“We know from the empty safe built between the underground tunnels where the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters hotels meet with one from the Neon Nightmare that your old IRA enemies had been amassing money and guns in Vegas for a couple decades.”
“What kind of safe?” Max asked.
“A giant walk-in one. That’s where Synth member Cosimo Sparks’s body was found, wearing white gloves, top hat, and tails.… Well, the top hat didn’t stay on when he was stabbed to death. A couple silver dollars were found on the floor, along with a bearer bond for twenty thousand dollars a rat dug up from the adjacent hidden tunnel to … the Neon Nightmare.”
“Rightly named,” Matt said. “You never told me you’d broken into the Synth’s lair at that nightclub.”
“Well, that’s because what I saw there wasn’t exactly believable.”
“In what way?” Max wanted to know.
“It wouldn’t pass the C. R. Molina test.”
“In what way?” Matt now wanted to know.
Temple kept jerking her head from one interrogator to another. “It does sound a bit too much Mad Tea Party.”
Into the continued silence she had to commit truth. “The club room held a middle-aged woman who looked like a medium, or Gandolph in the guise of a female medium at that Halloween séance. The other woman looked like Morticia, the slinky Goth wife from The Addams Family. And there was a pretty ordinary guy there. They were upset about Cosimo Sparks’s death, and then another spring-loaded door opened and these two … figures … showed up.”
“Figures?” Matt questioned.
Temple decided then and there to leave out the pack of black cats that closed down the private party minutes later, but she was now committed to describing the figures.
“They were disguised. In black. Head to toe.”
“Head to toe?” Max snorted. “Were they wearing blackface?”
“Gloves and long cloaks with hoods.”
“Old magicians’ tricks to blend in with the background,” Max said. “Houdini used it.”
“That’s not all. Full head masks. I thought of them as the Darth Vaders.”
“Now, that’s an elaborate getup,” Matt said. “Hokey, though. Are you sure that’s what you saw, Temple?”
“It was dark, but I’d entered through a sheltered niche between bookcases and it was like being an audience at a peepshow.” She took measure of the two men’s dubious expressions. “Not that kind of peepshow. Let’s just say it was a gathering of dramatic personalities. The Darth Vaders were clearly the stars. They had guns and they wanted money.”
“Temple!” Matt was shocked. “You put yourself at risk in the middle of some kind of heist? People who rip off casinos go for the extreme disguises, don’t they, Kinsella?”
Max looked quizzical. “You’re relying on my memory? Fortunately, it’s the personal history that’s mostly gone missing. Yeah. Because of the intense visual security and scrutiny in casinos, people who knock over cash transfers at money cages wear masks at least. They’re safe physically.”
Temple wasn’t so sure. “They always get caught.”
“But they are never interfered with as long as they’re armed and dangerous and out on the casino floor among hundreds of clients and players,” Max said. “Hotel security and police want zero collateral damage.”
“So,” Temple said, “you can get out with the money, but your chances of keeping it are—”
“Zero,” Max said.
“What about the plans I overheard, for the Synth magicians to create a multi-Strip free-for-all distraction of illusions to cover a major heist?”
“Again,” Max said. “Great idea. Would work for getting the money. As in every robbery from a modest ATM stick-up to a major planned assault on a Strip casino or Fort Knox, for that matter, the real trick is the disappearing act afterwards.”
Temple nodded. “That’s why the Glory Hole Gang hid out for decades when Jersey Joe Jackson absconded with the train robbery money.”
“Jersey Joe,” Matt reminded her, “got away with the money and cheating his buddies, but he had to hide the ill-gotten goods for so long, he died bankrupt and alone.”
“So this IRA money raised over a couple decades could simply be left hidden forever?” Temple asked.
Max sighed. “The Synth members are pawns. From what you said, they were in it for the revenge and the prestige, in the sense of the payoff in a magical illusionary statement, when jaws drop. So how did you and they escape being mowed down by two Darth Vaders?”
“Jesus,” Matt said prayerfully.
Temple shrugged. “I … just bowed out. They sorta noticed me finally—”
“‘Sorta’?” Matt sounded pre-cardiac.
“And I just said I was looking for a ladies’ room and they were really hard to find here and I wouldn’t be back. Stephanie Plum always gets out of pickles with girly candor.”
“Stephanie who?” Matt demanded, exasperated.
“The book series,” Temple said. “Chick lit mystery.”
Max chuckled. “She must mean Nancy Drew rebooted. You do know who that was?”
Matt shook his head, mystified.
“How do you know about Nancy Drew?” Temple asked Max.
“I don’t know.” He blinked. “I had a younger girl cousin, I guess, in Wisconsin.” His contribution ended in one of his memory-exploring silences.
“I know all about ‘younger girl cousins,’” Temple said, eyeing Matt.
He opted for silence too.
It was all just too nicey-nicey, Temple thought. Everybody was so busy not stomping on everybody’s else’s toes—or previous and current relationships—that any honest analysis was impossible.
If they couldn’t work together, they darn well might hang separately.
“You can see why I’d never mention this Neon Nightmare stuff to Molina,” Temple said into the extending silences. “I’m even sorry I discussed it with you guys. We need to divvy up the cold cases and investigate on our own.”
“How do we ‘divvy up’ this imposing table of multiple murders and possible perps?” Max asked.
“Mathmatically,” Temple said, then quipped, “MaxiMattically.”
Both guys shot more bolt upright at the idea being equated in her investigative formula. Good. Their competitive natures were kicking in after this very refined and very boring Likefest.
“And some say girls can’t do left brain,” Temple finished up.
She consulted her Table of Crime Elements like an efficiency expert, rubbing her hands together.
“Max. Your assignment. Assignments, plural.”
He pulled his long, lounging frame to attention. Temple was happy to see his core muscles and core spirit were, uh, she couldn’t think of a description that didn’t involve “hardening” or “stiffening,” so, like Scarlett O’Hara, she didn’t think about it anymore.
“You understand magicians,” she told Max, “whether you remember that or not, so your assignment will be the Cloaked Conjuror, the role model for the Darth Vaders, and the death of Professor Jefferson Mangel, a lover of magic and your magic act in particular. He was the first victim found dead in the Ophiuchus position and that’s an off-Strip site on the university campus.”
“What about the Goliath and Oasis murders I’ve already looked into?” Max wasn’t so much objecting as reminding her he’d done the groundwork.
“You’ve proved assassins are still out to get you, so you need to keep a low off-Strip profile. One involves Cliff Effinger, so Matt can deal with the Oasis now on that.”
Matt raised his eyebrows, pale as they were. “Uh, free will come into any of this assignment-making?”
“No.” Temple raked her Table of Crime Elements with another rigorous glance. “You’re already neck-deep in Cliff Effinger and his death, so you get the Phoenix ceiling death that looked to be Effinger but wasn’t and the Goliath, courtesy of Max defaulting, but also the scene of the death of the call girl you encountere
d called Vassar.”
“Wait a minute,” Matt said. “You’ve got me or Kitty the Cutter listed as the possible instigator of that ‘fatal fall.’ Granted I feel horrible about Vassar’s death and I did visit her at the Oasis, but I’m hardly a suspect on the Kathleen O’Connor level.”
“Just being thorough,” Temple sang out, aware that an unspoken rivalry was galvanizing the guys to feel possessive about their assignments, if not specifically about her.
Her best option as queen of the board and the Table of Crime Elements was to be bossy, move them to their best positions of personal safety, and herself take on the untidy murders that didn’t seem directly linked to current kidnapping and death attempts.
“I’ll look into Gloria Fuentes, if Max will e-mail me Gandolph’s notes on her, and see if I can track down the Synth members who knew Cosimo Sparks. His death had to have rattled them.”
“Hasn’t that South American entrepreneur been arrested for that?” Matt asked.
“The evidence against him is circumstantial,” Temple answered. “So far. And, of course, need it be said we’ll all keep a leery eye out for any traces of Kathleen O’Connor?”
“What would be her motives,” Matt asked, “after all these years?”
“Follow the money,” Max said. “She raised money for the Cause and doesn’t want it to line any private party’s pocket now that the Irish Republican movement is dead.”
“What about the news reports of resurfacing violence in Northern Ireland?” Matt asked.
Max waved a dismissive hand. “That’s the corpse having postmortem involuntary muscle tics.”
“You didn’t have money for the IRA as an idealistic teenager,” Matt pointed out.
“I had ideals. Look. What drove Kathleen, especially given her state of pariahdom from birth, was tricking or seducing people—men—into feeling the same self-loathing she herself did.”
“Luring them into genuine states of sin?”
“You could—and would—put it that way, ex-Father Matt. She just wanted her victims to feel as low-down and guilty as she could. I don’t think she toted up Sean and I competing for her affections as a duel of pride, lust, and betrayal. We didn’t think that way. If either one of us had scored with a girl after our sheltered upbringing, we would have been shocked to our jockey shorts and more about bragging to our mates back home than running to confession. The better ‘man’ would win.”
“And you were it, as usual,” Matt said.
“No, I was the one who … fell in love with her,” Max said in a tone of dumbstruck self-revelation, shocking Temple to her Daisy Fuentes undies, speaking of undergarment shock.
Matt looked pretty astounded too.
“Sorry.” Max shook his head as if finding the “reset” for his memory. “Some of my bits of recovered memory hit like sledgehammer strokes. And it’s all the distant, teen-drama ones, God help me. At that age, guys try to pretend they’re heartless to other guys and sincere to girls in such alternating impulses, they get whiplash. My gut knows I loved my cousin like a brother. I guess I didn’t have a brother. I don’t remember. At that age, you don’t have the maturity to admit family feeling, you’re trying so hard to break away. So. I encountered first love and first loss in a stunning double-bill.”
“Do you think,” Temple asked, “Kathleen had real feelings for you too? That your fury at your cousin dying in that IRA pub bombing wiped out her chance of any further relationship with you, and that really put her over the edge?”
“I don’t remember.” Max shook his head. “I don’t even remember the details of our assignation. I suppose that says something. Yes, I could think of nothing else but revenge on the IRA bombers, because I thought it was my fault I wasn’t there to save Sean, or to lose my own life too.”
“As much as it’d be fascinating to psychoanalyze Kathleen O’Connor in light of her roots,” Matt said, “you run a close second, Kinsella.”
“You’re not exactly Mr. Average yourself.”
Temple was not willing to probe into dueling guy adolescences. “So you’re both saying to know our greatest enemy is to outwit her. Why did she become a slut—?”
“That’s harsh,” Matt said.
“That’s written in her history,” Max said. “She was living up to what her mother was reviled for supposedly being, and she was herself labeled as from birth.”
“Let me finish,” Temple said. “Why did she whore for a noble cause? For religious and ethnic freedom, for equality and tolerance? Did she have a sinner-saint complex? Excuse me for asking. We UUs don’t much go in for extreme moral judgments.”
“UUs?” Max asked Matt.
Matt laughed. “You may have never known, or forgot. When pushed for her religious upbringing, Temple will be amusing and claim to be a ‘fallen-away’ UU. Universalist Unitarians reject age-old intolerances, like warring religious identities and condemning classes of sinners outright. No burning at the stake. With charity for all and malice toward none.”
“It sounds a bit wishy-washy,” Max said wickedly.
“You and I came up in moral boot camp,” Matt agreed.
Max nodded at him. “Like Kathleen. No wonder she’s targeted us both.”
“No wonder we’ve both survived her.” Matt waited for Max’s reaction.
He grinned. “So far, my lad. So far.”
Temple huffed out a loud, theatrical sigh. “I’m so happy seeing the two of you make common cause, but this woman is a walking war zone and you both bear her scars, visible or not. I may be ex-UU, but I’m not feeling at all tolerant about Kitty the Cutter. She’s obviously been lurking on the fringes of lives, shifting personas, pulling strings on her patsy associates, taunting us with her mysterious ‘gifts’ and ‘thefts.’ Was she Shangri-La? How can she have apparently died twice and still be around to haunt us? What’s the bottom line on her messing with us here in Las Vegas as if it’s the last stand before the end of the world?”
Matt was the first to answer. “She may be unconsciously searching for someone incorruptible, but she isn’t equipped to recognize such a person even if she found him. Or her. And doing that would so shake her negative world-view—”
“She’d implode,” Max finished. “And the fallout would be lethal.”
Temple tapped her Table of Crime Elements. “When I look at this, I’m struck by how many of these unsolved deaths involve falling. I’m a press release writer, not a logician, but it’s got to mean something. Maybe it’s an unconscious metaphor.”
“Falling from grace,” Matt intoned slowly. “Falling from a ‘state of grace,’ as the Church calls it. Kathleen’s mother was a ‘fallen’ woman. She was expected to live down to that. So she did.”
“Satan,” Max said, “tried to tempt Jesus to step from the top of the temple.”
Matt spun the crime table to face him and scanned the rows. “That could mean Kathleen O’Connor is responsible for almost all these deaths.”
“That would make her a serial killer.” Max said. “And that may not be her only method. Someone tipped the warring IRA remnants off to Garry and my movements in Belfast.”
Temple grabbed back her death list to study it again. “Then we’d better organize and ‘out’ her before she can do us all in.”
Chapter 34
Fur Flies
Miss Midnight Louise and I are enjoying an extended eavesdropping session beyond the flimsy French doors on the corner patio that borders both Mr. Matt’s and Miss Temple’s Circle Ritz digs, a floor apart.
“Well, this is awkward,” I comment.
“Yes, human breeding behavior is prefaced by many long and tortuous episodes and deep and lasting emotions.”
“I mean, Louise, that our human amateur sleuths are divvying up the list of murderous events and victims and locations into three separate investigations, and we are but two.”
I think for a millisecond, and then continue. “Of course, I am up to performing the work of at least two, but I am not a
ble to be in two places at the same time. Yet.”
“Pshaw,” Louise spits, nailing me in the eye. “Who do you think has been Johnny-on-the-spot at Mr. Max’s residence and elsewhere for all these suspicious comings and goings ever since the Neon Nightmare impact?”
“Unfortunately, the investigations from now on focus on multiple major Vegas sites, such as hotel-casinos, the Neon Nightmare nightclub, and even the singular institution of learning in our midst, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Few know that Vegas is a center of learning as well as—”
“Lechery?” Miss Midnight Louise suggests archly. In other words, her whole back makes like a croquet hoop. She is such a felinazi.
I ignore what is patently a personal swipe, and she had the paw to do that with. Oops, now she has me ending my thoughts with prepositions. I am feeling very Mr. Maxlike as my little gray cells go MIA.
Quickly, I point out, “That adds up to at least three, if not seven scenes of the crime or crimes.” I have always been better at math than the female of my species.
“Then,” says Louise, “we must round up seven, or at least three of the Cat Pack to shadow our human friends.”
“Now you make sense. I will take my Miss Temple. She is in need of objective yet steadfast male support now that her two beaux are both back in town.”
“Bow? She has two bows? You make her sound like a Yorkie fresh from the groomers.”
“Obviously, as with the sad case of Miss Kathleen O’Connor, you suffer from a stunted upbringing and have never had reason to learn that language so vital in show circles of our kind, French.”
“Oh, can it, Pop. Preferably with three-day-old tuna fish in a garbage bag. The airs you put on sometimes smell as bad as a card-counting scam at a Laughlin casino. The last time I saw you cozying up to those pampered Persian sisters in thrall to Miss Savannah Ashleigh, they had been assaulted by an electric fur trimmer and looked more like weasels than supermodels.”
“You should know that a deal may be in the works to revive my commercial career with the modishly restyled Divine Yvette and Sublime Solange.”
“Hmph,” Miss Louise sniffs. “I will believe that when I see it.”
Cat in a White Tie and Tails Page 19