Cat In A Leopard Spot

“I said I was Van von Rhine’s personal assistant calling from the Crystal Phoenix. We were running up against deadline on opening our animal attraction and could Mr. Van Burkleo spare a few minutes with their ace project coordinator, who could use some expert tips for the Phoenix exotic petting zoo? Van Burkleo doesn’t turn major hotel-casinos down, especially one with a manager whose name so neatly mirrors his own.”

“The Phoenix isn’t so major compared to some of the T rexes in this town now that MGM Grand has bought out Steve Wynn.”

Max smiled tightly, never taking his eyes from the rutted road. “But Macho Mario Fontana is major muscle; this guy’d never irritate a Fontana operation.”

“The Phoenix has nothing to do with Nicky’s uncle Mario. I know that for a fact.”

Max’s terse smile widened into a grin. “But Cyrus Van Burkleo doesn’t know that. And don’t you tell him.”

“So what is my mission at Rancho Van Burkleo?”

“Be on your toes”—Max glanced to the floorboard and at her platform wedge sandals—“which I don’t have to tell you to do. Ask anything, see everything, and make mental notes on it all. If you happen to notice a leopard that isn’t as happy a camper as the big cats you just saw at Animal Oasis…don’t let on. Naive, nubile, and perky should do it.”

“Max, that’s sexist.”

“So is Van Burkleo. I wouldn’t send you in there if I didn’t know he had a blind spot that’s just your size. Think you can handle it?”

If Molina had asked her that question, she would have snarled “Sure” on a knee-jerk impulse. With Max, she was tempted to hedge. And that told her she was getting all too dependent on him.

Time to go face King Kong on her own, hopefully without her hands tied behind her back.

Rancho Van Burkleo was tucked even farther back from the highway than Animal Oasis.

It sported no workshop-lettered sign. Only a desert track that suddenly turned into asphalt running toward the end of the world.

“There’s nothing out here, Max.”

“That’s the idea you’re supposed to have. Slow down and drop me off here. I want to scout the perimeter.”

“Dressed in black?”

“Left my camouflage clothes at home. It’ll be all right. At this point, the security should be mostly to keep the animals in, rather than humans out.

“You seem to have scouted this place before,” Temple observed as she slowed the car to a jolting stop on the rough road.

“No, but the data in Kirby’s files was fairly specific, at least about the perimeter of this place. Van Burkleo is one of those quasi-legal operators every law enforcement unit—state police, DEA, INS, Initials R Us, ad nauseam—would love to catch with his fingers in some illegal cookie jar.”

Temple said nothing more. Max was sending her into a serious danger zone. Either he honestly trusted her instincts or the umbrella of the Crystal Phoenix and the Fontana family was a larger, stronger defense than she realized. She was a little slow on the uptake, but half a lifetime of surviving on animal instincts had made Max a master at weighing danger.

Animal instincts. Number one was self-preservation. Temple had better dial hers up to maximum.

Max had told her to drive until she couldn’t, so she continued along the road more cautiously than usual, in other words, slowly.

Thickets of scrub clustered on the flat land, obscuring what lay beyond. What lay beyond was rougher terrain, crisscrossed by dry washes that could fill up with water breathtakingly fast in a hard Nevada rain, which came seldom but devastatingly.

A lot of washes were damp in their rocky bottoms, despite a long lack of rain. She began to suspect that these washes could be filled mechanically to put off trespassers. Some moat!

Finally, a gate set into piled rocks loomed ahead like a minimountain. An iron fence extended in either direction as far as the eye could see. Must have cost as much as a Strip hotel-casino wet area, and almost nobody would see this. Except for Max’s assumed high rollers. A modest sign read Rancho Exotica. She did a double-take when she read it, because the first time through she’d seen: Rancho Erotica. Las Vegas conditioning at work.

When she stopped at the gate, she noticed a speaker and camera set into the raw, red stone.

It squawked at her, so she squawked back after getting out of the car to get her mouth close enough to the speaker. The high-mounted camera recorded her most unflattering angle: from above she looked like a red-headed mop with no body.

“Temple Barr from the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino. Mr. Van Burkleo’s office is expecting me.”

A voice so distorted it was genderless instructed her to proceed when the gates opened.

She tramped back into the car, irritated at being too short to lean out its open window and submit to this inspection with dignity.

The high, barred gates retracted into their red stone mountains with the slick mechanical ease of ancient tomb booby-traps springing on the wary hero of an Indiana Jones movie.