“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hal said, echoing a Beatles song. “We had all sorts of civic plans. Then these outsiders found and talked up Cosimo.”
“They’d never show their faces,” Czarina mentioned bitterly, “but they pushed their way in, dealing with Cosimo mostly, but promising us revenge on the prepackaged magic world and touting ‘a really big score’ and ‘hidden treasure.’ I don’t understand why he was buying their schemes.”
“Now these tails are trying to wag the dog,” Ramona said. “Cosimo was our point man. He got way too dazzled by some rumored jackpot these ‘contacts’ of his promised. Meanwhile, the Great Recession made the Neon Nightmare a very shaky venue, so we really did need mondo cash.”
“I hate to hold up the stop sign for the greed train,” Max said, “but from where and how Cosimo was killed, I think your anonymous new foxes in the henhouse have pretty much decimated any lost treasure that existed.”
“That hidden underground safe was built to hold something,” Czarina said. “We just don’t know what. The secret tunnel itself dated to Jersey Joe Jackson’s day in the ’40s and ’50s. The Crystal Phoenix is a remodel of Jackson’s founding Joshua Tree hotel and the management even keeps his rooms in original condition, if unoccupied. Jackson was famous for stashing his loot underground.”
Max did know what the safe likely held: bearer bonds totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars and actual old-time silver dollars, also high-value objects. Perhaps even heavy weapons, all stockpiled for the IRA, maybe by Kitty the Cutter, the IRA’s chief fund-raiser in the Americas, who definitely had not signed a peace accord with anyone.
“So,” he said, hoping for confirmation, “you’re after Jersey Joe Jackson’s rumored loot stashed in and around Vegas in the early days?”
“Maybe. Maybe something more.” Czarina’s lips pouted in pinned-shut position.
“She means,” said Hal, “we don’t talk unless we know you’re willing to join us.”
“Why should I commit to the Synth? I have a comeback attempt to lose.”
“You could headline our big surprise splash on the Strip,” Hal said. “You have a name still.”
“Great. While I divert everyone’s attention, you knock off a casino cash cart to fund your nightclub and the hunt for hidden money in and around Vegas. I get nailed as an accomplice.”
“It’ll look coincidental,” Hal argued. “All our street people will back up your act.”
“You expect me to come up with a major illusion in a day?”
“You’re the Mystifying Max,” Ramona announced. “You love a challenge.”
He did. He also was getting a very wicked idea. “From what I’ve heard since I’ve come back—”
“From Canada,” Ramona interrupted.
“From Canada,” he answered with a look as pointed as her dubious comment. “And from the Keystone Kops charade of the underground safe opening in the new Chunnel of Crime,” he told them, “poor Cosimo Sparks had already played hound dog for these buttinskis, these people who muscled in on the Synth, but the cupboard was also already bare. That may be why Sparks was killed. They thought he’d moved the loot.”
“Poor Cosimo.” Czarina sighed. “Such a major loss. He was our leader.”
Max could sympathize with their loss. Cosimo Sparks and Garry “Gandolph” Randolph shared a lot of life history. Both were traditional magicians in formal dress whose performing time had passed; both were cut down while struggling for a future goal they passionately believed in, although in vastly different areas.
“This Synth is quickly becoming a rather minor cabal, and now looking seriously unfunded,” Max noted.
“Maybe the great Max Kinsella could help us with that.” Ramona had slouched down in her cushy armchair, crossing her legs so the slit in her long gown displayed them in David Letterman girl-guest perfection.
Max mirrored her slouch, but not the bared legs. “Maybe I can.”
Chapter 39
Cold Case Contact
Call her an old fogy, but media maven Temple Barr could not give up her daily newspaper as long as there was one to be had, even though she’d worked for a time as a TV reporter.
She’d really enjoyed seeing the Chicago papers recently. How thick the Sunday editions had been, promising hours of serial perusing while lounging and eating forbidden carbs and sipping high-calorie lattes. Web cruising was efficient, but it was like Web shopping; you got a cut-and-dried list. You couldn’t meander and surprise your eyes with something, well, 3-D.
So she was returning her Chicago-stressed mind to all things Las Vegas, which was mostly show openings and bad economy news, when she ran across a familiar but obscure name in print.
WOMAN’S DEATH STILL A MYSTERY
Unfortunately, that was not a startling headline in any U.S. city, but the name in the article’s first sentence was a shock.
“Gloria Fuentes,” Temple exclaimed aloud, disturbing Midnight Louie at his tongue bath in a large square of sunlight on the parquet floor. He regarded her with the long measuring gaze of a cat minding his own business and wondering why she was not minding hers and refraining from disturbing his grooming session. Then the lazy gaze narrowed to green slits and he bounded over to sit doglike by her feet.
Surely Louie had no interest in the name, just her sudden animation.
Temple examined the below-the-fold snippet more carefully. Newspapers nowadays were like trendy tapa appetizers: a palate-teasing dozen or so small stories arranged on the front page to intrigue a range of readers … if anybody read cold type anymore besides Temple.
Her fingers were tense as she paged to the “jump” on page six. What jumped out at her first was a logo reading, CCF: VEGAS, THE COLD CASE FILES.
This was a running feature she hadn’t noticed before, and a clever play on the venerable CSI: Vegas TV series.
“Louise Deitz.” She muttered the reporter’s byline to herself, giving Louie a glance in case he was interested in more than the rattling newsprint. His ears perked up over the still-slitty eyes. Perhaps he’d been reminded of the Crystal Phoenix cat named Midnight Louise after him.
Temple hoped being married would stop her habit of talking to Midnight Louie. Folks who lived alone tended to get into monologues with their pets. It did help her cogitation system to think aloud.
She scanned the short paragraphs that ended with a request for fresh information from anyone having it.
The facts were correct. “Yes, strangled in a church parking lot. Yes, professional magician’s assistant.” Gandolph didn’t merit a mention as Gloria’s former employer. Born in Chula Vista, California. Single and never married, an “attractive” forty-eight years old, with no known relationships outside her job. No known exes.
Temple digested some new information. A head shot accompanying the article reminded Temple of performer Chita Rivera. Muy attractive. And never married? A mystery. Temple remembered an even greater one about Gloria’s death. The fact that the words “she left” had appeared on the body at the coroner’s like a nightclub’s light-sensitive tattoo.
She turned back to the front page to read the byline. “Louise Dietz. Not familiar, but she soon can be.”
Temple lowered the newspaper to the coffee table top, thinking. Then she picked up her cell phone.
It rang before she could make a call. Matt on the line.
“Matt. I may have a lead on Gandolph’s assistant.”
“That’s great. What I’ve got a lead on is that crazy situation up in Chicago. I’m going to have to fly up. So, sorry, no amateur detecting for the immediate future. I’ll fly out after tonight’s show, really early Friday morning, getting back just before Friday’s midnight show. So you’ll never miss me.”
“Not possible. I always miss you. What’s up?”
“Mom’s agreed to see Philip finally, but only if I referee.”
“Gosh, the airfare on a one-nighter will be—”
“Steep, but well worth it if I can break this impasse.”
“I hate to leave you all alone down there with that walking sympathy-sponge, Max.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to trust each other.”
“Exactly what I’m going to tell those crazy middle-aged kids in Chicago.”
“‘Love is all you need,’” she quoted the Beatles.
“You’ve got it, love.”
“Mine, too. Good luck.”
Temple sat for a few moments after the call ended, wondering if Matt could pull off a miracle reconciliation.
Meanwhile, she had a murder to look into.
Chapter 40
Brassy and Breezy
So you think I would get an invite to accompany my Miss Temple to the local rag offices to interview the reporter known as Miss Louise Dietz? No such courtesy. And here I had acted as obnoxiously alert about the article as, say, your average hyperactive Chihuahua.
Yes, the words “Miss Louise” do provoke a visceral reaction in me. Unfortunately, I cannot stop my insensitive human associates from thinking it is “cute” to name another black stray cat they have come across after me, in the distaff version of the moniker of “Louie” revered in song and story.
How many famous Louies are there? Let me count the cherished examples.
There is the title song in my honor, “Louie Louie.” It has 1,500 recorded versions, numero uno. Take that, Beatles. You are so “Yesterday.”
Of course, every bartender in the world is named “Louie,” only he doesn’t know it. Louie rules.
As for “Louise,” there is only that one oldie song how “every little breeze seems to whisper Louise.”
Right now I could use that breeze for a short-wave communication.
Who do you think uses my proven methods of breaking and entering through Miss Temple’s patio French door, but the previously contemplated Miss Midnight Louise.
She seems seriously out of breath.
“So what have you gotten your exercise doing?” I inquire.
“Now that you are all alone and lounging around maybe you will listen to a report of import from me. I have activated the Cat Pack, and have heard from a night crew I put on duty. I borrowed a couple of Ma Barker’s best to shadow the suspicious parties at the Neon Nightmare club. There are only three in residence now that Cosimo Sparks was killed in the underground Chunnel of Crime between Gangsters and the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. Did you know, Daddy-O, that the world-class magician David Copperfield had sought to establish a franchise of underground restaurants?”
“No! So the Fontana brothers’ concept was not the first. What is with all these humans yearning to go underground before their time?”
She sits to twist and groom the tip of her long, fluffy train with long, lavish licks of her tongue, just to aggravate me. True, she could be one of those intellectual longhairs … or of rock band ilk. Maybe aristocratic blue-blood runs in her veins, but it is sure not from my side of any family tree, which scotches claims she might put forth for a personal relationship.
She desists bathing to lift her head and answer. “Perhaps it is a death wish,” she muses, “but I think it is the human quest for quiet and privacy.”
“Especially if they have something to conceal, like the mob would. Ma Barker hear of any mobs in Vegas besides hers?”
She shrugs as if having an itch right between her shoulder blades, that section so infuriating to reach.
“The mob always has a game or two going. The glamour and glory days celebrated by the Chunnel of Crime are over. Now it is hijacked meat trucks and gambling and girls.”
I make a face. “I would rather go after the Synth.”
“Well, I did, and I can tell you that led to a surprising conclusion.”
“What do you mean?”
“You assigned me to keep an eye on them and I had a crew of three to follow the three surviving Neon Nightmare operators. We split like a banana’s foster dessert to track those two women and a guy when they slipped out of a side door in the Pyramid of Pretense.”
“And—?”
“Me and Pitch solo, Three O’Clock and Blacula put the shadow on the trio.”
“Three O’Clock? He could not tail his own shadow!”
“I did not need all wet-ears on this job. He did fine.”
“So. What was the result?”
“We split up, we crawled on our bellies like snakes to trail these secretive humans all over Vegas, and we were there when each of the three landed for what remained of the night. You are right, O Ancient Sage. There is some master plan these Synth people are putting into motion.”
“And you know this because…?”
“They all,” she says sourly, “and we all ended up at the same destination.”
I control myself and do not anticipate her answer. Las Vegas has just too many sites that are ripe for crime and chaos.
“And—?”
“It appears they are going to knock off the Oasis Hotel.”
I play flabbergasted. Not only is the Oasis an old established venue, far from the nouveau flash of the Aria and Palazzo, but few see it as a prize target, although a heist at any Vegas hotel-casino will be rich takings … for the scant half hour the crooks have to enjoy lifting the loot before the combined fist of the casino security and police surveillance comes down on them as hard as the Cloaked Conjuror’s gauntlet.
I can believe the mob having such designs, but …
“This is crazy,” I tell Louise. “Why does a cheesy group of magicians think they can keep the heist cash? One of their own is dead, struck down in his white tie and tails in an empty underground safe, and their mysterious masked backers are about to cut the connection with bullets. Obviously, I must hie myself back to the Oasis and investigate for myself.”
“I will show you the site of the recent attack on Mr. Max aboard the ship.”
“I have already done my derring-do on that location, Louise, for an earlier case. You must keep an eye on the Goliath, because I would not put it beyond the Synth to try to make Mr. Max the fall guy on any schemes they have going.”
Of course, I do not mention that the house mascot at the Oasis is the lovely and lithe Topaz, she of the black velvet gloves and golden eyes. She has already clued me in that the mob is a clear and present danger, not a bunch of rogue magicians. Some might point out that Midnight Louise herself benefits from that sublime coloring, but since she claims to be kin, she is off my wish list for good.
Her loss.
Chapter 41
Sob Sisters
Newsrooms nowadays were quiet and orderly compared to when they filmed All the President’s Men about the Watergate political scandal. Temple sat in the one chair pulled up beside Louise Dietz’s tiny cubicle and scanned the newsroom’s mixture of empty and occupied matching cubicles. No-drama Cinerama. Columnists and feature reporters worked from home nowadays.
Louise Dietz was a poised forty-something blond woman secure enough to let a few silver hairs show through.
“So you’re the PR rep for the Crystal Phoenix Hotel, but you have a tip on the latest CCF profile?” the reporter asked, pulling out a manila file and a narrow reporter’s notebook.
“I used to be a TV reporter,” Temple said, knowing “public relations” people were suspect to print journalists.
“Me, too.” Louise smiled wryly. “Obviously long before your day. I got a bit ripe for on-camera, so I moved into print media just before newspapers started sinking into the Great Recession.”
“Bad timing,” Temple said sympathetically.
“It’s been grim, but I have this job now, and here you are to help me do it. What’s your tip?”
Temple knew you had to give to get, in all areas of life and work. “A weird message showed up on Miss Fuentes’s corpse in the morgue. It never got reported.”
“Really?” Louise was staring down through her reading glasses, pencil poised for a note.
; Temple smiled, so glad to see that long-honored notebook and pencil instead of a tablet computer. Since she loved vintage everything, beyond mere clothes, she lamented that everybody was stuck in the same computerized mass-market mode these days. Not that she’d want to break her fingernails on stiff manual typewriter keys.
“You laugh at my ‘stone tablet and chisel.’” Louise noted. “You get to my age, you’ll see your brain works best on what it learned young. I need that hand motion to get my little gray cells churning in think-and-remember mode.”
Remember mode. Maybe handwriting would help Max.… He could transcribe his adventures from the time he came out of his coma in the Swiss clinic. She’d suggest that ASAP. And she’d be first in line to read them.
“You’re smiling,” Louise said. “Is my method so laughable?”
“No, not at all. I’m smiling because I like that idea. I’m not laughing.”
“So how does a PR gal know this inside morgue information?”
“It’s because I’m in PR. There have been … deaths on my watch at events I’m responsible for. Think about it. Almost forty million people a year hit Vegas, or did before the economic downturn. Many of them attend conventions where you can have twenty to eighty thousand people milling around. What are the odds of … unexpected death, given the heat, the excitement, the long hours, the fevered hype, and after-hours overindulgence in food, gambling—”
“And sex,” Louise added. “So you see your job as supervising this giant aquarium of predators and prey.”
“That’s a bit colorful. Let’s say I run into the occasional great white. Mention my name to Coroner Bahr. B-a-h-r. No relation.”
“Makes me reevaluate the nickname ‘flack’ we journalists give those in your profession.” Louise smiled at Temple like a colleague. “So Grizzly Bahr is on your speed-dial too? He’ll just swear me to secrecy on this postmortem message. It’s the only way the cops have a prayer of solving the Fuentes murder.”
“Maybe there are other unsolved, and related, Vegas crimes you could look into.”
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