Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“You woulda thought he was the second coming of Roy Rogers,” Spuds said. “Bolo ties with western suit coats. Boots pointed enough to make a horse run away from him.”

“So he went ‘Hollywood,’ like the movie Melody Ranch’s singing cowboys?” Temple asked, to make sure they were talking the same language and style.

“Oh, yeah. Got way above us and hisself.” Wild Blue said. “Dollar cigars. We didn’t figure it out at first, where he got the money. Thought he won it gambling, or one mob or the other was backing him. He always had big plans.”

“We had Jilly to raise, number one,” Eightball said gruffly. “That changed our dreams of hitting a strike at an old mine. We only did that train robbery to get a fund for our girl, and when we found all the silver dollars gone from our mine tunnel, we figured at first other prospectors took ’em, not one of our own gang.”

“JJ was a disappointment,” Cranky said. “But he was long dead and gone, and the Joshua Tree Hotel and Casino was a wreck no one wanted to take on, by the time Solitaire Smith and that tourist gal stumbled on one of JJ’s new hiding places for the silver-dollar hoard.”

“We’d been hiding out all those years from that robbery, and turns out it wasn’t necessary. The dollars were only worth anything to those ‘numisintist’ people.”

Temple couldn’t help smiling at Spud’s mangled version of the word.

The Glory Hole Gang had all been roped into being stepfathers for Eightball’s orphaned granddaughter, and dreams of riches and glory had faded with their quirky responsibility for a young girl. Jill grew up looking out for her gang of uncles. Now she was Mrs. Johnny Diamond and lived on a lavish ranch that the Crystal Phoenix’s never-fading ballad singer kept as a retreat after his nightly shows.

The whole Crystal Phoenix family, Temple knew, would be devastated if any of these old guys had anything to do with killing the sunken soul Midnight Louie and his daddy had found on the bottom of Lake Mead.

“So,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Did you know anyone else in the old days who could have afforded a custom pair of silver heel-capped cowboy boots signed by a master silversmith out of Hollywood named Bohlin?”

She tossed the close-up photo of the maker’s stamp onto the coffee table that centered the sprawling conversation-pit sofas.

And all conversation stopped.

Every last man stared at the black-and-white photo as if it were an eight-foot-long rattlesnake sunning on a hot rock six inches from their cowboy-booted ankles.

They should have been safe from any poison, but just seeing the possibilities made their blood run cold.

“Oh, man,” Pitchblende wailed. “I saw those things fresh outta the box. Real fine box, with all this girly tissue-stuff wrapped around them for shipping.”

“Darn and definitely darn,” Wild Blue pitched in. “He did leave town without notice.”

“Forever,” Cranky intoned.

“I thought it was another fast deal down Arizona-way,” Eightball said.

“He never did like water,” Spuds mourned. “Only in his whiskey.”

Temple sat still and silent, realizing she had kicked off a wake.

For Jersey Joe Jackson? Didn’t seem quite right.

Motorpsycho Nightmare

Max dreams and knows it.

He’s riding a sleek silver motorcycle.

Through the Alps.

Revienne Schneider is riding pillion behind him, clinging. She is not the clingy type.

It this weren’t a dream, she’d be hurling Freudian interpretations his way.

Motorcycle, symbol of freedom. Alps, symbol of hubris and danger. She would yank him off his electro-glide high horse, bring him down to Earth.

So he knows dreamland is not throwing the sexy, brainy shrink at him, but someone else, the visceral, gut-wrenching shrew who is riding behind him in Revienne’s intellectual sheepskin clothing. Riding him.

Rebecca was a spoiled, conniving bitch in the famous novel of that name. And dead.

Now he sees the woman passenger’s long black entangling hair whipping around his face like a mesh mask. The burr on his back is Black Irish, just as he is. Thorny. Dogged. Just as he is. Deceptive. As he can be if he has to. Hate filled, as he never was, unless it was at himself.

Maybe that is the key to Rebecca. Her hatred was always self-directed, and turned outward.

Whatever the truth, he knows what she is. A revenant, a haunting dream. A nightmare is always a dark female ride for him.

He dares to pity her. And feels steel spurs in his side.

The tarot card reads Strength. Who is compassion and light.

He is the Magician. Who is action and power.

His dark rider is … Death. Who is dark and sometimes welcome, which is light.

Rebecca. Kathleen. Kathleen O’Connor. Kitty the Cutter.

The odd card in the deck, the Hierophant, with the stage name of Gandolph, rises with a staff, barring the middle of the steep, dark road. A ring glints into the air, all gold and twisted like the worm Ouroboros, the serpent swallowing its own tail, that ancient symbol of eternity. Its eye is shimmering like an Australian fire opal, which is a symbol of hope and purity.