"Kendall! Of course. And Miss Barr is the other customer?"
As smooth as extra virgin olive oil. Women in, coffee prepared, cushy guest chairs drawn up to the massive desk and Tony himself installed in the white leather chair that Brent Colby had commandeered Friday night.
The only snag in the Scenario was Midnight Louie, who marched in on quiet cat feet and leaped atop Renaldi's black Lucite desktop.
"Why would he want to be here?" Renaldi asked in jest. "Black on black is no advantage to either." He stroked Louie from head to tail-tip, earning a thrum of purr and a further exploration of his desk.
There was nothing like a toddler or animal for bringing out the true temper of a man or woman. Temple settled into her chair to watch Louie put Tony Renaldi through his paces. But first she studied their common prey.
Tony Renaldi, with his commanding stature and silver-edged dark hair, fit the slightly effete chair much better than Brent Colby, the graying blond Yale graduate, who would show to better advantage against clubby hunter-green or burgundy leather. The tufted pale chair provided a theatrical frame for Renaldi's feline masculinity. Temple tried to picture him as a young man, a private in Vietnam. She could do it best by casting him in some theatrical part she knew, say a gang member of the Jets in West Side Story. A twenty-year-old Tony Renaldi would have the lean and hungry look of "yon Cassius," who lusted after Caesar's power. His edges would be sharper, rawer, the immigrant heritage more obvious and more truculent. He might get into barroom brawls with fellow soldiers, debate whose hometown was better, or who got the bar girl. . .
The Tony Renaldi of today steepled his manicured hands and smiled at Temple. "I assume you wanted more than coffee, Miss Barr, or Kendall wouldn't have brought you here. Some questions about the cat-food promotion?"
Temple could be a velvet glove too. "Not at all. As a matter of fact, Kendall suggested I see you about an upcoming project I'm involved with. I'm consulting for a Las Vegas hotel that's planning an update. We'll introduce a theme park and interactive ride. Does your firm ever handle that kind of showbiz thing?"
Midnight Louie leaped from the desk to the long narrow table crowded with memorabilia along the window. He threaded through the costly office art objects and framed photographs like a wire-walker, disturbing nothing but the dust, and there was probably damn little of that.
"Handle Las Vegas hoopla? Not yet," Renaldi answered Temple, "but we'd like to. Rather, I would. Kendall brought you to precisely the right office. Las Vegas has become very sophisticated about marketing its unique attractions in the past decade. A major New York agency like CJR could position your hotel project to shine in the international focus needed today. We have a strong Internet section as well as top staff in such traditional arenas as television and print media. I thought your field was public relations as well.
"Yes, but I'm a solo act. A mere freelancer. I'm functioning as idea person for the project, but new approaches are always welcome."
"Good. CJR likes to get in on a project from the bottom up. Who are your principals?"
"The owners of the hotel, the Crystal Phoenix."
"Ah. The classiest hotel in Vegas.' Clever positioning for a smaller hotel. Snob appeal amidst a blizzard of hype. Am I guessing wrong to say that the Crystal Phoenix will be upping the hype ante, all in the best of taste, of course?"
"Exactly. We want to keep our reputation, but expand to a new clientele."
Renaldi nodded. "First, we'll settle this cat-account question. Then we can investigate other matters. You wouldn't count us out if the client chooses a representative other than yourself... or your impressive cat?"
"Business is business. The two matters are entirely separate."
Renaldi nodded. "A mature attitude. But I don't think you have anything to worry about."
Temple truly hoped so as she rose to shake hands with him and follow Kendall out of the office.
"That was good!" Kendall whispered as they went down the hallway. "You're a real con woman. Where's Louie?"
"He stayed behind to investigate," Temple said airily.
Victor Janos, feet on his cluttered desktop, was hurling darts at a board on the back of his office door when Kendall knocked. He stopped when they entered.
"Come in!"
They did, and faced a man with a raised dart in one hand, ready to arc it right toward one or the other of their eyes.
Janos was not a needlessly cordial man.
"What is it?"
"Urn. I brought Miss Barr to see you. About a possible Las Vegas commission for the firm."
"Las Vegas. Surface without substance. The perfect product for CJR show her in, Kendall, and then get thee to a nunnery, or wherever it is that young Carlo Renaldi would prefer you were, other than here."
Janos's crooked grin tried to be self-deprecating, but the attitude wasn't in him. Temple was suddenly aware that this was a man who had killed, and who could kill again, no matter how many decades had passed since Vietnam.
Kendall retreated without a farewell glance to Temple. She thought Janos was the murderer. She was leaving Temple to confront him alone.
Janos looked Temple up and down as if she were a commodity. "Sit."
Temple sat. "I was wondering," she began.
"Yes?" He expected a schoolgirl subject.
"Why you're number two in the firm name, and Tony Renaldi isn't."
He sailed a dart past her head. She heard it sink into the soft cork of the target.
"Good question." Victor Janos grabbed a fistful of shelled peanuts from a chrome bowl on his desk and began crunching. "Ever hear of a 'point man'?"
Temple shook her head. Damn Kendall! What had she gotten Temple into? Janos was a different man since the Santa Claus death: abstracted, bitter, mean.
"Point man. Guy who sticks his neck out. Goes first into a booby-trapped tunnel, a field of buried bombs. It takes guts. It takes stupidity. Sometimes, it takes a hero. But most of the time, it takes a shmuck. You know what they're gonna do?"
Temple shook her head.
"They're gonna leave me on point, and fade out. They forget where we came from. They forget where we were gonna get to. They forget everything but me, the guy on point. Perpetually on point."
"I guess I do know what a point man is," Temple said.
Janos's molasses-dark eyes dared her to be worthy of his time and attention.
"I guess I was on point when those two thugs jumped me in a parking garage, or when the guy who wanted to bring a whole neighborhood down had me trapped on the second floor of a burning house. Or when Savannah Ashleigh tried to have my cat falsely accused of impregnating her precious Persian."
"Come on." But the dart he held was poised, drawn back behind his head.
"I guess there are a lot of ways of being 'on point,' for a lot of different people," Temple said. "We all take risks. Maybe it's cigarettes. Or drugs. Or drink. Or AIDS. But you have the medals to prove it."
She nodded at the small wooden frames pocking his wall, each centered by a small metal object.
He swung his chair to face them. A regiment of medals from a war that many considered shameful and that was hardly dignified by the term.
"You know," Temple said, "when they keep referring to what happens in a war as an 'engagement,' you can hardly tell if it's a battle or a social event."
"Or a business arrangement." Janos spoke past the back of his chair, as the dart zinged home to a target halfway between two framed medals.
The chair spun around, and Janos dived into a desk drawer.
Temple stiffened, expecting to be confronted by a pearl-handled revolver at least, shades of Patton and World War II.
Janos pulled a bottle from the bottom drawer, and slammed it to the desktop.
"You don't know nothin' about war or medals or Vietnam, but I guess you got guts or you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be talking to me like you think you know me." His eyes blurred. "All the women we saw in Vietnam were whores or grandmas with gr
enades in their hands or little tiny kids with strategic parts missing. Which one are you?"
"I'm not in Vietnam. I'm in Manhattan, and it's Christmas and Santa is dead."
"God is dead. So what?"
"Mr. Janos." He glanced at her with those tormented eyes so capable of dishing out what they had gotten, and given, thirty years ago. "Why are you second on the company logo?"
"Because I always did the grunt work, and the worst work, the dirtiest and the deadliest work. I wasn't smooth, not like Mr. CIA Colby. I didn't have the imported-oil potential of Mr. Renaldi. I'm not any good at the advertising game, because it's a crooked game, and it takes a crooked man. I was a lot of things, but I was never that."
"I believe you."
"Why? Why does it matter? Too bad Colby didn't swing."
"Do you know anything about the man who died?"
Janos shook his head, tilting the bottle into a glass he pulled from behind a fake set of gilded leather-bound books.
"Rudy was a Vietnam veteran too," Temple said. "Not a very successful one. He couldn't even pass as a success, like you. I hear he was in and out of a lot of VA hospitals, and was a panhandler for a while. Friends from before the war got together and tried to keep him together, but they couldn't do much."
"Rudy?" Janos leaned forward as if he were deaf. "Did you say Rudy?" For the first time he was really listening to her.
"Yes. Does the name mean something to you?"
Janos was looking beyond her, maybe at the dart board, maybe at the ghost of Christmas past. He shrugged, taciturn again. All is calm, all is bright.
"Kinda ironic, I guess. With Christmas so near. The dead man being named Rudy, like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. Funny, huh?"
But Temple didn't believe for one jingle-bell moment that Victor Janos would know irony from an ironing board.
Her mind modified the carol's words to fit her suspicions as she left his office. All is calm, all is dark.
Chapter: Letter to Louise, Part 2
Bring the Meditations of Midnight Louie in New York City
"Well, here I am again, maybe-daughter-dearest, watching the snowflakes fizzle against the window glass while my mitts hit the old keyboard like it was a bottle of the best, heaviest cream eggnog, fresh from Elsie the cow herself and her good bovine buddy of clan Glenlivet
"Perhaps you would cut me a little slack if you could see how I have been wined, dined, and whisked around the Big Apple recently I have had so many uniformed chauffeurs in the past few days, many of foreign extraction, that I am inclined to salute rather than make condescending small talk with them.
"Miss Temple Barr will not let me out of her vicinity, perhaps acting under the mistaken impression that this mother of all cities might intimidate me. Anyway she keeps me in tender custody so I do not dirty my pads on any dog droppings that have been uncollected by rude parties when I pass from the curbed limousine to the solid gold revolving doors that lead to Madison Avenue office buildings. Miss Temple Barr is so impressed by what she calls the 'Art Deco ambience ' of the gilt elevator doors here that she pauses every time we enter to offer contemplation and worship. Did I mention that the streets are paved with solid granite?
"Despite the unrelentingly posh surroundings we enjoy, the only place these privileged tootsies of mine are allowed to land are atop the high-gloss mahogany conference table at the high-powered advertising firm of Colby, Janos and Renaldi, CJR to the cognoscenti.
"Even in this haven of affluence befitting a media spokescat, murder will out.
"Yes, your old man --I mean, your possible near-kin -- is once again the first on the scene of a crime. In fact, I saw the murder weapon before it was sprung, but of course no one would listen to me. Somehow the taint of those street days will not wear off, and I am still regarded as an unreliable witness.
"This was a bizarre death by hanging, from a golden chain, no less. Although one can concoct a likely scenario for a freak accident, I lean toward the freak murder. I not only suspected something of this nature, I served as town crier in this case, scaling a steep roof to halloo the horrible news from the chimney tops.
"Those present, being human and naturally obtuse, mistook my alarm for a cute cat trick.
"I actually heard mention of the David Letterman Show as I stood there in full cry, my coat fluffed to emergency fullness.
"Needless to say, the imbeciles present soon discovered the error of their assumptions, led by Miss Temple Barr. (I do not mean to include Miss Temple Barr among the imbeciles present, which the previous sentence structure might imply, but I am not about to strain my mitts by backwards-deleting my entire previous sentence.) I am not to the keyboard born, you know, even if I am swaddled in royal-purple velvet to keep the cruel northern wind and snow from my precious hide when borne outdoors.
"Anyway, my investigations have taken me from the cushy seats of power and influence in midtown Manhattan to the Lower Depths of the Village, where the sad domicile of a wasted life offered insight and a bad smell.
"So I am quite the celebrity on both the advertising and crime fronts. I cannot say that the female lieutenant in charge of the case is giving my opinions the proper hearing. But my Miss Temple is there, and I can usually make her see reason eventually
"As for the competition for the top spokescat position, I have had an edge over the 'other'candidate all along, even though the loathsome Maurice has had a fully effective politically correct operation since his indiscretion with the Divine Yvette.
"I have been gently twitting him by calling him 'one-ball'and more recently 'none-ball' in street patois. Oh, he snarls and hisses and growls, but he only undermines his chances at being selected as the most civilized, suave and sophisticated spokescat in the country. He is so predictable.
"I will not go into the new blonde in town. I realize that as a working woman you spurn females whose pulchritude is their ladder to luxury, fame and lazy days. But the Sublime Solange is a sweet, modest individual, and so shy she hardly seems aware of her stunning beauty. The Divine Yvette, Maurice's cast-off, is sadly disillusioned, but she is a wonderful mother to her scraggly quartet of yellow-bellied kits. I fear her unwed pregnancy will result in the loss of her fat television contract, but her heartless mistress, Miss Savannah Ashleigh, the same vicious bitch -- that is purely a scientific term for a female dog, so I am not using bad language here, only comparing the hussy to the species she most resembles, which is certainly not thine nor mine -- who hoped to end my masculine career, has forsaken Yvette for the rising star of her unsullied sister Solange.
"I assume that among humans the word 'unsullied' equates with 'cannot be proved, 'so am doing my politically correct best to see that Solange becomes a wiser but still winsome pussycat.
'Thus I prepare myself for an exotic Manhattan Yuletide, one brimming over with merriment, money and murder. If I have a minute, I will try to round up a trinket to bring home for you. We are, after all, possibly related, though such things are always difficult to prove, especially when there are residuals in question.
"Yours in mice, vice and lice on the run,
Midnight Louie, Esq
Chapter 30
Christmas Spree
"Should I call you 'Father Matt' or 'Cousin Matt?' "
Matt eyed his driver, who was wheeling the lumbering minivan in and out of freeway traffic as if it were a bumper car in an arcade.
"Just Matt will do."
"Okay." She flashed him a nervous, yet fascinated look. "I'm not sure if your cousin's kid is a second cousin or a first cousin once removed, but I gotta admit I wasn't too happy about getting assigned chauffeur duty during Christmas break. At least you aren't the usual outta-town-relative type. You know, the fidgety spinster aunt who tries to tell you how short your skirts are, and how to drive."
She swerved the wallowing vehicle across two lanes of bumper-to-bumper cars to avoid slowing down behind an old Volkswagen bug that was only doing the speed limit.
Matt had
to clench his teeth to keep his mouth shut. Now was the moment to distract himself with an ejaculation to a favorite saint, such as Blessed Saint Christopher, keep us alive for the next ten minutes!
"I must admit," Matt said, vainly feeling for a handhold on the van door, "that when I asked Bo if anyone could be spared to take me around, I didn't expect a teenage chauffeur."
"Teenage, how gross. I'm almost out of high school, for God's sake. I can't wait to turn twenty, then nobody can refer to me by that disgusting term."
"Sorry."
"Oh, I didn't mean you! You've been off with all those priests in the rectory. It's not your fault you don't know what drives people my age nuts."
Seventeen, Matt thought. This was going to be a long afternoon.
"What do I call you?" he said.
"Thanks for asking. Not Krystyna with all the y 's! Too groady! Krys is fine. Some people think it's short for Krystal, which is cool. So what do you want to do at the mall?" she asked, switching lanes to beat a huge black pickup truck to the exit lane. "Dumb redneck!" Her eyes flashed venom into the rearview mirror. "These Southerners can't drive on ice and snow worth spit. What do you drive at home? And where is home?"
"Las Vegas."
"Really? Cool. Do they have churches there?"
"More than most cities. And a whole flock of wedding chapels."
"They hardly count as churches."
"They do for the couples who get married there."
The mall, a Monopoly-block array of massive beige rectangles, loomed like bunkers on the minivan's right. Matt didn't know why anyone called these motorized behemoths "minivans"; they were roomy enough to host camping parties of Cub Scout packs.
"So you drive a Civic or something in Las Vegas?" Krys asked as she turned into the parking lot.
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