Molina was waiting in the same spot.
“Your turn,” Temple said.
“I’m okay. There’s another rest room that way. I suggest we snag a couple of drinks at the bar and then a table. A waiter could be a good long while.”
Temple nodded, reaching into her tote bag when they found a gap in the barstools.
“I’m buying,” Molina said.
Temple was sure glad Zoe Chloe never betrayed surprise.
Her last offstage chance to be Zoe saw her ordering a Green Appletini. Yup, she had to produce her driver’s license. Molina went the hard-boiled route and ordered scotch on the rocks.
It felt very odd to be weaving a path around tables in Molina’s wake, clutching a martini glass.
The first empty table was lit by a candle flame trembling like a caught bird in a pierced metal cage, a small draped tent of faux isolation meant to make a vast space seem intimate, or at least private.
Temple set her drink down on the glass circle that topped a swagged tablecloth.
Even sitting, Molina seemed to loom in the miniature tent.
“So what’s the occasion?” Temple asked. “You surely aren’t thanking me for going along with this masquerade as Zoe Chloe.”
“No, but I suppose I should. You’re right that this isn’t my idea. Your fiancé suggested we have this chat.”
“Matt? Why?”
“To clear his conscience.”
“What can you tell me about him that he wouldn’t?”
“Such perfect trust,” Molina said, her voice brittle. “He won’t be responsible for keeping my secrets any longer. I made the mistake of confiding something in him that he won’t keep from you, no matter how disturbing it is.”
“Disturbing?”
“Shut up and sip. I can’t say this won’t hurt me more than it will you.”
Temple felt a cold chill curl around her innards.
Molina took a good swallow of scotch, and began. This was obviously both a reluctant confession and a kind of story.
“As you can see, I’m a certifiably lousy judge of men,” she said. “First there was Rafi Nadir, now Dirty Larry. Perhaps the colorful names misled me.”
Temple’s PR genes revved up. Time to soothe the anxious client. “Rafi doesn’t seem so bad now, maybe to you too. And Dirty Larry was useful in this case.”
“Useful,” Molina repeated with odd emphasis. “Yes, I suppose he is that, among other things.” She smiled. “You’re always looking for the rainbow behind the rain, Little Miss Sunshine,” Molina mused, gazing into the distance, her eyes unfocused. “I wonder if that’s what attracts them?”
“Who?”
“Men.” Molina’s eyes met Temple’s, blue as the bottle of curaçao on the shelves behind the bar.
“Which men?”
Molina ignored her. “I suppose I shared my . . . predicament with Matt because it was something we had in common.”
“Being Catholic?”
“No. Being knifed.”
Temple felt her eyes widen in a way Zoe Chloe would never allow. “So that’s what—”
“That’s what is wrong with me. It’s been six weeks, but Matt can tell you eighty-six stitches have a way of reminding you about them for a long time.”
“Eighty-six! Who? Why?”
“A moment, kiddo,” Molina said in an almost motherly voice. “I gotta brace myself a little longer.” She swallowed again. Then sighed, and sat back in her chair. “I’m actually glad this is just us girls,” she said sardonically. “Men do require keeping one’s guard up.”
“Your men, maybe,” Temple answered almost as sardonically. “Rafi is always edgy around you and Dirty Larry is half manipulative and half scared . . . ah, spineless.”
“Is he really?” Molina asked, surprised.
“Who, what?”
“Rafi is edgy?”
“From my viewpoint, he’s been coming on like gangbusters,” Temple said.
“Maybe. But it’s for Mariah, not me.”
“You going to let him escort her to the father-daughter dance?”
“She’s gone beyond gaga over the new Matt.” Molina grinned. “Even I may have. Who knew? Maybe you. If I decide to come clean on this before the fall dance, Rafi will have to overcome that.”
“She’ll just be glad that Matt isn’t a father figure. By then she’ll probably be into Los Hermanos Brothers. It’s great that Danny Dove is giving Ekaterina a personal scholarship for classes and Mariah’s ecstatic that Adam wants EK in their next video. She’s been pretty selfless about this whole thing.”
“Yeah. Surprise. Maturity peeking through. She’s actually being apologetic to me. So”—Molina took a slug of her drink—“you don’t think much of Larry.”
“Don’t know. He’s one of those guys who could be bad news. Or not. What does my opinion have to do with your slashing?”
“Too much.” Molina made a sour face as she swallowed more scotch. “It’s how I got slashed that’s the literal sticking point. It was in your ex-fiancé’s house.”
“Ex?” It took Temple a moment to identify Max as an “ex-fiancé.” And then, really out of left field, “House?”
When she did, she rejected the whole phrase: “ex-fiancé’s house.”
“Max doesn’t have a house.”
“He did. No sense to deny it. He lived somewhere and it certainly wasn’t with you at the Circle Ritz, at least not in residence.”
“Why on earth were you and Matt discussing Max and his house?”
“That’s where I got knifed.”
“Excuse me, are you trying to lay another bogus charge on Max? He’s out of Vegas, was planning to before—I don’t know where he’s gone, or why, or when. Just that he’s gone. For good.”
“I would have said that a few weeks ago myself. Gone for good. And good for you, though you didn’t want to believe it. But I’m not so sure now. That house on Mohave Way says different.”
“You were there? That must have been during the Red Hat convention.”
“No. I was there later.”
“But . . . there was nothing there later. Nothing in the house. Why would you go there?”
“I can give you reason to stop excusing Dirty Larry. I had him follow you, and one time he followed you to Max’s house at 1200 Mohave Way. That’s how I knew where to go myself. Later. Alone.”
“Max would have been gone by then.”
“Right. And he was.”
“Then how did you get in?”
“You don’t have a need to know.”
“You broke in. But what about the woman who lived there?”
“What woman? The house was unoccupied.”
“The aging chorus girl.”
“Really? You saw her?”
“Yes, I went to the house and she said she’d bought it. She was moved in totally, every stick of Max’s furnishings was gone, even the magical props in storage.”
“The opium bed?” Molina asked quietly.
“The opium bed, the trick boxes . . . wait! How do you know about the opium bed?”
“I saw it. The house was fully furnished.”
“I was there on a Tuesday night.”
“I was there the following Sunday.”
Each was silent and each communed with her drink again.
“Then—” Temple began, choking back fear, pain, and rage.
“It was a magician’s trick,” Molina declared, “a vanishing act on a house-moving scale. You saw the illusions, the end result of it. I saw the stage restored to normal.”
“But why?”
“He wanted to be completely out of your life, leaving you free to do what you did. Forget him, marry Matt.”
“But . . . why?”
“A rolling stone gathers no moss. Maybe the same old story. The demons from his past were after him again and he wanted you out of danger.”
Temple sat there feeling Zoe Chloe Ozone melting off her body like a greasepaint clown face. Was
Max gone, or dead? Dead or gone? Or were they just the same thing?
“You said no one was there,” she told Molina, looking for a hole in her story. “Who cut you then?”
“I have no idea. True. The house was dark. I heard someone moving around after I’d gotten in. A strange tearing sound in one of the rooms. I can tell you Kinsella’s clothes were slashed to ribbons in one closet.”
Temple gasped. “Who’d do that?”
“I’d had a stalker at my home the past few weeks. I thought it was Kinsella.”
“Max? Stalk you? Are you crazy?”
Molina shrugged that one off. Temple noticed she wasn’t sharing what Matt had gleaned: that she thought Max had come on to her once, during a physical showdown that had turned psychological.
“Now,” Molina said, all policewoman, “I’m beginning to think that same stalker was in his house that night. That’s when I began to believe that he might be ‘innocent’ in some ways. I almost could make a case for my stalker being his stalker. And don’t ask me why, because that motive is very cloudy and twisted.”
“And the stalker cut you?”
Molina nodded. “I confronted the person in the hallway. A large butcher knife was missing from the kitchen block as I came in, I recalled too late. My scar will make Matt’s look like a needle scrape.”
Temple nodded. “Someone hateful after Max. I’d almost think it was that woman who cut Matt, except she’s dead. But her associates need not be.”
“The woman from Max’s counterterrorism past that Matt keeps talking about?”
Temple nodded, dazed and almost feeling knifed herself.
“Could be,” Molina said. “That’s all IRA stuff, though, and they’re pretty old news. Inactive. Terrorism is a wholly owned subsidiary of Al-Qaeda and suicide bombers now.”
“You don’t suppose Max went off to work on that front?” Temple asked with a shudder.
“Wouldn’t seem his culture, but he is a chameleon of sorts. No, there’s something rotten going on in Vegas tied into all this, but I have no idea what it is.”
“So,” said Temple, finishing her martini and actually debating ordering another. “Matt will be okay now that you told me it looks like Max stage-managed his own vanishing act and is alive and well and somewhere far away?”
“He didn’t want to be the one to tell you he knew Max had pulled another now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t. But he didn’t want to be the one to keep you in the dark, either.”
“Matt has a pretty fine meter on his conscience, doesn’t he?”
Molina nodded. “Yes, he does. An excellent thing in a man.” She drained her glass. “You do realize that Max made it look like he was gone to end any hope you might have of a relationship.”
“He’d been . . . drawing away lately. In a way, I wasn’t surprised.”
“Or . . . he could have known that he was again the target of some nasty international assassins and he wanted you out of the way forever.”
“Possible. Max takes his personal responsibilities seriously.”
“Or, to be totally realistic, he may have been taken out by those same shadowy figures and the scene set up to convince the one constant in his life that any search for him was futile.”
Temple would not tear up in front of Molina. Or choke on her words. “Yes, that too.”
There was a pause. Was it possible that Molina was choking on something too, like regret?
She finally spoke again. “What say we get another round and toast your fiancé.”
Temple assumed she shouldn’t ask which one, the old or the new.
Maybe this round they could discuss the possible sins and saving graces of Rafi Nadir and Dirty Larry Podesta. Who would ever have thought?
“Where’s that pesky cat of yours, anyway?” Molina asked as they returned from the bar.
“Louie seems to have made some new friends at the Oasis. It’s always good to have connections in this town.”
“Skoal,” said Molina, lifting her glass.
“Cheers,” said Temple, wondering how Molina was ever going to sort out the guys in her life without one of them proving to be crooked or going AWOL.
Meanwhile . . .
Max of Arabia, swarthy in desert burnoose, lurking near some ancient market.
No, the land of IEDs and suicide bombers made the IRA look like Boy Scouts by comparison. Temple hoped Max was on a cushy assignment in the Caribbean, chasing tax evaders.
Cane Dance
The hotel was within walking distance of more than shops and restaurants. He was heading for the Bahnhof train station, one of the busiest in Europe. It was an imposing nineteenth-century building as sleek and remodeled inside as a modern airport, with yet more shopping on a lower level. And where there was shopping, there were pockets to pick.
He needed to ditch the credit cards after each use in an urban area, and Zurich was unusually small and insular even for a European city. He couldn’t bury them in anything here but refuse, which was regularly accumulated and could be searched, unlike endless alpine meadows.
He rubbed his chin as he thought, surprised by the scrape of his own carefully cultivated stubble across his palm. Revienne hadn’t complained, but he wanted to kick himself for forgetting about it during the heat of their moments. So, more data to process. Thoughtful lover. Usually. Add that to the list of attributes he was compiling about his habits and likes and dislikes. Faithful? Apparently. That was inconvenient.
So. What was the verdict on Revienne? If he’d truly trusted her, he’d have used her given name in bed, he’d sensed that much. Yet the honorifics were inciting in a Victorian pornography way. Close, but not completely close. Unrestrained but still restrained.
As his memory was: still restrained, in a straitjacket.
He’d been constantly and unconsciously scanning the street and pedestrians. He stopped at a shop window to examine the reflection of a slow-moving silver Audi that seemed inclined to window shop too. It moved on, and after a couple of minutes he did too.
The railway station’s looming bulk was only three blocks away. It would present an array of problems for him, but mass ground transportation was safer than the airport.
A portly fellow in a homburg hat gazing too intently at the footpath brushed by. His cane tangled with Max’s ankle.
Like most street mix-ups, it quickly became a bungled Fred Astaire routine. Max grabbed the cane and spun out of the way, but the man’s cane slipped to the street. The old fellow was tilting off balance with no support.
Where the devil had the fellow’s cane gone?
Max bent to help him look for it. Then the cane reappeared between his ankles, knocking him off balance. He fell back against the rear fender of a stopped car.
He was perfectly placed to tumble inside an open backseat car door.
Oh, no, they didn’t. His arms grabbed each side of the frame as he prepared to thrust himself back onto the sidewalk and freedom.
“Max, you ass,” the old man hissed, “get in and make no more fuss about it. We’re attracting attention.
“Sorry, young fellow,” Garry Randolph added loudly in German. “Many thanks for catching me. Come, my car will take you where you were going.”
By then Max had managed to draw his long legs inside without too much pain as Garry pushed into the backseat after him and pulled the door shut.
The car eased back into traffic.
“Where’s—?” Max started to ask.
Randolph snapped his wrist and a telescoping cane unfurled in the space between them.
“I don’t need a cane anymore, but my fingerprints are on the one you left behind,” Max complained.
Garry Randolph jerked his head behind them.
Max rubbernecked backward. A teenage boy was bending to retrieve the cane.
“He’s mine.” Garry said. “I knew I could lose the walking stick in the confusion of the moment. The boy’s been paid to burn it.”
Max eyed the driver, who had ne
ver looked back.
“Doesn’t speak English and wears earphones playing Vivaldi anyway. A long-ago associate. How is the lovely doctor?”
“Wearing a lovely new suit and en route back to the clinic.”
“Do you trust her?”
“No. She did help me escape the place.”
“After the attempt on your life with the hypodermic needle.”
“What was in it?”
“Phenobarbital.”
“Know why I’m worth so much dead?”
Gandolph scratched the bristly gray mustache, then pulled it off. “No. You’re walking well. I’m amazed.”
“The bones were healed, so my atrophied muscles were the problem. Running for your life makes for very motivated physical therapy. How did you find me?”
“You had to pass through Zurich. I actually located you yesterday, but the lights in your room burned all night and I was reluctant to be seen in the hotel anyway. Had a siege of sickness, did we?”
Max cleared his throat. “That was actually Dr. Schneider’s room.”
“I see. A rather different kind of siege.” Garry shook his head. “Max, Max, Max. A deceptive woman got you into this whole counterspy mess twenty years ago. Boys will be boys, I suppose.”
“Is there some reason I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing?”
“She may be employed by an enemy.”
“Beyond that.”
“Any reason why you should have slept alone last night, you mean?”
He nodded.
“You left the love of your life behind in Las Vegas when you crashed into the wall of a nightclub during an airborne magic act.”
Max stared at this man he was supposed to know, and trust.
“Good God! I was in Las Vegas? Not on some damn mountain? I knew I was never on a mountain! Damn mountains, particularly Alps. But, Garry, I had a . . . wife? Lover?”
“Yes and no. Even you realized you couldn’t commit to marriage while your life was in danger, and you finally told her that. Freed her just recently. You also told me if anything ever happened to you, I had a mission: to find the first woman who deceived you and gave you a grief you couldn’t lose and set you on the path of espionage.
“You were unconscious after that murder attempt in Vegas, and then amnesiac. I used every resource I had from our active espionage days to smuggle you out of the United States to the Swiss clinic. I even set it up so that your Las Vegas love saw your house emptied of all your possessions and occupied by a stranger.”
Cat in a Topaz Tango Page 35
