The Vampire was embarrassingly loud about its arrival, and Matt knew his usual relief in switching it off.
The neon sign still burned its pink-and-blue image into the night, a real standout here where the only lights were sodium-iodide street lamps that poured watery Mercurochrome shadows down on everything.
Matt studied the cars as he walked to the Blue Dahlia's entrance, wondering what Molina drove when she wasn't ensconced in a department Crown Victoria. Impossible to tell, although Temple would have made a game of guessing the car, and probably would have guessed right by now.
But this wasn't Temple's affair; it was his.
He opened the door and glimpsed the smoky dining room beyond.
The trio itself was smoking, running a hot riff out for a trial ride and then reeling that buggy back on home. Maybe . . . she wasn't on tonight. It had been a risk, a gamble, an impulse, everything Matt had never relied on.
"Table for one, sir?"
The hostess's long black crepe gown reminded him of an old Susan Hayward film. His nod rewarded him with a seat in the back where he could watch, unnoticed, the figure perched on the stool onstage.
He ordered a Coke and asked the waitress how long the set would last.
"Almost over. Sorry, sir."
"No problem. I want to see Carmen afterward. Could you let her know?"
She eyed him like he was suddenly suspect. "You have a card?"
Matt paused in digging out the ConTact-house card with his name handwritten at the top.
Instead he withdrew one of his laminated sketches of Cliff Effinger.
The waitress raised an eyebrow. "I'll see she gets it when she comes off."
The waitress thought he was weird, probably, but then the whole place was weird, a kind of time machine. The trio picked up the melody and then Molina --Carmen--joined in, her voice dream-dusky. He didn't know the song, but the words were sedately old-fashioned and the melody was deceptively sophisticated.
He felt he should be wearing a fedora and nursing a gin fizz. "Of all the gin joints in Las Vegas . . . ," that kind of thing. Matt leaned his head against the wall until all he could see were the shuttered black backs of the spotlights, and then he just listened.
The song had ended and the music had ebbed and died before he snapped out of his reverie. The Blue Dahlia was empty except for a couple lingering over their after-dinner coffees.
The hostess came around the corner to his table.
"You can go backstage now." She gestured to his half-full glass. "That's on the house; you can bring it with you."
Matt scooped it up as expected and followed her around the front again, and down a narrow hall. The restaurant's tortuous innards reminded him of a labyrinth; it must be almost as old as the era it evoked.
The hostess paused at a door and knocked. "Come on in, the water's fine, and the whiskey isn't too bad, either," a voice Matt didn't recognize called.
But the woman who waited inside, sitting at a Goodwill dressing table with delusions of Sunset Boulevard, was indeed C. R. Molina.
She spun on the bench, having just removed the trademark blue silk dahlia from her hair.
"You're a cheap date," she said, nodding at the Coke in his hand.
He noticed a plain glass, half-full of amber liquid, on the blue mirror-topped dressing table.
Perhaps the whiskey of her greeting. He backed onto some sort of chest and sat.
She nodded to something on the dressing table surface. "I like to wind down after a gig, but apparently you had other ideas. How'd you know I'd be here?"
"I didn't."
Her eyes met his, showing some surprise. "Took a chance, did you, Father Matt?"
"Not a very big one, Carmen."
Gone were Lieutenant Molina and Mr. Devine. Matt realized they had somehow fallen into a double-decker relationship, because of what their guarded, often-invisible personal lives had in common. A religion, an ethic, a burden.
"I almost feel I should smoke in this room," she said, eyeing the small space nostalgically.
"It would be bad for your health and your voice." He hesitated. "You would need a long enameled cigarette holder, of course."
"Of course." She smiled, then picked up the object on her dressing table.
Effinger's sketched likeness.
"How did you like Janice?" she asked.
"Janice? Oh, the artist. Fine. She was great at digging out all the little details." Matt felt an unfortunate flush coming on. He felt guilty, as if he sat before Mother Superior after having been caught writing mush notes to a fourth-grade girl.
"She's quite a psychologist, in her way. Well, this is a thoroughly unsavory character. Can I have a copy?"
"Sure. I should have thought of that." Matt leaned forward on the chest. "Actually, I'd like a copy of his rap sheet, or a description, if a copy is not allowed."
"Oh, Matt." Molina shook her dark head. "The police department is as riddled with bureaucracy as the church. I can sum up; I can't hand over. But you're used to limitations, are n't you."
"Maybe, and maybe not enough used to getting around them. I bet you are."
She looked at her watch, a slim band with a vintage look. "Look, I've got to get back to Mariah and let the sitter go." She sighed and picked up the blue silk flower. Her eyes met his in the big round mirror, and the indirectness of the look was oddly exciting.
"Want to follow me home? We can discuss this in more natural circumstances."
He stood. "I've ... I've got a motorcycle."
"A motorcycle, you?" Her eyes, which exactly matched the silk dahlia, widened. "You've got Max Kinsella's motorcycle."
He nodded. "Electra lends it to me. It's hers now."
"Bullshit! It was Kinsella's and I bet he'll have it again. He wouldn't let go of anythi ng that belonged to him."
Matt didn't argue.
"He know you're riding around town on it?"
"I don't know."
"I do. He doesn't miss much. Neither do I. So. You've got a motorcycle. I imagine it can roll right into Our Lady of Guadalupe's neighborhood."
"Not very quietly."
"It's not a very quiet neighborhood."
Molina approached, making him wonder why, then lifted the Coke glass from his hand and put it on the dressing table.
"Wait up front by the hostess station. I'll be out in a wink."
Matt doubted that, given the complicated cut of her vintage velvet gown, but he could wait patiently. That was the first thing he had learned in seminary.
"You're a friend of Carmen's," the hostess stated when he took up a post on one of the waiting benches.
"More like a business associate."
"What business are you in?"
"Counseling."
She nodded, tucking stray hairs into her blond French twist as she closed down the cash register for the night.
Not even Muzak drifted through the restaurant, just the distant clink of dishes being done.
For a moment, the place felt like a happy home after a big holiday dinner.
"That's the neatest thing about this job," the hostess commented.
"What?"
"Hearing the music from in there. Carmen sings like, I don't know, like something else."
"She has a lovely voice." He hated stilted comments, and most of all when they came from him.
"Thank you."
Molina was there, a garment bag draped over one crooked elbow, a knit headband holding back her short bob, in flat-heeled shoes, dark slacks and a sweater. Carmen had dissolved like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
Matt found himself on the brink of stammering with surprise. This was a halfway Molina he didn't know, and didn't know how to relate to. She looked normal almost, almost. . . casual.
He followed her out into the lot, the Vampire a diamond solitaire shining against the empty black asphalt. Molina went right to it, her car keys jingling like a winning slot machine in her hand.
She stood staring at the motorcycle, fists on hips, as if challenging it to a silent duel.