Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“Maybe I did, just then.” Max’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “All right. You’ve briefed me on the short form of my personal and professional history with Ireland. I know you entered the picture after my dalliance with Kathleen O’Connor and after Sean waited out our tryst in a Northern Ireland pub, which an IRA bomb blew up, and with it my cousin, to smithereens of pint-glass shards and bone while he was nursing a lonely Guinness.”

“O’Toole’s.”

Max flashed him a confused look.

“The bombed pub’s name was O’Toole’s. Notorious now. Never rebuilt.”

“Okay. I can believe the Irish colleen we co-courted was a modern-day Mata Hari playing guilt trips with the pair of us, or even that she hated teenage boy virgins or American naïveté or something enough to set one of us up for the kill and the other for a world of survivor’s pain and guilt. I can even believe I tracked the three pub bombers and got them killed in a hail of British troop bullets. Why we’re going back to Northern Ireland at this late date I don’t get. That’s one insane war that’s wound down.”

“I’m following your instructions,” Garry said, “on what to do if anything ever happened to you in the mortal way: find and follow the trail of Kathleen O’Connor, her history and motives. So that’s what we’re doing.”

“The man who wanted that may not be dead now, but he doesn’t remember the why or wherefore of such a request. From what you tell me, I’m the one who’s left the ‘love of my life’ in Vegas thinking I’ve vanished. This … redhead.”

“Her first name is Temple.”

“Even the name is just an improper noun to my blasted memory. Is she Greek or Roman?”

“Neither. One of a kind.”

“Well, then, I should definitely be winging back to the U.S. immediately to explain myself.”

“Right into the hands of your attempted murderers.”

“Not safe there. Not safe here. From what you said I did to enrage the IRA years ago, I shouldn’t be here even now.”

“Probably.” Garry sighed and eased out his seat-belt strap, which cut diagonally and cruelly across a middle-aged girth. “But a promise is a promise.”

Max eyed a glimpse of the Irish Sea on the right, glinting like steel gray glass. “Does she have a Web site?” he asked more quietly.

“Kathleen O’Connor?”

“No. This Temple.”

“Probably. She runs a freelance public-relations business. I hadn’t thought of that. She’d have a Web page. When we get to the hotel we can look it up. No distractions now. We’re on the mission you assigned me, and are perhaps half an hour from the Little Flower Convent of Saint Therese.”

Max rolled his eyes. “A convent? Don’t tell me! The nuns there wear habits to this day, and it’s still as Catholic as the Pope. Predictably Ireland, God bless it.”

Max noticed Garry’s features settling into deep worry lines he guessed were new to those comfortable, intelligent features. Because of him.

“Nothing is predictable in our line of endeavor, Max,” Garry said. “Not the present and not the past. Especially not the past. I’ll thank you not to swear me to fulfill any last requests in future.”

Lights, Action

Temple approached the Fontana Suite’s double doors, treated like the entrance to a mansion, with etched crystal sidelights and brass torchères, wondering whether to ring the old-fashioned doorbell or just walk in.

An ear-piercing burst of automatic weapons fire first made her jump, then storm through the doors. She immediately leaped down and to the side, tumbling to the floor.

The firing stopped so abruptly that the silence hurt her ears in turn. At least she’d brought her iPhone, if not her purse, with the intention of making some quick notes, and could summon help.

A strange slapping sound came next from the other room. Temple rolled onto her bare, bony knees, not appreciating the cold and rough-textured slate entry floor. She rose awkwardly while pulling her skirt down and tried to tiptoe on her T-strap heels into the marble-floored main room.

Van and Nicky were clapping. Santiago stood near a massive steel-topped table, beaming like a São Paulo noonday sun.

A moderately sized flat-screen TV sat on the burnished metal tabletop, which also supported a fifteen-inch-high cityscape of miniature constructions, an elaborate architect’s model.

Temple looked around thoroughly and could see no source for the weapons fire. Apparently a gangland hit was not in progress.

“Won’t the tunnel magnify the sound effects unbearably?” Van was asking.

“Totally programmable,” Nicky reassured her. “Santiago just wanted to get our full attention.”

Temple thought she should declare her arrival.

“He certainly got mine from the hall outside the doors. I thought the Chicago Outfit was back to take over … or else it was the feared first terrorist offensive on Vegas.”

Santiago spread his white-suited arms like the statue of Christ of the Andes overlooking Rio’s harbor. He laughed heartily.

“No, PR lady, it was just me and my media creations. Come closer and see.”