Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

That was rather like an invitation from an albino tarantula, Temple thought, but she walked over the marble flooring to the silken Asian rug to join Van and Nicky at the hypermodern steel-topped table.

She was puzzled that the centerpiece TV screen was only a modest forty-six inches wide. Modest size didn’t seem to match Santiago’s egocentric, open-armed style. As she got closer, Temple spotted a twinkle in his deep hazel-green eyes. He was laughing at her … and at himself and his poses.

He reminded her of Max, wearing his Mystifying Max green contact lenses for disguise and his magic act. Max hadn’t done that for ages, concealed his natural blue eyes since then, not since he quit performing two years ago. Temple wondered why her subconscious had resurrected that outdated image. She’d have to do penance and be sure to phone Matt in Chicago tonight. Or at least watch his taped segment on today’s The Amanda Show at home before bedtime.

“Are you any relation to Flamin—I mean, Domingo?” she asked Santiago.

“That charlatan?” he asked, still laughing. “Only in a gift for thinking big, they tell me. This will be ‘big’ on a small scale, as you are, Miss Temple, and as is the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters. Here, Santiago is forced to be confined, in his thinking and the space he has to manipulate. That is what so intrigues me about this project. ‘Big is bad’ today. Wasteful. Costly. Santiago will make magic on a small scale. See this.”

He gestured at the miniature mock-up. Everything displayed was fashioned from white matte board, so it was mysterious and sculptural. Temple moved her spike heels delicately over the thick-piled rug so she didn’t turn an ankle. Who could resist 3-D miniatures, so like Christmas dollhouses one had never gotten but had coveted in department-store Christmas windows? A four-boy family wasn’t much into dollhouses when it came to the only girl.

“Oh!” Temple recognized a mock-up of the Crystal Phoenix that resembled the Ice Queen’s palace from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. That construction anchored one end of the slick silver table. At the other stood another fifteen-story hotel, Gangsters, with low additions for the attached limo service’s office and garages. Between them stretched an elongated spiral of white construction paper.

“You must imagine,” Santiago said in a hushed, hypnotic voice. “You must imagine this graceful tunnel as belowground, a swift, silent conduit between Gangsters and the Crystal Phoenix, an underground monorail … no, an American-underworld horizontal time tunnel.”

“A ride?” Van asked, her voice sounding unconvinced.

“No,” Santiago said. “A fast car chase … with intermissions. What is this wonderful American expression from the gangland days—being ‘taken for a ride’? The clients of Gangsters shall have the long-lost experience of that pleasantly helpless, thrilling state so devoutly to be desired.”

While he paused to let that sink in, Temple and Van crossed glances. Was this guy selling his ideas or seduction? If a combo, that was in the Las Vegas tradition, for sure.

“So people will be speeding around in underground limousines?” Nicky asked, immersed in the mechanics of the process more than the sensations.

“It may seem so,” Santiago said. “The ‘limousines’ will look like motorcars, like these ‘stretch’ vehicles, only from the nineteen thirties, forties, fifties, and even sixties. But they will ride like a dream, on rails. On the tunnel walls outside their smoked-glass windows, scenes of iconic American gangster days will unreel before their eyes … the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde and Bugsy Siegel, all the delightfully gory happenings of days of yore. But they will unreel backward. It shall be death and resurrection, a theme the very name of the Crystal Phoenix evokes, yes? It will not be morbid, but the happy ending all Americans crave, for themselves and the world. Yes? All people cannot take their eyes off a disaster. All people then hope to see it reversed. The Chunnel of Crime, as you so colorfully christened it, Mr. Fontana, will be the Ride of Resurrection.”

“We wouldn’t call it by either term,” Temple said. “Box-office poison. Just say it’s ‘Gangsters limos go underground for a thrill ride you can’t refuse.’ ” Or something, she thought.

“I like that,” Van said, as if relieved to voice a first positive reaction.

“Yeah,” Nicky told Santiago. “Temple’s a genius at ‘spin.’ You build it and she’ll call it something no one can resist, and they will come.”

“Oh,” Santiago said, reassessing Temple. “She is a very powerful woman, then. The smaller the explosive device the more concentrated the effect, I have always believed.”

“We’re not going to have ‘explosions’ in this … attraction,” Van said.

“Of course not.” Santiago was definite. “Sounds—yes. Action, motion—yes. Speed—yes. Thrills—of course. But it is all merely show, as you say.”