Their masks glared at each other, then Max pulled his off.
“How did you get offstage so fast?”
“Jumped up and was assumed into the wings on the curtain pulleys.”
“My bodyguards—”
“Never look up. They watch you, and you stay with your feet on the ground.”
“That was a nervy thing to do.”
“It was a nervy thing to drag me into your interview. I vanished for a reason, and I’d prefer the public, and everybody else, to forget about me entirely. You’ve just blown a year’s worth of invisibility.”
The Cloaked Conjuror lifted his arms and dropped them to indicate helpless regret. The mechanical voice forced him to rely on gesture rather than speech even in private. He resembled a mute Phantom of the Opera.
Max stopped being envious, if he ever had been.
The magician sat at his dressing table, where Max had warmed the seat only moments before. He didn’t remove his mask.
“I didn’t know how to get in touch with you.” Even the mechanical voice sounded weary. “I figured if I mentioned your name you might contact me. But not onstage in the middle of my act! My bodyguards are all over that backstage. Man, you are crazy.”
“No. I just know that the safest place to be when a man is under constant guard is right next to him. Even if they had noticed my brief visit, they weren’t about to shoot until they knew which man in black was who.”
The Cloaked Conjuror shook his head. “Whatever you are, you’re the only one who tumbled to the fact that my assistant was killed at the TitaniCon weekend. I’ve got a new problem, but it might be from an old source.”
Max pulled a chair closer to the mirror and sat beside the magician. “The Synth?”
“Maybe. I’ve been working with a new cat. Going to reveal the old cat into woman trick. Add a little femme pheromones to the act, you know? Somebody’s swiped the animal.”
“Big cat? Leopard, I suppose?”
The leopard-spotted mask nodded. “Cost a bundle. And a fine, mature animal. Worth…a bundle.”
“You blew my cover over a cat-napping?”
“A note was left, signed ‘the Synth.’”
“You’ve contacted the police?”
“Would you?”
“No. What’s the ransom?”
“The note didn’t mention a ransom.”
“Any calls?”
“Not for money. Not about the leopard.”
Max pondered the sense of announcing you’re the kidnapper without demanding ransom. “Do you think they’ll ask for money after you sweat a little, or do they really want the animal? Or is this a nuisance attack? Harassment.”
“I don’t know. I do know my security force is pretty teed off about someone breaching the perimeter and taking the cat. Either way, it’s a message.”
Max nodded again. “A major message. So the leopard was taken from your residence. I suppose you’re not about to share the location of that with me.”
“Not unless you convince me that you absolutely need it.”
“It’s near Las Vegas, though?”
“Yeah. Near enough.”
“Obviously, there are several messages here: one, they know where you are. Two, you aren’t as secure as you think. Three, they know what you’re planning for the act. Four, they can extort your money from you, or maybe they think they deserve it and you don’t, since you’re an antimagician. So why do you think I can do anything for you? Especially after you’ve irritated the hell out of me.”
The Cloaked Conjuror kept silent for a good minute, his masked face as still as a corpse’s. “I’ve seen tapes of your show. You’re the real thing. Man, you nearly gave me a heart attack when you showed up backstage. See, no one’s supposed to be able to do that. I figure if anyone can go up against the Synth, you can. I’ll pay you whatever you need to get the cat back and find out the who, what, and why behind this whole thing.”
Max stood, shoved his chair under the dressing table, glanced at the empty mask he had abandoned on the tabletop.
“I may need to produce money for the cat, and I may need that in advance.”
“Just ask.”
“Who was the woman?”
“What woman?”
“The woman you were going to change into a cat, and vice versa. One of your lissome assistants in the leopard catsuits?”
“No. I found someone a little more exotic, but she’s out of the picture for now. She wasn’t going to join the act until after the cat was trained.”
“How exotic?”
“Hot.”
“Like that’s a rarity in Las Vegas?”
The Cloaked Conjuror chuckled. “She does her own act, but it’s small-time. You may have heard of her. Shangri-La.”
“Shangri-La. I guess she’s used to working with a cat, or a house cat anyway. What is its name?”
“Her house cat?”
“No, your missing leopard.”
“Osiris.”
“The Egyptian god of death. Not a nice omen. Let’s hope that the real cat has as posh an afterlife as a pharaoh is granted.”
“Listen, if this big cat just has the regulation feline nine lives, I’ll be happy.”
“If I have them, I’ll be happier.”
Chapter 6
Sister Act
If there is anything I hate more than an overzealous bodyguard, it is two of them.
These particular two bracket the Cloaked Conjuror’s dressing room door as if they were guarding Pharaoh.
I know a thing or two about Pharaoh from a past life—Pharaoh’s past life, not mine—and I know that the Royal Bearded One takes it most unkindly when the hired help clings to the doorjamb like a couple of caryatids. Okay, caryatids were these naked ladies from a little later era, but the ladies along the Nile were not big on overdressing either. Anyway, these statuesque broads would have done well in a late-night topless chorus line at the Stardust, and it is a downright shame to find these two overgrown musclemen making like doorposts on the Cloaked Conjuror’s doorstep, thereby interfering with my eavesdropping.
So I am forced to cosy up to them and rub on their cowboy boots until I could have polished the varnish off a whole herd of ostriches.
Above my head there is much speculating about how I got in here (with my hands and feet just like you did, numbskull, although with a lot more finesse, as my kind is not normally welcomed or allowed on the premises). And about if I am hungry. (Do I look hungry? I weigh about as much as your favorite pit bull, pal.) And some idle chatter about how the Cloaked Conjuror is in a bad mood tonight. (You think your boss is a bit peeved! How about me, who has managed to spy the Mystifying Max in the dark onstage, trail him through the flies and the wings, which are stage parts and not insectoid in the slightest, track him below-stage, and now here I am balked on the threshold of revelation by a couple of oversize klutzes who would rather feed the kitty than protect their boss’s fake leopard-skin mask.)
Luckily, I have a trick up my sleeve.
Okay, I do not have a sleeve to speak of, but the trick does put in a sudden appearance.
It is the old Lassie shtick, and I must say it is the prettiest enactment of a dumb blond of the canine kind that I have ever seen.
I notice her first, leaning against the wall twenty feet away and panting.
Immediately, I stop my boot-black work so the idiots I have been forced to associate with can notice something under their noses down the hall.
She stutters forward on her little black feet, but soon sinks against the wall again, this time giving a little cry.
The dolts stop, look, and listen. By now they have graduated into making good crossing guard material.
She sighs, staggers upright, and begins limping away.
’Atta girl, Lassie! Timmie and the well he’s fallen into must be down that dark hall somewhere. Or a pony. Maybe these guys will be useful enough to stumble into it.
By now her tail is lifting, then jerk
ing down, then perking a bit, then dragging behind her heels. It is a sort of epilepsy of the anterior and it gets the guards running down the hall to tend to the poor thing.
I rub up tight against the door, pressing my left ear to the eighth-inch of air beneath it.
That is how I learn that Miss Shangri-La, the ooh-la-la lady magician who is one nice plate of chop suey in the looks department, is waiting in the wings to join Mr. Cloaked Conjuror’s act. And I learn that a cat is the crux of the matter (of course).
A sharp hissing sound like acid boiling over down the hall tells me that my assistant’s good nature has expired like an underfed parking meter downtown.
The pair of lummoxes heading my way are muttering about “damn cats” and scuffing their pointy-toed boots on the concrete floor as if entered in a roach-kicking contest.
I decide I do not wish to be mistaken for same, and rocket through their ranks, joining my compatriot on the dark end of the hallway.
“What a bum assignment,” she greets me, still fussing and spitting. “I nearly broke a nail on the dumb guy’s jean’s leg. Who ever heard of starched denim?”
“Calm down, sister.”
“Oho. You will not acknowledge me as your daughter, but I am good enough to be your sister when you need a little undercover work done. No go, bro!”
There is no doubt that Miss Midnight Louise needs handling with kid gloves, but there are no convenient kids in the vicinity, and besides, who would want gloves made from their sticky-fingered little hands anyway?
So I resort to my velvet tongue, which I stroke a few times over Midnight Louise’s twitching shoulder blades. Ooh, sharp!
“Cut out the velvet glove treatment,” she snarls, shrugging away. But her shoulders stop twitching. “So what did you learn while I was attracting the attention of those doorstops?”
“That one of our kind is in trouble. The Cloaked Conjuror told Mr. Max Kinsella that a big cat he was training has been kidnapped. There was also some talk about an associate of that lady killer I told you about.”
“I know. The knockout showgirl with the lavender-gray shoulder-length gloves and thigh-high hose. I think she is a figment of your pheromones, Daddy Dude. Her type of femme fatale went out with cigarette holders.”
“Anyway, it behooves us to track Mr. Max Kinsella as he investigates.”
“And hooves is what we will need if we try to keep up with that gentleman.”
Midnight Louise sits down on the cushion of her fluffy tail and begins one of those obnoxious, discouraging lists that dames are always going on about.
“We are not going to hot-foot our way through this case on pedal power this time. From what you have told me of your Mr. Max, he would be impossible for a bloodhound to trail. You do not even have a clue as to where he hangs his brass knuckles. Also, from what you tell me, he is not some amiable associate like your wire-haired so-called roommate, who will let us tag along in her motorcar. Hell’s bells, Daddio, he does not even use the same car from day to day. Nor would he be an easy dude to let us hitch a ride unnoticed, as we did in Mr. Matt Devine’s motorcycle pouches. And even that vehicle was originally owned by Mr. Max Kinsella, so I do not see how we are going to get anywhere trying to follow the likes of him.”
“I suppose I could call Nose E. in on the case. There must be plenty of essence de Max Kinsella lingering around my roomie’s domicile. And she is not ‘wire-haired’ like a terrier, but blessed with soft, flowing waves like an Irish setter.”
“Please spare me your paeans to human hair. It holds all the attractions of the lint trap in a clothes dryer for me. And speaking of hairy little individuals, I am not going to baby-sit the inside of an Oreo cookie again. Nose E. indeed! The Maltese flatfoot. I thought it was my assistance you required. Now you are inviting everybody but the kidnappers in on the investigation.”
“I suppose,” I say meekly, “you have a suggestion?”
“Why must we follow the human investigators? I say we forge our own trail and get there first.”
Midnight Louise nods as she strips the excess hairs from between her long and razor-sharp shivs.
And I am worried about a mythological beast named Hyacinth.
Chapter 7
A PR in PI Clothing
“I need,” Max said, gazing deeply into Temple’s eyes through his green contact lenses, “a clever shill who doesn’t know too much.”
“Great. What part of that is supposed to win me over? Not ‘shill.’ Not ‘not knowing too much.’”
“Clever,” Max pointed out.
“If I were really clever, I couldn’t be talked into being a shill.”
“I meant a convincing shill.”
“Clever and convincing. I suppose I could live with that.”
Max had arrived that morning by one of his literal second-story-man entrances to her, formerly their, condominium. He had entered, attired as usual in cat-burglar black from head to foot, by the patio French doors like a missing husband in a French farce, just in time for breakfast.
Temple had reciprocated this act of home invasion by popping two frozen waffles in the toaster. She and Max were now cosied up to the kitchen eating island on bar stools, applying bits of waffle to their blackberry preserves, pools of butter pockmarking the waffle grids amid the surrounding moats of maple syrup.
“Nutritionally, this is the pits,” Temple noted.
“I don’t come here for good nutrition,” Max commented.
“So now I’m empty calories.”
He shrugged, and ate.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing much. Just buy a big cat.”
Temple stopped sopping up waffle long enough to look pointedly at Midnight Louie lounging on the adjacent kitchen countertop, managing to look both bored and hopeful. “Got one.”
“Bigger.”
Temple was too busy chewing to speak with more than her raised eyebrows.
“That new attraction at the Crystal Phoenix is on the verge of opening, isn’t it?” Max asked, switching from syrup to coffee. “I’ve been hearing and reading nothing in the local media lately but squibs about the new Action Jackson subterranean virtual-reality mine ride and the Domingo flamingo farango—whatever performance-art installation and the children’s petting zoo.”
“Mmphhank ouuu!” Temple got out before she could finish mashing waffle.
Nothing paid tribute to a public relations person’s expertise more than a host of well-planted news items. You had to nibble the public to death to make an impression: repeated, needling mentions, rather like piranha love bites.
“So you’re perfect for the job,” Max went on.
“Of buying a big cat.”
“I don’t expect you to tote one home in your U-Haul. Just to…go shopping.”
“You can shop for lions, and tigers, and bears?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Of course it’s highly illegal.”
“Illegal.” Temple polished off the last swipe of waffle and reached for her morning multivitamin pill, which was almost bigger than she was. “I love to do illegal.”
Max grinned. “Yes, you do. I had no idea when I ran into you in Minnesota—”
“You ran into a ficus tree while looking at me.”
“You ran into a drinking fountain while looking at me.”
“At least we didn’t damage the greenery and the water supply.”
“No, they damaged us.”
“Then did we damage us?”
He sobered instantly. “No, fate and the past damaged us. Not too badly, I hope.” She shrugged it off good-naturedly, but he went on. “I often wonder if you would have been better off, safer and saner anyway, if I’d just stayed lost.”
“You would have never come back? Why did you?”
“I told myself that it was safe, for me, but especially for you. Sometimes magicians get so good at deceiving audiences they even fool themselves.” He pushed the plate of waffles and syrup away as if sickened by swee
tness when his thoughts had turned so sour. “If I hadn’t come back, you’d probably be married to Devine by now.”
“No! There wasn’t anything that serious between us.”
“He sure hates me enough for there to have been.”
“Matt doesn’t hate you, he just thinks—”
“That I had no business coming back and getting you into trouble. He’s right.”
“Max. Those thugs were going to waylay me whether you came back or not. Molina was going to hassle me whether you came back or not. Better you’re here. Now when I’m hounded, I’ve got a secret weapon.”
“Too secret. This isn’t the way I wanted us to live. I don’t think you’re happy with it either.”
“No,” Temple admitted, “but I don’t see how we can change things.”
“I keep telling myself that it wasn’t ego, my coming back and winning you back. That seeing you’d met Devine didn’t make me territorial. But I’m so used to everything going my way, by hook or by crook. And now look—the ring I gave you in New York, missing. Stolen, onstage, yet, in front of Devine and Molina and everybody. The future I promised you in New York—no bogeymen or women, me free of my undercover past and us living like a normal couple, married with…cat. Enter Kathleen O’Connor, stage left-wing. Or is she right-wing? Either way, she’s no angel. Domesticity is history.”
“That’s not your fault, Max.”
“You’ve changed. And that is my fault.” He frowned down at the countertop tile, his long fingers moving over it like it was a chessboard mysteriously vacant of kings, queens, bishops, knights, and pawns that he could move.
Max did not do angst, but he was perilously close now.
“Maybe it’s for the better,” Temple said.
He glanced up, startled.
“Maybe I’ve changed for the better. Gotten stronger. And what shape would I have been in if you’d never come back? Do you know how everybody pities and despises a woman whose guy has walked out on her? It’s nasty. Everybody thought I was crazy for believing in you, but you did come back. You proved me right.”
Cat in a Leopard Spot Page 5
