Cat with an Emerald Eye Read online

  But here, inside the diamond-patterned steel wire, all was quieter than the eye of a storm.

  Not that it would be quiet, Temple reminded herself, when folks lined up for a tour, as they would tonight, on the hour from six P.M. until the stroke of midnight.

  A dry, scraping sound at her feet made Temple jump. Looking down, she watched a dirty page of the Las Vegas Scoop skitter by. Crawford Buchanan's column happened to land facing up, and his face in the accompanying photo had been nicely wrinkled. Temple added to its troubles by clamping a foot down on the trash in mid-tumble. Her high heel put Buchanan's nose out of joint: a little higher and to the right. She bent to grab the page for disposal, but the gust wrenched it away. She watched it drift toward the lurid haunted-house facade, where a pile of orphaned papers huddled against the painted stone foundation.

  Temple moved on, hearing her soles scrape on sandy, rock-strewn soil. If the Midnight Louie shoes were already in her possession, she certainly wouldn't wear them over this blasted sand that could buff the sheen off industrial steel.

  Close up, the attraction facade looked like a mismating between the house-on-the-hill from Psycho and a funeral parlor with pretensions of Poe.

  The real horror was the architectural styles blended willy-nilly. Grinning gargoyles rubbed stone shoulders with wooden Victorian gingerbread shaped into spiderwebs. Bats flew out of a silhouetted belfry covered in gray shingles, while the entrance was flanked by classical pillars, Southern-style, draped in shrouds of Spanish moss.

  At this distance the quick rough strokes of the painting looked singularly unbelievable, but Temple detected a glimmer of some light-reflecting surface. A circle of ground-level spotlights were aimed at the cheesy artwork like howitzers.

  No doubt by night the whole thing would light up in a lurid swirl of glow-in-the-dark colors.

  Everything in Las Vegas was built to shine at night.

  The sound of a demented hinge squealing open made Temple gawk at the front door.

  Though painted to resemble ancient wood and wide enough to admit an elephant, the airy ease of its opening belied the whole effect. Within the broadening frame lurked a figure more likely to amaze than afright.

  Certainly Temple's jaw dropped.

  It dropped even further when a big black cat threaded through the elderly man's slightly bowed legs.

  "Howdy, Miss Barr," he said, further startling her. "You don't remember me, I bet. Wild Blue Pike from Three O'Clock Louie's out on the lake. You remember this ole black devil, though, right?"

  "Three O'Clock Louie." The cat lifted its head as she greeted it. Temple saw the white hairs dusting the muzzle. Older, and maybe wiser, than her Midnight Louie.

  "I'm here to see the layout before I join the Halloween seance party Thursday night."

  "You git roped into that deal?" Wild Bill politely spit (if any such action could be deemed polite) a stream of tobacco juice to the ground, where it added a new indignity to Crawford Buchanan's beautifully besmirched features.

  "I like your aim," Temple noted. "And 'roped' is the right word."

  "Bunch of hocus-smokus, if you were to ask me, which no one has so far. Me an' some of the other boys are here as consultants, but so far nobody wants any consultin' " , He stood aside as Temple went through the door into the dark beyond. "These are high' tech whiz kids.

  Know everything. All we know is a real ghost town."

  "Can you give me a tour?"

  "Sure, but you should really do it at night to get the full effect."

  "I think I will. Tomorrow." She bent to pat Three O'clock Louie's head. "What's he doing here?"

  "Migrating local color," Wild Blue said dryly. "You can't exactly count on a cat to perform on schedule."

  "Tell me about it."

  Wild Blue led her through the usual spook-house terrain, a Frankenstein monster's birth canal of twisting corridors draped with spray-on cobwebs. There was the usual Unexpected Sudden Step Down, guaranteed to make one's stomach defy gravity. There were the traditional Concealed Mirrors to Hell, which would reflect not only whoever walked by, but the unseen grisly figure towering behind the unsuspecting stroller.

  "It's all in the angles," Wild Blue said.

  "So I've heard." Temple ducked a dangling web. When someone her height had to duck, that meant the spider-soft network would caress most people in the face. Wild Blue Pike ducked too, being a wiry, compact man, like most old-time pilots.

  He led her through a tangle-town of corridors, the kind of classic maze setup where the confused visitor trudges for what seems like forever, but has actually corkscrewed through a surprisingly short distance, if seen from a raven's-eye view.

  Looking up, Temple noticed that the black-painted high ceilings had vanished, and that the black above them seemed seriously remote.

  "I guess you Glory Hole guys aren't over-impressed by the special effects around here," she commented.

  "Nope. But the centerpiece is a corker, I'll give 'em that."

  He made his comment just as they arrived at the complex web's heart. Temple's own heart paused a beat to give due honor.

  She and Wild Blue gazed into the convoluted heart of darkness: a vast dim chamber the size of a Hollywood sound studio, plumbed by veins of metal scaffolding. Most of the trestles twisted like pretzels, but a core before them rose up like the shaft of a mine, perhaps forty or fifty feet.

  All the scaffolding reminded Temple of the Eiffel Tower's deceptively lacy look, but the real phenomenon was what lay directly before them.

  She gazed into a large room through glass windows that faintly reflected their own shapes on the opposite windows. A pale tracery suggesting spectral wallpaper overlaid the glass, so Temple had the sensation of peering through a solid wall made transparent.

  The room was furnished in a style that Temple called Olde English Manor Eerie. It had served the classic black-and-white horror movies of the thirties and was revived in Hammer Films's more lurid Technicolor terrors in the sixties. Yards of glum brocade upholstered elaborately carved chairs fresh from Torquemada's Gothic torture chamber. A massive hearth large enough for a man to stand in, or perhaps to decorate a turning spit in, was surmounted by a mock-stone mantel bristling with grotesque faces and figures. Medieval weapons--battle-axes, maces and other appliances far nastier than mere dagger and sword--hung surrealistically before the window-walls.

  "The whole setup is three stories," Wild Blue boasted with a pilot's love of even ground-bound height.

  "We didn't go up or down."

  "No, but that does." He pointed to the empty room. "If you kept on the right path, you'd go down, too. No stairs, except for the odd heart-stopping six-inch drop. The so-called ground-level slants up ... and down. So you don't know how high or low you really are at any given time. But in the open middle, the roof is three stories up. And that there room goes up and down, bringing different ghosties past depending on what level you're on. And that's where the stance will be held."

  "So it's a moveable feast?" Temple couldn't resist asking.

  "Feast, hah! More like a famine, if you're planning on it making do for dinner. The house schedules regular shenanigans in the room, but Halloween night all you hand-holders will be going up and down like a yo-yo, but slower, so everybody gets to eavesdrop, and see the action as well."

  "Oh, my queasy stomach! Talk about your mobile local color. We'll be nothing but a traveling carnival of the weird. I suppose this method makes it harder for any hanky-panky to go on."

  Wild Blue shot her a slitty look through his famous Lake Mead-azure eyes. "Or easier, Miss Barr. You know what happens when the magician keeps one hand moving."

  "Do I ever," she muttered.

  Wild Blue Pike knew nothing of her ex-private life with the Mystifying Max, so he continued unperturbed, scratching at his shock of bleach-white hair like Will Rogers delivering a particularly down-home line. "Waal, it's a chance for the other hand to pull some pretty tricky stuff."

  "Are you s
aying that the seance Thursday night will be rigged to provide a successful materialization?"

  Wild Blue frowned and shrugged simultaneously. "Not that nobody tells us, but then they don't tell us nothin'."

  Temple waited for the herd of double negatives to thunder through her head, leaving her none the wiser as to his answer.

  "Just tell me yes, or no," she suggested.

  "It ain't that easy. We're jest 'consultants,' here to make sure none of the works tangles up.

  When you're in that room, jest expect to be gawked at plenty, and keep your feet on the floor."

  "That's what my mother told me when I went to my first prom."

  Wild Blue's laugh was an eerie echo bouncing along the huge glass-sided room before them.

  "Good advice for here, too. If it gets too spooky, and that Houdini feller ambles in with his head upon a hors d'oovers tray, remember that there are a bunch of folks out back here pulling all kinds of strings and don't take it too serious like."

  "Gotcha!"

  Despite his own sensible advice, Wild Blue jumped.

  By six that evening, Temple was standing in front of Electra Lark's penthouse door, her forefinger nailing the doorbell button to the backplate.

  One invariably had to wait a geological age or so for Electra to answer her door. That made Temple, always imaginative, speculate about secret admirers being hustled out a back entrance, or tarot cards being hastily swept up and hidden away.

  When the door finally opened, Temple unconsciously sniffed the air for cigar smoke or incense. What her nose picked up was ... tuna-fish casserole in the oven.

  Electra's always interesting hair was wrapped in something plastic, pink and chemical-smelling.

  "Temple! Sorry I can't ask you in. I'm conditioning."

  "That's okay. I just wanted to know if you could go through a haunted house with me tomorrow. It's for work, so I have passes."

  "Oh, dear... not that Hell-o-ween House?"

  "Yes."

  "Sorry, kid. I'm participating in a seance there Thursday night. It would be ... inappropriate for me to go through like a regular tourist beforehand. Might upset the spirit world, you know, to mix play-haunting with the true Beyond. It's bad enough that the local psychic society agreed to sponsor this Houdini-hunting scheme under such commercial terms. I didn't vote for it."

  "You? You're going to be there, too?"

  "You, too? But why?"

  "Van and Nicky are holding the After-the-Fall ball at the Phoenix, and they wanted me to get some insight into subterranean attractions by sitting in."

  "Seances are not an event for casual sit-ins, Temple." Electra's head shook in disapproval, spraying Temple with droplets that stung. "Only true believers should be present. I can't believe someone in our club okayed your attendance. You don't fool with Mother Ectoplasm."

  "Well, I was thinking it would be nice to know someone there."

  "Sorry if I sounded cross. I've got a wedding in forty minutes and I can't do a thing with my follicles! I'm just so upset with the con-stant, crass commercialization of what should be a fine and private exercise between sympathetic psyches. Promise me that you'll keep your mind open."

  "And my eyes shut?"

  "Oh, look for whatever you can see. Just don't be surprised if you see something you shouldn't."

  "You really believe in seances?"

  "Listen." Electra stepped out into the dimly lit hall, closing the door behind her.

  But, Temple thought, there was no one inside to overhear her, was there? No one except Temple's fictitious gentleman caller.

  Electra took Temple's hand, although her own was still gloved in pink gel.

  "Listen, dear. If you're going to be present, you must be sincere. You must believe that Houdini is out there, and that he badly wants to be back here."

  Temple nodded meekly. Houdini would have loved to play Vegas, if only it had existed in his time.

  "You must have faith in powers greater than the normal. You must be convinced of the strength of Houdini's will when he was living, and dying, and of the gathered psychics'

  powerful mental presence. You must realize that--this time--unsuspected powers may unite enough to wrest aside the Veil and reveal the unthinkable. You must give death a chance!"

  "Ah ... of course. I'm always open-minded. And it would be a great story--"

  "It would be earth-shaking." Electra's arm suddenly saluted the pale hall sconce as she squinted at her wristwatch. "Ten minutes! Golly, I've got to wash this gook off or my hair will come out brown!"

  Electra scurried back into her digs like the Little Pink Hen whose falling blue sky was turning brown. Temple ambled to the elevator area on dragging heels. She certainly wasn't going through a haunted house solo, and Electra's unavailability meant Temple would have to try Plan B, which normally would have been Plan A, had Temple not been a chicken of another sort on a certain issue.

  She paused in a mellow aura of hall light to squint at her own watch. Manage to dawdle any longer, and Matt would be off to work. It would be too late to ask him.

  Temple vacillated between taking the poky elevator down a floor, or seizing the moment to trot downstairs and right up to the door of number eleven.

  She did the latter, her forefinger pinioning the button to its mechanism before her cold feet could turn around and tippy-toe away.

  This door opened much too quickly, making her jump like an eavesdropper. "Oh!"

  "Temple."

  Unlike Electra, who often came to her door in a state of mid-grooming, Matt Devine always looked as if he had just come from the hand of his Maker perfectly composed, washed, brushed, combed and told right from wrong.

  "I know you have to go to work soon," she said, "but my work means I have to go to a haunted house Halloween night, and I need to go through first so I don't get any surprises. If you could go on the six o'clock tour, I could drop you at work and you'd only be a few minutes late.

  Electra can't go."

  He smiled at her machine-gun burst of nervous explanation. "Nothing makes sense, except that you need someone to hold your hand, and you don't want to look like you're asking me out.

  Sounds like a haunted house is more up the other fella's alley."

  "I see that I have created my own monster. Just say yes, or no."

  "Sure. Sounds like fun before another night of misery monologues courtesy of Sprint phone company."

  "Meet you down by my car at five-thirty?"

  "I was going to suggest we take the Vampire. Appropriate transportation, given the occasion."

  "My car. I'll breeze you back here in time to jet to work on the Vampire."

  "Five," he answered. "We can grab a drive-through something on the way."

  "That's beginning to sound like a date."

  "Don't tell anybody I know." He shut the door, still smiling.

  Temple retreated over the dusty mauve carpeting to the elevator. True, Max Kinsella would have been a more apt escort for her excursion, though he would have exposed all the tricks and she would have had no faith left at all by the time she sat down at the seance table.

  Date! Temple snorted to herself. She hated being hamstrung between two men. She hated dates. In fact, she was so disgusted with her own uneasy social situation that if Harry Houdini had the good grace to actually show up at midnight Thursday night, she'd elope with him and be done with it!

  Chapter 5

  If a Body Meet a Body...

  I love these vague assignments.

  It is fairly simple to sit in a posh penthouse and declaim "the sky is falling" to one and all. It is another thing to go out into the grimy streets and find out where the sky is falling, on whom and how fast.

  Of course, here in Las Vegas the sky seldom falls in the physical sense. The desert climate keeps us all high and dry most of the time. That is okay with me. When I lived on the streets, it was nice not have to deal with much rain, sleet and snow. I am not a postman, though I have been known to carry a m
essage now and then.

  The last time the Sublime Karma word-whipped me out onto the streets of Las Vegas on errands of a dangerous nature she was just as vague. I think she knows that this gets my goat, and relies upon my instinctive nose for the nefarious to unearth some evildoing, which she then can take credit for predicting. Though there are more things in heaven and earth than most people suspect, I have seen most of them on my travels and they are fairly ordinary evils: poverty, hunger and dirt. And the meanness of one to another, no matter the breed. Oh, and maybe Free-to-be-Feline without dressing.

  Like life's little pleasures, evil also most often comes in teaspoon-size servings, though I must admit that I have become hooked on Miss Temple's occasional dollop of murder most foul.

  There is nothing like having a mitt in righting the ultimate wrong to feel all is correct with the world.

  Murder is an interesting human concept. Among my breed, there is no such thing. There is killing, of course, to eat, and humans do it too, on a grand scale, not one-on-one so much. And they have the edge of weapons and technology. I am a bare-knuckle kind of guy; I only carry the weapons Ma Nature gave me, tooth and nail, just like any predator since Adam had a little lion.

  What happened to humans I cannot say, not being an anthropologist, and, given human history, I can see why these people have developed a scientific system that studies how to make apologies for the species' horrific history of mayhem and murder. I believe it is all based on overcompensation for inadequate equipment from the species' infancy.

  Have you ever really examined human teeth and nails? Pretty pathetic. Obviously, these were a bunch of weed-eaters from the git-go, destined to stand and chew and watch the clawed and fanged crowd do all the dirty work.

  Then they got tired of us saber-toothed tigers getting all the glory (not to mention the gory) and invented fang and claw substitutes. They are ingenious when it comes to inflicting damage, I will say that for them, as thousands of my ancestors found out during the Mid-Evil Ages, when we served as kindling for witch hunts.