Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Boogie Blues

  Lord, if they wanted to assassinate him, now would be the time to try. Please!

  Max had a “seat” on the hard-topped storage box in the tail of the airplane-long bus, where the diesel fumes almost put him under like lethal ether. He needed anesthesia again. His recently abused bones were shuddering with the efforts of the engine beneath him.

  As the incredibly long bus zigzagged like a sewing machine through the hairpin turns down the Alps, gorgeous postcards of scenery careened by, making his stomach into a blender for every acid in his system.

  A babel of foreign languages simmered like stew from the comfy upholstered reclining seats stretching endlessly toward the front of the bus, and exit, and fresh air.

  And Revienne was enjoying the cushy leather comfort of a Mercedes backseat somewhere far ahead. Did he really have to find her?

  Yes, dammit.

  If she had been kidnapped, he owed her a rescue-for-a-rescue.

  If she had been whisked away like a fancy fishing lure he was to be tricked into following, he needed to know that too.

  ZH 12656. Tracing a Mercedes license plate in Zurich would be like looking for fleas on a mongrel dog.

  He grabbed his duffle bag as a new lurch almost sent it skidding down the long aisle to the pert driver in the front. She shrugged when she’d indicated the far back of the bus: the only spot a hitchhiker could expect. And the price of a bouquet was small admission.

  He thought ahead to Zurich. Garry Randolph had said they’d “worked” the Continent together, magicians and spies. Counterterrorists. Switzerland was supposedly neutral ground in the politics of Western Europe, but all the money was here, and there was nothing neutral about money.

  Garry must have flown into Zurich. Max would concoct a story: a missed plane connection, a missing uncle. He’d need a new credit card as soon as he left the bus. His long fingers did an arpeggio of anticipation. No dexterity loss there. He could whisper an American Express Platinum from any breast pocket. He needed a better hotel, better wardrobe, some better food, and grooming/disguise time. Might keep the smudge of not-quite-shaved beard. Trendy Eurotrash look. The bus driver had liked it. Maybe not Revienne. She was a silk stocking girl, and they still made those lovely late-lamented articles here, abroad. How did he know that?

  Previous life.

  Odd, what seemed to be coming back were instincts and memories from the farther past, not the immediate one. Short-term memory was shorted out. He was a man without a country.

  Max clutched his elbows to keep them from jolting into seat backs ahead of him and let his disabled mind roam. Maybe it would guide him to a glimmer of Garry Randolph.

  Zurich.

  They had joked once. He and the older man had joked about the English word rich being in the city name. The restaurant had been dark and had served coffee as thick and black as molasses. Max’s after-dinner cup had a shot of whiskey in it. He was young and raw-boned, Irish and melancholy, and far from home and could drink under age twenty-one. He was still nervous about it but Garry had chuckled, sounding just like his favorite uncle . . . uncle? Uncle Liam. Sean’s father. Sean’s sonless father.

  “Drink up,” Garry’s voice came over the grind of the huge engine, as the boozy coffee’s aroma erased the diesel fumes. “You’ve managed to get the one thing most men in the world would give the world for: just revenge. The IRA bastards who blew up your cousin Sean are history. Two shot dead in the raid; three bound for a life sentence. We did it.”

  So that’s what they had done. Acted as an unofficial “equalizing” force against terrorists. Max tried to remember how he’d felt after that belt of Irish whiskey and Turkish coffee. Scared. Just scared. He was too young to be drinking hard liquor. He was too young to be seeing to it that men he didn’t know died.

  So, had he aged like whiskey, getting stronger, smoother, and mellower? Or had he grown hard and bitter, like coffee? Or was he a combination of dark and light, like most people. No, he’d never been like most people, never would be again, not a teenage virgin who’d graduated from high school to taking lethal revenge on five grown men in a single now-forgotten Irish summer.

  He must have fallen asleep. The bus was forging through the darkness into fistfuls of glittering lights in a distance that offered little sense of up and down.

  People’s heads were bobbing on headrests all down the aisles. Asleep, as he had been.

  They must be on the outskirts of Zoo-rich. Max stretched his long frame, hearing sinews crack. His legs ached like the devil.

  And that was appropriate. He had a lot of the Devil’s work to do in Zurich if he was to remain free, and remain free to find Revienne Schneider in that mass of people, buildings, cars, and numbered bank accounts.

  Unhappy Hoofer

  Matt walked into the greenroom for the competition, nodding to his new peers. Someone he’d already met was there, the Cloaked Conjuror, the Goliath Hotel’s oversize masked magician.

  Glory B. was a straw-thin, twitchy teen diva with a bee-stung pout courtesy of collagen injections.

  Matt found shaking hands with the handsome José Juarez, an Olympic fencer as lean and limber as a fencing foil, a knuckle-crushing experience.

  Keith Salter, a celebrity chef, was as expected—charming, egocentric, and chubby.

  The ladies he met were Olivia Phillips, a postmenopausal soap opera star who reminded him of Temple’s aunt Kit; Motha Jonz, a hefty black hip-hop diva; and last, but decidedly not least, Wandawoman, a World Wrestling Wrangle Amazon got up like Wonder Woman on steroids.

  Matt couldn’t help thinking he’d joined some X-manish federation of talented freaks as the token ordinary guy.

  Their pro dancing instructors were present, the guys a muscled mystery meat mélange of straight and gay and bi—you figure it out—the women young and sleek and as ambitious as spawning silver salmon leaping upstream.

  Matt grinned to think that Temple had pushed him into the heart of this gender-ambiguous, openly sexual world. She must think he was pretty secure. Which he was. Nothing like publicly advising other people about their deepest desires and identity crises to make one blasé.

  Matt sat beside the Cloaked Conjuror. He was a Klingon-imposing figure on high platform boots, wearing a completely concealing tiger-striped full head mask.

  “I, ah, met you at the costume contest you were judging at the TitaniCon science fiction-fantasy convention,” Matt said, not sure the man behind the mask would remember him.

  “That’s right.” He stretched his long legs ending in the Frankenstein boots. “The Mystifying Max’s pretty little redheaded girlfriend helped engineer catching a murderer that night. You were there too.”

  “I’m always surprised when anyone remembers me at such a huge event.”

  “Not my problem.” CC chuckled. His mask contained a voice-altering device, so he sounded unnervingly like Darth Vader giggling. “They mentioned you used to be a priest. I bet that and sitting behind an advice-line mike doesn’t make you a natural at tiptoeing through the triple-time foxtrot.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Matt conceded, “but you don’t seem geared for that either.” He nodded at the industrial-strength shoes in size fourteen.

  “I’ll ditch these for the dances.”

  “Temple said something . . . don’t you get death threats from disgruntled magicians because your act is built on exposing the tricks behind their most famous illusions?”

  “Temple! That was her name! Max’s squeeze.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “No? Max dump her?”

  “He’s missing. And . . . we’re engaged.”

  “Humph. So my old compadre bugged out and left you with the girl.”

  “It didn’t exactly happen that way.”

  “No, I guess not. You look like a nice guy. You’d wait your turn.”

  Matt held his temper, figuring he’d have to do it a lot in the next week. This greenroom looked like a theatrical variety show an
d he didn’t fit in.

  “Aren’t you taking a risk?” Matt pushed. “Exposing yourself at a hotel that isn’t set up to protect you 24/7?”

  “All Vegas hotels are set up for 24/7 surveillance, and I brought my own guys.” The massive feline head nodded at a two men in wife-beater T-shirts holding up the far wall. Matt had taken them for idle workmen or technicians. Which was the idea.

  “Why are you doing this?” Matt asked.

  “The charity. I lead a pretty isolated life because of the disguise and the death threats. That makes people even more eager to see me outside of my secure home hotel. Everyone who votes for me during the six days of this competition pledges twenty bucks to cancer research. I figure it’s worth the risk. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Yeah. The kids’ leukemia fund. And my girlfriend made me.”

  CC’s weird, wheezy, basso laughter somehow conveyed warmth. “I’d do almost anything for a smart girl like her myself. You’re a lucky man. I can’t afford a romantic life.”

  Matt just nodded. He gazed around the room at the assortment of strangers who’d become friendly rivals very soon. They were sizing one another up as the team of male and female hairstylists, makeup artists, costumers, and pro dancer-choreographers made the round of contestants with the show’s director.

  “Good,” said the head guy when he reached Matt and CC. “You guys are getting acquainted already. Dave Hopper, director. You’ll discover a real camaraderie developing between you eight. You’ll work harder mentally and physically than you ever have, and cross barriers you never faced before. It takes guts to try something you’ve never done much of right before live TV cameras.”

  He sat on an empty folding table as his production team gathered around.

  “The Cloaked Conjuror here will be a challenge from start to finish.”

  “The Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller of our show,” a costumer said. “A huge guy, larger than life. I’ll have to work around the mask.” The tall, blue-jeaned bottle redhead glanced at the lithe blond dancer beside her. “Vivi, you’ll need to dream up Beauty and Beast type routines. The masked man is a romantic image; we’ll have to play on it with the costumes and the choreography.”

  She turned to Matt. “Stand up.”

  He hesitated. He hadn’t been ordered to move since grade school.

  “Stand up, cutie. I need to see your build.”

  He hadn’t been called “cutie” ever. But he stood.

  “Fit, if not awesome. All-American boy.” She sighed and eyed the sinewy brunette who was evidently Matt’s choreographer-coach. “Blond and smooth as butterscotch syrup, Tatyana, but that’s a handicap in the Latin dances. And those are the audience-pleasers.”

  “We could cover the hair,” the hairstylist suggested. “Zorro scarf and hat. Or go brunet.”

  Hopper nodded. “Worked for Elvis.”

  “Could use an Elvis tune,” Tatyana suggested.

  “Uh, black dye—” Matt began, appalled.

  “Just a rinse,” the hairdresser said. “Could even spray it in. Look around you. How many of the pro guys and the male contestants are blond? Isn’t dramatic enough for guys.”

  “There’s Derek on Dancing With the Stars,” the costumer noted. “Does work that darling boy thing.”

  “Not in Latin,” Hopper decided. He was middle everything: in age, build, temperament. “We’ll go both ways on him. It’ll be a real shockeroo when the teen angel boy comes out all dark and devilish for the pasodoble. Audiences adore transformations.”

  “Plays well against the priest thing,” Tatyana suggested. “I can have fun with that: devil or angel.”

  Matt had a feeling her idea of “fun” wasn’t heavy on personal dignity, at least as he knew it.

  They moved on, as did CC, linking up with his bodyguards.

  And Glory B. moved in on him, taking the adjoining folding chair, then tapping her high and strappy spike heels on the floor so nervously they sounded like castanets. “How’d a priest get talked into doing this?” she asked.

  He regarded the notorious oversexed teen idol and decided not to emphasize the “ex” part of his status. “The charity donation.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Her ankles turned out like a kid’s wearing white patent leather mary janes for first Communion, skewing the hooker heels to the side. “I want do something for the kids.”

  “You were one yourself not too long ago.”

  “You think so?”

  Matt wondered what she wanted from him. Flirting? Nah, she’d mastered that years ago, even though she was probably sixteen, tops. Glory B. He’d seen her name in the newspaper gossip columns, on TV. She’d been in trouble? Drink or drugs? Both, probably.

  “I hit someone,” she blurted.

  With kids her age, it was usually another kid. He frowned, confused. What was so newsy about that? Tantrums must be her middle name.

  “With my Beamer,” she confessed. “Can’t drive it for a while anymore.”

  “You must have people around who can.”

  “Yeah.” Her nails were painted midnight-blue, but very short. Probably bitten that way. “It hit a kid. You know, a little kid. Broke both legs. So I’m dancing for charity to work off part of my probation.”

  Matt couldn’t help glancing down at her broken-looking ankles. Where does a teenage superstar put guilt? In a tiny purse like the one Glory B. kept beside her on a chain, clearly capable of carrying nothing more than a credit card, and maybe some happy pills.

  “Funny,” she said. “The kid’s in double casts and I gotta dance my ass off for doing it.”

  “How old is the kid? Girl? Boy?”

  “Girl.” She stood, wobbling on the four-inch heels. “These shoes cost more than the medical stuff. I was gonna give her a pair when she got better, but they say she might not be able to ever wear pretty shoes. Dancing shoes.”

  “It’s called penance,” Matt said.

  “Huh?”

  “When you do something wrong, you have to pay for it. It’s not the probation or what the law says you have to do. It’s what you feel inside. It hurts. It’s supposed to. You’ll remember that the next time you don’t think about what you’re doing that might hurt someone else. But you can’t hurt yourself to make up for it either. That way nobody learns.”

  She stood there clutching the ridiculous tiny purse, slathered in rhinestones like the cell phone probably inside it, and worth hundreds of dollars. She still looked like a lost seven-year-old and was probably worth millions.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “Everybody gets a second chance. Maybe this show is yours.”

  The eyes rimmed in black liner blinked once as she nodded and tottered back to her seat with the soap and wrestling queens. Men, Matt mused, usually got famous for what they did. Women often got famous for being caricatures.

  “Here come de judges, here come de judges,” Motha Jonz announced, springing up from her seat pretty spryly for a woman of size in her forties. Her Afro pompadour had a dazzling Bride of Frankenstein silver streak up the front and boobs and booty jiggled with every move she made, like Jell-O on parade.

  She certainly diverted every eye in the room from the trio of folks joining them.

  Then Matt jumped up to greet—of course!—Danny Dove, Vegas choreographer extraordinaire.

  They did the one-armed hug authorized between guys, even when one of them was gay. Danny was compact and wiry, and apparently not considered authoritative because he was blond like Matt, except his hair was even less impressive, being as curly as Shirley Temple’s had been.

  But his spine of stainless steel put the butch back in blond, and Matt was pleased to see him here.

  Knowing a judge couldn’t hurt, but mostly it was good to see Danny get back into the Las Vegas event whirl after the trauma of having his partner murdered.

  Another blonde, bottle-variety, was on the judge’s panel, and Matt knew her by reputation and sight: the endlessly self-resurrecting B-movie ex-actr
ess, Vegas hanger-on, and Temple Barr crown of thorns, Savannah Ashleigh.

  She was tall, enhanced by towering platform spikes, and dressed in extreme fashion. A purse pooch, all big black eyes and spidery blond hair, peeked out of a ridiculously expensive-looking bag. Savannah had previously traveled with a pair of glamour pusses, shaded silver and gold Persians named after French starlets, like Yvonne or Yvette. Temple’s cat, Midnight Louie, had seemed enamored of the missing pair but they were evidently passé now.

  He and Savannah had appeared briefly on a panel together only a couple of weeks ago, but she’d forgotten him already. She proved the makeover crew prophetic by ignoring him to canoodle with the other two male, and brunet, contestants.

  “Who’s the third judge?” Matt asked Danny.

  “Leander Brock, the show’s creator and producer. Obviously, I’m the serious credentialed gay one and Miz Ashleigh is the over-the-top female impersonator one. Somebody bi of either gender would have been a nice blend at this point, but we’re stuck as a troika.”

  Matt made a face. “Is it really pre-set up like that?”

  “Absolutely. The judges’ conflicting personalities drive these reality TV competitions. I was brought on board to be demanding and biting. Any choreographer has to be a bit of that. We’re really drill sergeants in tights. Miss Savannah Ashleigh will be ditsy and amusing through no efforts of her own, and Leander will provide the balancing act. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past him to cast his votes in such a way as to trigger the most people calling in, but it is all for charity. Just don’t expect justice. It’s all opinion. Mob rule, really, as so much today. Everybody’s an expert.

  “And so, Mr. Devine, the dancing wanna-be,” Danny went on, “what is your better half doing while you’re learning the cha-cha?”

  “Temple is—I don’t exactly know. Between my midnight radio call-in show and this last week of rehearsal for ten hours during daylight hours I haven’t had time to think about that.”

  “And how are you doing in dance class with—” Danny turned to examine the four buff men and women in rehearsal gear stretching and gossiping against the far wall. “Don’t tell me! Tatyana is your coach.”