Cat with an Emerald Eye

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "Born to Raise Hallelujah" seemed to be the best yet.

  Chapter 33

  That's Amore

  The Fontana brothers' "dark" had descended like a black velvet curtain when Temple parked the Storm in front of Orson/Gandolph's/ Max's house.

  Not a beam, a seam, a sliver, a scintilla of light cracked the uninhabited facade. Could light be measured in scintillas? Probably not.

  The real trick here was how she was going to mosey up the walk to the house, concealing a Pepe's Pizza Giant Everything Double-Crust Extravaganza box. The carton would make a good area rug.

  Her neighborhood "cover" as absent-owner's real estate agent would hardly excuse her if a neighbor saw her bearing the fast-food equivalent of a UFO into the supposedly empty house.

  Luckily, this neighborhood was expensive enough that children played indoors, cars were kept behind garage door openers and no one ambled out on a front porch to watch the neighbors come and go.

  Temple was all the way through the courtyard and at the front door before she realized that she had no key to get in with, and even if she had, it took two hands (and on her, both arms) to handle a whopper.

  Not to worry.

  The wide wooden door swung silently open on the dark within. Max--or someone apparently knew she was coming.

  Creepy.

  She edged inside, bearing her hot cardboard box before her.

  Gandolph? Or even ... Orson?

  The door hushed shut behind her, and only when it had whooshed closed--heavy-duty, light-blocking, sound-deadening rubber weather-stripping no doubt--did a light arise. This light came on softly, on the turn of a rheostat.

  "Supper, I take it." Max nodded at the box.

  "You can take it." She handed it over, smiling. She liked the word "supper," so Midwestern, so unassuming, so cozy. Uh-oh. "Thanks," she added as she followed him into the house's still-dark and twisted bowels.

  Few lights were on in the front rooms, but a faint one led them to the kitchen.

  "Pepe's," Max read aloud from the box's garish top. "You remembered."

  Temple shrugged. Pepe's had been their favorite take-out pizza place. Some things don't change.

  "Can we let it cool for a minim?" he asked. "The big oven will reheat it in a flash."

  "It could cool for a millennium and still be roof-of-the-mouth-scalding hot," Temple answered.

  Minim. British for "minute." She'd always thought Max's use of the odd foreign expression reflected his magicianly travels. Now it reminded her of his mysterious past. "What's up?"

  "First tell me what you've learned of those who commune with the incommunicado."

  Temple duly reported her adventures in psychic land to Kinsella, who leaned against Gandolph the Great's travertine kitchen countertops and tented his daddy-longlegs fingers. Bad romance novels usually featured heroes "without an ounce of fat" upon their entire bodies. Max didn't have an ounce of fat on his fingers, which Tempe found infinitely sexier.

  "While you've been communing with psychics, I've been getting around some myself," he said when she was through. "I want to show you something. Wine?"

  He opened one of the many tall, built-in doors of stainless steel facing the kitchen. A small wine cellar, bottles resting on wrought-iron cradles, lurked behind this one.

  ".Wine's fine, as long as you don't wall me up in your cellar and try to decide if you can get me to reappear on the cooktop."

  "You got the usual?" he asked over his shoulder.

  "Everything on it."

  "So a slightly nutty but refined white would honor the veal sausage, but a boisterous country red would wed with the pepperoni. Then again, an ambitious but ambidextrous rose would compliment everything."

  "Max, you know that I don't care about wine pedigrees."

  "Then the full-bodied red it is," he said, flourishing a bottle and grinning at her a bit too personally over his shoulder.

  Yes, much too tall to be the dark, dangerous, romantic man from Agatha's tea leaves.

  Absolutely. Temple would stake her Midnight Louie shoes upon it.

  Temple was also perfectly happy letting him worry the cork out. Some things in life men were truly better equipped to accomplish. She was perfectly happy to let him pour, especially since the wine glasses were in a narrow, under-ceiling cupboard above the range hood that only a second-story man could reach.

  The glasses were oversize and hand-blown with a faintly iridescent glaze that made her feel she was holding a soap bubble. Magician's glasses. A soap bubble filled with blood-red wine. A dead magician's glasses, maybe. Maybe even a murdered magician's glasses.

  "I rented the house furnished," Max said from a distance.

  The distance was hers. She'd been staring into the bowl of the glass as if into a crystal ball, and he'd read her mind as if her head were just as transparent. Then she wondered if he had bought the house furnished, and the glass was an artifact from the late Orson Welles.

  Temple managed a smile, then followed him down the dim hall, supporting the glass with a hand under its foot.

  All the light in the house was concentrated in one room: the office. Yet only the peripheral lamps were lit, on low, for the central light was not the overhead fixture, but the muted glow of the computer screen. Bright tropical fish schooling in a screen-saving program made her think of the Mirage tanks. No sharks here, though; she hoped.

  Max had stepped back like a showman after entering the room; indeed, it had changed remarkably since she'd left it last. Not for the better.

  Books were piled everywhere, and papers spewed from the printer lay on the desk, on chairs, on the floor.

  A phone now perched on a chair seat pulled up to the office chair. Alongside the desk sat a tower of trade paperbacks with garish yellow and black covers.

  Temple bent to read their spines, which were all in the same style and bore variations on the same title. "Modesty becomes you," she commented, straightening.

  He refused to let her needle him, but waited behind her with an air of... what? Kid showing off his first magic trick? Santa holding Christmas two months early? Someone knowing she was about to stumble upon the Midnight Louie shoes at any minute?

  "Have a seat." He indicated the chairman-of-the-board-size leather chair before the cluttered desktop. "Let me put down your wine " Indeed. "Here." He had found the one relatively bare spot just big enough for the silver-dollar-size foot of the glass.

  All right. If Pepe's pizza could cool in the kitchen, Temple could take her time here and find out what was going on. She bent to peer at the tower of books again . Windows 95 for Dummies. The Internet for Dummies. Object-moving for Dummies. Were these computer books, or magic books? Or were computer books this age's magic books?

  "I don't get it," Temple admitted. The only sure way to weasel information from a magician was to profess bewilderment.

  "What about this?" Max leaned over her right shoulder to tap some keys on the board with his long arms.

  The screen-saver image winked away; instead of fish there were rows of typed words taking their place, with a graphic loading into the empty rectangle above them. Nothing artistic about this image. Some kind of... form. An employment form, maybe. Date. Name. Age. Occupation--

  The image was filling top to bottom, black and white. A photograph.

  "Well?" Max was still hanging over her shoulder, his face next to hers; when he moved she felt a slight sandpaper brush and looked at him. He hadn't shaved, and Max was always preternaturally groomed, without her having seen the process, she recalled a bit bitterly, which was why she had never seen his blue eyes made green.

  Max had eyes only for the screen; he never noticed her perusal, her abrupt retreat into hurt memory.

  "Well?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at the image as if the most stupefying magic act in the world were going on right in front of them

  Temple looked back to the screen, a good move considering the slight sting in her eyes. It took her a moment to focus through her o
wn despair. The photo was filled out now, not nearly as sharp as a good portrait, but pretty focused for a computer screen.

  "Well?" Max repeated.

  And then she finally saw... "Oh, my God! It's... one of them."

  He nodded, not noticing that they were practically cheek to cheek and that his cheek was scratching hers. Men! she wanted to exclaim, in her smart single-woman exasperation with the species; they always rub you the wrong way. But the usual single-female ham-on-wry wasn't ringing true for her anymore. It wasn't Men! and that they'd forgotten to shave or walked out of her life. It was that she didn't have any skin left anymore. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. For the first time, she really understood something religious that Matt had said.

  "What do you think?" Max asked with an oblivious pertinence most unlike Max.

  "How--? I mean, that's one of the guys I identified." Before she could say more, Max tapped a few more buttons.

  The vision of a demon vanished, to be replaced with another dossier, and another slowly assembling photograph.

  Temple averted her face. A least she wouldn't have to worry about getting scratched.

  "Temple? You're not ... crying?"

  "I just--"

  His arm was around her shoulder as if to hold her together. "I should have realized it would be a shock. I'm sorry ... I guess that's why all the Dummy books are here." It was easier to let him think the mug shots had upset her. "I'm fine, just had a ragged day among the seers. One of them did my tea leaves and saw danger." His hand tightened on her shoulder, shook her slightly. "You don't believe that mumbo-jumbo, do you?"

  "No, but they seem to believe it so much, it wears you down to resist sometimes."

  "That's how they get clients," Max said grimly. "That's why Gandolph dedicated his retirement to ferreting out them and all of their works."

  "But Max--" She was ready to turn back to the screen, to him, to the inescapable light the screen reflected on her face. "Where did you get this? It can't be on the Internet, although there's probably some sort of police network--"

  He was silent, suspiciously silent.

  She was afraid she knew why. "This is the police network."

  "Don't sound so worried." He braced her shoulder again. Apparently the posture was semi permanent. "It's not the police network."

  "What is it, then?"

  "I downloaded it, so it's ... ours."

  "Where did you download it from?"

  Now he had to pause. "The police computer."

  "Which police computer?"

  "Ours."

  "Here? In Las Vegas? You can't! They have security systems ... firewalls, they're called.

  They'll be out here with the SWAT team any minute."

  "No they won't. I got the stuff this morning."

  "How? You're not a hacker. Sure, you used to noodle a little on my computers after I showed you how to get in and out, but this--! Picking up secured information like it was a toy in one of those arcade game machines ..."

  "Hey, even that's not so simple, or those machines wouldn't be so profitable. But this--"

  Max gestured at the second ugly mug now dominating the screen. "This is small stuff. Hardly top secret. It's meant to be circulated, in a sense."

  Temple had been looking around the altered room with new eyes. This time she spotted a new hardback book on a dim corner of the desk. " Take Down? That's the book about how they found that guy who crashed the international computer-security expert's files."

  "You can learn more from bad magicians than good ones."

  "This isn't magic, Max! This is ... computer crime."

  He gestured to the screen. "The crime is that these guys can do what they did to you, and still be out there. Don't you see? If I have information about them, they don't control us; we control them."

  She stared at him dumbfounded. She had never seen Max like this. Now that she looked, really looked, she could see that he not only hadn't shaved, he hadn't slept in at least twenty-four hours, hadn't eaten probably. His newfound enthusiasm for the high of computer hacking seemed genuine enough, but she wondered if he hadn't already been far more proficient than he let on when they lived together. Max needed to keep secrets about himself the way some other people bled personal data like information-age hemophiliacs. Still, even if Max had acquired his computer magic by a bargain with the devil, it was too tempting to scorn. Temple thoughtfully tapped a front tooth.

  "Can you get in again, to something else?"

  "Can a second-story man climb? What do you want?"

  "Motor-vehicle registration."

  "Easy as cruise control. What do you want to look up, license number, model and make of car, year?"

  "I'm foggy on year and never got the license number."

  "This could be a very long list. How many weeks you got?"

  "Maybe not such a lengthy listing. I'm looking for a Viper."

  "Most women settle for a man."

  She made a face. "Don't be an asp."

  "Who do you know who owns a Viper?"

  "So far, only the Fontana Brothers."

  "All of them?"

  "I think so. And it's black, like the one I'm looking for. Could they even afford nine Vipers a-vrooming?"

  "Can't say. Okay, here are your local black Vipers all in a row."

  "Ooooh." Temple squinted at the thick-as'thieves letters as Max scrolled slowly down the screen. "I had no idea there were so many of these budget-busters locally."

  "This is Las Vegas, Temple. Lots of big money and even bigger ways of showing it."

  "Aha! A Fontana in the flock. Who's that car registered to?"

  "Macho Mario Fontana. The uncle from Hell you don't want to mess with."

  "Interesting. Any other names we recognize?"

  "Wayne Newton?"

  Temple shook her head. "It wouldn't be him ... at least I hope it wouldn't be him."

  "What does this Viper mean to you?"

  "I'm hoping that it was out of place and trying not to be seen... wait! Was that last name-- ?

  Go back six lines or so."

  "Hmm." Temple stared at the static screen once Max had stopped scrolling. "Oscar Grant. Of course! He lives in Vegas."

  "That phony from Dead Zones." Max snorted. "Figures."

  "Let he who is without expensive, excessively fast status wheels cast the first gravel."

  "I gave mine up," he said as Temple jotted down the pertinent entry's information. "Did I do good? Save a life? Win a perky smile?"

  "Okay. At least that settles whose car was lurking discreetly be-hind Mynah Sigmund's place."

  "And?"

  "Oscar Grant."

  "That prime-time snake-oil salesman! I'm not surprised."

  "That he might drive a Viper?"

  "That he might consort with the White Widow. What do you suppose she drives. A Whale?"

  "Then you're not a particular fan?"

  "You should see Gary's file on her." Max had bowed out of the fancy-car file and was clicking his way far afield. "This machine isn't just good for tracking down lurking Vipers. Look." His face was lit by the screen again and he had the farsighted look of someone cruising cyberspace. "This is not only useful; it can be fun."

  He glanced at her. "I hope this won't upset you, but I was able to engineer a wee cosmetic change. Want to see?"

  Of course she was intrigued. What else had Max mastered while she had been gone for a day? He hit keys, the board chattered, the screen changed, all too fast for her to follow the entire sequence.

  Another dossier. Another list of attributes and offenses with another rectangle of felon filling in pixel by pixel. She watched the face and shoulders assemble, knowing them both, at least in retrospect. Molina hadn't let her glance linger on this card when she'd confronted Temple with it. So Temple was steeled now; she knew what to expect. She didn't bat an eyelash as Young Max came into view.

  When he was all filled in, she protested. "So you got into Interpol. Who do they send out to get on-line in
truders? The French Foreign Legion? And what good does it do you? They've still got the file on you in the main computer."

  "Yeah." Max smiled tenderly at his record. "But I made a little change. Not in the photo. The statistics."

  Temple looked closely. Max Kinsella, seventeen, U.S. citizenship. Six feet two, eyes of blue.

  No, not anymore ... eyes of green.

  Green. Like Midnight Louie's. Like the green eyes smiling into hers right now by the light of the cathode ray tube. When Irish eyes are smilin', sure, 'tis like a morn in spring . . . you can't hide lying eyes . . . But Max Kinsella could.

  She almost lost it right then; she almost cried her a Caspian Sea. Except that the silly, optimistic, devious audacity of it made her laugh instead of cry. In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing. .. And you can see the Devil polish his monocle on a bit of brimstone....

  She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. He was so right: naked wasn't the best disguise, loud was.

  Max wasn't too sure what Kinsella hath wrought. He waited for her to surface again. When she did, she had every right to openly swipe away a few tears.

  "You are a lunatic! Still, you didn't get into Interpol in one day. You may be good, but you're not that good."

  He shrugged, ready to be modest now that he had amazed. "I had a little help from some long-distance friends. They talked me past the books. They sent me some fairly volatile how-to stuff you can't get in bookstores."

  He nodded at the piles of printouts.

  "It sounds dangerous, Max." She was fully sober again.

  He nodded. "But it was pretty dangerous out already. Don't you see? It's incredible what's out there. Information is power. I know everybody's said that, but now it means something to me, personally. Temple, I can find things out without having to risk going out. I was ready to break into police headquarters downtown to get the dope on those thugs, but now I don't have to risk it. I don't have to risk making some sort of deal with Molina, I don't have to expose myself."