Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

One of the suits turned the person over, pounded the chest, worked the chest like a bellows, pounded and pushed. No “kiss of life” nowadays, no mouth-breathing, not since AIDS had made blood and saliva dangerous.

Temple watched, numb.

“Who is it?” someone asked over her shoulder.

“I don’t know.” Nobody unofficial should make that call yet. “Wait.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Temple watched for any flicker of an eyelash, any heave of the chest.

There was only the dead, implacable rhythm of CPR, of using a motionless chest as a drum skin and trying to beat it back

into a semblance of life.

The sirens rose to a deafening shriek and then stopped. EMTs in jumpsuits landed on Maylords’s interior turf like paratroopers, rushing, pushing aside the guy who was working on Simon, towing a gurney and an urgent attitude behind them.

Latex-gloved figures bent over him, muffled his face with an oxygen mask to breathe for him, looking to spark some life

still within him.

Temple found herself eyeing an empty spot on the floor. Beside it, a crouching man, hands braced on knees, gasped to recapture his own spent breath.

Rafi Nadir.

She stared.

He recovered enough to look up and notice her. The EMTs had lifted Simon onto the gurney. Wheels were skidding over the polished floor and through the main entrance. Everyone else had ebbed away, following the storm’s center to the parking lot.

“He’s … gay,” she said.

Nadir looked to the side, angry. “Christ. You don’t get it. Talking the talk is just shorthand. Street shorthand. I do my job.” She didn’t get it.

He straightened. “I’m too damn out of shape. Too damn out of shape to do anyone any good.” “You did all you could.”

“Not enough.” His face curdled with disgust. Self-disgust. “Don’t look at me like that. Get outta here.”

She spun on her heel and did as he said, racing to the parking lot where the ambulance was screaming away into the lateafternoon Las Vegas traffic.

Media vans screeched in its wake.

The people marooned on the asphalt watched with dead eyes.

“What hospital?” Temple asked Pritchard, who stood tall and alone by a second parked Gangsters limo. Lime green. The Kermit. Kids loved it.

“Mercy? You have one here named that?’

“No, but shouldn’t everyone?”

Temple stood staring after the vanishing ambulance: it was headed for Sunrise Columbia Hospital. She ached to follow it, but that wasn’t the most effective thing she could do. Kenny Maylord was doing that, and they had each other’s cell phone numbers.

First, she had to go inside to calm down Amelia Wong and company, and the Maylords staff. Second, she had to brief Mark Ainsworth on what to give, and not give, the media. Mr. You’ll-be-axed-in-three-months was not a promising candidate for suave media management. Third, as a fail-safe, she had to touch base with all the local media by cell phone to make sure she was their first, and last, contact on any follow-up. And in the middle of all this damage control, she needed to make a radical detour for a mission of mercy. Thank God for cell phones that would keep her finger on the pulse of events even when she was on the road.

Her major personal priority right now had to be off the record: escaping the scene of the crime to find and tell Danny Dove what had happened.

In this world of constant wireless contact, only a face-to-face would do. Temple also understood that actually and finally knowing for sure what had happened … and why … would only come much later. If ever.

Chapter 22

Slow Dancing

Temple headed to the sprawling pseudo-Saharan Oasis Hotel.

Danny was drilling dancers there, working up a huge new show. Rehearsing night and day. The start-up cost was millions. Temple recalled Simon lightly chiding Danny for his frequent recent absences the night of the Maylords opening. A fond pride. An intimate’s good-natured complaint.

Like she would joke about Max being the Invisible Man in her life.

She found herself walking into the Oasis’s Sub-Zero air-conditioning, moving among murmuring crowds into the noisy heat

of action and risk.

Theaters always were located at the rear of Las Vegas hotels, discreet marquees meant to be resorted to only when gaming was temporarily deserted.

This theater marquee was dark. A placard announced the future opening of another Danny Dove spectacular. Toddlin’ Towns, a tribute to the world’s great show cities. Paris, Chicago, London, New York…

Temple pushed through the easy-opening double doors into the back of the huge, raked house.

Far below, the stage was a black postage stamp pierced with pinpoints of lurid light.

Antlike, people milled in kaleidoscopic patterns below Danny’s art. Making motion into emotion. Patterns into phenomena.

Temple walked down the carpeted aisle, her heels digging in like pitons against the inevitable pull of gravity that tried to

make her stutter into a trot and finally a run. Digging in against inevitability.

As she got closer, she could hear Danny exercising his voice like a ringmaster cracking his whip.. Conductors commanded and cajoled with mute arm movements and expressions. Stage directors ruled with pages of postperformance lined notes. Choreographers created with voice and motion, physical presence and command.

They took your breath away.

And then you did more than you had ever imagined you could.

Temple needed to do more now than she had ever imagined she could.

Eventually the company noticed the lone figure stomping down the raked aisle. Their group gaze flicked away from their maestro to the distraction. Nobody ever interrupted a Danny Dove work session.

He finally sensed the diversion and turned, imperially annoyed. Saw Temple. Paused. Melted a little. Saw her expression,

or lack of it. Frowned.

He turned back to his troops. “All right, people! If you’re going to be distracted you are no damn use to me. Off! Go contemplate your sins! Try to manage a four-four-time trot as you leave. Take a break. Hustle, children! You are movers and shakers, not cigar-store Indians! Dance your exit, damn it! Haven’t you learned anything about making a final bow?”

They clattered away on their taps, a herd of percussionists in leotards.

Danny turned on Temple as she approached. “I’ve never seen you steal a scene before, toots, especially from me. You know rehearsal is sacred. So what’s the big occasion? It had better be.”

She went on silently, until her toes hit the stage-left stairs and her feet moved up onto the black hardwood stage and thundered at every step.

“Danny, I’d rather die.”

“Nobody ever dies in a Danny Dove production.” He waited until she came even with him. “It’s ‘Face the Music and Dance’

all the way.”

He held out his arms like a swain in a ’30s movie.

Temple tilted her head in bewilderment. That released a tear that had been dammed by her eyelashes.

Danny swept her into a box waltz, the dopey, basic four-step every kid had been taught in grade school. Temple stumbled anyway, but Danny was such a superb dancer, such a superb leader, that her stumbles meant nothing.

They moved around the stage, in the silent mathematics and music of dance steps.

“Tell me,” he said.

Temple’s voice was as clouded as her eyes. “I was there. Everything that could be done, was done. All the way to the hospital. Everything that could be done, was done.”

Danny said nothing, but he moved inexorably. Back, forward, side to side. He gave her time. Time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme.

He kept her moving, her head spinning faster than her emotions. He was the still, upright hands at the center of the dial. Midnight. Unmoving midnight.