Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“I get it,” Temple said. “And Cliff Effinger used it like a signature he put on all his mob jobs, including one more than twenty years ago to hide the Binion stash in the renovated church basement. Using the altar as a cover, which would have tickled a perverse sadist like Giacco Petrocelli.”

“But Binion had no idea that the altar itself was marked by a maker during the construction?” Max asked.

“No,” Temple said. “He was a rather dumb guy, to give the location of his hoarded millions to the man who built the concrete safe in the desert for him and who was, um, intimate with his wife.”

Max laughed and sang, “I am I, Dumb Coyote—” It echoed many times against the glass walls. “ Man of La Mancha ,” he explained.

“Oh, yeah, the old Broadway musical about Don Quixote. Come to think of it, ‘Don Qui-ho-te’ always did sound like “dumb coyote” when sung. I didn’t know you could sing, and on key.”

“No need for it,” Max said.

“Well, I can’t.”

“You’ve got to give poor Carmen Molina some advantage over you.”

“No, I don’t,” Temple said. “She persecuted you, and me, like Javert after poor Jean Valjean in Les Misèrables , another Broadway musical. Say, they were depressing for a while, weren’t they?” Temple was adamant on that. “Anyway, it was that odious Woodrow Wetherly Molina sent Matt to for information who was the dyed-in-the-woolly-white balaclava mask villain.”

“The man fooled people for decades, it seems,” Max said.

“He was clever. A mobster who killed and took the place of the cop trailing him decades ago, who kept running crooked schemes into his eighties. Giacco Petrocelli. Jack the Hammer and his bloody jackhammer.”

Max’s eyes narrowed. “A monster as well as a mobster.”

“Exactly.” Temple’s ire would not die. “That man was willing to kill people, not only to ruin my wedding, if I were prone to get in a huff. He needed a guaranteed congregation with a small guest list and specific times so he could round up and neutralize everyone in the nave of the church while his gang uncovered and plundered the basement stash.”

“‘Neutralize.’ Don’t we sound like a task force?”

“We were. Electra even announced the phony wedding rehearsal at OLG by emailing a photo of Midnight Louie in his white bow-tie as Ring Bearer to Crawford Buchanan’s fleazy gossip column. Louie went viral and it was an invitation the criminals couldn’t refuse.”

“Fleazy?” Max asked.

“It’s my new word for unutterably low.”

Max shook his head. “I’ve created mini-me monsters. Going undercover, tailing criminals, planting traps.”

“Are you continuing that spy stuff, Max? You said Kathleen was no longer a threat.”

“Not to us.”

“Matt and I have our talk show and Midnight Louie and I have our national commercial gig, but what are you going to do?”

Max pulled the papers closer. “Solve where the IRA contributions have been hidden right now. If the mob can’t fool Matt and Fontana Inc., can a cabal of rogue magicians and retired Irish rebels fool you and me?”

A thump atop the neighboring barstool made Temple jump. Max leapt up and clutched his shoulder like a Fontana brother who had misplaced his best friend. And he obviously wasn’t even armed.

“Louie,” Temple said. “What brought him here tonight? How’d he get in?”

“The building has been neglected and isn’t as secure as it will be,” Max said. “Apparently, just mentioning his name summons the demon.”

Midnight Louie didn’t seem to like Max’s explanation for his coming when “called”. He lashed his tail furiously against the stool seat. The big black cat’s chin barely cleared the bar’s lip, but he stuck it out. Pugnaciously.

Then he tilted his head as flirtaceously as a kitten’s toward Temple.

She could hear him saying, if he would deign to talk to her, “Somebody mention my name? At last!”

“My apologies. Pull up a stool, Louie,” Max said, drawing Louie’s stool closer. “First you are sleeping in my California king-size bed at the Circle Ritz with my ex-girlfriend and now you are cadging a drink at my bar.

“Sorry, Louie, nothing you can drink,” he added. “Liquor keeps, dairy products don’t.”

Temple couldn’t help smiling. Males get so possessive at times.

Louie responded by jumping atop the bar and sitting on the papers.

“Louie!” It was a battle Temple had fought many times. Work in anything but a paperless industry and your cherished feline companion will be on every possible pile, all over them, digging down under them. Sigh!

“Wait a minute,” Max said. “He’s placed the dead-center of his, um, posterior on the ‘house’ image of the major stars in Ophiuchus.”

“What? Divining by cat rear? The spirit of the Synth magicians survives. Look, Max. Cats are attracted by the scent of ink or toner. That’s all.”

“But that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about. You were saying you’d come to a new conclusion on the Ophiuchus constellation’s major star outline.”

“Only that we’ve been calculating it as referring to an area along the Strip. Look.” Temple took the transparent tracing paper of the house image and spun it as if transfixed by a pin.

“It matches all of Las Vegas inside the five major highways,” Max said. “That’s a bigger canvas than we’ve been considering, not a smaller one.”

“Well, maybe we’ve been looking small, rather than big.”

“Or…maybe the opposite. Sorry, Louie.” The cat grumbled with a smothered growl as Max pulled the “house’ version of the Ophiuchus constellation drawing out from under him.

“This would be highway 159 or 589 just below it on the north,” Temple said. “and that connects with Interstate 515 going southeast to Henderson. And you can get on Interstate 215 going directly west, for the bottom of the house, and 215 swings up north again to connect with 15 going parallel to the Las Vegas Strip to cross state routes 589/Sahara and 159/W. Charleston Avenue just south of downtown east and west. And there you have your rough ‘house’ shape in the stars.”

“Very true.” Max looked up and then down. Louie mimicked his motion.

“We’re inside it,” Temple realized. “We’re east of the Strip toward the junction of state 589/Sahara with 515. Right where a major star in the Ophiuchus constellation is located.”

“Rather, Temple, the Neon Nightmare is. Magicians are drawn to astrology too. Ophiuchus proved to be an unlucky star to the Synth members when they got greedy and schemed to get the IRA loot. Kathleen and Santiago wanted them to provide the cover of a magical diversion for a major last Vegas heist for the Irish cause. Only Santiago had gone rogue and Kathleen didn’t know it.”

“Everybody was duping everybody,” Temple summed up.

Max looked up. “And the stars weren’t aligned to let anyone profit. The Synth leader was murdered and cabal members scattered. Santiago was murdered. Kathleen returned to Ireland empty-handed, the reputed guns and loot lost.”

Max smiled. “Maybe that’s why it was a tough venue to make profitable. And cheap to buy.”

“Cheap?” Temple was skeptical.

“Cheaper,” Max said with a smile. “Remember Star Trek ?” he asked Temple.

“The new movies?”

“No, Star Trek Classic from the sixties.”

“Please. The women’s costumes were so sexist, boldly going into Playboy territory. Not my kind of vintage.”

Max smiled. “Always the consistent crusader. You’ve lived to see Playboy so over. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking of the 3-D girls, but the 3-D chess game.”