Cat In An Orange Twist

“I’m glad you got it,” she said of the car.

“If you’re glad, I’m glad.”

“So glad we agree. Well, I’ve got to buzz over to the Bellagio for a meeting of Wong Inc.”

“Now who’s upscale?”

“It’s not me. It’s my client’s star guest, of whom I’ve seen zilch since last night. Amelia Wong is also the likeliest target of the shooting spree, if anyone specific was. It’s time I made up for that oversight. Wish me luck.”

“I probably should wish you good chi.”

He didn’t have to look so amused and so scrumptious at once. “Chi, thanks!”

Temple hopped back into her car and revved out of the lot.

If she couldn’t imagine Janice Flanders riding a motorcycle, she could sure picture the guilty pleasure of riding shotgun in a Crossfire made for two.

Chapter 16

Chi for Two

At least Temple now had a car that made parking valets’s eyes come up double cherries when she abandoned it to their tender, gaspedal-goosing-up-the-hotel-parking-ramp care.

She was hardly persona plus grata at the Bellagio, but now she strode into the elegant arena, a girl gladiator to the marbleentry-hall-manner born.

The lavish Chihuly ceiling sculpture unfolded above her like the gigantic umbrella of blown glass craftsmanship it was, a great gleaming garden of exotic blooms never seen anywhere but in Alice’s Wonderland. Here in Las Vegas it was a true Hanging Garden of Hollywood Babylon.

The Bellagio had been the first Las Vegas hotel-casino to put Art with a capital Ah on the Las Vegas menu. Now newer megahotels like the Venice and the Paris rushed to mix high art with middlebrow tourism. It worked like Gangsters funky upscale limos … available on the cheap.

Much as Temple knew Las Vegas lows and highs in any area, she was eager to see a Bellagio celebrity-level suite, in which Amelia Wong and her Jimmy Choo shoes were sure to be ensconced.

The elevator whisked Temple higher than an elephant’s eye in no time. It disgorged her on plush eggplant carpeting so deep purple and thick that it consumed her vintage Lucite heels like a Midway sword swallower.

This was “puttin’ on the Ritz” … literally!

Temple slogged through the pure-wool loop jungle to a door whose Arabic numeral had been replaced by a Chinese character in brass. Or twentyfour-karat gold. Who knew?

Temple lifted the character-cum-knocker and let trendy greedom ring.

After a full minute, the door opened. Temple was admitted to the inner sanctum.

The doorman was the tall Swedish personal trainer, today a symphony in sweat-soaked gray warm-up suit with spaghetti—

string flaxen hair dripping onto his broad shoulders.

On either side of the door stood the suit-clad bodyguards. They still wore mirror shades. Temple had the antsy feeling of

getting the once-over … at least twice.

Beyond her stretched an expansive living room with furniture Maylords had never dreamed of. The odd Renoir or Degas highlighted a distant wall. The carpeting here was ankle-deep compared to the hall.

Temple prepared to mush forward into the lap of luxury. But first a bodyguard opted to detain her signature tote bag. It wasn’t that the tote bag was designer issue. It was just that she always carried one. If a life could be portable, Temple’s resided inside that tote bag.

So when an alien hand snagged it off her shoulder as she stepped into the suite, that was a moving violation in her book.

“He!” y

“Just checking the bag. Ma’am.”

Suit-‘n’-Sunglasses Man’s voice broadcast all the warmth and mechanical monotone personality of Hal, the 2001: A Space

Odyssey computer.

Ma’am! What a fighting word! Did this clone think she was over the hill or what?

Temple tugged back.

“‘Scuse,” came a gelato-smooth voice at ten o’clock high over her struggling shoulder.

Gelato was the Italian word for “ice cream,” and the dude who intervened wore the signature ice-cream suit of a Fontana brother. Also, his mirror shades were twenty degrees more wraparound than the bodyguard’s and bore the magic insignia

“Bulgari.”

Temple and the Fontana boys went way back. Temple’s mainstay client was the Crystal Phoenix Hotel, owned by Nicky Fontana, the white sheep son of a mob family. His nine twenty-something-and-beyond brothers were an astounding look-alike litter of looks to die for, old-country first names like Aldo and Emilio, jet-set tailoring, and vague occupations. They treated her with the elaborate and fond courtesy of a pack of Italian greyhounds riding shotgun for a Yorkshire terrier.

“Fontana Inc. will examine Miss Barr’s bag,” the unidentified Fontana told the anonymous guard. “Step this way, miss.

Just pretend this is an airport security station.”

Temple couldn’t believe it. A long gilt-slathered Renaissance table sat to the right of the door, and on it she was expected

to deposit her bag for inspection.

“Fontana Inc.? Come on!” she whispered to the anonymous Fontana brother, desperately seeking his name in her memory bank.

“So sorry, dear lady. We have been hired by Wong Inc. to assist her usual muscle … I mean, security forces, of course.”

“Of course, of course, unless it’s Mr. Eduardo! What are you guys doing here? Why are you searching me?”

“We are assisting. I will delicately paw through your tote bag enough to satisfy the brutes at the door. Also to protect any highly personal items you may carry from the glare of public revelation.”

Whichever Fontana brother it was, and Temple couldn’t ID him through the wine-dark Aegean shades, he did indeed tiptoe his fingertips through the contents of her bag. “Hmmm.”

The Reese’s peanut butter cup wrapper. Ooops! Two of them. Temple cringed.

“Aha.”

A bar stub from Les Girls strip joint on Paradise. She knew the all-female management, for Pete’s sake. For Patty’s sake, actually. It was a feminist strip club. Sort of. Honest. You had to have been there.

An item dangled from a small, steel-ball chain. Pepper spray. “I’ll have to confiscate this for the duration of your visit,” he

said. Sternly.

“Gee, I thought the Asian community liked hot peppers.” “Cooked, not carried,” was the terse reply.

Her defensive canister disappeared into a supernaturally flat Fontana brother suitcoat pocket. Amazing how many loaded Berettas the same pockets could conceal!

“Listen,” she whispered. “We are sympatico here.”

“Exactly. That is why I do not brandish … this.”

He flashed her computerized calorie counter before palming it politely and adding it to the pocket that held her pepper spray. “Discretion is a Fontana brother’s middle name.”

“Really, I thought it was Turncoat.”

“I will turn out my coat pockets and return your … goods, intact, when you leave.”

Temple shook her head. Amelia Wong must be superparanoid if she had beefed up her security forces with locals. It was high time she herself had an actual conversation with the feng shui Wonder Woman. Temple wondered how many layers it would take to peel this onion.

She quickly found out. Baylee, looking haggard for a blonde, passed Temple to her brunette coworker, Pritchard Merriweather, whose fatigue simply made her look hard-nosed, like Molina.

“Asking you to this strategy session was a mere courtesy,” Pritchard said. “You might have some slight insight on the local situation. Seeing Ms. Wong personally is impossible.”

“Nevertheless.” Temple paused after delivering a word that was almost longer than she was. At least she had fixed Pritchard’s attention. “I’m the only one here with local policeconnections. Positive police connections,” she added, glancing to the uncooperative Fontana brother who shall remain nameless simply because she couldn’t ID him.

“You have positive police connections?”

“Positively. Perhaps ‘Homicide’ strikes a chord with you?” “You know powers that be in Homicide?”

It was really called the Crimes Against Persons Unit now, but “Homicide” had such a more lethal ring to the uninitiated.

“Merely the lieutenant overseeing the case, Molina by name. You did hear that name mentioned? And Alch and Su, the investigating detectives … old acquaintances. Need I say more?”

Temple certainly hoped not, because this story of hers was like unblenderized California orange juice made from

tangerines: pulp fiction.

The word “Homicide” had come in handy. Pritchard shattered along the nerve lines.

“Ms. Wong has just finished her Zen Pilates routine. She may be mellow enough … now … to speak with an outsider. I’ll knock, but I don’t guarantee an answer.”

Temple nodded, following Pritchard through an enormous dining room and down an endless hall lined with Great Masters to a set of double doors wide enough to admit Jonah’s whale. Pritchard’s bony knuckles rapped. Once. Twice. Thrice. Thrice always worked in fairy tales and it did here. “Yes?” came a high, imperious voice.

“Temple Barr, Maylords local PR rep, wishes to speak with you. I know it’s early and-”

“The efficiently compact redhead,” came the clipped voice from beyond the door. “Fascinating hair color, if it’s natural. Red

is the color of power. Our affairs could use an injection of power. Send her in.”

Pritchard lifted her eyebrows to indicate the high level of honor bestowed on Temple, then turned one doorknob and pushed Temple through the crack in the doors, rather like tossing a virgin sacrifice into the yawning crater of a volcano.

“Pray you’re not a Miss Clairol redhead,” Pritchard advised in farewell. “Ms. Wong loathes fakes.”

Temple, genuine to her roots and often decrying it, swept past the statuesque dark guardian goddess called Pritchard into Amelia Wong’s lair.

The first thing to hit her was sound: falling water and clashing crystals and temple bells.

The next was the dim light. Shadow.

The third was smell. A delicate scent of … orange blossoms. Odd. Temple saw nothing to give off that scent. She smelled something else, a discreet incense of warmed underarm deodorant. And something intangible.

Amelia Wong, she realized, was afraid. Deathly afraid.

Oddly, that bucked Temple right up. If someone as rich and powerful as feng shui’s Wizard of Ahs was cowering behind a metaphysically protective curtain, maybe she, Temple, had the right shui and the right stuff to put things, well, right.

She’d done it before.

Ms. Wong, wearing a pale jade satin pantsuit, sat on a crimson couch that reminded Temple of Matt’s vintage model of

similar hue.

She looked youthfully delicate in the shadowed light, yet as stiff as a Chinese tapestry. Scared was the Western word that came to mind. Scared stiff.

She looked up as Temple entered.

“In the holy mountains of Tibet,” she said, “in the mystical mountains of Tibet, lies the inspiration for the Western fairy tale called Shangri-La. You know of what I speak?.”

Temple nodded. She’d seen the Ronald Colman movie once, ages ago. And it had been ages old when she’d seen it. And the mystical name had since been appropriated for stage use by one of what were amounting to Temple’s many mortal enemies.

“Sit.”

The only seat anywhere near Amelia Wong was a pile of three silk pillows, one purple, one orange, and one yellow.

Temple kicked off her heels and sat. She sank into down feathers like she sank into a Gangsters limo’s leather upholstery.

One was Eastern luxe, one Western, and they were more kissing cousins than they knew.

Amelia Wong continued to speak, her voice high and strained, and yet meditative.

“It’s shameful that the current Chinese government persecutes the Tibetans. Governments, Western or Eastern, always persecute the philosophical, the visionary.”

Temple remained silent.

“In Tibet, where once the Dalai Lamas thrived before being driven out, there was a breed of temple guard dog: small, longhaired, tenacious. It was forbidden that their divine breed be allowed to proliferate anywhere else. Then, in the 1930s, a Westerner smuggled two out. A breeding pair.”

Temple felt herself tense. Once again the Ugly American had ripped off an alien culture.

“The culprit,” Amelia Wong went on, “was British.”

Humph! A Brit at the bottom of it. So there, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and Bonnie Prince Charles!

“The new breed became known throughout the West as the Tibetan terrier.”

At these words, two long, low dogs trailing golden hair came romping into the room.

“Lhasa apsos.” Amelia Wong laughed as their exuberance lapped at her hot, hose-clad ankles. (Temple had sworn off pantyhose since moving to Las Vegas two years ago.)

“They are friendly, loyal, stubborn, and surprisingly lethal when defending their turf, or their substitute Dalai Lamas. Their jaws are short, but their spirits are as tall as the mountains. I would hate to fall down amid them if I had harmed their master. Or mistress. I call them Tibetan staple guns, but I suspect in another culture they might be considered canine piranha.”

Three more of the dogs had come thronging around Temple, no doubt scenting Midnight Louie. Their eyes were hidden by Veronica Lake falls of long, blond hair, but their black button noses were patent-leather slick. Their small, smiling mouths showed teeth as small and sharp as miniature mountain ranges.

Seeing Amelia Wong with her dogs instantly humanized her.

“Your point?” an emboldened Temple asked.

“You have the heart of a Tibetan terrier.”

Temple took that for a compliment. “I’m just an American mutt,” she began.

“You were the only woman to take action when that gangster began shooting up Maylords. Almost the only one at all.” “Shucks,” Temple began. “The other was the dance man.”

Temple nodded.

“He is gay.”

Temple nodded.

“Yin and yang together. The fish who swims east and the fish who swims west.” Amelia Wong lifted a circle of black and white jade on a golden chain.

Temple had always liked the symbolic black-white curved shapes nestled in a circle, but she’d always thought of them as sperm with eyes rather than fish. She also knew the black was the yin or female, passive principle and the white was the male, active principle. It was here that Temple parted ways with Asian mysticism. Way too stereotyped, although she understood that it was more complex than simply he Tarzan, she Jane.

Amelia Wong fingered the image as she continued to consider the dramatis personae of the Night the Lights Went Out in Maylords.

“Another who moved was the blond man who worried about you. The one who looked so like the Maylord’s interior designer. I thought it was the Maylord’s man at first, but then realized this man was a guest.”

Temple nodded, more guardedly this time.

“He broadcasts most interesting chi, that man who came to your aid. Mystical, but austere. I would love to redecorate his rooms. (So would Temple thought.) What is he?”

“A radio counselor.”

When Temple hesitated, Amelia Wong’s black eyes snapped at her. “His past is deeper than that.”

“A former priest,” Temple admitted.

Wong nodded, satisfied somehow.

“The third man, who actually found the light board and gave us all the gift of darkness, he bears a dark aura himself. Yet you know him and he knows you. Who is he?”

“A … former policeman.”

“You know many in transition. Perhaps it’s because you are too. This last man is utter yang. But you have strong yang as well as yin. So. It was no accident that the four of you acted in concert.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Danny Dove is used to ordering lights on and off. Rafi Nadir once lived for civic duty. And I have an incurable meddling streak-”

“And the blond ex-priest has an incurable need to bestow salvation,” Amelia Wong finished. “I am a multinational corporation,” she continued. “I am a brand name. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the philosophy I market, that markets me.

Down, Taj!”

As one dog obeyed, the other milling Lhasa apsos all settled on their stomachs, waves of blond hair pooling around them.

“Four people in action that night,” Amelia Wong summed up. “The fifth was the shooter. And then,” she said, focusing the full power of her incredibly dark eyes on Temple, “the sixth one I sensed but could not see. The Stealthy One. Your personal yang protector in midnight black. I felt him in the dark.”

Temple felt her forearms bubble with goose bumps. Was it possible Max had been there?

Or Midnight Louie?

“You know to whom I refer.”

Temple nodded. She wasn’t sure which one … Could Max have been there unseen that night? Of course. He wasn’t a magician for nothing. And Midnight Louie? She remembered the spidery flick of hair over her cheek. Matt’s hair, as he leaned over her? Or Louie’s whiskers? Or Max moving past, unseen, but touching her. Max often managed that, somehow.

Amelia Wong laughed. “You are surrounded by forces you hardly dare acknowledge. Now you wish to ask me questions. I will answer because you have strong chi.”

“Chi is the life force, isn’t it?”

Wong nodded. “I sense you have been in danger often, but rarely harmed. I could use such a force near me now.”

“The Fontana brothers?”

“They are beyond chi! They are their own life force. And so good-looking too. I like to believe that forces for good are also

attractive. A failing for one of my calling, but a pleasant fantasy nonetheless.”

Temple blinked. This was beginning to feel like girl talk.

“I imagine that,” Temple said, “in your position it’s hard to let your hair down.”

Wong idly ran her fingers through a Lhasa apso’s silky long waves. “One can be beautiful and dangerous,” she commented. “A successful woman is expected to be both in this culture. In my own culture, successful women are not suffered gladly.”

“You’re Chinese-American.”

“And expected to excel to justify my femaleness.”

“I’ve been expected to not excel.”

“Still,” Wong said shrewdly, “your parents did not move heaven and earth to ensure only male progeny.”

“No.” Temple realized this startling fact for the first time in her life. “They had sons until they had me. And then they stopped.”

Was it possible that she was a most-wanted child? That her noisy, bossy older brothers had not been enough?

Amelia Wong bowed her head, almost in tribute. “You are a last daughter? I honor your parents. In China, a first daughter is an abomination.”

“I don’t get it,” Temple said. “In your culture, women are both unwanted and yet expected to succeed?”

“To justify our unfortunate existence. This is not China, yet still the media stands in for parents, and views me with shame and anger.”

“Successful women scare men in every culture.”

“You?”

Temple glanced at the collapsed Lhasa apsos, like so many stuffed pillows.

“I’m too small and cute to scare anyone.”

“You should. You have big bite.” Wong smiled. “I am not a Dragon Lady, but that is the only incarnation the world

respects. So … I breathe fire.”

“Okay, Amelia. Then forget the protective image. Tell me what’s really going down with you, your enterprises, Maylords, the death threats. My Stealthy Protector. I desperately want to know who you have in mind there, girlfriend.”

Wong laughed.

“I was going to order green tea for us, but I think … a well-chilled greenapple martini would do better.”

“Yep. It’s been stressful and my piranha bite could stand to chill out.”

“Spelling bees,” Amelia Wong intoned contemplatively over the first martini, which had been delivered with panache by the Fontana brother. He probably had supervised the blending process for poison.

Temple was sure now that there would be a second. She nodded sagaciously. “Your people win them.”

“This is an interesting culture. Winners are both idolized and abhorred. One day an ‘American Idol,’ the next … the nexus of scandal.”

Temple nodded sagely. Greenapple martinis did that to one. “The conflict between our Puritan past and entrepreneur future. Henry Ford authoritarianism versus Enron greed. All yang, if you ask me.”

“I embody that conflict, I know that.”

“And that’s why someone wants to murder you.”

“No. Someone wants to ‘stop’ me. Murder is merely a means of expressing a political agenda. A racial and gender agenda.

Do you believe me?”

“I do,” Temple said solemnly. Odd, this felt like a marriage of true minds. Must be the vodka. “High achievers engender

antagonism. But that isn’t exclusive to American culture. It’s universal, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The more international I go, the more true I find that premise.” Amelia refilled their glasses from the pitcher, then poured some of her vivid drink into a shallow bowl, smiling as the Lhasa apsos gathered around, tasted, then shook their sagacious beards and ears. They reminded Temple of very short mandarin emperors. “I am impressed,” Amelia said, “by the diversity of your allies.”

When Temple, stunned, remained silent, Amelia went on.

“You know the police. And the police know you. You know both Danny Dove and the talented Janice Flanders in Maylords’s Art Department. You know the Fontana brothers, all of the many Fontana brothers, apparently. And chauffeurs and talk show producers … and even more obvious hired muscle.”

“Well … how do you know all this?”

“I am smarter,” the petite-chic Amelia Wong said, “than people like to think a media fad is. And tougher than I look,” she added.

“How tough?”

“The Tongs and the Triads have been trying to infiltrate my retail empire for years. My bodyguards aren’t just for death threats from fanatical feng shui adherents.”

Temple raised her eyebrows, trying to think on an international scale. “Smuggling?”

“Of course. I am an international entity. I import and export to and from both East and West. I am therefore good press. That gives me entree and privileges that the ordinary citizen of Hong Kong or Shanghai wouldn’t have. I am the perfect ‘front woman,’ except that I am my own woman.”

“And that’s why your life is in danger?”

“Maybe.” Amelia sank back into the cushy sofa, her dogs heaping around her like so many hairy designer pillows. “Maybe,” Temple said. “Or not.”

Amelia lifted a delicately arched eyebrow. But said nothing.

“Why are you doing this Maylords gig?” Temple asked next. “You don’t need to expose yourself to the public this way. You could do the weekly TV show and your national magazine and stay far away from imminent danger.”

Amelia sipped her martini, sighed. Regarded Temple. “Benny Maylord helped me early in my career. I did weekend

specialty presentations at his launch store. It is the least I can do to reciprocate.”

“You mean Kenny.”

“I mean Benny. The other brother. He was CEO then.”

“The brothers trade off running the business?”

“They did once,” she said. Her lips puckered before they sipped the deliciously tart martini again.

“There has to be a story there.”

“I don’t know it. I offered Benny a chance to fill me in, but he was as tight-lipped as we’ll be after finishing these greenapple martinis.”

“So it’s a family matter. Understandable that you feel you owe the family, but still-”

“My stints at Maylords got me media attention. It began the entire buildup. I owe Benny Maylord. We started out together.

I’m less impressed by the brother, but family is family.”

“Tell me about the fanatic fans.”

“That is a redundancy.”

“I know. The word ‘fan’ came from ‘fanatic.’ So the mania is built in. So, I suppose, is a possibility of violence. I thought feng shui instills order and harmony.”

“Properly used, yes. And it is merely a method of ordering the world around you to enhance your own needs and ambitions. We all systematize our environments, even the most untidy. Feng shui is a conscious commitment to installing order instead of disorder.”

“So why would feng shui practitioners go berserk?”

“Some use it as a guaranteed system for good luck. When their luck doesn’t visibly change, they blame the method, not their own manias.”

“The word ‘maniac’ comes from ‘mania,’ ” Temple noted.

“Anything that encourages people to search their inner souls and assuage their deepest needs can bring on obsession. Religion. Dieting. Gambling. The number of my demented former fans is small, but they can be vocal. Some have blamed me for bankruptcy, even the death of a spouse or a child.”

“They blame that on rearranging the furniture?”

“Feng shui is much more than that. And furniture is an important part of the domestic landscape, which, after all, so

intimately reflects the inhabitants’ interior landscape. Think about it.”

Temple did, sipping delicately at the sweetly tart green liquid in her martini glass. But the first significant piece of furniture

she fixated on wasn’t anything in her rooms-except maybe Louie, who followed his own feng shui in choosing where to artistically display his bonelessly sleeping form-the first furniture that came to mind was Matt’s red suede ’50s couch.

In his sparsely furnished rooms it screamed “major Hollywood motion picture” among a bland array of small, doomed independent productions.

Of course the Vladimir Kagan designer relic was a coproduction: Temple had found it at Goodwill and forced Matt to buy it because … because it was cool and actually valuable, it turned out. And it wouldn’t fit in her rooms, with all her accumulated stuff that was so much less interesting.

“You’re thinking of something both pleasurable and troubling,” Amelia said. “I’m almost afraid to ask what, and I’m never

afraid to ask anything.”

“What? Oh, I was wondering if two people can share custody of a single couch.” “They can with children.”

“But children are so much easier to move.”

Amelia laughed. “You obviously don’t have any. Nor stubborn dogs.”

“Only a stubborn cat.”

“Cats are too clever to be stubborn. They appear to go along with what you want, then turn it into what they want. I prefer

the childlike directness of dogs.” “Do you have children?” -

“Grown.” She smiled.

“And their father-?”

“Outgrown.” Her smile stayed the same, slight but pleased.

Aha! Temple wondered how Mr. Wong liked being cut out of the picture now that Amelia was Ms. Media Millionaire Sweetheart.

“Perhaps your … ex is unhappy about missing out on an empire.”

“It was his own idea to leave.”

“That makes it even worse.”

” No,” she answered with a smile that was both sympathetic and oddly impersonal. “The settlement was far more than generous. From me to him, of course. Now you tell me this.”

Amelia Wong set down her martini on the gold-leafed coffee table. She clapped her hands. The dogs jumped off the sofa in a golden wave and undulated back into the room from which they’d been called.

She eyed Temple with laser-ray intensity. “Why is a temporary public relations representative so interested in me? Or in the bizarre attack on Maylords, for that matter?”

“Public relations people are only supposed to care about the glitz and the glory, not the problems behind the scenes?”

Amelia made an impatient clicking noise, like an aggravated beetle. Her irises seemed as dark and shiny, and impervious,

as a beetle shell.

“This is a matter for the police. It is not your business. It is not my business. We are businesswomen, not policewomen. It is not our duty to tidy up every untoward happening that we witness.”

Temple could have given her reasons. She could have quoted John Donne that “no man is an island.” She could have mentioned her knack for unraveling crimes.

Temple put down her empty martini glass too. The truce in Amelia Wong’s frenetic, singled-minded work style was over.

Wong had bodyguards enough to survive a shooting spree without quivering. But Temple had been among the innocent extras who could have been caught, fatally, in the crossfire. Pampered Amelia Wong wouldn’t understand that if fear didn’t kill you, it made you angry.

Temple decided in ending the interview to go for inscrutable and just smile.

Too bad her next social appointment-cum-interrogation was going to give her zilch to smile about. And then some.

Chapter 17

Hot Water

A cafeteria was an unlikely place to rendezvous with a big bad bogeyman from a homicide lieutenant’s past, Temple

thought, eyeing the joint.

But maybe the apple-pie ambiance was just the right unlikely setting for a “date” with Rafi Nadir. Temple spotted him already seated by a window, a brown tray serving as a portable place mat before his folded arms.

His swarthy looks and solo state made him look out of place among Wonder-bread families chowing down at all the surrounding tables.

She shuffled through the line in her turn, trying to quiet the butterflies in her stomach. Rafi Nadir was one bad dude. Everybody said so. He was a rogue ex-cop turned hired muscle for shady operators. He liked to hang out at strip clubs. His former significant other regarded him as the Great Satan even after thirteen years apart.

Temple was nuts to meet him alone like this, but he seemed to like her for some unfathomable reason. Temple, and the ex-reporter in her, could never resist an easy source, no matter how dangerous.

So she shuffled through the line in her summer espadrilles, too nervous to eat much, nailing the last lime Jell-O dish to accompany her red dye

3 barbecue-sauced pile of beef brisket. Her tray had an unseasonably Christmassy air, but it couldn’t be helped. Cafeteria food was not her favorite.

She filled a huge paper cup with a cataract of tiny ice cubes and watered them well before she joined Nadir.

Nobody she knew would approve of her coming within six tables of separation from him. But Temple suffered from congenital curiosity, a feline predisposition that sometimes manifested itself in other species.

Nadir looked up from an uninspired mound of ketchup-frosted meatloaf and nodded. She sat to deploy her dishes on the plastic veneer tabletop. If he got too frisky she could heave the plate of brisket at him … or season the encounter by drawing the pepper spray from her straw tote bag.

“Now I see why you’re so little,” he said.

Temple eyed her meat-and-Jell-O meal. “I’m on the go a lot. I got used to odd foods.”

“Why didn’t you want to meet on the Strip?”

“It’s so noisy and crowded.” And there’s too much chance of my being recognized there.

Nadir sipped his black coffee. “I’da figured you to want as many people around as possible. Why are you afraid of me?”

“Well … I don’t know any guys who hang around strip clubs.”

“You think you don’t know any guys like that.”

She didn’t argue. It would be too hard to explain that the guys she knew best included an ex-priest.

Temple shrugged and pushed the beef away after nibbling two slices. The Jell-O was more fun, and challenging, to eat.

Nadir shook his head. “I met you at a strip club, remember?”

“Yeah, but I was there on a mission of mercy. So to speak.”

“Maybe I was too.”

“You? I mean, you did help me out by decking the Stripper Killer, but that was just because you happened along.““Maybe

not.”

“You were following me-?”

“Not that way. Don’t get your Jell-O in a puddle. I’m an ex-cop. I’ve got a suspicious mind.” “So do I.”

“That’s good. Little girls who stick their noses in big messes should have suspicious minds.”

“Big guys who put down little girls who carry pepper spray should wear big goggles.”

“Jeez, women today have more chips on their shoulders than the Jacksonville Jags have shoulder pads.” He tore open a blue packet of Equal and poured the powder into his coffee, as if sweetening it would sweeten up Temple. “You weren’t making a name for yourself as Tess the Thong Girl in that club because your sister sells spandex by the Strip side. No way. And you’re not a cop, city payroll or private. And secretaries don’t rate the attention you get. So what the hell are you?”

“You heard last night at Maylords: a public relations consultant.”

“Now, that’s a job title that’s subject to interpretation,” he said with a semi-official smirk. “But that I believe. So why were you pretending to be someone else at the strip club? Don’t tell me that’s how you snag new clients.”

Temple sighed and pushed away the green Jell-O, which was melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I did PR for a stripper convention over a year ago and met some of the women. When they started getting killed, I talked to a few of my contacts and … I was a TV reporter years ago. I smelled a story, that’s all.” “I smell a story too. ‘Years ago.’ What are you? Twentyfour?”

“Thirty!”

“You won’t be so fast to give your age in a few more years, cookie.” He grinned. “So. You don’t trust me because you

found me in a strip club.”

“I don’t trust you because I don’t know you. And you sure rushed away before the police came. Why? You could have played the hero.”

“You sprayed the guy. I just made sure that he stayed down. But I can see your point. I look like a loser.”

“Not a loser-” Temple couldn’t stand to see anyone putting himself down. She realized that this was a bad habit, smacking of enabling. Every good deed had a diagnosis these days. Even Rafi Nadir lifted skeptical eyebrows. “You wrote me off as a loser. And a bad dude on top of it, maybe even-”

“The Stripper Killer, right. I was wrong there.”

“Apparently.” He laughed. “You’re a lot tougher than you look. Listen.” He leaned forward, his intensity fixing her to the spot. “Being a cop is like being in a secret club. The secret is that no one knows what it’s like except another cop. You’re a necessary evil twentyfour hours a day. Sure, citizens are glad to see you on a crime scene, but drive along the street and watch even the most innocent avert their eyes. You’re a cop. You could object to how they’re driving at any moment, pull them over. And you never know when you pull a traffic violation over whether it’s Miss Tess’s harmless aunt Agatha … or an escaped con with a concealed weapon. You gotta trust no one to be what they seem. Ever. So I’m not surprised even a nice, safe-streets little lady like you isn’t what she seems.”

“I’m sure it’s rough-”

“Cops aren’t that different from strippers, see? No one really knows much about their lives, except to avoid them or use them if they have to. That’s the way it gets with cops and crooks and strippers. We’re all on opposite sides of the law when cops are enforcing ‘community standards,’ but we’re part of the same club. On the inside.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

He grunted as he tucked into his meatloaf. “You never thought. So what did you want to know?”

“You said something funny was going on at Maylords,” Temple began.

He nodded again. “The management has an awful high level of anxiety for a furniture store. They kept some of us hired security guys on after the opening. I’d figured they were worriedabout that Wong woman. I can’t see why she would get death threats.”

“She’s a lifestyle Nazi,” Temple said promptly. “Nothing hits as close to home as that. Some people swear by her and some people hate her house-remaking guts. I’d bet the death threats come from true believers, though, who think her advice somehow done them wrong.”

“Maybe. All I know is the Maylords management is playing amateur G-men, trying to catch what they say is a furniture—

stealing ring.”

“The management? Kenny Maylord himself?”

“Nah, that lard-ass manager, Mark Ainsworth. Acts like a little J. Edgar Hoover. Probably as much of a fairy too.”

Temple had idly tried another mouthful of lime Jell-O and almost spat it out. “Sexual persuasion shouldn’t matter-”

“Around Maylords it does. That place is crawling with queers.”

“Look. I’ve worked in the arts field and I don’t like you calling some of my friends names.”

“I’ve been called a raghead.”

“Didn’t like it, though, I bet.”

“Most people say all sorts of things in their living rooms they wouldn’t say on the street.”

“At least they know enough to keep it shut in public.”

He pushed away the meatloaf dish, now only a bloody smear of ketchup. “I call a spade a spade. You don’t like it, don’t ask me questions.”

“All you’re seeing at Maylords is that gay people are often very creative and they’re drawn to the decorative arts.”

“Why are they so damn creative? Isn’t that labeling them in another way?”

“Well, some observations hold true, by and large.”

“Right. Only mine aren’t worth anything because I come flat out and say it, is that the idea?”

“I didn’t come here to argue political correctness with you.”

“Why did you come here?”

“The Maylords opening is my baby. I’m responsible for things going smoothly. I need to know if any more bad-news

surprises are in store.”

” ‘In store.’ That’s good.”

“So what do you think of that explosion of gunfire?”

“Either sicko kids or a disgruntled former employee trying to throw a scare into the party. None of those shots was meant to hit anyone, or they would have. We were all in a freaking fishbowl.”

“But those shots could have hit someone. Who’d take a chance like that?”

“Someone who was drunk or high.”

“Only one person could do all that shooting?”

“With the right weapon, yeah. Or a gang of kids. I’m not the fuzz here, but I’m betting this was malicious mischief, not a gangland hit. So. Did you take this job because you’re still thinking I might be up to something illegal, or just because you wanted to see me again?”

“No way! How would I know you were there? Running into you again was an accident.”

“Most good things are.”

“That’s a pretty negative view of life. And I’m not so sure this is a good thing. So are you going to be working security there all week?”

“Maybe longer.”

Temple raised her eyebrows. She’d heard via Max’s recent undercover work that the lovely and charming Rafi Nadir had hooked up with a “big outfit” that was going to earn him “real money.” This couldn’t have been Maylords.

“You wouldn’t want to work for them full-time?”

“With all the … uh, creative types running around? No way. I have a semiregular gig for another outfit, but it’s not working out the way they promised.” He picked up a square of unused paper napkin and began pleating it.

His fingernails were completely clean, she noted With surprise. There was some core of self-respect there.

“What else would you do? Doesn’t sound like police work-”

He snorted at the mention and tore the folded napkin in half.

“I suppose you could … I don’t know how official your leaving the L.A. police was, but maybe you could get into private

investigation.”

“Private dick? They’re such sleazy bastards.”

Temple kept quiet, just lifted her hands with an I’m-off-thesubject gesture.

Nadir’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what you think I am? So much for my saving your ass. Man, that’s low. A private dickhead.”

“Maybe whatever you did to get taken off the force wouldn’t let you get a license or whatever anyway.”

“Nah. I took myself off the force. I got tired of the political correctness do-si-do. Anyway, they never had anything on me.”

“Boy, is this reassuring.”

“Private cop stuff? I could do it in a heartbeat. If I was dumb enough to want to starve to death doing spousal

surveillance.”

“This is Las Vegas. I bet there’s a lot of higher-level private security work around here than strip joints and furniture

stores.”

“They all have computer degrees nowadays. And the big joints go to big firms.”

“That’s why I pictured the lone operator. One man, one room, and one ex-stripper as a girl Friday.”

“No wonder you’re always getting your nose in a vise. You don’t live in a real world, girl. “

“What’s my motive and opportunity for that?”

He laughed softly. “So. You picked as much of my brains as you can stand for the moment?” “I wasn’t-”

He stood up, held out a hand.

Temple looked perplexed.

“Your tray. I’ll bus it. Maybe that’d be a good job for me.” She decided that there was nothing she could say that would make her or him look better, so she handed him the tray.

He glanced at the paltry little dishes. “You don’t eat much.

Maybe I make you nervous. Wonder if there’s a career in that.” If so, Matt Devine was moving right into it.

Chapter 18

Auld Acquaintance

“Look, man. It’s just that I really don’t want you hanging around my workplace. You know?”

“I’m beginning to get that this isn’t a pleasant workplace to hang around:’ Matt said, eyeing the Maylords model room settings. “You were ready enough to hang around my workplace a couple weeks ago … at three in the morning.” Jerome shrugged and said what Matt was starting to view as his mantra: “I guess.”

“What changed since then?”

“I figured out you weren’t gay.”

“You did it faster than I did:’ Matt said wryly. He meant it half-seriously. After sixteen years of religious celibacy, one was

a little disoriented on the outside, to say the least.

“Oh, come on! I should have known in seminary, except I had a lot of illusions then.”

“Didn’t we all. Look. I don’t care about our common past. I’m concerned with what I’m hearing here and now about this place.”

“You’re concerned about Janice.““Yes.”

“And that cute little redhead.”

Matt didn’t bother correcting that vastly inaccurate summation of Temple. “Less Temple than Janice. We don’t have to stay here to talk. Don’t you get a lunch hour?”

“Supposedly. Supposedly I was supposed to get a lot that I didn’t: a decent family; a religious education that didn’t screw

me up, literally; a future.”

Bitterness, Matt reflected, was the first refuge of many a depressed personality.

“So now you want to spend time with me,” Jerome noted, bitterly. “So I can help you help the women in your life.”

“There aren’t any women in my life. More like friends. I don’t get it. You were pretty anxious to talk to me outside WCOO a couple weeks ago.”

“Yeah. ‘Mr. Midnight’ was gonna make it all right, like the billboard said. You’re not coming from the same place I am.

Forget it.”

“We did come from the same place, Jerome. That’s the point. Let me buy you lunch.”

Jerome looked around, like Judas hunting eavesdroppers in the Garden of Gethsemene. That New Testament image gave Matt an idea.

“We won’t patronize a restaurant,” he said. “I know another place. Nobody from Maylords would go there in a millennium.” “Oh? You got good at sneaking around since I last knew you?”

“I got better at dodging reality. I recommend it from time to time.”

Jerome’s teeth worried his already cracked bottom lip. His hair was the gray-beige color of cold coffee with artificial creamer that had been congealing too long. His beard was the same constant three-day growth favored by punk movie stars. Matt always wondered how they kept their fashionable five-o’clock shadows at just the right length to mimic a homeless man with an expiration date. The chic antigrooming fad mocked male vanity at the same time it celebrated it. Like most fashions.

“Lunch somewhere discreet? Maybe,” Jerome was saying, not thrilled about the concession.

“Jerry!” The voice was female harpy. Even Matt flinched.

He turned to see the same willowy brunette who had harassed Janice at the opening advancing on him and Jerome.

“You can’t deal with clients,” she informed Jerome when she was still twenty loud steps away. “I’ll handle this.”

Matt waited until she was abreast of them and they were eye to eye. “You can’t handle this,” he told the woman Temple had called Beth Blanchard. “I’m not asking you to lunch.”

Her incredulous but speculative glance flicked to Jerome at warp speed. That told Matt how well she knew the corporate culture at Maylords.

“I’ll want those prints moved as soon as you get back,” Beth warned Jerome, tainting even his rare hour off.

Matt met her eyes, unimpressed by her bullying personality. She finally looked away, then turned and clunked down the travertine main drag through the store.

“I h o p e t h o s e a r e changed,” Matt muttered as she stomped away.n ‘ t J a n i c e ‘ s p l a c

“They are. And Simon’s. Everything that Simon does she needs to undo.”

“What is her problem?”

Jerome just shrugged, which was his problem.

Jerome was even more impressed with Matt’s new car than Temple.

Matt hadn’t meant to make such a problematical statement, but being around the wishy-washy Jerome reminded him how important it was to follow your own druthers no matter the reaction.

Jerry was a classic case of being everybody’s dogsbody.

Matt zoomed them through the drive-by window at McDonald’s, then headed for his secret oasis in greater Las Vegas.

Matt could see the fast food soothing the savage breast in Jerome. Neither of them had enjoyed a normal adolescence.

Matt turned up the radio as they cruised toward his own favorite refuge.

“Sorry to be a bitch,” Jerome said, cramming the soft fries in his mouth en route.

Matt hated the word “bitch” whether it was applied to women or men, but he understood it was a password to a secret hierarchy.

The parking lot at Ethel M’s candy factory had room enough for him to stash the Crossfire all by its (hopefully) unscratched lonesome under a shade tree.

“A candy store?” Jerry asked, looking around.

“A picnic site.” Matt grabbed his white bag and headed into the maze of curving walkways and exotic cactus.

“It’s free,” he said when they were seated on an artsy bench. “One of the few things that still are in the New Las Vegas. I used to come here before the traffic roared outside the perimeter and shade was not an option.”

‘ “It must have still been desert then.”

Matt nodded. “It’s been improved. Upgraded. Gotten comfortable and pleasant. I liked its old, thorny side better.”

“Forty days and nights,” Jerome mumbled through his Big Mac. “God, it is so good to get out of that Maylords place.”

“What’s so wrong with it?”

“That bitch, for one thing.”

“Why does the management tolerate someone like her? She causes nothing but dissension.”

“And that keeps all our eyes on her and not on management. Haven’t you figured out group dynamics yet? Somebody’s got to be top dog; somebody’s got to be low man on the totem pole, usually me. Somebody’s got to be slave driver and draw all the anger away from management. She’s their whipping girl to my whipping boy, that’s all.”

“She does a good job of whipping everyone. Janice is the stablest person I know, and she’s at the end of her tether.”

Jerome nodded. “Cool lady. Knows her stuff. Bad news if you work for Maylords.”

“Why? It doesn’t make sense. She and the others were paid for six weeks of training! That’s unheard-of. Then they’re treated like-”

“Say ‘shit,’ Matt. We’re out of seminary. No one’s chalking check marks Upstairs on every word that comes out of your mouth. They … we … Maylords’s employees are treated like shit. Why are you surprised? Guess you haven’t worked much in the real world, and that radio gig of yours is another loner assignment. You don’t have to struggle and grovel like the rest of us. Again.”

“This is about Maylords, not about seminary.”

“They’re not that different, don’t you get it? I went from the frying pan into the fire. I always have. You just skated over the burning coals and took them for foot warmers. You always have.”

“Why are you blaming me? Did I do anything then that aggravated you?”

“Yes! You survived without getting your extremities dirty. Sorry. That’s not your fault. It’s just that what’s wrong with Maylords is what was wrong with seminary and you’re finally asking the right questions and it’s too late. For me. Not for you. So pardon me for being a bit self-involved.”

“Go ahead,” Matt said, finishing his quarter-pounder. “I was dense about a lot of things. I don’t blame you for being mad.

Just … clue me in. Unless you think I don’t deserve to know.”

“It’s just that … man, I thought you always knew. I thought you were the one it worked for, and it was just me-screwup, ugly me-who didn’t get it right.”

“It was dumb luck, Jerome. That, and my being so screwed up already that I’d learned how to glide through reality without

really noticing. My fault. Not yours.”

“Mea culpa.”

Matt nodded. “My fault. We don’t need to put it in Latin anymore. What was I supposed to be so good at that you weren’t?” “Playing the secret power game. Man, I don’t want to go into this!”

Sweat was beading Jerome’s hairline, and Matt guessed it wasn’t from that actionably hot McDonald’s coffee he wasdrinking. Matt sipped his Fresca, glad he had chosen cool over hot. Or was that a habit?

“All I want to know about is Maylords,” Matt said into a lengthening silence. “We don’t need to discuss seminary days.

We’re both beyond that.”

“No! That’s the point. I’m still the same old asshole I was then. St. Vincent’s, Maylords, it doesn’t matter. I was cast in my

one role and here I stay, for eternity. I guess you could call it Purgatory, or Hell’s more like it. At least you get out of Purgatory, or you did. I’m still there.”

“Maylords is a secular institution, a store. They sell furniture for inflated prices. Okay, maybe that’s a little shabby, but it

isn’t a sin. Maylords isn’t a religious institution.”

Jerome snorted. “It’s still the same subterranean game: top dogs and underdogs, corruption and coersion. Hell, they all oughta be the mafia.”

“So something crooked is going on at Maylords.”

“Let me count the ways!”

“The nameless security forces-”

“Are window dressing. It’s a game. The management thinks it’s the CIA.”

“Furniture isn’t getting ripped off?”

“Please! The markup is horrendous. The stuff is worth one-fifth of what they charge wholesale, and nothing on the black market. They act like everyone and his brother is hot to make off with it, of course, but that’s just because the big cheeses like to play policemen.”

“So you’re saying the management ego is fantasizing a theft ring to add to their sense of importance?”

“Yeah. People in power fantasize a lot, but I guess you’ve never been in power, except for wearing a collar and an odor of sanctity.”

“You don’t know what I did after seminary, Jerome, and you sure don’t know what I did in seminary, that’s clear. Do we have to settle that old stuff before you can talk about what’s happening at Maylords? Because I’m ready to cast guilt with you stone for stone. Quit tiptoeing around the past. What’s your issue? Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on … then or now?”

” ‘Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.’ “

“I’m not that pure anymore, and I’m not sure I want to be, if that’s what keeps me from seeing the devils all around. Tell me about the devils, Jerome. I know they’re out there now. I had one on my own case for the last few months.”

“The devils are the people you know best, the ones you trust, that’s the worst part of it.”

Jerome rolled his waste paper tightly into the white bag, got up, and walked to a refuse container.

He dropped the bag inside with the panache of someone making a gesture far beyond the simple act he was performing to the naked eye.

Matt waited on the bench. Ethel M’s cactus garden had nothing in common with an old-time confessional, but Matt was sure it would serve.

Chapter 19

Mum’s the Word

“I do not see,” Miss Midnight Louise observes, “why we have to trek eighty miles to the north side of town when all the

criminal activity we are investigating is taking place in trendier parts south and west.”

“We are not hunting perps up here, we are after witnesses.”

“And what would witnesses be doing so far away from the scene of the crime?”

“The same thing we are, hunting.”

It does not help that we are conducting this conversation in the back of a beer truck hurtling over some of the city’s most potholed streets.

“Just because I have a cushy job as house detective at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino does not mean I have forgotten my streetwise ways,” she says. “We are heading right into gang territory.”

“Yes, but at least we have not been rendered shivless by some misguided human. Midnight Inc. Investigations fears nothing human.”

“I am not talking about the Crips and the Bloods and the Hell’s Angels biker gangs, Pop. I am talking about the Wildspats and the Shivmasters and the Distempers that operate up here. There are even the K-9 Packers and the Hydrophobias. Remember what happened the last time you tangled with an escapee from the Coyote nation. Those dog dudes give no quarter.”

“I am not looking for small change, kit. Besides, I have snitches up here.”

Louise leaps down from a beer crate to sniff the piss-yellow puddle on the truck floor. “At least you could have found a dairy truck to

hijack. This stuff smells as bad as hairball spit-up before it’s been laundered by a bile factory.”

“Actually, you can develop a taste for it,” I say from experience.

“You can develop a taste for anything,” she jeers. “I have seen the Free-to-beFeline heaped on your bowl at the Circle Ritz.”

“Miss Temple is a health food fanatic.”

“Not for herself, that much I have noticed.”

“She is only thinking of my better good.”

“Come on, Pops. Admit that you would love to muscle in on my private chef at the Phoenix.”

“Oriental cuisine does little for me, except for the koi.”

At this point during our culinary discourse the truck does a wheelie around the corner that slams Louise and myself against its

dented steel side. This adds indignity to personal assault by tilting so far over that the beer puddles around our captive feet.

Louise leaps atop a swaying carton, shaking her dainty black tootsies and sprinkling a yellow rain on my head.

The wild turn has shaken the roll-down door loose and I spy daylight. I head for it.

“Quick! Before we’re locked in here until the yahoo driving it comes back to release it.” Louise follows my orders for once and is out the vanishing crack of daylight like a furry eel.

We stand in the street and watch the beer truck roar into the distance, leaking yellow rain.

“So this is the mother country,” Louise says, gazing around.

I turn to take in your usual urban slum. The terrain is filled with small shabby crack houses, weed-choked sandy lots, cars lacking

wheels, and windows flaunting iron burglar bars like better domiciles flash white-painted shutters.

Fast-food wrappers skitter across the rutted streets, rasping like autumn leaves … not that Vegas, with all its palm and pine trees, is

much for fallen leaves in the autumn or any other season.

The flap of dry paper has Miss Louise making 180-degree turns with her back up and shivs out.

There is still nothing to be seen except urban decay.

I hear the distant rumble of a low-rider, so I shag Miss Louise out of the middle of the street and into the nearest vacant lot, which is

not hard to find. This section of town is mostly vacant lots.

Amid a tall stand of pampas grass, a silver mesh cage crouches. A rank glob of commericial cat food hunkers in one corner like a

dead gray rat.

“Sucker bait,” Louise diagnoses with a disdainful sniff. “How they hope to lure any hep cat with that lump of two-week-old chopped

mackerel liver is anybody’s guess.”

“If you had not eaten in two weeks, I guess you would be lured,” I point out.

“So this is a feral internment camp,” she says, looking around. “I always kept to myself on the street. Better company.”

I notice that her ears are at half-mast. “You know about the Program, then?” I ask. She has never said much about her roaming

days, other than that I was the cad to blame.

“What is new?” she asks with a careless swagger. “The helpful humans trap the Wildspats and their ilk, and whisk them away for a

low-rent neutering, then they return them to their turf, expecting attrition to eliminate the colony members without them having to resort to so-called euthanasia, or what I call knockin’ ‘em off wholesale. It is one way to reduce dependent populations without resorting to open warfare. Or welfare.”

“Not such a bad solution,” I say. “These ferals are never going to cozy up to a domestic situation, and this way they do

not litter the streets.”

She shrugs, unconvinced. “Not all of us can rehabilitate. Still, it is not our fault that we have been abandoned by humans and forced to fend for ourselves. I cannot understand why we allowed ourselves to be domesticated in the dim, distant past in the first place.”

“I do. We were taken in by the nice ones before we met the mean ones. It is still the same old story, optimists end up

pessimists in the face of the real world.”

“So what are we doing here in this pathetic part of town? What can we learn except who hates whom and how much more misery there is in the world than we thought?”

I look around. The long weeds are stirring. I did not expect that we would be allowed to gawk unmolested for long.

The only question is which gang has happened upon us. I am hoping the proximity of the Spade Ladies Cat-tail Gardening Club’s portable pied-�-terres means that our own species rules the immediate roost around here.

On the other mitt, my hopes may be misplaced.

I spring into position back-to-back with Louise and spit out a … suggestion.

“Suffering Succotash, Louise! We are on alert until we find out who is rattling the sagebrush around here.”

I hear her shivs clawing sand. Her fluffy rear member is twitching up a sandstorm of irritated feline fury. Mine makes like a metronome itself, pounding possession into our square foot of turf.

“Mr. Midnight!” cries a juvenile voice.

I see Gimpy galloping toward me. On three legs, with which he now makes better time than he did on the three and one distorted broken limb that had healed without veterinary care.

The little yearling nearly knocks me off my feet, which is saying something for a twenty-pound dude like myself.

Gimpy licks the sand out of my face that his own exuberant entrance has kicked up.

When I blink away the grit, I see we are surrounded by the same old gang.

What a relief.

Behind me, Louise is a whirling dervish of sand and fur and snarling female fury. There is something to be said for that combination.

“Hello, Big Boy.” My next welcome mew comes from Snow Off-white, the rangy female I encountered on my last, and first,

expedition into feral cat territory.

Her greeting rubs the dust off my dapper sides, causing Miss Louise to hiss and spit out a warning.

“Do not get your ruff in a wad, honey.” Snow Off-white eyes Louise and pauses to wet a whisker with a soiled paw. “This old boy and I go way back.”

Well, only a couple of weeks, but I can see that Miss Louise is impressed with the wide range of my acquaintanceship on the wild side. Maybe not favorably, but she is impressed, and that is a start.

“What happened to you?” I ask Gimpy, who is still prancing around me on his three legs. The fourth has gone missing

entirely, and I see a bald spot where it used to be.

Granted it was a twisted mess, but . .

“The alien abductors,” he says importantly. “They swooped me up in one of their silver ships. Then all I remember is this long needle coming toward me, and when I woke up I was back here, but three of my vital members were missing.”

The gathered gang members emit sighs of resigned horror. They do not like the alien abductions. They do not like the genital gentrification going on ih their neighborhood. However, they cannot argue that Gimpy is not better off now.

I process this tale with my superior worldview. Gimpy has been kidnapped for his own good, rendered sterile (which requires losing his two, um, hairballs), and surgically freed from the burden of his mutilated limb. I see how these people think: better three legs that work than a fourth that puts the whole system out of joint.

“You look good, kit,” I tell him with a manly box on the ears. Homo sapiens is always big on boxing. In the ring. We just do our boxing in the litter. “You will be winning the Special Olympics in no time.” I notice one major piece missing from this reunion. “Ma Barker around?” I ask.

There is a silence I do not like to hear. Or not hear.

“What is it?” Louise asks, her fur now damp and flattened into an imitation of a civil coat.

She sure is quick on the uptake.

The big marmalade bruiser known as Tom swaggers forward. “She took a hit.”

I manage to keep my voice level and calm. “Car or canine?”

“Neither.”

I lift the few, airy vibrissae (whiskers to you) over my eyes. “Those are generally the usual suspects.”

“Racoon,” Snow Off-white says, putting me out of my misery.

There is a silence filled only the by the snare-drum rhythm of McDonald’s wrappers blowing past like tumbleweeds.

Racoons are a tough tangle. They come fully shived and toothed, and are canny and fierce opponents.

“I heard you guys got coyotes around here.”

“And racoons. With all the suburban development, the wildlife is being herded into the badder neighborhoods, where no one cares enough to eradicate them.”

“Is that why I scented your gang hanging out down by the new Maylords store going up?”

“Yeah. Ma Barker was insisting we needed to relocate into a nicer neighborhood. That was one of the last empty lots left in

town. She figured we would at least get a better grade of fast-food throwaways there.”

“And,” pipes up Gimpy, “she was big-time annoyed aboutmy leg and all the alien abduction visits. Called it ‘unconscentyou-all’ surgery. Said free food was not worth sacrificing your freedom.”

Louise drops a murmur in my ear. “This is your mama they are talking about?”

“She might be something of a socialist,” I admit. “So, uh, where is she?”

“Holing up in the MASH unit.”

“You guys make illegal hooch?”

“Nah. MASH stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. What is the matter? They do not have cable TV at the fancy place you hang out? I will show you.”

“At least,” Louise hisses in my ear, “it sounds like she is still alive.”

“Yeah. And I bet seeing you will make her sit up and howl too.”

Louise ignores me and turns tail, trotting ahead to accompany Tom. Traitor!

“So how did she end up called Ma Barker?” Louise asks, batting her twentyfour-carat golds at him.

“Held off four rogue Hydrophobias a while back,” Tom snarls. “A long while back. When she was done with them, not a one could do anything more than whimper. They had been after her latest six-pack of kits for dog meat. She stole the bark from the whole darn gang for several days, until their wounds scabbed over. That was before the alien abductors saw to it that she had no more kits.”

“High time,” I hear Miss Louise mutter.

“I guess she was past her prime,” Snow Off-white admits. “Gimpy is our last young ‘un. His littermates were caught and probably ended up domesticated, but he wiggled away.”

“Straight into the metal mangler of a car,” Louise notes.

No one can say anything to that, so we trudge around broken glass and discarded sharp-tipped needles that are poisoned on top of being sharp, and those strange deflated balloons that humans do unthinkable acts with, and keep mum.

This territory is occupied by homeless humans as well, and they are nicer to our kind than many of the housed ones are. But some of the humans who come here are scum preying on the bad luck and ill health of their own kind.

I cannot imagine in what shape Ma Barker is if she is being kept in a MASH unit. Until now I thought a MASH was a speeding car.

Not long ago I had to pull Louise back from the brink of a near-death experience. I do not relish trying the same trick with a

tough but pretty elderly broad.

A racoon. Not your usual urban evildoer. Nobody is ready to go up against a rogue racoon. It might even have a form of “distemper” the humans call “rabies” to come this close to civilization. If that is the case and the beast has bitten Ma Barker, she is roadkill.

I rue the day I ever told Miss Louise about her maybe-grandmother. Dames always take relationships way too seriously. It is a built-in flaw in the species. On the other mitt, without dames, we would have no species, flawed or otherwise.

Chapter 20

Orange Bowl Special

Temple awoke to the insistent chirping of her cell phone. It was worse than sparrows in the chimney, which was not a current problem because the Circle Ritz didn’t have chimneys.

Her left calf was numb from Louie lying on it.

She shook a leg, quite literally, and leaped out of bed, limping across the parquet floor to her tote bag. It leaned drunkenly against a wall, which reminded Temple of her 90-proof bedtime toddy with Matt the night before last, which reminded her of …

well, never mind.

“Yes?” Temple answered the phone. Max! At last! She needed to see him, touch him, but hearing him would do for now.

“It’s Pritchard Merriweather.”

“Oh. Yes?”

“How fast can you move?”

Temple eyed her left leg twitching with tingles as she leaned against the wall. “Not fast at the moment. My leg’s gone asleep.”

“I meant on publicity.”

“Like canned lightning.”

“Good. Ms. Wong is doing an orange-peel blessing at Maylords at 4:00 P.M. today. Since Sunday’s a slow news day, it should be worth some coverage on the nightly news, maybe even national. Can you swing the locals?”

“Can you fax me the particulars on an orange-peel blessing in ten minutes?”

“Two.”

“Done.”

“See you there.”

Temple’s ear was slightly warmed from the brain-killing press of her cell phone. Louie had deigned to rise and had come over to rub against her numb leg.

Maybe he was apologizing … or, on the other hand, being a cat, just rubbing it in.

Temple sighed heavily, feeling her spine flatten against the wall. Her regular phone rang, and it was time to hobble to the office on the other side of the living room and peel the fax sheets off her machine.

Maybe that was the “peel” in an orange-peel blessing, but Temple doubted that she would ever be so lucky.

Forty minutes later she had a snappy press release ready to fax to the local TV stations. She decided to hit the radio stations too. This was a very funky event, according to the gospel straight from Wong Inc.

She checked her watch and saw it was almost 9:00 A.M. Okay to phone one floor above.

She pressed a quick-dial button on her phone and sat down, tapping her fully circulating left foot.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” she asked when the ringing stopped.

“Just barely,” came Matt’s voice. Matt’s bedroom voice, come to think of it. Only in her dreams. Just what had she dreamed last night anyway? Max had the bedroom voice, and the personal history to back it up.

“Listen. There’s a very trendy spiritual event happening at Maylords this afternoon. I thought you might want to be there.”

“Spiritual? At Maylords?”

“It’s an orange-peel blessing with Amelia Wong presiding. I was rounding up some media and thought, hey, Matt is media.

Maybe there will be some fodder for a future Midnight Hour discussion.”

“Uh, orange-peel blessing?”

“I know. It sounds blasphemous to a mainstream religion guy, but I’m told it will ‘cleanse and bless’ Maylords and its

inhabitants in the wake of the other night’s ‘evil assault,’ the Friday from hell. It will erase a multitude of negative influences and will correct and compensate for known and unknown feng shui problems, providing a fresh start after even the most unfortunate circumstances. It is also appropriate to bless a home or office upon moving in, and can ensure an auspicious grand opening for a new business.”

“Sounds like ‘Reverend’ Wong should have performed this rite before the gala opening night.”

“Better late than never,” Temple said.

“You were reading that off a press release, I hope.”

“My personal press release. PR is magic: transforming disaster into advantage.”

“So that’s what you and Kinsella have in common.”

“Ah, do you mean magic … or disaster?”

“I’ll let you answer that one. So, okay. If you want me there, I’ll come.”

O000h. Temple bit her tongue to avoid an inciting answer to that innocent double entendre. Ow. “I have to run. Actually, I have to run off at the mouth and follow up my faxes with personal calls. I’ll have a cauliflower ear by noon. The ceremony’s at four P.M.”

“See you there,” Matt signed off.

Temple listened to the dial tone drone for a while to help her heart rate slow down.

A bit after three, Temple eased her Miata into a parking space all by its lonesome near the street, so no one would park in adjacent slots and chip her paint.

She surveyed the array of media vans pulled up in front of Maylords with satisfaction. They represented every major local station, as well as the networks.

The fa�ade of Maylords was pretty jam-packed too. Workmen moved between the room settings and the great outdoors, replacing huge sheets of glass.

Temple hustled inside on her white patent leather clogs, a patriotic symphony in a red-and-blue knit suit. The floor, she was relieved to see, was pristine, and all of Friday night’s shattered glass had melted like icicles in the Las Vegas heat. If it weren’t for the workmen reinstalling the plate glass windows, one would never know… .

A wandering TV reporter with videographer in tow started to intercept Temple, but was diverted by the sight of a Day-glo orange Gangsters limo as long as Shamu trick-or-treating as a pumpkin. It was pulling up to the entrance.

In the manner of a clown car the back door opened to unleash the entire Amelia Wong contingent.

Temple nodded like a hostess with a spring in her neck as they passed her on the way in. Then she sidled up to the chauffeur clad in an orange zoot suit.

“What model is this?” she asked.

“The O.J. It comes with Bruno Magli footrests and a lemonade concession.”

“Isn’t that a bit tasteless, even for Gangsters?”

“Hey, taste is in the mouth of the beholder.”

Another voice intervened from behind her. “Speaking of tasteless, your wardrobe isn’t in tune with the big blessing ceremony.”

Before she could turn to confront that oily and unfortunately familiar baritone, he added her initials as a coda to his comment. “Is it, T.B.?”

Temple finished turning. “If it isn’t C.B., as I live and regret it.”

T h e r e h e s t o o d , Buchanan, a l l the fsleaziest i v flack e - in f Vegas, o o resplendent t - f iin van orange terry jogging suit. It went well with his gelled black hair that erupted in a foam of curls at his nape. All in all a preHalloween look.

“At least I don’t look got up as a grease monkey:’ she said. “Who’s just escaped from somewhere in a jailhouse jumpsuit.”

“At least I don’t clash with the feng shui vibes around this place.”

“What are you doing here anyway?”

He shrugged his head over a brightly plush shoulder. Ugh! “Haven’t you heard? I’m doing radio spot news for KREP.”

“KREP?”

“It’s French for tasty little roll of powdered sugar,” Awful Crawford explained with a customary leer.

“Who would hire you as a journalist?”

“It’s an all-news, all-talk format, not some Muzak-talk mush-‘n’-slush station like WCOO that your friend Matt Devine works

for.”

“I’ll take a slush station over sleaze any day. Excuse me.”

A mike appeared in Crawford’s white-knuckled fist. “All right, listeners, we’ve just buttonholed Las Vegas’s favorite flack

Temple Barr on her way into Maylords … and this little gal has some buttons worth holing-”

Temple, regretting her distant collection of instep-spearing high heels, drove her clog into Crawford’s tennis-shoe-shod instep on the way past.

“Oops!” He coughed, then went on gamely. “She’s been called away by the head feng shuister. Meanwhile, here’s a glasstotin’ man hauling sixteen tons of plate into Maylords’s front window. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“Outta my way, dork, I drop this and you’re sushi under glass. Shrimp sushi.”

Temple grinned as she entered the building, then paused to sense some of Friday night’s terror settling back on her shoulders. She dusted them off, as recommended in yoga class to release muscle strain as if it were dandruff.

The simple gesture did banish a certain tension.

She moved ahead into the central atrium, prepared to do her duty.

Instead of the long buffet table of Friday night, a round orange damask-draped model sat at the circular space’s exact center.

Like a bull’s-eye, Temple thought sourly, glancing around for any protruding gun barrels.

Amelia Wong, her handmaidens, and bodyguards were lined up behind the table.

On it sat a giant wooden salad bowl like Temple’s mother still had from the ’60s, heaped with oranges.

Tall vases sprouting vivid orange tiger lilies flanked the … urn, Orange Bowl.

Temple bit her lip. Giggling did not seem to be the proper ceremonial reaction here.

Amelia Wong’s black eyes noted her arrival. A flick of her lashes ordered Temple to a position behind the table. Perhaps it was an altar.

She edged closer to Baylee Harris. The tall blond young woman seemed the most realistic of the bunch, maybe because she was such a physical opposite to their grand dame, Amelia Wong.

“What’s going on?” Temple whispered.

Baylee squinched down so Temple could hear the answering whisper. “She is about to do the Three Secrets

Reinforcement.”

Temple stood at attention. She had never seen a Three Secrets Reinforcement before, although she had a few secrets of her own.

Amelia Wong stood as straight as a tin soldier behind the bowl heaped with oranges.

“Twenty-seven oranges,” Baylee managed to whisper before falling silent.

Amelia Wong cradled one hand in another, then began chanting what sounded like Sanskrit: ” Ga-tay ga-tay, para ga-tay, para sum ga-tay, bhodi swaha.’ “

New Age was the trail mix of culture. Nine times she repeated the mantra.

Then she lifted an aluminum pitcher and poured water into the bowl until it was three-quarters full.

Systematically, her long, lacquered fingernails tore the rinds off the piled oranges, letting them sink into the water.

The oranges themselves were cast into a plastic trash bag at her Manolo Blahnik-clad feet.

Lifting the heavy wooden bowl, Amelia moved ceremonially toward the front door.

“Isn’t this all sort of futile?” Temple asked Baylee. “I mean, the windows are blasted away. You could walk through them.

Where’s the protection?”

“It’s the why, not the where,” Baylee said solemnly. “This blessing is best used on a place where security has been compromised. That’s the cool thing about feng shui. It works in the past, present, and future.”

Temple thought about it. Like all mystical things, feng shui was in the eye of the believer.

She nodded, feeling the same about it as she did about religious and superstitious gestures in general: what the heck. It

couldn’t hurt.

Amelia folded the middle fingers of her right hand into her palm, leaving only the pinkie and the forefinger erect.

Behind her back, Temple tried this position and found her muscles rebelling. It must take practice, like bullfighting. Or bull throwing.

Rapidly, Amelia flicked her folded fingers outward. Temple counted nine times. It was a bit like the shoulder-dusting gesture of yoga, designed to release tensions.

Next, Amelia cradled the fingers of her left hand in her right, her thumb-tips touching.

Then she performed a two-handed finger weave. Temple blinked. She saw the curled little fingers touched by the thumbs, the ring fingers straight up, the middle fingers crossed and touched by the index fingers.

This was an amazingly complicated position. Temple felt her knuckles ache just to witness it.

Cradling the bowl of orange peels in one crooked arm, Amelia Wong marched right to the store’s entrance doors. With the same flicking motion, she sprinkled the water on the hard-surface floor.

Temple watched Kenny Maylord’s brow morph into pale corrugated cardboard. Water droplets would be as lethal to upholstery in an interiors store as they were to Wicked Witches in Oz.

Amelia Wong was busy chanting some new mantra: ” ‘Om ma-ni pad-me hum.’ “

It reminded Temple of the classic kid’s trick: getting some innocent to chant, syllable by syllable, “0 wah to goo Siam.”

Temple concluded that children’s games often carried over to adult life.

Beside her, Baylee chanted her own descriptive mantra in a discreet whisper. “She is cleansing the area. The Six True Words will remove all the bad luck and negative chi, or life force here. The finger flicking is called an Expelling Mudra. It would help if we all joined in to visualize the evil being removed.”

Temple flowed into the procession that followed Amelia Wong as she sprinkled and chanted her way through the store, watering every model room.

Kenny Maylord looked dazed, no doubt wondering if orange spots would soon be busting out all over his showroom.

Temple flowed into visualizing the water spots drying and leaving no trace. That was the only kind of positive chi she could imagine as the outcome of this ritual, so vaguely religious in nature.

It took almost an hour for Amelia Wong to return to the front entry and the table, or altar. Plenty of time for all the videographers to shoot their hearts out.

“Next,” she announced, “the Three Secrets Reinforcement.” She turned to place the bowl on the table, and froze in midgesture, frowning.

Temple was perfectly situated to see her glowering profile and follow her stare right to the gleaming bitter-orange Murano.

A car, Temple supposed, was a sort of room, and it had not been blessed with water spots.

Amelia Wong was clearly about to take care of that omission. First she walked solemnly around the vehicle, chanting and sprinkling. ” ‘Om ma-ni pad-me hum.’ “

Temple couldn’t help hearing that as “Oh Ma, no pat my bum.”

Having completed her ceremonial circuit, Amelia pulled the driver’s door open with her sprinkling hand, keeping the water

bowl lifted in the other.

Something came tumbling out from inside the deep black tinted window glass and painted orange steel. It fell to the beige

travertine tiles, a sack of pale laundry.

Amelia Wong’s tiny high-heeled feet stuttered backwards like a Yorkshire terrier’s: click, click, click.

The falling body, for it was exactly that, settled lumpily on the hard shining floor.

The bowl fell beside it, flooding the area with orange peels and water.

Apparently the Murano’s bad chi had been more thoroughly expelled than expected.

Chapter 21

Feng Shui Can Be Mudra

Videographers surrounded the huddled corpse like technobuzzards.

Their rush to tape the scene squeezed Amelia Wong outside the circle of T-shirt-and-jeans-clad ghouls.

She stood back stunned, her complexion gone ghost white. A stray orange peel had washed up on the toe of her beige-silk pump.

Temple nodded to the nearest Wong associate, Pritchard Merriweather. “Call nine-one-one, right away.”

Kenny Maylord stood helplessly witnessing the lurid discovery from the fringes.

“Get your security people,” Temple told him. “Someone needs to try CPR. And if it’s too late for that, these media people are messing up what may be a crime scene.”

“M-may be?”

“We can’t even tell the gender of the person yet, much less the identity.” Temple turned to the six people hunched over their shoulder-held cameras like hyenas.

“Back, you camera goons!” she ordered in the gruffest basso she could produce. “This person may need air!”

Before she’d finished, two Maylords security guys and Amelia Wong’s shade-wearing bodyguards, all attired in dark suits, were grabbing T-shirts and manhandling men, women, and machines out of their way.

The body curled into a fetal position on the floor looked lonely. Temple knew how to demand order, but she wasn’t quite up

to exploring the condition of the fallen figure.

One of the suits went down on one knee and slowly lifted a shoulder off the floor.

Temple glimpsed blond hair, short blond hair and a smudge of features … forehead, chin.

For a second she was sure it was Matt, and her heart stopped.

Then she saw it was Simon.

She thought she made a tiny sound of denial, but it could have come from someone else.

The scene turned instantly surreal.

One of the suits turned the person over, pounded the chest, worked the chest like a bellows, pounded and pushed. No “kiss of life” nowadays, no mouth-breathing, not since AIDS had made blood and saliva dangerous.

Temple watched, numb.

“Who is it?” someone asked over her shoulder.

“I don’t know.” Nobody unofficial should make that call yet. “Wait.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Temple watched for any flicker of an eyelash, any heave of the chest.

There was only the dead, implacable rhythm of CPR, of using a motionless chest as a drum skin and trying to beat it back

into a semblance of life.

The sirens rose to a deafening shriek and then stopped. EMTs in jumpsuits landed on Maylords’s interior turf like paratroopers, rushing, pushing aside the guy who was working on Simon, towing a gurney and an urgent attitude behind them.

Latex-gloved figures bent over him, muffled his face with an oxygen mask to breathe for him, looking to spark some life

still within him.

Temple found herself eyeing an empty spot on the floor. Beside it, a crouching man, hands braced on knees, gasped to recapture his own spent breath.

Rafi Nadir.

She stared.

He recovered enough to look up and notice her. The EMTs had lifted Simon onto the gurney. Wheels were skidding over the polished floor and through the main entrance. Everyone else had ebbed away, following the storm’s center to the parking lot.

“He’s … gay,” she said.

Nadir looked to the side, angry. “Christ. You don’t get it. Talking the talk is just shorthand. Street shorthand. I do my job.” She didn’t get it.

He straightened. “I’m too damn out of shape. Too damn out of shape to do anyone any good.” “You did all you could.”

“Not enough.” His face curdled with disgust. Self-disgust. “Don’t look at me like that. Get outta here.”

She spun on her heel and did as he said, racing to the parking lot where the ambulance was screaming away into the lateafternoon Las Vegas traffic.

Media vans screeched in its wake.

The people marooned on the asphalt watched with dead eyes.

“What hospital?” Temple asked Pritchard, who stood tall and alone by a second parked Gangsters limo. Lime green. The Kermit. Kids loved it.

“Mercy? You have one here named that?’

“No, but shouldn’t everyone?”

Temple stood staring after the vanishing ambulance: it was headed for Sunrise Columbia Hospital. She ached to follow it, but that wasn’t the most effective thing she could do. Kenny Maylord was doing that, and they had each other’s cell phone numbers.

First, she had to go inside to calm down Amelia Wong and company, and the Maylords staff. Second, she had to brief Mark Ainsworth on what to give, and not give, the media. Mr. You’ll-be-axed-in-three-months was not a promising candidate for suave media management. Third, as a fail-safe, she had to touch base with all the local media by cell phone to make sure she was their first, and last, contact on any follow-up. And in the middle of all this damage control, she needed to make a radical detour for a mission of mercy. Thank God for cell phones that would keep her finger on the pulse of events even when she was on the road.

Her major personal priority right now had to be off the record: escaping the scene of the crime to find and tell Danny Dove what had happened.

In this world of constant wireless contact, only a face-to-face would do. Temple also understood that actually and finally knowing for sure what had happened … and why … would only come much later. If ever.

Chapter 22

Slow Dancing

Temple headed to the sprawling pseudo-Saharan Oasis Hotel.

Danny was drilling dancers there, working up a huge new show. Rehearsing night and day. The start-up cost was millions. Temple recalled Simon lightly chiding Danny for his frequent recent absences the night of the Maylords opening. A fond pride. An intimate’s good-natured complaint.

Like she would joke about Max being the Invisible Man in her life.

She found herself walking into the Oasis’s Sub-Zero air-conditioning, moving among murmuring crowds into the noisy heat

of action and risk.

Theaters always were located at the rear of Las Vegas hotels, discreet marquees meant to be resorted to only when gaming was temporarily deserted.

This theater marquee was dark. A placard announced the future opening of another Danny Dove spectacular. Toddlin’ Towns, a tribute to the world’s great show cities. Paris, Chicago, London, New York…

Temple pushed through the easy-opening double doors into the back of the huge, raked house.

Far below, the stage was a black postage stamp pierced with pinpoints of lurid light.

Antlike, people milled in kaleidoscopic patterns below Danny’s art. Making motion into emotion. Patterns into phenomena.

Temple walked down the carpeted aisle, her heels digging in like pitons against the inevitable pull of gravity that tried to

make her stutter into a trot and finally a run. Digging in against inevitability.

As she got closer, she could hear Danny exercising his voice like a ringmaster cracking his whip.. Conductors commanded and cajoled with mute arm movements and expressions. Stage directors ruled with pages of postperformance lined notes. Choreographers created with voice and motion, physical presence and command.

They took your breath away.

And then you did more than you had ever imagined you could.

Temple needed to do more now than she had ever imagined she could.

Eventually the company noticed the lone figure stomping down the raked aisle. Their group gaze flicked away from their maestro to the distraction. Nobody ever interrupted a Danny Dove work session.

He finally sensed the diversion and turned, imperially annoyed. Saw Temple. Paused. Melted a little. Saw her expression,

or lack of it. Frowned.

He turned back to his troops. “All right, people! If you’re going to be distracted you are no damn use to me. Off! Go contemplate your sins! Try to manage a four-four-time trot as you leave. Take a break. Hustle, children! You are movers and shakers, not cigar-store Indians! Dance your exit, damn it! Haven’t you learned anything about making a final bow?”

They clattered away on their taps, a herd of percussionists in leotards.

Danny turned on Temple as she approached. “I’ve never seen you steal a scene before, toots, especially from me. You know rehearsal is sacred. So what’s the big occasion? It had better be.”

She went on silently, until her toes hit the stage-left stairs and her feet moved up onto the black hardwood stage and thundered at every step.

“Danny, I’d rather die.”

“Nobody ever dies in a Danny Dove production.” He waited until she came even with him. “It’s ‘Face the Music and Dance’

all the way.”

He held out his arms like a swain in a ’30s movie.

Temple tilted her head in bewilderment. That released a tear that had been dammed by her eyelashes.

Danny swept her into a box waltz, the dopey, basic four-step every kid had been taught in grade school. Temple stumbled anyway, but Danny was such a superb dancer, such a superb leader, that her stumbles meant nothing.

They moved around the stage, in the silent mathematics and music of dance steps.

“Tell me,” he said.

Temple’s voice was as clouded as her eyes. “I was there. Everything that could be done, was done. All the way to the hospital. Everything that could be done, was done.”

Danny said nothing, but he moved inexorably. Back, forward, side to side. He gave her time. Time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme.

He kept her moving, her head spinning faster than her emotions. He was the still, upright hands at the center of the dial. Midnight. Unmoving midnight.

“Simon,” she said. “It was Simon. I’ve been on the cell phone checking every few minutes with Kenny Maylord all the way over here. Everything was tried. At Maylords. In the ambulance. At the hospital. It was too late.”

Danny danced. He took Temple with him at arm’s length, in that inane, insane grade-school gym-class pace.

Temple felt her tears twirling away. Evaporated, in some Terpsichorean spin-dry cycle.

Danny finally stopped. Bent his head until their foreheads touched.

“Hospital. Everything tried.” He repeated her key words. “He’s dead.”

She nodded, feeling his head bob along with hers, like a puppet’s. What would she feel if she found out that was why Max hadn’t been contacting her? Too sad and confused and guilty to live.

“Gone.”

She nodded.

Danny’s hands were absolutely dry. They slowly released hers.

“Danny.”

He said nothing, never moved.

“You have to be ready.”

“I’ll never be ready again.”

“You have to be. I couldn’t tell a cause of death, but I’m thinking it was murder.” The word didn’t seem to register. “They’ll come asking you questions. The police.”

He dropped her hands. The dance had ended.

Danny shook his head. “They can’t ask anything more than I would. Than I do. Temple. You were the one with the guts to tell me. You’re going to have to be the one with the guts to help me. To help Simon.”

Chapter 23

L i f e w i t h M o t h e r

The sun is high in the sky as we work our way through tangled weeds and cactus.

Louise and I have returned to our thrilling days of yesterday, only that was like … yesterday two weeks ago, when Louise herself was in Code Red condition.

Today we are in another maze of stickers and thorns and brambles but far from the site of Louise’s last stand. I realize that Ma Barker’s gang has located its R&R facility pretty cannily.

Not even racoons would fancy clawing their way in here, much less dogs, who do not have much tolerance for pain, except

for the pit bulls.

All our coats are looking as if we were groomed by a wood chipper, but our leader is smart enough to weave a way through the maze so only a clumsy type will get snagged down to the skin.

I finally spot the rusted hulk of an abandoned abductor cell that has been dragged away from the area of operations into this forsaken urban junkyard.

It sits in the shadow of an upended La-Z-Boy recliner upholstered in turquoise Naugahyde dating to the late ’60s. Smart. The steel bars protect the occupant and the recliner acts as a day-long awning … although I would hate to try to snooze under a hundred pounds of sun-blistered Naugahyde, steel, and springs.

Talk about a rat trap: this is a potential cat trap.

Anyway, I glimpse a water-filled tuna can in a corner and a darker shadow in the opposite corner that resembles a black shag carpet roll from the same era as the recliner chair.

This does not look good. The others gather around the cage, silent.

“So there must be a way in,” says a voice behind me. Louise.

In answer, Tiger, a big guy in dingy prison stripes, leaps up against the door and hits it just so. The off-kilter gate pops open.

“If dogs were smart enough to do this,” Tiger notes, “she would not still be in here.”

The rickety latch reminds me of a castle portcullis that is about to plunge right down and impale the next individual to pass through. I have watched enough PBS reruns on the construction of the medieval castle to know about moats and porcullises and boiling oil and such.

But Midnight Louise-benighted street kit that she was, and is-trots right through the rickety door, tail held high.

Well, can Midnight Louie let a girl outclass him in the courage department? Never!

I am hot on her heels.

So there you have it, I realize with a sinking feeling. The entire possible Midnight clan, with the exception of my dear old dad, Three O’Clock Louie, are bottled up in a rickety cage in an unofficial dumping ground, surrounded by feral cats who would just as soon jump us as dump us.

Not a good move.

But Louise pays no attention to the looming dangers. She just hunkers down next to what is left of Ma Barker and begins

with the licking.

Dames! They always confuse cleanliness with good health.

I hate to tell the kit, but she is not going to raise anything from the dead with a few licks and a promise.

I shoulder Nurse Sandpaper aside and touch my tongue to Ma Barker’s nose. Hot and dry, like the desert all around. Not a

great sign.

I lift first one, front paw, then the other. Limp, but not broken.

I nose around her sides, sniffing dried blood. The tail is lifeless to my prodding touch. The back legs I cannot get near.

Miss Louise nudges into place behind me, purring.

This is the one thing humans do not get about our kind: the purr.

They think the purr is always a positive, happy thing. Like a human giggle or something. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is

the opposite. A mother in labor will purr; it soothes the birth pains. An injured cat will purr, the same self-medication at work.

Meditation-medication, a New Age upstart like Louise might call it. She is into Oriental food and who knows what other mystical Asian hanky-panky. Maybe even feng shui.

All I can say is whatever Miss Louise is up to, it is catching. I find myself purring despite myself. Pretty soon I will be intoning Om and raking strange runic patterns into my litter box. Actually, I use my home facilities so little it might as well be an Oriental rock garden.

So anyway, I hum along despite myself.

Before you know it, little Gimpy’s wimpy tenor has joined in. And Snow Off-white’s raspy alto. And Tiger’s and Tom’s double-basso.

I, of course, am the basest basso of them all.

So we all sound like a choir of kazoos, except more melodious, and even the cage grill seems to be thrumming.

I fear imminent avalanche from the overhanging turquoise recliner.

What an ignominious end! MASHed to death. Mashed by not even real leather.

And then, in the darkness that surrounds us, black as the pit from hidey-hole to hidey-hole … I see light.

One eye has opened in the inky ruin of Ma Barker’s face. It is green and slitty and looking pretty pissed.

As we hold our conjoined breaths we hear a faint purring. Can it be from her?

No.

Oh, it is from her, all right, but it is not purring.

The sound escalates into an audible growl.

‘What is that bee-buzzing, mind-numbing racket?” she mutters. “It is interrupting my beauty sleep.” Then the eye narrows even farther, aiming at me.

“Is that you, Grasshopper?”

“Er, yes ‘um.” I hope to hell that Midnight Louise is too busy playing registered nurse to register this abominable nickname. Louise’s head lifts from her licking duty. Her eyes narrow.

I quickly change the subject. “Do you want anything?” I ask dutifully. “Do you want me to fetch Three O’Clock from

Temple Bar on Lake Mead?”

“That old sea-dog of a sorry excuse for a tomcat? I do not think so,” Ma Barker growls. Even louder. “Why would I want to see that no-good?” She rises up on her front paws, like a black, sand-blasted Sphinx.

Apparently me and dear old dad are excellent stimulants to the circulatory system.

I back off, ears flattened.

“Besides,” she adds in even stronger tones of disgust. “My hair is a mess.”

And that is when I know that Ma Barker will live to fight another day, and probably another racoon.

We are all hunkered down near the MASH unit.

Ma Barker is sleeping peacefully, her attentive maybe-granddaughter beside her.

I understand that her gang is much enjoying the subsequent respite.

“She is a tough old crow,” Tiger notes.

“Hey! That is my mother you are comparing to a bird,” I say. “It was a compliment, okay?”

Our hackle hairs settle down.

“Okay.” I rise, shake out my buzz cut, and look in every gathered eye. “I need to know what you guys were doing in the lot across from Maylords and what you heard and saw that night.”

“Ma had us scouting a new territory,” Gimpy puts in. “The whole gang?”

“The whole gang. What is it to you?” Tiger growls.

“What it is to me is that the whole gang was witness to a bushwhacking. Who had the nerve to blast away at Maylords when it was

full of people and press? You guys cannot pull triggers. It had to be someone human.” “Barely,” Snow Off-white mews under her breath. “You saw them?”

She nods.

“More than one then?”

“More than human,” she answers, bitterly. “They had us outgunned. Leather from neck to toe, so we couldn’t rip a gut. Hiding behind

glossy helmets.”

“Revving their machines,” Gimpy puts in. “We did not have a chance.”

“Hmmm,” I mews thoughtfully. “Miss Midnight Louise managed to bring down an easy rider all by her lonesome only a couple of weeks ago.”

“She is a domesticated twit,” Miss Snow Off-white sniffs.

“She is a domesticated terror, believe you me.” I look around at the unhappy gang members. Their leader is down and they do not

like having to answer to outlanders.

“So who were these motorized nightmares?” I ask. “Usually biker gangs broadcast their affiliations in a hundred little ways.

Any insignia on these dudes’ jackets or helmets?” The gang exchanges looks.

“‘Little Drummer Boy,’” Tom spits out.

“Audrey Jr.”

“Killer Tomato.““Psycho Punk.”

“Hot Femalie.”

“Marilyn Manson-Dixon Line.”

“Peter Rabid.”

I am beginning to get the picture, and it is not early Mar-Ion Brando. It is not even late James Dean. Or Peter Fonda. “You are saying you were outclassed by a gay biker gang?”

“With assault rifles.”

Hmmm. I do love an enigma. Unless it is female. Speaking of which, Miss Louise has managed to get Ma Barker up on her shaky

pins.

They emerge from the MASH unit, and Ma Barker sits down snarling.

“All right, Grasshopper,” she says. “Are you telling us we were ambushed by the same gang you are after?” In a sense, yes.

I nod sagaciously. I learned this from Three O’Clock. There is nothing more powerful from a middle-aged male than a sagacious nod.

Not that I am middle-aged. I am just post-young-bloodstage.

I sniff pretentiously and chew my cheeks. Marlon would be proud of me. What is needed here is not a fairy godmother, like Ma Barker, but cat-fairy godfather.

“All right,” I rumble. “I eventually need youse guys back down there in decor-town. I need eyes and ears around Maylords. We are

going to take over our Bast-given territory. But first we gotta scout the turf before we can roust those yippie-kai-yai-ai dudes in the Powder Puff Motorcycle Derby.

“As soon as Ma Barker is fit to travel, she and I will do a little executive relocation search. Then we will get the whole gang together

to kick a little people-butt.”

The roar is deafening. And gratifying.

Now all I wish I knew is what I am doing.

Chapter 24

An Officer and a Lady

Carmen Molina sat on the breakfast barstool in her kitchen.

Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s paddle holster, 9-mm semiautomatic, ankle holster, and .38 were locked in the gun safe in her bedroom closet.

That locked Lieutenant Molina in the closet too.

Sunday afternoon. Carmen could lounge around in jeans and flip-flops over a mug of gourmet coffee. Sunday afternoon, and she was actually at home, only the cell phone on the laminated countertop a link to the job that never died.

The heel of her right flip-flop hung half off her foot. Something furry tickled her sole. One of the cats, also at play on a lazy Sunday afternoon. No early mass today, thanks to attending Saturday evening. No hot homicides at work. No mas. No more. For now.

She sipped the black brew, as full-bodied as dark ale. Just the right temperature: barely cool enough to drink.

Mariah came charging from the hallway, through the living room, into the kitchen and almost out the back door. “Goin’ over to Merrrodee,” she mumbled in passing.

“Whoa! Chica.” The long arm of the law-and Carmen stood almost six feet tall in her flip-flops-reached out to corral her

daughter’s shoulder. “I didn’t recognize that name. It’s not Miguelita?”

“No. She’s-”

“She’s what?”

“We’re not tight anymore.”

Tight?

“Well, that happens,” Carmen said. “So who’s the new best friend this week?”

“Oh, mo-ther! Melody. I’m going over to Melody’s.” Carmen frowned. “What’s the last name?”

“Honestly, you have to know everything! I might as well live in the city jail.”

Carmen examined her daughter as if she were someone else’s.

Mariah had shot up three inches in the last year and two inches in front. She was pushing thirteen now. She wore cotton flowered capri pants that were a bit too tight and showed the baby fat still on her stomach, and a midriff-baring top that Carmen’s own mother would have made her burn. But that was close to thirty years ago in east L.A., and little girls today grew up a lot faster, even the ones in Catholic schools designed to retard the onset of that ol’ devil puberty.

Puberty still played by the old rules. In the last few months Carmen had gotten used to sullen glances sliding away, long silences, rolled eyes, and the favorite expletive of the preteen set: “Oh, mo-ther!”

In Mariah’s case, the Put-upon Almost-teen could add “Oh, mo-ther the cop!”

“I just want to know the girl’s name and family, chica.”

“Melody Crowell.”

‘I’ve never heard you mention her before.”

“Because she’s new at school.”

“Her family moved into the neighborhood?” The core of the community was Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and school and the residents were mainly Hispanic-American.

“She was transferred,” Mariah said, looking down. “From Robison Middle.”

Robison. Molina saw numbers. The highest in the middle school system. Almost forty arrests, knife incidents, two gun incidents. Assaults on students and even a couple teachers. Controlled substances. The worst public middle school. Juvenile Delinquent Central. Not quite fair. Lots of kids got through there just fine. And lots didn’t and so parents tried to straighten them up by sending them to “stricter” Catholic schools. Ai-yi-yi-yi, as Ricky Ricardo used to say about his own live-in juvenile delinquent, his wife, Lucy. Back in the Stone Age before digital everything.

“So what’re you two doing?”

“Our nails, all right?” Mariah fanned out her stubby fingers, the nails alternating metallic purple and teal polish. Both chipped. Being a girly girl involved a lot of maintenance.

“Looks like you need it.”

Mariah relaxed a bit. “Melody’s cool. She’s got this, like, white-white hair. Straight to her shoulders.”

“Natural?”

“Mo-ther.”

Eight-year-olds were into painted finger and toenails nowadays and carrying purses and cell phones. Ten-year-olds were spray-painting their hair. Eleven-year-old chicas were going blond and chicos were bleaching their buzz cuts platinum.

Who was she to stop the preening of America?

“You in too much of a hurry to wait a minute?”

“What for?” Said suspiciously.

“Want some coffee?”

Mariah’s big brown eyes got bigger. “Coffee?”

“Yeah. I made plenty.” Carmen pulled out the other stool and patted the olive vinyl seat.

“Well … yeah.”

Carmen got up to fill another mug, doctoring it with a long shot of hazelnut-flavored creamer. When she came back to the countertop Mariah was perched on the stool, her precious little girly purse with the sequined Palm Beach tootsie emblem set primly in front of her.

Carmen pushed the steaming mug over to her daughter andwatched her sip, fight off making a face, then put the mug back down as carefully as she had deployed her purse.

Carmen had given her only daughter a pretty name, one with Latina roots but skewed Anglo, all the better to bow to her heritage and still blend into a melting-pot world. A hell of a song associated with Clint Eastwood (and mama Molina had an unconfessable weakness for Clint Eastwood) went with it. What more could a girl want?

To be called “Mari.” Not pronounced “Mary,” but Mah-ree. Carmen hoped it was a stage and wondered if her daughter realized that was a French pronunciation. Probably not. Mariah sipped again, her eyes not watering as much this time. They sat quietly for a few moments.

“Is anything bothering you?” Carmen asked.

Mariah sighed. Obviously, too many things to count. “I wish …

-

“What?”

“I wish … I didn’t have to go to stupid Catholic school. Otherwise, I’d be in junior high already and not be treated like a baby.”

Carmen nodded. “That’s true. Not treated like a baby in what way?”

“Duh! Dorky uniforms!”

“They are pretty dorky.”

Mariah eyed her with the usual suspicion mixed with a dash of surprise. “I thought you loved dorky. All mothers do.”

“No. You’re right. I wear a uniform too. I need to not attract attention to myself in my job. Doesn’t mean I like that.”

“And those clunky shoes you wear to work. No heels.”

“I’m not trying to be Cher, hon. Just a working cop.”

“You’re a lieutenant.”

Carmen smiled at her daughter’s rare tone of pride. She couldn’t explain she had to be an officer and a lady. And to her mind that meant dull. “So what’s really bothering you?”

“Nothing.”

Carmen waited. Mariah sipped bitter coffee, a bigger sip, less of a face.

“I guess they try at OLG.” She rolled her eyes. “Next fall they’re having a Father-Daughter dance. Oh, goodie.” “Urn. Well, at least you get to dress up, right?”

“Yeah! But they already put out a list of what we can’t wear: no bare midriffs, no miniskirts, no hip-huggers, no bustiers.

What a drag!”

Carmen had to swallow her laughter with a big gulp of coffee to imagine Mariah finding a bustier in 29A-tween size.

Then she sobered. She suspected that finding a “father” for an escort was the real problem. Who? Morrie Alch was a sweetheart, and had a grown daughter of his own. He’d understand this stage.

Carmen eyed her daughter, reading the unsaid plea behind the disparaging words. Every teeny bopper, as they’d said in her day-which was irrevocably a “day,” she realized-wanted to play Cinderella.

“Maybe,” Carmen said with a strange reluctance, “Matt Devine would be available.”

“Matt? Really? Oh, Mom, he’s so hot!”

Carmen blinked at the reaction. No mo-ther, she noticed.

Mariah jumped off the stool, antsy with excitement. “That would be so rad! All the girls would be so jealous! I mean, he’s almost young! And such a babe!”

Where, oh, where has my shy, retiring daughter gone?

Morrie would have known how to handle this hot preteen potato. Would Matt? Sure. He’d been dealing with grade school crushes since seminary. Not to worry.

“You want me to ask him?”

“No.”

Carmen blinked again. She’d thought she had a sure sell there.

“I want to ask him. I need practice calling up guys, anyway. Do you have his phone number?”

On my one-touch dial system, daughter mine. Only I don’t have your nerve.

Carmen nodded, then frowned maternally. “No bare-midriff dresses, though. Not until … high school.”

She couldn’t believe what she was saying. Maybe that fashion fixation would be toast by high school, along with pierced navels. Maybe not.

“Oh, moth-er!”

“Maybe I should drive you over to Melody’s,” she said, rising from the stool.

Her cell phone rang, answering that suggestion.

“Gotta go:’ Mariah said, already using the call to fade halfway out the door.

Carmen stood there, semipleased and half-distracted out of her mind.

The voice on the other end filled her-in, fast and emotionlessly.

Her maternal frown gave way to a professional one.

“What do you mean ‘celebrity involvement?’ Amelia Wong? And who else? Danny Dove? Celebrity suspects? If Alch and Su are up for this case, by all means, let them have at it. No, Captain, I don’t think Su will have any problem handling America’s most successful AsianAmerican entrepreneur. I don’t. Yes. I should. I’ll get on it.”

Lieutenant C. R. Molina, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Crimes Against Persons Division, a.k.a. CAPERS,

a.k.a. Homicide, pressed the cell phone off and slammed it down on the kitchen countertop.

She headed for the bedroom, unzipping her jeans and walking out of her flip-flops for the cats to have at, the key to the gun safe, which she always wore on an unseen chain around her neck, in her fingers.

Sunday afternoon, and all’s normal in Las Vegas. Hell to pay for Saturday night.

Chapter 25

Cat Crouch

I am back home in my favorite thinking position, supine on the couch, when I watch my Miss Temple enter our rooms at the Circle Ritz, red eyed and shaky.

She walks out of her spunky high-rise clogs as soon as the door is locked behind her, letting her bare feet luxuriate in the faux longhaired goat rug under her coffee table before she collapses onto the sofa, a.k.a. (all too often, in my opinion) the love seat.

I, of course, am entrenched there in one of my Playgirl poses, but she ignores my manly chest hair. I see in an instant that what she needs is a cocktail table, but I am no barkeep.

She digs her trusty cell phone from the bottom of her signature tote bag and pushes a single button.

I can guess who she’s dialing: my rival for her affections, the first and only Max Kinsella, the once and future Mystifying Max. The man who would be king, and still her live-in, except that I am here now, bud.

I figure I better earn my pride of place and bestir myself tocozy up to her hip, running my tongue down her wrist, always a ploy

that drives the ladies crazy.

She waves me away, redialing.

“Answer, Max! Answer,” she beseeches the cell phone, poor little thing. Oh, man! This is so lame. “Answer. I need you!”

No. She needs me. Usually she knows this. How can I get through to her? We communicate without words, but right now she is too

distressed to sense our usual rapport.

She punches another button. And waits.

“Matt? Oh, thank God!”

Well, I thank Bast myself, but that is a somewhat old-fashioned practice, I admit. Still, it is better than thanking Elvis, which I have

been known to do on occasion. Any deity in a storm.

I recall my own traumatic reunions in recent hours and resort to the self-soothing regimen that proved so effective for catkind. I

stretch out along my Miss Temple’s hip, purring up a furry hurricane. She strokes me absently. Absently! “Matt, I just had to tell Danny Dove that Simon Foster, his significant other … oh, God … is dead.”

Is my Miss Temple saying that God Is Dead? That is so over.

Well, there is no one faster to intervene in a crisis than a priest, even if he is an ex (the most dangerous kind, in my opinion).

“No, I’m all right,” she says, clearly not.

Why do people lie about their states of affairs? When I am . down in the dumps or fit to be tied, everyone around me knows it, and can take appropriate measures. But no, people have to waylay each other with polite lies. No wonder homicide only happens to Homo sapiens. Hey, that is kind of catchy! Not to mention alliterative. Too bad I am not a tunesm ith.

Well, Mr. Matt will be here in a Las Vegas minute, which is how long it takes to lose fifteen hundred dollars at the craps table.

I roll away, miffed. No one notices. Still, despite the humiliation, I should hang around to overhear what’s going on. So low has the role of the private dick sunk in the present day. Sam Spade would never have put up with this.

Miss Temple cannot even wait for him to arrive, but starts for the door on her little cat feet, barefoot. On her naked pads! Without defensive shivs!

If my petite miss were a vegetable, she’d be a radish: small and colorful, with bite. Right now, her bite has become all gum and no fang. I hate to see her acting like an overcooked broccoli, which is pretty limp to begin with.

Mr. Matt Devine’s knuckles barely brush hardwood before she has the door wide open.

I sneak behind the sofa, so as not to inhibit my subjects, and crouch into position with my ears cranked forward, on high

fidelity.

Chapter 26

Sudden-Death Overtime

Matt seldom saw Temple without any shoes on, and particularly without any shoes on that added height.

She looked shrunken and sad today, and the out-of-focus blur of her eyes alarmed him.

“Temple?” He followed her into the living room. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who Simon is.”

“Sure you do. You must have met him at the Maylords opening. You saw Danny there too, didn’t you?” “Yes, but-”

“Well, I met Simon there. Danny introduced us.”

“I didn’t know that Danny . Matt decided it was safer not to say what he didn’t know about Danny Dove. He knew three things, none of them apparently sufficient for this situation: that Temple had known the famed choreographer for longer than anybody in Las Vegas except Max Kinsella, that they were fond of each other, and that Danny was gay.

If Danny were dead, God forbid, he could understand Temple’s emotional state. But … who was Simon?

She shook her head. “How could you have missed him? Simon was way too good-looking to be let off a movie screen.

Blond, like you. In fact, when I saw him, his body, at first I thought-”

“You saw his body?”

“It fell out of the Murano at Maylords during the orange-blessing ceremony.”

Matt couldn’t help looking completely lost, no matter how much he knew that it was important right now to look sympathetic and knowing.

“Murano?”

“That was the orange SUV crossover that’s the Maylords opening door prize, there by the entrance.”

“Oh, that’s what that orange thing is called. He died in the, urn, crossover vehicle?”

Temple clapped a hand to her mouth. “You’re right,” she said through her fingers. “I guess it was literally a ‘crossover vehicle,’ all right. I’ll have to get him to replace it. Kenny Maylord. Get a new giveaway car. One nobody died in. Yet.”

“Hey, don’t get hysterical.” This sentiment seemed to require stepping nearer to Temple, and putting a hand on her shoulder.

That seemed to require her to look up at him through teary eyes and edge into an embrace.

Comforting the afflicted had never felt so good.

Matt cleared his throat. “You’d better sit down.”

Or he had better. He got her perched on the end of the couch and looked around for large black impediments before he sat beside her.

“Simon,” he said again. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, but I do remember some blond guy moving around opening night.”

“Like you.”

“Well-”

“A t f i r s t g l a n c e crossover … car door opened and he tumbled out onto the floor, I h e l o o k e d l i k e y o actually assumed for a moment-”

“He didn’t really look like me. Maybe similar hair color, similar height.”

“Maybe that’s enough! Matt, Kenny Maylord told me that at the hospital they discovered he had been stabbed in the back.” Matt patted her shoulder. Why did people always pat people who were feeling sorrowful? Because of how mothers instinctively soothed infants? Did we try to mother others in times of sorrow? People who pat people … are not the luckiest in the world, maybe just the most inarticulate.

“What are you saying, Temple? That I was the target?”

“No … just that it’s odd.”

“Look. I’m tired of being a target. Anybody’s target. I never would have been anywhere near Maylords if it weren’t that-”

“That what?”

Matt sure hadn’t wanted to spell this out to Temple, of all people. “That I was there with Janice. She’s the Maylords connection. I was just a casual escort.”

“Casual? Didn’t look like she thought so.”

“We’re friends, all right?”

“Of course it’s all right,” Temple said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It is. So this Simon was Danny’s-”

“Partner. Life partner. I know your Church doesn’t-”

“Spare me. You’re not talking to my Church. You’re talking to me. And you had to be the one to tell Danny? Why, Temple?”

“Who else was gonna do it? Some … I don’t know who they would have sent. Probably a detective. Would you want

Molina telling you your life partner was dead?”

“She wouldn’t do that. Not herself. She’s an administrator.”

“Oh, great. So he would have gotten a what, a beat cop? Or some snarly old detective who thinks there ought to be a law against gay people?”

“You’re stereotyping the other way, Temple, but I can see why you wanted it to be you.”

“It was worse because I’d just found out about Simon, had just met him. Danny was letting me into a part of his life he didn’t open up to just anyone. It was much worse. They seemed so happy with each other.”

Matt could say nothing to that, so he just patted her back as she choked up and tried to stuff her feelings back down with a crumpled tissue and a fist at her mouth.

After a while he asked, “You don’t really think someone mistook him for me? She’s dead, Temple. Thoroughly dead. I saw the body in the morgue myself.”

“I don’t think it’s your stalker, no. We can’t blame ghosts.”

“Why would anyone at Maylords have it in for me? I’d never set foot there before, and I’ll likely never do it again.”

“Not even to see Janice?”

“I can see her other places much better.”

Oops. He wished he could swallow that reassuring comment gone terribly wrong. Why? Why should Temple care? She had Max. Didn’t she?

Temple grew quiet, then blinked and shook her head as if shrugging off the tears.

“Still,” she said. “It’s odd that you two looked alike.”

“We didn’t look that much alike, did we?”

That forced her to really look at him, forced her out of the black box inside her. “No … you didn’t. But didn’t someone at the opening mistake you for another man?”

“Only from behind!”

“Simon was only stabbed from behind!” she reminded him.

“Will you forget that? I haven’t got a mortal enemy left in the world, now that the two worst ones are dead. Come to think of

it, I’m pretty hard on mortal enemies, rather than vice versa.”

She smiled thinly at his reassurance. “Anyway, it’s lucky you didn’t manage to attend the orange blessing. If the police had spotted any resemblance between you two you’d probably still be downtown having a tete-a-tete with Molina and her minions.

Where were you, anyway?”

Matt didn’t know how to say what he needed to without sounding terminally shallow. “I did stop by. So late that nothing was left but the orange peels. No wonder the place seemed deserted. I was late because … my booking agent called and there were a lot of dates he had to cross-check with me.”

“Speaking dates,” Temple said.

“That’s about the only kind I have time for these days.”

“I’m sounding stupid. Sorry. All I knew about Simon was how important he was to Danny. Seeing him dead, and thenhearing how afterwards … Who’d want to kill someone as amiable as Simon? He was new to the staff, everybody was. No time for murderous hatreds to develop.”

“Turning the place into a shooting gallery opening night sounds like a pretty murderous hatred.”

“That had to be someone outside Maylords. Literally. Given the elements inside and outside the store, one might suspect some sort of gay gang war. But a stab in the back is as up close and personal as murder can get. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s not sudden death’s job to make sense. It’s our job to make sense of it for ourselves. What does Kinsella think about this Maylords mess?” he asked.

She leaned back and away, shrugged. Temple was never offhand. He read the truth instantly.

“You haven’t told him yet, have you?”

“No,” she said. Shortly. Everything Temple did was shortly, but he liked it.

He stared, watching her momentary high color fade. It was odd how paper white redheads could go under stress. Even if they had few freckles, like Temple, stress brought out every one. Not that he objected. So she hadn’t told Mr. Undercover about this latest trauma? Max Kinsella had always been Temple’s partner in crime solving. Had always been her partner, period. Even when he had vanished for months without explanation, Temple’s loyalty remained hard-rock solid.

But this time she hadn’t told Max. This time Matt was on the inside, not the outside. How really great he felt about that sudden switch was a good indication of just how dangerous this was. Even Janice had nailed, in a split second, the subterranean sizzle between Temple and himself. None of his Las Vegas adventures, even when they had been somewhat lurid, had prepared him to confront something as simple as what he really wanted. And maybe act on it. Irrevocably. But … baby steps first.

“I suppose,” he said, treading lightly on the new and unstable ground he sensed had opened up between them, “Janice might have some insights. I suppose, you … we, owe it to Danny to find out.”

Temple’s head was nodding up and down like the little Chihuahua on a low-rider’s dashboard.

“I owe it to Danny to find out,” she mumbled, catching on to the one course she could act upon. “And I owe it to Maylords to do damage control and keep the bad publicity to a minimum. There’s got to be a way I can spin it and still stay honest, and somehow … save the day. I’ve got to go back, find out what was going on. I will do that. I owe it to my profession, and, most of all, I owe it to Danny.”

Matt remembered how Danny Dove had come to her rescue during a dangerous investigation a few months back.

And now he recalled his one glimpse of Simon Foster at the Maylords opening, who had seemed an innocent figure of light in an environment of dusk and shadow. Matt had sensed fear in the festive atmosphere. Something dark. Darkness he knew a bit about. And strong emotion, hidden agendas, lies. Not sex and videotape, though. He hadn’t gotten to that stage. Yet.

He didn’t particularly want to go gently into that dark night of ugly human behavior where hidden motives become unholy murder, that he knew.

But he would.

And so would Temple.

Neither of them could help it now, she for Danny’s sake, he for the sake of every seen and unseen freckle on her body.

Her teary interlude ended with a hiccough and an expression of true grit.

Janice was right. He thought it was adorable.

Uh-oh.

Chapter 27

All About May lords

Temple sat tapping her toes on the floor and tapping her pencil on the tabletop at Goldie’s Old-fashioned Cafeteria.

Matt had arranged a quickie tete-a-tete with Janice Flanders at the restaurant.

You can get anything you want… .

Trouble was, Temple didn’t want anything she could get from Janice Flanders.

Okay. Temple herself was a significant other of long standing. Almost two years. She shouldn’t care about other people’s

significant others. But in this case she did.

Temple was POed. Piqued off. Max had been incommunicado a bit too long. Sure, that was his usual MO. Modus operandi. But Temple was not a cop. She was his SO. She hated initials, especially the letters CR. As in Crusading Retrowoman. Temple hated shorthand, period. And she was beginning to feel that she’d gotten the short end of the stick from everyone she knew.

Even Matt.

Who’d gone and found himself somebody while she’d been trying to make the monogamous relationship she’d had work with one half of it often AWOL. Darn it! Max hadn’t told her about his shadow life until it suddenly drove him away. Now that he was back he kept promising they’d have a full-time relationship again. At first, Max’s hit-and-run surreptitious midnight visits had seemed Zorro-ish and swashbuckling. Now she just felt nervous when she wondered when, or if, he would come around.

Matt, though, was everywhere she turned lately, and she was getting way too used to that.

Maybe she was just jittery today because Janice reminded her of a college dean, one of those sensibly attired, eventempered female authority figures that always had you worrying that your Inadequacy Quotient was showing. Temple’s IQ was sky high, in both senses of the initials.

Temple eyed the sunlit door again. A tall figure darkened it. At least it wasn’t Molina, the other looming Mother Superior

figure in her life.

Wait! Wasn’t Janice a divorced mother of two? Hadn’t Temple heard Matt say something about Janice needing to support her kids? Both Molina and Flanders were mothers! And Temple was not. Temple was nowhere near being mother to anyt h

m o r e t h a n M i d n Lassie-Louie did i g h t not L need a mother!o u i e , a n d - s o h

Neither did Temple. She had a perfectly good, well-intentioned, overanxious mother far away in Minneapolis.

Still, maybe she was a bit oversensitive to the earth-mother type, because she wasn’t one and never would be.

When Janice finally saw Temple and approached the table, Temple had summed her up. “Junoesque” was the word to describe Janice. She wasn’t as tall as Molina, but looked as annoyingly competent. Her clothing, though, was both soft and sensuous, and arty. She looked at first sight like an Interesting Person.

Temple could see Matt responding to that benign maternal temperament. Heck, if Janice were Catholic, she would be

aperfect model for the Virgin Mary … after having been married with children in the twenty-first century.

Temple needed to find out if she was Catholic.

Janice loomed over the tabletop, setting various dishes on it without spilling anything, including the tall plastic glass of

iced tea.

Competent and coordinated. Drat!

“How are you?” Janice asked first, sounding concerned.

Of course. Temple had a front-row seat when the corpse had showed up.

“Fine,” Temple said. “We could have met someplace upscale, but I didn’t want to run into any Maylords execs, or the

Wong faction either.”

“This is fine. Suits my budget.” Janice easily pulled out the clumsy wooden chair Temple had been forced to wrestle into submission on her side of the table.

Randy Newman’s satirical song had been wrong about short people: they deserved to live. But he hadn’t underestimated the uphill climb they faced in everyday life. Like a lot of other people who didn’t fit the desirable Madison Avenue image of tall, blond, young, white, thin, and therefore “perfect.”

“I’m really sorry,” Janice said, “that you had to be right there for that grisly discovery. I was back in Accessories and only heard about it later.” She made an unhappy face. “I’m also really, really sorry about Simon’s death. He was a gifted designer and a sweet guy on top of it. Too sweet, maybe.”

“You referring to his sexual preference?”

“No! To his personality. Matt said you had a theatrical background. You and I know the arts are a haven for sensitive people who might be discriminated against elsewhere. Simon was simply one of the good people: good at what he did and good to know.”

“Simply Simon. So you don’t think he was killed because of his sexual orientation?”

“I suppose it’s possible. It’s an ugly world. But … Maylords is very gay friendly, which is only realistic in the design subculture. Still-”

Janice frowned as she moved her chicken Caesar salad front and center. “Something is rotten there, something in the management. And then there are those Iranian secret-police types ; the company hires to do security. But all this is just gossip.” ” ‘Just gossip’ is what solves crimes.”

“Matt said you had a tendency to Nancy-Drew it through life.”

“Did he? Danny Dove happens to be a very good friend of mine. Danny saved my hide once, and maybe my life. Simon was the most important person in his life, and I am not going to let Simon’s killing be written off to a fluke. I want to know all about Maylords.”

“My sympathies to your friend Danny, but I can’t say I’m surprised something violent happened. Except that it happened to

Simon. The whole place is a snake pit, but why, I can’t tell you. Maybe it’s the celebrity thing.”

“Wong is pretty hot stuff media-empire wise.”

“Not Amelia Wong. Danny Dove. There’s a lot of … I won’t call it romantic rivalry among the Maylords staff. Maybe a corporate form of bondage and discipline. Look. There are a lot of gays on staff, and certain ugly hierarchies have been set up. It’s not a particularly gay thing. It could be a woman thing. Or a purple people-eater thing. It’s any place where power is used to put sexual pressure on anyone. There could have been jealousy because Simon was connected to such a high-profile person.”

“Oh, God, I hope that never occurs to Danny. It’d kill him to think he’s responsible, even indirectly. It’s gotta be something else. Amelia Wong gets constant death threats. It could be jealousy, as you suggest, but of her financial success and fame.

She’s the new personality that’s been injected into the scene for one high-intensity week.”

Janet nodded. “Is that why you’re determined to solve all this? It’s part of your job nursemaiding Wong for Maylords?”

“Exactly. I studied the company when they took me on as Las Vegas PR rep, but I also boned up on Amelia Wong and her kingdom of companies. Anyone can find that out on the Web. Now I want the inside dish on Maylords’s daily operations, onwho, what, when, where, and why. Then I might discover the who, what, and why Simon was killed.” “I doubt I can help you any more.”

“You’re the insider.”

Janice sighed as her fork explored her salad ingredients. “Matt said you were loyal, to a fault.”

“I don’t care what Matt said to you about me. I want to know what you’ve seen and heard at Maylords.”

“Why are you so concerned with Maylords?”

“Because it’s where a man died. That has to mean something.”

“It could have been a love triangle.”

“Uh-uh. There was no third leg to what Danny and Simon had. I saw that.”

“That’s your opinion. Maybe you aren’t the most accurate observer on the block.”

Ouch! Temple checked the tines of Janice’s fork to make sure her blood wasn’t on them.

Janice laughed and dug into her salad. “Relax. You’re right. Something is definitely rotten at Maylords, and the casual PR

rep is not in the position to document all the ins and outs of it.”

“But you are.”

Janice grinned at her. “You bet. I was wondering what I’d gotten myself into well before someone sprayed the model rooms with bullets or poor Simon came tumbling down out of that prize vehicle.”

“You did? Really?” Temple’s appetite was back as she tackled her hamburger hot dish. Funny how fluttery her stomach had been until Janice had started talking frankly. “Tell me.”

Now that they were into real “dish,” any personal tensions were forgotten. Or forgiven.

Janice chewed, probably a perfect ten times, then said, “You do know that the new staff has had a fully paid six-week orientation period before the opening?”

“Apparently that’s unheard-of in the retail biz. That fact was ballyhooed in my press releases. Kenny was really proud of

that.”

“Well, why then, just as that six-week freebie was ending-and just after Kenny Maylord flew in to meet the new troops-did we all get told we were dead meat?”

“I heard that, but it doesn’t make sense.”

Janice finished the half of her salad she was going to eat, then leaned back to study their neighboring diners.

Finally she leaned toward Temple again, lowering her voice. “From the beginning it was … interesting. First, there were the Disappeared.”

“The Disappeared?”

“You know, like in Latin dictatorships, the Desaparecidos. The first one I could understand.”

“How so?”

“Two weeks into orientation, she-and, boy, was she a `she,’-spent a whole meeting with a case of creeping hemline.”

Temple shook her head to show that she didn’t get it while also polishing off the last bit of noodle.

“She kept lounging lower on her tailbone on the folding chair and her skirt kept creeping up her thighs. I’ve never seen

anything like it, but I’ve missed a lot of R-rated movies. Pretty soon that skirt was hip-bone high.”

“She was an exhibitionist?”

“Sad, but apparently so. Anyway, none of us ever saw her again after that meeting.”

“Understandable.”

“Then, just before the ‘soft’ opening, which was a few days before the official opening, our leader had flown in from Palm

Beach to address the troops.”

“Kenny.”

“Right. And he spent half an hour telling us that we were the finest group of well-trained and qualified customer associates

Maylords had ever assembled.”

“Were you?”

“I think so, truly. Three-quarters of the sales force was hired away from the biggest established furnishing retailers in town by the upscale Maylords image. The interior designers deserted their stand-alone shops like lemmings, and they came from every high-end firm in Clark County. I was in Frames and Accessories, and they even had a plummy Brit, Nigel Potter, who had done table settings for the queen of England, working in Fine China and Crystal.”

“Do I know that! Nigel and his veddy, veddy British accent and monocle was a huge hit on local TV shows for a week before the opening. Rule, Britannia. The harried PR person can do no better on American TV than with a snobby Brit. It was almost as good as Princess Diana’s butler. Not to mention the queen’s ransom in expensive table settings he whipped together.

He almost upstaged Amelia Wong.”

“So there we were. The CEO said we were the best yet, and we were still basking in the praise when Mark Ainsworth took the stage.”

Temple giggled into her lemonade.

“What?”

“It’s hard to imagine anyone as ineffectual as Mark Ainsworth taking anything, much less a stage.”

“So your opinion of him matches mine?”

“Which is?”

“How did this guy ever get to be manager of a Maylords store? He doesn’t even look the part, being squat and chubby and red faced and oily haired and pathetic. But then he got up to address us after Kenny Maylord had left.”

“And he showed hidden virtues?”

“He stunned us. He said two-thirds of us would be gone in three months’ time. That’s before we got vested in a company health plan and got an employee discount, by the way. He said it was sink … or swim with the bottom feeders. If we didn’t perform, we’d be out. We were left reeling.”

Temple considered. “Six weeks’ paid training time before the store even opens, and almost all of you are presumed to be gone in three months? What was the point? A rehearsal for a reality show like Fear Factor? It makes no sense. And you say Kenny Maylord had left by then?”

“It was just us and the weaselly widdle wabbit … with Dracula fangs.”

Temple laughed at her description of Ainsworth.

Janice shrugged disarmingly. “Guilty. Two kids at home who watch way too many cartoons. But I admit I’m perplexed by the Maylords strategy. Why hire the cream of local employees, pay them fully for six weeks merely to learn the company routine, bring in the boss man to praise them to the skies, then turn them over to the on-site manager, who threatens immediate beheadings?”

Temple mused, this time eating her Jell-O. “Good cop, bad cop,” she said finally.

“But we were already pumped on ‘how great thou art, Maylords.’ We didn’t need threatening.”

“You got me. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No. Anyway, after that there were more ‘Disappeared.’ “

“How do you mean? More gratuitous skirt hikings?”

“No. Just the man in Mattresses who was hired after orientation, came around one day introducing himself … and was never seen again.”

“You suspect foul play?”

“I suspect he quit, fast, for some reason. He never even got the Jekyll-and-Hyde treatment. He just vamoosed like a bad dream.”

“Maybe Maylords was the bad dream. Anything else odd going on there?’

“Only the occasional impossible employee who can do no wrong. But that happens everywhere.”

“Who is it in this instance?”

“An impossibly bossy … okay, bitchy … woman named Beth Blanchard. You glimpsed her in action. She behaves like she runs the joint, orders all her peers around. Worse, she steals other sales people’s commissions in the most blatant way. You have a client coming in at ten? She meets her at the door and ‘escorts’ her to you.”

“I’ve seen her in action, but how is that stealing?”

“Only in that any sales agent who ‘refers’ a client to another sales agent gets half the commission. By intercepting your appointments, she gets half the sales commission.”

“What a witch! Has she done that to you?”

“She’s tried. She especially went after Nigel’s flocks, who came flooding in asking for him after all the media exposureyou got him. He was murderously mad! When she tried a few of those tricks on my modest contacts, from my mall sketch-artist days, I immediately sent a memo to Ainsworth protesting her poaching other people’s clients, but I haven’t heard anything back.”

“For someone’s who’s dead meat in three months, you’ve got guts.”

Instead of accepting Temple’s praise, Janice made a face. “I can’t afford to kiss off a good position, not with child support as erratic as it is. But I also can’t afford to give up half my commissions to Miss Snake in the Grass. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. I think that’s how most of the Maylords employees feel now that the kid gloves are off. It’s as if Kenny Maylord hasn’t got a clue and he’s letting the gorillas in boxing gloves run the zoo.”

“That sounds awfully cutthroat, like Enron or something. Who would think selling furniture was a new Ottoman Empire, full of Byzantine schemes and backstabbing and two-faced sales associates and managers? And I thought the theater was bad.”

“It’s retail. And I hear, now that I’m there and talking to the veterans, that retail is hell. It’s all commission, ergo worth backstabbing for.”

“I would have made the same mistaken assumptions as you did,” Temple said, consolingly.

Janice quirked her a smile. “I’ll live. At least I hope so. After Simon . .”

“You think he somehow got caught in the schizophrenic management style?”

“He was very straightforward. Certainly not crooked enough to protect his back. I don’t see Simon playing anyone’s game. You said his partner was Danny Dove, a major celebrity and power in Las Vegas. Maybe Simon never had to fend for himself.

And-” Janice winced. “There was the sexual harrassment.”

“I noticed that women were in the minority opening night. There was you and that Blanchard witch, and about half the

interior designers.”

“Not that kind of sexual harassment.”

“What other kind is there?”

Janice rolled her eyes at the ugly cafeteria ceiling. “I don’t like to say it, but there’s a double standard going on. One of the Disappeareds was this really handsome guy in Carpets. I mean, Hollywood material even if he couldn’t walk or talk, and he could.”

Temple started to interrupt, but Janice cut her off. “Beyond Matt. Beyond Simon. Just beyond. One of those people you can’t take your eyes off even if they’re not your type or your sexual preference. Nature’s amazingly right-on anomaly. Clete was getting hit on, not by the opposite sex. And he was straight. So he left. Before he got anything: health coverage, furniture discount, even a single commission. It sobers you to see a guy get sexually harassed out of a job. You’re so used to seeing it happen to women. I won’t be there long. The best and brightest are being systematically driven out. I don’t have that high an opinion of myself, but I don’t want to end up falling out of a car like a mob hit.”

“Then you’re not here just because Matt asked you to come?”

Janice shook her head. “True, I’ve heard a lot about you. From Matt. A good part of it was what a great investigator you are. I think you’re onto something here, Temple. I don’t want Simon dying in vain. The police? It’s all rumors and company politics, with some sexual politics thrown in. Damned if I can figure it out. Maybe you can. One thing’s certain. I’ll discourage Matt from visiting me at work as long as Simon’s murder goes unsolved.”

“You don’t think the resemblance-?”

“I don’t know what to think. I’m not used to this industry, I’m used to the open ego warfare of the arts world. I can’t figure the damn place out, except that it doesn’t seem healthy for women, gays, sales associates, interior designers, and other living things. And that’s all it is, whatever it’s feeding upon, whoever or whyever.”

Temple nodded. She’d already resolved not to rest until Danny had an answer, however ugly. Now she had to go forward and would have to wait until she’d accomplished something to ask Janice what the heck else Matt had said about Temple that Janice was unwilling to pass on.

Other than that she was a good investigator.

Try to take that to bed or to the bank with you!

Chapter 28

Trouble in Store

Maybe it was because today was Sunday, but furniture stores in the late afternoon reminded Temple of churches.

This was when both were formally decked out for company, but usually deserted.

Temple had wanted to check in the store before it closed at 7:00 P.M. She prowled Maylords’ concentric aisles, visiting the landmarks of the grand opening without the distraction of a mob.

She had glimpsed a suited man loitering in the big boxy area, around the corner from the entrance, reserved for unglamourous goods like mattresses and carpet samples.

The harried shirtsleeved man she saw pushing a huge dolly bearing a credenza was Matt’s friend from seminary, whom he’d pointed out at the opening.

Temple cruised past vignettes she was beginning to recognize, regarding them as side “chapels” to round out her church analogy.

At one she stopped, almost ready to light a votive candle, had there been any.

This was Simon’s design, a temple to Art Deco revival. He had been so talented. Her eye moved from one piece to another, torn between pure aesthetic pleasure, a lust to own everything she saw, and an impulse to weep.

Her gaze flipped back the way she might return to an earlier-read page. Something was … wrong.

In her memory, Simon again stepped up to the lacquered gray wall and exchanged one Ert� print’s position with another. The improvement was instantaneous.

Now it was back the old way, and all wrong. Temple stepped up to the wall, and stretched to lift one framed print off its hook. She leaned it against a leopard-print sofa cushion, then strained to remove the other.

She was too short for this job, but Simon deserved to have his vignette the way he had wanted it.

“What are you doing there?” The question was sharp and commanding.

Temple didn’t stop what she was doing. Neither did her inquisitor.

“Lady, I’m talking to you. Customers can’t just walk in this store and start rearranging furniture.”

“Why not? You do it.” Temple turned, facing the tall woman standing in the aisle like an affronted statue come to life. “The last thing I saw Simon Foster do when he was alive”-Temple lifted the Ert� print of a woman in a gauzy black and orange chiffon gown, to the hook on the left-“was to restore the placement of these two pieces. Like this. Some yahoo had come through and moved them back again.”

“There’s no computer connection to Yahoo here,” the woman said scathingly.

“Yahoo,” Temple explained, “is an ignorant being, not an Internet service. See Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.” When the woman looked blank, she added, “Ted Danson played the title role in a TV miniseries. He ran into a lot of yahoos. A yahoo is a member of a race of ignoramuses.”

Beth Blanchard blinked. Slowly. “Ted Danson. Cheers. Right. We have nobody named ‘Gulliver’ here.”

She was tall and thin with a hyperthyroid look: bulging blue eyes. She was also incredibly unlearned.

“And,” Blanchard added, “you’re the … ignoramus if you think you can walk into Maylords and rearrange the room

settings. I’m going to call security.”

“Get Raf Nadir while you’re at it,” Temple said. “And Kenny Maylord. He’s the one who hired me.” “If you were hired you can get fired.”

“Apparently that’s the rule around here. Unfortunately for you, I have a contract with the corporation.”

While Beth blinked in confusion, Temple stepped back into the aisle to eyeball her quick-change act.

“Much better. Simon had an impeccable eye. See how the spiral right-facing movement of the orange piece complements the scroll on the bedposts?”

“You’re nuts, lady. I don’t see anything.”

“My point exactly. You should let people who can see things do their jobs unmolested.”

The woman blinked again. Temple concluded that she was not only ignorant but a tad stupid. They didn’t always go together, but when they did you got a dangerous person. Nothing would stop her from running roughshod over people much sharper, and more sensitive, than she. Even when they were dead.

Temple hated bullies, especially when they were standing right beside her and had nine inches on her.

Another voice joined the discussion. “You mentioned my name?”

Rafi Nadir was standing there in all his brute glory; navy mobster suit and five o’clock shadow.

Beth tensed beside Temple. “This woman is vandalizing the vignette. Escort her out of the store.”

Nadir turned to Temple. He looked stern. “Anything I can help you with, Miss Barr?”

“This woman is undermining the work of her fellow Maylords employees. Get her off my back.”

“Well!” Beth started to say more, but Rafi turned and gave her a look Temple recognized as cop-not-to-fool-with.

“Your days are numbered, though you don’t know it,” Beth told Rafi.

Temple sucked in a breath. That sounded like a death threat. Maybe Simon had received the same warning.

Beth hoarded one final salvo in her mediocre mind, a shot at dishonoring the dead. She stared toward Simon’s vignette, then said, “I guess he won’t be collecting any commissions on that stuff, no matter how it’s arranged.”

The sound of her furious retreating heels echoed for a long time.

Nadir stared after her. “Castrating bitch,” he noted without rancor, then turned for an expected chastisement from Temple.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she said.

“You are full of surprises.”

“So, sometimes, are you.”

“She’s right. The extra security guys like me are only contracted until the Wong woman leaves. Then it’s down to the skeleton crew of regular security … a bunch of Marx Brothers who think like police reserve wannabes. Amateurs.”

“Maybe she meant ‘your days are numbered’ literally. And I hear the entire sales force has been put on notice.”

“Is that right? Everybody’s expendable? After the dough Maylord spread around getting ready for this opening? Doesn’t

figure.”

“No, it doesn’t. But how does Simon’s murder figure into it?”

“He was queer.”

“That’s no reason to kill someone.”

“In some circles it is.”

“Not in upscale home furnishing stores.”

Nadir shrugged, declining to argue, but not changing his mind, or his prejudices.

“Listen,” she said, “all I know is that people are leaving the staff already, one way or the other. I need a list of how many have quit so far. If, as the charming Ms. Blanchard says, your days here are numbered, could you get that for me?”

“You want me to pass privileged information on to you? You want me to play snitch?” “Ah . yeah, that’s about it.”

He shook his head and laughed. “You know how low snitches rank in the game of cops and robbers?”

“Lower than a snake belly?”

“Even lower.”

“I don’t suppose you know how to run the kind of computers they probably use around here anyway. Maybe you could get me into the administrative offices after-hours-?”

“Worse plan. And I am computer literate. But you don’t need to do technoespionage, kid. You just want to interview the employees who were dumped, or ran, right?”

“Right. Just talk to them.”

“Okay. I’ll get you a list.”

“How?”

He waited a beat. “I should impress the hell out of you and not tell you how.”

“If you can get me that list, I’m already impressed. It’s a good idea, isn’t it? Interview the malcontents?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m no detective, not even a private one.”

“So how are you going to get that list?”

He shrugged. “No magic. They keep a list of authorized employees in the security office. They’ve checked off the exec, including the Foster guy. They’re real nervous about the disgruntled ones doing them dirt. Heard, or overheard, that they had an incident recently in Palm Beach when an angry ex-employee shot out their illuminated display windows at night.”

“Wow. So there’s precedent, then. And the rain of terrorizing bullets could have been from one of the people just fired?”

He shrugged. “You’re the girl detective. I’m just a grunt. All I’ve gotta be is copy-machine literate. You okay with that?” Temple nodded. “More than okay. I’m impressed. Simple is better than complicated. Don’t get caught.”

“Right. Like you wouldn’t be relieved if I did.” He walked away.

Even when he proved unexpectedly helpful, Rafi Nadir’s pervasive bad attitude, BA, hung over him like BO, body odor, canceling out any possible redeeming qualities. It made Temple yet more curious about his long-ago relationship with Molina. Apparently he was why she’d sworn off men. How mind-boggling to imagine the hard-edged homicide lieutenant Temple knewbeing young and vulnerable enough to associate with Nadir. Or had Nadir’s worst characteristics surfaced afterwards? “Miss Barr?” The voice was a whisper at the edges of her consciousness.

She looked around and saw the credenza pusher.

He reminded her of Sisyphus from the ancient Greek myth, forced to roll a rock up a hill and always losing ground before he reached the top. She seldom encountered anyone so obviously beaten down, especially not in Las Vegas, a city that rewarded chutzpah. Jerome was the quintessential Nice Guy metamorphosized into schmuck: a mild-mannered man, obviously, in his early thirties, but already his hairline was beating a swift retreat along with everything else in his life. He’d tried to compensate with a beard, but even it was thin and tentative.

“I’m Jerome. Jerome Johnson.” He looked around again, then stepped nearer. “I’d like to talk to you. I’m a … friend of

Matt’s.” He eyed her uneasily. “Too.”

“Talk? Sure. There’s the shopper’s caf� at the back of the store.”

Jerome shook his head, still looking around.

“Maybe the employee lounge would be more private.”

His watery gray gaze fixed on her face with horror. “Not there. Someplace out of the store, where nobody from here would

be likely to go.”

This desperation for privacy intrigued her, but his request also stumped her. Las Vegas was a city designed to attract tons of people everywhere. And what would be the opposite of a place that Maylords employees would hang out?

“There’s a Chunk-a-Cheez Pizza place off Flamingo. It’s noisy.”

“Noisy is good,” Jerry said. “I can get away at one P.M. I’ll see you there tomorrow.”

“Jer-ry,” came a clarion call from the lovely and cultured Beth Blanchard. “This credenza is six inches off-center, just like

your brain.”

Temple could hear the woman’s oncoming heels beating travertine like a drum.

Jerry winced an apology at her, then scurried to meet the enemy. She had to admire his dogged courage. Temple could hear Blanchard’s admonishing monologue as she slipped through the store the other way around and finally ended up at the entrance.

Something was indeed rotten in the not-so-merry old land of Maylords. The bland Kenny didn’t seem up to overseeing a seriously dysfunctional workplace, but evil can wear an unlikely face.

Speaking of dysfunction, the feng shui surrounding Amelia Wong reeked of superficiality and sycophants. Celebrity produced the worst kind of power, and attracted the worst sort of psychopath. That rain of bullets smacked of some sort of Wong involvement. Larger-than-life empress, big-time attacks.

Simon’s murder smacked of the intimate, the small: one-on-one. Neither act of violence made sense. Each was wholly destructive, with no hint of even something as constructive as personal gain underneath.

Well, that would have to be found out, Temple thought, surveying the clumps of sleek furniture grazing around the polished stone floor like elegant sheep in an upscale meadow. Where there is conspicuous consumption, there is probably conspicuous crime.

This was Temple’s scene for the moment, her little world for the term of her contract. Nothing was supposed to go wrong in it, and everything had. The publicity attracted was not positive but negative and lurid. It could not go on, or more and worse events might result. Temple eyed the deceptive stillness.

A faint orange fragrance lingered, overcoming even the discreetly savage smell of leather. Orange. Blossoms. The scent should have reminded her of weddings, if not her own, but she’d think about that tomorrow.

Instead, this scent had a citruslike, bitter undertone, like the rind of an orange. It reeked too much of the mysterious concoction Temple thought of as domestic Agent Orange, the ubiquitous scent morgues used to cover the smell of decay. Temple had taken a tour of the Vegas medical examiner’s facility when she was repping a medical convention. It had been a clinical yet creepy environment.

It occurred to Temple that this scent of gussied-up decay was oddly appropriate for Maylords.

Chapter 29

Undercover Cats

“This place is one big napatorium,” Ma Barker notes when I show her the illuminated display windows of Maylords Fine

Furnishings. “I always like a long Sunday nap.”

She is up and about, despite her injuries. I hijacked a bottled-water truck in North Las Vegas to bring her down-Strip in

style.

Now she is looking with lust upon all the upholstered furniture our kind cannot afford to dig our shivs into.

Many of us cannot afford even a Dumpster Dive Decor. “You know people who work inside this davenport dream?” she asks.

“A few,” I admit. “Most I do not know. And one of them could be a murderer.”

“Murderer-schmurderer,” Ma Barker notes with a sneer. “It is all a matter of point of view. Am I a murderer? I eat dead things. Oh! Sorry to offend your domesticated sensibilities, my boy. I guess I should say I eat … well-done-in meat. There. Is that better? That is what your human friends doevery day, and you do not wince when they discuss their eating habits.”

“Let us agree to disagree,” I say, “and admit to what disagrees with us.”

Ma Barker turns from gazing into the display windows to regard the sandy empty lot across the way.

“You are right, Grasshopper. Now that our population is stable we need a better class of empty lot.”

I am right! The old dame has admitted I am right!

“But this place will not stay empty for long,” she adds. “And window shopping will wear on a clan used to getting its claws

into life. Rodeo Drive is not for us.”

“Well, there is Three O’Clock’s place out by Lake Mead.”

“We are an urban community.”

“How about that Cloaked Conjurer’s spread, the residential joint behind the cemetery with the Big Boys on board, where you took out those rottweilers and I pasted the ears back on that she-devil Siamese?”

“That feisty little girlfriend of yours did the takedown that time, Grasshopper.”

“Ah, Ma Barker, we gotta talk about that.”

“It is all right, son. No need to be embarrassed about a steady girlfriend. I understand that a righteous dude must be responsible these days or the Behavior Police will nail his nuts to the wall. Boys cannot be boys the way they used to be, for the good of the species. And there is the age difference. Not that I have anything against that. I believe that little Louise has had the operative procedure. She is a modern girl. Yet she has accepted tradition enough to bear your name. You could have done worse. I might have liked grandkits now that my mothering days are over, but I understand.”

“I do not think you do.”

At which point she swats me firmly on the kisser. “No back talk. You are still a kit to me. Ma Barker knows best.”

Chapter 30

Swing Shift

Max buckled the bungee cord to his leather cummerbund and checked it twice.

Up here at the pyramidal peak of the club called Neon Nightmare the only music from below that drifted up was the thrumming beat of the earthshaking bass.

Earplugs.

That was the next piece of equipment he needed to add to his arsenal. Tonight he’d have to work in the matrix, though.

That was the heart of his new act: movie Matrix-style leaps and capers, not to mention vertical wall walking.

The black stretch velvet cape swirled around him, obscuring the hooks and wires that made his current magic act fly.

He was like a puppet on a hundred-foot-high stage, clinging at the top of the flies to a tiny parapet at the pyramid’s peak,

waiting to take the plunge into the limelight.

At thirty-four, this was a hell of a way to go without a stunt double, but he’d been training hard to press his advantage in having breeched the Synth’s secretive walls as a whole new performing personality.

The Phantom Mage. Part Batman, part Spider-Man, part Matrix-man. What a way to reinvent his performing career, and all for the sake of espionage, not fame and fortune.

When he’d been a full-time magician, the Mystifying Max had been renowned for defying gravity.

Now, in this new act, he’d be defying both gravity and death. The gravity of death.

If it worked and his act pulled the attention of the self-absorbed party people below, he would prolong his chance of learning something solid about the sinister Synth, which might be the magicians’ version of Murder Inc.

If it didn’t work, he’d be another magician/acrobat that couldn’t, and would have to start all over again from square one to position himself inside the heart of darkness known as the Synth.

Death-defying leaps into free fall seemed the better course.

Max pulled once more on the steel hook, waiting for the pulsing drumbeats that were his curtain-raiser, and leaped into the dark noise below.

The rush of wind, his cloak billowing like wings, the stomach-churning swoop caused an adrenalin rush.

He was upside down like a bat (Count Dracula was another compelling media role model), but he forced his body to stay

loose, so he wouldn’t fight the sudden jerk at the end of his elastic tether.

He rebounded in the spotlight, the drums echoing his accelerated heartbeat. His booted feet touched one side of the pyramid, then bounced off the other, the rhythm quickening to the drumbeat until he was banging back and forth at the pyramid’s narrow apex like a human Ping-Pong ball.

The applause was deafening, even up here.

All eyes focused on him as he dropped thirty feet and began walking on air in the blinking images of strobe lights.

His hands rained glittering tubes of light on the revelers below, who donned them like Mardi Gras necklaces.

This hokey idea was a hit!

Now the audience was an eerily lit part of the show.

Max glanced to the dark tinted glass that hid the high, overlooking balconies from the dancers below.

Were the people inside impressed? Did they accept him as what he claimed to be? A performer irritated at the trend of outing time-honored magic-act trickery. An old-style magician with a bone to pick.

And a compelling illusionist in his own right.

Right.

He couldn’t help thinking how Temple would cheer him on, if she only knew. How much she hated that he’d been forced to abandon his livelihood, his art, for the shadowy world of the undercover operative.

She’d fought Molina like a tiger to defend him while he was gone, knowing nothing of the facts involved in his disappearance.

Loyalty like that was unheard of in the double-agent world of espionage. You couldn’t buy it, you couldn’t bully it. You

couldn’t live without it once you’d had it.

The hoots and whistles and the applause rang hollow, after all.

There was only one person he wanted to see him do this, now, who would bring the joy of his achievement home to him.

He could climb the interior of a modern pyramid like a human fly, but he couldn’t manage to spend the time he needed with the woman he loved.

And who still loved him. He hoped.

Chapter 31

Cheesy Decor

Temple’s spur-of-the-moment choice of an assignation site came from her utter ignorance of the inside of a Chunk-aCheez Pizza restaurant just past high noon on a Monday.

She figured it would be loud in both design elements and clientele.

She hadn’t figured on outright pandemonium. That is what one got for having a cat instead of a child. Cats liked to play couch potato. Kids liked couch destruction as play, with the sound track on movie-theater maximum high.

She wondered how she would interview Jerome in here without shouting secrets to the whole wide world of junior Spy Kids.

Through the pandemonium she at last saw Jerome scanning the continuous action reminiscent of a Jackie Chan fight scene.

He finally spotted her sitting alone at the table for four crammed against the back wall, as far from the speaker system as possible, and headed her way. That meant sidling crablike to avoid bumping into any bumptious kids, frazzled parents, crammed tables, or servers swooping huge trays of pizzas and tall plastic soft drinks over everybody’s heads.

“G-good choice.” He sat and gulped from the unclaimed water glass opposite her. “Nobody from Maylords would be caught dead here.”

He flinched when he realized how that sounded, under the circumstances. “Should we eat something so we don’t arouse suspicion?”

Temple suffocated her smile. Arousing suspicion did not seem something that came naturally to Jerome Johnson. He suffered from such a terminal case of “nice” that he was likely to vanish altogether. “I think we better order. What we do with it afterward is up to our consciences.”

“What about my conscience?” he asked, stricken.

Jeez. “I’m sure you have a very nice one, but right now I’m interested in what you have to say about Maylords. If you have reservations-”

He gazed up at the lip-pierced teen waitress who had paused by their table with pencil poised, her baby face looking both bored and impatient.

Temple decided leadership was called for here. “A cheese and tomato pizza.”

“Super, Gigantic, or the Incredible Hulk?” “Uh, what size is the ‘Incredible Hulk’?”

“Same as the Gigantic, except it has green peppers all over it.” Temple interrogated Jerome with her eyebrows.

“The last thing,” he said. Nervously.

“Drinks?” the waitress demanded.

“Water will be fine,” Temple said.

It was not fine with the waitress. She bit her collagen-plump lip, then released it so the steel ring flipped them an unfond farewell, and slouched away.

“Cheez,” Temple said, “you’d think we’d spurned their liquor license, and they don’t even sell the stuff.”

“This is perfect for security,” Jerome mouthed, leaning over the table so she could hear him.

“Glad you approve. I ordered plain so we didn’t get anything you hated.”

“I don’t hate much,” he said with a shrug.“How about Beth Blanchard?”

“She isn’t worth hating. A deeply insecure woman.”

“Nice of you to be so generous. I wouldn’t.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Where?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he surgically removed the paper wrapper from his straw. Then rolled the thin paper into a mote the size of a spitball for Mickey Mouse. Then dropped it in the obligatory glass ashtray on the table.

“You’re a friend of Matt’s,” Temple said, remembering that much from the Maylords opening night.

Jerome shrugged. “A schoolmate, more like it.”

“In Chicago?”

He looked surprised. “No. In Indiana. At St. Vincent’s.” That name rang a bell in the temple of her memory. But she was a Unitarian Universalist by birth, and they didn’t sling saints’ names on every place of worship. Maybe they thought it was devisive, pitting one holy figure against another. “The seminary,” Jerome said, noticing her confusion. Well, confuse her some more. She knew it was where priests and ministers-in-training went before they were ordained. Yet the word always reminded her of female seminaries, the genteel nineteenth-century academies that made girls into ladies. Call her Incongruous. It fit.

“You’re not Catholic, are you?” Jerome smiled for the first time. “I assumed wrong.” “I’m not even religious.”

“Wow.”

“Wow?”

“I’m surprised Matt has escaped the religious culture so completely. You seem to be a good friend of his.”

“Pretty good,” she said, wary.

“Look. I’ve heard enough around Maylords to know you’re trying to put two and two together about the operation, and

Simon. Well, you can’t.”

“I can’t?”

He smiled again, looking more relaxed, looking more like someone human she wouldn’t mind spending time with.

“Maylords doesn’t add up to four. It adds up to three. Or five.”

“Jerome, you’re losing me.”

“Oh, I was lost a long time ago. Back at St. Vincent’s. I don’t know how much you suspect, or how much you even want to suspect.”

“Here’s what you need to know about me, Jerome. Simon is dead. I’d just met him, but he meant the world to a friend who means a lot to me. I have this … affinity for figuring out things. Maybe I can help. That’s why I need to know what you know.” “I don’t want to betray Matt’s confidence.”

“Neither do I.”

“How much do you know about him?”

“How much does anybody?”

He nodded. “Right answer. Matt’s reticence is understandable. Flunk out of Catholic school, and you go into life minus a high school diploma. Flunk out of seminary, and you go out scarred for life.”

“I don’t believe that. Matt’s pretty okay, except he’s a little obsessive-compulsive about right and wrong. That’s better than the other extreme, which is the Hell’s Angels.”

“He’s got nothing to be worried about; you’re right. Me, that’s a different story, and I don’t know how to tell it.”

“For starters, why didn’t you want to talk to me at Maylords?”

Jerome looked at her as if she was finally demonstrating her complete state of nuttiness. “The place is bugged.”

“Bugged? Like where?”

“Like the employee’s ‘lounge.’ And ears are everywhere. That layout is a maze and you never know who’s unseen, one vignette over, hanging on everything you say, everything you might think about saying. Everyone will know you and Beth Blanchard had a spat Sunday by four P.M. today.”

“So what did ‘everyone’ know about Simon?”

Jerome sucked air and then water through his straw. Around them the din cranked up.

“Simon was there and not there. He had a celebrityboyfriend. He was untouchable … and more vulnerable at one and the same time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You ever been anyplace that encourages a secret society?”

She thought of the Synth, the supposedly ancient conspiracy of magicians, but that was Max’s area of expertise. She knew next to nothing about it.

“I’ve been where some people are underhanded, but that’s any workplace … a theater, a TV station. That’s why I like working for myself.”

Jerome shook his head at her, assuming a strange superiority. “I don’t know how much I should tell you, how much I dare

tell you.”

“Someone at Maylords will be out to get you if you do?”

“Matt won’t like it.”

“Matt? He has nothing to do with Maylords. Except he … knows a couple employees. Me and”-Temple bit back her reluctance-“Janice Flanders.”

“You’re temporary at Maylords,” Jerome said quickly. Dismissively. “Janice too. It’s not a game women can play.”

“What? The old ‘golf’ excuse? Women can’t move up in management because they don’t play golf and they can’t play golf because the most exclusive clubs deny them membership?”

“This is a way bigger barrier than golf.”

Temple opened her mouth to object to that clearly sexist assumption, just as Miss Pierced Pout arrived to slam a steaming tray of tomato sauce-spattered cheese down between them.

“Incredible Hulk,” she announced. “Peppers? Parmesan?”

“Uh, sure,” Temple said, eager for her to leave. “The works.”

A curtain of steam and heat rose between her and Jerome. This was hardly the environment Temple would have chosen for a confidential conversation, but it was the only place she would learn what she needed to hear.

Glass-bottomed containers hit the table like automatic rifle fire. Hot sauce, dried red peppers, milled Parmesan, and other uncertain condiments.

Though the server was soon gone, the question remained, and Temple asked it.

“Why can’t women play the Maylords game? Most of the interior designers are women. Granted, the sales force and management are almost all male, now that I think about it.”

“It’s seminary all over again! All men, and a few women who aren’t ever going to get anywhere and will move on without knowing why.”

“What about Beth Blanchard? She doesn’t look like someone who’d move on if a semi came at her head-on. I’m surprised she wasn’t found dead in that crossover SUV. Why does management put up with her abusiveness? Why do you?”

Jerome tried to pull a triangle of pizza free of the gooey strings of cheese that held it captive to the tin. Without much success.

While he struggled he eyed her uneasily. “You’re more than a friend of Matt’s.” It was a question, despite lacking an upswing in tone.

“Sure. We’re neighbors.”

He shrugged his disbelief. “How long has he known Janice?”

“I don’t know.” Temple carved a pizza slab free with her fork edge while she calculated. “Since early last fall sometime.”

“Is it serious, do you think?”

“Gee, I should ask you that. You’re the one who works with Janice. And I’ve hardly seen Matt at all lately, he’s been so busy.”

“Yeah. I could see you and Janice hadn’t expected to encounter each other at the Maylords opening.”

They chewed in silence for a while, Temple glad she didn’t wear dentures. A Chunk-a-Cheez pizza would have extracted them with a single attempted bite.

“Why are you so interested?” she finally asked.

Jerome flushed a little, but the pizza was still steaming. “We were in seminary together, and both left. I just wondered how much Matt has … resocialized.” -

“Well, I know Janice is a divorced single mother, but she’s not Catholic, is she? From what I can figure out, Catholics can’t marry each other if they’re divorced, but since marriages among non-Catholics don’t count, they can marry any old divorced

Protestant, or Muslim, or Mormon, or atheist they want to. As long as they do it in a Catholic ceremony.”

Jerome’s deepening flush matched the dried red peppers Temple sprinkled on her congealing cheese.

“That’s not exactly the way I’d put it.”

“You’ll have to excuse me. I’m an unwashed Unitarian.”

“Unitarianism. I hesitate to call it a religion … more like a social philosophy.”

“Do you hesitate to call it a religion because it’s light on fiats and proscriptions?”

“Well, no. I mean, obviously it’s not very demanding.”

“You mean it’s way too tolerant of human needs and weaknesses, like Jesus in the New Testament?”

“Hey, Miss Barr, I didn’t mean to put down your religion.”

“Actually, I don’t really, you know, attend services anymore.”

“It sounds like you haven’t left the fold, though.”

“Philosophy is a little harder to leave behind than ritual,” she agreed as she gave up on the fork and Bucky Beavered a sheet of cheese free with her two front teeth. All she wanted

for Christmas was a buzz saw for this pizza.

“I guess we shouldn’t talk about religion,” he said. “It gets tense.”

“I wish talking about Simon’s murder would get a little more tense. I have no idea what motive the police are exploring, but

I don’t see how or why it happened. And Danny Dove is expecting me to come up with some explanation.”

“Can’t you let the police do it?”

“If I, a PR person by trade, can’t get to first base about the corporate climate at Maylords, how are the police going to do

it?”

Jerome stabbed his fork into the pizza crust with enough fervor to snap a piece into two parts.

“Nobody’s going to do it,” he said. “I don’t know why Simon died, and I don’t care. He was another one of those golden boys who coast through life. He had a rich boyfriend. Why was he even working at Maylords anyway?”

“I have a rich boyfriend. It doesn’t mean I don’t need or want to work for a living. Maybe that makes it even more vital that I

support myself.”

“Then I guess everybody’s a winner and nobody thinks about what the losers go through. I’m sorry I came.” Jerome stood up and

threw two crumpled bills on the table.

In moments he was weaving through the boisterous crowd and soon swallowed by it.

Temple was left to chip away at the cold, congealed cheese on her plate. It was about as cooperative as Jerome, who apparently

had some chips on his shoulders the size of the cow variety.

Well, heavens to Elsie! It seemed like he had come here more to pump her about Matt’s love-or like-life than to feed her info on the Maylords management structure.

He was also way behind the financial times. Temple scooped up the bills. A pair of fives, which were worth as much toward an Incredible Hulk pizza at Chunk-a-Cheez as they would be in a poker game. Didn’t this breast-beating loser know how much a super-sized

pizza went for these days?”

Probably not. Temple didn’t think they ordered much pizza in at a seminary. She bullied two tens from her tote bag and left them on

the table, not daring to skimp on a tip for a lady with a ring in her lip.

Chapter 32

Virgin Sacrifice

The parking lot outside was both quieter and hotter than inside the pizza joint. Summer was coming up fast on Vegas, aching to

escalate from prolonged simmer to roaring broil.

Temple started toward the Miata, wondering if red was the best car color choice for a Sunbelt state.

Something roared in her ears … not noise pollution left over from Chunk-a-Cheez but something moving.

She turned, sensing personal danger.

A rainbow coalition of Harley hogs was powering into the lot … a couple as black as your worst nightmare, others that were hot red,

green, purple, baby blue … and one Elvis number that was solid pink. Six, seven in all.

They circled Temple, cutting her off from the Miata. Their engines made the deep-throated growls of mechanical Dobermans.

What was it with sinister motorcyclists in this town? And what had she done lately to tick off a whole motorcycle club?

Their helmets, visored with smoked Plexiglas that hid features and expression, didn’t answer her unspoken question.

Those helmets were emblazoned with names:

“Peter Rabid” on a black model, “Little Drummer Boy” on the baby blue one, “Psycho Punk” on the pink, “Killer Tomato” on the red, “Hot Femalie” on neon yellow, “Marilyn Manson-Dixon Line” atop purple, and “Audrey Junior” on the lima-bean green one. For all their Technicolor exteriors, they acted as facelessly menacing as any biker gang.

Temple turned to keep each machine and rider in her sights, getting dizzy.

Her car keys bristled in her hand, but what good were they against leather-clad men at a distance? What was she going to do with them, scratch their paint jobs as the bikes circled closer and closer, the riders’ lavish cowboy boots scraping ground to keep them upright on the tight turns?

“Get out of the store, lady,” one voice yelled in eerie imitation of Beth Blanchard’s command to Temple in Maylords one morning.

BB, the Wicked Witch at Maylords, had a multifiavored motorcycle gang at her command? The Las Vegas, post-Oz version of Flying Monkeys? It all felt unreal, like a comic-book-turned-movie.

Temple wished she had a cool long black coat and could do that Matrix air-walking thing. Max might be able to manage it,

or look like he did.

She, however, remained annoyingly earthbound, not to mention short.

Still, she fished for the canister of pepper spray in her tote bag. Like it would penetrate motorcycle helmets. Temple stared at her useless self-protection device like a guy who actually needed an Internet spam offering to expand his member. This fourinch spray can of liquid red-hots wasn’t going to do a thing to repel helmeted Technicolor gay Nazi bikers!

She desperately delved in her tote bag again. She took it with her everywhere and stuffed everything into it from press kits

to the results of lightning raids on the Quik-Stop store.

Had she bought giant thumbtacks, perchance? A staple gun? A A… her hand closed on another cold canister. A really bigmetal canister. Hairspray? How would that stop the boys in Harley Hopping Mad? Although, given their bike color preferences, maybe only Lady Clairol would know for sure.

Temple let her eyes leave them long enough to inspect the fat new aerosol can in hand. Ah. Spray cooking oil in extra-virgin olive.

She didn’t think even extra virgins would distract this crew.

Still. She aimed, fired, and doused the asphalt with a skinny oil slick, rather like the trail of an inebriated snail weaving all around herself.

If at first you don’t succeed … she sprayed and turned, making herself the center of a darker ring, like a target. Oh, great.

At least the can gave off this snakelike hissssss as she sprayed. Don’t tread on me, or my blue suede shoes.

The circling motors gunned. The sinister riders tilted even more to turn more, closing Temple in a noose of heat and noise

that tightened on her with every circuit.

And then … they hit her upscale faux-Crisco moat and started skidding. Rubber screamed and smoked. Expensive leather boots (even the pink pair!) dragged on the asphalt, making sparks as metal toetips and cleats hit bottom. Bikes tilted almost horizontal to the ground.

Temple felt like a beekeeper in the center of a madly buzzing hive, wearing a protective suit of … salad dressing.

One by one the villainous-looking bikes lurched horizontally and spun out.

Temple watched with satisfaction, ready to dodge any spinning Harley heading her way. That’ll teach ‘em to mess with a

domestic goddess-in-training!

But the bikers were at bay now. They milled around beyond Temple’s enchanted olive-oil slick, engines growling and

stuttering.

“Stay out of Maylords,” a couple yelled, sounding ridiculous. They could hardly keep their bikes upright.

“Stay out of my way,” she yelled back. “Feng shui rules! You guys are not earth-friendly. Your chi is tossed salad.”

One biker, the self-announced Peter Rabid on the black number tattooed with silver decals so elaborate she couldn’t read what they said, gunned the motor until his bike reared up on its back wheels to charge.

It drove right at her, like a bull. Like a bullfighter, Temple jumped to the side.

The ring of politically correct emollient didn’t stop this one. It raced across the oil-darkened asphalt.

Temple jumped as far away as she could. Her eyes squeezed shut at the inevitable and imminent impact.

Splaaat-thud!

The sound was TV-familiar. A bottle thwacking into something?

Through slitted eyes Temple saw the horizontal cycle sliding along the asphalt, leaving a dark trail of black body paint.

She winced, imagining Max’s streamlined Hesketh Vampire cycle coming to a such a scraping end. Except that Matt used it now. Sometimes.

Brakes screeched behind her. Was someone else trying to make her into parking-lot roadkill?

Who and why?

She spun around. A long, long, long limo, black as midnight, glided toward her.

One rear door was open, and out of it peeked the shiny black barrel of a semiautomatic pistol.

She turned back to see that the downed motorcycle had a blown-out front tire. Shot out. Its rideless master vaulted onto a

seat behind the rider of the circling Elvis model.

The whole gang roared into an escaping pack and scattered down the side streets, finally dwindling like their engine roar.

Temple eyed the limo’s protruding gun barrel with suspicion: she was crouching kitten, hidden panther. Her trigger finger

itched to depress the canned heat in her hand. Limos didn’t like oil slicks either.

But the vehicle stopped before one front tire tread crossed the gunk. The back door swung fully open.

Fontana brothers came pouring out like passengers in aclown-car-cum-hearse: one tall, dapper, dark-haired brother after another and another and another.

Nicky Fontana, founder of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, had a surfeit of siblings, all male. Some might even say a mob of mama’s boys. With Ermenegildo Zegna suits and Beretta accessories. Temple had worked with Nicky for a long time. She and the nine other Fontana brothers were more than passing acquaintances, though Temple had never been able to tell the junior Adonises apart. They were buff, they were bachelors, and they were beautiful. What more did a girl need to know?

She had memorized their names, though, if not what faces went with them: Aldo, Emilio, Giuseppe, Rico, Ernesto, Julio, Armando, Eduardo, and Ralph.

“How’d you get here?” she asked. “How’d you … all … get here?”

“Chunk-a-Cheez called the cops, on whom we eavesdrop sometimes,” said one she thought was Aldo. He made a face.

“These fast-food joints nowadays have no guts. They reported a redhead holding off a motorcycle gang with a can of canola oil.”

“It’s extra-virgin olive oil.”

Aldos lifted one skeptical eyebrow a centimeter. “If you say so, Miss Temple. Anyway, we knew right away it was you.

Slick idea.”

“Thanks. And how’d you get a Gangsters limo here so fast that you beat the police?” Temple asked.

“This Gangsters limo happened to be cruising by and we, ah, thumbed … a ride.”

Aldo pantomimed his thumb cocking a gun, although even Temple knew a Beretta was a double-actioned semiautomatic

weapon that didn’t require cocking. Still, point taken.

“In fact,” said Emilio, who she recognized by his discreet ear stud (“Earring is for Emilio,” she remembered drumming into her consciousness once), stepping back to hold the door open, “you’d better accept a ride from us, unless you like explaining yourself to the police. Surely carrying concealed extra-virgin olive oil is illegal somewhere.”

“Not in any Italian restaurant I know.” Temple ducked into the limo’s cool, dark interior. Vivaldi thundered joyously from the stereo system. “My car,” she protested unheard.

“Relax and let us waft you to safety in the manner to which you should become accustomed,” one of them said.

All around her the Fontana boys gathered, an ice-cream-suited flock of hunky young guys wearing Brut aftershave and an air of welltailored … well … muscle. She felt like a mafia prom princess escorted by a carload of gangland Prince Charmings with Crest-Strip white teeth. Until now (maybe the black limo had done it), Temple had never realized just how potent an aura of mob surrounded them.

Oh, the shark, dear, is your dinner date. Barracudas, beware! Whatta way to go, though! Much better than the average squad car with strawberry-scented freshener for aftershave.

“So,” asked … Rico, casually sniffing the scentless white carnation m his lapel, “why’d a weird biker gang target our Miss

Temple for becoming a spot on the asphalt behind such a low-grade eatery?”

“That is for sure,” said Emilio gallantly. “She deserves to be attacked behind the Bellagio at least.”

“And how did she happen to be carrying that lethal can of extra-virgin olive oil?”

“Hush, Julio,” said another she knew as Ralph by the tiny ponytail at his nape. “Perhaps Miss Temple does not wish to make public the contents of her purse.”

Temple quailed to imagine Lt. C. R. Molina probing this intimate area.

Obviously the brothers were musing aloud so she could answer their questions, although they were much too polite to ask

her right out.

“I was reaching for my canister of pepper spray, and that’s what came out of my tote bag,” she said. “I’d been to the store

Friday and a few necessities didn’t fit in my grocery bags.”

“Of course not.” Aldo eyed the lumpy tote bag crouching at their sleek Italian leather toetips like a snarl-ridden Lhasa apso.

“What was the extra-virgin olive oil for?” a possible Ernesto asked. (Or was earring for Ernesto?)“My salads, of course.”

“Perhaps you had better locate your actual pepper spray,” Julio urged. “You might mistake it for something to apply to a pizza later. It is always a good idea to dispense weapons to more accessible locations on your person.”

“Such as where?” Temple asked a bit testily. “I rarely wear slacks, so can’t use my ankle or the center of my back. I don’t wear a blazer, so have no handy pockets.”

“That is true,” Ralph said gravely. “There is not much of you to conceal anything on.”