Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  "Died? Both died?"

  Max nodded.

  "That's why you retreated back to Europe; you had brought the Troubles back to your own home town."

  "Back to my own family. I saw in a nutshell how four hundred years of strife had divided a whole population. And ... I was dangerous to those closest to me, even if some of them hated my guts."

  "Dangerous because you were in danger?"

  He nodded again. "From the IRA, from the government forces. When I turned in the IRA men who had bombed the pub and killed Sean, I was an instant wild card no one wanted. Except those who deplored all terrorism. Gary Randolph was my first mentor. I began as an apprentice to Gandolph the Great, but magicians have a perfect cover, and our European appearances were always more than magic."

  "Why are you letting me interrogate you?"

  "You ask good questions. And you deserve any answers I can give you."

  "Okay. Enough for now. What have you got to show me?" A pause, a very long pause. "Not that! I mean the advertised mysteries. What was hidden in Gandolph's magical mystery supply of tricks? What did the computer files reveal? Where is the hidden staircase?"

  Max grinned and took her hand. "Follow me, and all will be revealed."

  The room, or rat hole, in which resided the new object of Max's affections, the computer and its attachments and various arcane guides to them all, was as crowded and messy as when Temple had last seen it. Only someone who knew the extreme, catlike meticulousness of Max Kinsella, as Temple did, would have been surprised by that.

  The glowing computer screen was a window into a lurid Halloween world inhabited by squadrons of bats flying over haunted houses and graveyards.

  "The Halloween screen saver is still on," he noted. "Would you care for something Christmasy? Flying Santas?"

  "No. No, thank you." Temple hadn't mentioned the Santa slaying in New York. She thought she probably never would.

  "You're right; it's a little late for Christmas. I suppose I could find something for Martin Luther King Day."

  "Flying freedom marchers in outer space, no doubt. No thank you. So. What's to see here?"

  Max sat in the swiveling office chair, swiveled, and plucked a two-inch-high stack of papers from the top of a pile that leaned like the Tower of Pisa.

  Temple hefted the stack. "Half a ream. Impressive. What is it?"

  "Gary's book. My book. I hope, your book."

  "Really? You finished a draft of Gandolph's expose on false psychics? Already? He must have been an interesting man, always a secret crusader. Did he die because of what you two did in your common past, or because of his late-life campaign to expose psychic fraud? I wonder if his mystery will ever be solved, or how much you can reveal in a book. I realized why you wanted to finish his book, but for a nonwriter to actually accomplish it " She regarded Max with respect.

  "I'm . . . amazed."

  She flipped through the neatly typed pages, surprised and somehow gratified to see Max dealing with a process she had always understood; not special effects and illusions, but ideas made into the flesh of words. Paper work. Writing.

  "Gary's part of the story was mostly written down already. I tried to give it context. I don't know if I succeeded."

  "Modest Max."

  "Yes. You know I'm hoping that you'll read it. Make suggestions. Edit. Cut me to ribbons, if you like."

  "Oh, not ribbons. Whose byline?"

  "I don't care, personally. Gary's, I suppose. And yours if you want."

  "Pity he wasn't as well known as David Copperfield, or even you."

  "Gary gave all that up to follow his quest. He really was a knight in shining . . . drag, I guess.

  It's almost hard for me to believe. I added some sections on disguise to explain his success."

  "Makes sense. I'll read it and give you my expert opinion, buttressed by the publishing observations and consulting opinions of my aunt the historical novelist."

  "Really? That rather elfin lady writes those big heavy tomes of yesteryear?"

  "Er, yes." Temple would be damned before she'd clutter the discussion with that put-down word of all put-down words, historical "romance."

  Why was every novel in the nineteenth century considered a "romance," and in the twentieth century a "romance" considered "a bodice ripper?" From what she had heard of mid-twentieth-century popular literature, male writers were the main practitioners of bodice-ripping scenes.

  "I'll take the manuscript home and study it assiduously."

  "Manuscript. That has a nice sound."

  " 'Book' is even better, but the jury is out on that."

  Max's long fingers hit some keys. The screen saver vanished as if swallowed by Dracula's inky cloak. Temple recognized the Windows program, but Max's fingers flitted from screen to screen too fast to follow.

  "I've come across traces of unauthorized entry."

  "In your computer?"

  "It was Gandolph's. From what my long-distance friends can determine, someone has been watching Gandolph's literary progress and mine."

  "Looking at the book?"

  Max nodded. "I've been given safeguards and procedures. But sophisticated defenses beget sophisticated offenses. I take it as a given that this computer is not fully secure."

  "And . . . this house?"

  He shrugged. "Any house is vulnerable. It depends on who wants to break into it how badly."

  "You said something about Gandolph's illusions."

  "Illusions. Always the best place to attack. In this case, quite literally. Can I take you to a scene of the crime?"

  "Fine." Temple left her tote bag by the computer and followed Max out into the single-story home's bedroom hallway.

  He led her to the room filled with magic, with painted boxes and curtained mirrors and other arcana.

  "You know how valuable these artifacts are?" he asked.

  "I guess. They must be custom-made."

  "Temple! They are magician-made. They're worth literally thousands and thousands of dollars. Each magician's tricks are his stock-in-trade. When he retires he can sell them to one inheritor. Never more than one. It's the professional code. We never betray each other. We perfect our signature acts in solitude and keep their workings secret. We're worse than the Masons used to be."

  "Sounds creepy."

  "It is creepy. But I inherited Gandolph's equipment, and I've been exploring it. In this--,"

  Max pressed an elaborately painted upright box, a sarcophagus shape again. A small drawer in the base snicked open. "--I found these." He presented her with a hand-written book bound in heavy parchment, thongs of suede tying it together.

  "What is this? The Necronomicron of the mad Arab himself?"

  Max managed to look both intrigued and mystified.

  "Never mind. Just jump out of the way if drops of blood start dripping onto the text from the ceiling."

  "There's nothing up there but crawl space."

  "Crawl space is named that for a reason, trust me. Can I sit down somewhere with good light and look at this?"

  "Of course, Madame Detective. May I interest you in my parlor?"

  "As long as the ceiling doesn't drip blood."

  Max's "parlor" was what every good female fly would fear it would be: in his case, an opium bed.

  Just the name of the thing carried a freight of exotic superstition. It was the size of a latticed garden gazebo, a lacy carved wooden structure meant for the swooning upper classes of China as they inhaled from the elegant sterling opium pipes curling around their thumbs like ophidian rings.

  Temple knew the artistic provenance of the piece; she just didn't like its social history. Or maybe she didn't like the fact that one was likely to start living up to that history once reclining on the cushioned fabrics within its architectural boundaries.

  But she had to admit it was the perfect site to sit, propped up by silk and suede-covered pillows of every shape in a geometry book, gazing on mysterious papers by the warm light of the craftsman-style fl
oor lamps hung with fringed brocade shades.

  "This setting reminds me of Fu Manchu's brothel," she complained while settling in after kicking off her black velvet tennis shoes.

  Max bent down and wordlessly presented a tiny pair of embroidered satin Chinese slippers.

  "Your feet could get cold."

  Temple curled her toes into the silken mules and focused her new custom lenses on the thick calligraphy.

  " 'Sacred secrets shall never be shared,' " she quoted the first page of parchment. "Well, the author has an overdeveloped sense of the poetic. Not only four instances of alliteration, but the first two are a simple 'ess' sound and the second two are the 'sh' sound so dear to librarians.

  Pretty hokey."

  "It gets hokier." Max leaned on one elbow, settling beside her like a warlord being entertained by a favorite geisha. No, that was Japan.

  Temple frowned and read the second sheet, identically penned on identical paper.

  " 'The Synth is like a battlement, safety. The aberrant brother is like a match, fire.' Were all the sheets folded in quarters?"

  Max nodded. "Why?"

  "It's an odd, old-fashioned way to fold messages, as if they weren't sent by mail."

  "I found no envelopes."

  Temple moved to the next crackling sheet of heavy paper. "Sherlock Holmes would no doubt have something enlightening to say about the paper source."

  "It's handmade, high rag content. No maker's markings. A labor of love by a skilled craftsman."

  "Or craftswoman."

  Max nodded solemnly.

  Temple recited the third message. " The aberrant brother shall be declared anathema. The price upon his head shall be death.' "

  "Or her head?" Max wondered.

  "This is a brotherhood," Temple pointed out. "I think we can take that literally. No need for equal opportunity pronouns. They were sent to Gandolph, presumably."

  "Presumably." Max committed a private smile. "It's taken me more than a month to find and figure out how to open that particular hidey-hole, so I doubt anyone else has been paging through them. Gary was a talented magician long before he was a talented psychic debunker."

  " Anathema.' That almost sounds like . . . excommunication from the Synth."

  "Is that your broad liberal arts background talking, or your hard-headed Unitarian ancestors, or a touch too much of Matt Devine?"

  "Maybe a little of all three."

  Max took her hand, her left hand. He turned it so the lamplight caught the opal in his--her--

  ring and turned it to pale fire. "Do you dress for the part, or for the partner of the moment?"

  "Max, I am not going to bang anybody over the head with our relationship. What if Lieutenant Molina should spot this ring and ask about it, and she would, believe me. She's like a hawk looking for any trace of you in my life."

  "Maybe she should get a life of her own."

  "And maybe you shouldn't worry about controlling mine when I'm not with you."

  "But you're so often not with me now, not like before, when I was foolish enough to think we could live together openly."

  "So I don't wear my ring openly."

  He nodded. "I know. I just don't want to know." He lifted her hand and kissed it. "Let me take those tacky illuminated threatening notes away before they give you a headache."

  "A headache was never a reason to say no in my book."

  "No. But why take any chances, when we've so few of them?"

  Chapter 11

  Midnight at the Oasis

  Midnight. Murder. What's the Diff?

  When one is short, short of cash, and persona non grata at most of the establishments in town (through no fault of one's own except accident of birth, I might add), finding entertainment in Las Vegas is still as easy as even odds. There is no more democratic town than Vegas when it comes to playing to the rabble of any species.

  One just has to get there early enough to ensure a good seat.

  So it is that I find myself perched upon the lip of an ancient looking wharf, gazing into the rippling waters of an ersatz Mediterranean Sea. No doubt my Egyptian ancestors sat in just such a pose to contemplate the mighty yellow delta of the river Nile.

  My dubious descendent, one Midnight Louise by popular acclaim but no input of mine, sits beside me currying her tail with her tongue.

  She makes a great deal of this common beauty routine, rather like a human female applying fresh lipstick at a dinner table in the Paris Ritz. No doubt the grooming fetish is meant to remind me that she has Longhair on the one side of the family--not mine-- for my rear member is long, but bears a buzz-cut rather than a ponytail. This suits me fine.

  Not that I am admitting any paternity here. I was not born yesterday, and the Esquire I use after my name on occasion is not just for show: when they use the phrase "street legal" they are thinking of my gaming-house-lawyer nose for what is permissible, performable and preferable.

  Although the New Year has not quite turned, I am still in a holiday mood. Thus I attempt a gesture of reconciliation with my namesake.

  "These are pretty cheap seats, Daddio," she sniffs once she has deigned to lift her face from her rear quarters to regard mine. My face, that is, not my rear quarters. Miss Midnight Louise has been "fixed" so that her only interest in the aft of the male animal is to see it walking away from her.

  "The Midnight Show at the Oasis is not exactly a prime ticket," she adds. Her petite black nose strains out over the water, sniffing again. "This man-made swamp does not even support any game fish, just a lot of rusting underwater gears and tracks."

  I resist the opportunity presented by a lonesome stretch of water and an empty wharf; I allow the mouthy Miss Midnight Louise to mince back from the brink with distaste. Were she any spawn of mine, I am sure that I could not resist a disciplinary whap with my despised shorthair tail.

  "I thought we could dine later," I reply, unruffled. "At Chef Song's private table at the Crystal Phoenix."

  "The Crystal Phoenix is my beat now, and I eat in it all the time. I am sure that Chef Song gives me a higher quality of leftover than he would give you. You do not turn your pockets inside out when you spring for a meal, do you, Daddy dearest?"

  "Stop using that dreadful misnomer. We are no relation. I much preferred your shelter nom of Caviar. I cannot understand why Miss Van von Rhine had such a lapse in taste as to rename you 'Midnight Louise.'"

  "She was a new mother at the time," Louise returns sourly.

  If I had been grooming that longhaired vermin trap of a tail, I would be sour too.

  "But, then," she adds for good measure, "what would you know of new mothers? You are the type to hit on, and run."

  "Ah, but I am no longer offspring-enabled," I point out.

  "No thanks to any doing of yours."

  "Circumstances have deprived me of parental expectations, it is true, but I will make the best of it."

  "I am sure you will, but not with me."

  "Louise! I am shocked. You insist that I am your father. Although I disagree, I must respect your misapprehension. I would never make unfatherly overtures toward you."

  "No, you never would, because you know you would get a five-claw salute to the kisser." She shrugs the rusty black fur-piece over her shoulders into neater order. "I do not know why you suddenly wish to share my company, since you deny being my father to the death and you know that I would lacerate your lousy hide to the bone if you tried anything funny with me."

  "With my luscious little redheaded roommate, Miss Temple Barr, working on a long-range project for the Phoenix, I feel we should get to know each other better. Bury the hatchet.

  Cooperate like the trained professionals we are. We will no doubt be seeing more of each other."

  "I am professional. You are a blot on the seedy Las Vegas landscape. A very large blot."

  Just because the streetlight behind me flares like a setting sun and I cast a long shadow that blurs the edges of my true, muscle-sculpted form is no
reason to affront my size. I do not call her a "puny, anorexic pip-squeak."

  By now the foot traffic behind us has picked up. Human feet and legs and body odor crowd us to the brink. Everyone in Las Vegas knows that the Oasis Hotel's "Battle of the Barges" occurs on the hour around the clock.

  Being the thoughtful escort I am (even of an ungrateful brat), I have arranged that we see the more dramatic night-time spectacle, held at my signature midnight hour.

  "It was thoughtful of you," Midnight Louise admits after turning and delivering a blood-curdling snarl to an encroaching human ankle, "to invite me to the show held at the time that celebrates my new name. Much as I hate to bear a version of your name, at least 'Midnight Louise' is a hair better than just plain 'Midnight.' Humans have no imagination when it comes to naming black individuals of other species. Where did the 'Louie' in your name come from, anyway?"

  I fan my nails, which bear an ebony sheen that would do a Steinway concert grand piano proud.

  "Some suggest I was named for my distinctive singing voice."

  "You do sometimes sound like Louis Armstrong with a tracheotomy."

  "Others say I was plucked off the street as a kit and gotten drunk on beer by a group of frat boys, so the name of their song got pasted onto me."

  'The infamous 'Louie, Louie,'" Louise growls. "I wish I had been there. I would have signed, sealed and nailed those creeps for introducing alcoholic substances to a helpless minor of another species."

  I am touched by her concern, but cannot let a misapprehension linger. 'These were Eastern frat boys, my dear. I was not named after that low-brow drunken bar chorus you mentioned, but rather after 'the Whiffenpoof Song' so dear to Yale University undergraduates."

  " 'Whiffenpoof!" Louise practically rolls over the wharf's edge laughing. "Whiffenpoof? What a wimpy name."