Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  I rush the arch where they are cowering and suddenly notice that the two sets of green-eye reflections I am rushing are now . . . three. And the third set has a half-moon on one side.

  “Ma Barker is here,” a raspy voice announces. “B and B, get yourselves back in the open.”

  “Where are the rest of the troops?” I ask. “My partner is missing.”

  “Which one?” Ma asks.

  “Miss Louise. I have not seen her since we did some reconnaissance here a couple days ago.”

  “Not good. Where is Three O’Clock?”

  “Uh . . .” I cannot betray my threatened gender. “He is guarding the tunnel’s other exit at the Crystal Phoenix.”

  I fix Blackie and Blackjack with a fierce glare and a significant mitt gesture. They gulp and keep their mouths shut.

  “What about your human partner?”

  “She was headed here, bearing arms.”

  “They all have arms. We all have legs. What of it?”

  “No, Ma. Firearms. Well, just one.”

  “Your red-cream is carrying . . . carrying something besides that giant tote bag of hers? Not good.”

  “Have you found the secret hallways to the big club room at the top of the pyramid?” I ask.

  “We were guarding the exit of this tunnel on the main floor and nearly putting our hearing out,” she answers.

  “Up above is where I last saw Miss Midnight Louise. That is where the suspect club called the Synth meets.”

  “Then that is where we will go,” Ma says. “Onward Blackie and Blackjack, to join Blackbeard and Blacktop, then it is up, up, and away to the roof on this crazy pointy-topped joint.”

  Ma Barker as Santa Claus? Please. But she does know how to crack the whip.

  So we are soon to be six strong and storming Synth headquarters. I scamper along, newly invigorated. Knowing the head-strong ways of Miss Midnight Louise, I am sure that she is lurking somewhere ahead.

  Armed and Dead

  Temple felt she had walked onstage in the middle of a play.

  Probably the climax of a murder mystery.

  She had entered the room between two huge bookcases, putting her in a shadowed niche, and the lights were dramatically dim.

  So she kept as still as if in a childhood game of “statue” and took in the scene.

  Five people in profile were in the midst of an intense scene, three arrayed on or near the room’s furnishings, two in front of a wood-paneled wall that had obviously also concealed a door.

  Of the two seated women, one obviously was the femme fatale, the usual slinky brunette. Why were blondes and brunettes always slinky and redheads just . . . cute? The other woman was a chubby Electra Lark caftan-wearing type: electric and eclectic and eccentric in dress. Where Electra spray-dyed her halo of white hair rainbow colors, this lady wore a large paisley turban on her perm-frizzed gray hair.

  A Max-tall man about twenty-five years older than he, wearing a chocolate brown suit and rust silk T-shirt, stood by a gas-log-equipped fireplace, the leaping flames making his face a craggy mask.

  And then there were the two Darth Vader types in floor-length black cloaks and Cloaked Conjuror full-head masks, holding sleek handguns on the three apparent club residents. Double Darths. Double firepower. How . . . not nice.

  Temple’s right hand still clutched the top of her purse. In only a few quick motions she could open it and draw the gun. So few seconds and yet far too many; she saw that now. Any movement on her part threatened to uncork the physical violence that was still frozen into verbal exchanges.

  Unless . . . she started her moves now and nobody noticed, which seemed most unlikely too. Instead of being armed and dangerous, she could end up being found armed and dead.

  Both parties were staring exclusively at each other, the way lovers do. Or haters.

  “We know nothing about the money stash,” the older woman in the ridiculous turban said wearily. “Cosimo handled all that. He was the main contact with . . . you people abroad.”

  “If they are the real contacts,” the tall man said. “Can your gazing crystal tell us that, Czarina?”

  The other woman present ignored him to taunt the intruders in a calm contralto. “Did you start by murdering the Phantom Mage?” she asked the masked pair. “Then Cosimo? Now us? That’s the way to get your damn stockpile of money, all right.”

  “The money is not ours,” one bizarre, androgynous voice answered. “It was held in trust for our just cause.”

  “ ‘Just cause,’ ” the standing man echoed. “That’s a laugh. You needed our magical bag of tricks for the most astounding multicasino heist in Las Vegas history, and were prepared to pay us ‘royally’ for preparing and carrying it off on your command.”

  One of the gun barrels lifted.

  “Hal, Carmen,” Czarina cautioned in a low, trembling tone, “we’re in no position to argue.”

  “We’re in every position to argue—for our lives,” said the fiery brunette named, of all things, Carmen. No wonder C. R. Molina hated her given name. “We know nothing of where the funds were kept, or in what form. Cosimo Sparks was our leader, our emissary to you people. And you killed him.”

  “We did not,” the voice of the other figure in Darth drag answered. “That doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of killing you. Perhaps one of you wanted all the funds—they’d been just lying there for so many years—and killed Sparks in an attempt to get them.”

  “And then,” the other Darth’s twin voice suggested, “you moved everything. The cash, the bearer bonds, the guns, and explosives.”

  “There were explosives?” the brunette asked, astounded.

  “Of course, Carmen,” Hal answered her. “The actual robbers would have needed them for the heist, and we would have needed them as a distraction to turn the Strip into a bigger sound and light show than the Fremont Street Downtown Experience while the robberies were going down.”

  “ ‘Lying there for so many years’?” Czarina asked. “That’s absurd. The Synth has been active for only the last three, when Cosimo recruited us and a—”

  “There are more members than you?” one cloaked figure demanded.

  “None that knew of the scheme or the stockpile of money and weapons,” Hal answered. “Only some disgruntled minor prestidigitators we convinced to be part of our ‘mystical, magical’ alliance, so we’d have ‘extras’ to deploy for our Grand Strip Illusion, which would be the talk of the nation and the world. We are the Synth, the synthesis that old alchemists dreamed of, the creators of a method to turn base material into gold. Only we were after taking a golden parachute out of the demeaned profession that magic has become in these days of media manipulation.”

  Temple noticed that the paired gun barrels had lowered slightly. The masked invaders were surprised by what they were hearing. Could the Synth talk itself out of such a double-barreled threat?

  “What of this Phantom Mage you mention?” one Darth asked.

  Carmen stood, also sensing their confusion. “Only our most prized and recent recruit. He was a marvel. He could have produced the Strip-long illusion you demanded. He maintained his anonymity to the last, but I know he was Max Kinsella, playing a double game as himself and this lowly nightclub magician named the Phantom Mage.”

  Temple felt a gentle tap on her calf and glanced down without moving her head.

  Her eyes finally had adapted to the room’s dimness. She saw a long black furry tail.

  Louie!

  No. This was a longer-haired, plumed tail. Midnight Louise had guided her here.

  Thanks a lot, sister, Temple thought. Maybe you can distract them while I claw out my gun.

  “Who the bloody hell is Max Kinsella, and why would anyone want to kill him?” one transgendered voice demanded.

  The three Synth members seemed struck dumb, as Temple was. Come on; Max had starred in a major Strip hotel show, billboards and all! True, he’d performed sans surname, but the Mystifying Max had been huge until he ha
d first disappeared two years earlier. Where had these Vader creeps been, on the dark side of the moon?

  “Did one of you, perhaps?” the other Vader twin asked.

  The entire scene was getting so absurd and Alice-in-Wonderlandish that Temple was forgetting to be afraid and was getting angry instead. Which was dangerous, but also liberating.

  She waited for the Synth’s answer—her presence “unbeknownst,” as some put it, to the others, making her the third armed but so far invisible person on the premises.

  “We don’t know,” Hal said. “As we told you, Cosimo was our maestro, our go-between. He’s the one who would tell us what to do, when we were called upon. Meanwhile, I guess we felt useful, part of a pending, monstrously amazing illusion, our parting shot to the world that had once applauded us. We were all in the same sorry boat—passé and poor. Cosimo waved his magic words, and we believed we’d get the best revenge—living well. We trusted him.”

  “And he betrayed us!” the pair of Darths said as one.

  “I doubt it,” Czarina said.

  “You saw it in your crystal ball?” a Vader jeered.

  “No. I just knew Cosimo. We trusted him because he was a straight shooter.” She regarded the leveled weapons. “Oh.”

  “Perhaps Cosimo was robbed,” Hal said. “If you knew of this . . . hidden treasure, wouldn’t others of your . . . type also possibly know of it?”

  Silence prevailed. Temple was watching a true stalemate. The intruders wanted information, not blood. The Synth as represented here certainly was nothing sinister, although that Ophiuchus and alchemy mumbo jumbo would appeal to anyone with an occult mind, like those drawn to magic. Someone had been playing both ends against the middle, and it was getting obvious to everyone in the room that they all might be the “ends.”

  Standing there, Temple let the key phrases stamped on her mental tape recorder replay: money and guns and explosives, oh my . . . stockpiled for years, oh my . . . all-time major Vegas heist, oh my . . . a team of magicians providing a distraction . . . just cause . . . bloody hell.

  She remembered that some 2001 Al-Qaeda surveillance tapes of Vegas casinos, including New York, New York, with its faux-Manhattan exterior skyline, had turned up from foreign sources years later, and that Mohamed Atta and his 9/11 suicide crew had visited Vegas before the world-devastating plan was put into motion on the other coast. . . .

  Terrorists were drawn to Vegas as a target . . . of destruction or bankrolling. Civic powers were always underplaying, perhaps even concealing, that fact to keep the tourists coming.

  And . . . years ago, before 9/11 in 2001, before the previous bombing at the Twin Towers in Manhattan, another terrorist group had issued a “dead or alive” Western-version death fatwa on a teenage Max Kinsella for his youthful antiterrorist activities. The Irish Republican Army, aka the IRA. Temple knew Max’s thriller-novel past, but had always considered it a cul-de-sac of personal ancient history. Not a current concern.

  The connections jumped synapses in her brain, jumbling around, not adding up to a scenario she could link into anything sensible.

  The Synth members were having trouble too.

  “Look,” said Hal, striding forward, “you’ve—”

  Carry a gun in your purse, and you’re depending on crooks to give you time to react.

  Hold two guns in your hand and—

  The chilling, preliminary double clicks seemed simultaneous with a booming, double-rapping sound. The burnt whiff of firearms discharge in the small room was overwhelming. Temple’s hands clapped over her ears before her conscious mind could kick her in the damn-fool shins.

  The motion brought every eye to her . . . and then came the sickening sound of clicks from all sides, triggers being pulled to release a hail of . . . not bullets, but—

  —hidden doors all around the room springing open at once! A swarm of black screaming figures leaped through them like a circus act of black panthers—a riot of cats hurtling onto Darth Vader cloaks and climbing them, heavy fabric rending with audible groans from the weight of three swarming feline bodies to a cloak. The wearers bent at the knees, screaming as leaping cats clung with all fours to their forearms, while the third attached to each climbed their heads from behind to start clawing the sinister face masks, all the while screaming like, well, tomcats fighting, a sound echoed in double strength by their startled victims.

  By then, both visitors’ guns had hit the carpeted floor with a thunk, thunk.

  Apparently the Darth Vaders were all scary masks and no bloodlust. They’d fired warning shots into the floor. Now they were cursing and backing away in tattered cloaks through two of the open doors, pursued by . . . cannibal cats.

  Temple had no intention of following the fading Vader invaders, even if they were disarmed. The Neon Nightmare offered too many escape routes. Carmen was eyeing the fallen semiautomatics like a hungry tiger, but the other two were staring at Temple. Temple heard a soft click behind her and felt an opening door bump her rear. She knew it was time for a dramatically astounding exit.

  “Sorry,” she told the literally shell-shocked Synth members. “I was looking for the restroom. This place is a maze. Anyone ever tell you that? And you have a very bad infestation of really big rats. I won’t be coming back.”

  By then the attack cats had also ebbed into the “maze.” Temple backed through the door Midnight Louise had opened, leaving the Synth still immobile and herself in the slightly lambent dark. Which was lit by an honor guard of vivid green irises pointing the way to a presumably vermin-free path downward and out to the main nightclub floor.

  She took it and would ask questions later.

  At least she knew for sure that Max’s magic fingerprints had been all over this place. If he had also been the Phantom Mage, the odds he had died were fifty-fifty. What Rafi had described had sounded too traumatic for any sane person to set up for himself. On the other hand, a master illusionist like Max would want any feigned final exit to look impossible to survive.

  Murder in 3-D

  When Temple awoke the next morning, she felt as if she’d been in that old Memorex tape commercial. “Was it real? Or was it Memorex?”

  Her memory felt hung over. The Synth showdown she’d witnessed at Neon Nightmare unwound in her mind like a dream, even though a nightmare scenario involving disgruntled but corny stage magicians, the disbanded IRA, and Max Kinsella was starting to add up to something big.

  Her nightclubbing clothes were strewn around the room—not like her—and she was curled into a ball because Midnight Louie’s hot, hairy body was plastered against her legs. Surely her eyes had been playing tricks on her in that creepy, dark lightning-struck nightclub with its network of secret passages.

  She couldn’t have really seen Midnight Louie cloned to the ninth power and in frantic attack mode, or any Darth Vader clones either.

  Temple decided to reach out to the real world. First she checked her iPhone for messages.

  Matt had called and left a long, sweet, sexy missing-you message that had her kicking Louie out of bed to run to her computer to download it for future replay on rainy days and the next time Matt was out of town.

  Then . . . darn! Nicky Fontana’s message wanted her to attend a fancy-dress gala command performance at Gangsters at 4:00 P.M. Temple checked the bedside clock and groaned. Eleven A.M. already!

  She quick-dialed Nicky to question the wisdom of plowing ahead with the Chunnel of Crime and got her marching orders instead. Yes, the police were totally okay with them “test-driving” the vintage cars rail-run. The vault and environs had been released as a crime scene and the Olympic games could be held there, as far as Detective Ferraro was concerned.

  No, there was no progress on the Sparks killing, but the police seemed to find everything involving the Glory Hole Gang, “Concrete Boots Benson,” the Chunnel of Crime, and cats too outré to deal with. Just don her glad rags and get over to Gangsters for the dry run.

  Temple, exhausted and confused af
ter her intense night before at the Neon Nightmare, knew a PR person must be on call around the clock, especially in Las Vegas. Holding a “dry run” near a bar and restaurant named Speakeasy’s was a contradiction in terms that tickled her funny bone, and she much needed something distracting at the moment. Besides, Nicky was her boss. He was so jazzed about introducing the installed 3-D Chunnel run. Previewing an ambitious new Las Vegas attraction was an invitation Temple couldn’t refuse, even if several pesky mysteries simmered behind the scenes.

  She decided to consider touring the Chunnel a welcome break in her investigation, especially now that she’d penetrated the Neon Nightmare–Synth connection. She replayed Matt’s message, showered, microwaved an individual pizza and gulped it down, raided her closets for a slinky, black-crepe thirties tea gown and some kicky heels, replayed Matt’s tape, and by three thirty was riding the cocktail carousel down to Gangsters’ lower and most lurid depths.

  The Chunnel of Crime was fully gussied up for company now. It resembled a subway tunnel without any stops except beginning and end. Black-and-white gangster movie stills wallpapered the tunnel sides. These bigger-than-life scenes of movie mayhem would appear almost animated as the limos glided past on tracks. The blowups also served as background “sets” for the 3-D filmed scenes of vintage movies Santiago had projected onto both sides of the tunnel.

  For now, only one side was activated, so the trial-run spectators could stand against the clear opposite wall to watch the rail-adapted vintage cars glide by like the showboats of style they were.

  Some were elegant conveyers of moneyed mobster kingpins; others looked like they’d been grabbed on the run outside a just-robbed bank. Almost all of them were shiny basic black with slit-windowed and cavelike passenger compartments. Until now, Temple had never realized that the automobile designs of early decades emulated the closed, private-to-the-point-of-paranoia urban carriages of the nineteenth century. People today were used to full exposure, more than ever, with every cell-phone camera a potential online media nexus.