Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“No Fois Gras?”

“The daughter is a member of PETA, no abused geese.”

“Don’t tell me! No caviar?”

She longed to make him pay the $290 price tag for a “Trilogy Osetra Caviar, Golden, Russian, Siberia”, but fish eggs were probably another daughter-forbidden food.

No one should expect her to avoid magnificent beef. She ordered “The King” filet mignon at $69.

He raised her to $79 with the Rossini filet mignon Fois Gras with Truffle sauce.

She frowned. “Don’t you know that ‘fois gras’ are force-fed geese livers. Brutal.”

“Yet beef is a more politically correct food than some others? All right. Being politically correct costs.” He topped her with $89 for a 22-ounce bone-in rib-eye with bone marrow.

“It’s hard to renounce being a carnivore,” she agreed, ordering a snappy peppercorn sauce while he stuck to lulling bordelaise. A steal at only 6$ each.

“Apparently,” he said later over a second glass of the smoothest red wine she’d ever tasted and must be sky-high in cost, “you’re intent on eating and drinking me out of house and home when that’s already been done.”

“You do owe me. I’ve dismissed all charges against you.”

“You can’t fool me. You can’t be bought. Not even by this magnificent dinner.” He looked beyond her. “Apparently the Strip is celebrating my innocence. The lighted fountains are flaring to life, right in time for dessert.”

Once one looked at the glorious golden rise and fall of the Bellagio fountains, which performed on an automated evening schedule, it always made viewers breathless, like viewing Fourth of July fireworks through a precious topaz lens.

Yet through the glass walls of the restaurant, it was a silent symphony in your head.

“It always reminds me of Tchaikovsky’s most popular work,” Max said, “used for fireworks displays, the 1812 Overture, celebrating the Russians thrashing Napoleon.”

“That’s a bit bombastic,” she said. “From the rhythm of the fountain highs and lows, it looks a lot more like popular music in this pantomime we see through the glass.”

“You would know, of course. Hmm . I’m thinking it might be Frank Sinatra’s ‘Luck Be a Lady Tonight’.”

“Funny. I ‘see’ Gene Kelly’s ‘Singin’ in the Rain’.”

“Apt, and you’re the musician. I’m just a magician with a tin ear. Still, those explosive bursts remind me of the Overture’s climactic volley of genuine cannonfire, ringing chimes, and the brass fanfare finale. Explosive, lethal. Defeating Napoleon doesn’t happen every day. Not as smooth as dessert here, say, but most symbolic.”

Also erotic, Molina thought, as she watched the plumes of gushing water play tag with the pulsing lights.

The waiter brought two white bags emblazoned with the Eiffel Tower restaurant name…

“Dessert to go,” Max explained. “The famous Eiffel Tower sculpted in white chocolate.”

Max held out his paper bag to her. “A souvenir for Mariah. Say it’s from Rafi.”

She nodded.

And the waiter left behind the black padded book concealing a bill on the table.

“Are you sure you can afford me?” she asked.

“My current magic wand.” Max flipped a tightly rolled bill through his four fingers like a tap-dance cane. When he unfurled the bill, the number one had a train of zeros.

“My work here is done.” He slipped the bill inside the small black book.

Mission accomplished; she must be the most expensive “date” ever. Molina concealed a smile as she bowed her head to examine the white chocolate Eiffel tower inside. Two made a mother and daughter pair. Mariah would love it. She looked up to an empty chair opposite her to say thank you.

Molina screwed herself around in her chair to rubberneck. Max Kinsella’s black back had already passed the hostess station and disappeared into the line waiting for what was now her table and soon to be available again.

She turned back to the view one last time to imprint the image of the furiously flaring fountains, spotlighted against the Bellagio’s Italian Lake Como façade. Fountains and lights were really soaring now. She recognized an unforgettable rhythm. Wasn’t Whitney Houston’s “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the roster of music? “O’er the rocket’s red glare” maybe…

“Oh, my God,” she muttered, checking inside the black book holding an over $600 charge and a bill with a one and three zeros on it. One grand. He’d promised her a “grand” dinner.

Who was the mustached man on its face? Didn’t matter. She grabbed both bags and nodded appreciatively to the waiter aching to pounce on the tray on her way out. Eighteen-twelve overture, her left foot.

She was reaching for her cell phone. Her vintage suit coat—surprise!—had real pockets.

“Detective Alch, we have overtime to put in. And ask the Captain to use any pull he has with the Bellagio management from past arrests we’ve made there. Also WET, W-E-T, the design firm that handles the Bellagio fountains and the Mirage flaming volcanoes.

“I’ve got a notion where the IRA small arms to possible rocket-launcher weapons the Feds want are hidden. Down in the biggest set of plumbing tunnels in town. I think they use frogmen to clean it. Thank God the shows are down to only two an evening. Frank Bucek is going to be ecstatic. Well, maybe a little bit more mellow.”

Molina eyed a dim reflection of herself in the elevator doors on the way down. Temple Barr had been right about one thing. She could pull together an awesome look if she tried, if she wanted to look chic while being led by the nose to the object of a quirky law enforcement quest.

37

Mad Max on the Run

“Long bumpy flight?” Liam asked. “You look like hell.”

Max unzipped his black leather bomber jacket to reveal the airplane wear, a bespoke suit jacket underneath it. He had more than one stop this trip and had more than one role to play.

He examined the familiar IRA clubrooms, a dingy “below-stairs” pub with the street level a precious ten-second dash above them.

The clientele were the same ex-IRA men. Max was about to take it for a second home, with the remembered scents of yeasty ale and damp wool.

“How’d Sean take to the US of A?” Liam, the leader and spokesman, asked.

“It took to him, but he’s back home in County Tyrone. He’ll get a lot more American visitors at the B and B now.”

“Newfound family. That was well done. Sean is a good man,” Liam agreed, shutting his eyes as he pictured Max’s cousin’s bomb-marred face, Max supposed. “He deserved better than what you and Kathleen left him with.”

Max shrugged. He couldn’t change what had happened or these men’s opinion of him, or her.

“You’ve got the ransom.” Liam’s sentence was not a question.

The boys in the bar had been giving Max’s suit-jacketed form under the loose jacket the hard-eyed once-over since he’d clattered down the several steps from the street in his motorcycle boots.

He didn’t look like his pockets were stuffed with American dollars or British pounds.

He’d kept his back to the wall near the stairwell as the men in billed caps sat ringed around their tables and the one long bar. Probably with an Uzi underneath it.

“I thought,” Max said, “our business was not so crude and criminal as kidnapping and ransom…and revenge.”

Work boots scraped their readiness for action under the tables and behind the bar.

“But,” Max went on, “if you insist, I’ll have to see Kathleen before you can see the color of my—excuse me, your— money.”

Liam nodded to an underling to fetch her from beyond the same door she’d vanished behind, kicking and flailing, a couple weeks ago.