Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Why did he feel more guilty, Matt wondered, the longer he let himself be forced into nightly meetings with Kathleen O’Connor?

Maybe that was because he was getting somewhere with her, which meant she was getting somewhere with him. The last thing he needed was for her to transfer her love–hate fixation on Max Kinsella to him. The fact was, Temple was still in danger from the woman either way, because she’d been loved by both men.

At Temple’s Table of Crime Elements meeting today, with the exciting revelation that Jeff Mangel had secreted a Synth map in his exhibition of magic and Max had found it, Matt had wanted to shout, “Hey, I found out that Kathleen O’Connor isn’t the second Darth Vader who intimidated the Synth members. She is cat-scratch free.”

Yeah, explain how he knew that to Temple with Max Kinsella looking on.

Speaking of Kinsella, he’d broadcast the same air of stress and guilt Matt felt. And Temple had obviously picked up their unease.

Last time Kitty the Cutter had cut herself. He’d tended the wound and left her the razor. She’d seemed much more docile tonight, even subdued. They’d discussed her abuse, his abusive stepfather, Cliff Effinger.

She’d first approached—and cut him—because she’d believed his following Effinger made him a rival for her interests. That alone tied the IRA hoard to minor mob errand boys, at least.

It was almost a normal counseling session.

That made Matt nervous. Normality made Kathleen O’Connor even more nervous.

The session was breaking up early tonight.

*   *   *

“Do you see her after every time you come here?” she asked as they’d left the room together, like a fornicating couple leaving an assignation.

At least that’s the look they got from a late-returning gambler shambling down the hall toward them, his short-sleeved shirt darkened by damp rings around the armpits. His build was as baggy as his eyes, but he spared each of them a knowing leer that said “hooker and john” before passing by.

Matt had stepped to the brass-and-steel railing, turning his back. He was a radio “personality,” to be heard but not seen … except for the station billboards. MR. MIDNIGHT IN THE WEE HOURS. He didn’t want to read any headlines like MR. MIDNIGHT’S TRYST IN THE WEE HOURS.

Kathleen, of course, had leaned back against the railing as the man had passed, stretching her arms out to display her torso and leering back. “You took the risk in the first place,” she whispered just loud enough for it to be a hiss, “seeing that whore here, for counseling, at night, an upstanding ex-priest like you.”

“That used to be called ‘giving scandal,’” he admitted, relieved that Kathleen had been referring to Vassar, not Temple.

“The Church has a name for every little move a man could make.”

Her answer echoed a song Ambrosia played sometimes, about the usual unfaithful woman. “Sundown.” It was sure place- and person-appropriate now.

He couldn’t help smiling, which infuriated her.

“Smug. You’re so sure, so smug. So ‘right,’ like all the rest of them.”

With the graceful wrist movement of a flamenco dancer poising a castanet for playing, she unfurled the straight razor.

Matt’s small smile didn’t fade. Who did she think she was, a femme fatale or “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” with a razor in his shoe?

Yeah, she’d accosted him on a dark street and cut him once, when he’d been new to Las Vegas and innocent of her existence. He’d had warning now.

He could have done a mind-bending riff on how the razor was an emasculating weapon for a woman, and also an artificial extension that grew longer and a phallic symbol as well. But she wasn’t interested in academic theories now. The leering man had set her off. She was back into terrorizing.

She leaned far out to look down into the tunnel of hanging jungle foliage with colorful birds flitting in and out like escapees from an animated Disney film.

“If you fell from here, like Vassar,” Kathleen speculated in a playful tone. “Just saying. If you fell and were declared a suicide, you’d never be buried in a Catholic cemetery. No St. Peter’s or Paul’s or Stanislaus’s in Chicago for you or your family.”

She spun and put her back to the railing, still flirtatiously threatening.

“And why shouldn’t you fall, with a razor at your throat? Why shouldn’t there be a ‘scandal?’ ‘Ex-Priest Radio Personality Dies on Site of Apparent Tryst.’ Why shouldn’t everyone who knows you weep and wail and say they can’t explain it?… I could leave some indicting trinkets. Hints of a secret love affair gone wrong. Who’d be around to deny it?” She lunged toward him. “Not. You.” The point of her razor pressed against his carotid artery.

He could feel it pulsing, but kept his voice calm. “So this is how you extorted money out of your wealthy IRA ‘donors’? Sex wasn’t always enough, was it, Kathleen?”