Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"So it's a suite. Lots of hotels have them."

"Not like this." Ralph flourished an old-fashioned pass key from his breast pocket.

Obviously, this was the tour's big moment. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, at the same time drawing Temple behind him as if to protect her from the contents.

What was this? An unauthorized drug raid on an unsuspecting guest?

Ralph edged into the inner dimness, then vanished.

In the hall. Temple wondered whose privacy he was violating now. She sincerely hoped it wasn't that of an ex-mob hitman who'd been residing here quietly under the federal witness protection program and who still considered an Uzi an appropriate retirement companion.

A crash came from inside the room. Ralph cursed so colorfully that Temple couldn't translate it. A light--but not much--clicked on.

''Come in," Ralph urged, still muttering under his breath.

Temple crossed the threshold and found her sharp heels sinking into rose-floral carpeting.

She was aware of too much green, clunky yet prissy furniture, and satin draperies teased into fantastic shapes. '

"The Ghost Suite," Ralph announced with pride of possession. "They haven't changed a doily in here since the forties."

Temple wrinkled her nose,

"All the original stuff. Funky, huh?" Ralph opened another door deeper into the dark.

"Here's the bedroom. Imagine. Jersey Joe Jackson slept here." His voice had sunk to reverential depth. "Was he an operator! Right up there with Bugsy Siegel and Howard Hughes. Died broke, though, but not really."

"I've heard about Jersey Joe Jackson," Temple said. "One of the local legends. But I didn't know he kept a suite in this hotel."

"This place was the Joshua Tree then. Man, that dude was into everything--real estate, gambling. Made a pile. Nobody could figure why he died so poor--until Johnny Diamond and the little lady he's now married to did some of their courting on these premises. Guess what they found in the inner spring of the mattress?"

"Inner peace?" Temple hazarded. She was getting really fed up with peeking into other people's bedrooms, probably because no one would want to peek in hers now that Midnight Louie was its sole masculine visitor.

"Nah." Ralph did not miss a beat. ''Silver dollars. The big round kind that would make a Kennedy half-dollar look like a BB. Big as ... yo-yos," he bragged. "They actually made money like that in the old days, and these were old coins, too, hijacked by the Glory Hole Gang in the forties and hidden away until Johnny and Jill jounced 'em loose a couple years ago."

"Not exactly a story fit for family consumption," Temple suggested.

"Huh? It's good enough for my family. Look, I got one of the coins as a lucky piece. We all got one."

Ralph pulled something from a slack pocket and sent it spinning toward the ceiling.

Temple watched the thin silver disc wobble its way down to Ralph's waiting hand like a UFO

on a leash and wondered why she kept getting such flaky clients.

Ralph slapped the coin to the top of his free hand and sneaked a peek, "Heads. My lucky day. Wanna bet?"

"I only bet on Kennedy half-dollars," Temple said with apt untruth. Those were about as rare nowadays as the Mystifying Max and a sane client.

Ralph gave another of his affable shrugs and showed her out the door.

"Whatta you think?" he asked in the dead-quiet tunnel of hallway leading back to the elevators. "Can you cook up a campaign to turn the Crystal Phoenix into a place that would appeal to kiddies?"

"Without adding a theme park that costs several million dollars? I don't know, but I'll think about it," she promised.

Ralph nodded sagely, insisted that she enter the elevator first, then faced forward into his sleek stainless steel reflection. He ignored her as they descended seven floors.

"Maybe I'll stick with the ring thing," he said at last.

"Good idea."

"In my nose."

Brother!

Chapter 2

More Blessed Beast and Children

Even though it was Saturday morning, the playground thronged with milling, laughing, squealing children.

Temple also studied an awesomely interwoven melange of scampering, barking, quacking, braying, howling animals.

Obviously, animals were an attraction kids adored, but she couldn't picture this melee on the elegantly landscaped grounds of the Crystal Phoenix. She didn't even know what she was doing here, except that the whole thing was her idea.

"Lemonade?" Sister St. Rose of Lima chirped beside her, holding up a Big-Gulp-size paper cup.

While Temple hesitated, the diminutive nun quickly added, "It's on the household."

"I think you mean 'on the house,' Sister," Temple said, taking the beverage.

"Whatever." Sister St. Rose's elderly eyes softened behind the magnifying lenses of her plastic-framed spectacles. "Oh, how nice to see the parish presenting such a fine face to the world after that awful business with poor Miss Tyler.''

"This mob scene certainly does resemble a casting call for Noah's Ark," Temple admitted, surveying the panorama she had stage-managed down to the last detail, including the refreshments. About to sip her lemonade, she regarded Sister St. Rose of Lima sharply, "Oh . . .

you haven't been doctoring the beverages again--?"

"Goodness, no! This is not an emergency. Besides, the bishop's brandy is almost all gone from the last time."

"I don't doubt it." Temple's nostalgic smile vanished with a sip of tart lemonade.

''Anyway, at fifty cents a glass, we couldn't afford it," Sister St. Rose added a trifle sadly.

''How's business at the lemonade stand?" Temple glanced at the long white tablecloth that hid a trio of pushed-together card tables.

Stainless-steel urns with spigots alternated with signs reading Lemon-Aid Our Lady of Guadalupe. A ragged line of people crowded the tables, eager for cool liquid refreshment.

Temple blew a breath upwards to lift her bangs from her forehead. She sometimes thought the whole town was a mirage glimpsed through a shimmering force field of heat. Even in late September, Las Vegas simmered with desert heat, which accounted for the indelicate bouquet of animal stew hanging over the playground.

. "Rose!" The nun's twin came bustling up, wearing the same serviceable pastel cotton blouse and skirt, except on second glance Sister Seraphina O'Donnell was taller, wider, slightly younger and much spryer. "Would you take over my spot at the lemonade table? Channel Twelve has come to film a feature," she added rapturously enough to be announcing a sighting of Tom Cruise--or, in her own hierarchy of heavenly treats, the angel Gabriel. Temple didn't detect much difference between the two mythical beings.

"That's wonderful. Sister," Temple said, proud of how quickly she'd mastered the native form of address around Our Lady of Guadalupe. Not bad for a fallen-away Unitarian who hadn't been inside a church of any denomination in years.

"And it's your doing, dear."

Temple let only two people in the world call her ''dear." One was her energetically outgoing landlady, Electra Lark; the other was Sister Seraphina. Both were over sixty and both were candidates for She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed t-shirts, though neither would ever don such a homely item, for quite different reasons.

Sister Seraphina turned to survey the bustling playground, pushing her slipping trifocals against the bridge of her nose. "Combining an animal blessing ceremony with a giveaway of Miss Tyler's cats was so ingenious. But I'm glad you talked the Humane Society into handling the placement of the cats."

Temple glanced at another rank of cloth-covered card tables, this one staffed by volunteers from the local-animal welfare' group.

"That's a cardinal rule of public relations. Sister. Kill two birds with one stone whenever you can."