" 'Denial.' The Pharisees in the New Testament were in 'denial' about Christ. Is it all right that they turned him over to be crucified, then?"
"They weren't sixteen-year-old girls."
"Well, l think Matt did a heroic bit of situation-saving there," Nick "said. "Apparently she called into some entertainment radio WCOO? WACO?"
Matt swallowed a smile. He should have realized he'd return as a cause celebre. "WCOO.
We Care Only about Others."
"Is that the one with that Oprah-type show?"
"Ambrosia. A self-help guru of the airwaves. Actually quite a good amateur psychologist.
Anyway, her listeners are devoted to her. And poor Daisy felt encouraged enough to call."
"Must have been . . . hell," Nick said. "Picking up the phone and hearing that awful situation reveal itself. Makes old-style confessions in dark boxes seem like a picnic. You stopped her from killing that infant."
Matt took a deep breath. "So they tell me."
"How could you be so calm when two lives were hanging by threads over that phone line ?"
Jerry wanted to know.
"I've had some recent revelations. Really. I ran into a son of an unwed mother from the fifties, saw how bitter he was, how few options he had. My own mother-- Let's just say l wonder what the Virgin Mary would have done if she hadn't had an angel to tell her what was what.
Maybe she would have thought she'd had an alien visitation too. And she really did."
"Angels as aliens. An interesting conceit," said Nick, with a wry smile. "Makes you wonder if all those deluded alien abductees are simply seeking a touch of grace in this secular world."
"Or if the saints have been deluded," Norbert said.
"What will happen to her?" Damien asked.
"She'll be psychoanalyzed, then possibly charged. The baby's been taken away, for now, at least. I doubt she could get custody without a caretaker family in her life, and her real family are hardly candidates for anything but criminal charges. I'm told there's a high demand for white babies, no matter the background."
"Poor, poor creatures."
"We are, aren't we ?"
Nods and silence.
Chapter 43
Scotch and Soda
It was one of those theatrically self-indulgent places with an obligatory mirror behind the bar, so everybody who bellied up to the faux-leather bumper rail formed an informal police lineup.
Most of them belonged in one. Including himself, according to some.
Max studied his fellow swiggers, an unsavory and ragged chorus line of high and low, narrow and fat. haired and less-so. He fit right in.
Temple would not be enamored of his revised appearance.
Since the Strip bullet had put a crimp in his ponytail anyway, he'd had his hair chopped off to normal street-length, left an inch too long in the back and cut short enough at front and sides to emulate the hedgehog look so popular among media boy-wonders and aging actors with thinning hair alike.
The effect was punk Elvis, but it went with the black velour jogging suit and the heavy gold chain hanging like snarled fourteen-karat spaghetti around his neck. A crude mass of ten-karat gold and diamond chips on one knuckle completed the transformation. He had used enough hair gel to paste down Alfalfa's cowlick. Add to that a heavy dose of the most noxious men's cologne he could find at the drugstore mingling with a lingering whiff of the joint he'd puffed on before entering.
He fit right in.
Secrets was a dump for all seasons. Part strip joint, part pool hall, it served as a crossroads for every loose-ends lowlife in Las Vegas. Nadir had worked as a bouncer here since arriving from Los Angeles four months ago.
Max lit a cigarette. took a puff, had a fourth belt of the cheap watered-down whiskey in its cheaper low-ball glass, then hoisted it to signal a refill.
Behind him, in the mirror, a virtually naked girl tried to leave her DNA on a chrome pole on the bar across the way, which came with hot-and-cold-running strippers. The bartender swiped a damp tag over the water-spotted faux-black marble Formica before reclaiming Max's smudged glass.
"Looks like this place sees a lot of action," Max commented, still looking around.
"Oh, yeah. Why? You looking for anything in particular?"
If the bartender hadn't been in the navy, he ought to have been. The way he braced his thick, hairy arms on his side of the bar implied more tattoos that you could wipe out with a laser beneath his muscle shirt. He reminded Max of a Mexican hairless bulldog, all bulk and undershot jaw, with so much fat piled on his muscle that the hairs were stretched miles apart, especially on his fat head.
"I'm always looking for something," Max said. "I don't particularly need anything."
The bartender waved the empty glass. "Except another shot." Max nodded, and watched him lumber away.
Not exactly suspicious, but not a good source of information. Max turned to face the room and the carefully spaced tables. The girls who had finished performing on the small stage at one end of the vast, unimaginatively shaped room now undulated among the tables, performing lap dances and more--most of it illegal, even here.
Strip bars reminded him of medieval masters' visions of Hell. Music so loud even your fingernails vibrated, and bad music on top of it, raunchy and tinny at the same time. Predatory people playing out their prescribed roles of users and losers in equal turn. Crinkled bills pushed toward convenient crotches; alcohol and drugs tossed up and down the usual socially acceptable orifices. Victims who masqueraded as vamps; marks who played at appearing to be masters.
A messily drunk stripper wove over to him. Young, with tumbling long curls and a mouth as slack as her eyes. Blown. Pretty in a way that wouldn't last long at a place like this. A lot of strippers were former high-school cheerleaders who had been sexually abused children.
"Hi." She leaned on him as if he were a chrome pole in need of a good polishing. "I can do barstool dances." Her fingers twined around the god-awful neck chain, then pulled tight for balance.
He could feel the metal-burn on the back of his neck, and reached out to support her. She took it for acquiescence.
Max guided her bare rear onto the edge of the neighboring barstool.
The guy sitting there turned angrily at the invasion, then looked into Max's eyes. Grumbling, he took his tall beer glass and moved down the bar; far down the bar.
"Jush a drink," the girl was saying. "Jush a drink. I dance for jush another drink."
"What kind of drink?" They had to shout mouth-to-ear to hear.
Her eyes focused for a moment. "Anything. Anything you want. What's you drinkin'?" He signaled the bartender. Harder to say who of the two of them the barman viewed with deeper contempt. No moral judgment there, except that of weakness versus strength. Any man who put up with this lush was a fool; any woman too drunk to make the most of the fools around her was a bigger fool.
"Water," Max told the barman when he returned. The bad drinks were obscenely overpriced, but Max added a five and got his plain glass of water.
"I don' remember seein' you here before." She tried to sound coy, but her sloppy pronunciation only made the remark seem phony.
"You haven't." Max diluted her drink with water while she toyed with his clothes, jewelry, hair. She'd stay blown, but maybe she'd be a trace more understandable with an ounce less liquor in her.
"Oh, new. Like I am."
"Is that why you're drunk?"
"I am not!" She tried to pull away in mock indignity, but tripped and wobbled back down on the stool instead. She reached for the glass, chugalugged a quartet ounce of booze and three ounces of city water. She made a face.
"You don't like my looks?"
"Oh, you look jush fine. Everythin' looks just fine." She gazed blankly at the hectic scene.