Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  This was not “her” event. Yet here she was positioned in a spotlight in front of the Oasis Hotel’s security force, arranged in an impressive semicircle around the glittering prize in front of the two-story-high elephant statues to either side.

  Rafi had even arranged that she’d stand in front of the live elephant imported for the event, not at the back, where an anonymous jumpsuited man with a bucket and shovel stood.

  That down-home touch was appropriate. Some large elephant doo-doo was going down in this event. Even as she stood there in her glitzy go-to-meeting network executives suit, Temple recognized that the same zodiac spotlight pattern as the Neon Nightmare’s was programmed into the nightly highlighting of the prize.

  The effect here was subtle, but it had stopped her in her tracks and her gold leather gladiator shoes. Luckily, not until she was in place alongside the treasure chest.

  She watched the familiar image of a “man versus serpent” smackdown flash over the cash-stuffed plastic trunk along with images of a lion, a ram, an archer, a scorpion, and a pair of fish that reminded her of Midnight Louie’s precious koi.

  Ophiuchus. That dastardly word gripped her brain like the grabby sign of the crab, Cancer.

  “What’s with the zodiac light wheel?” she’d asked Rafi, who looked seriously official tonight in his Oasis house cop uniform.

  “It’s all mumbo jumbo and hype,” he’d answered. “The Cloaked Conjuror is making a secret, special appearance managing this, uh, ‘dramatic finale’ to the ‘Oasis Apotheosis.’ What the heck does ‘apotheosis’ mean anyway?”

  “Granted. I’d never stick a five-syllable word on a big prize promotion, but ‘Oasis’ is a tough name to work with. ‘Apotheosis’ means the best, the model of supreme coolness, say. Whatever. ‘Oasis Apotheosis” sounds like something mysterious.”

  “Yeah. Like an exotic disease.”

  “What lured the Cloaked Conjuror from his New Millennium fortress?” Temple wondered. “The Oasis is part of the same consortium of hotel-casinos, but, with all due respect, the security here must be less dictator-like than at his home hotel.”

  “I agree.” Rafi’s eyes kept darting over the crowd. “I think he’s crazy to do it too. Maybe top management twisted his arm. Still, flaunting all that cash in a see-through steamer trunk out front sure drew a crowd this past week. I’ve been earning a lot of overtime.”

  Rafi squinted into the gathered crowds, which were hard to see against the eye-dazzling assortment of lights from the hotel opposite. “Our audience here is mainly card-carrying consortium members, but riffraff too,” he added.

  She emulated his squint. “I see what you mean. Some of the Strip street performers are using the aah factor of all that naked money to mingle with the onlookers and pitch them. Guess the Oasis has an irresistible event going on here, despite the weird name.”

  “‘Mingle,’” Rafi echoed her with a sour twist to his tone. “Probably pickpockets, every last one.”

  “You don’t get to savor a drop of human kindness in your job, do you? The Strip never had itinerant street acts before the Great Recession. Nevada has been hit the hardest of any state.”

  “And I have a good new job, Little Miss Sunshine, I know. But part of that job is anticipating trouble. I don’t like this giveaway drawing out here in the open, at night, one bit.”

  “Not to mention the elephant.” Temple turned to eye the huge ankle cuff and chain that kept the immense creature tied down. “I don’t approve of captivity.”

  “What you and I don’t approve of is not in the mix here. Just stay put where I placed you, although that may be too much to ask of your inner Zoe Chloe Ozone.”

  Temple saluted sharply. “She’s on leave. Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

  Rafi moved back to inspect his troops, the two lines of ten guards at attention who served as set dressing for the million-dollar prize.

  Temple kept focused on the circle of sidewalk that had been cleared for the drawing ceremony, watching the animals and symbols of the zodiac flash across it. If you weren’t aware of the theme, you could stand in the crowd all night and not notice the zodiac-sign parade, especially the entwined strongman and giant snake that signaled Ophiuchus.

  Why did Rafi want her to be present? Did he know about the Synth? That they’d already lost whatever had been hidden in the underground walk-in safe between the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters hotels, and the Neon Nightmare nightclub?

  Whatever Rafi’s motive was for inviting her, Temple was betting these seasoned conspirators wouldn’t let another opportunity to score a bundle, for whatever reason, evade them.

  Chapter 46

  Monkey-Suit Business

  While Temple speculated about what was really going on, the recorded music, which had been on the cheesy tick-tock game show countdown side suddenly revved up with brass and winds as the main event neared.

  The elephant behind her trumpeted—Temple shivered at the blaring teeth-rattling screech, being a mere ten feet from the creature. Though the heat had lifted as the sun went down, she smelled some Essence de Barn, hay and mashed cow paddies. She turned to see the trainer tap what passed for the elephant’s knee, which was at her waist level. The impressive bulk of the beast lifted in what would have been a rear to a horse.

  Temple gazed at the rising gray wall of wrinkled hide, speechless in her front-row seat. The elephant’s open ankle cuff, about four feet in diameter, lay sprung like a trap beneath its momentarily balancing bulk.

  Why did she think she had any business being here?

  And then an airborne shadow came shooting from the right as the elephant turned and pulled back its massive ears. Ye gods! Talk about angels dancing on the head of a pin. Temple blinked as a resurrected Cosimo Sparks stood in a spotlight, dressed in top hat, white tie, and tails, the satin lining of his cloak flashing bloodred in the spotlights as he danced on the head of an elephant.

  But Cosimo Sparks was dead.

  Temple sensed everyone around her holding his or her breath. The effect was staggering, but was it a true surprise to some of the gathering, a resurrected Cosimo Sparks appearing to his Synth buddies and, perhaps, his not-yet-umasked Synth slayer?

  Or was the Mystifying Max doing this elephant walk? Whoever, the figure moved like a puppet on a string, barely touching elephant head or back as it lowered and lifted. Max had been “retired” for more than a year from a major Vegas venue. In Vegas time that was an eternity. If you weren’t the object of buzz, you simply “weren’t” in Vegas.

  So either way, a resurrected Sparks or Max in disguise, this was a dead man dancing.

  The effect had everyone, including the elephant, looking up.

  Another figure shot into the lights and the rotating shadows of the zodiac on a batlike gliding descent. This massive, dark-clothed figure landed as lightly as a moth on the sidewalk beside the treasure chest as the crowd gasped.

  Oh, my. Was this shaping up to be some sort of a superhero smackdown? Temple felt someone move protectively close to her back and glanced over her shoulder. Rafi.

  The Cloaked Conjuror shook out his heavy cape like Batman, lifting his glittering tiger-striped face to the moon. Temple imagined a sidewalk production of Cats and expected CC to burst out singing “Memories” at any moment.

  Temple’s time as a repertory theater PR person clicked to the forefront on her dial of past and present media jobs. Everything so far was totally scripted, meticulously scripted.

  She glanced at the elephant-dancing swell in top hat and tails. It was hard to see clearly against the intense lights haloing the hotel façade, but he was indeed too tall to be Cosimo.

  The Cloaked Conjuror strode back and forth in front of the massive treasure chest crammed with a visible fortune in hundred-dollar bills. Was he too slim for CC? Could it be one of his stunt doubles, like Barry, the poor guy who had plunged to his death at TitaniCon at the New Millennium?

  Wait. Max could be atop the elephant! Or … he could be “
styling” the Cloaked Conjuror with the jackpot on the ground. He certainly wasn’t confiding his moves to her as he’d used to. Ex-significant others got scarce on the reporting-in roster fast.

  Temple inhaled. Hard. Something big was going down here. Scanning the crowd, she spotted an almost seething organic motion rippling through it, as if a giant … snake were threading through the onlookers’ ankles, entangling their ankles.

  Meanwhile, more than cell phones were waving on uplifted arms everywhere.

  Here, there, everywhere … the flat disks of top hats were snapping into 3-D prominence as they did on Broadway stages or in magic shows. Five, six, eight, nine. Temple was impressed.

  Max’s act had used one of those collapsible toppers and they cost about three hundred apiece. This smacked of money and planning. On the other hand, Vegas thronged with high- and low-end costume rental outfits.

  But wait! This is Vegas and there was more.

  Here, there, everywhere, Darth Vader masks and cloaks were springing up like melting Wicked Witches of the West run backwards on the film reel. Three, five … no, eight. Holy breather apparatus! Darths were everywhere. But both the masks and black cloaks were pretty standard too.

  Could some of the crowd, the street performers, all be part of a bizarre plot, probably a social-media-generated group flash mash-up? That would create enough confusion to hide a heist.

  Fiendishly clever. Could tons of ordinary folks have been “e-vited” over social networks to show up in one of three costumes … Tap Dance Man, Darth Vader, or Security Guy? In a crowd this unsettled and also populated by gangs of identical fakes, the real money was vulnerable.

  “Back, you minions,” the Cloaked Conjuror’s voice ordered, boosted by the major mic amplification of his headgear. The figure in front of the frail-looking Plexiglas chest gestured with one sweeping arm and gauntleted palm, like a traffic cop.

  Except he wasn’t one. Nobody here was on the premises to stop anything, only accelerate the mob excitement and …

  “You fools,” CC intoned with much overacting. “I, the Cloaked Conjuror, will claim this prize. Watch and weep.”

  He strode past the treasure chest, snapping his cloak higher than a matador challenging a bull. By the time he let the cloak fall back to his side, the bill-stuffed chest had vanished. Only the entrance doors to the Oasis showed, and no one hustled in and out, as usual, because the two lines of Oasis security guards prevented anyone from surging out, or in.

  The crowd gasped. Temple had never heard such a conjoined mass sigh.

  Another amplified voice spoke during the lull. “Good, but not good enough.”

  The tails of the elephant-dancing man flapped like bat wings in the silence as he skated to the ground on an invisible spider-string. The costume was all Fred Astaire except for the Zorro-like black eye mask.

  He faced the Cloaked Conjuror and flourished his red-satin-lined cape.

  As he forced CC to retreat, he passed, obscured, and moved beyond the empty entrance. When he turned and again flourished the scarlet panache of his cape lining, the treasure chest reappeared, spotlights flashing off its clear plastic surface and the crushed greenbacks filling the almost invisible dimensions.

  Temple’s brain was whirling. She knew one of the dueling magicians was going to execute a final pass past the prize, the magical third time. Then the money would vanish and be gone for good. Most dramas had three acts, like fairy tales had three brothers.

  There had to be an elaborate setup behind this illusion that jerked the crowd’s perceptions back and forth like a saw blade cutting through a magician’s case containing the endangered lady.

  While she was thinking, something like a forefinger of King Kong—or a huge attacking serpent … the Ophiuchus serpent—whipped around her waist and lifted her up, up, and away, above the treasure chest, above the crowd, and into the glare of the lights and the rhythmic zodiac sign shadows, now recognizably only Ophiuchus … and she was the struggling human figure in the muscular, strangling serpent’s grasp.

  She was the distracting magician’s assistant.

  Her hands tried to grasp the snake’s coil, but it was too massive to curl around. Oh. This was an elephant trunk, and the pressure it exerted was amazingly delicate for such a thick and rough-skinned appendage.

  Temple kept her hands on the living noose that had circled her. The motion as she was lifted over the beast’s high shoulder made her stomach dip. Before she could say “Dumbo,” she was perched on its surprisingly hairy back in front of the palanquin. She grabbed on to its draped, gilt silk cloth … a flimsy “rope” as prone to tearing as a belly dancer’s skirt. Far too far beneath, the animal tender was shouting commands even she couldn’t hear. The elephant flapped back an ear to heed him, apparently in vain. If the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye, as the song went, she was halfway up Jack’s beanstalk.

  The elephant man suddenly screamed loud enough to attract the beast’s attention. Something black had climbed the elephant’s dangling headdress decorations and was now midway through a leap to … the elephant’s left scimitar of ivory tusk.

  The elephant swayed its trunk, but Midnight Louie spun to hang under the tusk like a tree sloth. The behemoth uneasily shifted its weight from foot to foot. Above, Temple swung to and fro, a mere decorative tassel. Louie sprang upward to claw-cling to the harness on the elephant’s forehead and then to the top of the head, where he leaned down to yowl in an ear.

  Midnight Louie was demanding a one-on-one.

  The huge appendage flapped back. One edge slapped Temple in the dangling calf. It felt like being whapped by a canvas sail.

  The triumphant tap-dancing guy on the ground bounced once and achieved a spot on the elephant’s shoulder blades. He bent to seize Temple around the waist—good thing she had a twenty-two-inch one—and bounced down to deposit her on the elephant tusk opposite the one Midnight Louie had used as a stepping stone before alighting beside the chest again.

  Showtime! The elephant’s trunk swayed from side to side. It was used to passengers and was getting into its performing groove. In a moment, it carefully went down on one knee, then two. Rafi was waiting there to swing Temple back to ground zero.

  She looked up the elephant’s kneeling form, anxious about Louie. Not to worry. He’d used his claws to climb farther and was sitting smack-dab center of the palanquin like a rajah, surveying the action below.

  And what action!

  The Vaders’ dark forms were falling to the ground under a wave of black cats that swarmed their cloaks, unseen by the tourist crowds, who nevertheless had been conditioned by countless Star Wars movies to join in and keep any downed Vader in black … down.

  Meanwhile, the masked white tie and tails guys were tap-dancing forward in formation as the dueling magicians pantomimed lifting the treasure chest with their sweeping cloak action.

  The chest elevated four feet off the ground, nothing beneath it but air, as the eight formally attired men separated into pallbearer formation. The crowd parted as they escorted the floating money chest down the entry lane into a waiting 1930s black hearse.

  In an instant the rear doors slammed shut and the top-hatted white-tie guys vanished behind the vintage vehicle’s four doors, which also slammed shut as the hearse glided away.

  Temple was as agape as everyone in the crowd, including the elephant handler.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned.

  Rafi.

  He pointed to a pale middle-aged man in an expensive dark suit turning a crank on a Plexiglas rolling chamber filled with slips of paper.

  Invited, she drew one. Rafi handed her a portable mic.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she intoned, “the winner is … Mr. Joseph Merrick.”

  The man in the suit had his impossibly anticlimactic moment in the spotlight. “Please come forward, Mr. Merrick, and we’ll complete the process in the casino offices.”

  He seemed unconcerned about the disappearance of th
e prize money, and Temple knew why. The audience had accepted every moment as the usual Las Vegas overblown live theater. Joe and supporters rushed toward her. Beyond them, Rafi and security crew pulled downed Darth Vaders into custody. Onlookers melted away.

  Besides having corralled a protesting group of black-cloaked street performers, Rafi’s security guys were left holding three empty masks and cloaks.

  Temple stepped up to him. “I guess you’re not too worried about where the money went.”

  “Looked like to the bank.”

  “If you bank at Fontana Brothers, Inc., Rafi, you didn’t set this all up on your own. You needed maximum diversion from two major magicians, three amazingly diverse mammal groups, and one prominent Las Vegas family, as well as one poor lone working girl. I claim credit for Louie and providing comic relief, but you and the moonlighting magicians engineered it.”

  Rafi’s smile was as big as a million dollars. “And no official police action involved. With a little help from my friends, this gets me the security chief job here, and a step forward in my crusade to reclaim my kid from the big, bad Molina.”

  “Why did anybody need me? I was arm-candy for an elephant and did a three-sentence announcing gig.”

  “Well,” Rafi said, “you had about—” He thought. “—about forty protective eyes on you, so it seemed a slam dunk.”

  “Even the elephant’s trunk episode?”

  “Sultana performs nightly with a petite woman.”

  “So that’s two mammal groups down. What about the third?”

  “We’ve all heard that ‘Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.’ I figured that might apply to domesticated wildcats. We needed them to soften up the Vaders, and someone assured me that they’d done the job before.”

  “Someone?”

  Rafi shrugged. “The Cloaked Conjuror keeps an artificially amplified ear to the ground.”