Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

The cars were indeed starting up, but it was a smooth, whoosh sort of thing, no “road feel” that Temple could discern.

Oh, wow. The ride was so smooth and creamy, while the film images projected on the static poster images on the tunnel walls created this jagged, wild, video-game double-action scene that was instantly adrenaline pumping and absolutely hypnotizing.

Santiago might be a prima donna pain, but his media work was … magic!

Temple leaned her head closer to his to see out the dark-tinted side window, mentally dodging bullets and tough talk, looking Edward G. Robinson in the eye as he aimed a big pistol right at her, and then a bullet sound whizzed by in an echo of harmless but heart-rate-upping rat-a-tat-tatting. She’d only been so sound-surrounded at a Cirque du Soleil show, when massive timpani drums had everyone’s seat bottoms and pulses throbbing into breath-catching heart-attack mode.

Her pulse was leaping now, but in a good way, a live-entertainment high. She was feeling breathlessly alive, as if they were all escaping the past and daily life and death. What a pseudorush.

Then the tinted window she was craning past Santiago’s sharp, sun-baked profile to see through, viewing the visual wonders, turned 3-D. The scene morphed. She was staring into a face hanging in space outside the tinted car window, a face that was a combo of the Joker’s twisted clown visage from Batman and the talking Magic Mirror from Snow White. Its features, almost Silly Putty human, seemed totally real. They moved in their own space and plane, and reassembled into … Jersey Joe Jackson’s.

Temple was amazed Santiago had reached that far back into local history. Jersey Joe’s name was known, but you’d only see his photographed face on Internet sites, if you bothered. As she had.

Now a voice whispered, inside the car interior, right next to them all.

“Welcome to my ‘Chunnel of Hidden Trea sure.’ If you come to rob me you will find only empty vaults and busted dreams, but if you come to enjoy the ride, you’ll get more than you bargained for… .”

At that, the facial image dissolved into a younger, plumper visage, a face suspended over a formal winged collar and tie. It reminded Temple of some slot machines that featured a magician’s face and disembodied white gloves laying out the video poker cards … and now here came the gloves, protruding their fingers into the actual passenger compartment. Oooh, spooky!

Only the cards it laid out were tarot cards.

“The magician, oh my,” the face said, in stagy tones, white gloves flaunting the card in question.

It was amazing how the bones of the face pushed through the window glass, as if it were only a cellophane cerement. Temple cringed back as an actual tarot card flipped into the limo compartment. Louie reached out a clawed forefoot and snapped it down to the carpet, anchoring it with a sharp nail.

She stared at Santiago, wondering. Had he used this multimedia display to program something personal?

The echoing voice filled the car interior.

“Magic never dies,” it pronounced. “Am I mere bones in a morgue or a disembodied voice on a manipulated movie screen? Does it matter? I live, I speak, I watch, I intrude. I am the ghost in the machine. I live to avenge untimely deaths. Murders. I take vengeance.”

Temple jerked back, surprised.

What a lifelike effect. What a gruesome segment. Maybe too scary for the public … She’d have to mention that to Nicky and Van. Whoa! She had goose bumps, though. Super effective.

Oops, Temple thought. My lord, it resembles an actual, animated death masque. Not exactly promotable. Temple was betting the wax sculptor who’d created the Boots concrete memorial had accomplished the model for this filmed resurrection.

“Where is the money?” the eerie voice intoned from the 3-D death masque. “Follow the money. It was in the vault. Then I ended up there, dead. Stabbed.”

Temple knew by the prickling of her thumbs that something wicked this way comes… .

Actually it was by the prickling in her panty hose, had she been wearing any. She could feel the cat hair around her calves flaring and prickling instead of tickling.

And cat claws in three-four time, kneading warning into the unseen black carpet on the car’s floor.

She had to admit she hadn’t expected this demo ride to be so … ghoulish, so in your face.

So … like from a major historical theatrical masterpiece, like Hamlet.

“The play’s the thing,” to prick “the conscience of the King.” The king … of chutzpah?

“This is absurd,” Santiago objected. “This part is not of my creation. This is a cheap fright show. I demand you restore my immortal and elegant Rat Pack figures—Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. They had charisma, talent, a deathless magic.”

“Like Cosimo Sparks?” Nicky asked. “He was a stage magician once, still dressed like a magician of the old school, in white tie and tails. Was it hard to stab him through that starched shirt?”

“I? Santiago?” His chiseled features tightened with dismay instead of warming with rage. “How dare you! I am internationally renowned, as you well know. I am not some cheap … gangster, stabbing someone with a … shiv.”

Midnight Louie leaped up between Temple and Santiago and issued a low rumbling growl, the likes of which she had never heard from him. It gave her chills and forced Santiago cringing into the corner of the car. Louie was a big cat, and every black hair was puffed out like hackles as he stared at Santiago, until the man blinked and looked away.

“Get that wildcat away from me,” Santiago snarled in turn, his head turned into the car window as if about to kiss the now-frozen grotesque face of Cosimo Sparks.

“We’ll get you away,” Macho Mario assured him, “for a lot of years in prison.”

Midnight Louie leaped onto Temple’s lap, so she tumbled over sideways, just as Nicky and Macho Mario pulled major iron from their shoulder holsters. Like guns. Like big guns. Like they were ready to use them for real.

Santiago tried to lurch somewhere, his hips slamming Temple’s back into the hard leather seat, his hands meshing with the taunting 3-D face in the car window.

He’d worked this audiovisual magic. He knew it was an illusion, a high-tech, amazing, and breathtaking illusion—didn’t he? Magicians like Max and Cosimo Sparks knew illusion from reality. Santiago, mystic architect, did not seem to know.

His hands crashed through thick tinted glass as they sought to touch, to stop, to strangle the dead man’s image, spraying blood and sharp shards, some maybe of bone.

Temple cringed against the seat back as the whole Cat Pack clan joined Louie in surrounding her with a moat of fang and claw, and she felt boas of black cat fur wreathing her torso.

And lots of sharp claws braced on her—ow!—thighs.

Macho Mario and Nicky grabbed Santiago and pulled him onto the opposite seat, stuffed immobile between them and two gun barrels.

The window image had vanished. Only the faces on the graphic tunnel walls flashed past, and then the steel vault, all impressive metal facade and empty significance.

“That’s the wrong vault,” Santiago shouted. “That vault is a substitute. It’s empty. It’s not supposed to be empty.”

“Nor are you,” Nicky said, producing handcuffs from his jacket side pocket and wrapping Santiago’s back-pinned wrists as Uncle Mario kept the gun at the man’s chest. “You’re just another empty suit, Santiago, running a scam to feed your greed. And we Fontanas hold the key to your past and your future. Arriba!”

“Thanks for taking us for a ‘ride,’” Macho Mario chortled, holstering his revolver once the man was manacled. “Brings back the bad old days in the most delightful way. Unfortunately, modern times are not in favor of ‘offing’ bad apples on the spot. We have Detective Ferraro and other officers of the law waiting at the other end to take you into custody for killing Cosimo Sparks. Thanks for the really thrilling ride.”