"Krys?"
"Those clothes! So short and dark and strange. Purple nails and mouth. And those awful earrings, if you can call them that. She looks as if a porcupine had thrown its quills at her. Wearing a cross, of all things."
"All the young girls wear that stuff. And worse."
"Not in my day. I don't understand why you encourage it."
"I don't encourage it. I tolerate it. There's a difference."
"You tolerate too much."
"Are we still talking about Krys, or about something else?"
His mother sighed. Sighs were potent maternal weapons, mute accusations of offspring misbehavior.
"The girl obviously has a crush on you, and you seem to encourage it. You may have left the priesthood, but it's still scandalizing. To the others, I mean.
"Mom, girls got crushes on me when I was in the priesthood. It goes with the territory. Only now I know how to handle it. I used to take it too seriously, like you do. Most teenage girls develop crushes on older unattainable men. To Krys, I'm still pretty unattainable. I used to blame the phenomenon on my looks, but this time I realized that something more serious and less shallow was going on. Krys wants to be an artist; she wants to do something different from the rest of her family, maybe go to college out of town. Heresy for a Belofsky. She is desperately seeking a role model, someone in the family who did something different, and then I showed up, the prodigal ex-priest. Maybe a crush on me far away in Las Vegas will keep her safe from the all-too-attainable guys who can short-circuit her plans to become somebody."
"There are lots of women she could use as a role model."
"In the family? Who?"
"I work."
"At something you love?"
"I work for money, not love. I always have. Even that was looked down on, that I wasn't home all the time. For you."
"Who was to look down on you? Your family? If you hadn't worked, we wouldn't have eaten. Not with Cliff spending all his money on gambling."
Bars of light from the overhead lamps rhythmically rolled up the hood and across the windshield, bathing them in fleeting stripes of light. In one of those rolling lightning slices, Matt saw his mother's expression. Bitter.
By criticizing Krys's blithe immaturity, she castigated herself by proxy. She'd been Krys's age when she'd become pregnant. She'd had one crush, a lightning strike that had been both quick and fatal to those involved.
"I used to draw," she said finally. "In school. I won some prizes."
Matt realized then that he had pasted her bitter expression on his own preconceptions. Krys's burgeoning sexuality didn't bother his mother as much as the younger woman's possibilities, her independence, her choice.
"Sounds like artistic talent runs in the family," Matt said casually. Except for me. I just doodle when I'm on the phone."
"A man in Cincinnati is famous for his doodles. Makes good money for them."
"No, that's not going to be my line, I'm afraid. You'll have to take it up again if you want an artist in the family."
"Do you... really 'blame' things on your looks?"
"Why?"
"I did too."
Matt was silent, navigating the narrow and rutted alley that ran behind his mother's house, passing wooden garages with double sets of sagging single doors that looked exactly like hers, looking for a landmark that would say they had arrived.
He finally spotted the bare snowball bush by the garbage can and turned into the short driveway. The headlights dramatized a blank pale yellow canvas of peeling paint.
Matt got out to pull the door open. Snowflakes falling again danced in the headlights. Like celestial dandruff, it punctuated his coat sleeves with dozens of white periods.
For the next few minutes they emptied the car of presents and leftovers, then navigated the foot-wide path through two feet of piled snow to the back door.
Inside, the house was dark and silent, except for the occasional ping of a radiator. Then the glaring kitchen light snapped on, and by the time the food was put away, the idea of making or consuming anything else had died.
"You know," Matt said as they moved into the living room, his mother going ahead to turn lights on, he following to turn them off behind them, "I've never seen any photos of you when you were young."
"There aren't many." She paused to jerk on the front doorknob to make sure the door was locked, then headed for the back hall to the bedrooms.
"But there are some."
She looked back over one shoulder, the earrings he had given her glistening like her eye whites. The overhead hall light made her face a black-and-white patchwork of planes and angles.
"Some. I can look them up in the morning, if you like."
He nodded and followed her down the hall.
Chapter 34
Back to Base Camp
By Thursday, the day after Christmas, Temple had developed a battle plan.
It was based on hidden suspicions, deception and treachery, but it fit the situation pretty well.
First, she called Colby, Janos and Renaldi and got Kendall on the phone.
"Temple! I'm so glad you called." Kendall sounded feverish.
"There was such a blowup after you left before Christmas. The partners were going at it hammer and tong. They were even throwing their awards at each other.
"But I have a new theory. This is a second-generation scheme. It's Carl. Carlo. My rat ex-husband. He needs money. Daddy hasn't got it. Or ... is that my daddy? No! I'm getting confused. It's so awful here. Everybody hates everybody else. I guess they always did. Can you come over, Temple? It's a real dogfight."
Tempe was not surprised.
Kit watched her bundle up with suspicion, especially when Temple hitched on Louie and his CatAboard with the grim intent of an Old West gunslinger tying Oil the double holster of Colt revolvers.
"Temple, first you go to the library, which almost no one in New York does at Christmastime, except kids, and now you're going back to the weird advertising agency on Madison Avenue. I feel terrible that I've got an appointment and can't go with you. Do you need my Mace spray?"
"I need a flak jacket, Kit. Or maybe that should be 'flack' jacket, since I am one. But I have finally seen the light, and it isn't pretty."
"Temple." Kit hurled herself again the front door, like a protester. "Is this about poor Rudy?"
"It was never about poor Rudy. It was about rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief."
"You need backup," Kit said, squinting without her glasses.
"I have Midnight Louie."
"He's no protection."
"His absence is, for your computer. With you gone, and me gone, think what he might get up to."
"I can't be sure the little devil deleted half of my new novel. Thank God I have a backup on diskette."
"You can't be sure he didn't. Besides, the Shadow knows."
"The Shadow. He's black all right, but what can a cat know?"
"What the nose God gave him can smell. You can call Lieutenant Hansen, if you want."
"I'll call the paramedics--for myself!--if you keep me in the dark like this."
"I don't think anyone's dangerous any more, Kit. Rudy's death was a . . . flashback. The whole thing's falling apart anyway. I just want to be there when a very sad person learns the bitter truth."
"Cut the cliches, okay? Truth is always bitter. Listen. Rudy wouldn't want anyone else hurt, honest. Don't take this further than Rudy would."
"Kit." Temple encased her aunt's hands in her nylon-and-down mittens. "Rudy wouldn't be dead if he had been willing to take this as far as it would go. He died because he really didn't mean any harm. And that's such a dangerous position to take, with the guilty."
Kit put her head in her hands. "What will I tell your mother if anything horrible happens?"