpened by a razor knife. The metal body was spotted with dark gouts of red paint.
A.k.a. blood.
Mobster Giaccomo Petrocelli. Jack the Hammer. So named for jack-hammering people to death.
A legend long dead, but not forgotten.
And his favorite murder weapon retrieved to murder again.
Then Matt saw the headlights of a fleet of silent oncoming cars, obviously Fontana Inc., and decided to bust the Probe into the building…now!
That was last night. This was tonight. So here was Matt, where he did not want to be, but had to be.
“You know,” the old guy said, leaning back into his big, battered recliner. “The time has come to talk of many things.”
Matt felt like the Walrus strolling down the path with the Carpenter toward some innocent oysters. Rightfully. Who would eat whom?
“Yes, my young friend. Kid. Sonny boy. I suspect you are on the verge of knowing too much. Your Midnight Hour may be closer than you think.”
“I do think that myself,” Matt said.
“And yet you came back. You’re beginning to interest me again. I admit you could have your uses. ‘Call me irresponsible’,” he crooned in a raw croak. And cackled. “I always did love Sinatra. And I don’t think your foolish alibis will bore me.”
“Is that the next line of the song?” Matt asked.
“Maybe. Depends on you if there is a next line to the song.”
Tailpiece
Midnight Louie Sounds Off
Call me Speechless. Which is my default setting anyway.