I swagger over as best I can while dodging shuffling tourist steps. In a moment we share our own island retreat in the chaos.
“Those purse pooches are taking over the neighborhood,” the lithe and lovely Topaz says.
She is the short-hair sort, black-panther sleek, and her larger-than-life image lounges on all the hotel-casino signage. The Oasis is a trendy multicultural mélange of Indo-Asian with a touch of Mediterranean. Topaz is the best thing on the premises.
I dare to greet her with a Nose E. pass (sans slobber) at her Cleopatra-collared neck, dangling its precious topaz jewel. This is a custom necklace, no lowly collar from a pet store. Topaz roams free in the hotel-casino, different charms on her neck netting the customers a nice prize. Tonight she wears the grand prize. No wonder the poor girl is hiding out.
“Why are you here, Louie?”
“Need you ask?”
Her purr would soothe the deaf.
So I warn her. “I am worried about something bad going down at the Oasis. There was a murder once on one of the cove ships and an attack there just last weekend.”
“I am not surprised,” she tells me in an urgent hush, “since my job is literally to ‘get around’ and allow the maximum number of tourists to spot me and thus win the daily prizes. Our security chief is meeting with suspicious strangers in the hotel-casino’s hidden service areas.…”
“As the murderer did when we solved my last case here during the reality TV dancing show…”
“Yes,” she hisses, “but this is no cakewalk. Security preparations for the big Friday-night prize drawing outside are complex, but I fear they are not enough.”
“So you suspect our inside man, Mr. Rafi Nadir?”
“No. However, I clearly see he suspects everybody else.”
“Not good. What can one man do against a mob?”
“You have uttered the word I dare not say. I am getting the distinct whiff of ‘mobster.’”
“Someone needs to stop this.”
“I am so glad to see you here, Louie.” She does the velveteen brush all along my side. “This is my home. I am the logo mascot. A mere canine bit of comb-leavings cannot do the job. I need major muscle.”
I am easy. “Do not worry, Topaz. I can provide that.”
You and what army? I can hear Miss Midnight Louise jeering.
And then I feel Topaz’s bristly pink tongue doing a swirl inside my ear and hear nothing else but purrs.
Chapter 38
Game for Adventure
Pretending to stumble through the familiar dark mazes inside the Neon Nightmare pyramid, Max at last followed Hal Herald through the concealed pressure-sensitive door into a firelit and incandescent-bulb glow.
Polite applause greeted him. There were only three people clapping, but they were all standing. One wore the frowsy flowing garb of a medium, like Electra Lark gone Sunset Boulevard. The other was dressed for excess as a Latina Cher, only half the diva’s age. The third was bar-mate Hal, who had stopped and turned around to face him.
“Lovely, dear people,” Max said with a bow. “Thank you. And I applaud your civilized retreat from the buffoonery that now commandeers the Strip.”
He nodded at the two women in the room, addressing the elder first. “Czarina. Wonderful to meet you in person. And Ramona. Always a pleasure.”
“Wonderful to see you so well.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve been in retreat working on my new act for ages. Speaking of retreats, I missed this magnificent room. It’s like something air-lifted from the Magic Castle in L.A.”
That mention had been intended to land in their midst like a Molotov cocktail. Has-been magicians like this crew would not be invited to perform there, or even be members. Max remembered at that moment that he was one. No wonder his participation in the Synth would be a “catch” for their private club here.
“It’s better than that pretentious place,” Czarina said. “And we own this entire club, not just some fusty old mansion.”
“The building and nightclub are spectacular. All they lack is a magic act.”
Three glances exchanged fast as whip snaps. Max’s apparent ignorance of the Phantom Mage’s performance run had them guessing.
He let them toss that idea around in their devious heads and played the unsuspecting pledge at a fraternity house. “And look at this room. So cozy and yet so charged with secrets, I bet.”
As in his dream, the room had not only that Vegas rarity—a gas-log fireplace—and several expensive and comfy upholstered wing chairs, but also a mantel holding exotic objects Sherlock Holmes would have envied.
His brain was doing double-time, flashing visions of previous visits here through the masked eyes of the Phantom Mage. He strode to the fireplace to further confound them. They had to have suspected him of being the PM, given his long apparent absence from Vegas and reputation for aerial illusions.
His back to them, he studied the mantelpiece, his glance passing over a crystal skull and elaborately jeweled dagger to the wax embodiment of a severed human hand. As he reached to examine it, the fingers pulsed and the hand spider-walked toward the dagger.
“Marvelous,” Max said, laughing even as he’d jumped back. “A prop from The Beast with Five Fingers or The Hand remake?” He seized the dagger before the mechanical hand reached it.
“And this?”
“From a production of the Scottish play where the actor starring as Macbeth died onstage,” Czarina confirmed. “Several interested Hollywood types were in the audience.”
“The curse strikes again.” Theater superstition had it that saying the name of the Shakespearean play, Macbeth, led to death among its cast. Max palmed the dagger, produced it in his other hand, and tossed it in the air to land in the empty space produced by the wandering hand.
“You have been practicing,” Ramona said.
“Cheap trick,” Max said modestly. “I wasn’t expecting to be anything more than drunk at this point of the evening.”
“Sit,” Czarina commanded.
So he did, crossing his long legs and settling into the wing chair as if the lord of the manor. Ramona, surname Zamora, had borne an arresting stage name at birth. She mirrored his posture in the matching chair opposite. She was right. They’d make an interesting stage pair. A pity she was a suspected murderess.
“Now,” she said, “the great Max Kinsella knows why we once-established magicians are furious at being relegated to some Illusionists’ Boneyard by Cirque-du-Everlasting-Soleil and robbed of our secrets by the Cloaked Conjuror.”
Ramona’s fury reminded Max of the Evil Queen from Snow White. That was fine. The short-circuiting wires in his memory tossed out the fact that, as a kid, he’d loved the Disney version for her wicked tricks, amazing image transformations, and sexy jealous rants. That lady had drama down cold.
“Now,” Hal pointed out, “you’re one of us disgruntled ripped-off performers, from what you said.”
“Absolutely. I returned from more than a year away fine-tuning a new act, and, presto, one of my former construction assistants skedaddles to sell the mechanics of my signature illusion to the Cloaked Conjuror for a few paltry thousand. Or so the rat’s former partner says.”
“Oh, it’s true.” Czarina was huffy angry. “CC has millions to throw around, and your last act was legendary around here. You have a huge following on Twitter.”
“I do?” Max was astonished. “Don’t you have to ask for that?”
“Anybody who wants can ‘follow’ you,” she said. “It helps,” she added seductively, “if you follow back.”
“That’s just it.” Max threw up graceful hands, his long fingers the envy of most of his peers for their dexterity. “I’m a magician, not a PR flack.” He winced internally to think of Temple Barr hearing those words from his lips. “I just want to do my job in peace, without some parasitic imitator trying to ‘expose’ me when he’s getting great notices and rich for doing it.”
“Hear, hear.” H
al pumped a fist into the air.
“Even worse,” Czarina said, watching him with all the shrewdness in her soul, which was considerable, “we think we lost our house magician to an assassination.”
“That’s ghastly,” Max said, “and worth prosecuting. Why haven’t I seen any media on the case? I must have still been out of town when this happened.”
“Out of town, where?” Czarina asked.
“Out of the country, actually.”
“Oh, where? I swear I got a couple cryptic messages from you.” Ramona lifted raven’s-wing eyebrows.
“Did you? I didn’t roam as far as anyone might think. North of the border.”
“Oh, clever,” Hal said. “Nobody looks for anyone up there in Canada but aging Vietnam War protesters. Good show.”
Max detected the triumvirate exchanging flash glances again. His story was holding up because of its very humdrum nature. Why had he said Canada? It had felt so right and reasonable, and wasn’t someplace spectacularly suspicious, not as if Max had claimed to be on the run on the Continent.
“You think someone is bumping off your membership?” he asked. “Someone did die here.”
“The Phantom Mage was a mere hireling,” Czarina said, all heart. “Probably a Cirque reject. That flashy bungee cord swishing around did distract the drinking crowd, but his magic technique was nothing to get excited about.”
“Some of us,” Hal said, “thought he was a spy.”
“Some of us,” Ramona added, “thought he was you. But then he died, or was killed, and you weren’t, unless you’re now a vampire or a zombie.”
“Excellent ideas for my new act, Ramona. ‘The Mystifying Max: Back from the Dead.’”
“We don’t know the Phantom Mage was killed,” Hal said.
“Really?” Max felt his muscles tensing for a rapid getaway. Had they invited him up here for an interrogation and possible extermination?
“He could have gotten careless,” Czarina admitted. “He seemed overconfident.”
“And you never suspected it was me,” Max chided with a smile, an overconfident smile.
The silence was uncomfortable. He’d confronted the weakness in his story head-on, like the Phantom Mage had faced his apparent death, but that crushing impact had been too convincing for any doubt, thanks to Rafi Nadir’s falsely official presence and diagnosis.
Max nodded soberly. “Perhaps the revolving lights of the signs of the zodiac disoriented him. They sure distracted me from my troubles. Did you know you’ve repeated one?”
“Repeated?” Czarina asked.
“I was slow to be served and had nothing to do but watch the mirrored bar-top light show. That’s the idea, I know, but I counted thirteen of those zodiac glyphs going around. It was like counting sheep, only the ram kept showing up, and the fish and the scorpion and the boa constrictor and the lion.”
“You were sure in your cups, my friend,” Hal said, chuckling, “if you were seeing snakes in the zodiac. What’s your sign?”
“I never paid much attention to bar pickup lines.”
Czarina snorted. “You wouldn’t. You’ve never needed to do that. Born between the first day of spring and the anniversary of the Oklahoma federal building bombing and assault on the Waco cult, dates of new life and hope as well as political insanity, you are obviously Aries. That’s a sign of power and fearless strength, a muscular body and mind. You seek thrills and challenge, but you can be deceptive. Am I right?”
“I hope so,” Max said modestly. “At least I was born in the first half of April. All of those traits sounds useful for a magician. So the symbol of my zodiac sign is a—”
“Ram,” Ramona said lustily.
“And the boa constrictor I glimpsed in passing?”
Hal was happy to instruct. “That is Ophiuchus, my Aries friend. The ancients identified it as a constellation. The ‘ophidian’ coils indicate the biological suborder Ophidia or Serpentes, from the Greek ophis: a snake. Some versions of the zodiac do show it, but it’s always been the unlucky thirteen in a set of signs that fit the twelve months of the year. So, despite some tabloid buzz recently when an astronomer suggested it needed to be made room for, it’s a lost sign that we have taken for our symbol of forgotten magic and magical powers.”
“Cool.” Max nodded. “An apt symbol. Best that it stay out of the common parlance. Besides, who’d want to murmur ‘Ophiuchus’ in someone’s ear at a bar when they could whisper Aquarius or Virgo, and roar Leo or Taurus.”
“See, my dear boy,” Czarina said, “you know more of the zodiac than you thought.”
And he also knew why the Synth had adopted a man-crushing snake as its poster glyph.
“So what form will your revenge take? Do you plan to disrupt the Cloaked Conjuror’s performances at the New Millennium? I’m not saying kill the man, merely show him up.”
“You’re right,” Hal said. “We are not about killing, but we are being killed. Just a couple weeks ago, Cosimo Sparks would have been here.”
“Yes,” Czarina said morosely, “wearing his white tie and tails, adding class to the assembly.”
“You wore that in your Goliath act,” Ramona said. “Ultra classy. I still think you needed a dancing-on-air partner.”
Max nodded slowly. From what he remembered of her, she’d been an able illusionist.
Ramona blinked at him after giving him a good long stare, like a cat. “No longer determined to be a one-man band?” she asked.
He blinked back. “Maybe not. What do you expect to accomplish, then, besides sitting around this attractive hideaway mourning your losses?”
“We’re a lot more organized than we look, young man,” Czarina said.
“Just how many members do you have?”
Czarina laughed. “Don’t make the mistake of taking our lot as the sum total. We’re the leaders, but we have a lot of unemployed magicians and their assistants and technicians to call on when we make our big move.”
“We’re more than the Neon Nightmare owners and operators,” Hal added. “We have a couple hundred investors and we can call on that many ‘extras’ if we need to. The idea was to get a nightclub going, introduce a magic act, then use the building as a daytime facility for small but magical birthday and retirement parties, special convention outings, weddings, small fund-raisers. Make money for all the ‘little people’ who got pushed out by the big shows, and now are blitzed by the recession.”
“Meanwhile,” Max said, “chasing some legendary pots of Vegas gold wouldn’t hurt.”
Hal leaned forward in his chair, intent, recruiting. “We have powerful sponsors. There are forces in Las Vegas who want to take a lot of money out of it because a lot of money is stashed here in hidden places.”
“The mob? If you work for them, you’ll need to corrupt a forensic accountant,” Max said. “The magic of numbers isn’t my game.”
“No, not the mob in that respect, although they’d love to take over our venture if they knew the details,” Ramona said, leaning forward also, although her plunging neckline when she did it was a lot more convincing than Hal Herald and his plaid bow tie.
“The thing, Max … I may call you that?” Hal smiled as Max nodded, eager to hear more. “Is that certain illegal entities have always stashed money around Vegas. The trick is getting it out.”
“As in all casino cash cart robberies,” Max put in. “If you’re armed and dangerous, they’ll let you walk away with the loot, but they’ll grab you and the take once you’re away from innocent bystanders.”
“No one is innocent in Las Vegas.” Czarina’s hard tone reminded Max of Ma Barker, the ’30s female gangster.
“Cosimo Sparks.” Max located the name tap-dancing in his mind and found the correct connection. “He was a friend of my mentor, Garry Randolph.”
“The truly ‘great’ Gandolph the Great,” Czarina agreed. “Have you never questioned his death at the Halloween séance?”
Max shook his head numbly, perfectly in char
acter, perfectly stricken. No one could ever know who Garry really was, how he’d really died in Belfast, far from Vegas and its smoke and mirrors that Garry had manipulated so expertly.
“You’re saying we magicians have enemies who’d reduce our numbers one by one?” Max said. “And you’re inviting me to join you? Dare I say, thanks?”
Ramona licked her lips, selling hard. “There’s been a game of hide-the-prize going on. The prize could be worth a couple million. Yes, it’s a duel as to how many of us are left before the others who want to use and destroy us win. If we can pull off one major illusion, a Synth victory that will be talked about for decades, we’ll prove the value of traditional magic and make the people who killed Cosimo and maybe even Gandolph pay.”
“And the Phantom Mage, whoever he was?” Max waited for a reaction.
“Him too,” Hal said impatiently. “He was a patsy caught in the Great Game, like the Cloaked Conjuror’s assistant.”
“What?” Max said, recalling Temple’s oh-so-handy Table of Crime Elements, created way back when as if a memory aid for his future befuddled self. CC had not suspected his assistant’s death was murder despite the death threats. Neither had the police.
“Yeah.” Hal nodded. “Barry’s was a terrible death and a loss to the Synth.”
“So the Cloaked Conjuror’s assistant fell to his death, too.” Max eyed the women. “Was he a plant for the Synth on CC’s team?”
“No.” Czarina was the usual dogmatically certain. “We were working on engineering a super mass illusion to highlight traditional magic, maybe even making one of the iconic hotels disappear, the ultimate in ‘street magic.’ You know, like they do National Dance Day, only it would be Major Magic Day. People all over the country could chime in by Internet or YouTube. Barry was interested. Like a lot of faceless people in the discipline, he had hopes of making a name for himself someday. Vegas would be the centerpiece.”
“That’s an A-one idea,” Max said. “You could encourage schoolchildren.…”
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