Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“Welcome to my ‘Chunnel of Hidden Trea sure.’ If you come to rob me you will find only empty vaults and busted dreams, but if you come to enjoy the ride, you’ll get more than you bargained for… .”

At that, the facial image dissolved into a younger, plumper visage, a face suspended over a formal winged collar and tie. It reminded Temple of some slot machines that featured a magician’s face and disembodied white gloves laying out the video poker cards … and now here came the gloves, protruding their fingers into the actual passenger compartment. Oooh, spooky!

Only the cards it laid out were tarot cards.

“The magician, oh my,” the face said, in stagy tones, white gloves flaunting the card in question.

It was amazing how the bones of the face pushed through the window glass, as if it were only a cellophane cerement. Temple cringed back as an actual tarot card flipped into the limo compartment. Louie reached out a clawed forefoot and snapped it down to the carpet, anchoring it with a sharp nail.

She stared at Santiago, wondering. Had he used this multimedia display to program something personal?

The echoing voice filled the car interior.

“Magic never dies,” it pronounced. “Am I mere bones in a morgue or a disembodied voice on a manipulated movie screen? Does it matter? I live, I speak, I watch, I intrude. I am the ghost in the machine. I live to avenge untimely deaths. Murders. I take vengeance.”

Temple jerked back, surprised.

What a lifelike effect. What a gruesome segment. Maybe too scary for the public … She’d have to mention that to Nicky and Van. Whoa! She had goose bumps, though. Super effective.

Oops, Temple thought. My lord, it resembles an actual, animated death masque. Not exactly promotable. Temple was betting the wax sculptor who’d created the Boots concrete memorial had accomplished the model for this filmed resurrection.

“Where is the money?” the eerie voice intoned from the 3-D death masque. “Follow the money. It was in the vault. Then I ended up there, dead. Stabbed.”

Temple knew by the prickling of her thumbs that something wicked this way comes… .

Actually it was by the prickling in her panty hose, had she been wearing any. She could feel the cat hair around her calves flaring and prickling instead of tickling.

And cat claws in three-four time, kneading warning into the unseen black carpet on the car’s floor.

She had to admit she hadn’t expected this demo ride to be so … ghoulish, so in your face.

So … like from a major historical theatrical masterpiece, like Hamlet.

“The play’s the thing,” to prick “the conscience of the King.” The king … of chutzpah?

“This is absurd,” Santiago objected. “This part is not of my creation. This is a cheap fright show. I demand you restore my immortal and elegant Rat Pack figures—Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. They had charisma, talent, a deathless magic.”

“Like Cosimo Sparks?” Nicky asked. “He was a stage magician once, still dressed like a magician of the old school, in white tie and tails. Was it hard to stab him through that starched shirt?”

“I? Santiago?” His chiseled features tightened with dismay instead of warming with rage. “How dare you! I am internationally renowned, as you well know. I am not some cheap … gangster, stabbing someone with a … shiv.”

Midnight Louie leaped up between Temple and Santiago and issued a low rumbling growl, the likes of which she had never heard from him. It gave her chills and forced Santiago cringing into the corner of the car. Louie was a big cat, and every black hair was puffed out like hackles as he stared at Santiago, until the man blinked and looked away.

“Get that wildcat away from me,” Santiago snarled in turn, his head turned into the car window as if about to kiss the now-frozen grotesque face of Cosimo Sparks.

“We’ll get you away,” Macho Mario assured him, “for a lot of years in prison.”

Midnight Louie leaped onto Temple’s lap, so she tumbled over sideways, just as Nicky and Macho Mario pulled major iron from their shoulder holsters. Like guns. Like big guns. Like they were ready to use them for real.

Santiago tried to lurch somewhere, his hips slamming Temple’s back into the hard leather seat, his hands meshing with the taunting 3-D face in the car window.

He’d worked this audiovisual magic. He knew it was an illusion, a high-tech, amazing, and breathtaking illusion—didn’t he? Magicians like Max and Cosimo Sparks knew illusion from reality. Santiago, mystic architect, did not seem to know.

His hands crashed through thick tinted glass as they sought to touch, to stop, to strangle the dead man’s image, spraying blood and sharp shards, some maybe of bone.

Temple cringed against the seat back as the whole Cat Pack clan joined Louie in surrounding her with a moat of fang and claw, and she felt boas of black cat fur wreathing her torso.

And lots of sharp claws braced on her—ow!—thighs.

Macho Mario and Nicky grabbed Santiago and pulled him onto the opposite seat, stuffed immobile between them and two gun barrels.