Cat In An Aqua Storm

In the distance, the Goliath’s garish towers glittered like fresh powder snow streaked with gold dust and blood. Their car rolled up under the entrance canopy and paused, the sergeant flashing his badge at the sandaled parking valet who rushed over. The valet backed off, kilt flapping, and the car stayed right where it was.

The moment they got out of the car, they were off. Temple trotted along in the wake of two fast, determined, long-legged people. Who needed Louie to play Toto? She was Toto. Crowds parted as if at the behest of Moses.

Molina led them straight to the ballroom where the strippers would perform. Nervous hotel security men guarded the closed doors. Temple recognized them for what they were at once.

Hotel security men always wore street clothes and always looked like the Iranian secret police: grim, vigilant men with eyes like eagles’ and an implicit ability to do all kinds of unthinkably nasty things if necessary. If they didn’t look like that, welshing gamblers wouldn’t sell their next of kin to pay up in a hurry.

Molina was not impressed. The men opened the double doors, and she brushed past, Dindorf and Temple in her wake.

The ballroom looked like the morning after New Year’s Eve. Scattered chairs and equipment stood in place, but without a throng of people at work, the vast area was a deserted set lacking all vitality.

Not quite deserted. Temple followed the two detectives toward the pool of spotlights where a few forlorn figures stood.

No one was talking, which lent a furtive, almost funereal air to their presence. Temple couldn’t decide whether the people looked sad, or guilty, or a bit of both.

Molina began announcing their party’s names and ranks while still twenty feet away—Molina’s and Dindorfs, not Temple’s. This omission made her the uneasy object of quick, surreptitious glances. The others could be speculating whether she was a mystery expert on murder, or a chief suspect.

The identity of the welcoming committee became quickly clear. Arthur Hencell, WASPish head of hotel security. Lisa Osgood, a hyperactive young blond woman who handled hotel special events. Hipolito Herrera, the pudgy middle-aged maintenance man who had found the body when opening up the ballroom for the day.

“Where are the people who expected to work in here today?” Molina asked.

“The Caravanserai Lounge,” Lisa Osgood answered nervously. “We’re, uh... storing them there until the police let them back in here. How long—?”

“Hours, maybe not until tomorrow. I’d find another place to practice” was Molina’s encouraging answer.

“You’re not sending any black-and-whites?” Hencell’s question edged dangerously close to an order graced at the last moment with an interrogation mark.

“Don’t worry. The coroner’s ambulance and the M.E. will use the back entrance. Nothing awkward will be wheeled through the casino, only the usual money carts.”

Temple folded her lips to keep from smiling at the security chief’s livid face as he suffered Molina’s sardonic reply.

Molina turned to the maintenance man with more warmth than she had shown the higher-ups. “What time did you—” Her question broke off suddenly, for no reason Temple could discern. And then, “¿A qué hora descubrió el cuerpo?” Molina asked in Spanish that flowed into one long phrase.

“A las nueve.” The man’s face, his entire body, relaxed as he began an outpouring of Spanish, his hands and arms gesturing.

Molina nodded, and pulled out her notebook.

“Nine o’clock,” he repeated laboriously in English at the end of his spiel.

His last hand wave directed Temple’s attention to the metal skeleton of jungle-gym-like scaffolding that stood near the raised stage.

Something lay crumpled over the low bar nearest the floor. Temple’s shiver started at her tailbone and worked its way up her spine to her scalp. Falling over Chester Royal at the ABA had been a macabre accident. She hadn’t known the man was dead until it was too late to get hysterical about the fact.

This was the first dead body she had approached with the same cold certainty as the police. She didn’t like the feeling, the sense that this investigation was about a collection of facts and circumstances rather than the tragic end of a personality, of a specific human being’s hopes.

“Ven conmigo, Señor.” Molina’s head-jerk indicated only the maintenance man. Dindorf, his own notebook in hand, closed in on the other two hotel personnel.

Torn, Temple decided to follow Molina despite the language barrier. She needed to understand what murderous force was stalking the event she was responsible for. You couldn’t do PR in an information vacuum.