Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Oscar leaned forward to tease an answer out of her and his right cuff pulled up even higher.

"Deathreats" read the letters upside down, which Temple had learned to do when serving as a high school intern on her local weekly shopper, which had still been set in hot lead then. An elderly printer had been kind enough to teach her the trick. Death threats, or Death rats? Either way, it was an ugly sentiment to engrave into your epidermis.

"Well? Are you going to tell me?" Grant was still smiling behind the Black Bart mustache.

"Oh, it's something one of the psychics said. Nonsense, no doubt."

He shook her hand again and smiled.

Temple shook back and smiled more. "It's silly ... one claims that the Houdini we saw was a fake, but that there was another, real apparition--"

"A fake!" He dropped her hand like it was a dead cigarette. "That's nuts. I've got prime footage on that appearance. What loose cannon is making those kinds of charges? My show on this seance will make the November sweeps, you just watch. You do watch Dead Zones? "

"I will now," Temple confessed, shyly tucking her chin into her chest like a good silent-screen star.

Oscar bought the act the way she had almost bought Houdini. "And what 'real' apparition?

These flakes, always embroidering on a good scheme. Hams on Wonder bread. They should keep their eyes and mouths on what they came to see, to evoke. Houdini in the flesh, or at least the phantasm. He looked real to you, didn't he?"

"He looked real odd. Did he truly ask to be put in all those irons?"

"Absolutely. He was the first Iron Man athlete. Loved to be locked up. Loved it almost as much as Mama. Kind of makes you wonder about his childhood, doesn't it?"

Temple nodded, all eyes and smiles. Thanks to her appreciative act, Grant's cynicism was finally shining through like a piece of unadulterated aluminum foil in a recycling bin. She knew he was too good to be true to Agatha's tea leaves. Now she decided to show him that she was being too good to be true too, by telling him what she really thought.

"Kind of makes you wonder," she said, "who doctored the photo and arranged for it to be projected onto the dry-ice mist in the chimney. If it wasn't a cover for Gandolph the Great's murder, what was it?"

Oscar, struck silent by contradiction, stared at Temple as if she had suddenly turned into a cobra. She would have thought he'd be used to the effect from associating with Mynah.

When he finally spoke, he was furious, and his attraction to her hand had turned into a clamp on the wrist. "It was a damn good show theme, that's what! And keep your mouth shut about any theories--"

He got no further.

A tall--well, mostly medium-tall--dark man had materialized at Temples right.

"Watch yer langwidge around a lady," a Fontana brother intoned in singsong John Wayne-style.

"Yeah," said another medium-tall, dark man who had appeared on Temple's left. "Unhand that dame."

Oscar's grip relaxed, then his hand crept back, but not before the man behind him slammed a stiletto into the tabletop right between the webbing of skin separating his first and second fingers. -

A truly classic cinematic moment, Temple thought. Count on the Fontana brothers to bring a sort of hokey brio to all their works.

"Hey, sorry, hombre . Just doing my nails and the razor slipped. But I didn't finish reading your wrist." Ralph (he had a matching minirazor swinging from his left earlobe) Fontana grabbed Grant's wrist and held it to the light: the light being the candle that had flamed behind a glass funnel on the cocktail table. Now the funnel was off and the candle dripped hot wax on the tender inside of Grant's wrist.

Poor Oscar writhed, but not before Ralph pronounced: "Deathreaters. That was the punk L.

A. outfit a dozen years ago. All needles and no nuts. S'cuse," he tossed to Temple before slamming Oscar's wrist, now bare of its gold chain, back to the table.

"Nice," the Fontana at Temple's left shoulder told the glowering man, "that you've started leaving such classy tips for the help around here. These waitresses work their tails off for peanuts." He turned to Temple. "Now what are you doing here in such low company when you're in high demand elsewhere? Come along, miss. I am sure that we can find some honest work for you at the mission."

She was hustled away, leaving Oscar to nurse his naked, but still tattooed wrist.

"What're you doin' at a place like this?" Ralph asked in aggrieved tones from behind them as Temple left flanked by brothers twain.

"Interviews. And the Mirage is top of the heap."

"Yeah, but look at the class of the heap. That guy's a phony."

"I know! That's why I wanted to interview him."

"But he was slobbering all over your manicure," another brother (she thought Aldo) told her.

"Manicures can be touched up. Information is hard to come by."

"Well, we didn't like what we saw."

"I gather. How did you figure on the tattoo?"

"He had that L.A. look. Besides, we were keeping a very close watch on you." Ralph pointed up to the ceiling.

"Eye in the sky? You were watching us on the security camera?"

Ralph basked in the fact that she appreciated the feat.

"We know a few folks in this town; big folks, not-so-big folks. And who knows a Fontana, owes a Fontana."

"Well, I owe you a great big thank-you for jumping in when I smashed Mr. Grant's bubble; he was turning a trifle physical."

"I thought this guy was supposed to be a physic," Aldo complained, turning to frown back at Grant, who was vanishing behind a smog of smoke. "You need an escort anywhere?"

"Pepe's Pizza?"

"Aw, Miss Temple, that ain't real pizza pie. You should stay away from those slick franchise joints. Where's your car?"

"In the lot."

"We'll see you to it. It's dark."

"Boys, it's often dark in Las Vegas and I'm often out in it all by myself."

"Not when we're around." Ralph opened a set of double exit doors so his brothers wouldn't have to squeench their well-padded shoulders to accompany her through, and stepped back.

"Luckily for you," she said, "I was almost done."

"Hey, lucky for us we ran into you."

Eduardo (she thought) took her car key when she dug it out and opened the Storm. Aldo brushed off the seat before she sat. Ralph finished cleaning his nails while he bent to make sure her headlights were working.

"Now lock yourself in." Eduardo gave a finger waggle that spotlighted his Roman glass ring.

They stood in a line like French Legionnaires and waved as she put the car into gear and headed out.

Temple waved back. They were fairly tall, dark and plural. Definitely in the running for romance. Was it possible that fate would cut one out of the herd just for her? She couldn't ask for a better escort service.

No way. She shook her head and headed for the take-out pizza place, still dreaming up fantasy tattoos for Matt Devine.

"Born to Raise Hallelujah" seemed to be the best yet.

Chapter 33

That's Amore

The Fontana brothers' "dark" had descended like a black velvet curtain when Temple parked the Storm in front of Orson/Gandolph's/ Max's house.

Not a beam, a seam, a sliver, a scintilla of light cracked the uninhabited facade. Could light be measured in scintillas? Probably not.

The real trick here was how she was going to mosey up the walk to the house, concealing a Pepe's Pizza Giant Everything Double-Crust Extravaganza box. The carton would make a good area rug.

Her neighborhood "cover" as absent-owner's real estate agent would hardly excuse her if a neighbor saw her bearing the fast-food equivalent of a UFO into the supposedly empty house.

Luckily, this neighborhood was expensive enough that children played indoors, cars were kept behind garage door openers and no one ambled out on a front porch to watch the neighbors come and go.