Temple parked her so-new-it-squeaked red Miata convertible behind Gangsters Casino, a three-story building designed to evoke a Prohibition speakeasy.
She didn’t have to put up the car’s top because it had never been down. Wouldn’t want to ruffle her hair-sprayed headful of natural curls before she met the great goddess Wong.
It wasn’t as if Temple was part of the Wong entourage and needed to meet and greet the incoming party. She was strictly a local liaison. But the first Wong media appearance was at a TV station where Temple, as a local public relations freelancer, was definitely persona grata. So she was here to grease everyone else’s wheels, and this rendezvous had been prearranged. She would ride alone in the limo to the airport. There she’d meet Wong and entourage in the private jet area. Then they all would wheel away to a full day’s program of promotional appearances.
Temple was uneasy with the arrangement. First, she liked to drive more than she liked to be driven, even in a block-long limo. And in Vegas, where the blocks were as long as the latest luxury hotel-casino grounds, stretch limos looked like they’d got their lube jobs on a medieval rack.
If you absolutely had to use a limo, though, Gangsters was the place to put up with. The stand-alone casino, having no attached hotel rooms to provide a gambling base, made its mark with a clever gimmick. It ferried customers to and from the major Strip hotels in an array of custom “gangland” limos.
The fanciful stretch limos and their gangster-suited chauffeurs had proven so popular that a separate limo biz evolved: Gangsters Legendary Limos.
Temple walked in the warm morning sun to the small rental office, passing an awesomely long lineup of limos.
The Elvis model was a hot pink 1957 stretch Cadillac burnished with a hunka-hunka burning chrome. The Bugsy? That was a humpbacked black ’40s number emblazoned with real bullet holes. The Marilyn was a metallic platinum blond ’60s Chevy. And the Sinatra was a sleek ’70s felt-fedora gray Buick Park Avenue. Every limo was all-American vintage. No foreign models went on the rack at Gangsters.
More celebrity limos filled out the fleet, including the white-tiger-striped Siegfried and Roy, but today only these few sat idle on the lot, and the S&R model had been retired with honors after Roy Horn’s tragic onstage injuries a few months ago.
The limo Temple was to ride in had been selected for its feng shui political correctness: the Newman. It was the color of money, a green Lincoln.
This wasn’t an Irish green, or an olive green but a muted midtone green that Temple hoped would find favor with the feng shui maven. From her recent reading, green and blue both signified hope. Lord knew that Amelia Wong insisted on all the favorable signs for her expeditions.
Inside the air-conditioned building, Temple blew a soggy lock off her forehead. She approached the Edward G. Robinson clone manning the desk in a pinstriped dark wool suit despite the tropical-weight weather outside.
“I’m supposed to accompany the Wong party limo to the airport. My name is Temple Barr.”
“There are no wrong party limos here at Gangsters,” he cracked wise out the side of his mouth. “And Temple Bar is on Lake Mead.”
“I am not the geographic Temple Bar,” she said. “I am the PR Temple Barr. Two r’s.”
He winked at her and checked a log book. “The Newman has been preempted by Warren Buffet, the financial whiz. You’re now in the Chan. Solid black. Around back.”
Hmmm, in the feng shui color system black signified power and authority (good), but also gloom and death (not good). Temple had read of a school called Black Sect Feng Shui, however, and hoped, greenly, that Amelia Wong liked it. Anyway, done was done.
Temple nodded and turned away. Then turned back. “Is that limo named for Charlie or Jackie?”
His shrug didn’t dislodge his Klingon-broad shoulder pads. “Black is for black belt. Who’s Charlie?”
“Never mind.” Temple hustled out into the heat again, carrying on a crabby interior monologue.
Who’s Charlie? Didn’t anyone watch vintage films anymore? Charlie Chan and his pithy Oriental wisdom and number-one son weren’t totally passé. Hadn’t this skunk-striped bozo heard that Lucy Liu was going to star as Charlie Chan’s granddaughter in a new flick? Of course there’d be some Jackie Chan-style martial arts on display.
By now she was nearing the limo. The driver catapulted out of the front seat to hotfoot half a mile back to the rear door.
Somebody at Gangsters had tumbled to the Asian connection, but this driver looked Japanese. Uh-oh.
Temple ducked into the dim, cushy interior behind the India-ink window tint.
She was instantly tush-deep in kid-glove leather. Since she was so lightweight she couldn’t sink into beach sand with barbells on her ankles, this was some cushy cowhide!
The limo’s layout was fit for a rock band or a prom party. That meant seating in the squared round, like a ’60s conversation pit. Above Temple’s head was a limo-wide row of control buttons and LED readouts it would take a fighter pilot to master. Burlwood doors were sunk here and there into the limo upholstery. She was sure they concealed a TV, full bar, and plenty of snacks.
Despite all the tempting buttons waiting to be pushed, Temple felt like Alice in a high-tech Wonderland. No way was she going to touch anything here. Who knows? She might suddenly shrink or swell. Although any swelling inside this conspicuous consumption-mobile was likely to be of the ego variety, she thought, if one got used to rodding around in such elongated glory.
Speaking of which, the limo pulled smoothly out of the lot. The driver was remote behind a glass barrier Temple had no idea how to lower. The limo glided into an endless turn onto the side street.
Temple didn’t really look forward to meeting Amelia Wong, the feng shui darling of Wall Street. She kept running the proper pronunciation of the phrase in her head. Not Amelia Wong. That was child’s play. Feng Shui, though, was pronounced “fung shway.” Strange language, this mystical interior design dialect.
While the frantic suburban development around Las Vegas made it one of the fastest-expanding cities in the nation, the Las Vegas Strip and environs were still as simple as pie: the Strip was one long, busy eight-lane street called Las Vegas Boulevard. It was lined with enough Fantasylands to make the late Walt Disney so jealous he was liable to go into premature cryogenic meltdown. And right next to the hotels, McCarran Airport. To thirty-some million annual visitors, that’s all Vegas was: the palm-greased skid from driver to bellman to dealer, from airport to hotel-casino to airport.
Temple never tired of gawking at the high-rise hotels and their various iconic towers along the Strip. The Paris’s Eiffel Tower. New York, New York’s Gotham skyline and Statue of Liberty. The MGM lion. The Luxor’s Sphinx . . .
She eyed one of the limo’s burlwood chests. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. She could use a bottled water, but didn’t dare go hunting for it like one to the limousine born.
In minutes, anyway, the limo slowed to a stop in the executive terminal area of the airport.
Temple, who always aimed to be fast out of the starting gate, had to tap her clogs while the driver dismounted and walked the long, long way around his black steel steed to release her from the buggy section in back. Barging unaided out of a chauffeured limo seemed the height of low-brow anxiety.
Temple was aware that everyone stared as she emerged.
“Everyone” was only a couple of jeans-wearing mechanics, but it was more than enough to make her glad she had kept her sunglasses on, like the ersatz starlet they took her for.
A sleek white baby jet was just taxiing toward them.
Temple boosted her tote bag onto her shoulder and turned with everyone else to watch its arrival. A welcoming party of three: one in Nine West, two in axle grease.
Here on the tarmac you could hear the engines whine down to a dying wheeze. You could feel the sand in your contact lenses and the vibration under your feet. (Even, in Temple’s case, through two inches of foam-enhanced platform shoe.) It felt like the days of early aviation.
Too bad, Temple thought, that Amelia Earhart wasn’t about to deplane.
The door behind the cockpit cracked open and fell toward the tarmac, its interior stairs resembling a stopped escalator.
People began pouring out: first men, then women.
Temple had memorized the names, rank, and suspected gender of the Wong party, but as they swarmed out like ants, all presumptions vanished from her mind.
The first woman helped out by the first two men to deplane caught herself up face-to-face with Temple.
Temple introduced herself, then added. “I’m doing local PR for the Maylords opening.”
“Baylee Harris.” The woman extended an unenthusiastic hand. “Ms. Wong’s personal assistant.”
Baylee. A girl. Okay. Tall, blond, and ultra-WASP.
Next.
“Tiffany Yung.” Another assistant, this one a personal beautician. Definitely female. Also short, bespectacled, brunette, and Asian.
“Carl Osgaard.” Male. Tall, blond, and Scandinavian. What was he doing here? “Ms. Wong’s dietician and personal trainer.”
Oh.
So far they were all in their late twenties to early thirties. Temple was relieved that she fell on the cusp of that. At least there would be no age gap.
“Pritchard Merriweather, Ms. Wong’s media liaison.” Tall, dark, handsome. A black woman with mucho presence. “I really don’t require a local media rep.” But not male, no way. In fact she was an ar-chetypically female, first-person-possessive female! A bit like a tall, dark, and authoritative female homicide lieutenant Temple knew. And sometimes loathed.
“I actually represent Maylords,” Temple said. Mildly. “Kenny May-lord, the CEO of Maylords, will meet us at the TV studio for his joint appearance with Ms. Wong on Las Vegas Now!”
Feeling surrounded by two tall women, she lowered her voice and asked the only burning question on her mind. “What’s with the guys in Men’s Wearhouse suits and Matrix Reloaded sunglasses?”
Only Baylee deigned to answer her. “Death threats.”
Death threats? Temple eyed the sinister duo again. They made the ersatz mobster behind the Gangsters desk look as quaint as an antique pump organ.
How could advice on dressing your house for success earn death threats? From aggravated contractors forced to install fountains at the front door? That would run up the water bills in an arid climate like Las Vegas, sure, but feng shui had swept all the chichi world. Get over it.
“If you’d rather not ride with us—” Pritchard suggested hopefully.
“No problem.” Temple was dying to see how the burlwood trapdoors worked. “Death threats are old hat here in Las Vegas. The cat’s fedora.”
Nobody got her last quip because they’d all swiveled to salute the queen bee. B as in bitch, it was reported.
At last she arrived, the brand name underwriting the flunkies: Amelia Wong, the woman who had made fashion, food, and home furnishings into a spiritual discipline, who had whipped simple domestic arts into a form of metaphysical and merchandising martial arts.
She was tiny. Tinier than Temple and Tiffany Yung. Bird boned, if that bird were a stainless-steel blue jay. Older than she looked, which was about forty. All spine, like a Victorian spinster. Gorgeous in that deceptively serene Asian way. Charming. Like a cobra swaying before it strikes.
“What is that car?” she asked the moment she laid eyes on Temple, the native Las Vegan.
“The Chan.”
“Chan? What is this? An abbreviation of channel? Did that TV station send it?”
“No. And yes.”
Crow black eyes fixed on Temple. “You are being intentionally cryptic.”
“I am being intentionally precise. The limo’s name is not an abbreviation of ‘channel’ but a tribute to two great Asian film stars: Jackie Chan—”
Amelia Wong snorted. The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz had said of her evil plans for Dorothy: “These things must be done dellll-i-cately.” That is exactly how Amelia Wong snorted.
Temple went on. “—and the purely fictional, but immortal, Charlie Chan.”
“Rampant racist stereotyping.”
“But . . . ultraintelligent and charming, all the same.”
“Is that a compliment, Ms.—?” Ms. Wong glanced to her entourage.
“Barr,” Baylee supplied.
“Barr?”
Temple inclined her head. “A compliment is only as good as the spirit in which it is given . . . and taken.”
“What is your birth sign?”
“Gemini in the Zodiac. I was born, however, in the year of the Tiger—”
“Ah. So. A creature of passion and daring, and the sign that wards off fire, thieves, and ghosts. You do not look like a Tiger. I am expected someplace. No doubt.”
Amelia Wong’s entourage flocked around her, wafting her into the limo-cum-rec room.
Temple ended up, sans bottled water and built-in bar, riding up front with the chauffeur, Yokomatsu. She learned nothing about the limo-sine’s exotic inner workings, except the automatic shift, which was very old news to her. The chauffeur’s given name? Charlie, of course. An unemployed twenty-six-year-old blackjack dealer with a degree from Caltech, delivering a monologue on the pits a down economy was for the freelance soul all the way into town.
Temple began to enjoy herself for the first time that morning.
Lacey Davenport was adamant, and willing to say so.
“I’m sorry. The green room can’t accommodate a crowd like this. Especially not now. We had a sudden opportunity to book some normally reclusive Las Vegas celebrities. We have the white tigers and lions with us today.”
“So does a zoo,” tall, dark Pritchard said.
“This is a very rare TV appearance for two very endangered species,” short, dishwater-brown-haired Lacey Davenport answered. Firmly. “And Siegfried and Roy are heroes in this town, especially now. It was an eleventh-hour photo op, so we simply can’t accommodate you all in the Green Room. Not with lions and tigers in residence. It’s not safe.”
The bears, Temple thought, would be the Wong entourage. Ill-tempered bears.
“Ms. Wong requires all her personnel with her at all times,” Pritchard said.
Lacey leaped. “In that case, we have an empty office down the hall. But you’ll have to crowd in. And there are no mirrors.”
“Foul feng shui,” Amelia Wong mentioned to the ceiling.
By then the party had swelled with the addition of Kenny May-lord, CEO and president of Maylords. Maylords home furnishing store was new to the Las Vegas market and aimed to debut with a splash, perhaps of fountains, thanks to week-long special appearances by Amelia Wong.
“The lions and tigers can move,” Pritchard said. She herself moved toward the closed door behind Lacey.
Something within roared. Not growled, not snarled. Roared.
Pritchard jumped back. “This is ridiculous. Ms. Wong is a billion-dollar corporation. You can’t palm a mere office off on Wong Inc.”
The men in black, still wearing sunglasses, either placed their hands over their hearts in preparation for reciting the pledge of allegiance or to massage their not terribly well-concealed Glocks.
Temple cleared her throat. Her voice always had a slight raspy tone, which served well for catching people’s attention.
“Lacey, isn’t Studio B empty right now, until the noon news? Couldn’t you install the Wong party there? There would be plenty of room, and . . . no one would expect them to wait there, so security measures would be even better.”
Lacey loosed a deep sigh. Temple had worked with her many times before. “Sure. If that’s what you want.” She flashed Temple a relieved grin. “We’ll send in pages with soft drinks.”
“No soft drinks.” Pritchard again. “Our faxes clearly stated that only Vita Clara lime-flavored bottled water is used by Ms. Wong. Her associates prefer Evian.”
She glanced at the distinct midwesterners in the party: the intimidated Kenny Maylord and Temple. “I don’t know what these people drink, but all of our needs were clearly laid out. Didn’t you get my faxes?”
“Yes, but all the bottled water we have has been put out for the lions and tigers,” Lacey said, deadpan. “They get agitated in a TV studio, where the lights are hot, and they pant. A lot. They use roasting pans for water dishes when they’re away from their compound. And the Cloaked Conjuror and Shangri-La are also here with their leopard and panther, so there isn’t a drop of bottled water anywhere, except the nearest convenience store.” She eyed the entourage. “Perhaps someone on your crew could dash out—”
Even more clear than bottled water was the fact that it was bad feng shui for a Wong flunky to fend for oneself.
“We’ll wait in the studio,” Pritchard said shortly.
The bodyguards flowed into lockstep behind Lacey as she led the way down the hall.
Baylee looked worried, and Amelia Wong looked as though she were on another plane—or wished she was, literally, one out of this tank town—ignoring all the fuss about arrangements.
Baylee caught Temple’s arm and held her back from the parade for a while.
“Is it always like this in Las Vegas?” she asked in a whisper.
“Like what?”
“Lions in the Green Room?”
Temple nodded. “You have to understand. Las Vegas is home turf to the world’s most exotic acts. Visiting celebrities seldom can compete with the homebodies, especially if the locals weigh a few hundred pounds and are lavishly furred. Sort of like Liberace on testosterone.”
That image stopped Baylee cold for fifteen seconds. Then she frowned. “Ms. Wong isn’t used to this sort of treatment.”
“Luckily, I am.”
“So. Thank you for coming up with an alternative to the Green Room. And a page boy dashed out for the requisite brands of bottled water. If he hadn’t volunteered, I thought Pritchard was almost ready to set the two Dobermen on somebody.”
Temple smiled at Baylee’s nickname for the Wong muscle.
“They’ll be kept busy now,” she said. “The studio is huge and filled with dozens of cables of uncertain origin. Checking them out should keep the Dobermen occupied until showtime. I asked Lacey to make sure a healthful appetizer tray is delivered too. Nothing like gnawing on cruditées to soothe the savage soul. Funny how white lions and tigers and media stars like their meals raw these days.”
Baylee’s smile was nervous. “I see why you’re needed here. Our party’s endangered predators should be purring by now.”
“Thanks. And now I’ll leave things to Team Wong. I need to check out something back in the Green Room.”
Temple was pleased to notice Baylee watching her exit with a slight expression of dismay. Apparently not all of the Wong minions had been browbeaten into institutional arrogance.
She turned and retraced her steps, pausing when she was out of sight around a corner. Then she waited. Two minutes later, a harried Lacey Davenport came along on her soundless Nikes, all the better to not disturb filming.
“Temple!” Lacey jumped back as she rounded the corner at a speedy clip. “You scared me. Are these fen shouey people from Mars or what?”
Lacey was solid through and through, from her deft but hefty figure to her unflappable attitude.
“’Fung Schway,’ ” Temple said. “I hope the interviewers got the phonetic pronunciation I wrote out for them or there’ll be Hong Kong to pay.”
“It’s on their cheat sheets, but I don’t have to bend myself out of shape trying to remember it now.” Lacey shook her no-fuss permed head. “Why aren’t you baby-sitting that crew? They could use it.”
“They made clear that they want to stew over the situation without an outsider as witness. Besides, I’m more personally interested in your first act.”
“That’s right. You have a cat at home. These animals are magnificent!”
“This is a spot to support the Siegfried and Roy zoo breeding program?”
“Of course.”
“And the Cloaked Conjuror and Shangri-La serve as spokespersons now that Roy has been so badly injured? Will their leopards be on camera too?”
“Leopard and black panther. Yes, but leashed.”
“Not to worry. They’re the same critters, all leopards. Just the color is different. Listen. Can I hang out on the studio fringes to watch the cat act?”
“I don’t know. We’re taping the Big Whites from the Green Room, can’t risk them on the set with people after what happened when Roy’s tiger dragged him offstage by the throat. Imagine: Las Vegas’s hottest ticket and a new multimillion-dollar ‘lifetime’ contract history in just a few seconds! That’s the trouble. We now know anything can happen with the big cats. You know how to behave yourself on a set, Temple, but . . . why are you so hot to watch this segment in person?”
“Let’s just say I can’t resist magnificent animals in the flesh.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that magician-boyfriend of yours. Or is it ex-boyfriend? I never see you two around much anymore.”
“Max is . . . touring.” Temple shrugged. “Really, I’d love to see those cats close up, live, and in person. Okay?”
“Sure. Anything you want for getting those crazy decorator people off my case. Who do they think they are?”
“In tune with the universe. Only it’s theirs, not ours.”
“If they try to rearrange my cameramen, it’s all off.”
“And I’ll already be on the scene to baby-sit them when you bring them out from the other studio.”
“Deal.”
Temple nodded and peeled away from Lacey to follow a nondescript hall until she encountered a wall of black linen curtains. She peeked between the first opening.
The Las Vegas Now! set sat in a concrete-floored, high-ceilinged warehouse environment. It was surrounded by a web of thick black cables on the floor and three manned cameras.
The usual “living room” setup of sofa and chairs had been supplemented by banks of large potted palms. Imported pedestals on either side showed off the visiting big cats to advantage.
Yes, Temple had a big cat at home: a big alley cat named Midnight Louie. Yes, she liked to see the magnificent felines, who outweighed a baby grand piano in person, and performing, even though that was recognized for the risk it was since the tragic incident that had instantly closed Las Vegas’s biggest show a few months ago. Siegfried and Roy deserved a standing ovation for their work in preserving the white tigers and lions now lost to the wild.
But what Temple really, really wanted to see was the lesser act and the lesser cats, now on the set and being interviewed and admired. And she didn’t really want to see the Cloaked Conjuror, the masked magician who’d made a hot ticket out of unmasking the illusions of other magicians. As the significant other of a “legitimate” magician, Temple wished him bad cess, as they used to say in antique plays.
No. She wanted to eyeball, up close and very personal, the woman who had tricked her out of Max’s friendship-cum-engagement ring. A very decent little emerald from Max gleamed on her hand at this very moment, but it was a consolation prize, a mere crackerjack token compared to the opal and diamond ring he’d given her for Christmas in New York City almost six months ago.
Temple felt she still contained the heart of a wrathful tiger as she remembered her previous encounter with Shangri-La when the woman magician had played the Opium Den. How easily Temple had been lured onstage as the audience shill. How she had been magically stripped of her romantic ring and then kidnapped with intentions to cross state lines . . . not hard in Las Vegas, which was cheek-by-Hoover-Dam with Arizona. How weeks later that very ring had turned up on the fringe of a murder scene. Ultimately it had come into the custody of Max’s and her worst enemy, homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina, a seriously overgrown woman whose hands wore nothing more exciting than a big, clumsy class ring, and probably never would.
Temple had last glimpsed the delicate Tiffany construction of her ring in a plastic evidence baggie on Molina’s desk.
That was too detestable to take sitting or lying down, or even standing up, as she was now.
Shangri-La had wrested the ring away and vanished.
Now the Asian enigma had reappeared after several months, newly partnered with the Cloaked Conjuror. Both magicians performed in masks. CC—another target of death threats; was that this year’s trendy problem or what?—wore a striped full-head mask that included a device that garbled his vocal patterns, so he sounded like a secret witness on a TV tabloid show.
Shangri-La was more subtle. She was masked by makeup, painted like a figure from a Chinese opera. A dead white rice-powder face with flagrant red wings shadowing her eyes made her into an effective icon. She leaped about the stage in tattered robes, flaunting snaky tendrils of hair and long mandarin fingernails as curved and sharp as tiger claws.
She was long overdue for a comeuppance for the ring caper, but Temple had not seen hide nor hair nor unfiled fingernail of her until now.
Now that the Wong party was safely sucking French bottled water and California broccoli florets in their studio-in-waiting, Temple was darned if she was just going to lurk in the wings and watch the thieving witch’s on-camera performance. It was time to confront Shangri-La coming off the set and demand to know how the ring charmed off Temple’s finger onstage had ended up weeks later on the fringes of a parking-lot crime scene.