Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“More refined and Frenchlike,” Eightball agreed. “But how come our boots are suspects? Forgive me, Miss Temple, but even we can’t string out a pair of boots for more ’n twenty years’ wear. That Lake Mead dead guy musta passed back in the glory days of the forties and fifties, because as Las Vegas heated up as a tourist destination, you did not wanta pollute the wonders of nature they could be bussed out to, or have an indiscretion caught on a boat anchor and causing consternation.”

“Gotta give whoever dumped that body in concrete booties credit,” Cranky added morosely. “Didn’t get found until Mother Nature sucked all that H-two-oh outta the lake.”

“You guys go back that far, along with Jersey Joe?”

“Yes, ma’am, ’cept we are all still alive. Living out in the desert keeps all that carbon monoxide from the Strip out of a man’s lungs,” Pitchblende said.

“Did Jersey Joe get too big for his boots when he stole all those silver dollars you all found? Did he dress like a dude?”

“ ’Course he did.” Eightball snorted.

“You woulda thought he was the second coming of Roy Rogers,” Spuds said. “Bolo ties with western suit coats. Boots pointed enough to make a horse run away from him.”

“So he went ‘Hollywood,’ like the movie Melody Ranch’s singing cowboys?” Temple asked, to make sure they were talking the same language and style.

“Oh, yeah. Got way above us and hisself.” Wild Blue said. “Dollar cigars. We didn’t figure it out at first, where he got the money. Thought he won it gambling, or one mob or the other was backing him. He always had big plans.”

“We had Jilly to raise, number one,” Eightball said gruffly. “That changed our dreams of hitting a strike at an old mine. We only did that train robbery to get a fund for our girl, and when we found all the silver dollars gone from our mine tunnel, we figured at first other prospectors took ’em, not one of our own gang.”

“JJ was a disappointment,” Cranky said. “But he was long dead and gone, and the Joshua Tree Hotel and Casino was a wreck no one wanted to take on, by the time Solitaire Smith and that tourist gal stumbled on one of JJ’s new hiding places for the silver-dollar hoard.”

“We’d been hiding out all those years from that robbery, and turns out it wasn’t necessary. The dollars were only worth anything to those ‘numisintist’ people.”

Temple couldn’t help smiling at Spud’s mangled version of the word.

The Glory Hole Gang had all been roped into being stepfathers for Eightball’s orphaned granddaughter, and dreams of riches and glory had faded with their quirky responsibility for a young girl. Jill grew up looking out for her gang of uncles. Now she was Mrs. Johnny Diamond and lived on a lavish ranch that the Crystal Phoenix’s never-fading ballad singer kept as a retreat after his nightly shows.

The whole Crystal Phoenix family, Temple knew, would be devastated if any of these old guys had anything to do with killing the sunken soul Midnight Louie and his daddy had found on the bottom of Lake Mead.

“So,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Did you know anyone else in the old days who could have afforded a custom pair of silver heel-capped cowboy boots signed by a master silversmith out of Hollywood named Bohlin?”

She tossed the close-up photo of the maker’s stamp onto the coffee table that centered the sprawling conversation-pit sofas.

And all conversation stopped.

Every last man stared at the black-and-white photo as if it were an eight-foot-long rattlesnake sunning on a hot rock six inches from their cowboy-booted ankles.

They should have been safe from any poison, but just seeing the possibilities made their blood run cold.

“Oh, man,” Pitchblende wailed. “I saw those things fresh outta the box. Real fine box, with all this girly tissue-stuff wrapped around them for shipping.”

“Darn and definitely darn,” Wild Blue pitched in. “He did leave town without notice.”

“Forever,” Cranky intoned.

“I thought it was another fast deal down Arizona-way,” Eightball said.

“He never did like water,” Spuds mourned. “Only in his whiskey.”

Temple sat still and silent, realizing she had kicked off a wake.

For Jersey Joe Jackson? Didn’t seem quite right.

Motorpsycho Nightmare

Max dreams and knows it.

He’s riding a sleek silver motorcycle.

Through the Alps.

Revienne Schneider is riding pillion behind him, clinging. She is not the clingy type.

It this weren’t a dream, she’d be hurling Freudian interpretations his way.

Motorcycle, symbol of freedom. Alps, symbol of hubris and danger. She would yank him off his electro-glide high horse, bring him down to Earth.

So he knows dreamland is not throwing the sexy, brainy shrink at him, but someone else, the visceral, gut-wrenching shrew who is riding behind him in Revienne’s intellectual sheepskin clothing. Riding him.

Rebecca was a spoiled, conniving bitch in the famous novel of that name. And dead.

Now he sees the woman passenger’s long black entangling hair whipping around his face like a mesh mask. The burr on his back is Black Irish, just as he is. Thorny. Dogged. Just as he is. Deceptive. As he can be if he has to. Hate filled, as he never was, unless it was at himself.

Maybe that is the key to Rebecca. Her hatred was always self-directed, and turned outward.

Whatever the truth, he knows what she is. A revenant, a haunting dream. A nightmare is always a dark female ride for him.

He dares to pity her. And feels steel spurs in his side.

The tarot card reads Strength. Who is compassion and light.

He is the Magician. Who is action and power.

His dark rider is … Death. Who is dark and sometimes welcome, which is light.

Rebecca. Kathleen. Kathleen O’Connor. Kitty the Cutter.

The odd card in the deck, the Hierophant, with the stage name of Gandolph, rises with a staff, barring the middle of the steep, dark road. A ring glints into the air, all gold and twisted like the worm Ouroboros, the serpent swallowing its own tail, that ancient symbol of eternity. Its eye is shimmering like an Australian fire opal, which is a symbol of hope and purity.

A lost engagement ring. “Engagement” being action and power, as well as passion and commitment.

He wants to ditch this monkey on his back, this entire magical, mystical motorcycle ride.

And he does. The motorcycle lies on its side, smoking tires spinning. He bends over to brush a long, lusterless lock of hair back from the pale face on the ground … and recoils.

The face is a map of decaying fungus, iridescent with rot.

He is up and running. Down a dark, deserted road, naturally.

Not so naturally. He’s running toward something, a black pyramid topped by a rearing stallion etched in flaring neon light.

It’s her! The real nightmare. The steed the fairy-tale knight urged up the glass mountain again and again, as he failed to surmount it again and again. To win the princess.

He understands that dreams are often the outpourings of subconscious punsters, like the literal nightmare. He’s got a split mind, both creator and hapless creature of himself, of his banged-up mind.

Then he’s running through a place he knows, the neon-sign graveyard in Las Vegas, faded in the sterile sunlight, larger than life, clownish. All bones and no flesh … flash.

As if turning on his dismissal, the world goes from sun soaked to black velvet painting. There is noise, music, as loud and raucous as the blazing neon images clashing all around him.

He is plunging down a dark rabbit hole, swinging out over an abyss. Instead of crashing down into the blur of life and motion and light below, he swings into an angular zigzag of a tunnel, running again, bouncing off the reflective black walls.