“It was an invitation. That’s different.”
“You know the second one?”
“I think it’s the cat that replaced Louie at the Crystal Phoenix after I adopted him. They call her Midnight Louise.”
Nadir just shook his head, then watched her belt herself in and take off.
Her departing headlights reflected from a number of gleaming gold eyes in the shrubbery fringing the lot. Louise jumped down to the carpeted floor, but Louie remained in the passenger seat, bracing his front feet on the window frame and looking around with interest.
Temple’s busy brain kept bouncing from the professional to the personal. Rafi was still hyped from tonight’s triumph, and Temple felt that excitement too, which is why she’d turned down his offer of a drink. It was a sad day, or night, actually, when the most available co-celebrator was Molina’s despised ex-squeeze!
Maybe she could help rehabilitate Maylords’s image by having them do something for the feral cat colony that had so thoughtfully shredded the drug-laden furniture shipment for them. That was weird, how they took shelter in that truck and ended up ratting out the whole scheme… . Maybe they were like Louie, obviously attracted to the scent of cocaine, like it was sort of people catnip. She’d have to watch Louie; he was developing expensive tastes, not to mention lethal.
She turned on the radio. Mr. Midnight was on. Matt’s voice filled the small car, sounding both soothing and compelling, which was why he had the job he did. He was advising a woman estranged from her sister. Well, gee. Temple was feeling estranged from everybody. She was dying to retell the night’s events and had no one to listen. Maybe she could phone the Midnight Hour when she got home. Hah! She could always phone Max, but he didn’t seem to be in nights much anymore, or answering.
When she parked in the Circle Ritz lot, the cats accompanied her in and up to her unit.
Louie headed right for the pale sofa, where he arranged himself in a sprawling yet regal pose usually reserved for purebred Persians. He looked pretty pleased with himself. Louise, and it was indeed she-Temple recognized the yellow eyes and longer hair that distinguished her from Louie-headed right for the Free-to-beFeline bowl and dug in. Temple hadn’t heard so much crunching in the place since her knees had nixed an extreme exercise video she’d tried for a few days.
She dialed Max, of course, and was instructed to leave a message. Of course. She knew his tape wouldn’t shut her down
after thirty seconds, so she left a long, breathless report of the night’s events.
And so to bed, as Pepys or somebody used to close out his days a couple centuries ago.
There Temple tossed and fell asleep briefly, woke, dreamed a little, and woke again. Fragments she recalled explained why she didn’t linger in Dreamland long: She was going to the high school prom with Rafi Nadir! Then she wasn’t in a prom dress, she was in a bridesmaid dress, wearing the Louie shoes, and Molina and Matt were getting married! Then Max was doing a highwire act at the top of the Goliath atrium and he fell twenty stories, but turned into Midnight Louie and landed on his feet. And she was fleeing in a red stretch limo with the Fontana brothers while a biker gang surrounded them and she threw a Mumm’s Champagne bottle out the window and the whole street burst into fire… .
“Max, you won’t believe it!” Temple’s voice on the phone at 2:00 A.M. was triumphant, yet endearingly raspy. “Oh, I wish you could have been here!”
So did he. Instead he’d been swinging on a star at Neon Nightmare, chasing a phantom that sometimes looked like himself.
He almost said, “I’m performing again, Temple. In disguise, undercover, but I’ve put together a new act. Maybe we can put
together a new act…”
“You should have seen it! I had Rafi Nadir hand over the Maylords killer to Molina. In person! I can’t wait to tell you more.”
I can’t wait to hear more. See more. Of you.
“Molina was … well, everything I’d ever hoped for. Chagrined. Speechless. Furious. Pissed.”
That he could picture, since he’d caused it often enough.
“And Louie must have followed me to work at Maylords, and made himself right at home on the seating pieces. He sniffed out the insider cocaine link. Although almost everybody there was guilty in one way or another, from Kenny Maylord acing out his young brother in the business; to Benny going undercover to sabotage the operation; to Kenny letting the manager, Mark Ainsworth, put together a predatory secret-clique management structure, all based on greed. The setup produced more disgruntled employees than Caligula. The two murder victims either knew too much or inadvertently interfered with the in-house drug-smuggling operation, hence the gay bikers. They were transport. I’ll let Molina and company figure out who offed whom and why, but Simon Foster was definitely an innocent who got in the way. Poor Danny. I wonder when he’ll be up to working again?
Gosh, this town has been unlucky for performers, what with the Siegfried and Roy tragedy and now Danny Dove’s new show is temporarily darkened, and you were driven out of your profession by murder at the Goliath … Now I’m getting depressed. Home alone by the telephone. I’ll just shut my eyes and think of Molina’s expression when she first saw Rafi Nadir again.
“Call me back as soon as you can. Heck! Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?”
On that mock-suggestive Mae West note, Temple’s voice was gone. It was 2:00 A.M. Max, the wee-hours wonder, was still hanging on a star at Neon Nightmare. He shut the cell phone and its voice-mail message away and stowed both on his tool belt.
Then he swung out again over deep black nothingness.
The beat from below bellowed in his ears. The lights stung like bees. He defied gravity, sanity.
He couldn’t make a personal appearance at the Circle Ritz tonight, but he’d call Temple first thing in the morning.
Max Kinsella awoke in the dark. Five A.M.
The utter dark. Too early to call Temple.
He remembered dragging the futon into the bedroom used to store magic paraphernalia. He must have collapsed rather
than slept.
And after everything that had happened lately-martial arts chases in magic dungeons, illusions, motorcycle nightmares, bullets to the back, death and resurrection-why not?
He rubbed a hand over his eyes, checking how he felt. Good. Very good. Very, very good.
Oh. Right. It had been an erotic dream, the kind so vivid you woke up almost satisfied. Temple had been in it, which was gratifying. When you had erotic dreams about your significant other, it was a good sign the flame hadn’t died. Also that you’d been a good monogamous boy… .
He remembered following her flashing red heels down the long dark hallways and around the abrupt corners of the nightclub called Neon Nightmare.
Then they were lying together in an emerald green meadow, with a chorus line of sheep singing Rod McKuen’s “Jean.” He was undoing the front of Temple’s dress, a lace-up affair that Temple would never be caught dead in, even in a production of The Sound of Music. She wouldn’t be keen on the sound of sheep either. Temple was an utterly urban chick.
The hills are alive … spies were poking heads up all over the glen, Boris and Natasha, and the owner of the milkmaid bodice and its inner accouterments wasn’t Temple, after all, but Kitty! Kathleen O’Connor. His first love, first everything, now lying on stainless steel in the Las Vegas medical examiner’s facility.
The dream images lingered in his drowsing mind. Temple’ s red hair had become black, her blue eyes green, like Kathleen’s.
Max rolled over in the dark and patted the wood floor until his fingers curled over the electric cord snaking through the
dark. He found the control dial and turned it.
Light flooded his corner of the room, which was piled like an Egyptian tomb with the arcane boxes and claptrap of the magic trade.