Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Max thought he knew his man, but he thought some more. His fingertips tapped a rhythm on eight buttons. Nothing happened. The girl sighed heavily behind him. He tried three more combinations. The fifth unlocked the door, which he pulled open to admit her before him. Always the gentleman, but this was the riskiest part of the plan.

Two heavyset men who probably held black belts in several varieties of exotic martial arts and also held high-caliber automatic weapons bracketed the door.

They didn’t have a silver-metal almost naked girl, though, and from the looks on their stolid faces, this was the best part of their day.

Knowing her power, the waitress approached without hesitation. From the next look on their faces, she had smiled at them.

“Legacy liquor-crafted cocktails from Mr. Akihiro on a radiant performance,” Max intoned in an insufferably snobby English accent. The major Vegas hotels could charge thousands for drinks made from obscenely aged liquors.

Max knew their voices would be piped into the next room. So did the cocktail waitress, who probably believed this entire farce was the gesture of an immensely rich “whale.”

The interior keypad allowed the door to be cracked enough for Max to again usher his glamorous guide right through.

And like that, he was in the fortress of the Cloaked Conjuror’s dressing room.

As the door shut automatically behind them, Max took the cocktail tray and placed it on the dressing table. The next moment, he wrenched off the helmet and made a deep bow with it playing the part of a cavalier’s hat.

“Yo, Max Kinsella!” The man in the massive easy chair rose slightly. “Testing my security again and finding it lacking. I’ll have to put you on retainer.”

Max gave another courtly bow. “I live to serve.”

“What did you use to take out my doormen, a Vulcan neck pinch? A bit physical for you, isn’t that?”

“Nothing crude and violent. My intercepting you coming offstage last time made that route null and void, so I improvised with a lovely distraction, the trick of our common trade.”

“Jolly good.”

The waitress flashed Max an approving look and offered another to the Cloaked Conjuror, who’d retained his helmetlike but animalistic head mask after leaving the stage for the night.

“Have a seat, and your gorgeous cocktail waitress friend can fetch you any drink you desire.”

“Sparkling water,” Max ordered. “In fact, I see some on ice on your dressing table. That’ll do,” he told the waitress.

He fancied he would have seen CC’s eyebrows rising if the magician hadn’t been wearing the head-encompassing mask.

“You a teetotaler suddenly?” CC asked, incredulous. Max was probably the only drinking buddy he had.

“Just for the moment.” Max accepted the Baccarat crystal goblet showcasing totally unalcoholic bubbles fizzing like mad.

When the heavy door shut behind the departing cocktail waitress, Max set down the glass and leaned toward CC. “I followed you following her last night.”

“Me? Out following someone?” The mask’s voice-altering mechanism made CC’s laugh sound like a pack of Santa Clauses on a toot. “Max, you’re good, but you’re not so good you can follow a figment of your imagination.”

“The figment of my imagination was my first thought about the identity of the portly guy who trekked from the Goliath to the Treasure Island to the abandoned Neon Nightmare to the New Millennium here. I actually thought at first it might be Gandolph.”

“And why wouldn’t it be? He’s a foxy fellow and could have led you a merry chase.”

“He was shot and killed in Belfast a few weeks ago.”

“God, no.” CC slumped back in his chair, the sagging of his costumed shoulders conveying sorrow, but in an exaggerated way, like a forlorn clown. “I’m sorry, Max. I know how much he meant to you.”

“Then take off that mask and talk to me face-to-face.”

The Cloaked Conjuror put his bare hands to the striped sides of his leonine face mask. Then they paused. “You broke in here, but you’re also going to have to break out, if I say you can’t go.”

“I’m aware of that.” Max finally drank some water, never taking his eyes off CC and the mask at his graceful fingertips. Magicians were used to making flourishes.

“Risk.” CC pulled off the headpiece. “Always your long suit, Max. I envied you that. My risks are well cloaked, and I don’t have any sense of personal credit when I win.”

“I’m not after credit. I’m after justice and truth.” Max heard himself and laughed. “And the American way.”

“You’d make a good Superman, but I don’t think red and blue are your colors.” CC chuckled, setting his iconic headpiece on the dressing table.

Black greasepaint circled his eyes and nose so they’d blend with the mask, and red surrounded his mouth, which made him look like a part-time member of Kiss. Sweat shone in his hairline. Max doubted it was fresh.

“Cheers,” said CC, leaning forward to click his drink glass with Max’s. He sat back. “So how did Garry Randolph come to be shot in Northern Ireland?”

“We weren’t just magicians when we toured the Continent years ago.”

“That was such a lucky gig for a young pup like you. I was doing birthday parties and nursing homes. Then, years later, you came back and hit Vegas like a storm with that strobe light and walking-on-air act of yours. Why’d you vanish after your first year? You must have had offers bigger than the Goliath by then?”

“I did.” Max sipped fizz water, feeling his throat tighten. To get info, you had to give info. First rule of manipulation. “Also several firm offers to leave the planet. Garry and I were undercover counterterrorists during our tour of Europe. I’d run afoul of the IRA when my cousin was blown up in a pub bombing, and they’ve been after me ever since.”

“No shit.” CC was shocked to the soles of his five-inch platform shoes.

“So now you know why I slink around Las Vegas like a cartoon spy character. I have a lot at stake. Now I want to know why you slink around like a bad cartoon spy character and how long this has been going on.”

“What? You’re hallucinating, Max. You don’t know what I look like out of mask and makeup and this costume, not to mention the padded body armor because of all the threats on my life. You thought you were seeing Gandolph, Garry Randolph. That shows you’re a bit off your rocker, and I don’t blame you.”

Max got up, got an empty glass, and poured the Grey Goose vodka on a side table into it straight.

CC tensed as Max moved, yet kept very still.

Then Max poured the vodka into his sparkling water. “Not exactly a James Bond–approved martini, but it’ll do. Yes, I am a bit off my rocker. Someone tried to kill me and racked up my legs and memory.”

“You … walk just fine.” CC frowned his puzzlement at where this was going. “And you remember me.”

“I remember bits and pieces of back then and back now, and bits and pieces of people. Confession time. I always admired your guts in making an act out of exposing other magicians’ tricks.” Max settled in the chair as if for a long winter’s nap, stretching out his legs. “Those ticked-off magicians are short-sighted. They’ll still get audiences trying to see them do what you show they do, and the audiences still won’t see through everything.”

“I never exposed one of your specialties.”

“I appreciated that. That’s why I’ve been acting as your guardian angel.”

“I didn’t know about your double life, Max, but I’ve always felt a kinship with you, probably because I sensed you had your own secrets. You understood my isolation and loneliness, and I sensed that in you.”