“A CinSim is both character and actor,” I mused aloud. “Actors improvise. Cary as Johnny brought April a latte just after she and I talked about her family wanting to end their honeymoon and retrieve her money.”
“It could have been the beginning of a systematic ‘killing with kindness,’” Nightwine agreed. “You began to view the Cary Grant CinSim as an object of suspicion, as Joan did in the film.”
“What will Johnny do now?”
“Inhabit the setting April bought for him as long as her funds hold out. Then the Immortality Mob will move him back to the Star Bar, but that would be years hence.”
I thought I had the big picture now. Mr. Lucky rides again.
“A frustrating case,” Godfrey murmured in consolation, ushering me out the back door to my Enchanted Cottage and nearby office.
HOW RIGHT HE WAS. My suspicions lingered, but I had to wait to check them out.
A month later I looked up real estate records on the disposition of April Robertson’s house in the Sunset Boulevard Estates.
Johnny Aysgarth was still listed as in residence for as long as her trust fund lasted, but he was no longer alone.
He had a new ‘wife’.
Christa Robertson.
He had the looks and the class; she had the greed and newly discovered lust.
She had the power. and maybe the lethal powder; he had the potential.
Together, they could be box office poison.
Sam Spade with Effie in his office
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1184733184/tt0033870?ref_=ttmd_md_pv
Suspicion film photos
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2591528960/tt0034248?ref_=ttmd_md_pv
THE FIFTH TALE
INTRODUCTION
POST-MONSTER-APOCALYPSE Las Vegas also is home to formidable shapeshifters, like Inferno Hotel security chief Grizelle. She’s a slightly different breed of Big Cat than the Snow Leopard shifter pictured, but she has the same ferocious high-fashion predator’s soul. She hates Delilah Street almost as much as Delilah Street claims to hate Grizelle’s boss, Snow.
EVERYONE WONDERED WHY A Sin City bigwig like Christophe performed twice nightly as “Cocaine” with his own rock band at his Inferno Hotel venue.
That was like “the Donald” leading a Fifties Doo-wop group nightly at the Trump Las Vegas, although that very thought was more shuddersome than a pack of feral zombies invading a tea party.
Everyone was dying to know, in a Las Vegas packed with supernatural moguls, just what flavor of paranormal the Seven Deadly Sins’ lead singer, Christophe aka Cocaine aka Snow, was. Rumor whispered that he was an albino vampire, but Snow maintained that was way off base.
Except for the albino part, obviously.
One night between shows, the mogul-rock star stepped firmly out of character.
“Get me Delilah Street,” Snow told his security chief, Grizelle, even though the formidable shapeshifter hated Delilah Street almost as much as Delilah Street claimed to hate him.
“You’ve never asked me to provide you with a woman before,” Grizelle observed, her soft snarl the feline equivalent of snark.
“I’m not asking now. She’s a paranormal investigator.”
“She’s a self-advertised paranormal investigator. I find her annoying. I thought you did too.”
His colorless lips sketched the shadow of a smile. “I do.”
“She’s a bloody amateur,” Grizelle went on, “and she’s the Cadaver Kid’s girlfriend, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“She’s going to be my bloody amateur next. And, Grizelle, I notice everything, including when you’re jealous.”
“Jealous? Who’s got your back with tooth and claw?”
“You do.”
His pale hand stroked the top of her gleaming ebony hair styled into shoulder-brushing braids. She was a tall, handsome woman with watered-silk skin, an intricate swirl of black and deepest gray that outshone her emerald green-silk sheath dress and metal-heeled gladiator sandals.
As Grizelle leaned into his fond gesture, her moiré skin sprouted black and white fur and the green gown dwindled into the concentrated gleam of feline irises. Now shifted into a huge black-striped white tiger, Grizelle rested platter-sized paws on the broad shoulders of Snow’s white leather catsuit. Her emerald eyes slitted with devotion as one furred cheek rubbed her scent onto his cheekbone.
Her gesture almost dislodged the black sunglasses Snow always wore to shield his eyes from the light. “I’m going to need a human investigator in my corner very soon, Grizelle,” he whispered into her large, tufted ear.
The Big Cat eased down onto all fours before rising up in her human form, shaking her stripes into velvety black skin and satiny black hair. Her flashing emerald eyes evoked the glitzy green costume of Envy in Snow’s Seven Deadly Sins band.
“I’m your security chief,” she reminded her boss. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I told you. Delilah Street isn’t here.” His voice held the sharpness of command now.
“She doesn’t like you,” Grizelle half-growled, sounding sulkier than a soap opera diva. “It might be difficult to convince her to jump at your call.”
“I’m sure you’ll devise a plan. Don’t wait. Something wicked this way comes.”
YOU’D THINK A GIRL could get a peaceful night’s snooze in a cozy Enchanted Cottage. Sleeping Beauty had managed it for decades in a drafty old castle. I’d gone to bed early to get my own beauty sleep in after a tough case.
My bedroom isn’t located in any fairy tale joint, but in a replica of a nineteen forties honeymooner’s nest from a movie named The Enchanted Cottage. Inside it, the film storyline went, true love had overlaid movie-star looks on a plain old maid and a disfigured war hero.
I’ve been a black-and-white movie fan since I grew up in Wichita group homes after being found as an abandoned infant on some Delilah Street or another. I’d been an old maid, too—if that translates as “virgin” nowadays—until I was twenty-four and hit post-monster apocalypse Vegas looking for my exact double after I saw me/her autopsied on CSI V, Las Vegas.
There’s nothing like finding a good man and dog to get a girl past her intimacy issues. I had them both now, plus my stout Midwestern values and an abiding hatred of the group-home “vamp boys” who’d driven me into hiding from them in the TV room every night.
Now I have my own media room in the Enchanted Cottage and much better—and weirder—defensive weapons than a drugstore nail file stolen from a social worker. “Love, enchantment, cottage” spell peace to most people, but since my home, sweet, homage is located on CSI V producer Hector Nightwine’s Las Vegas estate…maybe not all the time.
So when I awoke to the apparent sound of repeated gunfire and sat up, blinking like a Gothic heroine in my filmy-curtained four-poster bed, I immediately looked for intruders.
Bingo! No gunshots, but one of my two casement windows was open and banging against the wall. The light sweat of alarm on my skin didn’t detect so much as a breath of night air, never mind a window-sash crashing wind. So…an intruder?
Checking the bedroom floor, I saw no sign of my devoted adopted dog. Quicksilver would enter and exit the cottage windows at night, discreetly and without drama, but never on the second floor.
Next I noticed the creepy “bugs-moving” feeling along my thighs wasn’t my nightshirt riding up, as I first thought. It was the crocheted bedspread slowly ebbing to the bed’s foot.
Since this is post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas and not your father’s Sin City but one crawling with supernaturals, I had immediate suspects. The first were the seldom seen domestic “helpers” that came with the Enchanted Cottage. The second suspect would be a first for me—a genuine ghost.
I grabbed the absconding coverlet with both hands and jerked it up to my waist again.
It jerked back down.
I leaned forward to jerk harder.
Something seized my T-shirt front and tugged even more. I fell facedown o
n the foot of the bed as that unseen “something” outflanked me to pinch my now-exposed rear.
This indignity ruled out a disembodied ghost, but not the mischievous pixies, gnomes and poltergeists that abound in the borders between the paranormal and natural worlds.
My house “spirits” so far had been as good as $2,000-an-ounce gold. They’d never resort to this spectral horse-fly bite.
I rolled over and off the bed, my slender ankle bracelet thickening as I went into uproot-and-expel mode. In seconds, my silver familiar had migrated to my rear and transformed into a really heavy and cold metal fanny pack.
That form was Vegas-appropriate, sure, but not helpful. Nothing would pinch my butt again, but I didn’t need a rear anchor right now either.
My yell and karate kick was meant to clear my immediate space.
Instead, the unseen Something grabbed my extended ankle and jerked again.
I would have gone bellydown on the floor if I hadn’t caught hold of a bedpost, spun around it, and churned my legs to scamper over the crumpled coverlet and off the bed’s other side.
“Show yourself, coward,” I shouted from a defensive position on my haunches.
Feeling ridiculous as well as furious, I launched myself at the wall near the door hoping to crash into my invisible visitor. I momentarily brushed something so elusive I ended up plastered straight-up against the wallpaper, a nineteen-forties floral design with blossoms bigger than my hands.
I must have looked as ridiculous as I felt because I heard a high-pitched, self-satisfied…giggle.
“Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet,” a crazy voice sing-songed.
It came from the open, now gently tapping casement window.
I charged the sound. When I arrived, my hips were lifted to catapult me past who or whatever was there, through the open window onto the flagstones below.
A parting pat on the fanny pack had me cursing. I’d already curled my fingers around the closing window frame at the last moment and swung safely inward with it to the wall. Once my feet were on the floor again, I slammed the window shut and held it closed with my back, sealing in my tormenter.
“…and she began to cry,” the disembodied voice taunted.
By now I was panting hard, but hardly tearful. The silver familiar had finally got the message that I could defend my own rear better than eight pounds of solid sterling. (Would that my glutes were that pumped.) It had looped around my left bicep as a funky designer cuff…lariat-in-waiting.
I scanned the room. Everything was dead-still now, even my airy bedpost curtains. The shut window was no longer a point of entry…or exit.
My glance fell on the stainless-steel water bowl against the opposite wall, kept in my bedroom for Quicksilver’s security rounds on the nights he was home. It was ten inches across because I’m talking a hundred-and-fifty pound dog, part-wolf, part wolfhound. I sometimes thought he might spend his nights out chasing his own tail.
Great! Out prowling just when I could use him guarding my besieged tail here at home. I caught a glimmer of something in the mirror over my dresser. Mirrors have been doors for me ever since I came to Las Vegas, so I see more in them than most people. Is it me or Sin City? Or a combustible combination of both?
Right now, I realized my filmy bedpost curtain was gathered into a fan of folds about…five-feet-six inches above the floor. Something clutched the fabric.
I dove across my bed again—most solo fun I’ve ever had on it—bounced and then caromed off the opposite wall, bent to grab the dog’s water dish…and flung the contents at the empty space between me and the bedpost.
For an instant, a wet figure took weird negative shape, like a strip of old-time camera film soaked in developing fluid.
“Strip” is the word. I ripped the coverlet from my bed and leapt on the being playing peek-a-boo behind the bedpost. My pounce encountered, and drove back, a solid form. I pushed forward until I pinned it to the wall.
“Ow! My eye,” the voice howled. “Jack put in a thumb and pulled out a plum—”
“Enough with the nursery rhymes! If I wanted a naked man in my room,” I told my unseen prisoner, “it wouldn’t be the Invisible Man. Now get decent and then you can explain yourself.”
Releasing mushy biceps—mad scientists aren’t much for working out—I folded my arms under the message on my sleep T-shirt—Kick Sass.
“Nice pecs.” Dr. Jack Griffin, a.k.a. the Invisible Man, commented on my posture with another giggle.
Where’s Fabio when you finally think you need him?
I stepped back a stride to watch a reverse strip show.
My abused crocheted coverlet, probably made by pixies or possibly even Madame Defarge, began to elevate like a cobra from a basket on the floor. It twisted around and around as it went higher, making my visitor look like he was donning a Roman toga.
“Here.” I tossed a rhinestone-banded black fedora from my dresser-top to his approximate middle. “Put this on. I like looking people in the face, even when they’re invisible.”
“Snazzy hat,” he cooed, giggling as the hat levitated over the room scenery between the toga shoulder and his forehead.
My uninvited guest was no threat to anything but my patience. What I had bagged was a rogue Cinema Simulacrum, or CinSim. Old back-and-white movie characters filmed on silver nitrate could be overlaid on illegally smuggled zombies from Mexico. The mysterious Immortality Mob leased them to Vegas attractions, where they were chipped to remain in suitable settings. My personal affinity for silver made me their champion. They, in turn, were my best confidential informants in town.
“Say, Miss Street,” the Invisible Man cajoled. “I just had to have a little fun with you. Can’t you take a joke?”
“Why now? And how’d you escape the Inferno Hotel on the Strip to get all the way over to my digs on Hector Nightwine’s Sunset Road estate?”
“I’m an Invisible Man of Mystery.”
“You’ll be unseen chopped liver if you don’t start talking.”
He adjusted the fedora to the jaunty angle I used when I wore it. Ruin it for me, why don’t you?
“I’m the only unchained CinSim in Vegas, darlin’ girl. I can go where I want because nobody can see me.”
“Why would a major Vegas mogul like Snow let one of his valuable leases go wandering?”
“I’m not as visibly valuable as the Inferno Hotel’s other CinSims. Nick and Nora Charles are chipped to the Inferno bar with that darn dog, Asta. The Noir CinSims have their own custom settings on the Limbo level. The bordello CinSims like Errol Flynn and Marilyn Monroe inhabit the Lust level right below.”
Mention of the Limbo and Lust “levels” didn’t faze me. The Inferno sat atop a recreated Nine Circles of Hell. Made you wonder what monsters that could dig up.
“I’m just an off-balance oddball,” Dr. Jack said, “as I was in my film life. Mister Mad Scientist, always considered smarter and crazier than sexy. An invisible CinSim gets no recognition. You at least put up with me. I even thought you really liked me.”
He sounded pouty now.
“I like you fine. At the Inferno Hotel, not in my bedroom.”
“That’s what I broke even my long-distance bonds to come and tell you. Things aren’t fine at the Inferno Hotel. It’s haunted.”
“The Inferno is owned by the world’s and the afterworld’s most freakingly arrogant rock star. Grizelle is tiger enough to handle it.”
“My dear lady. Grizelle is…no longer…what she was. No one or nothing at the Inferno is.”
“What’s new about that? Snow is just doing his usual control-freak act.”
“Snow’s no longer in control. Look at me!”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, sure, Miss Street, I like to give girls at the bar the occasional fanny pinch, but when did I get into serial assault on asses? Tonight. Then, heading here, I almost ended up way down the freeway in Laughlin, not at Nightwine’s estate. All we Inferno entities are possessed. Hayw
ire. Any minute the news will hit the thousands of tourists trekking in and out of the hotel. And Snow’s nowhere to be found.”
“Small loss,” I muttered, shaken despite myself. “Since when am I back-up security for the Inferno?”
“It’s all so horribly wrong, Miss Street. The slot machines are spitting out razor blades. At the Inferno Bar, your white-chocolate Albino Vampire cocktails are pouring out as dead dark as Black Russians. The ‘perfect film wife’ Nora Charles has runs in her silk hose, and hubby Nick Charles is out of gin!”
It was no secret I was annoyed that Snow had appropriated the profits from the cocktail recipe I’d invented at his bar as a nervy on-site taunt, but Dr. Jack’s last complaint alarmed me the most. Thirties booze-hound detective Nick Charles running out of Boodles was like the film Casablanca running out of doomed lovers. Sheer travesty.
While I stood there wondering what suit of armor I should wear to a cursed Las Vegas hotel, my casement window slammed open again. This time the cause was all too visible.
A huge wolfhound-wolf cross dog with vampire fangs and a bloodhound sniffer wanted to know who’d been tipping over his water dish.
Quicksilver’s unprecedented Superdog leap had him bounding off my abused bedspread to land by the upended bowl. He skidded through the spilled water as I dodged aside, then leapt with paws extended at shoulder height to pin the not-so-Invisible Man to the wall.
“Thanks, partner. Keep him busy while I get ‘decent.’ And no peeking,” I warned Jack Griffith, “even if you are a doctor.”
“I’m not that kind of a doctor,” he said. “Rin Tin Tin here seriously needs a manicure. Ouch!”
“I know,” I said. “He likes to keep his nails long and I don’t ever argue with that muzzle.”
LIVING IN AN ENCHANTED Cottage has its benefits. I slipped into my endless closet, still wondering what to wear to an unspecified hotel-wide haunting, and closed the door. A hovering pixie made herself into Tinkerbell so I could see in the dark.
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