She edged deeper into the darkness, her mind churning with great expectations, with notions of a lost past heritage shaping a profitable future.
One thing she was sure of, one way or another: Midnight Louie had hit pay dirt.
Chapter 38
Track of the Cat
Matt lingered outside the Peacock Theater, not sure which sin was the greater: to risk missing Temple's skit, or to hunt for her as if she were a lost three-year-old incapable of taking care of herself.
Still, he knew how much that one production number meant to her. Why would she risk missing it?
While he debated, he noticed a dark-haired man who resembled a department-store floor-walker in a tuxedo eyeing him suspiciously across the crowded room.
Matt realized that standing still and thinking could be construed as bizarre behavior in a gambling casino. He hesitated for a last moment, torn between returning to the banquette, where Temple would expect to find him when she returned, or trying to find his way below-stage.
"Something wrong?''
Matt glanced at another dark-haired man in a tuxedo who had sidled up beside him, then looked for the first man. Still in place, and still watching Matt curiously.
In evening dress, the two men looked like twins, but now he understood. He turned to the stranger beside him.
"I was with Temple. I wondered where she'd gone."
The man frowned and cocked his head at his distant clone. The other man began walking over ... another who looked just like him came from the left and yet another deserted his post leaning against the cashier's cage to advance on Matt.
The sight of the converging sober men in formal dress might have been intimidating, except that Matt had recognized the species from his encounter with the owner of the Crystal Phoenix: Fraternitas Fontanas.
"Temple is missing?" the first man asked incredulously. He toyed with a gold cannon-shaped earring in his left ear. "Can't be, man. The alert here was a false alarm. The Phoenix was just a diversion. All the action is over at the Goliath." He sounded truly sorry about that. ''Now is no time for Miss Barr to flee. This place is safer than Al Capone's vault was from Geraldo Rivera."
The identically dressed brothers had circled Matt, giving him an unnerving impression of confronting a stranger's face in a funhouse chamber of mirrors.
''She went to see about backstage matters." Matt waved toward the service elevators. The brothers' overwhelming presence had made evasion devoutly to be wished. "I'll tell her the bad news about everything being okay here."
The brothers nodded morosely, twitching the armed portions of their anatomy in reckless abandon: shoulders, hips and even ankles. All that hardware was now redundant. Pity.
Matt broke their charmed circle and headed for the service area. Temple was going to miss the Gridiron finale unless she showed up pronto. What could be keeping her?
He didn't bother with the elevator, instead clattering down the empty stairs once so unexpectedly threatening. The hand-rail felt as solid as Gibraltar, but he didn't trust any weight to it.
The downstairs, where only hours before performers had dashed and chattered, was eerily silent. He peered into abandoned dressing rooms, inhaling the oily chemical scent of open stage-makeup tins. Askew chairs, scattered pencils and jars, carelessly tossed items of clothing gave the place a Twilight Zone feel, as if the cast had truly been wafted away in a UFO, leaving everything behind.
When Matt reached the under stage area, he saw a hushed crowd huddled around the strangely compelling form of the UFO, and stopped. A muffled din filtered down from the stage above like smothered Musak. No sense disturbing the cast. Temple wasn't here. She probably had returned to their banquette by some arcane backstage route and was now wondering where he was.
Matt retraced his steps, enjoying the echoing silence, He began to understand Temple's fascination with the theater's big, rumbling underbelly. The atmosphere reminded him of a team locker room while the big game was played elsewhere. Full of past and promise, for now it was a place where time stood still.
Then Matt stopped. He had heard something, faint but accidental-sounding. A clang of some kind. And the sound came from ahead, away from the under stage area. A clang like a cell door slamming, and then--a shriek. A thin, tiny scream, so distant it could have been the squeal of an unoiled wheel.
Except that nothing moved here, not even a ceiling fan. He stood and listened to the building breathe; the air conditioner's constant drone became a white noise to ignore. He looked back down the hall toward the now-invisible UFO. No, not from behind . . . from ahead.
But nothing waited ahead--only the stairs and elevator at the left, the empty dressing rooms on the right. He glanced at a spooky rack of hanging costumes of every type and color. It looked like Halloween had been lynched. The stuffed black cat with a fear-arched back planted at the hems of the tawdry costumes only added to the macabre impression.
The cat hissed as it saw him, then lowered its back and stepped forward tentatively to greet him.
"Caviar!"
Matt was shocked to the soles of his black wing-tips. The little cat had been off on her own of late, and he had worried about that, but his own multiple anxieties had overridden any other concern. He was surprisingly relieved to see her. Now if only he could pinpoint Temple. . . .
Caviar was rubbing frantically back and forth on the swaying costumes, her nervous turning, pacing and tail-waving lashing them into an eerie imitation of live-action,
''What are you doing here?"
He neared the animal cautiously, knowing the idiocy of asking a cat anything, but the creatures responded to vocalizations. He had learned that much.
Caviar meowed plaintively. At his approach she transferred her rubbings from inanimate clothing to his pant legs. At least she was also black.
He bent to pick her up, but she eluded him. Mincing over the costume rack's bottom metal support, she nudged between the hanging curtains of costume.
''Hey, kitty! Don't do that."
He bent lower to retrieve her, and that's when he heard the distant echo of scuffles and muffled shouts. Caviar was disappearing where the costumes gaped in the middle like a carelessly closed stage curtain.
Matt reached into the narrow aisle of space and thrust back the costumes as far as he could force them.
The faint noises he had heard were louder. He was facing a black velvet curtain where the wall should be. Caviar nosed right into that dark barrier, her front half vanishing except for the glow of her golden eyes.
She looked back at Matt with that patented feline gaze of calm expectancy: You know what I want. Now do it ignorant human.
The wall was obviously absent without leave here. Matt thought with new anxiety. Since Temple was truant, being Temple, she must have gone where the missing wall went.
Sure. Matt stepped over the rack frame and into instant darkness. Looking back, he saw the costumes had sprung almost closed again now that he was no longer holding them apart.
Temple could have performed the same vanishing act, and no one would have been the wiser had Caviar not played lookout and attracted his attention.
Who--or what--Matt wondered, would attract attention to where he had gone? Maybe his guardian angel, he thought, hearing Caviar's gentle purr of satisfaction and feeling her rubbing pull on his pant legs.
The smothered racket deep in the darkness intensified. Was this some theatrical storage area? Was a crew moving unneeded Gridiron props? Whatever, Temple was even more likely than he to explore such an interesting anomaly. She really was as curious as a cat. He was not, but he had another bad trait: a bulldog sense of responsibility to and for others.
Matt plunged into the unknown territory, his hands a buffer zone before him in the blackness. His fingertips bounced off the paint-smoothed roughness of concrete blocks. He quickly discovered that the space was a broad tunnel, and that it curved as it continued. Light gleamed off a turn far ahead. When his reaching hands found an empty spa
ce that proved to be another arm of the tunnel, he began to doubt his wisdom in being there.
''Caviar?" he questioned the dark.
There was no answer, not even a tug against the satin side seams of his rented trousers. He weighed alternatives and decided that feeling his way in a dark so dense he couldn't even see a black cat was idiotic.
He retreated while he still sensed the way, despite a plaintive meow from the abyss. Fools will rush in where even guardian angels fear to tread. He couldn't guarantee any angels, anywhere, anymore. But he could keep at least one fool from further folly Chapter 39
An Uplifting Escape
Temple wasn't sure how far she had walked.
In her high heels, it felt like blocks, but how could that be?
The Crystal Phoenix grounds weren't that extensive.
Farther into the tunnels the occasional bare light bulb provided periodic gobbets of light.
She guessed that they were on the same line as other lights at the Phoenix; the same circuit as the dressing rooms, say. Maybe this had once been storage space for casino and theatrical equipment.
Now the space was utterly empty, but not deteriorated. At least this was Las Vegas, and the walls weren't damp and discolored, or covered with lichen and slime, she thought as she skimmed along the tunnel wall with her hand as a guide.
She could still hear the faint sound of stage machinery. The tunnels were curved, not straight. She may have circled back behind the stage elevator for all she knew. Still, she hadn't found another exit yet, and she didn't even have a humble trail of bread crumbs to lead her back.
She knew she should have turned back long before, but Midnight Louie kept eager pace with her. Every time she stopped, she felt him brush against her calves. Occasionally his upright tail tickled her thighs, the naughty boy! He acted like a dog in a Disney movie; he had something to show her.
Besides, Temple's mind was spinning a public relations web from the network of tunnels she traveled. She could see it now: the Glory Hole Gang mine ride : rocket like Indiana Jones through the darkest bowels of a treasure-laden earth! The Jersey Joe Jackson desert diorama and treasure hunt, with a silver dollar at the end for every ticket holder.
Of course, this motherlode of invention would cost Nicky and Van a fortune, but, hey, half the groundwork had been clone. The Crystal Phoenix already had a pre-excavated, dark, dramatic underworld ripe for development, repositioning and exploitation. Plus, Temple thought happily, the mystique!
Jersey Joe Jackson--Action Jackson!--had hacked this secret network of tunnels from the desert in his heyday, perhaps for a dozen mysterious purposes. Pick your passion. Treasure-hoarding. Escape routes. Disposing of rivals. Oooh, creepy. Any minute Temple expected to stumble over a body, no ... a skeleton. Oh, holy fright night! They could offer a Halloween special with a holographic ''ghost'' of Jersey Joe haunting the rides and displays.
Temple was thinking so hard she stumbled over something, and hoped it wasn't Louie. The steel heels on her shoes were more than somewhat lethal.
She bent down to feel for the cat and found her hands shaping a long, lumpy hummock of burlap sacks.
Oh my gosh, maybe this was her dead body!
Temple crouched beside whatever it was in the dark, unwilling to probe further, yet unwilling to turn around and give up.
Midnight Louie began massaging her jackknifed legs, his enthusiasm threatening to topple her.
The sounds that Temple had thought were behind her increased. The stage machinery was running full tilt now--darn, she was missing the debut of her very own UFO. She could hear the subtle squeak of the pulley wheels turning and the grunts and gritted-teeth curses of the stage hands . . . getting forty people and a humongous prop positioned for an elevated entrance was not easy.
She must be very near the staging area, Temple thought, looking back over her left shoulder for the narrow, lighted crack of an exit.
Light came, but it fell on the right side of her face.
She looked ahead, hearing some machine grinding toward her, some truant deus ex machina wheeling down the abandoned tunnels curling length toward her like a runaway ore car in an Indiana Jones movie.
Temple stood, sensing that she needed to get out of the way. Watery light was leaking down the tunnel ahead of the noise, pale but indomitable. It fluttered like candle flames, jerked up and down.
"Damn!" a man protested.
"Shut up!" another whispered. "Sound carries down here. Just a bit to go and then we can dump this load."
But the unseen vehicle's wheels continued to protest in soprano squeaks while the men's guttural grunts provided a percussive base.
Temple now could distinguish Midnight Louie's outline against the dawn of light warming the tunnel sides. His halo of uplifted hair made him resemble a hedgehog. He was retreating on stiff legs, adding an intermittent hiss to the sound effects echoing off the concrete walls.
"You hear anything?" a desperate voice whispered hoarsely.
"Just us," came the answer. "Keep movin'."
Temple glanced to her feet. The soft light played over the shape of a sleeping transient at the tips of her black suede shoes. She jumped back, then saw that she viewed not a body, so much as . . . body parts. Bags of camouflage-colored canvas grouped into the accidental semblance of a human form.
She bent again, worked one stiff draw-cord open and felt inside. Her fingertips touched the damp, limp linen of well-used legal render. Paper money. A cache of cash.
At that moment a spear of light bounced off the opposite wall. A man was backing into her sight, a man in dark clothes, with something shiny, dark and bulky jammed into the back of his pants. He held flashlights in both hands, hoisting and waving them as an airport worker guides a grounded airplane into the gate.
After him came the grinding, squealing sound, swelling as a stainless steel cart nosed into view. It could have been a hospital cart, or a food cart or a dozen other carts, but it looked just like the carts casinos use to transfer slot machine and gaming table money to the collection center hidden at their cores.
Now Temple was backing up, and so was Midnight Louie. Her hands were behind her, on the smooth cool wall. She kept her feet shuffling along the hard-packed dirt floor so her steps wouldn't be apparent. Thank heaven the cart sounded like the Tin Woodman before he got a lube job! Its shrieks would surely drown out little her. Louie, of course, made no more noise than a quartet of Q-Tips on parade. ...
The tunnel was finally curving enough to begin concealing the oncoming men. Temple could only glimpse one bag of the pile that was their goal. She let her breath ease out while inching and shuffling backward.
The lead man twisted his head over his shoulder to gauge the distance to go.
She saw a bone-white face punctured by a machine-gun pattern, and gasped.
He didn't hear her over the din, but he saw her.
The twin flashlights swept her way like dueling lasers.
She turned and ran, the rat-a-tat pound of her heels a surprisingly heart-stopping burst of noise. No point tippy-toeing now. This dress was a sterling silver target.
"Stop her!" someone shouted.
The cart noise died in an instant, replaced by pounding soft-soled feet and huffing breaths.
Where was Louie?
Temple had no time to look. She had successfully plunged into the deeper darkness, her hand scraping along the sandpaper surface of the concrete blocks.
A feeble glow of light ahead signaled one of the overhead bulbs. She paused to snatch off her shoes and ran on, dreading the light. They wouldn't shoot her, no. They didn't want sound.
But they could catch her; their big feet pounded relentlessly behind her. She didn't know the way out, only that tunnel branches might lead to dead-ends.
And she knew that the occasional light bulbs would act as fingering spotlights. She was barreling into the wincing light of one now. Temple ran faster as she neared the light, holding one steel heel high. She imagined she mu
st look like the Statue of Liberty bearing a rhinestone torch. As she streaked under the light, she leaped up and swatted up with the heel. The glass bulb shattered, then scattered to the floor, its filament winking out in an instant.
Pleased to discover she had not electrocuted herself, Temple sprinted on, her strides hiking her hem up to-mid-thigh. Between the rough floor and her beaded hem sawing against her thighs like a diamond-edged blade, her pantyhose were history.
Temple hoped that she was not.
Then an oncoming overhead light developed an alarming mobility and began probing the darkness with relentless intelligence. Temple, huffing and puffing, dared not slow down or be overtaken, but she was surrounded! Someone was ahead of her, maybe a confederate who planned to meet the money-movers in mid-tunnel.
Or could these people be legitimate casino employees? Had she stumbled on where they discreetly processed the take? Maybe they took her for a crook, an unauthorized person at least, and all would be well.
Maybe Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera would get married.
A stitch in her side was giving Temple the contrary impression that it had split open. Or her dress had.
With her last rush of adrenalin, she hurtled straight for the barrier flashlight. If whoever held it wanted to shoot, so be it. Her dress was a goner, so she was going to aim a karate kick right where the unseen arm would be.
She aimed, leaped, kicked . . . and felt a countering hand intercept her instep with a force that shopped her in mid-thrust.
She would have twisted and tumbled flat on her face, except that the arm holding the flashlight moved in front of her as she collapsed on it.
"Temple, what on earth-- ?"
cat in a crimson haze Page 33
