Cat With An Emerald Eye

Chapter 28

Cameraman

On a cool early November Monday morning, Temple Barr called the offices of the Las Vegas Scoop to make an appointment with one of its employees.

She once swore that it would be a cold day in Hell before she'd need anything from anyone at what she privately called the Las Vegas Pooper Scooper, but pride goeth before a frigid fall in temperature. And Gandolph the late Great's death was growing very cold, very fast.

When Temple reached the office, she was almost disappointed to find her quarry not only on the job, but reasonably ready and willing to receive her.

She had donned her most washable clothes and expendable shoes. She had confined makeup and nail polish to funereal pales.

She would have worn sackcloth and dumped ashes in her flagrant hair, if she'd had them.

Unfortunately, in this secular age, sackcloth and ashes weren't the staples of life they once were.

Despite the seasonal cold snap, Las Vegas refused to wallow in an autumnal funk. The desert sky was Lake Mead-blue with scat-tered clouds afloat on its surface like icebergs. On a more down-to-earth level, hardy flowers still blossomed among the greenery.

Temple parked the Storm at the weekly papers strip-shopping-center offices, its front wheels on preflattened front pages saturated with oil-pan drip.

Temple entered through a glass door so smudged with fingerprints that it looked opaque.

Why were fingerprints always so obvious when it didn't matter?

Inside was instant chaos--the click and clatter of computer keyboards, and the chatter of people scurrying to pull another Gutenberg miracle out of their heads, hands and hats.

Newsroom noise always made Temple nostalgic for her WCOL-TV days, but the receptionist was never like this.

"Help you?" he asked, sweeping a mailing list aside and showing off a nail polish job far less subtle than Temple's. His spaniel-blond hair was all one length to the tops of his ears, then shaved to the skin below. He wore one tasteful aurora borealis crystal stud in his right ear, and eyeliner on both eyes.

Temple asked for the man she wanted, or rather, the man she didn't want, but needed to see.

The receptionist tossed his hair toward the large room's far wall. "Photo desk. Over there."

Temple headed in the direction indicated. Like all foot soldiers dispatched by duty to foreign turf, she hoped that it would soon be over over there. She kept an edgy eye out for another Scoop employee, whom she was even less eager to encounter.

The photo desk was presided over by a squat, graying man who looked more like Ed Asner with a hangover than Asner himself ever could.

" I've got an appointment with Wayne Tracey," she told him.

"Aren't we fancy now? Appointments and everything. Wayne!" he bawled over his shoulder.

A revolving door only big enough for one customer at a time, with opaque black dividers, slowly thumped around until it disgorged a harried guy of thirty in rolled-up shirtsleeves.

"Come on in," he said. "Im souping some stuff and can't stop now."

Cranky at the desk nodded brusque encouragement, so Temple jumped for the revolving door's next empty compartment. She shuffled along in complete darkness, like someone in a small, circular haunted house, until she found the only way out on the other side: the eerie, dim, infrared atmosphere of a development chamber.

She edged up to the only man inside, who was submerging paper in solution until an image appeared. This was not unlike being at a seance, Temple realized, though in the past she had taken photo studios and their processes for granted.

Yet, when you came to think of it, there was something spooky about the entire process.

First you caught people's essences--their frozen images--in reverse light-and-dark. Then you projected them on paper. And finally, you let those encoded vestiges stew in a strong chemical soup until the person begins to peer out from the developing pan like a shy spirit. Instant ectoplasm.

"Yeah?" the photographer asked without looking up.

"Wayne Tracey?"

"Right."

"You must remember me from the haunted-house seance you shot the other night."

He glanced at her, surprised. "Why should I? I shoot a few dozen photos a day, and when I'm videotaping for out-of-town media, I shoot thousands of feet. I don't pay much attention to exactly who's in front of my lens, just as long as the reporter gets the names and faces right, and clues me in on what's happening so I know where to point."

"Oh. Well, I was there. I wondered if any of the spooky effects showed up on your live footage."

He tonged a dripping wet photo of a mangled van surrounded by even more mangled passengers into another chemical bath.

"What was to show up? Fog. No different from when it shows up outside along the road, though we don't get much fog out here. Not wet enough."

"Did the police see your film?"

"First thing. Confiscated it. Only let me have a copy of my own stuff, period. And for what?

The film just shows these shifting patches of fog, and the people sitting around the seance table look like wooden Indians playing ring-around-the-rosy."

"Not a lot of activity to warrant a live camera," Temple agreed sympathetically. "We were instructed to be still and concentrate. But didn't you catch the action when the person keeled over? You, know, the man who died?"

"So someone faints. An Oscar it ain't. And it's a guy under that wig and Hedda Hopper hat, yet, can you figure it? He reminded me of our work-in-progress receptionist. These psychics are ultra weird, man, and I see plenty of weirdos every day in this job."

"If you're an expert, maybe you could say whether this seemed like a normal seance."

"A normal seance? Hey, they're no fun unless everything's abnormal." He shook his head.

"Nope, nothing out of the ordinary but the usual hazy theatrics."

"You mean the knife dance and the woman fainting, then Gandolph keeling over?"

"And the chimneyful of fog-bound ectoplasm."

"So you did see something in the fireplace."

"Smoke, probably. That's what the police concluded too. Excuse me."

He brushed past Temple, a photo dripping solution between his fingers, and hung the print on a drying line.

"What about the face that appeared on the various windows?"

Wayne stopped what he was doing to frown at Temple.

"Face? No face. Except maybe some uneasy rider outside slipping past in a programmed car.

Or a reflection of my light. That glass all around is murder to shoot in. No wonder the freaks fantasized seeing someone's face there."

"But you... didn't."

"Nope. Just saw what my film showed. A lot of nothin'."

"And there's nothing odd or unexplained on the film?"

"Only the psychics, like I told you, and the police. They can play with it all they want; what they see now is what they'll have later."

"Then what killed Gandolph?

"Boredom?" he asked pointedly.

"Sorry, and thanks. I won't keep you." Temple turned to feel her way out, then paused. "You work with Crawford Buchanan much?"

"Just lately, now that he's got this national TV stringer job. It's a good deal for me, great for the resume, you know? Never hurts to look big-time nowadays. That's what I love about Las Vegas, opportunity comes to you here."

"So you're new to town?"

"Been here a couple of months."

"Think you'll stay?"

"Maybe, but not at the Scoop for long."

"And with Crawford and Hot Heads?"

"As long as I have to in order to make a name for myself. That Buchanan guy is a pain in the butt. Thinks he's the cat's pajamas and its cream and sugar too."

"I know." Temple sighed. "Did the police ask you anything special when they interviewed you?"

"Only said not to leave town without telling them. I hope to God there's nothing on my film they give a piss about. I hate testifying at trials. I'm a shooter, not a talker."

"Got the message. I'm through, anyway. Aren't you curious why I want to know about the shoot, though?"

He shook his head. "Everybody wants to know. That's why rags like this exist. That's what pays my rent. Everybody's got to know the gruesome details about everything. And I'm the guy who'll give it to them in Technicolor."

He lifted a close-up print of a mutilated body to the line, clipped it, and left it there to drip-dry... developing solution oozed off the limp paper like body fluids.

Outside the revolving door, Temple stood still for a moment while her eyes adjusted to the overhead lights. That moment of disorientation was her mistake: she wasn't a moving target anymore, just a target.

"There she is," a voice rumbled too nearby to dodge.

Cold fingers clasped her forearm. "What brings the star of the local newspaper Gridiron Show to our humble doorstep, T.B.?"

Crawford Buchanan was looking suspiciously cheery. Maybe it was the orange tie. Even his usual smirk turned up at the corners as if auditioning to be a grin.

"Just checking into a few things."

"Check on," he said, his smirk now a full-fledged expression of extreme self-satisfaction. "If you're trying to get the spotlight by solving another murder case, though, you should have read your horoscope this morning. You are out of luck."

"Why?"

"See it on Hot Heads tonight, and weep. Will you be surprised! This time I've got the scoop, and you're out of the loop, my little amateur snoop."

"Watch your adjectives, Crawford. My' and little' could be actionable." Temple jerked her arm out of his custody, but he remained perfectly smug. "I can't believe anything you've got to say about the seance murder could be news to anyone."

"Just keep on burying your perky little red head in the sand, T.B.; there's plenty of it around here."

"There's plenty of nerve around here too, and you're a fine one to sling the word little'

around."

Crawford adjusted the lapels of his double-breasted navy blazer that made him look annoyingly officious, like a cruise-ship captain, or something.

"Keep on fooling yourself. This time I was at the death scene too, with a cameraman, and my report tonight is going to make you look like yesterday's warmed-over squash." He edged nearer and lowered his voice. "We could meet in the Crystal Phoenix bar at six-thirty to watch the show together. I'll even buy you a drink. You'll need it."

"I would if I was dumb enough to meet you anywhere."

Temple headed for the safety of the newsroom, but Buchanan caught hold of her tote-bag strap.

"You're so cute when you're mad, T.B. And you will be tonight. Don't forget to turn on the TV and tune in."

"Drop out!" she suggested, digging her high heels into the cigarette-burned vinyl tile.

He released the tote-bag strap just as she shrugged away, so she hit the floor running and took several steps to slow down to normal speed.

Meanwhile, heads all over the room looked up to see Temple lurching toward the door.

Crawford Buchanan was gifted, she had to admit, gifted at making everyone around him look almost as bad as he did.

She was so infuriated by the encounter that she fussed aloud at the Storm all the way home.

"Creep! He's just pretending to know something I don't. The cameraman said the film canister was bare, so to speak. Nada. The Big Nada, like C.B. himself. Or... why should the cameraman tell me if his footage has a hot image on it? It could be his ticket to the top. He admitted he came to Vegas to 'make it.' Damn Crawford Buchanan! I knew when I heard he was on the seance list that he'd be trouble. What does that make me, huh? A fortune-teller?"

Temple slammed on the brakes before the Storm bruised its nose on the oleander bush at the end of her parking space, and came out of the car slamming the door shut as well.

She stormed into the Circle Ritz and ran up the two flights of stairs to her condominium.

After she let herself in, she bolted for the living room VCR to ravish the instruction book until she was sweating bullets and to push buttons until she was fairly sure that the machine was set to record every annoying second of that night's Hot Heads telecast.

When she rose after her struggle with button sequences, she took her spleen out on the lifeless television and recorder.

"He probably won't even get on tonight. He'll end up on the cutting-room floor with the rest of the second-stringers. He'll probably lose out to a Rush Limbaugh feature."

That notion was so pleasant that Temple headed for the kitchen to grab a bite. She ended up taking a carton of nonfat yogurt in the car with her. This time when she put the Storm into gear, it backed out as smooth as vanilla-raspberry yogurt.

"You know," she speculated aloud, "Crawford could have done something himself to create a story, to get him the notoriety he so desperately wants."

An interesting theory. Maybe even collusion between Buchanan and the ambitious cameraman. Temple nodded. Who was the one person who was almost as effacing as a ghost during the entire seance? Wayne Tracey. Everyone in these media-conscious days-- and spirit mediums in particular--knows what to do when there's a video camera in the room. Ignore it, act natural, maybe get your face on national TV. The last person anybody in that room was looking at Thursday night was Wayne Tracey.

She clicked on the radio and nodded along to the country music as the car headed toward her next stop, where she would meet another man she wouldn't trust as far as she could throw him. And even with Matt's martial arts lessons, she'd never been about to throw the Mystifying Max.

It took Temple ten minutes of driving around the housing development to find the front of the house she and Max had broken into the night before.

Then it took Max three minutes to answer her knock, even though he should have expected her.

"Hi," he said, immediately moving away and leaving her to secure the door.

Temple followed him. Such indifference was not Max's usual mode. She found him in the first of the two bedrooms, hunched before the computer screen. A half-ream of paper lay uncollected in the printer well, and another sheet was scraping across this pile as it struggled to print out.

Temple swooped up the paper and disciplined it into an even-edged pile on a nearby table littered with floppy disks and cold pizza slices.

Max, his face not turning from the screen, reached out a hand for something.

Temple filled it with a sloppy slice of congealed hamburger/pep-peroni/anchovies. Ugh!

Max held the pizza slice poised for a moment, in front of the disk port, then lifted it to his face and chewed. And chewed. And swallowed. Double ugh!

"A mess, huh?" Temple said soothingly. "You haven't had much experience with computers, obviously--"

The hand with the pizza (now a mere triangle of crust and anchovies) pointed to the table.

"This is incredible. Take a look at those pages. I printed out whatever seemed intriguing.

Gary had been writing up a storm."

Temple fanned through the sheaf. Words jumped out at her: illusion, show, St. Louis, Missouri ... somebody's "Aunt Velda," housing doves, Houdini, Citizen Kane, mention of cemeteries ... some dialogue, as if from an interview or a ... a novel.

"This is a jumble of everything. It doesn't make sense."

"Except that it's a jumble," Max agreed.

He leaned his elbows on the padded wrist rest. The supernaturally smooth hair at his temples was roughened, as if gophers had been burrowing into it.

"Maybe you'd like me to run the computer--*

"No, I'm doing fine. It's just that there's so much, and Gary used some cryptic naming and filing system that would baffle anyone else. I don't think he really meant for me to unlock this stuff, only he couldn't hide it from me. It's all done like stage magic, with the assumption that the abnormal pertains, and I'm used to thinking like that... "

After another minute or two, when the only sound was the clatter of the computer keyboard now and again as Max moved through directories and files, Temple pulled a chair over to the pizza table and tried to install order among the abused diskettes.

Like men not used to typing and computer keyboards, Max punched each key with his forefingers. But otherwise he seemed to be navigating the screen just fine.

"This is incredible, Temple."

She nodded, unnoticed, behind him. Max, mesmerized by something other than magic. And it wasn't her. It was whatever had been on Gandolph's apparently overworked hard drive.

"It'd take months," he went on, "to decipher and untangle this stuff. Everything's misdirection. Two files in a naming sequence match, and the third is totally unrelated."

When she didn't answer the silence, Max actually turned from the screen-to look at her.

"Sorry. Rapture of the Deep. This is something I'd never imagine Gary doing."

"This is something I'd never imagine you doing. You gave my home computers about as much attention as a dust mote."

"I had to learn a bit about them during my... leave of absence. Some of them have too much information about me for comfort, and some of them have information I need. I can't just whisper in Molina's ear when I want an inside track."

"Stop grinning like the Microsoft mouse that ate a conglomerate. Your keyboard technique may be strictly Rocky Marciano, but you obviously are no longer a stranger in the land of Cyberspace, where the local gods are Byte and Megabyte."

"Have some pizza," he suggested in an absently placating tone. "There's some ... something to drink somewhere."

"This cold... slab of cholesterol and sodium on cardboard? You want me to eat it? I might as well chew on one of these not-so-floppy disks."

"No, don't fool with the disks!"

But when he looked up, he saw she was stacking disks, and not into a Dagwood sandwich.

"Max, computer nerding does not become you. Get off-line for a minute and tell me what you've found so I can see what I can find."

"Okay." He uncoiled from Gandolph's big leather desk chair, then winced as he realized what several hours hunching over a hot computer screen will do to muscles and joints.

"Grab those papers," he told Temple. "Let's go into the kitchen where we can get some good light, and maybe something warm to eat or drink. Or both."

"Thank you," Temple said devoutly, casting her eyes to the ceiling. "Thank you, gods of the Computer Kind."

"Somebody out there scuff your shoes?" Max asked curiously as he led her into the house's large and... wow!... superbly equipped kitchen.

"You did say that Orson Welles lived here, didn't you, and he was quite a gourmet."

"I think the exact word is 'gourmand,' but words are your business."

"No, you're right. 'Gourmand' it is." Temple opened a stainless-steel door and found an upright freezer filled with catering-firm entrees. "Gandolph apparently was no slouch in the food department either."

"No, that's why he was so ideal for the house. I felt secure leaving it in his care."

Max probed the various clear plastic boxes, tubs and containers. "So what went wrong today?"

"Nothing. It's what might go wrong tonight."

"How so?"

"Oh, Crawford Buchanan is boasting that his spot on Hot Heads will have startling information about what he calls the 'Halloween Havoc.' "

"Awful Crawford is on Hot Heads now?"

"Oh, yeah. And he really pulled a dirty trick at the Gridiron Show, getting me to write a bunch of skits just so he could have the pleasure of not using them."

Max leaned against the marble-topped counter and folded his arms. "Old C.B. sounds like he's taking over the world."

"Not the world, only my part of it. I just had a run-in with him at the Las Vegas Scoop. He is so scummy. Half the time he acts like he's coming on to me, and half the time he acts like he wants to stomp me flat; either mode is equally unwelcome."

Max smiled tolerantly. "You have been dealing with elevated media. Temple, Buchanan thrives on riling you. Just regard him as a kid in sixth grade who figures the way to tell a girl he thinks she's cute is to put garter snakes into her lunch bag."

"It's not so harmless when that kid grows up still feeling he has to put down women to feel superior enough to hit on them. And I don't want him thinking I'm cute!"

Max shook his head. "Oh, he's a sleazebag, but not worth worrying about. Concentrate on something crucial: what do you want for dinner?"

He unfolded one arm and then the other to reveal two of Temple's favorite cold-weather comfort foods, genuine Kraft macaroni and cheese (lots and lots of cheese) and linguini Alfredo (lots and lots of Alfredo.)

"I haven't had macaroni and cheese in ages. I don't know! Choosing between two equally tempting dishes is not my strongest point."

"I hope you don't mean that." Max's most piercing look always thrilled 'em in the twelfth row. Up close it was a lot less enjoyable.

She realized she had blindly walked right into his allusion. Maybe she could talk her way right out of it.

"The linguini needs reheating. The macaroni has to be boiled from scratch, sort of, as convenience food goes, but... oh, heck, the macaroni."

"Ah, yes." Max turned for the pots hanging high on a rack. "The unassuming, all-American staple, not some pretentious, somewhat pricey item with antecedents abroad. Good choice."

"Just get the damn pot down, and I'll start the water boiling. What's for dessert?"

Max was opening another series of cupboards. He produced a brown glass bottle.

"Gary was getting down to the luxuries. Bailey's all right?"

"Macaroni and cheese and Bailey's Irish Cream. You do know how to set a table, Kinsella."

"We should have a vegetable, to be virtuous. I'll see what I can do."

While Max foraged for what promised to be a truly original repast, Temple frowned at the copper-bottomed pot on the expensive smooth-surface ceramic cooktop. (As opposed to the stainless-steel stove on the other wall that grilled, barbecued, seared, fricasseed, took credit cards and gave change.)

Watching water come to a boil was a thankless occupation, but it gave her time to reflect how oddly ordinary it felt to be rummaging around a kitchen with Max, hunting up an impromptu meal. Never mind that the kitchen was equipped to coddle the five-star chefs of Europe, or that the man who had used to live here had died holding Temple's hand only four nights before. Or that Max actually owned this house crammed with fancy food and magical apparatus. Or was that apparati? Apparatuses?

Any port in an emotional storm.

Speaking of port, Max apparently had also found the wine cellar, no great feat for a former owner.

"For Madame's entree." He bowed like a sommelier and extended a bottle with the usual flourish. "An uppity Medoc."

"I think beer is the liquor of choice for macaroni and cheese, but wine is fine, and no doubt Orson Welles would approve."

"I don't think Orson Welles approved of much," Max said, working the cork out the way any old mortal would, with a corkscrew he found in a drawer. "Especially himself. He always had film projects under way, you know. He didn't just drop out, as many people thought. But he couldn't find the backing and the finances, and so many of them vanished into thin air."

"Thin air," Temple repeated. "Was that why he ate so much, all his dreams were immaterial, so he became totally material?"

"I doubt it," Max said, sitting opposite her at the breakfast table. "I think he ate because he truly enjoyed it. He probably inherited his tendency to overweight, and age simply ensured that heredity took over. The camera is as cruel to heavy men as it is to women."

"Yes, the camera is an equal-opportunity offender, but people aren't. Overweight women are more despised than overweight men."

"And overweight Beautiful People are despised more than anybody. Media idols aren't supposed to have our same feet of clay."

Temple gazed down at her mound of pasta tubes and bright yellow cheese sauce, steam rising from its surface like mountain mist.

"Now I feel guilty about eating this. Think of all the starving Beautiful People in the world who would give anything to exchange their diet of Kitty Litter and purified water for this!"

"Eat, drink and be merry while you may," Max suggested, lifting his glass.

"Good advice, but since I'm the leg-woman of this outfit, I'm planning to do some extensive running around tomorrow ... and tomorrow. Not much time to eat."

"What's going to keep you in constant transit?"

"My ... unconventional personal life. I'm afraid things have come to such a pass that I'm going to have to consult some psychics."

Temple couldn't tell whether Max took her statement as a promise or a threat.