Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“No. I think you’re a rock, too much so. But I’ve noticed that something has been seriously bothering you. I thought it might be, you know, your ex.”

“Him! Rafi. Some secret. Even you’ve met him. Sure, he’d be a likely suspect, but now his reappearance on the scene looks like child’s play compared to someone stalking me and Mariah. And that someone can only be Max Kinsella.”

“Why?”

“Because at the time that your adored Temple, crazy mixed-up kid that she is, went undercover to trail the Stripper Killer, I had Max Kinsella in my sights at Secrets’s strip-joint parking lot. He was all hot to trot, saying that Temple’s life was in danger at Baby Doll’s. He wasn’t going to assume the position and cuffs, no way. Much as I wanted him to give me a reason to shoot, he wasn’t doing that either. He was unarmed.”

“A stand-off.”

“Right. What to do? I had to subdue him or lose Mr. Slippery again. And all I had was ‘suspicion’ of being the Stripper killer. But it was good enough to take him in for, with him right there on the site of a previous crime, and having been seen there earlier.”

“So you radioed for backup.”

“He was going to walk, daring me to shoot him.”

“So—?” Matt was really curious now, sitting forward on the sofa, a terrific audience for her defining, and dumbest, moment.

“So, I slapped my weapon down on the nearest pickup hood and we went hand-to-hand.”

“Carmen!”

“I’ve been trained. The sexist watch commanders in L.A. set little old rookie me taking down three-hundred-pound brothers and drug dealers with Uzis in Watts. Loved that Latino-black rivalry. Adding a woman to the mix was even more amusing.”

“Yeah, but . . . Max is a world-class strong man.”

“He’s not that tough. I did cuff him.”

“Maybe he let you. So that’s the problem? You cuffed him and what? Um, I know. He uncuffed himself.”

“And me to the steering wheel of my car! Never arrest a magician. By then, the radio was announcing the takedown of the Stripper Killer, thanks to your pal Temple’s meddling. I would have had to let him go anyway.”

“But he would have escaped before then. What’s so irregular about that scenario? You found and captured a reasonable suspect then freed him when fast-moving events proved him innocent.”

“Don’t ever apply the word ‘innocent’ to that man. Yes, he got away. Yes, no one knows about our parking-lot round but he and I. And that’s how I know—I know now!—that he’s my stalker.”

“How?”

She took a deep breath. “When we were fighting, he thought he had the upper hand at one point. He came on to me. Seriously. Your lovely little Miss Temple was off the radar. He had turned my pursuit of justice into some sick psycho-sexual game between us. It was real, believe me. If she had seen it, she would have dumped him like that. I’m protecting her, in a way, from having her illusions sent to Sing-Sing for life.”

“What did he do, say?”

“I’m too embarrassed to tell an ex-priest.”

“Try me.”

“Just that our cat-and-mouse game was substitute for what I really wanted and needed, a good screwing.”

Matt winced. As much as he was adjusting to secular society and its rough edges, crudity still impacted his priestly sensibility. Suddenly, he looked at Carmen from under those baby-blond eyebrows, his penetrating brown eyes so unusual in one of his Polish coloring.

“Intense feelings can flip either way, love or hate.”

“Don’t say love.”

“Passion or hate, okay?”

“You ever feel either one?”

“More than you can imagine, Carmen.”

For a few fixed instants, she believed him. “Right. You hated your stepfather. I assume that’s resolved now that he’s dead.”

Matt shrugged. “Nothing’s ever resolved. It just evolves, or we do. I see your confidentiality problem. I see why you think what you do. What I don’t see is Max Kinsella as a stalker. He’s like Lucifer. He’s got too much pride. So do you.”

“I am the law!”

“No. You’re a representative of the law. You may not realize this, and I can’t say more because I do honor confidences, but Max is a representative of another kind of law.”

“Another kind?”

“He’s a seeker of justice.”

“And I’m not?”

“He’s an émigré from an abused minority.”

“And I’m not?”

“So. You have a lot in common.”

“No way! Matt, you’ve gone over the edge here. Stay out of it.”

“May I still take Mariah to her father-daughter dance?”

“Yes.” Said begrudgingly. For her daughter’s sake.

“Sure. I will. But, you know, as long as we’re being bottom-line frank here, I think her real father should do the honors.”

He had gotten up and was halfway to the door.

“Are you crazy? Do you know what her father is?”

“I know who he is, but, no, I don’t know what he is. Do you?”

And the bastard walked out of her house unscathed, as Max Kinsella himself had done not a day before having left his sleazy rose-scented threat behind.

Molina fumed, her teeth taking her frustration out on her lower lip, raking it with fury. It was a bad day when a former priest and a former magician could make her own home taste like bitter ashes in her mouth.

Mum