It was amazing how the bones of the face pushed through the window glass, as if it were only a cellophane cerement. Temple cringed back as an actual tarot card flipped into the limo compartment. Louie reached out a clawed forefoot and snapped it down to the carpet, anchoring it with a sharp nail.
She stared at Santiago, wondering. Had he used this multimedia display to program something personal?
The echoing voice filled the car interior.
“Magic never dies,” it pronounced. “Am I mere bones in a morgue or a disembodied voice on a manipulated movie screen? Does it matter? I live, I speak, I watch, I intrude. I am the ghost in the machine. I live to avenge untimely deaths. Murders. I take vengeance.”
Temple jerked back, surprised.
What a lifelike effect. What a gruesome segment. Maybe too scary for the public … She’d have to mention that to Nicky and Van. Whoa! She had goose bumps, though. Super effective.
Oops, Temple thought. My lord, it resembles an actual, animated death masque. Not exactly promotable. Temple was betting the wax sculptor who’d created the Boots concrete memorial had accomplished the model for this filmed resurrection.
“Where is the money?” the eerie voice intoned from the 3-D death masque. “Follow the money. It was in the vault. Then I ended up there, dead. Stabbed.”
Temple knew by the prickling of her thumbs that something wicked this way comes… .
Actually it was by the prickling in her panty hose, had she been wearing any. She could feel the cat hair around her calves flaring and prickling instead of tickling.
And cat claws in three-four time, kneading warning into the unseen black carpet on the car’s floor.
She had to admit she hadn’t expected this demo ride to be so … ghoulish, so in your face.
So … like from a major historical theatrical masterpiece, like Hamlet.
“The play’s the thing,” to prick “the conscience of the King.” The king … of chutzpah?
“This is absurd,” Santiago objected. “This part is not of my creation. This is a cheap fright show. I demand you restore my immortal and elegant Rat Pack figures—Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. They had charisma, talent, a deathless magic.”
“Like Cosimo Sparks?” Nicky asked. “He was a stage magician once, still dressed like a magician of the old school, in white tie and tails. Was it hard to stab him through that starched shirt?”
“I? Santiago?” His chiseled features tightened with dismay instead of warming with rage. “How dare you! I am internationally renowned, as you well know. I am not some cheap … gangster, stabbing someone with a … shiv.”
Midnight Louie leaped up between Temple and Santiago and issued a low rumbling growl, the likes of which she had never heard from him. It gave her chills and forced Santiago cringing into the corner of the car. Louie was a big cat, and every black hair was puffed out like hackles as he stared at Santiago, until the man blinked and looked away.
“Get that wildcat away from me,” Santiago snarled in turn, his head turned into the car window as if about to kiss the now-frozen grotesque face of Cosimo Sparks.
“We’ll get you away,” Macho Mario assured him, “for a lot of years in prison.”
Midnight Louie leaped onto Temple’s lap, so she tumbled over sideways, just as Nicky and Macho Mario pulled major iron from their shoulder holsters. Like guns. Like big guns. Like they were ready to use them for real.
Santiago tried to lurch somewhere, his hips slamming Temple’s back into the hard leather seat, his hands meshing with the taunting 3-D face in the car window.
He’d worked this audiovisual magic. He knew it was an illusion, a high-tech, amazing, and breathtaking illusion—didn’t he? Magicians like Max and Cosimo Sparks knew illusion from reality. Santiago, mystic architect, did not seem to know.
His hands crashed through thick tinted glass as they sought to touch, to stop, to strangle the dead man’s image, spraying blood and sharp shards, some maybe of bone.
Temple cringed against the seat back as the whole Cat Pack clan joined Louie in surrounding her with a moat of fang and claw, and she felt boas of black cat fur wreathing her torso.
And lots of sharp claws braced on her—ow!—thighs.
Macho Mario and Nicky grabbed Santiago and pulled him onto the opposite seat, stuffed immobile between them and two gun barrels.
The window image had vanished. Only the faces on the graphic tunnel walls flashed past, and then the steel vault, all impressive metal facade and empty significance.
“That’s the wrong vault,” Santiago shouted. “That vault is a substitute. It’s empty. It’s not supposed to be empty.”
“Nor are you,” Nicky said, producing handcuffs from his jacket side pocket and wrapping Santiago’s back-pinned wrists as Uncle Mario kept the gun at the man’s chest. “You’re just another empty suit, Santiago, running a scam to feed your greed. And we Fontanas hold the key to your past and your future. Arriba!”
“Thanks for taking us for a ‘ride,’” Macho Mario chortled, holstering his revolver once the man was manacled. “Brings back the bad old days in the most delightful way. Unfortunately, modern times are not in favor of ‘offing’ bad apples on the spot. We have Detective Ferraro and other officers of the law waiting at the other end to take you into custody for killing Cosimo Sparks. Thanks for the really thrilling ride.”
Scowling and handcuffed, a silent Santiago remained bracketed by the Fontana family while the car rushed past the effects he’d created.
Temple, upright again, with four cats for seatmates, leaned across to whisper into Macho Mario Fontana’s ear.
“I’m surprised you’d let a girl go along for the action and danger.”
“Ah, Nicky told me you’d get more violent if we didn’t than if we did,” Macho Mario whispered back. “The detective did whisk Van and her long-stemmed girlfriend out of harm’s way.”
“Santiago could have been armed,” she admitted, leaning back to her side of the car.
“Only by his massive ego,” Nicky put in. “He thought he was home free, and also free to hunt a second vault’s cache to his heart’s content.”
“And, besides,” Macho Mario said, reaching inside his jacket, which made the haughty Santiago flinch, “I have a little something—”
Temple pulled her feet in tight as the black boa gathered close to her and emitted a ganglike growl.
“Not to worry, little lady and little kitty cats.” Macho Mario extended a long cream envelope to Temple. “Here’s a gift certificate for a big little shopping spree at Gangsters Moll Mall for any damage our ride here might have done to your rolled-down hose.”
He managed to sneak in a pat on her bare knee as she took the envelope. His thick, still-jet-black eyebrows rose. Macho Mario hadn’t realized hose was passé for modern, comfort-driven women.
“Uh, sorry for ruffling your … fur, Miss Barr,” he said, hastily reclaiming his hand before any of the four cats could snap it off, and sending Nicky an apologetic look.
Macho Mario Fontana might be old mob, but he had no idea who possessed the important fur not to ruffle in this gangster car, Temple thought, looking down and smiling on a constellation of green, and one set of gold, cats’-eyes.
That would be Midnight Louie and the latest hot new gang in town, the Cat Pack.
On Thin Ice
After uniformed officers had hauled away the urbane and protesting Santiago, who claimed he had lawyers on three continents and would use them to sue everyone in Vegas involved in this travesty, Detective Ferraro asked “the principals” to remain behind, while the Glory Hole Gang and the Fontana brothers—the elegant Revienne escorted in their midst—took the trio of Chunnel elevators up to the exit on the Crystal Phoenix’s landscaped grounds.
Nicky and Van and Temple and Uncle Mario had no such luck losing their accompanying four cats, who ignored police wishes and stuck around, sometimes quite literally. Midnight Louie and Louise shadowed Temple and Van, while Three O’Clock glued himself to Nicky’s pant leg. Uncle Mario had somehow ended up with Ma Barker at his feet, favoring him with frequent upward but off-eyed glances that were either admiring or murderous.