"Whoever's doing this serial hotel killing is certainly fond of heights," Temple admitted. "So you believe the plunging UFO was cut loose by the same person?"
"Person," Ferraro growled, "or organization."
'The Mafia?" Temple felt numb with disbelief. "That's another cliche so antique it could be marked up quadruple and furnish a national landmark."
''Not necessarily," Ferraro added. 'The notorious godfathers may be an endangered species nowadays, but that doesn't mean that crime kingpins don't exist. They just don't get the colorful press they used to. The newer gambling areas are having the kind of trouble with organized crime we licked years ago. Then there's always the flashy foreign models--the Japanese Yakuza and the Russian mob are real bad news."
"Who would take my spoof seriously except somebody who was seriously disturbed?"
Temple persisted.
"There's that, too," Molina conceded.
"You mean a nut case--?"
Molina turned to retrieve a sheaf of papers from the desk behind her. "A nut who's decided to follow the plans you so thoughtfully laid out in your sketch." Molina slapped the papers to the desk again, close enough to Temple that she could recognize the familiar lines of her Gridiron skit. Who had given the cops a copy?'Did the initials "C.B." ring any bells, Quasimodo?
Temple shook her head, a mistake. The gesture brought her glance to the FBI agent, who was leaning forward in his borrowed chair. His no-nonsense eyes focused on Temple as if they hoped to rivet her to the wall.
"What about your veiled allusions to all those classified black projects at Nellis Air Force Base?" he wanted to know.
"Just that. Veiled allusions to what every TV tabloid show has been dredging up for years.
Next you'll tell me that someone's trying to resurrect Elvis, too!"
"Well ..." Ferraro began.
Temple couldn't stand it.
"Not . . . yet," he conceded with reluctance.
"I can't believe that you people are getting all excited about something I made up. Okay."
She eyed Molina. "My mob takeover scheme does seem a bit close to your speculations about the deaths of the two men in the casinos, but it's pure coincidence. Can't you see that I went through a catalog of all the old fish stories about Las Vegas and put them together into one big, unlikely bouillabaisse?"
''And can't you see, Miss Barr,'' the FBI agent answered her, ''that Las Vegas is a crux city where a ton of money and motives meet every day? Can't you see that an international clientele moves in and out of this town like a plague of locusts. The opportunity for big-time crime here is nothing to joke about. If you had any sense, you would jerk the skit from the show."
"What are you all? Shills for that miserable Crawford Buchanan? He'd love to cut my skit at the last minute, but Danny Dove would go ballistic if he lost his major number."
"Danny Dove?" The agent repeated the name with distaste as much as disbelief.
"An eminent local choreographer," Molina explained, "now directing, this comedy of errors."
"A stage name, surely," the agent persisted.
Molina shrugged, but Temple jumped to Danny's defense.
"Absolutely not. He got that handle when he was born in Norman, Oklahoma, longer ago than he's willing to put on a resume. I happen to know that for a fact, because I did freelance PR
for the Sands when Danny was setting up the original staging for their big 'Sands of Time' floor show."
The agent blinked, obviously flummoxed by the nitty gritty of Las Vegas entertainment.
"Whatever Danny Dove's antecedents or reaction to losing your literary efforts," Molina put in, "it's pretty clear that your imagination has irritated somebody besides the local constabulary.
We can't force you to do as we suggest, but we can cover this production like a London Fog shrouds a flasher. And we will have to, if nobody else is to get killed, especially you."
"You can't believe that these backstage mishaps were meant to harm me?" Temple was incredulous. "How could anyone determine when I would go up those steps, or that I'd use the handrail?"
Molina's eyes dropped to the site of Crawford's continuing inspection, for a quite different reason. "Anybody familiar with your footwear could figure that you would hang onto something when climbing those steep, concrete stairs in high heels."
'*What about the footloose UFO?" Temple asked. 'That thing could have smashed half the chorus, too. Isn't that overkill, even for Las Vegas? And who was to know that Crawford would be up on stage, and make me play bell ringer, the jerk?"
"There could be two scenarios," Ferraro suggested from his corner. ''One to take you out, and one to disrupt the production itself. Maybe they coincided. Either way, someone besides us doesn't much care for your script-writing."
"I invoke my freedom of speech." Temple folded her arms. "Besides, I think you're paranoid, which was part of my point in the skit. Pretty soon you'll hatch some notion that Elvis was secretly freeze-fried at death and is being brought back as an assassin for Castro."
Nobody smiled. That was the trouble with pursuing a career in law enforcement, Temple decided right then; all that martial arts practice destroyed the funny bone. She'd better cut back, fast.
They could do nothing, of course, even with the mighty FBI on the case, except interrogate, suggest and warn.
By the time Temple limped out of the barren office, a crowd of worried supporters had mustered in the narrow hallway. Actually, it was composed mainly of Fontana brothers, but they added up to a crowd all by themselves.
Danny Dove was eyeing Temple's limp. "More ice, more rest," he decreed.
Temple nodded meekly. Her ankle was throbbing almost as much as her head.
"We'll see her home," Ralph declared, promptly bending to hoist her like a Barbie doll.
Van von Rhine stood next to her husband, her arm threaded through his, her porcelain brow ruffled with worry. She walked out with the airborne Temple and her flock of Fontanas.
"Temple, that woman lieutenant had some rather worrying words with me. I told her that the hotel had been the victim of malicious pranks before, but she thinks this outbreak could be much more lethal. She pointed out that it already has been, in fact.''
Temple could only agree. "Do they know anything more about the man who was killed?"
Nicky broke his polite silence. "Some small-time low-roller. A drunk and a woman-beater. In other words, a loser hardly worth killing, unless he knew something uncomfortable to somebody. I'm thinking the cops are right about a possible takeover scheme."
"Oh, Nicky, no!" In her distress. Van stopped walking.
Fontana, Inc., too, stopped on a dime, which meant Temple was jerked to a halt that was rather hard on her ankle. Though elevated, it was not stable enough to withstand sudden changes in direction.
"Ow!" she complained without thinking.
Everybody tsked in concert. Danny would have been proud of them.
''It's not for us to do the police's work." Van patted Temple's shoulder. ''You go home and get a good rest."
Temple nodded, unwilling to debate everybody. She had some heavy thinking to do, anyway.
Nicky and Van peeled off. Temple was left wafting along in her flock of Fontanas. They cut such an impressive swath through the casino that slot junkies actually stopped their button-pushing long enough to look up.
Temple felt like Snow White among an unnaturally elongated squad of dwarves. Yet she liked the new vistas afforded by being carried along at a tall man's chest height, a mobile and human Eye in the Sky.
My, she could look down rows of slot machines, spot Hester Polyester and the Leopard Lady working the few one-armed bandits left, like laundresses chained to shiny chrome wringer-washers.
She could literally oversee the craps tables, and eyeball the balding heads of the ardent worshipers at the temple of snake-eyes and naturals. Had anyone ever done a study: craps and male-pattern baldness?