Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"My Gridiron skit?" Anxiety had pushed her voice into its froggiest register. "It's just the usual satire."

Ferraro edged closer, until he hung over the FBI man's gray wool blend shoulder. "What's so funny about the mob taking over a major Vegas hotel?"

"I made that up. I was playing on tired Vegas cliches."

"'You and somebody else," Molina put in darkly.

Temple jerked her head in that direction. Maybe she could get a little female solidarity going here. "That's what I do. I'm a PR person. I make things up. Based on the facts, of course, but I slant 'em and spin 'em and shake 'em up until they stand up and sing 'Dixie.' My skit merely exaggerated that sort of thing. Humor is exaggeration. Nothing in that skit is reality-based in the slightest."

''We're pretty sure," Molina said ponderously, more for the benefit of her colleagues than Temple, "that the Goliath murder a few months back was part of whatever caused this later murder, part of the same conspiracy."

"Conspiracy?" Temple squeaked. She knew that racketeering and conspiracy were charges that fell under FBI jurisdiction.

The agent nodded, watching Temple like a hawk would if she were a rainbow trout skimming too close to the surface. "I understand that you were associated with the suspected mastermind of the Goliath . . . incident."

Max? Oh, come on. "So then I went and spilled the whole scheme in a Gridiron skit, which the entire town will see in a couple of weeks? I don't think so."

"You're working at the Crystal Phoenix now," Molina pointed out helpfully.

"Yes, I am."

"Where another dead guy," Ferraro growled, "dropped from the Eye in the Sky like a crocodile tear."

Temple frowned. Same M.O., all right. "You . . . think whatever was up at the Goliath is gonna go down"--God, what a trendy expression!--"at the Phoenix!"

Her last supposition brought nods all around, whether of agreement or simple satisfaction that Temple had committed her thoughts to incriminating sound bites was debatable.

''Somebody up there''--Lieutenant Molina's luxurious eye brows lilted toward the ceiling--

''certainly doesn't want your skit, or you, doing business as usual."

"This skit is harmless fun," Temple protested again, truly confused, not to mention worried by this triumvirate of solemn law enforcement types.

"You haven't lived in Las Vegas very long," Molina informed her, "but let me assure you that

'fun' here isn't always as harmless as you and twenty-four million other tourists would like to think. Las Vegas isn't Wonderland, or even Disneyland. It makes its money from the art of separating ordinary people from an extraordinary amount of money by wrapping the process in expensive, glitzy paper. All of these architecturally overblown hotels, the acres of neon, the new virtual reality amusement attractions add up to a multimillion-dollar carnival midway that stays in one place. And that gives the sideshow operators very high stakes in the Las Vegas image, especially now that family-rated entertainment is becoming the name of the marketing game.

You don't survive in this billion-dollar melee without a lot of brass, especially on your knuckles.

And you don't tweak the tails of these sacred cash cows without risking an annoyed kick or two. In this town, you don't kick sand in the Sphinx's face and you don't step on an Elvis imitator's blue suede shoes."

Temple contemplated the blank white ceiling to which her attention had been drawn by the notion of a "Somebody Sinister Up There" who didn't like her. That "Somebody" apparently hadn't liked the two dead men, either. She frowned.

"So something in my skit riled some power-that-be in the bottom line?"

"Could be," Molina folded her arms. "Or it could be that whoever's behind these hotel deaths is making the accountants nervous and your skit is the straw that broke the camel's back."

"Whoever's doing this serial hotel killing is certainly fond of heights," Temple admitted. "So you believe the plunging UFO was cut loose by the same person?"

"Person," Ferraro growled, "or organization."

'The Mafia?" Temple felt numb with disbelief. "That's another cliche so antique it could be marked up quadruple and furnish a national landmark."

''Not necessarily," Ferraro added. 'The notorious godfathers may be an endangered species nowadays, but that doesn't mean that crime kingpins don't exist. They just don't get the colorful press they used to. The newer gambling areas are having the kind of trouble with organized crime we licked years ago. Then there's always the flashy foreign models--the Japanese Yakuza and the Russian mob are real bad news."

"Who would take my spoof seriously except somebody who was seriously disturbed?"

Temple persisted.

"There's that, too," Molina conceded.

"You mean a nut case--?"

Molina turned to retrieve a sheaf of papers from the desk behind her. "A nut who's decided to follow the plans you so thoughtfully laid out in your sketch." Molina slapped the papers to the desk again, close enough to Temple that she could recognize the familiar lines of her Gridiron skit. Who had given the cops a copy?'Did the initials "C.B." ring any bells, Quasimodo?

Temple shook her head, a mistake. The gesture brought her glance to the FBI agent, who was leaning forward in his borrowed chair. His no-nonsense eyes focused on Temple as if they hoped to rivet her to the wall.

"What about your veiled allusions to all those classified black projects at Nellis Air Force Base?" he wanted to know.

"Just that. Veiled allusions to what every TV tabloid show has been dredging up for years.

Next you'll tell me that someone's trying to resurrect Elvis, too!"

"Well ..." Ferraro began.

Temple couldn't stand it.

"Not . . . yet," he conceded with reluctance.

"I can't believe that you people are getting all excited about something I made up. Okay."

She eyed Molina. "My mob takeover scheme does seem a bit close to your speculations about the deaths of the two men in the casinos, but it's pure coincidence. Can't you see that I went through a catalog of all the old fish stories about Las Vegas and put them together into one big, unlikely bouillabaisse?"

''And can't you see, Miss Barr,'' the FBI agent answered her, ''that Las Vegas is a crux city where a ton of money and motives meet every day? Can't you see that an international clientele moves in and out of this town like a plague of locusts. The opportunity for big-time crime here is nothing to joke about. If you had any sense, you would jerk the skit from the show."

"What are you all? Shills for that miserable Crawford Buchanan? He'd love to cut my skit at the last minute, but Danny Dove would go ballistic if he lost his major number."

"Danny Dove?" The agent repeated the name with distaste as much as disbelief.

"An eminent local choreographer," Molina explained, "now directing, this comedy of errors."

"A stage name, surely," the agent persisted.

Molina shrugged, but Temple jumped to Danny's defense.

"Absolutely not. He got that handle when he was born in Norman, Oklahoma, longer ago than he's willing to put on a resume. I happen to know that for a fact, because I did freelance PR

for the Sands when Danny was setting up the original staging for their big 'Sands of Time' floor show."

The agent blinked, obviously flummoxed by the nitty gritty of Las Vegas entertainment.

"Whatever Danny Dove's antecedents or reaction to losing your literary efforts," Molina put in, "it's pretty clear that your imagination has irritated somebody besides the local constabulary.

We can't force you to do as we suggest, but we can cover this production like a London Fog shrouds a flasher. And we will have to, if nobody else is to get killed, especially you."