Cat In A Leopard Spot

The six nuns chatted happily as they all walked to the nearby church in the warm afternoon sun. Las Vegas didn’t offer the tree-shaded streets of the Midwest, but the climate’s sun-scoured, healthy openness was always an upper. Our Lady of Guadalupe’s spire, capped with red tile, simmered in the last blaze of undiluted afternoon sunlight.

The nuns’ short black veils seemed more like linen mantillas than a last vestige of more formal habits. Matt almost felt himself transported back to the heyday of California’s Hispanic-Catholic culture. Young and middle-aged people were also converging on the old-fashioned adobe church. Their half-Latino, half-Anglo greetings and banter gave the forthcoming ritual a preface of celebration.

Matt could literally feel and see a community assembling, and for a moment he was homesick for his past at the center of so much goodwill.

But when his party passed into the shade inside the church and dipped their fingertips in the tepid holy water of the entrance fonts, when the sign of the cross replaced chatter and the only sounds in the interior stillness were the scrape of soles on floor tile and the thump of kneelers being lowered to the floor, he felt he was back a hundred years, or maybe only thirty, and about to hear a Latin mass.

Illusion, of course. The nuns led the way to a pew near the front and bracketed him in their midst. He managed to study the confessionals as they entered.

Darn! They were on both sides of the church. He’d forgotten to tell Molina which side to meet at.

The choice was simple: on one side St. Joseph ruled at the tiny side altar. On the other, Mary. There was an assignment for the amateur operative: which would Molina choose?

It was bad enough to arrange to slink into one of the unused little rooms; playing musical confessional would attract certain attention.

He glanced around as the congregation stood for the entrance of the celebrant and two altar boys…one altar boy and one altar girl, what do you know? Molina was about as tall as he was, and he didn’t spot her anywhere in this traditionally short crowd.

So even as the familiar prayers and responses of the mass settled on him like a warm, familiar blanket of sound and motion, Matt found himself fidgeting, fretting. Turning slightly to check out the pews. Studying the confessionals: three doors with a tiny arched window covered with pleated white linen.

At communion time, he was so distracted that he was mostly thinking about how he’d have such a good view of both confessionals on the way back to his seat. Then was the time to spot Molina, or make a choice. And he should also be on the lookout for Miss Kitty. It’d be just like her to show up where least expected. Imagine sliding behind one wooden door and finding her in the confessor’s seat!

Worry, Matt realized, was a great distraction from prayer, so he settled down and asked God to help him find the right confessional, please.

Not a very noble request, but all he could muster.

Someone tugged at his sleeve. He had stood automatically with everyone else for Father Hernandez’s exit. “We’ll see you back at the convent later,” Sister Seraphina whispered.

Matt nodded, kneeling again quickly and burying his face in his hands as if in private prayer. Why had he decided to go with the nuns? They had chosen a pew far too close to the altar. There was no way to turn around discreetly to figure out if everyone had left, or Molina had arrived. If she would come. Maybe something had come up, an emergency.

The church was still and growing dark except for the eternal red light near the altar, signifying the presence of the Eucharist. Maybe this meeting mocked the place and its purpose. What had he been thinking of? Desperately consulting Molina, that’s what. Kinsella was not much help. Matt needed comfort as well as aid, and Molina was the only person besides Kinsella he figured was strong enough to go near and not risk her life.

So she might aid him. Comfort? That was a foolish, reflexive need. Nobody got comfort anymore, except the dying in a hospice.

He sat on the pew and bent to lift the kneeler out of the way. The sound of it resting against the pew back ahead echoed like a single knock on a big wooden door.

Matt stood, tossed a mental coin, and opted for St. Joseph. A lot of women reared Catholic had overdosed on the Virgin Mary by age twenty. Molina would choose Joseph, because he was a missing person as far as the Scriptures went. He was a mystery and she was a cop.

Matt opened the nearest confessional door and slid in, checking the church. Utterly vacant, except for the Eucharist.

He had forgotten how dark these old confessionals were, although St. Stanislaus in Chicago had kept sinners lined up for confessionals long after the ritual, renamed and repositioned as the sacrament of reconciliation and practiced face-to-face in well-lit rooms, had become commonplace.