Matt parked in the MGM-Grand lot across the street. "I thought walking over would be the best way to see it. Can you walk this far in the Midnight Louie heels?"
"Can a stork stride?" Temple scrambled out of the car before Matt could come around to assist her. "This is so much better than real life. Even for Christmas, Manhattan is granite-gray drab. They should get with the mauve and verdigris buildings."
"Mauve and verdigris, huh? I took them for pink and pale green."
"Well, the green is the aged-copper color of the mock Statue of Liberty. Also the color of money. A very subtle reference in its own screaming way."
Crossing Las Vegas Boulevard was made simple by escalators up to the Brooklyn Bridge, whose light-draped spans glimmered like golden garlands against the night sky.
"Now that does look like the real thing," Temple said.
An escalator on the other side glided them down to the street level and the reflecting pool that surrounded the Lady with the Lamp.
They joined the random current of people bearing left past the Statue of Liberty to the hotel's main entrance. The front of the long porte cochere was a neon litany announcing "New York-New York" against a spiky crown motif borrowed from Lady Liberty.
In fact, a bed of flowers basking in the lurid neon glow repeated the tiara design. Across the driveway, stationed before the brassy row of entrance doors, pulsated a string of stretch limos painted Broadway yellow and striped with checkers to emulate New York City cabs.
Matt nodded to the limos and their vanity plates, which read NY NY 1, 3 and 4. "Wonder how Gangster's likes that?"
"You can't copyright ideas, especially in this town," Temple answered. She looked up at the glittering gold tiara above her, and the gilt art-deco fountain designs of the entrance facade.
"Cool."
Matt pulled a glossy brochure from his jacket pocket. "We're due at the Bar At Times Square for a predinner cocktail. I've got a map here--"
"I bet you do. This outing must have set you back a mint."
They pulled on Lady Liberty's torch-shaped door handles and entered the icy, dark interior of the hotel casino.
"It was nothing, compared to the second-hand sofa."
"And the necklace," Temple added in a spasm of guilt (or was that spelled "gilt" in the glittery ambiance of New York-New York?). Her fingertips traced the small feline figure at her throat.
Beneath them, marble inlaid floors sketched out another gigantic version of Lady Liberty's headgear. Around them chinked and chug-chimed and electronically yodeled dozens and dozens of slot machines. Ellis Island this was not.
They followed a marble-paved path past some upscale shops to the Central Park area.
"Oh." Temple paused.
Despite the eternal night sky of the casino interior, they were positioned to enter what she considered a Chinese plate scene: weeping willow trees, autumn trees half afire with fall colors amid the green leaves of summer, stuffed birds beside artistically arranged nests, a bridge over the untroubled waters of a small in-door lake.
And always the undying chatter and whoop of the flocking slot machines.
They crossed the-bridge to the Bar at Times Square, its lit red apple poised high above the crowds, ready for the traditional New Year's Eve dip at midnight.
They found a free cocktail table for two, and squeezed into the seats.
"Cozy," Temple observed.
"I'd say crowded. And noisy."
A waiter slouched over with true Manhattan nonchalance.
Matt flashed a green chit and the waiter was gone as fast as he had come.
"The drinks are built in," Matt said. "No choice."
"Another authentic touch of Olde New York."
"You sound a bit jaded."
"Maybe lugging Midnight Louie around Manhattan can do that. So tell me about the Great Manhunt here in Las Vegas."
"Effinger. What a bust. For Molina, anyway."
"She couldn't hold him for anything."
"How did you know?"
"Oh, guessed." Temple wasn't about to admit that she'd seen Effinger on the loose.
Some women, she supposed, would use Effinger's attack as an excuse to stop seeing Matt.
But telling Matt that he was too dangerous to know, and then hanging out with Max Kinsella was hardly consistent. Not with Max's shady connections having brought a much worse attack down on Temple months before. She suddenly remembered that Effinger was linked to Max as well as Matt. Lieutenant Molina suspected Max of involvement (in other words, murder) with the two dead men found in the casino ceilings of the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix Hotels months apart. The second body had borne Effinger's ID, although it was later proved a decoy when Matt tracked down the real Effinger. Effinger . . . Matt. . . Max, an eternal triangle, but what did it mean? Her thoughts stopped at Matt's continuing commentary on Effinger himself.
"... pretty funny, I guess. Me trailing dear old stepdad through off-Strip dives and finally nailing him at the Blue Mermaid Motel. I kept remembering you met the flamingo guy there.
Blue mermaids and pink flamingos. Only in Las Vegas."
The waiter materialized beside them, whisking two wide-mouth cocktail glasses floating maraschino cherries to the tabletop.
They both leaned over their mystery drinks, puzzled.
"Ah." Temple cracked the case first. "Manhattans, what else?"
Matt sipped his, then frowned. "Kind of. . . sweet. What's in them?"
"Ed Koch only knows! But you can put the cherry aside so the stem doesn't tickle your nose."
"I sampled a lot of strange and undrinkable concoctions on my pilgrimage."
"So what finally gave Effinger away?"
"His drinking habits. Boilermakers. Bartenders remember people's taste in liquor."
"Boilermakers? Yuck."
"I agree. Anyway, I waited at the motel until some guy showed up who was wearing a cowboy hat, and I followed him home."
"Wasn't that risky? Nevada's a western state. Lots of guys could wear cowboy hats."
"Well, the first one to come along was Cliff Effinger."
"So you . . . what? Approached him outside his door, asked him to come along to see the nice policewoman?"
"Not exactly. I, uh, invited myself in. At that point I wasn't sure what I was going to do. That room was such an incredible dump. And Effinger wasn't the ogre I thought he was. What? You look . . . skeptical."
"Tell me about it," Temple said swirling the cherry in her sweet, murky drink. She needed to know what had happened between Matt and his stepfather so she could understand why the man had come for her.
"It's not exactly edifying information for a New Year's Eve gala." Matt made a face as he sipped his Manhattan. "But nothing I have to report about my Christmas vacation is what you could call edifying. So. There's Effinger not believing it's me, and me not believing he's Effinger.
Such a scruffy old creep. Then he tries to run. Suddenly, I'm Tarzan. I feel like I could fling him around like Cheetah. I cool him off in the shower, haul him out to the pay phone by the manager's office and call police headquarters for Molina,"
"That's it? He was just a rag doll?"
Matt nodded soberly, thanks to the foreign taste of the Man-hattan. "He just didn't seem so big and dangerous any more. And he was really, really disturbed that I found him."
"Disturbed?"
"Ah, guess I should use the EI. lingo. Pissed. I never said that to a lady before. Never said that to anyone."
"Heard it, though, I bet. So Molina was duly grateful."
"Not really. She didn't have enough grounds to arrest him, but they kind of... coaxed him into going downtown for an interview. Then Molina lectured me for involving myself. I thought that was that, until she called me just after I got home and asked me to come in to watch his interrogation."
"Watch? Like behind one of those two-way windows?"
Matt nodded. "I'm not sure who she hoped to learn more from: Effinger, or me. Molina's tricky. She's always thinking of something you haven't gotten to yet."