Cat In A Topaz Tango

The only things he didn’t know about was his childhood, boyhood, and personal, educational, professional, and romantic history. Details.

He’d shopped before he approached the Gotthard’s front desk, where he’d muttered in broken German about a skiing accident in the Alps having delayed his getting to a banking appointment in Zurich. He was rather embarrassingly marooned at the moment but had a crucial appointment at Adler and Company, Privatbank, in the morning. Was any sort of suite or even a single room available?

His illness-drawn face and the hokey carved cane, which he regarded with rueful disdain and reluctant dependence, had convinced the hotel manager. That and his Gucci bag. Snooty service staff assessed women first by their handbags, then their shoes, and finally their jewelry. For men, the order was watch, luggage, wallet, shoes.

That’s why a shiny new Patek Philippe high-dollar watch weighed down Max’s bony wrist, courtesy of an oil company executive from Texas. Max didn’t like the piece’s looks and overhyped luxury, but wore it proudly in the name of Enron ripped-off ex-employees everywhere. Corporate greed deserved a comeuppance.

See? It was all coming back. The nightly news. The exhausted American economy, the Irish renaissance. Brand names. Foreign words. But . . . nothing Personal. He felt like a data-gorged robot.

Maybe that was why he was chasing Revienne and her Mercedes chariot when he ought to let her go her own way, villain or victim, true purpose unknown.

But he couldn’t. She’d laughed over dinner in the mountain village, and wolfed down her meal like a real girl. She’d scavenged for him in the mountain meadow farmholds, finding a saw to cut through his imprisoning casts, begging food and clothing. She’d massaged his mending legs until he’d fallen asleep, as trusting as an infant.

If she’d been kidnapped because of him . . .

If she’d been leading him on . . .

Who was Max? Hero or killer? Or just Garry Randolph’s protégé, long past the age of needing mentors?

After this drink, and a dinner of the restaurant’s famed seafood, Max would be whisked five stories high in this 1889-vintage building to an arty suite with an Internet connection.

Did he even know how to connect to the Internet, much less real people, including Revienne? Had to. If the languages had come back to him, so would the technology. Just . . . nothing Personal.

His mind did another of its disconcerting flashbacks: to bright alpine wildflowers, a bouquet of fragrant yellow freesias, a pretty brunet bus driver who wrangled a major German bus and had granted him passage, and . . . a redheaded woman with gray-blue eyes. Revienne was blond.

Max lurched up. The “lurch” was partly his legs and partly his aquavit. Time for dinner and then a tour of the world by Internet. He’d punch in the words “Garry Randolph,” “Revienne,” “Schneider,” and “Max.”

As Edward R. Murrow, the pioneer TV broadcaster, used to say in closing his TV news program, “Good night and good luck.”

See! He remembered vintage catchphrases from before he was born.

Why not his own damned history?

Precious Topaz

While my human posse is introducing itself to our new venue, concentrating on the Dancing With the Celebs set and environs, I figure I better get my black velvet pads pussyfooting over the Oasis Hotel’s entire layout.

One never knows when the big picture will come in handy.

The Oasis is one of those midlevel Las Vegas people palaces, like the Luxor, and the remaining grand old dames of the Strip like the Riviera.

This does not mean that the Oasis is not the usual wild and crazy theme park of an attraction. Where the Luxor exploits the archeological fascination of ancient Egypt, the Oasis concentrates on eastern mysticism in general. Which is a nice way of saying that architecturally and thematically it is a hash of pop culture: ancient hidden treasure, camel trains of stolen jewels, Marco Polo, a little Sinbad and the 1001 Nights, harems, gypsy fortune-tellers, belly dancers, you get the Kodak. It has grabbed the lost Aladdin Hotel’s marketing spot with a more multicultural air.

An undercover operative like myself often ends up spending the most time on the shady and elite sides of the Strip. Crime tends to erupt at the extremes of the social scale. The happy middle is where passion and money tend to be on the mild and cheap scale. It is not surprising that Mr. Rafi Nadir could quickly rise to a second-in-command security position here, not to take anything away from his admirable reformation.

Apparently, discovering an unknown out-of-wedlock child can stabilize a man.

I cannot say that the discovery of my reputed offspring, Miss Midnight Louise, provided me with any impetus other than to run the other way. My impulse was intense, I will give the situation that. Miss Midnight Louise would be cranky that I am operating solo now, but purse pussies do not come in pairs, unlike shoes, or even gumshoes.