"Tell her I had a good time in New York."
Temple yanked the door open and headed for the elevator.
Louie sneezed once, then growled.
"Keep that sniffer in prime working order," Temple instructed him. "I saw what you did at Rudy's place, and I'm counting on you, and on old habits dying hard."
Temple hailed and got the first cab that she spotted. Kit was right. It was all attitude. She'd found that out when she had tried to out-macho Victor Janos.
She got to Madison Avenue in mid-afternoon. No cat people were scheduled. That whole matter would be settled with phone calls, telegrams and letters after the New Year. Would she and Louie win the endorsement sweepstakes? Temple could not care less. She was really angry. They were lying about Vietnam before she was born, and they were lying about it right now at Colby, Janos and Renaldi.
A few snowflakes were flying, but not enough to cling. The street people huddled over heating grates, trying to be invisible when the police were forced to come and kick them away from the only outside warmth the city of New York offered.
Temple paid the cabbie and walked into the bustling lobby, heading straight for the correct elevator bank. She couldn't believe she had been so ignorant just a week ago.
The elevators were as handsome as ever, but reminded her of escorts whose true selves have shown through the facades, who pale by comparison with reality, who show the skull beneath the skin.
She could see the entire steel spine of the building as the elevator shot her up its empty shaft to the thirty-second floor. Another skeleton was ghosting down the hall on clattering anklebones. Just out of sight.
Louie lifted his nose in the empty hall, and sniffed, nostrils and whiskers trembling.
"Good boy."
The outer office was deserted, the receptionist surprised to see her. "We're about to close; we normally close early all through the holidays, " she said, her jet-black braids glossed into the sheen of India ink. Her nails were shiny, and painted the color of ripe pomegranate.
Temple wondered if they celebrated the Asian New Year of Tet
"You must he here to see Miss Kendall Renaldi--"
"No, I'm here to see Mister Brent Colby."
The receptionist's kamikaze nails hit buttons. Temple was instructed to sit for a while, but was finally buzzed in.
She and Louie passed the almost-closed door of Kendall's office. They headed straight for the corner office, where Brent Colby worked.
You could think Colby, Janos and Renaldi's name was decided according to alphabetical order. Or you could wonder about just what was the underlying order.
"Miss Barr."
He stood when she entered the room, as a gentleman should, but he seemed oddly detached.
"I don't understand why you're here. The trial... that's what we call this audition period, not that it's a dog obedience show. Sorry, Louie. A cat obedience show, although that seems a contradiction in terms. Not as if the trials, er, auditions, are over."
"I'm sorry too." Temple sat on a cushy visitors' chair and unfastened Louie. "I may have given you the wrong impression. This visit has nothing to do with the cat-product auditions."
"No?" He leaned back in his swivel chair, tilted his head, waited.
"I'm afraid it's about Kendall."
"My daughter?"
"She has been distraught about what almost happened to you."
"No, no! She's been distraught over what she thought might happen to me."
"I see. Anyway, I didn't want to leave you out."
"Leave me out?"
"Kendall was excited about my role as advisor to a Las Vegas hotel on an upgraded facility. She trotted me around to meet the partners and make my pitch. But she neglected to include you."
"Daughters. They think you're God, and they sometimes forget you for that very reason. So you wish to make up for her daughterly oversight. Commendable."
"No. In my own interest. My employers would be impressed if I were able to intrigue a major New York advertising agency with their account."
"One hand washes the other."
"Always."
He nodded. "You were right to persist and come to me. Have you seen... the others?"
"Oh, yes. Kendall saw to that."
"Kendall?" He looked disturbed now.
"She is such an adoring daughter, and so fearful that your trusted partners wanted to kill you. She wanted me to see if either of them were unduly greedy over the Las Vegas account."
His steepled fingers had stopped tapping one another. "And were they?"
"Not in my opinion. I'm afraid your daughter has been seriously disturbed by the recent events here. I wanted to warn you, so you could attend to her."
"Are you saying Kendall is crazy?"
"Well, she's been kept in the dark; what else is she to think?"
"Kept in the dark? How?"
"Vietnam," Temple mentioned, bending over to release Louie. "Do you mind? He's getting restless."
"I'm getting restless. You're saying that Kendall isn't. . . normal. Now you're bringing up Vietnam, which was a long time ago."
"Not in your generation's lifetime. Did you know that the murdered Santa Claus was a Vietnam vet?"
"Murdered? I can't agree to that. I still think that some bit of carelessness ... he must have brought in that chain as a sound effect, only it backfired on him."
"First he came to see you. The day Louie and I arrived."
"It's amazing, Miss Barr. The way you keep referring to that cat. Almost as if he were human. Certainly it's a good recommendation for you to get the job. Yes, I think I can strongly advise Allpetco to take on you and your stunningly smart Louie."
"How wonderful. Were you as enthusiastic when you hired Rudy?"
"Rudy?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. That was the name of the Santa Claus."
"I don't remember."
"No. No more than you would recall a certain Air America flight out of South Vietnam during the war. I found an obscure story at the public library. 'Vietnam mystery.' The plane loaded with illegal drugs, that were diverted to China. Wasn't Rudy the pilot.'"
"Rudy? I don't know any Rudy. As for this Air America--"
"An infamous arm of the CIA, according to library sources, which no one would question if it carried contraband. Drugs. Marijuana? A feeble base for a killing, both financial and--years later--physical, but you were all there: I've seen the memorabilia on all your office walls and can picture the rest. The two lowly but heroic draftees, the nobody pilot and the CIA man who wanted to make a financial killing out of Vietnam, to start a business his blue-blooded father abhorred. The library had an article on your Yale-man father, but you weren't like him. You wanted to be an advertising man. A hypester. A manufacturer of smoke and mirrors. The other two men you blackmailed to go along. They became your partners. The third man you lost track of, a pot-smoking zoned-out pilot who hardly knew where he was, much less what he was doing.
"I saw it on Janos's and Renaldi's walls: the Golden Hemp Award. No real trophy, except from the pot-smoking brotherhood. You are the only partner who keeps no war memorabilia on your walls. You didn't want to advertise it, savvy spin-master that you always were. You were a shadow-player. But you played crooked and had to consort with the underlings."
"Who told you this? Who betrayed me? Janos? He always agonized over the deaths."
"No," said Temple. "Your daughter did, because she was searching so frantically for whoever would want to harm her beloved father. Oh!" Temple lifted a leg. "That Louie has snagged my hose. I think he's found something, under your desk."
She bent down and rose with her thumb and forefinger pinched around a tissue paper. "Oh, look, Louie! It's a nasty brown cigarette butt. Do you suppose that it has anything to do with poor Rudy, who could never outgrow sixties habits? Do you suppose the police department will be able to find just this mixture of weed and paper in Rudy's place? No, it's not catnip, old fellow, it's cannabis, as in I'd walk a mile for a Camel.' Would your war partners walk a mile for you, Mister Colby?"