Matt just strolled in, checked to see that Ambrosia's far table was empty, and made for it without much looking around.

He sensed no hostility, just curiosity. Curiosity only killed cats, and the last time Matt had looked he'd had no fur or a tail.

He sat down and, when the dreadlocked bar girl came by about seven minutes later, ordered a beer and a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary for Ambrosia.

The drinks arrived much faster than the server had, and the regally red b.l.o.o.d.y Mary seemed to make a good stand-in for Ambrosia. The chatter and buzz in the place returned to its customary pitch, while Matt waited for the absent queen of the airwaves.

Ambrosia rolled in like coastal fog fifteen minutes later, swift and casting a giant shadow.

Matt watched her approach, never having seen her at a distance before, but only in the claustrophobic halls and cubby-hole offices and studios of the radio station where they worked.

She walked with the little cat feet of Carl Sandburg's metaphoric fog, lithe and sure despite her three hundred pounds. Her bright knit tunic and pants rippled like tribal ceremonial robes. She was a lot younger and heavier and darker, but reminded him of the late sculptor Louise Nevelson, who had dressed like a living totem to some indeterminately ancient ethnic culture and who thereby went beyond that to utter individuality.

For the first time since he had awakened that morning, Matt felt a thread of hope pulling his leaden spirit upward.

Leticia Brown, aka Ambrosia on the radio, spied the b.l.o.o.d.y Mary before she did him, and beamed.

"Is that stalk of vodka-soaked celery for me, or are you just happy to see me?" she quipped in Mae West's deep breathy tones.

"All yours."

She eyed the long-neck in front of him as she sat. "Men and beer. It's some tribal thing."

"It says we're hoping to stay sober, for the air in my case."

"Son, you got miles to go before Mr. Mike makes you sit up and pay attention."

"I know. I thought I'd tag along for your stint."

"I enjoy a live audience as much as the next radio voice, but Matt, honey, you got five hours to kill after we get there."

"I know. I'd like to kill a lot more hours." When she only sipped her drink in answer, he added. "I'd like to kill all of last night, rewind it, and erase it, only that last verb is grimly apt."

"Last night! That's right! Did you do the dirty deed?"

Ambrosia sipped the b.l.o.o.d.y Mary through a straw, her perfectly made-up face puckered into the innocent insouciance of a fifties teen at a soda fountain.

"Did I do the dirty deed? Lieutenant Molina seems to think I did."

"Lieutenant? We talking poe-lice here?"

Matt nodded. "Everything went horribly wrong."

"When doesn't it, baby?"

He could only huff out a half-laugh and sip his beer. It tasted flat already, but he guessed that everything would for a long time.

"Let's go back to square one," Ambrosia declared. She was definite about everything, and that was what Matt needed now.

He nodded permission for her to direct this off-mike session of theirs. She wiggled a little as she settled into the wooden captain's chair.

"So you did what we decided was the only way out. If a stalker wants your cherry, you give him-her, in your case-used goods. Used goods. Virginity. That whole notion is such retro-think! You read about that poor girl in Pakistan, where her eleven-year-old brother violated some tribal rule by walking with a girl from another neighborhood, and the dudes in the tribunal decided the only way to make it right was to gang-rape the little boy's teenage sister, and they did it personally while hundreds of villagers stood outside and laughed? That is so not-human. I do not want to share the planet with such sc.u.m. Bunch of dirty old men panting after some young girl and coming up with fairy tales about 'honor' to make it happen. Sometimes I hate men. Just the gender. Every last one. I do. Tell me why I shouldn't."

"It's a woman who's hounding me."

"Un-natch-u-ral woman. That's who she is. Acting like a man. Like she needs to own people. I'm sorry, Matt. Sometimes I get so mad. You're not like that sc.u.m."

"I suppose any of us could be like them. If we didn't have the capacity for evil, being and doing good wouldn't be worth as much."

"Don't give me that theology. I don't want to see any evil in the world. No devils. And that witchy woman stalking you is a devil. Riding in on her motorcycle, s.n.a.t.c.hing the necklace right off my neck and waving it around like a scalp before she roared off . . . one unnatural woman. And she don't even come from some crazy primitive land, you say."

"Only Ireland, and that is a crazy, primitive land in its own way."

Ambrosia nodded, and directed the last part of it at the waiter. Her b.l.o.o.d.y Mary was a thin, watery pink in the bottom of the tall gla.s.s.

She sighed. "Ireland and Israel. Strange, besieged lands. You'd like to like those feisty people, much sinned against, but sometimes they're so stubborn you could strangle them. We were sinned against," she added contemplatively, the first time Matt had ever heard her refer to her race, "but we danced and sang and marched our way out of it, as much as we ever could."

"I can't know about that, not really."

"N000, you can't. And I can't really know about that poor Pakistani girl, much as I came close to her experience."

Matt nodded, acknowledging what she had confided to him during a previous session at Buff Daddy's, her childhood s.e.xual abuse.

There she was on the radio, a disembodied voice that was mother confessor to anybody who chanced to call in.

In person she still hid behind a wall of flesh, flaunting what was pretty about herself, but keeping it to herself.

"So what happened last night that was so bad?" she was asking softly now, the pacifier of a fresh b.l.o.o.d.y Mary sitting before her again. "Just losing it? The virginity thing? I'd like to know, since I've never misplaced mine yet."

"Me neither," Matt admitted, as he had not yet told anyone else.

The perfectly plucked and groomed eyebrows lifted without wrinkling her smooth, brown forehead. "You neither? How's that possible?"

"I got to talking to her. The call girl. I'd been a.s.sured she was a perfect pro, that there was no way I could take advantage of her. Turns out, she couldn't take advantage of me either."

"She wouldn't play?"

"Not so much that. It's when we got talking ... you know what happens with that. You connect, whether it's over the airwaves or face-to-face. She wasn't as 'professional' as advertised. She had, as they say, issues. I had issues. So . . . nothing happened."

"All that angst and nothing happened? I am disappointed, my boy. I may be sympathetic, but I like a good gossip as much as the next person. So that leaves you witch-bait. Still. I say you should have checked your conscience at the front desk and gone for it."

"Maybe. But then I'd have a better motive for her death. Maybe."

"Death? Whose death? I hope that motorcycle mama."

Matt shook his head. "She was there only in spirit. Everything was between me and this woman, Va.s.sar. I left thinking it was all right. I left her the money. She understood why I couldn't sleep with her. Weird expression. It's about anything but sleep, as far as I can tell. Anyway, she didn't take my walking out on her as personal. In fact, I think she was beginning to examine some personal issues. I considered that a positive step. Maybe I was wrong."

"You jilted a ho' and hoped that she was reconsidering her lifestyle? I have heard of unreformed do-gooders, but that beats all."

"Yeah, I'm a compulsive do-gooder, all right. Anyway, sometime after I left at three in the morning, I don't know when, Va.s.sar slipped, jumped, fell, or was pushed off the twenty-fourth-floor tier of the Goliath Hotel and fell all the way to the third-floor neon ceiling. The impact killed her."

"Holy smoke, child. You saying you're not only still a virgin, but you're a murder suspect too? That witch-woman on the bike is a double whammy, that's for sure. I'd like to send her over to Pakistan."

For a split second he actually relished considering it. "No. We don't want to do that."

"Speak for yourself, John, such as you are."

Chapter 13.

. . . Maxed Out It turns out that we turn up a not very interesting menagerie of bored and thus talkative pets on the twentieth floor of the Goliath Hotel. You would think it was the Noah Hotel and we were the head-counters for the Ark.

I make it one snapping turtle, two trilling lovebirds, three twitching bunnies, four porky pigs, and a python in an air duct, five gnawing ferrets, six yapping lapdogs, seven afghan hounds, eight cooing c.o.c.katiels, nine hamsters running, ten gerbils a-gyrating, eleven iguanas leaping, and twelve pampered pussums.

Unfortunately, none of them have anything significant to say, so Louise and I pad out through the kitchen again, snagging an errant shrimp and a fallen-by-the-wayside gourmet turkey burger on the way out.

We pause for a snack behind the hotel's rear Dumpster, which is camouflaged as a mini-ark in keeping with the Goliath's biblical theme.

"I must compliment you on your restraint today, Miss Louise," I say after disposing of the shrimp. I have a weakness for seafood, so I leave the turkey burger, unnatural hybrid that it is, to her. She can take it. She is a modern girl.

"How so?" she asks, patting daintily at her whiskers.

'We encountered a lot of tasty tidbits on the hoof, paw, and belly up there. I imagine during your life on the open road you must have had to dine on their cousins frequently."

'What I dine on when or where is none of your business. Certainly now that I have a personal chef I do not need to rustle up my own foodstuffs."

"So Chef Song at the Crystal Phoenix hotel is still laying down the rice bowls for you in return for his precious koi going unmolested in the hotel pond, is he?"

"Why should you care? I have never cared for carp. By any other name, and price, koi are still carp. And it is obvious that you have converted completely to health food. I saw the bowlful of Free-to-be-Feline on Miss Temple's kitchen floor myself. It is amazing that you do not lose weight on such a macrobiotic diet, but perhaps your metabolism has slowed down with age."

I am speechless. The little twit can load a couple sentences with more insults than Don Rickles can pack into a Milton Berle roast.

"Then you had better hasten back to your gourmet Asian cuisine at the Phoenix," I say finally. "I need to check on Miss Temple."

We agree to part ways and I hoof it back home, meditating on that full bowl of Free-to-be-Feline Miss Louise spotted. It is always full because I do not eat that disgusting health food, which is probably composed of compressed seaweed and sawdust. Certainly the army-green color would not appeal to anything other than a buck private and I have never considered military life.

Back at the Circle Ritz, I let myself in through the trusty French doors on the patio, having vented my temper with Miss Louise, tooth and nail, in climbing the palm tree that so conveniently shades the building.

My dear roommate is in residence at the moment, and greets me with happy little cries. I respond with unhappybig cries, and am rewarded when she opens a can of baby oysters and shuffles them over the Free-to-be-Feline in a succulent chorus line as an encouragement.

I wolf them down. Several hours in Miss Louise's company is very draining.

"Now do not eat just the oysters, Louie," Miss Temple advises me fondly. "The part that is really good for you is underneath."

That is always what they tell you and you cannot believe a word of it, whoever they are or however well-meaning they are! I am a great believer that the "good stuff" is usually right on top and easy as pie to reach for those who would take it. Observe the case of Adam and Eve, though that turned out badly, but that is only because it was an object lesson. The lesson is that you must be surrept.i.tious in pursuing the objects of your desire. Do not just reach for them and grab them right out of the Crystal Phoenix koi pond in broad daylight.

So I manage to move a few unappetizing pellets around with my nose in such a manner that my movements could be mistaken for actually eating the things. I see that I must export a few to the wastebasket by dark of night. If I do not disturb the underlayment in my bowl, Miss Temple can on occasion get as stubborn as a Yorkshire terrier and hold back on the toppings.

After my bit of domestic undercover work, I hop up on the sofa arm to smooth my whiskers and bib.

A rat-a-tat of fingernails on the gla.s.s panes inset into the French doors alerts both me and my lovely roomie. I manage an under-my-breath growl as Miss Temple rushes to admit Mr. Max Kinsella.

When it comes to Mr. Max Kinsella, there are times when I regret that we are rivals for my Miss Temple's affections. He has much to recommend him.

I heartily approve of Mr. Max's second-story skills, his surrept.i.tious ways, his magical arts, his limber physical condition, his penchant for wearing black and only black, his skill at keeping his lips zipped, and his impeccably effective way around the female of his species. In fact, he is a lot like me in many ways, as anyone could plainly see.

That may be why my hackles rise when he enters the picture and my Miss Temple's domicile, even though he once shared her Circle Ritz unit as an official resident.

Things change, and I am official resident now; he is visitor.

"Missed dinner, huh?" he comments, observing my grooming ritual.

"Baby oysters over dry cat food," my personal chef says. "Scrumptious," Mr. Max comments acidly.

I flash him an agreeing glance, but not an agreeable one. "May I sit on your tuffet, Miss m.u.f.fet, or is the House Cat going to draw claws on me?"

"Louie is just a big lovable lug," Miss Temple says, speaking from her experience.

The Mystifying Max honors me with a fleeting glance. He does not believe that for an instant, and I must say I like him the better for it.

"So what brings you out in the light of day?" she asks.

'What else? Seeing you. How's the working world going?"

Miss Temple sits down on the sofa, much closer to Mr. Max than to me. In fact, she is close enough to lick his whiskers for him, if he had any.

"Good. That Crystal Phoenix job may have been all-consuming, but now that the revamped attractions are up and running, I'm getting calls to handle public relations for big events all over town."

Mr. Max runs a few pads down Miss Temple's arm. "Are you not going to miss Elvis? I hear he haunts the Haunted Mine Ride at the Phoenix."

"Where does Elvis not haunt in Las Vegas? It used to be his town, so why not? I've got a big gig this weekend. Not your style, or Louie's, but I will have fun. It is the Woman's World expo at the civic center. Miles of stuff that bores men but enthralls women. I wonder why we're so different? Do you ever?"

"Never." Mr. Max does what I cannot, no matter how hard I try. He smiles.

"So what are you working on nowadays, besides writer's block?"

"Writer's block. I love it. It sounds so intellectual. There's never such a thing as 'magician's block.' "

"Actors 'blank' onstage sometimes."

"That is momentary amnesia. Writer's block is long-term, from what I can tell. I went online and you should see the sites that spring up from those two little words. I have never had a trendy malady before. I enjoy it."

"You would. You still have not told me what you are up to."