Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“You’ve spotted the missing shoe?” As Temple bent down, Mira stepped close and drew the hairbrush from Temple’s nape to the curling ends of her hair.

“Now you’re fluffed.”

“Tricky lady.”

“Oh. What pretty earrings you have too.”

Temple touched the delicate webs of tiny rubies and diamonds. “Your son is a really good judge of earrings. And rings. So. Let’s go down and cause dropped jaws.”

“What about the cat?”

“Oh, he’ll come along in his own way and his own time. He always does.”

Temple winked at Louie and took Mira’s arm. “Let’s get married.”

Chapter 53

Evening in Paris

Max couldn’t decide whether he was at work as an ace agent or not at work at all as a Los Lonely Guy when he abandoned the black Maxima from Garry’s garage to the Paris Hotel parking attendant.

It was still daylight, yet entering the casino immersed him in the always-nocturnal landscape of velvety black punctuated by a couple galaxies’ worth of supernovas.

No one stood in line for the single elevator to the Eiffel Tower restaurant at this unfashionably early hour. Tourists ran on a schedule hotel hours subtly established. About now, the women were still moving from baking in the hotel pool areas. The pools closed early to shoo the women back inside to dress for a long day’s night on the town in the restaurants, shops, and casinos. The men were still killing time at the blackjack, baccarat, and craps tables.

Revienne was already primed for the night. She perched on a stool beside a nearby bank of slot machines. Her blond hair was sleeked back into a bun the size of a doughnut hole that emphasized her swanlike neck and shoulders.

She wore a loose-knit sleeveless top woven with beige and iridescent yarns, braless, and a short white-silk pencil skirt, both highly seduction-worthy. He’d expected no less.

He came up behind her and produced a twenty-dollar bill for the slot machine before her hand could slip in another ten. “You’re losing. Try my money.”

She stood and slipped his bill into the toy purse set beside the slot machine, along with a casino card for the Paris consortium. “We can gamble later, dine now.”

“You’d never know you were new to Vegas,” he commented.

“I’d never have known you were here if you hadn’t visited the campus,” she answered, eyeing his newly shorn hair with the bit of gel nonsense at the top. “I hope that’s not a result of brain surgery—?”

“Heat exhaustion preventive.”

“Then you’re new to this so very hot climate.”

“As you know, I’m a world traveler. Nowhere is entirely new.”

He escorted her to the elevator that whisked them up a mere eleven stories to the first stage of the half-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower. The hostess and the bar were straight ahead, so they were swiftly escorted to the prized corner table in the glass-walled restaurant, facing northwest into the mountains and directly across from the Bellagio’s famous dancing fountains.

“You have ‘pull,’” she noted discreetly after the waiter had seated her. He’d taken the corner seat so she could look past him at the floor show of the lighted fountains.… Also, his back was to the wall of glass so he could survey reflections of the restaurant and bar like a security camera.

“You’ll see the sunset during this early seating,” he told her. “I know most people prefer to be fashionably late. Especially the French.”

“So you’ve been in Las Vegas before?”

“Don’t know,” he lied.

“As you had been in Zurich?”

“Zurich? No. That was a first.”

“As with me.” She glanced down to her glittering petite purse, slowly opened the jeweled clasp, and slipped out a slim gold compact to apply a nearly colorless gloss to her lips.

Whew, Max thought. Frenchwomen lived up to their seductive reputation, even when they were half-German.

“It’s so dry here in this climate.” She snapped the lip gloss compact shut.

Now that she’d invoked memories of their impulsive rendezvous in Europe, Max figured she found him sufficiently drugged, web-bundled, and ready for devouring. The question was whether she worked for the Real IRA or the old IRA, or some other interested international entity. Max wondered if it was necessary to play cat and mouse with her, but he supposed it would exercise his brain, if nothing else.

They ordered boutique martinis while scanning the menu.

“I hope, Miss Schneider, our necessary detours in Switzerland didn’t interfere too much with your forthcoming academic obligations here in Las Vegas.”

“No. Quite the contrary, Mr. Randolph. It was a very existential romp. Who am I? Who is he/she? Who is trying to kill us? Will we kiss or kill each other? Or both? Believe me, for a woman with a challenging but never lethal psychological practice, it was quite invigorating.”

“Exactly my response.” Max toasted her with his martini. “I’m not surprised that you’re in international demand.”

“Nor I, you.”

“I didn’t know the local university had such a prestigious psychology department,” Max observed.