Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“We defected,” Olga said, her quiet voice clogged with tears. “Ivan. Myself. Andrei. All years ago, when that was the only way to leave Russia by free will. Andrei, he became drunk on Western freedom and destroyed his career, almost himself. Ivan and I met in Paris while I toured with the Russian Ballet. When Andrei and I defected, Ivan joined me in helping other defectors. After the Cold War ended, Russians could come and go, but not the Chinese or the North Koreans.”

“We helped them,” Ivan said, “the younger generation of defectors. Covertly, of course. We didn’t want to cause international incidents. With Hai Ling, she had family back home she feared for. She wanted to work anonymously. We helped her in the beginning. Later, we’d lost touch. We didn’t know her stage name. We didn’t know Shangri-La was Hai Ling until she approached us, very discreetly, after we were all here preparing for the exhibition and show opening.”

“She thanked us,” Olga said, “for helping make possible her participation here. For helping to ensure her continuing career, so that she could perform as a star at this magnificent hotel in America . . . and because of us she was here to be coerced into becoming a thief and to die in a stupid accident caused by such a petty motivation as greed!

“She told us she’d been careless,” Olga went on bitterly. “She was so eager to see the exhibition space going up she darted into the area without her constant concealing makeup on. The area was filled with workmen. How could she have known that our masters immediately spotted her. Defectors—their own or other countries’—were their business. They knew her instantly.”

Temple was as speechless as everyone in the room. She had thought that only she remembered the few moments a barefaced Shangri-La had shown herself. And it wasn’t due to bedazzlement at the White Russian exhibition, or any other naive girl reasons she had given to her long-ago sponsors.

It was because she had wanted to taunt Temple. She was already a thief, she had brazenly taken Temple’s Tiffany opal-and-diamond ring from Max onstage. She was no shrinking lotus to quail at someone’s suggestion that she steal a priceless artifact. She’d had some unsolved connection to designer drug dealers. She could turn on her persona as easily as she could spin on a bungee cord, and probably would, for a big enough cut.

Temple could have mentioned all that, but she didn’t want to expose a personal life that led right back to the Mystifying Max Kinsella and the real thief of the scepter.

And she didn’t want to disillusion a pair of heroic old people who revered their heritage and probably regarded Hai Ling as a foster daughter.

Hai Ling, aka Shangri-La, had likely laughed up her scalloped sleeve when she realized that showing herself to Temple had earned her a cut in a major heist. She at least had the grace, or balls, to make her former sponsors feel they had done a good thing all those years ago, and that she was an exemplary graduate of their school for defectors, and someone worth mourning.

Temple would leave her those two true mourners.

Pete Wayans was disrupting the silence by see-sawing a pencil on the lever of his fingers, one end and the other tapping against the tabletop like a metronome.

“So, just who are these ‘masters’ behind all this? As far as I know, these people don’t have ‘masters’ anymore.”

“You don’t know much,” Randy muttered into his double chin.

“Exactly,” Temple said. “Who was putting the pressure on everyone to dance to their tune?”

Ivan eyed Randy. “Sometimes ‘masters’ are czars, or political functionaries, or CEOs. And even if one defects and is safe in another country—or one’s family fled decades ago—the pull of power is a long and deadly one. You have your own masters to account to, Mr. Wayans, and you know it.”

Pete cleared his throat and choked off the pencil.

“And sometimes,” Temple said, “masters are mobsters.”

“Wait a minute here!” Pete Wayans stood up. “That is such an old charge for enterprises in Las Vegas. Maybe the mob was a factor in founding Las Vegas. Maybe it ruled the roost in the fifties. And the sixties.”

“And seventies,” Detective Alch put in.

The other, unidentified man at the doors was unnervingly quiet.

“The mob has gone corporate,” Randy said, “for the most part. It has to answer to . . . folks. It would never endorse a high-scale heist at a major hotel. Bad for business. Everybody’s business.”

“Agreed,” Temple said. “But I’m talking about the Russian mob.” She smiled at Boris and Natasha, who did not smile back.

Ivan pulled Olga off her chair and to the floor.

Wayans gulped, grabbed Randy’s arm, and pulled him down too.

The men at the door remained at attention.

Boris and Natasha pulled two ugly black guns with nasty long barrels that Temple didn’t know what to call.

She did know enough to punch one button on the computer keyboard in front of her that was set to operate the gray flannel blinds that wore mirror shades on the other side.