Certainly following a vocation in a church that forbids its priests sexuality caters to obsession; hunting down my stepfather was obsessive to a point. Now that I've lost the intensity of that quest, maybe I've just translated the monomania to Temple. It's true that I knew her and we even played at dating and I didn't feel what I'm feeling now. Maybe l imagined that she has any feelings for me at all."
"My poor boy. Your Temple of the Holy Ghost cares for you.
She may not be able to love you as you would love her, but at least she is not insensible, insensitive, indifferent. That is a gift.
Take it and go elsewhere."
"How?"
Nick inhaled deeply from his pipe of wisdom. "Date other women. How many have you really known? Get some CDs. Leonard Cohen, a poet-turned-songwriter who offers a master class in the bittersweet push-pull of love and desire, of loss and fulfillment. He's Jewish, but his work has an occasional Christian bite.
Do you have a VCR? Get Gigi, a film musical from the fifties based on a tale by Colette. A girl from the courtesan class, a literal family of mistresses, meets a man of the world. Her love for him makes him innocent again. Wonderful moment. It's a Cinderella Story, how a girl reared for sex feels love, and transforms a man reared for sexual distance into someone who can enjoy intimacy.
Buy some romance novels, the ones with the covers you wouldn't be ashamed to check out of the library; they make those nowadays and an awful lot of women read them. Find out what women want--or fantasize that they want--when it comes to men, love, and sex. See other women. Live a life. You've a lot of time to make up for. Do it."
"But how do l do it honestly, without sin?"
"What is sin? "
"I know the letter of the law--"
"Put the letter of the law into a sentence you can live by."
"Sinlessness. To love God and not hurt anyone else."
"Including yourself?"
"Including yourself. I suppose."
"Don't suppose. Live! You'll make mistakes. You will 'sin' by some people's lights. But if you love God and yourself and your fellow/sister man/woman, you will not do wrong."
"I see you've mastered the politically correct slash."
"The slash is our salvation. We are not all black or white. We are gray. We are human. We are two genders and one soul. We have choices."
Matt shook his head. Too much. He was to go forth, and multiply his involvement with the mysterious species woman. He was to remain true to his school, his vocation, his first love.
Maybe he'd got it right at the beginning. A true love: a vocation. A lifestyle: celibacy. A libido: confused. A heart: broken.
Coming here had only compounded his confusion.
And yet, when he thought about it, there was only one bottom line, and always had been since he came to Las Vegas looking to lay his past to rest.
Temple.
Chapter 17
Cold Case
"You know this guy, Lieutenant?"
Molina was glad Alch was studying the name he had just jotted on his notepad instead of her face.
"Not really," she said evenly. "What's more important is, what do you know about him?"
One side of Alch's mustache quirked, a sure sign that he hadn't gotten all the information he had hoped for.
"Rafi Nadir," he said, savoring the unusual name. "Made Sergeant, but he isn't with the LAPD anymore."
"Since when?" Molina kept her voice from sharpening.
"June of last year."
"Retired?"
"He's a little young for that. Forty-one." Alch shook his head.
"Moved," she suggested, rapid-fire.
Alch shook his head again. "Too bad you wanted my inquiry to be 'discreet.' l could have gotten much more if I hadn't been."
"So . . .he's not with the LAPD for a serious reason. Not retired, not moved." She cleared her throat. "Dead?"
"Worse than that."
"Worse?"
"Bad case. Civil suit. Lost the suit, lost his job."
"Just last summer?"
Alch nodded.
"Hmm- Any personal data? Wife, kids?"
"Neither. Had a girlfriend a while back, I guess. Nobody much knows where he went, and I get the impression nobody much cares. A rogue cop gives us all a bad rap."
"That's for sure. Your contact's name written down there. Detective?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Give it to me and I'll follow up on a higher level."
"This have something to do with the corpse at the Blue Dahlia!"
She shook her head. That theory would be too farfetched even to mention. "Hardly. A cold case l had in LA. Wanted to follow up on it, but it looks too cold. Thanks."
She copied a name and number from his notebook and gave him a perfunctory smile to indicate the report was over.
Alch's lips pouted as he slapped his notebook shut.
She'd seen that expression on his face in interviews when a witness's or a suspect's answer hadn't been satisfactory. Good detective, Alch. Too good sometimes.
She smiled at his wrinkled suit-coated back (Las Vegas will do that to wool blends) as he shuffled out of the office. You couldn't trust that shuffle; it looked indifferent, but it meant that he was thinking, hard.
She glanced down at the name and number. This wasn't who she really needed to call, but she couldn't make that unwelcome call from here. A pay phone that was quiet, maybe. Not easy to find. Too bad there was no other way. She knew her next step: She had to call a woman about a man, neither of whom she liked asking for favors, to get the number she needed. Not easy to ask the devil you don't know to find out about the devil you do. She'd just have to make it sound like a demand, rather than a plea.
Something to do with this case? She hoped to God not.
Chapter 18
Cat Tracking
"This is outrageous."
Midnight Louise's tail lashes the walkway until desert dust rises like a genie conjured in a tale of Sinbad the Sailor.
"It is procedure," l explain patiently to the kit.
"She called animal control. She called to have the body removed from the crime scene and disposed of who-knows-how.
No autopsy, no investigation. Just swept under the rug, quite literally."
"You know the routine. Our kind are twentieth-century slaves, with no value beside the monetary."
"But this was cold-blooded murder."
"We cannot be murdered, only be 'killed.' "
"Why?"
"I believe the reason came out on one of my early cases with Miss Temple. An elderly lady argued with her parish priest who had said that animals have no souls. I fear that is the common perception."
"I do not care if I have a soul! I care if I am treated rightly, dead or alive."
"I am afraid that souls are prerequisite to being treated rightly, at least in theory, and among humans."
"Huh! It they truly had any souls, they would not allow such perfidy."
"We will do what we can."
"Which is squat."
"Which is a great deal. We know, at least, that Wilfrid was deliberately hit."
"How do we know that?"
"His mistress is missing."
"I do not care about missing humans."
"Ah,my dear Louise. If you are going to care about the missing of our kind, I am afraid that you will have to care about the missing of their kind. Our lives and fates are intertwined, you see."
"Not mine! I belong to nothing human."
"You work at the Crystal Phoenix. You eat the delicacies that Chef Song leaves out for you.
You accept the fondness of the management."
"I tolerate. I do not beg. I earn my keep."
"So do we all." I nudge her upright and then into the house again, which Miss Meter Maid has thoughtfully left open for the imminent arrival of animal control, which I happen to know is so overworked it is not likely to show up before morning. "Are we not 'animal control?' And the way I earn my keep, as you put it-- though Miss Temple Barr would never be so crass as to call it that--is to assist in matters of a mortal nature. I have much experience in this area, and I predict that we will not find out the why and the who of Wilfrid's attack until we find out the where and the what of his mistress's disappearance."