Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“All right. My First Rule of Ex-clients. First I evaluate their credibility, then I grade them on a scale of minus-five to zero, and then I kick them off my client list.”

“I had to give you a preview of the attraction, Miss Barr, so you wouldn’t lose faith. So I had to distract all of the Vegas Strip to give you a peek unveiling of my little beauty behind the curtain.”

“Projecting your video concept on the deserted building frame and all that curtaining plastic and canvas is very clever, Mr. Farnum. In fact, a recent project of mine, a new attraction between the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters, employs ultra-sophisticated audiovisual holographic effects, so don’t think you can pull the pixels over my eyes.”

“Exactly!” Farnum sounded triumphant. “It takes one to know one, and you now know I’m creating the real deal, with more advanced techniques than ever seen before outside of a secret laboratory run on the level of a Stephen Hawking operation. This is not only mind-bending, it is space and time-bending as well. And, after all, isn’t that what aliens are all about?”

“I’m getting a terrible feeling, Mr. Farnum. One of your ‘silent partners’ wouldn’t go by one name?”

“Yes! Brilliant deduction. You are such the right woman for the job. So intuitive.”

“That man is a person of interest in a recent murder in town, and you have him working on a project where a dead body was found?”

“No, that can’t be true.” Farnum was so crestfallen, his five-hair comb-over seemed to shrivel to three. “Domingo has an international reputation.”

“Domingo? He’s not under suspicion of murder,” Temple conceded.

The renowned international environmental artist had come to town before to mass thousands of pink plastic flamingos around the Strip, making a statement about overblown popular taste, but that’s as close to a crime as he’d gotten.

She couldn’t imagine why Domingo would return and expand into fleets of mini-UFOs, but supposed it was another statement, perhaps about the usual suspect: the alienation of modern life.

“I’m not mollified,” Temple told Farnum, “but I can see how Domingo would be interested in a similar stunt … uh, artistic installation.”

“You do know ‘spin,’ Miss Barr.” He produced a happy grin. “However, even better, Domingo is not the only international cutting-edge figure involved in my project.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed. My other silent partner is as serious as Domingo, but in an allied field.”

Well, that had her stumped.

Farnum literally tucked his thumbs under his seersucker suit lapels in the tried and true pose of pride. “His name is Santiago.”

And that guy was under suspicion of murder.

Chapter 23

All at Sea

The pool was cool but felt like silk.

Matt pulled himself through the water, arm over arm, like pulling a liquid rope toward and past him. The underwater lights created a turquoise spring at either end that drew him like an aquatic moth. Then he pushed off the solid poolside and pulled into the second half of the lap, performing like a thread on a loom.

Swimming had always seemed a form of meditation to him, and it reminded him to breathe, deep and steady.

He pondered the Crystal Phoenix reception and the uneasy undercurrent he had sensed there, apart from the petty crime being committed … and revealed. Then he’d kissed Temple good night, more out of despair than passion, and she’d responded so intensely, it had driven him crazy because he couldn’t be with her when he wanted to … and he’d said something crazy and horrible and left her to move on to two hours surfing waves of everybody else’s pain coming over the telephone and spreading across the country. He’d finally topped off an angst-ridden evening with a wee-hour overdose of Kathleen O’Connor.

He’d left a profoundly apologetic message on Temple’s cell phone, and hoped he could atone in the morning, which would soon be here.

It must be five in the morning. The sun never quite set on the Vegas Strip, given the halo of bright lights playing aurora borealis on the skyline. Here, though, he glimpsed a bowl of black sky through his water-spotted eyelashes. He was moving too fast to stargaze, but that was the idea, to rinse off his latest encounter with a woman so volatile, even using her given name could set her off.

Tonight she’d set him off. Not really. It’d been a bit of psychodrama on his part. Her life had been so extreme, it took extremes to get her true attention. To find some genuine emotion other than anger buried under manipulation.

Still, he needed to rinse off the last couple of hours. Their jousts made him feel like the man in the constellation wrestling a huge serpent, Ophiuchus brought down from the skies to Earth, if you could call Las Vegas Earth.

What significance did the shape and stars of that unlucky ex-thirteenth sign of the zodiac hold for the rogue magicians who called themselves the Synth? Why would his dead stepfather keep, hide, and be hunted for a drawing of the entwined man and huge serpent the ancients had seen in that distant cluster of stars?”

When Matt’s hand hit the pool’s end, he turned automatically, picturing an ancient Greek statue at St. Peter’s in Rome of the same subject, only it had been a man and his two sons who found themselves in the giant serpent’s toils. The Trojan priest Laocoön had suspected the Greeks’ giant horse might conceal soldiers, but the gods who favored the Greeks, Poseidon and Athena, sent two giant serpents to kill Laocoön and his sons before they could warn the Trojans.

Laocoön had always warned them to “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Matt was willing to bet that no Greek warrior hidden in the Trojan horse was bearing a razor.

* * *

Kitty the Cutter was always waiting for him at their Goliath Hotel rendezvous. He was stuck signing off the air at WCOO and could never get to the room before her, never sit in the catbird seat.

And she always had her straight razor cocked open in plain sight. It was almost like a pet with her.

“You’re looking a bit harried,” she had greeted him earlier this morning, stirring her room service cocktail with her pinkie finger and then sucking it with an X-rated movie flourish.

Matt had never seen an X-rated movie, and now he didn’t have to. Kathleen O’Connor had obviously frozen in the teenage Lolita stage years ago. Serial killers liked to torture their victims for sexual satisfaction. Kitty had substituted the adolescent tease to the murderous mix, but with her the payoff wasn’t sex—it was control.

She lounged on the beaded brocade bedspread like a road show Cleopatra clutching her queenship and her ever-present poisonous asp.

He sank into his accustomed chair across from the bed. He’d booked the room for two weeks after she reserved it in his name the first night they’d met here. He hoped his self-imposed deadline would prove correct. Whether it would or not depended on his ability to “reach” her and release the self-loathing that made her so dangerous.

“Extra hours at work,” he told her, “takes a toll. You must have noticed that too.”

“You must be running short of excuses back at the Circle Ritz.”

Matt celebrated a little victory. He’d warned her any specific mention of Temple would terminate this charade. She’d conceded enough to come up with a code phrase for her.

“Not really. This is just an extension of my radio advice work, only more in-depth.”

“And in person.”

Matt nodded. “Although I’m just a stand-in for Max Kinsella.”

That had her squirming on the bed, and not in a sexy way. She tossed her head back with an angry swallow of liquor.