“I can move the pork down three places, no more.” Chef Song pointed magnanimously with the cleaver, to which a few translucent flakes of raw onion clung like . . . yuck, tissue.
Ms. Wong’s obsidian eyes followed the gesture and studied the suggestive CSI-like evidence clinging to the broad steel blade.
Her eyes and voice matched the cleaver’s sharpness. “That would be sufficient. I must have my shrimp central and foremost.”
He bowed. “Shrimp is the empress of appetizers.”
“Agreed. It was never about the shrimp.”
Ms. Amelia had to look up to look down her snub nose at him. She had accomplished this while accessorized with . . . Temple, impressed, sneaked a quick peek downward. Wow! Seattle space-needle-high Jimmy Choo heels, several seasons newer than Temple’s.
For Temple owned a pair of Choo shoes herself. They had been acquired at a resale shop, were only three inches high and four years old. Ms. Wong’s model, however, had graced the feet of Lucy Liu in the most recent issue of InStyle magazine.
Temple wondered briefly if there was an offshoot of feng shui called Feng Choo. Either way, Temple could sympathize with pint-size women seeking a leg up on the competition in the business world.
Amelia Wong moved the length of horseshoe-shaped table, switching the placement of plum and mustard sauce bowls according to some universal order known only to a domestic arts master.
Chef Song shook his head and muttered words Temple could not translate, fortunately.
Beyond them both loomed an overpoweringly orange backdrop: the spotlit gleaming bulk of the Nissan Murano. This was one of those crossover vehicles: a kinder, gentler SUV doing all it could to avoid any stylistic hint of an old-fashioned station wagon. A local dealer had provided the new model as the door prize for the Maylords end-of-the-week raffle. Amelia Wong’s last act would be selecting the winner.
Kenny Maylord and his wife edged over to Temple now that the former celebrity combatants were contentedly plying the buffet table and switching each other’s arrangements around. Flowers, food . . . it was all musical chairs.
“I’m used to temperamental interior designers,” Kenny said, “but this takes the cake. Honey, this is Temple Barr, the local PR hiree.” As Temple acknowledged the introduction to Kenny’s thirty-something wife, he told her, “I understand from Ms. Wong’s PR gal that your work at Las Vegas Now! saved our skin as far as TV coverage goes. I guess I didn’t get it at the time.”
Temple accepted his sheepish smile as an apology. “The situation was out of our control. We needed to spin the dial back our way again. Sometimes it takes extreme measures.”
Mrs. Maylord, a bland-brown-hair clone of her husband, stepped closer to speak under her breath. “Things are so . . . dramatic in Las Vegas. We never would have had that kind of problem back home in Indianapolis.”
Such a Ken and Barbie couple: same height, same coloring, same plastic Stepford-spouse look, with more than a touch of American Gothic behind it. No way would they understand Las Vegas and its high-rolling ways without spending some time here. It was a far cry from Indianapolis.
Temple, herself an escapee from the sound-alike city of Minneapolis, felt sorry for this poster couple for stable midwestern values. Las Vegas lived and died on a fault line of change and hype. There was nothing stable or midwestern about it, but, on the other hand, it was fun.
“I think the chop shui crisis has been handled,” she said.
She eyed the two artistes, who were each rapidly undoing each others’ adjustments. It was like watching two neighboring nations moving guard stations on the border.
Amazing how unnecessary busywork defused tensions.
“I’ll just be happy when the opening huzzahs are over,” Mrs. Maylord said, with feeling. She extended a hand. “I’m Barbara, by the way.”
Temple, shocked by the name, shook a palm that was as dry as white cotton gloves, amazed at her own prescience. Ken and Barbie.
“Temple Barr.”
“What an interesting first name.”
“I don’t know how I got it, and I used to hate it. Wanted to be an Ashley in the worst way, but now I kind of like it.”
Mrs. Maylord leaned inward. “You don’t know what I’d give not to be a Barb. I always feel like a fishing lure.”
Temple laughed out loud. Maybe bland hid unsuspected spice.
“That’s why our kids are named Kelly and Madison. Guess which one is the girl.”
“Wouldn’t even try. I think that’ll be a big step forward in the future, gender-neutral names, I mean.”
“Don’t tell Kenny,” she confided. “He thinks we’re being Eastern and trendy.”
Temple nodded, finger to lips, and turned to check on Song and Wong. Oh, no! Asian surnames had a monosyllablic simplicity her own echoed, but lent themselves to the most outrageous English wordplay.
She thought of Merry Su, the small but assertive detective who worked for Molina. A good role model. Temple considered herself small but assertive.
Speaking of assertive, where had the newly protective Matt got himself to?
She turned, satisfied to leave Wong and Song at opposite ends of the buffet table, still moving dishes like chess pieces in an elaborate game.
While she watched, the central display of queen shrimp on beds of crushed ice exploded into a salmon-white fireworks of flying chips and flesh.
Her ears thundered with a dull knock-knock-knock sound. Who’s there?
Flying shards of plate glass joined the ice chips exploding in air.
“Hit the ground!” a male voice shouted.
Temple did a four-point landing on her knees and the heels of her hands without thinking. Both stung, maybe bled.
Above her foodstuffs spattered in time with a staccato whomp-whomp-whomp sound, almost like a hovering helicopter.
“Hit the lights!” another male voice bellowed.
Temple recognized Danny Dove’s commanding choreographer’s bark.
Temple glanced around. Wong and Song had vanished behind their buffet table. The Maylords lay belly down beside her. Nothing much was moving but the sudden sleet of glass and ice and food from the buffet.
She had toured the store before opening, from stem to stern. She’d seen a big light-control panel on some wall . . . but where?
No one seemed to be moving.
The sounds continued, relentless, obviously from a distance, obviously from a high-powered weapon aimed at the bright store interior surrounded by windows, spitting like an Uzi into a giant fishbowl.
Wait. The light panel was near the employee lounge, toward the back of the store and the loading dock.
Temple pressed her burning palms into the stone floor and put the soles of her shoes in motion.
Power Play
Matt hit the deck on instinct.
Cries and muffled sobs echoed all around him, where only moments before conversations and laughter had provided a counter to the Musak pouring over the loudspeaker.
That soft, jazzy beat made a bizarre counterpoint to the punctuation of repeated gunfire now.
Maylords was under siege.
His not to wonder why. His but to do or die . . . and people could have died already.
He’d been visiting the vignettes, looking for Janice, working his way back to the central entrance.
His cheek rested on salmon-colored plush carpeting. A testered Colonial-style bed loomed above him.
So did the darkness of a Las Vegas night outside the showroom window.
As he watched, the glass shattered like spun sugar. A celadon vase on the nearby dresser blossomed into flying pieces.
One grazed his temple.
Temple. Where was she?
Matt elbow-crawled onto the central path of cool stone and lay there for a moment to listen.
Danny Dove’s commanding cry, “Hit the lights,” struck him with relief. That was the first line of defense. He bet cell phones were hitting 911 all over the store.
He didn’t carry one. Mr. Behind-the-Times. From now on he would, an urban guerrilla armed with technology instead of a personal firearm.
But . . . where was Temple?
He crawled over the glass-gritty floor, aware that she had last been called to the reception area.
“Stay down, people!” another voice ordered. Deeper and darker than Danny Dove’s, but no less commanding.
Temple took her role as public relations rep responsible for everything running smoothly like some updated quest in the Philip Marlowe school. Matt knew she wouldn’t be taking this attack lying down.
She’d respond to Danny Dove’s call with every theatrical instinct in her soul. She’d be trying to get to the lights, to shut them down, to end this ugly act and make the store into a dark enigma instead of an overlit shooting gallery.
He put his forearm over his eyes, both to see better against the glaring lighting system above the scene and to defray the bits of glass and food that were raining down in an unholy hail on them all.
He crawled past downed couples tangled like fallen mannequins in the vignettes, muttering into cell phones pulled from pockets and purses.
He glimpsed a glint of silver on the move as he neared the central area, low and erratic, but visible to him . . . and therefore visible to the shooter.
Matt pushed up into a crouch and went zigzagging through the empty rooms, past prone bodies hopefully only playing dead and dialing for their lives.
“The employee lounge,” someone bellowed. He recognized Janice’s voice, coming from far across the central space.
Lights. Employee lounge. At the back? He hadn’t seen it in the front, didn’t make sense in the front, and the bit of moving quicksilver had been heading deeper into the store. . . .
Matt dodged from ottoman to desk legs to bedskirt to decimated buffet table, aware of people lying everywhere.
He skittered like a beetle, edged like a roach.
The occasional gun report shattered something precious, and hopefully, not sentient.
The shots were interspersed with sobs and moans.
Who knew how many had been hit?
He could have been still facedown like most of them. Waiting for the nightmare to end. Except . . . he saw a bigger nightmare. A flash of silver and red suddenly splashed like well-veined shrimp across the entrance atrium.
Matt heard something scream at his heel, and pushed forward. Chips of shattered travertine spit into his calves.
He dove under the looming orange body of the Murano, eyeing the undercarriage, then crawled past and through, working back into the darker parts of the store. Into the interior shadows, where the light panel lay.
In the distance, he heard the wail of oncoming sirens, still far, far away.
A glimpse of ground-level silver fluttered like a startled dove past a Barcelona chair. Matt lunged after it, hearing a bullet ping off the chair’s stainless-steel frame.
The bastard was aiming . . . aiming at movement. At Temple.
He was outrunning the bullets, catching up, overtaking.
Matt dove for the only moving element ahead of him.
And . . . the lights went out.
Shrimp Cocktail
Well, this was the night the lights were blazing in Georgia, but they sure went out in Maylords. Here is how it all went down from my point of view. My own personal lowdown, so to speak, which is as low down as you can get. Ankle level, in point of fact.
As soon as the blasts of gunfire turn Maylords into an exploding glass factory, Miss Midnight Louise and I swing into action.
We streak from the anticipated chow line out back to the firing line up front.
Luckily, we operate well under the line of fire and are able to tiptoe through the broken glass and into the besieged home decor store. Only in America.
We still have to keep under the sofas, being careful to avoid being seen by carpet-hugging humans who are crawling around on our level for once. It is not a pretty sight. I find that I much prefer socializing with various brands of sniffy footwear than ineffective applications of underarm deodorant.
Although, to be fair, these humans are in a state of primal fear.
They are not used to being hunted on the streets of Las Vegas, as Louise and I have been, merely for the simple sin of being homeless.
Nowadays, of course, we have whole buildings to call home. Louise has bagged the elegant Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, where she has taken over my old job as house detective. I hang my unused collar at the retro-funky Circle Ritz apartments and condominium, where I am in permanent residence with my live-in, Miss Temple Barr.
Still, our roles in law enforcement matters are not self-evident. When we boogie around the city on business we are in constant danger of being snagged by Animal Control and treated like disposable nobodies. Makes one almost succumb to wearing a collar, but give one inch and pretty soon Big Brother Vet will be imbedding eavesdropping chips in our brains.
Anyway, before we can thoroughly scout the place, the lights go out.
Immediately the downed humans start mewling and whimpering like whipped curs. Louise and I roll our eyes at each other in the dark. We come equipped with night vision, like the Rangers.
Now we can paddy-foot where we please, as long as we avoid using a prone human as an area rug. (Which role reversal, actually, would be kind of fun, but I know what Miss Louise would think of such unprofessional behavior.)
We soon make our way to the abandoned entrance area, where tender curls of fallen shrimp strew our path like rose petals carpeting the footsteps of conquering heroes.
Should we help ourselves? I do not mind if we do, for night troops travel on their stomachs. Or so I hear.
Of course, we must chew our morsels well, as ground glass is not a seasoning for the weak stomached. However, both Louise and I grew up on Dumpster picnics. We are pretty savvy about avoiding slivers of glass and tin cans, not that anything from a can would be found in a Chef Song buffet.
A voice booms out in the darkness with such authority that for a fleeting moment I fear the world will be created again.
Miss Louise hunkers against me, not from fear but the better to whisper in my ear. “Who is on the loudspeaker?’
“That is no loudspeaker, dear girl, that is a theatrically trained voice projecting. Sometimes I envy these humans their immense, and immensely wasted, vocal range. In fact, I know the possessor of that stainless-steel foghorn.”
“You always claim to know everyone in this town.”
“Mostly, they know me,” I retort modestly. “That happens to be the commanding voice of Danny Dove, the eminent choreographer. At least someone two-legged in the place has the sense to call for the lights to be put out.”
As we listen, we hear the answering scrabble of a few footsteps. Someone besides us is up and about now.
Louise and I dispose of the last shrimp within reach and duck under the floor-length tablecloth as a new burst of gunfire rakes across the china, making for a rainfall of chips that are useful at no casino in town.
In the fresh quiet after the storm, I hear at least two or three people in motion. Peeking my nose out from under the water-soaked linen, I spy a sight that would turn my whiskers whiter, were they not already so colored.
“What is it, Daddikins? You have stiffened like roadkill.”
“Roadkill. That is a good name for it. My roomie has lost her mind and is on the move in this shooting gallery.”
“How do you know?”
“I have glimpsed the fugitive sparkle of what can only be my Austrian crystalized Stuart Weitzman signature shoes. Miss Temple must be looking for the light-control mechanism in answer to Danny Dove’s clarion call. I must go to her aid.”
“And what can you do?”
“I do not know, but I can be there in case. Stay here, under the tablecloth. And do not eat all the shrimp!”
Without a backward look, or a burp in mourning for the abandoned shrimp, I streak in the direction
I last saw Miss Temple’s shoes crawling in four-four time. At least she has the sense to assume a four-limbed mode of locomotion. On the other hand, I hate to contemplate my namesake shoes scraping their delicate crystals on all this scattered glass . . . speaking of which, ouch! I might be better off with some protective booties myself.
Sure enough, the megawatt glimmer of those dazzling white Austrian crystals are as easy for a seasoned tracker like myself to follow as breadcrumbs for a bird.
Ker-plough ack-ack-ack. Whoever is shooting has a lot of ammo, not to mention nerve. I crouch down, hoping my Miss Temple has had the sense to do likewise. But someone else is moving despite the fresh shots.
Someone pale and sensibly low is following Miss Temple too.
I scramble right on those vanishing heels, which are dull brown leather and not nearly as simple to tail as synthetic diamonds.
And then all the lights go out.
Luckily, I am blessed with phenomenal night vision.
So it is a bit of a surprise when I hear thumps and whispers ahead in the dark, and find myself forced to screech to a stop.
That is a only a figure of speech. Were I truly to “screech to a stop,” the entire set of hunkered-down humans in this building would be clapping their hands over their ears. I have quite an effective screech in my repertoire.
No, this is a metaphorical screech. It means that were I a motor vehicle stopping so quickly, my brakes would scream bloody murder.
As it is, I stop on a dime without a sound, a master of the feline change of direction in midair. I am only sorry that all the lights are out and no one is here to see it. Especially Miss Midnight Louise.
I land silently, but not without great effort. There is a lot of me to land silently.
Although the most immediate humans in the area are right in front of me, I must do a sniff test to make sure of their suspected identities.
This I manage with my usual undercover delicacy. My supersensitive vibrissae (whiskers to you crude human types) twitch near the presumed face of my lovely little roommate.
It is Miss Temple indeed, flat on her back and utterly safe from flying bullets, even in the dark.
Cat in an Orange Twist Page 8