Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“I’m following your instructions,” Garry said, “on what to do if anything ever happened to you in the mortal way: find and follow the trail of Kathleen O’Connor, her history and motives. So that’s what we’re doing.”

“The man who wanted that may not be dead now, but he doesn’t remember the why or wherefore of such a request. From what you tell me, I’m the one who’s left the ‘love of my life’ in Vegas thinking I’ve vanished. This … redhead.”

“Her first name is Temple.”

“Even the name is just an improper noun to my blasted memory. Is she Greek or Roman?”

“Neither. One of a kind.”

“Well, then, I should definitely be winging back to the U.S. immediately to explain myself.”

“Right into the hands of your attempted murderers.”

“Not safe there. Not safe here. From what you said I did to enrage the IRA years ago, I shouldn’t be here even now.”

“Probably.” Garry sighed and eased out his seat-belt strap, which cut diagonally and cruelly across a middle-aged girth. “But a promise is a promise.”

Max eyed a glimpse of the Irish Sea on the right, glinting like steel gray glass. “Does she have a Web site?” he asked more quietly.

“Kathleen O’Connor?”

“No. This Temple.”

“Probably. She runs a freelance public-relations business. I hadn’t thought of that. She’d have a Web page. When we get to the hotel we can look it up. No distractions now. We’re on the mission you assigned me, and are perhaps half an hour from the Little Flower Convent of Saint Therese.”

Max rolled his eyes. “A convent? Don’t tell me! The nuns there wear habits to this day, and it’s still as Catholic as the Pope. Predictably Ireland, God bless it.”

Max noticed Garry’s features settling into deep worry lines he guessed were new to those comfortable, intelligent features. Because of him.

“Nothing is predictable in our line of endeavor, Max,” Garry said. “Not the present and not the past. Especially not the past. I’ll thank you not to swear me to fulfill any last requests in future.”

Lights, Action

Temple approached the Fontana Suite’s double doors, treated like the entrance to a mansion, with etched crystal sidelights and brass torchères, wondering whether to ring the old-fashioned doorbell or just walk in.

An ear-piercing burst of automatic weapons fire first made her jump, then storm through the doors. She immediately leaped down and to the side, tumbling to the floor.

The firing stopped so abruptly that the silence hurt her ears in turn. At least she’d brought her iPhone, if not her purse, with the intention of making some quick notes, and could summon help.

A strange slapping sound came next from the other room. Temple rolled onto her bare, bony knees, not appreciating the cold and rough-textured slate entry floor. She rose awkwardly while pulling her skirt down and tried to tiptoe on her T-strap heels into the marble-floored main room.

Van and Nicky were clapping. Santiago stood near a massive steel-topped table, beaming like a São Paulo noonday sun.

A moderately sized flat-screen TV sat on the burnished metal tabletop, which also supported a fifteen-inch-high cityscape of miniature constructions, an elaborate architect’s model.

Temple looked around thoroughly and could see no source for the weapons fire. Apparently a gangland hit was not in progress.

“Won’t the tunnel magnify the sound effects unbearably?” Van was asking.

“Totally programmable,” Nicky reassured her. “Santiago just wanted to get our full attention.”

Temple thought she should declare her arrival.

“He certainly got mine from the hall outside the doors. I thought the Chicago Outfit was back to take over … or else it was the feared first terrorist offensive on Vegas.”

Santiago spread his white-suited arms like the statue of Christ of the Andes overlooking Rio’s harbor. He laughed heartily.

“No, PR lady, it was just me and my media creations. Come closer and see.”

That was rather like an invitation from an albino tarantula, Temple thought, but she walked over the marble flooring to the silken Asian rug to join Van and Nicky at the hypermodern steel-topped table.

She was puzzled that the centerpiece TV screen was only a modest forty-six inches wide. Modest size didn’t seem to match Santiago’s egocentric, open-armed style. As she got closer, Temple spotted a twinkle in his deep hazel-green eyes. He was laughing at her … and at himself and his poses.

He reminded her of Max, wearing his Mystifying Max green contact lenses for disguise and his magic act. Max hadn’t done that for ages, concealed his natural blue eyes since then, not since he quit performing two years ago. Temple wondered why her subconscious had resurrected that outdated image. She’d have to do penance and be sure to phone Matt in Chicago tonight. Or at least watch his taped segment on today’s The Amanda Show at home before bedtime.

“Are you any relation to Flamin—I mean, Domingo?” she asked Santiago.

“That charlatan?” he asked, still laughing. “Only in a gift for thinking big, they tell me. This will be ‘big’ on a small scale, as you are, Miss Temple, and as is the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters. Here, Santiago is forced to be confined, in his thinking and the space he has to manipulate. That is what so intrigues me about this project. ‘Big is bad’ today. Wasteful. Costly. Santiago will make magic on a small scale. See this.”

He gestured at the miniature mock-up. Everything displayed was fashioned from white matte board, so it was mysterious and sculptural. Temple moved her spike heels delicately over the thick-piled rug so she didn’t turn an ankle. Who could resist 3-D miniatures, so like Christmas dollhouses one had never gotten but had coveted in department-store Christmas windows? A four-boy family wasn’t much into dollhouses when it came to the only girl.

“Oh!” Temple recognized a mock-up of the Crystal Phoenix that resembled the Ice Queen’s palace from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. That construction anchored one end of the slick silver table. At the other stood another fifteen-story hotel, Gangsters, with low additions for the attached limo service’s office and garages. Between them stretched an elongated spiral of white construction paper.

“You must imagine,” Santiago said in a hushed, hypnotic voice. “You must imagine this graceful tunnel as belowground, a swift, silent conduit between Gangsters and the Crystal Phoenix, an underground monorail … no, an American-underworld horizontal time tunnel.”

“A ride?” Van asked, her voice sounding unconvinced.

“No,” Santiago said. “A fast car chase … with intermissions. What is this wonderful American expression from the gangland days—being ‘taken for a ride’? The clients of Gangsters shall have the long-lost experience of that pleasantly helpless, thrilling state so devoutly to be desired.”

While he paused to let that sink in, Temple and Van crossed glances. Was this guy selling his ideas or seduction? If a combo, that was in the Las Vegas tradition, for sure.

“So people will be speeding around in underground limousines?” Nicky asked, immersed in the mechanics of the process more than the sensations.

“It may seem so,” Santiago said. “The ‘limousines’ will look like motorcars, like these ‘stretch’ vehicles, only from the nineteen thirties, forties, fifties, and even sixties. But they will ride like a dream, on rails. On the tunnel walls outside their smoked-glass windows, scenes of iconic American gangster days will unreel before their eyes … the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde and Bugsy Siegel, all the delightfully gory happenings of days of yore. But they will unreel backward. It shall be death and resurrection, a theme the very name of the Crystal Phoenix evokes, yes? It will not be morbid, but the happy ending all Americans crave, for themselves and the world. Yes? All people cannot take their eyes off a disaster. All people then hope to see it reversed. The Chunnel of Crime, as you so colorfully christened it, Mr. Fontana, will be the Ride of Resurrection.”