"Really? From what you said. you did a good job. You got some real scoops. Why didn't they get you anywhere?"
"Because l didn't look right. Nobody took me seriously."
"Maybe they took you too seriously."
"What?"
"All the opposition you faced, from the male bosses, the other women reporters. You kept thinking it was something wrong with you. What if it was something right with you?"
"Huh?"
"People don't attack you for your weaknesses, Temple. They attack you for your strengths.
You went at news stories like you went at those crimes you stumbled across, didn't you? You were relentlessly inquisitive. You had certain verve, charm, charisma. People saw you cared.
They'd talk to you. They didn't need tall, blond, thin. They needed honest, genuine. Your peers blocked your career because they were jealous."
"Of me? Ever since l was in junior high and I realized l wasn't going to grow much higher, that l was going to be the Gidget of the eighties, l just sort of looked at those prom-queen girls and blinked. They were like goddesses to me. So tall and elegant, so sophisticated and smart.
They couldn't envy me; I envied them."
"Add to their motives your unending innocence. You didn't even appreciate your edge, which double-damned you in their eyes. You've told me about it, when we were in Minneapolis.
You've told me about it here, that artist's mistress who commandeered your hat because you had something individual, and she had to be the only individual thing around."
"Okay! So women can be spiteful, sabotaging snobs. I guess it is a danger."
"And guys can be violent, sadistic bullies. This is an equal-opportunity syndrome. You're worried and have trouble living with the idea of a few homicidal hit men who might want to shoot me. That's nothing compared to the danger ordinary kids face every day. The peer groups that demand you become a gang-banger or be the victim of them. Look at an abused kid like Matt Devine. It's obvious where his obsession with his stepfather came from. Every day, every hour in your own house, the screaming, the yelling, the quick fist or slap, the beating. Look at thousands of dogs, for God's sake. A dog who starts life as a happy, panting puppy just wanting to be part of the human pack, subservient to a two legged master, a dog neglected and berated and beaten until, broken, it crawls on its belly to anything human that will recognize it. Danger?
It's all around us. You, me, Matt Devine, Midnight Louie. Black cats have been hated and hunted and killed for centuries. And why do they attack us, these bullies? For our strengths, not our weaknesses. For our liveliness and talent and love and potential, which is a slap in the face to so many who have known only deadening days and nights of loss and hatred and failure."
"God, that's a scary assessment of the human race."
"Exactly. And once you see that you'll appreciate the heights the human species can reach.
For every two thousand Gottis, there's a Gandhi, for every Hitler there's an Einstein."
"For every Big Bad Wolf, there's a Rin Tin Tin?"
"No. But there's probably a Midnight Louie."
"Fun-nee," she said. It came out almost sounding like "Fanny." Chapter 29
Shooting Gallery
The knock on Molina's office door made her look up, then check her watch. "Right on time, to the minute."
"I know artists are supposed to be childishly free souls, oblivious to ordinary constraints, but not if you have two kids to support."
Molina nodded to her rather hard and unfriendly chair, and Janice Flanders came to sit there like an obedient schoolgirl. The closed oversize sketchpad lay across her blue-jeaned lap like a tray. Her laid-back Santa Fe style was attractive and reassuring.
"What a relief," Janice said. "I thought the computer simulations had made me obsolete to the police."
"Don't get overexcited. We need a sketch of a corpse."
"Ooh, my favorite."
"And. to sweeten the assignment, also of one very undead guy, only I need him aged about seven years."
"Only seven?" Janice glanced at the black-and-white photo Molina had handed her. "Looks pretty buff here."
"He's forty-one now; encroaching middle age should make a big difference. Most men show it sooner than women. And this man's gone down in the world, from respectable to seedy. Use your imagination."
"Looks like a physical fitness freak. Military, maybe?"
"Police. Not here in Las Vegas. He might have gotten more into pumping iron after his big fall. I don't know."
"A computer sim could run through the possibilities much faster, and cheaper, than I could."
"Yeah, but those things always have the personality of so-called Roswell test dummies. As l said, l want your imaginative touch. You've done so many mall portraits you've developed a sixth sense about facial planes, how they evolve and devolve."
Janice laughed. "Thanks. I think. Oh, and I also owe you thanks for steering that new customer my way."
"New customer?"
"Matt Devine."
"Oh. That's right. You did the Effinger job for him."
"I did, and with good results. He was an interesting subject."
"Effinger."
"Well, yeah, but I meant Matt too."
"He posed for you?"
"Not exactly. I did a quick sketch to warm up. I mean, who could resist those honest brown eyes? He's been a good customer, and I can always use the extra work."
Molina held back the two photographs of the Church Lot Lady she was about to show Janice, not wanting to interrupt this discussion of the living with the bare-faced fact of the dead.
"It sounds like an ongoing relationship," Molina noted.
"Yeah. I was surprised when he came back for another sketch, but, ah, it might be more of an ongoing relationship than you mean."
"Oh, really?" Molina was horrible at female small talk after all her years in law enforcement.
Now she wished she had a refresher course under her belt. But she had kept her tone innocent--and yet knowing enough, she hoped--to encourage Janice Flanders's confidences.
"I wondered why he wanted these pseudo-law-enforcement services. He swore he wasn't an ex-cop or a private detective. I couldn't figure it out, haven't yet, really. Except now that I know he's an ex-priest, it makes a little more sense. They're always out there doing good, right?"
"Let us hope so." Molina found her ordinarily nimble mind balking like a gate-shy horse at the mental leap to What Janice was implying.
"Anyway, how could this guy go wrong? I don't know how well you know him--" Holy cow! Who was trying to pump whom here? Molina smiled disarmingly, or what she thought was disarmingly. She hadn't had much practice in a long while. In fact, disarming smiles were a hazard in her business.
"He's visited in my parish," Molina said casually. "Our Lady of Guadalupe, where my daughter Mariah goes to school."
"That's right! She must he--"
"In sixth grade."
"Time flies. My two are in junior high now; teen-monsters-in-training," she added with enough fondness to undercut the truth of the remark. "You're so wise to keep your Mariah out of the public schools, but then I suppose you know more than I do what's going on there." Janice shuddered for effect. "That's where I put most of my child-support money, private school. So you know Matt socially," she added.
"As much as I know anyone socially. Between this job and keeping up with Mariah--"
"Say no more. The single-mom routine is the pits. I could use a break today. Or tomorrow. I was just wondering, since you're Catholic, if there's anything l should know about Matt, or some place where l could learn what to expect."
"Golly. I'm a lukewarm Catholic myself. All I can say is that you'd expect him to be pretty conservative about adhering to the church tenets."
"Like celibacy?"
Molina nodded.