Cat In An Alien X-Ray

It must be five in the morning. The sun never quite set on the Vegas Strip, given the halo of bright lights playing aurora borealis on the skyline. Here, though, he glimpsed a bowl of black sky through his water-spotted eyelashes. He was moving too fast to stargaze, but that was the idea, to rinse off his latest encounter with a woman so volatile, even using her given name could set her off.

Tonight she’d set him off. Not really. It’d been a bit of psychodrama on his part. Her life had been so extreme, it took extremes to get her true attention. To find some genuine emotion other than anger buried under manipulation.

Still, he needed to rinse off the last couple of hours. Their jousts made him feel like the man in the constellation wrestling a huge serpent, Ophiuchus brought down from the skies to Earth, if you could call Las Vegas Earth.

What significance did the shape and stars of that unlucky ex-thirteenth sign of the zodiac hold for the rogue magicians who called themselves the Synth? Why would his dead stepfather keep, hide, and be hunted for a drawing of the entwined man and huge serpent the ancients had seen in that distant cluster of stars?”

When Matt’s hand hit the pool’s end, he turned automatically, picturing an ancient Greek statue at St. Peter’s in Rome of the same subject, only it had been a man and his two sons who found themselves in the giant serpent’s toils. The Trojan priest Laocoön had suspected the Greeks’ giant horse might conceal soldiers, but the gods who favored the Greeks, Poseidon and Athena, sent two giant serpents to kill Laocoön and his sons before they could warn the Trojans.

Laocoön had always warned them to “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Matt was willing to bet that no Greek warrior hidden in the Trojan horse was bearing a razor.

*   *   *

Kitty the Cutter was always waiting for him at their Goliath Hotel rendezvous. He was stuck signing off the air at WCOO and could never get to the room before her, never sit in the catbird seat.

And she always had her straight razor cocked open in plain sight. It was almost like a pet with her.

“You’re looking a bit harried,” she had greeted him earlier this morning, stirring her room service cocktail with her pinkie finger and then sucking it with an X-rated movie flourish.

Matt had never seen an X-rated movie, and now he didn’t have to. Kathleen O’Connor had obviously frozen in the teenage Lolita stage years ago. Serial killers liked to torture their victims for sexual satisfaction. Kitty had substituted the adolescent tease to the murderous mix, but with her the payoff wasn’t sex—it was control.

She lounged on the beaded brocade bedspread like a road show Cleopatra clutching her queenship and her ever-present poisonous asp.

He sank into his accustomed chair across from the bed. He’d booked the room for two weeks after she reserved it in his name the first night they’d met here. He hoped his self-imposed deadline would prove correct. Whether it would or not depended on his ability to “reach” her and release the self-loathing that made her so dangerous.

“Extra hours at work,” he told her, “takes a toll. You must have noticed that too.”

“You must be running short of excuses back at the Circle Ritz.”

Matt celebrated a little victory. He’d warned her any specific mention of Temple would terminate this charade. She’d conceded enough to come up with a code phrase for her.

“Not really. This is just an extension of my radio advice work, only more in-depth.”

“And in person.”

Matt nodded. “Although I’m just a stand-in for Max Kinsella.”

That had her squirming on the bed, and not in a sexy way. She tossed her head back with an angry swallow of liquor.

“You know he’s back,” Matt said.

“Of course. And still an elusive bastard.”

“Really elusive this time. You know his memory is shot,” Matt added.

“Poor boy hit his head in a very bad fall.” She eyed him slyly. “Just like the poor call girl who met with you here before. Only she died. Much good you did her. Jumped down to the casino’s glass ceiling far, far below.”

“Or was pushed.”

“Are you confessing, Father?”

“I rather hoped you would.” He watched her. She wasn’t mad, with no grasp on reality, he was convinced, just very damaged. “Tell me about your relationship with Max Kinsella.”

“You priests like all the filthy details in the dark of the confessional.”

“Those dark confessionals are passé, Kathleen. And, from what I’ve heard, you were a lot less dark then. Wasn’t it a romp with the two naïve American boys lighting up dreary Belfast with high spirits and healthy but innocent hormones?”

“Oh, quite the engaging lads, they were,” she said between her teeth, her Irish accent strengthening. “Still blushed at first kiss, but that didn’t stop them from wanting one thing. You all do.”

“Boys, you mean. Men, you mean. That’s nature. I went against nature for a long time, but it didn’t work, because it was out of cowardice, not conviction. Not for the reason I thought it was.”