"You're a good detective. Morey. I'm a music buff. That's why I go there. Not everybody shares my enthusiasm."
"The band guys say they stayed late to jam."
"Yeah."
"And did they let you listen in on the session, 'cause you're a regular?"
"Yeah. I'm a regular."
"That's what they said too. They said you left when they knocked off, about three A.M."
She nodded. "It's my only vice, Morey. I've got a great sitter for Mariah, stays all night."
"Solitary vice."
Molina shrugged. "In my position--"
Su was rapping her lethal nails on the glass desktop, impatient to talk about something of substance, like wounds or possible suspects.
Alch got the picture. In her position, Molina couldn't socialize regularly in the cop bars around town, and didn't care to anyway.
She didn't dare date inside the department, and her hours and single parenthood kept her off the streets, except on occasion when she went to the Blue Dahlia.
If she had to, Molina would let Alch and Su in on her avocation. But not unless it was absolutely necessary, Carmen worked as a pressure-reliever only because she was a figment of everyone's imagination. The moment she became too real, she would have to die.
And Carmen Molina really didn't want two women to have died in the Blue Dahlia parking lot that Friday night.
"So we've got a mystery woman," Alch summed up, gathering the scattered materials into the manila folder and rapping it sharply on the glass so no untidy ends poked out.
Molina nodded. " 'She left.' A lot of women have, and have ended up dead for it. Just make sure that we don't end up with a mystery killer."
Chapter 8
Wild Woman, Part II
The radio station sat under a giant's erector set of metal, an Eiffel Tower of the communications world. The one-story building was oddly insignificant for the spire of electronics it demanded, like the little church in the vale attached to a Gothic flying buttress.
Matt parked the motorcycle as discreetly as he could: A silver streak called a Vampire is hard to hide. He entered a tiny reception area that was equipped with a desk piled with mail and one low sofa for visitors.
"Oh. You must be Ambrosia's three-o'clock." The girl at the reception desk was exactly that--gangly, pierced at earlobe and nostril, wearing a garishly clashing knit vest skimpy enough to show her navel, also pierced.
Matt felt like he was in a massage parlor, although he had no, um, firsthand experience of such venues.
The girl eyed him approvingly from under eyelashes tipped with cobalt-blue mascara.
"I'll let her know right away." She hit a button on the desk phone while Matt studied the chaos. Music, not totally strident, played over a speaker.
He cleared his throat, even though he didn't have to say anything . . . yet. He'd worried about dressing appropriately for the interview, but saw now that radio was not a visual medium.
Khaki shirt and pants might be a bit unimaginative, but they certainly weren't too formal.
He checked his watch. WCOO wasn't far from the ConTact offices, but he did have to leave for errands by four.
"Go right in." the girl announced proudly.
He went through the only door, a bland expanse of wood.
The other side was as jumbled as the lobby: a rat-maze of cubicle walls.
"Hi! You're Matt. I'm Leticia Brown. Come this way and we'll . . . talk radio."
She laughed and led him down the narrow corridor. Matt followed, wishing he had a white rabbit for a guide instead of this amazing being.
She was the most dazzling woman he had ever seen, bar even Kitty O'Connor, the femme fatale of the alley behind ConTact. The memory jangled Matt's nerves like a thrust of broken glass at his veins; a phantom pain that, along with a scar, were eternal reminders of a bizarre assault. But the memory of the woman Temple had christened Kitty the Cutter in a fit of black humor faded before Leticia's majestic presence. The impressions reeled in his mind: caramel-colored (and lots of it visible) skin; perfectly applied and perfectly obvious makeup highlighting dark brown-black eyes that tilted like a cat's under winged brows; burnt-orange highlights in jet-dark hair that were probably tinted, but who cared because the color would have made Titian throw away his brushes in the futility of capturing it. Bold perfect teeth, Wite-out bright against that cafe-au-lait skin. The effect was over-whelming, especially when you factored in that the possessor of all this pulchritude weighed about three hundred pounds.
Matt was used to considering his own good looks a curse; what would it be like to be the perfect woman in everything but the all--important size, he wondered.
What she wore was loose and flowing and didn't do a thing to disguise her bulk. He wasn't sure that she didn't like it that way. Her movements were brisk, adept, and in charge.
She led him into a jewel-box-size office crammed with papers and CDS and tapes, and indicated a frail looking chair.
"Nice to meet you." A plump amber hand bridged the desktop clutter, a hand be ringed and braceleted as if wearing costly welts.
He shook it.
"Whewl Are we talking the wrong media for you!" She sat back to admire him, her chair whining at the weight shift. "I suppose we'll have to do billboards."
"Wait a minute. I don't even know what exactly we're talking about."
"Exactly that. Talk, my man. And music. And emotions. Did you like my tape? I'm Ambrosia."
"You're Ambrosia?"
"I'm a producer here too. But Ambrosia is my baby, and Ambrosia is a hit. That's the deal. I thought about adding a real, honest-to-goodness counselor to the mix, and your name came up--"
"How?" Matt figured he better interrupt her or he'd never get a word in edgewise.
"I was interviewing one of the passing-through celebrities. He overheard me and Dwight discussing the idea afterwards, so he recommended you."
"A local celebrity recommended me? Who?"
"Mr. Flamingo, the great Domingo himself. You know, that conceptual art weirdo who got the whole town in a flap over plastic lawn flamingos? I figure that man knows the public pulse."
"That's very nice of Mr., ah, Domingo. But all my counseling work has been private, not public. l don't know about hundreds of people listening in. Look. Miss Brown. I'm even anonymous at the hotline; we use pseudonyms."
"Thousands and thousands listening in," she corrected him, leaning forward until the chair squealed for mercy again. She propped that siren's face on chubby fists. "Oooh, tell me. What's Your hotline pseudonym, honey?"
"Ah, Brother John."
"Brother John." She tasted it, rather than pronounced it. "Brother JA-on. After that old school song?" She proceeded to sing, rather well, "Are you sleeping, Brother john?"
" Frere Jacques, right?" Her laugh was a tenor saxophone solo. "Far reach, mon ami." Somehow, the voice made the name seem , . . slightly lewd. "All right! This is a music medium as well as a talk medium, after all.
"Brother John," she repeated, wrinkling her nose. And a lovely nose it was too, bare of ring or stud. "I see your point. Maybe that's kind of . . .bland. The Brother John Show. Naw--"
"Hey! Bland Brother John might not be interested in any show."
"Might not be interested in doing a radio counseling show! Led into by a hit like 'Ambrosia in the Evening?' We are talking possible syndication here, and Brother John might not be interested? You are an interesting cat. Maybe you're all looks and no brains. But you see what I mean. 'The Brother John Hour,' it sounds like the Crystal Cathedral or something. Religious radio." Her nose wrinkled again.
"What exactly are your counseling qualifications anyway?" she asked as an afterthought.
Matt took a figurative, but deep breath. "I've worked at ConTact hotline for almost a year.
Before that, I was a Catholic priest."