Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  He didn’t have to look so amused and so scrumptious at once.

  “Chi, thanks!”

  Temple hopped back into her car and revved out of the lot.

  If she couldn’t imagine Janice Flanders riding a motorcycle, she could sure picture the guilty pleasure of riding shotgun in a Crossfire made for two.

  Chi for Two

  At least Temple now had a car that made parking valets’s eyes come up double cherries when she abandoned it to their tender, gas-pedal-goosing-up-the-hotel-parking-ramp care.

  She was hardly persona plus grata at the Bellagio, but now she strode into the elegant arena, a girl gladiator to the marble-entry-hall-manner born.

  The lavish Chihuly ceiling sculpture unfolded above her like the gigantic umbrella of blown glass craftsmanship it was, a great gleaming garden of exotic blooms never seen anywhere but in Alice’s Wonderland. Here in Las Vegas it was a true Hanging Garden of Hollywood Babylon.

  The Bellagio had been the first Las Vegas hotel-casino to put Art with a capital Ah on the Las Vegas menu. Now newer megahotels like the Venice and the Paris rushed to mix high art with middlebrow tourism. It worked like Gangsters funky upscale limos . . . available on the cheap.

  Much as Temple knew Las Vegas lows and highs in any area, she was eager to see a Bellagio celebrity-level suite, in which Amelia Wong and her Jimmy Choo shoes were sure to be ensconced.

  The elevator whisked Temple higher than an elephant’s eye in no time. It disgorged her on plush eggplant carpeting so deep purple and thick that it consumed her vintage Lucite heels like a Midway sword swallower.

  This was “puttin’ on the Ritz” . . . literally!

  Temple slogged through the pure-wool loop jungle to a door whose Arabic numeral had been replaced by a Chinese character in brass. Or twenty-four-karat gold. Who knew?

  Temple lifted the character-cum-knocker and let trendy greedom ring.

  After a full minute, the door opened. Temple was admitted to the inner sanctum.

  The doorman was the tall Swedish personal trainer, today a symphony in sweat-soaked gray warm-up suit with spaghetti-string flaxen hair dripping onto his broad shoulders.

  On either side of the door stood the suit-clad bodyguards. They still wore mirror shades. Temple had the antsy feeling of getting the once-over . . . at least twice.

  Beyond her stretched an expansive living room with furniture Maylords had never dreamed of. The odd Renoir or Degas highlighted a distant wall. The carpeting here was ankle-deep compared to the hall.

  Temple prepared to mush forward into the lap of luxury.

  But first a bodyguard opted to detain her signature tote bag.

  It wasn’t that the tote bag was designer issue. It was just that she always carried one. If a life could be portable, Temple’s resided inside that tote bag.

  So when an alien hand snagged it off her shoulder as she stepped into the suite, that was a moving violation in her book.

  “Hey!”

  “Just checking the bag. Ma’am.”

  Suit-’n’-Sunglasses Man’s voice broadcast all the warmth and mechanical monotone personality of Hal, the 2001: A Space Odyssey computer.

  Ma’am! What a fighting word! Did this clone think she was over the hill or what?

  Temple tugged back.

  “ ’Scuse,” came a gelato-smooth voice at ten o’clock high over her struggling shoulder.

  Gelato was the Italian word for “ice cream,” and the dude who intervened wore the signature ice-cream suit of a Fontana brother. Also, his mirror shades were twenty degrees more wraparound than the bodyguard’s and bore the magic insignia “Bulgari.”

  Temple and the Fontana boys went way back. Temple’s mainstay client was the Crystal Phoenix Hotel, owned by Nicky Fontana, the white sheep son of a mob family. His nine twenty-something-and-beyond brothers were an astounding look-alike litter of looks to die for, old-country first names like Aldo and Emilio, jet-set tailoring, and vague occupations. They treated her with the elaborate and fond courtesy of a pack of Italian greyhounds riding shotgun for a Yorkshire terrier.

  “Fontana Inc. will examine Miss Barr’s bag,” the unidentified Fontana told the anonymous guard. “Step this way, miss. Just pretend this is an airport security station.”

  Temple couldn’t believe it. A long gilt-slathered Renaissance table sat to the right of the door, and on it she was expected to deposit her bag for inspection.

  “Fontana Inc.? Come on!” she whispered to the anonymous Fontana brother, desperately seeking his name in her memory bank.

  “So sorry, dear lady. We have been hired by Wong Inc. to assist her usual muscle . . . I mean, security forces, of course.”

  “Of course, of course, unless it’s Mr. Eduardo! What are you guys doing here? Why are you searching me?”

  “We are assisting. I will delicately paw through your tote bag enough to satisfy the brutes at the door. Also to protect any highly personal items you may carry from the glare of public revelation.”

  Whichever Fontana brother it was, and Temple couldn’t ID him through the wine-dark Aegean shades, he did indeed tiptoe his fingertips through the contents of her bag.

  “Hmmm.”

  The Reese’s peanut butter cup wrapper. Ooops! Two of them. Temple cringed.

  “Aha.”

  A bar stub from Les Girls strip joint on Paradise. She knew the all-female management, for Pete’s sake. For Patty’s sake, actually. It was a feminist strip club. Sort of. Honest. You had to have been there.

  An item dangled from a small, steel-ball chain. Pepper spray.

  “I’ll have to confiscate this for the duration of your visit,” he said. Sternly.

  “Gee, I thought the Asian community liked hot peppers.”

  “Cooked, not carried,” was the terse reply.

  Her defensive canister disappeared into a supernaturally flat Fontana brother suit-coat pocket. Amazing how many loaded Berettas the same pockets could conceal!

  “Listen,” she whispered. “We are sympatico here.”

  “Exactly. That is why I do not brandish . . . this.”

  He flashed her computerized calorie counter before palming it politely and adding it to the pocket that held her pepper spray. “Discretion is a Fontana brother’s middle name.”

  “Really, I thought it was Turncoat.”

  “I will turn out my coat pockets and return your . . . goods, intact, when you leave.”

  Temple shook her head. Amelia Wong must be superparanoid if she had beefed up her security forces with locals. It was high time she herself had an actual conversation with the feng shui Wonder Woman. Temple wondered how many layers it would take to peel this onion.

  She quickly found out. Baylee, looking haggard for a blonde, passed Temple to her brunette co-worker, Pritchard Merriweather, whose fatigue simply made her look hard-nosed, like Molina.

  “Asking you to this strategy session was a mere courtesy,” Pritchard said. “You might have some slight insight on the local situation. Seeing Ms. Wong personally is impossible.”

  “Nevertheless.” Temple paused after delivering a word that was almost longer than she was. At least she had fixed Pritchard’s attention. “I’m the only one here with local police connections. Positive police connections,” she added, glancing to the uncooperative Fontana brother who shall remain nameless simply because she couldn’t ID him.

  “You have positive police connections?”

  “Positively. Perhaps ‘Homicide’ strikes a chord with you?”

  “You know powers that be in Homicide?”

  It was really called the Crimes Against Persons Unit now, but “Homicide” had such a more lethal ring to it to the uninitiated.

  “Merely the lieutenant overseeing the case, Molina by name. You did hear that name mentioned? And Alch and Su, the investigating detectives . . . old acquaintances. Need I say more?”

  Temple certainly hoped not, because this story of hers was like unblenderized California orange juice made f
rom tangerines: pulp fiction.

  The word “Homicide” had come in handy. Pritchard shattered along the nerve lines.

  “Ms. Wong has just finished her Zen Pilates routine. She may be mellow enough . . . now . . . to speak with an outsider. I’ll knock, but I don’t guarantee an answer.”

  Temple nodded, following Pritchard through an enormous dining room and down an endless hall lined with Great Masters to a set of double doors wide enough to admit Jonah’s whale.

  Pritchard’s bony knuckles rapped. Once. Twice. Thrice.

  Thrice always worked in fairy tales and it did here.

  “Yes?” came a high, imperious voice.

  “Temple Barr, Maylords local PR rep, wishes to speak with you. I know it’s early and—”

  “The efficiently compact redhead,” came the clipped voice from beyond the door. “Fascinating hair color, if it’s natural. Red is the color of power. Our affairs could use an injection of power. Send her in.”

  Pritchard lifted her eyebrows to indicate the high level of honor bestowed on Temple, then turned one doorknob and pushed Temple through the crack in the doors, rather like tossing a virgin sacrifice into the yawning crater of a volcano.

  “Pray you’re not a Miss Clairol redhead,” Pritchard advised in farewell. “Ms. Wong loathes fakes.”

  Temple, genuine to her roots and often decrying it, swept past the statuesque dark guardian goddess called Pritchard into Amelia Wong’s lair.

  The first thing to hit her was sound: falling water and clashing crystals and temple bells.

  The next was the dim light. Shadow.

  The third was smell. A delicate scent of . . . orange blossoms. Odd. Temple saw nothing to give off that scent. She smelled something else, a discreet incense of warmed underarm deodorant. And something intangible.

  Amelia Wong, she realized, was afraid. Deathly afraid.

  Oddly, that bucked Temple right up. If someone as rich and powerful as feng shui’s Wizard of Ahs was cowering behind a metaphysically protective curtain, maybe she, Temple, had the right shui and the right stuff to put things, well, right.

  She’d done it before.

  Ms. Wong, wearing a pale jade satin pantsuit, sat on a crimson couch that reminded Temple of Matt’s vintage model of similar hue.

  She looked youthfully delicate in the shadowed light, yet as stiff as a Chinese tapestry. Scared was the Western word that came to mind. Scared stiff.

  She looked up as Temple entered.

  “In the holy mountains of Tibet,” she said, “in the mystical mountains of Tibet, lies the inspiration for the Western fairy tale called Shangri-La. You know of what I speak?”

  Temple nodded. She’d seen the Ronald Colman movie once, ages ago. And it had been ages old when she’d seen it. And the mystical name had since been appropriated for stage use by one of what were amounting to Temple’s many mortal enemies.

  “Sit.”

  The only seat anywhere near Amelia Wong was a pile of three silk pillows, one purple, one orange, and one yellow.

  Temple kicked off her heels and sat. She sank into down feathers like she sank into a Gangsters limo’s leather upholstery. One was Eastern luxe, one Western, and they were more kissing cousins than they knew.

  Amelia Wong continued to speak, her voice high and strained, and yet meditative.

  “It’s shameful that the current Chinese government persecutes the Tibetans. Governments, Western or Eastern, always persecute the philosophical, the visionary.”

  Temple remained silent.

  “In Tibet, where once the Dalai Lamas thrived before being driven out, there was a breed of temple guard dog: small, long-haired, tenacious. It was forbidden that their divine breed be allowed to proliferate anywhere else. Then, in the 1930s, a Westerner smuggled two out. A breeding pair.”

  Temple felt herself tense. Once again the Ugly American had ripped off an alien culture.

  “The culprit,” Amelia Wong went on, “was British.”

  Humph! A Brit at the bottom of it. So there, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and Bonnie Prince Charles!

  “The new breed became known throughout the West as the Tibetan terrier.”

  At these words, two long, low dogs trailing golden hair came romping into the room.

  “Lhasa apsos.” Amelia Wong laughed as their exuberance lapped at her hot, hose-clad ankles. (Temple had sworn off pantyhose since moving to Las Vegas two years ago.)

  “They are friendly, loyal, stubborn, and surprisingly lethal when defending their turf, or their substitute Dalai Lamas. Their jaws are short, but their spirits are as tall as the mountains. I would hate to fall down amid them if I had harmed their master. Or mistress. I call them Tibetan staple guns, but I suspect in another culture they might be considered canine piranha.”

  Three more of the dogs had come thronging around Temple, no doubt scenting Midnight Louie. Their eyes were hidden by Veronica Lake falls of long, blond hair, but their black button noses were patent-leather slick. Their small, smiling mouths showed teeth as small and sharp as miniature mountain ranges.

  Seeing Amelia Wong with her dogs instantly humanized her.

  “Your point?” an emboldened Temple asked.

  “You have the heart of a Tibetan terrier.”

  Temple took that for a compliment. “I’m just an American mutt,” she began.

  “You were the only woman to take action when that gangster began shooting up Maylords. Almost the only one at all.”

  “Shucks,” Temple began.

  “The other was the dance man.”

  Temple nodded.

  “He is gay.”

  Temple nodded.

  “Yin and yang together. The fish who swims east and the fish who swims west.” Amelia Wong lifted a circle of black and white jade on a golden chain.

  Temple had always liked the symbolic black-white curved shapes nestled in a circle, but she’d always thought of them as sperm with eyes rather than fish. She also knew the black was the yin or female, passive principle and the white was the male, active principle. It was here that Temple parted ways with Asian mysticism. Way too stereotyped, although she understood that it was more complex than simply he Tarzan, she Jane.

  Amelia Wong fingered the image as she continued to consider the dramatis personae of the Night the Lights Went Out in Maylords.

  “Another who moved was the blond man who worried about you. The one who looked so like the Maylord’s interior designer. I thought it was the Maylord’s man at first, but then realized this man was a guest.”

  Temple nodded, more guardedly this time.

  “He broadcasts most interesting chi, that man who came to your aid. Mystical, but austere. I would love to redecorate his rooms. (So would I, Temple thought.) What is he?”

  “A radio counselor.”

  When Temple hesitated, Amelia Wong’s black eyes snapped at her.

  “His past is deeper than that.”

  “A former priest,” Temple admitted.

  Wong nodded, satisfied somehow.

  “The third man, who actually found the light board and gave us all the gift of darkness, he bears a dark aura himself. Yet you know him and he knows you. Who is he?”

  “A . . . former policeman.”

  “You know many in transition. Perhaps it’s because you are too. This last man is utter yang. But you have strong yang as well as yin. So. It was no accident that the four of you acted in concert.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Danny Dove is used to ordering lights on and off. Rafi Nadir once lived for civic duty. And I have an incurable meddling streak—”

  “And the blond ex-priest has an incurable need to bestow salvation,” Amelia Wong finished. “I am a multinational corporation,” she continued. “I am a brand name. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the philosophy I market, that markets me. Down, Taj!”

  As one dog obeyed, the other milling Lhasa apsos all settled on their stomachs, waves of blond hair pooling around them.

  “
Four people in action that night,” Amelia Wong summed up. “The fifth was the shooter. And then,” she said, focusing the full power of her incredibly dark eyes on Temple, “the sixth one I sensed but could not see. The Stealthy One. Your personal yang protector in midnight black. I felt him in the dark.”

  Temple felt her forearms bubble with goose bumps. Was it possible Max had been there?

  Or Midnight Louie?

  “You know to whom I refer.”

  Temple nodded. She wasn’t sure which one . . . Could Max have been there unseen that night? Of course. He wasn’t a magician for nothing. And Midnight Louie? She remembered the spidery flick of hair over her cheek. Matt’s hair, as he leaned over her? Or Louie’s whiskers? Or Max moving past, unseen, but touching her. Max often managed that, somehow.

  Amelia Wong laughed. “You are surrounded by forces you hardly dare acknowledge. Now you wish to ask me questions. I will answer because you have strong chi.”

  “Chi is the life force, isn’t it?”

  Wong nodded. “I sense you have been in danger often, but rarely harmed. I could use such a force near me now.”

  “The Fontana brothers?”

  “They are beyond chi! They are their own life force. And so good-looking too. I like to believe that forces for good are also attractive. A failing for one of my calling, but a pleasant fantasy nonetheless.”

  Temple blinked. This was beginning to feel like girl talk.

  “I imagine that,” Temple said, “in your position it’s hard to let your hair down.”

  Wong idly ran her fingers through a Lhasa apso’s silky long waves. “One can be beautiful and dangerous,” she commented. “A successful woman is expected to be both in this culture. In my own culture, successful women are not suffered gladly.”

  “You’re Chinese-American.”

  “And expected to excel to justify my femaleness.”

  “I’ve been expected to not excel.”

  “Still,” Wong said shrewdly, “your parents did not move heaven and earth to ensure only male progeny.”

  “No.” Temple realized this startling fact for the first time in her life.

  “They had sons until they had me. And then they stopped.”