"You still haven't heard from your ex?" the lieutenant was asking, eyes narrow to trap any obvious lies.
Temple shook her head. ''About the Goliath. Other than the fact that Max had been appearing there, and vanished just as the body in the ceiling was found, what indicates that he had anything to do with it? The only criminal record you can find on him is that ancient IRA thing from Interpol. Even you admit it was for suspected association, and not proven. So why would Max be murdering men in Las Vegas fifteen years later?"
"Las Vegas is always a target for ambitious and clever thieves, and the IRA always needs money."
'"I'd be willing to bet that Max's IRA involvement was a youthful extreme. He just wasn't that political when I knew him, nor willing to be that ruthless. If he ever was, he outgrew it."
"Maybe he never outgrew the high of doing something illegal, of tricking the system, whatever it is. A magician is-perfectly placed to do a lot of damage of that sort. He travels everywhere. He's uniquely skilled in the right areas. He knows how to divert attention and how to vanish."
"Max wasn't that money-hungry. He made plenty the old-fashioned way."
"But he was that attention-hungry, wasn't he?"
Temple couldn't answer that as fast as she would have liked. Molina had touched on an aspect of Max that had always troubled her: his constant need to mystify, to astound, to manipulate. If magic had become too routine. . . .
''Maybe," Temple said finally, "but he liked to hang around and take the bow afterwards."
"That's why I'm still looking, and watching."
"Watching me?"
"How could I avoid it? You turn up like the plague. I suppose I can expect to see you underfoot around here for some time."
"Don't worry. Lieutenant. I'm not leaving town until I can take my bow for the Gridiron."
Molina nodded her dark head and looked satisfied. She moved on without a farewell word.
Temple watched her head bob above the milling crowds in the casino until it vanished.
Hard to imagine the same woman drawing out smoky syllables in the spotlight of an intimate nightclub. Carmen. She had to hate that name as much as Matt hated the longer version of his own. Mart's loathing was understandable. His name had been a warning and a weapon in the arsenal of his vicious stepfather, until he came to hate the sound of it almost as much as the man who used and abused it.
The name "Carmen" had been a verbal weapon for peers, Temple guessed, with its echoes of grand opera and sultry cigarette girls, of Hispanic songstresses with fruit-basket heads. That would all hit too close to home to a tall, awkward, maybe chubby teenager, and Temple suspected that Mariah Molina was a pretty accurate duplicate of her mother at that age.
So had Molina finally lived up to her given name and become a saloon singer? Or was she living down her past by creating an alter ego who was quite successfully Carmen in the arena made for her, on stage?
Temple eyed the gorgeous but mythical Lalique bird one last time, then plunged into the ever-moving mob herself. Living in Las Vegas accustomed a person to crowds and a certain restless energy that became addictive.
The background chime of slot machines produced its own heavy metal music. Temple welcomed seeing characters about town, like the Leopard Lady, who only wore clothes in that pattern, or Eightball's friend, Hester Polyester, or Nostradamus. They all recalled bit players in some elderly Broadway musical comedy. Even the occasional murder seemed a dramatic touch designed to bring down the first-act curtain. That is, it all seemed slightly unreal until you knew the victim, whether that was a stripper acquaintance or your neighbor's never-met stepfather.
Temple wondered, given the second casino killing, if she might not unknowingly know another, as-yet-undiscovered victim: Max Kinsella. Molina would be sorry about pursuing Max so heatedly if he were actually dead. . . . No, Molina would not be sorry, but Temple would.
***************
"Wait'll you see the set.''
Danny Dove sat cross-legged on the floor like an elderly but double-jointed elf as he rustled through a pile of sheets the size of house plans.
"Your skit inspired it," he added impishly.
Temple cast dignity aside to join Danny on the cold concrete floor of the rehearsal room.
Crawford had been such a stick-in-the-crud about her skit that Danny's enthusiasm was exciting.
Dove brandished a crackling paper covered with scrawls. "Here's the backdrop for the whole show--a velvet painting with all these lurid outlines of existing Las Vegas landmarks mixed in with your fictional ones. Tiny colored fairy lights will twinkle like toe-dancers all over the skyline and sky. Isn't it too, too divinely tacky? And for the finale at the end of your skit, the sky explodes with stars--forming a constellation of a Technicolor Elvis down to his blue suede shoes!"
"Dazzling," Temple agreed.
"For the final medley, I use the stage trap door to bring up the entire cast, like miners from below the earth, the government secret agents, the Cosa Nostradamus muscle, the concealed aliens and their spaceship, which will fly into orbit around Elvis's enormous paunch, which has toy cars racing around it. . . ."
"Gross," Temple said with admiration.
Danny looked over the tops of his clear plastic half-glasses. ''It's not easy to outdo Vegas Garish at its own game, but I believe I have created the backdrop for a truly tasteless Tinsel-town east."
"Everything looks fabulous," Temple said. "I suppose Crawford is in clover."
"Crawford," Danny Dove enunciated in tones of deep disdain, "would be pushing up clover, if I had anything to do with it. What an ugly little man. However did the show committee decide to let that cross between Pee Wee Herman and General Sherman run things?"
"I think Crawford marched through a committee meeting in a sharkskin suit. He's awfully overbearing to direct a cooperative effort."
"Listen, young lady. Nobody directs anything on this Gridiron but yours truly." Danny Dove leapt to his threadbare-tennis-shod feet in a single, gravity-defying spring.
Temple struggled upright, trying not to twist a tall J. Renee heel.
"We start rehearsals tomorrow at two p.m. Do drop by. You might offer some little suggestion that would be amusing. You are such a clever girl."
"Thanks, but won't it irritate Crawford if a mere writer shows up to consult?"
Danny crossed his hands on his chest and tilted his head like a good child. "Yeth," he mock-lisped with an angelic grin. "It will annoy our little man no end. So don't be late."
Even Temple heard the happy spring in her step as she left the empty rehearsal area.
Her fictional remake of Las Vegas was getting a first-class production, despite Crawford Buchanan's sneering acceptance of what he treated like a second-class script. Her actual and ambitious remake of the Crystal Phoenix's image was beingembraced by the hotel's enlightened managers. That was putting pence into Temple's pocketbook as well as elevating her ego.
She tripped up the stairs to the hotel's main floor, her hand on the wooden railing as light as her heart. . . and then she just tripped.
The railing had become a long, bouncing baton as it pulled off the wall and caromed toward her legs like a log.
She lost her footing and her ankles took two terrific bangs. The high heels collapsed like a tower of poker chips. Temple was falling down the long flight of stairs, their sharp concrete lips digging into her tumbling body. The railing clattered down ahead of her like a giant's berserk drumstick.
Everything happened too fast for her to scream, and there was nothing to catch onto. She tried to roll with the fall, martial arts style, even while trying to grasp with her hands and her mind at something that would stop her before she got-- ow!--seriously hurt.