Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  This time emotion had colored the mechanical voice. Bitterness.

  “Barry died,” Max said.

  The Cloaked Conjuror didn’t respond for a moment. “You know magic shows are based on doubles. Barry was my body double. The police never started a murder investigation. There wasn’t any evidence. People in the circus, people on window-washing rigs, people in high-steel construction sometimes fall, and sometimes die.”

  “I’m the poster boy for that fact,” Max said. “What about your late performing partner for the hotel’s signature Russian artifact exhibition?”

  The Cloaked Conjuror kept statue-still. It must be torturous to remain always behind the mask, behind the façade, literally caged by his costume, his larger-than-life persona.

  “Perhaps people around me are fated to die,” the mask intoned.

  “Perhaps,” Max said, leaning forward intently, “people associated with magic and who dabble in aerial illusions are fated to be killed in this town because something is killing them.”

  “Besides hubris, you mean?” The flat of CC’s palm hit the dressing table. “Did you see Shangri-La perform?”

  “On a couple of occasions.”

  Major flashback.

  “And—”

  Max found talking to CC, talking to a fellow magician, like Gandolph, produced ripples of recovered memory. This time he saw a flying woman falling from grace, from life to death.

  He knew what to say. “She was … amazing in performance. She managed to combine the gravity-defying martial arts moves of the artiest recent Asian films with classical magic illusions.”

  “Yes.” The CC’s shoulders lifted with a sigh. “She was a tiny thing, but fierce, like that trick Siamese cat of hers that could balance on a wand, or so it seemed. Hyacinth and Shangri-La were much more interesting than rabbits and top hats. Everything in her act was a delicate Asian watercolor overlaid on a samurai sword. She died because of an attempt on my life.”

  She died attempting to take your life, Max’s memory spoke up. She had already taken Temple’s ring during an onstage trick and then kidnapped Temple and Midnight Louie, the cat who was hardly a tiny thing, but fiercely devoted.

  Max’s memories were becoming quite a chorus. He could hardly think past their jumbled, tumbling rush to escape the lockbox in his head. He could hardly talk for the oncoming noise.

  “Why remind me of that awful loss?” CC’s deepest inhuman voice asked, with justification.

  “Because I don’t think the deaths are done.”

  “Deaths are never done, you know that, Max. Part of magic is the constant reversal of death. The rabbit is gone, the rabbit is there. The girl in the box has been sawn in half, the girl in the box is whole. Shangri-La—or the Phantom Mage—is defying gravity. Shangri-La—or the Phantom Mage—falls to a harsh death. Only you didn’t die and Shang actually did.”

  Max sat there stunned. “Only I didn’t,” he repeated.

  But he’d been there at the New Millennium, had tried to save her. Was it actually Shangri-La who died while working with CC’s aerial magic show above the Russian jewels exhibition?

  Or a body double under that heavy Asian face paint that even the Cloaked Conjuror had probably never been permitted to see past?

  Chapter 36

  I’ll Have a Double … Agent

  Max ordered a drink at the bar, cozied up to it, and proceeded to let himself mourn his lost profession of top-ranking Vegas magician.

  It was unfortunate he’d had to look himself up on the Internet to get an overview of just how good he’d had it.

  No doubt, he’d enjoyed a “brief, shining moment” that extended from his last road tour through settling down in Vegas for more than a year … until his counterterrorism past caught up with him. Having his only friend, a retired Garry Randolph, and a smart, upbeat girlfriend at the Circle Ritz must have made Vegas seem like home, sweet home. At last.

  Then he’d had to go undercover as a masked acrobat-magician at this hinky, kinky nightclub and mess up his legs, memory, and private life. If he ordered a drink for every attempt on his life, they’d be rolling him out of here on a cash cart.

  So it wasn’t hard to appear deeply morose. He just had to order another drink until someone significant recognized him. While he made himself into an apparently stewed sitting duck, he wondered what his self-appointed “savior,” Temple Barr, would think to see him now. She’d either admire his chutzpah … or take him for a lousy lush.

  He was on his third whiskey sour, when the words “Max Kinsella, I’ll be damned” came confidentially close to his ear. Someone shouldered onto the momentarily vacant barstool next to him. This was a popular place.

  The voice had been male and the face, when he looked up from his drink, was genially handsome but fading with age. The guy was dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, both a touch extreme in style. The duds reminded Max of an old-time Broadway promoter. Maybe it was the quintessential extrovert’s plaid bow tie that did it.

  “Hal Herald,” the guy introduced himself. They had to huddle together to hear each other over the loud, pulsing music. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember a low-ender like me, but what the hell happened to you after your big break headlining at the Goliath?”

  “I had a bad manager. Me.”

  “So … a comeback in the works? Not a lot of magician slots are out there, now that everything in Vegas and beyond is that damn Cirque de Soleil nonsense. Most tourists can’t even pronounce the name, but they sure flock to their shows.”

  “Very confidentially,” Max said, leaning a bit too close, speaking a bit too sloppily, “I am working on a comeback gig on the Strip. And now I just learned the damn Cloaked Conjuror will be adding the secret to my six-swords illusion in his act at the New Millennium.”

  “Nah? That bastard. He’s left you alone so far. You must be furious.”

  “Furious enough to make that joker disappear for my new act’s finale.” Max signaled the bartender. “Something for my friend Hal.”

  “Another failed-magician parasite living on dissing the lifework of others.” Hal pointed at Max’s glass to banish the bartender as fast as possible. “And now the recession. There must be a couple hundred magic acts out of work in this town. I’m not talking your level, I’m talking small clubs and motels and even the kiddie party circuit.”

  “People don’t want mystery in their lives anymore,” Max said. “They want everything and everybody revealed. It’s Gossip Nation.”

  “That’s right.” Hal grabbed the whiskey sour as soon as it landed. “I’ll get the tab, don’t worry. Magicians are an endangered species. We entertained. Hell, we made them think. People wanted to know, How the heck did they do that? That’s healthy. That’s an inquiring mind. Now the public only wants to know what celebrity is screwing whom. Don’t get me going.”

  “Amen, brother.”

  “Listen.” Hal gulped half his drink. “I’m meeting some folks, but I’d like to go into this more. Can you hang here for a few minutes?”

  Max lifted his mostly full glass in answer. It had been window dressing anyway.

  “I’ll be back.”

  The minute Hal Herald vanished into the crowds on the dance floor, Max turned to the guys on either side of his and Hal’s empty seat. He slapped a hundred-dollar bill in front of both men. “Hold my places for five minutes and you’ll own these pretty pieces of paper permanently when I come back.”

  “That’s an ex-shpensive leak, buddy,” one said in serious slur mode.

  But when Max slid off his perch, both men were hooking an ankle on the footrests of the empty barstools. Besides, the unfinished drinks were a claim too.

  Max threaded through the crowds like a whip snake, elbowing and shouldering a path with just enough force to make people shift without getting territorial.

  The men’s room was darker than an Egyptian tomb, all black reflective surfaces, even the urinals. He ducked into a cubicle, lucky the busy clientele had their ba
cks to him and no mirrors on that wall.

  Max cruised the Internet on his cell phone and had Hal Herald’s Wikipedia bio in hand. Pushing Medicare. Had a pretty good engagement for a lot of years at the Frontier in the old days. One of his ex-wives had been a successful medium, got some cred from “finding” a dead body for the police, late did an act as Czarina Catherina. Wait! Had shared bills with Gandolph the Great and—bulletin Miss Temple Barr would die for—the recently late Cosimo Sparks.

  Herald’s busy biography until the late 1980s confirmed what he saw as “the death of magic.” What else was obvious now, twenty-some years later, was the death of magicians and people associated with them.

  Max returned to the “reserved” barstools in plenty of time to convey the two Ben Franklins to the bracketing drinkers, who grabbed them and probably exited to hit the casinos.

  Only a couple minutes later, Hal Herald reappeared. He didn’t claim his expensive barstool. “Say, we don’t have to sit here with the going-deaf-slowly crowd. I happen to be one of the owners. We have a private suite upstairs. We make a point of keeping it on the QT. Game?”

  About time. Max followed Herald up the same subtle staircase to the same pressure-operated door Temple Barr had described. Oddly, he remembered the next part from his recent dream of being closeted in secret rooms with the Synth. Probably that had been the Phantom Mage’s dream, but that persona was truly dead and gone.

  And he needed to convince the people here of that, because this would be Max Kinsella’s big play. Only a real commitment would win him entrée to the circle of vengeful entertainers or clever criminals or just plain crazies who called themselves the Synth.

  Chapter 37

  The Shadow Nose

  My feet and heart are both primed to hop, skip, and jump over to the Oasis Hotel and Casino in the dark of my namesake hour.

  Great Bast’s Ghost! When is a dude to get some downtime on his own in this world? When I was not in the bosom of my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt and his family members during the weekend Chicago jaunt, I was in the clutches of the low-end mob boyos and TSA security checkers coming and going.

  These are not happy travel memories and involve many personal indignities too indelicate to describe, including derogatory comments about my carriers, especially Miss Krys’s homemade one, which occasioned open hoots of laughter. If I do return to Chicago, I will have to have a nose-to-nose with her.

  Then, I come home on Tuesday and Miss Midnight Louise is always hovering somewhere, needing to unburden herself of endless “reports.”

  Now, at last, my role as CEO of Midnight Investigations, Inc., and my need for a roam of my own have met. Something fishy is going on at the Oasis, at least in the Lusty Ladies and Laddies ship attraction.

  There are times when I wish to keep a low profile and enter a major casino by the well-hidden rear service areas. This is not one of them. Crowds are milling in and out of the Strip joints despite … or because … of the nearing wee morning hours.

  Most Strip hotels gussy up their entry approaches with large iconic sculptures and lush landscaping, so I can tiptoe through the manicured jungles as unnoticed as dirt: rich, almost-black loam is imported for the exotic greenery. I can also slink around the massive statues, in this case one of the facing elephants who suffer from a severe condition common to Las Vegas, called “gigantism.” These painted and overdressed pachyderms would be big even to the towering statue of Goliath down the Las Vegas Boulevard.

  Getting through the casino’s front door is not the slick process I can usually execute. A lot of people are standing statue-still around something right in front of the rows of brass-framed doors.

  I am forced into an intricate and risky weaving maneuver to pass but not tickle a forest of bare and hairy ankles so I can survey the object of their interest.

  Hmm. Louise did not mention the megabucks forced into an elephant-palanquin-size treasure chest sitting on the front doorstep for all to see, and see through. The chest is clear plastic and rather ghostly. She is so fixated on Mr. Max Kinsella that she cannot see the moolah for the mush.

  The ersatz sailing ship in the cove at the hotel’s side may be the scene of Mr. Cliff Effinger’s gruesome demise and now haunted by supervising thugs. And there may be an infestation of electric eels in the cove water. And it is somewhat interesting that Mr. Max was attacked there Monday night (yet again, yawn), but that is the price you pay for being nosy.

  I say the big dough up for grabs Friday night is the far more likely target at the Oasis. And the dead-certain likeliest target to be found in the entire vast hotel-casino layout is the one I intend to track now, whose likeness is plastered above the doors nobody is watching now that so much fresh green money is on display.

  Midnight Louie always has his eye on the prize, and in this instance it is not bankable.

  An hour later, I am still searching. Vegas casinos would deny the comparison, but they are laid out like an Ikea store combined with a maze the size of Massachusetts.

  I would bet all the money in the out-front treasure chest that the clever Norse pattern the Ikea store on a route where you can walk and walk and never quite exit. That way you see all the wares and make impulse buys. Same thing in a casino.

  Just as I am about to be terminally overcome from the floor level foot odor, I am making a three-foot dash to the next craps table when a white tornado comes churning in my direction.

  Busted! I am caught out in the open, the object of every eye that is not pinned to a slot machine or a gaming table.

  Luckily, that is very few people. Unluckily, my right ear is the target of a hot wet slap in the face.

  “Louie, old pal,” yaps the white dust mop of fur sporting hot pink satin bows about the ears, “whatcha doing here at the Oasis, huh, huh?”

  Before I can answer this silly creature, a dog that weighs less than half what I do, speaks for himself.

  “I have been riding at human shoulder-height for hours, sucking in secondhand smoke. I envy you having a job where you work best at foot-odor level.”

  The little guy has a point. There are no health warning labels on Odor-Eaters. Some might sniff at this dainty excuse for a canine as a “ladies’ lap dog” but Nose E. has one of the most dangerous assignments around Las Vegas: hanging around the big social events and casinos, using his small but potent sniffer to target illegal drugs and explosives. Usually he is carried around by a hot chick or a big beefy guy like Mr. T who can flatten anyone prone to snicker at a man with a purse pooch.

  “So what is up here at the Oasis,” I ask, “besides the million bucks awarded Friday to the gambler of the week?”

  “That is chump change.” Nose E. paws at the inner corner of one black button eye, and seeming to stroke the side of his valuable nose like giving the high sign. White breeds have a tendency to eye stains, not a problem for one born to be black and beautiful. “The management is concerned about explosive traces in the casino.”

  “This place could blow?” I cannot help sounding alarmed. “You are investigating the pirate ship attraction on the cove?”

  “Not in the assignment. I am not as credible in the great outdoors as you are, Louie. No, my beat is the casino. I am picking up very faint traces, meriting only a muttered whimper, not a full-blown aria of alarm accompanied by a paw lift and head tilt, which signals imminent danger.”

  “Manx! Are you a prima donna or a narc?”

  “A bit of both,” Nose E. growls. “It is a very specialized position.”

  “Speaking of ‘position,’ why are you not—?”

  Before I can finish my query, our down-low floor-side confab is joined by a third … I guess I should say … twins.

  They are a pair of female feet attired in towering platform spikes that would be a nine on the Lady Gaga Scale. My poor Miss Temple is only a six even at her most extreme. Some are not born for glitter rock ’n’ roll.

  Anyway, I have not seen the rest of this babe, but the ladder of leather strings from
her toes to well above her ankles is severely challenging to my chaw-and-claw instincts. Ah, leather! So tangy, so pierceable, so … dead prey.

  She is obviously Nose E.’s partner on this assignment and an updated clone of Miss Savannah Ashleigh, whose day has come and gone.

  This new-model starlet bends down to regard Nose E. “Here you are! Cozying up to the house mascot. Naughty, naughty, boy! That is not your job. Oh. Speaking of jobs, if you had to have a bathroom break, you need only have done the blink-and-arf signal and I would have escorted you to the sward out beside the elephants.”

  Bathroom break? I mince backwards. Nose E.’s kind is known to lift, aim, and spray on carpeting like this, whereas my breed is civilized enough to dig our own latrines far from the madding crowd. “House mascot”? What does that mean? I am nobody’s mascot.

  She bends down again, no doubt attracted by my movement. “Oh, you lovely thing!”

  A small improvement.

  Her taloned hands feel my neck. Is this a Jacqueline the Ripper? I try to wriggle away but she is quite … firm.

  “You are supposed to have a prize charm on your collar, but you seem to have slipped your collar, you naughty girl!”

  What a dim bulb. This woman is twelve on the Savannah Ashleigh meter if she has mistaken Midnight Louie for a girl. And a common collar-wearer! Blasphemy, O Bast, hear me and be avenged.

  I show my fangs.

  “You must be tired,” she coos. “Such a big yawny-wawny.”

  I … am … being … forced to discharge a hair ball onto the carpet like a misbehaving dog. Begone, foul temptress!

  By now, thankfully, she has swooped up the unfortunate Nose E. to silicone bosom height. “You naughty, naughty boy. It is off to work we go.”

  Nose E. is right. I have the better job.

  The pair of stilettos stomps off, damaging the carpet with every steel-heeled step. I hear a hiss behind me and turn to find the object of my quest glaring from under the craps table. Her fabled golden orbs are in full phase, the pupils mere black dagger slits.