Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

I nod modestly. Mr. Max and I work well together, even when we do not know about it beforehand.

“That masked man would have saved Shangri-La too, if Hyacinth had not gone postal.”

Squeaker is not as sheltered as I had suspected.

“Louie, I do not wish to be found up here!” she says. “I am very sensitive about facing humans. I was not treated well by them. Call me a coward but I must find a way out of here. Quick! Before they catch me and put me in a cage again.”

“No problem, Princess.”

I peer out Hyacinth’s entrance niche. Everyone below is focusing on the emergency personnel who have made a circle around Shangri-La’s form. The rescue parties are swarming up the tunnels behind us.

“We will have to risk a little Tarzan swing up to that tangle of bungee cords under the ceiling.”

“I fear man but not the works of man,” Squeaker says. “You know where you wish us to go. Lead and I will follow.”

Suits me. This leap is kit’s play compared to the acrobatics I use to scale the Circle Ritz most nights. I lunge, hang over empty air for a split second, and tangle sixteen shivs in Mr. Max’s special ceiling cradle of bungee cords. It still holds firm.

Squeaker glances over her pale cream shoulder at the approaching hordes of inquisitive humans, then blinks her baby blues at me. Or maybe she winks, but I personally think that she is too shy.

She launches her lean form like an Olympics gymnast and in a moment my webbing trembles from the impact of another sixteen-point landing.

“Unlatch yourself and follow me,” I say, swinging into the barely visible open black mouth of Mr. Max’s escape hatch.

She manages the transfer like one running for her life.

When we are both safely situated, I lean out and slash a key bungee cord free. The whole mess falls free, then snags on a piece of dangling platform twenty feet below.

Squeaker’s velvet gray muzzle wrinkles with puzzlement at my action.

“The masked man is a sort of friend of mine. Besides, the longer they do not find his escape tunnel, the longer we will have to escape.”

With that we turn and make our easy way through an anaconda-size twist and turn of giant piping. Sometimes, even I wonder how Mr. Max Kinsella does it.

But I am glad he did it.

Brass Tactics

“Is she . . . dead?” Temple asked Randy.

He nodded, his face paler than his ash-blond hair. “I’m pretty sure. You don’t have to see for yourself.”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll come too. They’ll only let us so close.”

But he hadn’t reckoned there’d be the sober ring of Fontana brothers circling the death scene like white-suited angels from a 1940s movie fantasy.

Despite their light-colored garb, their serious and handsomely swarthy faces lent the somber air of a Mafia funeral to the occasion. They posed with their broad defensive backs to the victim, legs splayed apart as if for a last stand, hands clasped in front like an honor guard with the muzzles of the black Berettas in those hands aimed at the white marble floor.

Temple could already hear a wave of rising consternation from the casino as emergency technicians and police forged their way through the crowded aisles to this cul-de-sac of tragedy at the very back of the huge hotel.

Probably there was a nearer, more discreet entrance, but emergency crews couldn’t gamble on finding it. This entire museum wing was new and had never required a siren run before.

“Well?” she asked the nearest Fontana brother. He looked down at her, his expression stern as a Marine’s.

“Not pretty, Miss Temple.”

“This is my job scene.”

Ralph nodded and shifted to one side.

She saw the form aptly described as “crumpled.”

The painted face was turned toward her, almost accusingly. The traditions of Chinese opera face painting made American clown-face colors elegant: white face accomplished with fine rice powder, not heavy grease paint. No enlarged fire-engine-red lips, but the crimson petals of a mouth echoed in a red blush over the cheekbones and around the eyes, delicate as a pale rose petal. Slashing black lines exaggerating natural eyelashes and eyebrows.

And a crooked trickle of blood drooling out one corner of the perfectly painted crimson bud of a mouth. A pool of that blood engulfed the horse tail–long strands of dull black hair, probably false, haloing the figure.

This woman had stolen Temple’s ring as part of a stage magic act and probably participated in her kidnapping. So Temple shouldn’t bat an eyelash to see this stagy figure melted into white marble like her darker sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, right?

Temple batted two eyelashes, thick with tears of shock.

Aldo stepped in front of her to conceal the body again.

“Cheese it, the cops,” he muttered, while an adept hand gesture made the Beretta vanish.

The Fontanas had broken rank and melted bonelessly into their ice cream suits, backing into the watching crowd of murmuring hotel and corporate honchos.

Randy pulled Temple aside as a gurney crashed through the mob faster than an Olympic sled. They were called over to the fringes by the murmuring executives.