''Sounds weird enough to dazzle even Las Vegans."
"You should see the set they're gonna do! Danny Dove was showing me the plans just before I made like Jill-up-a-hill. So spectacularly garish--that isn't easy to achieve in this town."
"And here you were worried because your arch-rival Crawford Buchanan was show chairman. Sounds like it turned out okay."
"Okay ... as long as I don't see much of Crawford. And as long as he doesn't mess with my production number. Oh, and they persuaded Johnny Diamond to sing my Las Vegas Follies medley; he is such a powerhouse! Listen, can you go to the Gridiron? I mean, with me?"
"My investigations have reached a dead end, so I suppose I can get the night off if I ask in advance." Matt paused to pick up a section of the Las Vegas Sun. "Sure. Will Lieutenant Molina be doing a solo too?"
Temple's good mood plummeted. "Only around the Crystal Phoenix crime scene."
She leaned forward to adjust the towel on her ankle. Matt leaped up to help, ruining her attempt to buy time while she decided whether or not to tell him something personal.
Before Temple could lean back, he had stuffed a couple of supporting pillows behind her.
Solicitation made her nervous. Anything that made her feel helpless did.
"One thing my tumble taught me," she began.
He waited, unaware that this was not what she was going to say originally.
"I think I'm less afraid of being hurt. Not that I'm getting masochistic, but since I've been attempting martial arts, I see myself as less fragile. I know I can get hurt and that I'll heal."
"That's good. If you feel durable, you'll act that way. When it shows, people are less liable to mess with you. And if they do, you're more resilient. That's the trouble with our sexist society: women are so afraid of getting hurt that they let their lives be scribed by that fear."
"Men don't?"
''Maybe men don't let on. That's what we're supposed to learn in team sports: how to get hurt. . . and go on . . . and not let on. Men fear getting hurt in other, less tangible ways."
Temple nodded. ''So do women. Your stepfather's murder--"
Matt kept still, even when Midnight Louie leaped atop the newspapers covering half of the huge ottoman. After some comfy pawing and paper-crackling, his big black paws tucked into each other. Temple was reminded of a mandarin innocently slipping his long-nailed hands inside his robe sleeves for warmth and security. Now Midnight Louie was listening, too. Temple hated broaching a mutual sore spot in public, but she had to do it.
"Molina's on the case now."
"I thought you said it was some other homicide lieutenant."
"It was. It is. But Molina's got an open file that ties into the Effinger death. That file just happens to involve Max's disappearance."
Matt's listening posture stiffened. In a way. Temple was glad that mention of Max Kinsella made him as nervous as talk of his late and definitely unlamented stepfather. Maybe it substantiated his innocence.
Temple finally plunged in where Molina would never fear to tread.
"A man was found dead above the Goliath Hotel gaming area the same night that Max disappeared. The corpse, which was never identified, was wedged into a cubby-hole fashioned from the air-conditioning duct. Molina figures an ace magician would be a natural to set up that spy-hole."
"Why?"
"Who knows? Not me. Not Molina. But, coupling the man's sudden death with Max going AWOL that night, Molina is convinced that something was rotten at the Goliath . . . besides the body odor in the air-conditioning duct.''
"Do you think Max is capable of shady dealing . . . even of murder?"
"No. But I didn't know then what I know now."
''What?" His eyes met hers for the first time since she'd brought up his stepfather's death.
Temple squirmed on the sofa. At least Matt stayed put now, instead of jumping up at her every move.
She bit her lip. ''Molina found an old record on Max. Nothing much, an Interpol file. Max was still a teenager then, but he was suspected of IRA involvement."
"Figures," Matt said promptly. "Kinsella's an Irish name. Tons of Roman Catholics are Irish, and more than a few succumb to backing the IRA."
"Don't you think I'd know if I were living with an international terrorist?"
"Don't get agitated; you'll hurt your foot."
"Forget my foot! Just figure the likelihood that Max was some sort of undercover agent."
"Didn't he travel a lot?"
"Magicians do. They have to go places to perform."
"Out of the country?"
"What are you? Junior detective?" The ache was no longer just in Temple's ankle. "Sure, out of the country, and all over it."
"I can see Molina's point." Matt looked annoying calm. "He traveled, and I assume he was clever at deceiving people?" Temple nodded glumly. "Physically fit?" She nodded again. "Molina is not incompetent, however much you'd wish her assumptions were wrong."
"You're right. See! I don't wish everybody to be wrong. The point is, with your stepfather dead, killed in that place and particular way, I don't know what to think about the first death anymore. I even wonder if this second killing means that Max is . . . back. But then that makes him a murderer, and I won't believe that I lived with a murderer."
Matt kept silent, pleating a corner of the newspaper he'd held since the conversation had taken this turn.
''You don't believe that you loved a murderer," he finally corrected her in a subdued voice.
'*We can love terrible people, Temple, even people who behave terribly to us."
''Your stepfather?" she suggested quickly.
He shook his head. "He was too cruel, too alien. And he hurt my mother, too. But she . . . put up with it. She saw no other answer. Her family, the church, the way society thought about abusive men then certainly encouraged her to play the martyr, even to relish the role. His violence became her secret crown of thorns. She would win honor in heaven by forgiving it, and him, by enduring it, and him, by being the perfect doormat. She became his silent partner. I knew, even when I was still pretty young that she had sold us out, but I loved her anyway, though I didn't understand."
"You're saying that if you ever at any time had a decent relationship with someone, you have a big stake in believing that they didn't use you, didn't abuse you. You become a little blind."
He nodded, then tossed the mangled newspaper aside.
"Why should you listen to me? Why should anyone listen to me? I've figured out my own case down to the finest point. I've sat with counselors and shrinks and worried my own past to shreds, until I thought I had turned into cerebral stone. 'The Thinker' as boat anchor. I've learned exactly why I became what I became, am what I am now. I just don't know how to change it."
"Maybe it's too soon," Temple pointed out. "Does your underlying motive mean you fear relationships because they were so painful to you? Are you afraid to be disappointed, to be hurt?"
Matt shook his head. "That would be simpler. I suppose there's an element of that; there always is. But my monster wears its hide inside out. I'm not really afraid of being hurt; I'm afraid of hurting."
Temple sat up, away from the comforting pillows. She looked at Matt as if she had never seen him before. She had never felt the need to look at Max Kinsella that way. Perhaps she should have.
"You think . . . you would have killed Cliff Effinger, if you had found him before someone else did?"
Matt regarded the floor. Louie, moved by some mysterious feline impulse, merowed impatiently and twitched his tail, as if urging Matt to 'fess up.
Matt looked up with dead-serious eyes. "I would have hurt him, Temple, if I could have. I don't know if I could have stopped myself."
"What if he was still bigger, and meaner? He could have hurt you, killed you, had you entangled again."