Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Somehow she was not comforted, being in the mood to brood about her assailed skit; her assailed self, her perhaps-glimpse of a Max clone, and her current, ignominious state of physical dependency.

Ralph shouldered the lobby door open and braced it with one Italian loafer toe as he turned to edge Temple through without any rude brushes with the doorjamb.

The Circle Ritz's always tepid air-conditioning greeted them like a tropical zephyr, humid, and half-hearted. The door hushed shut to banish the traffic hiss-and-squeak reverberating from the ever-busy Strip.

Temple sighed.

Ralph smiled with the knowledge of a job well done.

In the dim, black-marble paved and lined lobby, someone cleared his throat.

A figure stepped from the interior shadow before either one could react.

''Sorry to intrude on such utter solitude, but I have come, I fear, to beg a most receptive ear."

Ralph was not amused. 'This bum must have a speech impediment. He doesn't make sense.

Is he trying to rip off my earring?"

"He makes perfect sense," Temple dared to disagree. "Nostradamus is no robber, he's a bookie."

"Same difference," Ralph growled, lowering Temple to the floor in preparation for battle.

She braced a hand on the cool marble facing the elevator and attempted to put weight on her bad ankle. It declined to buckle, so she stepped slightly ahead of Ralph to keep him from charging Nostradamus in defense of his treasured earbob.

"I take it that you came to see me, not Ralph Fontana."

The bookie doffed his hat, a sweat-stained straw number pungent with nostalgia, especially in its pleated paisley band.

"Sure fine to see you on your feet again," he said. "It's glad I am that we could meet again. I hope to lure you to Temple Bar, to see a friend who's under par. Spuds Lonnigan has opened a new bar, and he could use some clever PR."

"Spuds" Temple tasted the name, which was familiar in a warped sort of way. Time-warped, probably. ''You mean one of the geezers in the Glory Hole Gang?"

Nostradamus's face screwed up in disapproval despite the lurking presence of Ralph Fontana. ''Geezerdom, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Someday even youngsters like you will find themselves . . . older."

"True. I feel it already. I just meant ... well, what does Spuds want? To talk to me?"

"If you could repair to where his place is, you two could discuss some nice biz."

Ralph, still playing bodyguard, toyed with the pewter hacksaw dangling from his left lobe.

"Sounds fishy to me," he told Temple.

Nostradamus turned to him with ready politeness. "Indeed, young sir, you have hit it on the nose. The landing at Temple Bar teems with those."

"Fish," Temple translated promptly for Ralph's benefit. "I've heard about this new . . .

restaurant. Jill Diamond's grandfather Eightball O'Rourke is an associate of this Spuds Lonnigan."

"That don't cut any gray poupon with me," Ralph insisted.

"Carp," Nostradamus explained. "Carp swimming ashore in a golden greeting." He turned to Temple with a bow. "Shall we say two tomorrow for this meeting?"

"I may not yet be able to drive--"

"A car will conduct you to this dive."

"Dive?" Ralph frowned, then turned to Temple and laid down the law like an overprotective husband. ''You're not going who knows-where to God-knows-what alone, today or tomorrow."

'' 'Dive' is just an expression," Temple said hastily, "and it rhymed."

Nostradamus shrugged apologetically, but said nothing.

Temple mused on the mental effort it must take to improvise rhymes day in and day out.

One would think figuring odds for bettors would be taxing enough. A master of both math and meter; Nostradamus was indeed a Renaissance bookie.

Ralph might have made more objections, having settled as deeply as a Method actor into the role of grim guardian, but just then the Viper shrieked from the street outside.

Ralph was barreling across the lobby and through the door, reaching into his flapping suitcoat, before Nostradamus could come up with a rhyming couplet.

Temple hobbled after, Nostradamus taking her elbow, for all the good that gesture did her.

Outside they found Electra Lark, her hands lifted so sky high that her muumuu had hiked up well beyond the dimples in her knees. Given the landlady's Technicolor dress and her lime and pink sprayed hair, it wasn't hard to notice that her face was Liquid-Paper white.

Maybe the source of Electra's shock was the shiny black Beretta that matched the screaming Viper so nicely. The semiautomatic fit Ralph Fontana's fine Italian hand like a steel gauntlet and was pointed straight at the turquoise bird-of-paradise on Electra's muumuu.

"I was only . . . petting the fender," Electra said in a gush, "when the dang thing started yammering. I barely touched it."

"Better be the truth." Ralph bolstered his firearm and settled his jacket into smooth lines again. "Better not have a fingerprint on it. That's a fresh, hand wash-job, lady. This baby's been buffed by genuine shimmy cloth."

Temple refrained from telling Ralph that chamois was pronounced "shammy," not like something a topless dancer does.

As Ralph came around the hood to examine the street side fender, Electra, hands still raised on high, edged around the car's rear until she stood on the sidewalk with Temple and Nostradamus.

"I barely brushed it," she complained again.

Ralph silenced the alarm system with a punch on the remote control, then bent deeply over the fender for a close inspection.

"The alarm is set on super-sensitive," he muttered with satisfaction. ''Look wrong at this baby and you're siren-meat. This is Fontana brother property. Look, and lust, but don't touch."

Electra examined the speaker and made a face that Ralph was too intent to see.

''Well, excuse me for window-shopping." She turned to Temple, finally lowering her limbs.

Armfuls of garish titanium bracelets jangled from forearms to wrists like the rings of Saturn coming in for a landing. "You okay, dear?" She eyed Nostradamus with more mother-hen suspicion.

Temple nodded, weary of such high doses of solicitude. "Nostradamus came here to discuss business, and Ralph drove me home from the Phoenix. I admit that I could use a little peace and quiet, though."

"You shall have it." Electra appropriated Temple's elbow to guide her back inside. "We shall all have it when the nasty man with the noisy car departs."

Ralph, squinting into the dazzling, dark mirror of the Viper's sun-warmed fender, heard nothing.

Nostradamus topped his balding head with the straw fedora and tipped its brim to the two women vanishing into the Circle Ritz. He looked well satisfied.

****************

Temple was waiting--feet wisely shod in tennis shoes, tote bag loaded for bear over her left shoulder--in the Circle Ritz lobby less than twenty-four hours later.

In the interval, she had taken a long, hot bath, followed by a long, cold application of ice to her ankle while she read her way through one-twenty-second of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale .

Temple kept an always-mean-to-read-someday shelf of eclectic books, most of which she never got to. Helprin's lyrical yet epic fairy tale bewildered but bewitched her, and totally made her forget Fontana brothers, police officers and Crawford Buchanan, which was a sizable achievement.

In the morning she cut her toenails, another always-mean-to-get-to chore, did her nails, and read the paper with Midnight Louie.

Reading the paper with Midnight Louie meant that she opened a section wide in preparation to concentrating on a story. Then Louie walked across the paper and her lap. He finally settled in a large, lumpish mass on her thighs, the paper betwixt them, so that he was comfy and she could not read, move, or even breathe. She could not, in fact, do anything but stroke his glossy, Viper-black fur until he purred like a hive of bees.