"Those martial arts will tear you up every time."
"Not every time, thank God. Just now and again."
*****************
Driving to the morgue had a feeling of arrest to it that Matt suspected as being deliberate.
He rode in the back of the capacious Crown Vic, Molina in the passenger's seat with a uniformed officer driving.
Her attitude was brisk, ultra-professional and bored. Routine, it implied, when he knew damn well it wasn't. But he was grateful for the Crown Vic; a big car with a marshmallow ride, it saved him a lot of pain in transit. Physical pain, anyway.
He was glad the ME's facility was familiar. By the time they ar-rived he had managed to ape Molina's attitude inside and out. Only a small twitching nerve near his left lower eyelid told him this was the real thing: he would gaze upon Cliff Effinger dead. The man would hurt no living thing again.
In the viewing room he and Molina stood side by side, like a bizarre honor guard, silent, at attention, stiff. He was quiet because he hurt; she was stiff because she was on duty.
The curtain jerked back in increments. Matt gazed down at Effinger's closed-eyed face. Pale, gray still.
"No identity doubts this time?" Molina asked.
"No doubts. And you?"
"I always knew the answer. I just wanted to watch your reaction to the actual corpse."
"And?"
"You're too guarded. You're not telling me squat, except what I know, that the dead guv is Effinger. Now I'll tell you something. He had something in his pocket. A reference to Temple Barr. Think about it. And does the word 'Hyacinth' mean anything to you?"
Matt shook his head. "Hyacinth? No. But Temple . . . what kind of reference?"
"Do you know of any reason why Temple Barr would have motive to kill Cliff Effinger, or to know it was done?"
"No!"
"Well, I know of a reason a straight-John citizen might have grabbed Effinger a week ago and turned him over to the law. It's called precedening. You could have alibied yourself by being a restrained citizen, then gone back and offed the asshole. He was an asshole, wasn't he Matt met her eyes, on a level with his own. "Maybe. Maybe not always. Lite isn't only black and white, Lieutenant. Effinger wasn't the Ogre of All Ogre-
"Really? And how long have you felt with charity toward all, malice toward none, Mr.
Lincoln?"
"Since I went to Chicago for Christmas, and found villains other than Effinger."
She read the truth in his eyes, and didn't like it. She made her living looking for lies.
"Outta here, choir boy. And do tell Miss Temple I plan on talking with her."
Chapter 22
On Hyacinth Lane
As soon as Matt got home he unearthed his map of Las Vegas. Under "H" in the street directory he found Hyacinth Lane.
A short residential street just west of downtown, Hyacinth Lane's neighborhood sheltered in the fork made by U.S. 95, the principal east-west highway in town, crossing U.S. 15, the northsouth highway that roughly paralleled the Las Vegas Strip.
Matt located the Oasis Hotel on the map, down the Strip from Hyacinth and near the Stardust. From there he pinpointed the Circle Ritz. The three locations formed a right triangle, with the Strip as its hypotenuse.
Matt sat back and gave the throb in his side free rein for a few minutes. He felt his face crease into a mask of total feeling, which was a much better fit to his inner state than the mask of total unfeeling he had been wearing.
He supposed that crooks and cops both had to adopt that deadpan survival guise, becoming more like each other and less like the citizens they preyed upon and protected.
Alone, he could wonder why his every instinct had screamed that Kitty's attack must be concealed.
Shame, he supposed. Hurt, he was a child again, struck unmercifully by a callous world. The woman was, in a way, evil incarnate, an embodiment of everything he had never stood for. She hated good, or what the church defined as good. She hated him for trying to live up to that ideal. Basically, she hated, and it wasn't personal, even when the hatred expressed itself in such a deeply personal way: outright attack, verbal and physical.
Temple had concealed Effinger's attack to spare Matt guilt and anger. Now Matt himself concealed his injury to . . . learn more. More about Kitty, and more about himself. Also to soothe his wounded manhood. Falling victim to a female mugger was a loss of masculine face. His Adam had been betrayed by an Eve who had also played the role of the snake. And perhaps she had also aspired to a prerogative of the Almighty, taking Matt's life and his integrity in her hands and twisting slowly. She was the Tree of All Knowledge, and he had a lot to learn. About her, for sure. Maybe especially about himself.
And maybe he had a lot to learn about Temple. Where to start?
First he called Electra.
After exchanging the usual pleasantries, Matt explained that he'd had a martial arts injury and couldn't ride the Vampire for a while.
"It's safe, Electra, locked on the ConTact lot. But that's not the best neighborhood in Vegas.
Could we drive over in your car and you could ride it back? I really have to avoid . . . vibrations."
Electra laughed that earthy laugh of hers and agreed to everything. "Just let me collect my
'Speed Queen' helmet, honey, and we'll glide off into the sunset together. Yeah, fivish would be fine. See you in the parking lot in two revs of a Vampire's wail."
Matt hung up, pleased. That abandoned motorcycle had been weighing on his conscience.
Couldn't lose anything that had belonged to Max Kinsella. That would tip the balance between them, which was too unbalanced to begin with. Max and his carnal knowledge of Temple.
The phrase was as lurid as his thoughts sometimes became lately.
******************
Temple sounded both relieved and worried when he called.
"Matt. Are you all right?"
In view of what had happened the night after their date, Temple's question was ultra-appropriate.
"That's debatable," he answered. "Could you stop by my place in a couple minutes? I have some news you'll want to hear in person. Besides, you can see the Big Red Sofa in position."
"It's all right, isn't it?"
"Better than I am."
He knew that sign-off would set her internal rescue sirens keening. That's how Temple got involved in everyone else's business, she was a one woman cleanup detail. "Murder scenes and emotional wrecks tidied up while I agonize and you watch," could be her motto.
She was ringing his doorbell before he could get the instant coffee made.
Her face fell when she saw him. "What's the matter?"
Matt was glad he had news shocking enough to explain his pained look.
"Sit down."
"Hey! Who could resist this free-form settee." Temple put her fists on her hips and stared at the sofa, or rather the sofa's current user. "And what's Midnight Louie doing up here, sprawled on your Vladimir Kagan like he owned it?"
"He's been showing up at my door, rubbing back and forth on the frame and my legs. I finally decided to let him in this afternoon. He headed for the Kagan as one to the biomorphic born."
"He'll get black cat hair all over it, though he does look like cover boy material posed there."
"I'm not sure this sofa is very practical, Temple. Louie can mold his feline form to the thing, but a person would have to have scoliosis to sleep against that ess-curved back support, such as it is."
Temple perched on the sofa like a pixie, oblivious to a serious clash between her sunset-orange-red hair and the sofa's deep lipstick-red color. She was as determined to stake her claim as Midnight Louie.
"On the other hand, it's sure cheerful," she decided. "Like those red-painted free-form steel sculptures they put up in every downtown in the seventies. Where'd you get the cool little tables?"