Cat in a Sapphire Slipper Read online

  “You’re a man used to being in control, Mr. Randolph. If you weren’t wealthy, you wouldn’t be at this sanitarium. If you weren’t willing to risk, you wouldn’t be in a wheelchair.” She leaned closer again, flashed her subtle cleavage, hardly worth it. “Were you drunk?”

  “No!” The response was instant, emphatic. He surprised himself.

  “As I say. You are a man using to being in control. Or believing that he is. Or it could be denial. Do you know?”

  He was silent, thinking. So much was foggy, even without drugs. Drunk. The accusation repelled him. Why was this his strongest reaction yet? Why was he so sure?

  “If you have to ask, you don’t know,” he said.

  Chagrin flickered over her annoyingly serene features.

  “They’d have taken blood tests right after the accident, yes?” he asked.

  She nodded. “No alcohol or recreational drugs in your system. At that point. But you were flown in from another continent.”

  He nodded, in turn, to the window and the panorama of what he now knew were the Alps. But which Alps? French, Italian, Swiss? The Alps snaked across Europe like the rim of a massive crater.

  He said, “Any climber, especially a control freak, would be crazy to drink anything but water up there.”

  “ ‘Control freak.’ I do love American expressions. They always cut to the . . . pursuit.”

  “Chase. Cut to the chase. The expression is based on early filmmaking. Directors of cheap thriller movies would skip the exposition, the dialogue, and cut to the action scene: bad guys chasing good guys.”

  “And which guy are you?”

  He smiled at how formal the word guy sounded in her overprecise English. “We don’t know yet, do we? So why’d you ask if I was drunk, when you knew the tests proved me sober?”

  “I wanted your spontaneous answer.”

  “Just to be mean? Taunt the invalid?” He almost added, “Get a rise out of him?” but decided that was too close to reality.

  Actually, he was enjoying this in more ways than one. He’d heard only solicitous murmurs in the far back of his mind for a long time, maybe even weeks. It was good to exercise his brain on something, someone not treating him like a helpless child.

  She pursed her lips while examining the chart he suspected was a meaningless prop for her inquisition. Psychiatrists always thought they could outthink their patients, and she was exactly what he’d suspected she was. But what kind of psychiatrist?

  “Actually, Mr. Randolph,” she said at last, “being drunk is the only rational explanation for why you weren’t more seriously injured. The surgeons said your fall had the impact of a car crash at sixty miles an hour. You should be dead, or in a cast up to your cerebellum. Instead, you have a couple of broken legs. Not fun, but not as lethal as it should be.”

  “You’d prefer me dead?”

  “Of course not. But the surgeons said that the only way you could have come off so lightly, the only way anyone did from an impact like that, was as a drunk driver. The kind that walks away from a crash that kills his victims because he was so inebriated his body was utterly limp during the crash. Senselessness saves the sinner.”

  He didn’t like hearing how bad it could have been. Or being compared to a drunk driver. He knew he hadn’t brought this on himself. Why was she trying to make him feel guilty? Some shrink! She was doing everything she could to rile him. Weren’t there laws against this kind of patient abuse?

  He gazed out the window. From this distance the majestic peaks seemed only postcard pretty, not lethal. And he couldn’t picture himself attacking those sharp icy teeth with pitons and a pickax. Not his thing. But it must be.

  He glanced back. Her eyes had never left his face.

  “Maybe,” he said, “I’m just a relaxed kind of guy.”

  “That doesn’t go with the control freak.”

  “Maybe I’m more complex than you think.”

  “Oh, I think you’re very complex, Mr. Randolph. Too much so. I don’t want to keep you. À bientôt.”

  Until later.

  He watched her leave, relishing a future tete-à-tete. His legs were broken, maybe not badly, thank God, but she was right about his need for control. He hated this wheelchair.

  He propelled it into the adjoining bathroom, through a bland blond door wide enough to accommodate it. Brushed steel assistance bars were everywhere, but he was interested in the shower rod above the—nice, if his casts were off!—Jacuzzi bathtub.

  Pushing himself upright against the white-tiled wall, he studied the rod and its attachments to the tile. Solid. Everything here was for security and safety. German-built. Like Revienne Schneider.

  He grasped the pole underhanded and then hauled up against his imprisoned legs. If he was such a gung ho mountain climber, he didn’t want to lose any upper body strength. He guessed he’d been doing this during every conscious, unchaperoned moment. The first pull-up was still agony. The second worse. He did ten. Twelve, twenty, then stopped and lowered himself on trembling arms into the wheelchair.

  He’d forgotten to check himself out in the mirror over the sink while he’d been upright, but it was probably just as well. He had a feeling he wouldn’t recognize his face. He knew “things,” could think, but he didn’t know a damn thing about himself or how he’d got here. What really bothered him was the name “Randolph.” It had a vague familiarity, but it wasn’t his. It didn’t feel like his name.

  Nothing did. Surnames tumbled through his brain—O’Donnell . . . Kinkaid . . . Bar . . . Bartle. Moline. But that was a town in Illinois. His brain had salvaged lots of general information, but no specifics. No faces and places. He’d have to analyze himself before that tight-lipped shrink pried out more than he wanted her to.

  He knew a lot about mountains and foreign languages and attractive interrogators, but he didn’t know a damn thing about himself except what he could weasel out of his shrink.

  Nothing.

  Not even his name.

  Matt, maybe. The name just came to him! Matt?

  Matt Randolph. Didn’t feel right.

  From Here

  to Urbanity

  Even long, lean Fontana brothers, Las Vegas’s own Magnificent Ten, have to disembark from the Rolls onto the desert sand when we arrive at the party destination in the dark of evening.

  Wait a minute. Desert sand?

  I am not the only one befuddled, although I am the only one who is licking sand grains from between my unshod toes.

  “Hey,” says one plaintive voice. “This isn’t the strip club, is it?”

  By now three rounds of champagne have sloshed in the gathered glasses, except for Mr. Matt’s and mine.

  That extra-dark tint on the Rolls’s windows may have been disorienting.

  “Naw, that must be the place,” Emilio announces, gesturing with his still-full champagne glass.

  Indeed, amidst the Stygian darkness that surrounds the party we can see the illuminated glitter of a large entrance canopy.

  (This Stygian darkness is like super-dark shades and refers to some ancient place underground, like a cave. Or a wine cellar. Or a tomb. Even now I do not quite grasp our situation. And I am the only one in the party fit to grasp anything, except for Mr. Matt, who is starting to frown just before the Rolls headlights go out and we are all truly in the dark.)

  The sound of leather soles grinding on sand guides me forward. Mr. Matt and I have been abandoned to trek along behind the brothers ten and Uncle Mario.

  By now I have been noticed, and, in fact, had about six toasts made to my unexpected presence en route to the bachelor party. That is why I and Mr. Matt are sober and surefooted, and all the Fontanas are lurching along like hail-fellows-well-met.

  I am starting to feel the hairs on my spine stiffening and standing upright.

  It could be the cooler night air.

  It could be the off-key chorus of “O Sole Mio,” that is drifting back on the desert air.

  It could be the fac
t that the convivial singing comes to a sudden halt on the warm, lamp-lit threshold before us all.

  I, of course, was born to see in the dark, so I swagger into the lead. That is not hard to do. The brothers Fontana are already swaying instead of swaggering. I have never known them to be the tipsy sort, but this is a landmark occasion.

  I gaze into the light, my pupils slitting to laser-sharp focus long before the humans in the party can stop blinking blindly.

  And a little cat shall lead them. . . .

  I march into the glare, having spotted all the hallmarks of bachelor bliss awaiting our party: several human little dolls of the leggy sort, attired in skimpy wisps of sheer fabrics decorated with sequins and rhinestones and (my favorite) mounds of marabou feathers.

  Let the games begin!

  Perennial Partner

  Matt was trying to be a good go-along guy.

  Mob scenes, figurative or literal, weren’t his thing.

  Stag entertainment wasn’t on his horizon or in his history.

  An ex-priest had a hard time regarding women as sex objects.

  Large amounts of bare female skin still made him uneasy.

  Intimately, it was a turn-on. Publicly, it was . . . gross, crude, blatant. Exploitive of both gawker and gawkee.

  And, of course, all en route to this bachelor blowout, he wondered, not what Jesus would do—He’d probably be okay with it; witness the woman at the well and the wedding at Cana; Jesus had been the Prince of Peace and the Soul of Mercy and Tolerance—but what Temple would think.

  Of him.

  This did not promise to be an easygoing evening.

  So when he saw the peep show backlit at the entrance to wherever they had been driven, he thought, Holy mackerel!

  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid could not have been greeted by a perkier array of corseted, feather boa-strewn, high heel-booted saloon girls in their heyday.

  He’d expected to suffer through this supposed festivity. He hadn’t expected to be as badly ribbed as the guest of honor, bridegroom-to-be Aldo Fontana.

  “Pretty good goods,” a Fontana brother commented, jabbing his ribs.

  “You get what you pay for,” Matt answered, meaning every shade of the words.

  They bounced off Fontana brother bonhomie.

  “Right. This is way spicier than I expected, now that Aldo is giving up his wild, womanizing ways. We’re gonna actually have fun. I can tell. Let the partee begin!”

  Matt and, of all not-people, Midnight Louie were the last to move into the dazzling light. The cat had been first, but now hesitated on the threshold.

  Temple’s black cat, a last-minute hitchhiker, finally trod in delicately, forefoot by forefoot. Matt could have sworn the cat was as much taken aback by this Wild West saloon scenario as he was.

  “We’ll both have to keep a sober eye on the proceedings,” Matt told Louie under his breath.

  It disturbed him immensely that the big black cat winked at him.

  Okay. One eye closed momentarily. Maybe he had a hair caught in it.

  Twelve men and cat had entered a Wild Wild West fantasy of a Victorian brothel. The flocked floral wallpaper wasn’t scarlet woman crimson-colored, but it was velvet-flocked: deep blue against a silver foil background.

  The carpeting was a field of Victorian, full-blown roses (so appropriate to the feminine residents). The shades were blue and green with touches of gold.

  Beyond the foyer in the parlor, on various blue velvet love seats and settees in the Victorian style, lounged, lay, and reclined about a dozen women attired in bits and pieces of corsets and lingerie, all in shades of blue.

  If there were eight groomsmen in the party, there was a shade of blue for each one: baby blue, aqua, sky blue, periwinkle . . . lavender-blue, Dilly, Dilly . . . teal, ice blue, royal blue, sapphire blue, and even navy blue, in the form of a sailor suit with a bikini bottom and a skimpy sea-shrunken top.

  While the groomsmen leapt to the task of inspection, Matt was interested to see that Aldo and Nicky were loitering in the foyer with frowns on their faces.

  One was almost wed, one married, so Matt approved of them showing at least some discretion. Uncle Macho Mario Fontana was accepting a cigar the size of a submarine sandwich from the madam of the place, the only woman fully clothed. She wore some Mae West blue-sequined gown rimmed in pale blue feathers at the shoulders.

  Matt edged over to the frowners because they most closely reflected his own confusion.

  “We were supposed to go to the G-String Club on the Strip,” Nicky was saying under his breath, “with the nude harpists. I mean, fun’s fun, but this place is obviously—” He shut up as he noticed Matt approaching.

  Aldo’s back was to Matt and he kept talking. “Kit will have my nose hairs in a vise and our Miss Temple will have all our heads on pikes outside the Crystal Phoenix if she finds out about this. The guys said they’d arranged a first-class venue with one discreet, cake-popper-out-of stripper. The usual harmless prank.”

  “This,” Matt said, “doesn’t look ‘usual’ to me, and I’ve never been to one of these before.”

  Nicky’s upper lip was actually dewed with tiny dots of sweat. He had his cell phone to his ear.

  “Sorry, Father,” he murmured absently. “Damn!” he spat at Aldo. “I’m not getting a signal. We are screwed. What’s going on here? That drive was way too long.”

  Aldo was chewing his lower lip. “I thought we were deliberately being driven around town so we’d have time to do our duty by the champagne.”

  The eldest and youngest Fontana brothers were clearly dealing with an unexpected situation.

  “Why don’t we ask the driver?” Matt suggested.

  Nicky and Aldo exchanged a long stare.

  “Good idea!” Aldo strode toward the door, Nicky and Matt behind him.

  Aldo opened it on someone on the other side. Someone in a nifty black chauffeur’s cap and jacket, and nothing else but fishnet stockings, four-inch black heels, and an Uzi cradled in her uniformed elbow.

  “Holy shi—shazam!” Nicky breathed, glancing at Matt midway through his expletive.

  “No need to get huffed,” the caramel-skinned chauffeurette said, caressing the Uzi’s trigger with her forefinger. Her nails were long and lacquered crimson. “You all look so cute standing out here with your mouths hanging open, but you’d better get back inside before this big mean gun gets too heavy for little me to hold and I grab onto the wrong part.”

  Nicky and Aldo backed up quickly. Maybe it was her remark about the wrong part. Matt stayed put.

  “You drove us out here?” he asked. “Why?”

  She looked him over, mostly his face and blond hair. “You may be an innocent bystander, mister, but an Uzi isn’t very discriminating.”

  “Jesus!” Aldo breathed behind him. “I for one don’t underestimate the ‘weaker’ sex. This is as serious as that chest-stapler she’s holding. What the hell—?”

  “Get back inside,” Nicky ordered. When Matt didn’t move, he shouted at the girl, “You’d off a priest?”

  “Ex,” Matt tossed over his shoulder without taking his eyes from the woman. He was used to talking to suicidal and sometimes homicidal people on his call-in radio advice show. This girl didn’t strike him as either.

  But her next words and tone changed his mind. “A priest,” she purred. “Now isn’t that interesting. Maybe we can use you for some ceremonial necessities later.”

  “They don’t do extreme unction anymore,” Aldo said, jerking Matt back inside the foyer by the jacket sleeve. “Hold your trigger finger, lady. We’re all inside.”

  Matt shook himself loose as soon as the door slammed shut. “She’s not for real.”

  “That Uzi sure is,” Nicky said. “Never argue with a fully automatic gun that can kill your whole damn family in one strafe.” He redialed his cell phone. “Nothing. You take this,” he said to Matt, slipping it into his jacket pocket. “It’s an auto-dial to Van. I have a feeling this is
a Fontana affair.” His face and voice were grim.

  “Some gangsta hoods have heisted us,” Aldo said. “Don’t let the James Bond girl in fishnet hose fool you, padre. This is a sharp operation. They’ve got Fontana Inc. in the palms of their machine pistols. The whole enchilada. Shit!”

  “Yup. The whole Mama Fontana pasta factory.” Nicky turned to Matt. “Play along. Don’t make any fuss. We’re the target, obviously. They may overlook you.”

  “They?”

  But the two brothers were separating at the double doors to the parlor, drawing Berettas and waiting like cops about to storm a crime in progress.

  “Mr. Fontana and . . . Mr. Fontana?” came the madam’s once-booming voice, sounding quivery. “Please come in.”

  “And drop your weapons before you do,” a second voice commanded.

  Consulting each other with a glance, Nicky and Aldo lowered their guns to the floor and kicked them inside onto the field of blue flowers that carpeted the place.

  Matt stood, shocked, in the foyer as the two men vanished into the Victorian sitting room at some unseen gunpoint.

  This must be act one in a Vegas mob war.

  From Temple’s talk of the Fontana brothers, he’d considered them hunky comic relief on the Las Vegas scene. Apparently it was a lot more serious than that. Thank God Temple was safe at home at the Circle Ritz. Sweet Jesus. Louie! Her precious alley cat was here, in danger of getting caught in the crossfire. Anything happened to him, it’d be worse than the current anxiety she was feeling about Max. She tried to downplay it, but he knew.

  Nicky was right. Nobody had mentioned him. He glanced to his left and the floral-carpeted staircase leading into shadows above. Thank God! Midnight Louie stood five steps up, waiting for him. Looking like the cat was concerned about him, rather than vice versa. That was a cat for you.

  But Louie was right. Matt got it. In this crowd of large, dark-haired men barging into that crowded and armed and dangerous brothel sitting room, an effacing blond guy might get lost. He had been. Along with an alley cat. The driver-gangster girl wouldn’t forget him, but she was pulling guard duty outside, perhaps for the duration.