Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Temple was as speechless as everyone in the room. She had thought that only she remembered the few moments a barefaced Shangri-La had shown herself. And it wasn’t due to bedazzlement at the White Russian exhibition, or any other naive girl reasons she had given to her long-ago sponsors.

It was because she had wanted to taunt Temple. She was already a thief, she had brazenly taken Temple’s Tiffany opal-and-diamond ring from Max onstage. She was no shrinking lotus to quail at someone’s suggestion that she steal a priceless artifact. She’d had some unsolved connection to designer drug dealers. She could turn on her persona as easily as she could spin on a bungee cord, and probably would, for a big enough cut.

Temple could have mentioned all that, but she didn’t want to expose a personal life that led right back to the Mystifying Max Kinsella and the real thief of the scepter.

And she didn’t want to disillusion a pair of heroic old people who revered their heritage and probably regarded Hai Ling as a foster daughter.

Hai Ling, aka Shangri-La, had likely laughed up her scalloped sleeve when she realized that showing herself to Temple had earned her a cut in a major heist. She at least had the grace, or balls, to make her former sponsors feel they had done a good thing all those years ago, and that she was an exemplary graduate of their school for defectors, and someone worth mourning.

Temple would leave her those two true mourners.

Pete Wayans was disrupting the silence by see-sawing a pencil on the lever of his fingers, one end and the other tapping against the tabletop like a metronome.

“So, just who are these ‘masters’ behind all this? As far as I know, these people don’t have ‘masters’ anymore.”

“You don’t know much,” Randy muttered into his double chin.

“Exactly,” Temple said. “Who was putting the pressure on everyone to dance to their tune?”

Ivan eyed Randy. “Sometimes ‘masters’ are czars, or political functionaries, or CEOs. And even if one defects and is safe in another country—or one’s family fled decades ago—the pull of power is a long and deadly one. You have your own masters to account to, Mr. Wayans, and you know it.”

Pete cleared his throat and choked off the pencil.

“And sometimes,” Temple said, “masters are mobsters.”

“Wait a minute here!” Pete Wayans stood up. “That is such an old charge for enterprises in Las Vegas. Maybe the mob was a factor in founding Las Vegas. Maybe it ruled the roost in the fifties. And the sixties.”

“And seventies,” Detective Alch put in.

The other, unidentified man at the doors was unnervingly quiet.

“The mob has gone corporate,” Randy said, “for the most part. It has to answer to . . . folks. It would never endorse a high-scale heist at a major hotel. Bad for business. Everybody’s business.”

“Agreed,” Temple said. “But I’m talking about the Russian mob.” She smiled at Boris and Natasha, who did not smile back.

Ivan pulled Olga off her chair and to the floor.

Wayans gulped, grabbed Randy’s arm, and pulled him down too.

The men at the door remained at attention.

Boris and Natasha pulled two ugly black guns with nasty long barrels that Temple didn’t know what to call.

She did know enough to punch one button on the computer keyboard in front of her that was set to operate the gray flannel blinds that wore mirror shades on the other side.

The sound of them remotely being opened was enough to draw Boris and Natasha’s attention in the same split second that the blinds reflected an infinity of Fontana brothers in off-white ice cream suits with black Berettas, all in copyrighted James Bond pose, legs planted and guns aimed and braced in both hands at Boris and Natasha’s most precious bodily organs.

It was an infinitely split-screen stand-off.

Boris and Natasha lowered the firepower as the Fontana brothers to the ninth degree circled in on them like well-tailored sharks.

Dimitri sat still. “I am not a defector,” he said, “but I am requesting the protective custody of the U.S. government. These are my guards, but not my bodyguards. I have been their prisoner since arriving in this country. They are mobsters intent on robbing the exhibition and I would like them extradited to my country for . . . proper punishment.”

Temple sank onto her chair, her knees shaking, as the Fontana brothers wafted the two Russian mobsters to the doors, which opened to reveal the boys in buff (officers of the LVMPD) ready to cuff ’em, read ’em their Mirandas, and cart them away.

Pete Wayans was patting his forehead with his silk pocket handkerchief and sitting on a chair again.

Olga and Ivan were joined at the hip, although pale.

“Can we go?” Ivan asked.

“It’s pretty clear,” Alch said, “that a lot of folks were coerced here. We’ll need a statement, but you two need to rest up a bit first. We’ll call.”

Temple was nearly putting her neck out of joint to see, but no Molina seemed to be lurking in the hall.

“So the only criminal still at large,” Wayans was saying, “is the fellow who actually took the scepter. Do you think those Russky bozos will say who he was during interrogation?”

Alch smiled slightly at the paper tiger Wayans had become.

“Who’s to say, sir? This is a pretty murky case, even with Miss Barr’s masterful extraction of the facts from the victims of this scheme.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her, and left.

“Great job,” Wayans said, gathering up his automatic pencil. “The show will go on without the scepter. Too bad,” he told Templer, “I like your spin that maybe someone took it to save it from these mobsters. Randy, do me a press release on all this. All’s well that end’s well. International scheme uncovered by the staff of the New Millennium and me. The regular.”

He left briskly, except when he came up even with the remaining man at the door, and then he stalled a little.

The guy smiled like a shark. Maybe it was the sleek, gray sharkskin suit.

Wayans scooted through the door as Randy patted Temple on the shoulder.

“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I would never have remained standing with the Fontana brothers and their Italian tailoring and designer Berettas the only thing between me and those Cro-Magnon mobsters.”

“You didn’t, Randy,” Temple said, laughing.

“So this tangled web of theft is pretty much untangled, except for how all the magic show rigging turned into breakaway props. You can’t tell me anyone up there was expecting that, not even Shangri-La.”

Randy was right: Temple couldn’t tell him most of what had happened up there, especially Max’s involvement, or suspicions that the Synth had been trying to kill him. She had to come up with a good reason to overlook that issue.

“It’s possible that Shangri-La rigged some of it to fail as a distraction, but was taken unawares by the extra rigging set up for the fake Cloaked Conjuror.”

“Two forces working in secret opposition?”

“Something like that. The police will be working overtime to ID the thief and find him, believe me.”

Especially Lieutenant C. R. Molina, she added mentally.

“Right. Well, I’ll tell the press the equipment failed because the thief or thieves tampered with it. And I’ll do as much for your role in resolving this situation in the press release as Wayans’ ego will let me. Semper fi.”

Still, Temple’s ankles wavered a little on her to-die-for Stuart Weitzman/Midnight Louie high-heeled pumps covered in solid Austrian crystals with a black cat image on the heel. They were way too dressy for this occasion but somehow it felt good to have Louie backing up her ankles, at least.