Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

rinse all the welcome from Charles Brandon’s pink and fleshy face.
    It was too late to stop the handshake. Matt kept his grip firm but not pushy. The hand he shook went limp with the surprise the face had registered first.
    “Mr. Devine,” the man repeated, as if impressing the name on his memory. “You are the visiting family counselor on The Amanda Show. Aren’t you?”
    “Among other things, yes.” Matt studied the man, watching him juggle preconceptions.
    “Well, sit down.” Brandon bustled around the desk to install himself on the gray leather behemoth of a chair behind it. His formerly flushed skin tones now matched the ashen hide. “Ah, as I was saying, my wife loves you. I mean, she loves your, ah, point of view, I guess. You know women, always into that relationship stuff. So. What can I do for you?”
    While Matt reseated himself, reaching for the briefcase, Brandon kept talking in the way of a man who makes his living by it.
    “You must forgive my surprise. You’re not what I expected.”
    “In what way?”
    “Oh, you know. Dr. Phil. Fat and fifty. I had no idea you were such a... handsome young fellow. No wonder my wife, eh?”
    “I’ve been told I’m telegenic. That word always sounds like an exotic affliction to me.”
    Brandon chuckled, his face and manner resuming their earlier bonhomie. “Clever fellow too. How’d you get into the TV shrink game?”
    “I’m not a shrink. I was a Catholic priest for most of my adult fife.”
    “Now that surprises me. Also relieves me. Can’t have the wife too enamored of sharp young men on TV. You left, then?”
    “Officially, yes, the priesthood. One doesn’t ever leave the Church, I’m told.”
    “I’ve heard that same sentiment from Chicago’s most famous priest, Father Greeley. Wonderful man.”
    Matt felt he had now been firmly pinned to whatever part of the bulletin board Brandon reserved for such alien life forms as celibate priests, current or former.
    “What can I do for you?” Brandon repeated.
    “Not for me so much as for my mother.”
    “Your mother—”
    “She lives here. In Chicago.”
    “And you?”
    “I live in Las Vegas now.”
    “Las Vegas? Really? Quite the switch for you, I imagine.”
    “It’s mostly a city that ordinary people live in. That’s where my syndicated radio talk show originates.”
    “Syndicated. Indeed.”
    Matt hated to use his media connections but they appeared to work.
    “Would you like my girl to get you a cup of coffee or tea? Something stronger?”
    “No. Thank you. What I’d like is for you to take a look at this... document my mother signed thirty-five years ago. Your firm drew it up.”
    “An old document. Quite the mystery. Now you’ve got me curious. Let’s see it.”
    Matt lifted the briefcase, unlatched it, and brought out the three-page agreement that bore his mother’s signature.
    Brandon lowered his silver-haired head to the pages, skimmed the first page. Flipped the paper back over the staple in the upper-left-hand corner.
    “A deed transfer. Straightforward. Your mother was given title to a two-flat.” He hit the third page, where she was required to seek no more “compensation” and to make no further “contact” with the unnamed party who had transferred ownership of the two-flat to her.
    “Most... unusual.”
    Matt had watched Brandon’s face fade again to gray. He’d heard people described as “going white” with shock but he’d never actually seen the phenomenon before. It was more a grim tightening of the features than actual paling, but there was no doubt that what Brandon saw in those papers disturbed him.
    “An unusual deed transfer but quite binding, I’d think.” Brandon held the papers out to Matt, who didn’t take them.
    “It was a compensation for my birth. Child support of a sort, if you will. My mother was very young, not even eighteen, and she signed it without legal advice.”
    “Still, she signed it.”
    “But I didn’t. I’d like to know who the unnamed ‘party of the first part’ is.”
    “Impossible. The anonymity is as binding on this firm as your mother’s agreement to seek no further information was, and is, on her.”
    “I’m not her. I want to know the name of the family that made arrangements for my domestic life. I want to know my family name.”
    “You have a perfectly good, and fairly famous, one now: Devine. I advise you to be happy with it.”
    “It’s a phony name, Mr. Brandon. Do you know where my