Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“I thought the old saw went, ‘Those who can’t … teach.’”

“Not in this Internet age.”

“Yeah, the threats on my life are up four hundred percent with my name out there for ‘instant feedback’ on hundreds of sites.”

This time Max whistled, and it worked so well, the dressing room door banged open. Two musclemen bearing major small arms filled the doorway and scanned the room, weapons at the ready.

From the glowers they gave Max, his magical aerial entrance next to their boss rankled mightily. It must rankle even more that Max had turned out to be a bosom buddy, so to speak.

“That’s okay,” CC’s weirdly emotionless voice said. “Old friend. Get a couple drinks in here.”

CC rested his booted feet on an unoccupied chair drawn up to the dressing table. For him, this must be an unexpected but pleasant social occasion.

“Thanks for shaking up my guards, Kinsella. I owe you. In fact, I should put you on my payroll to test my security regularly.”

“Don’t need the money, but, sure, I can do that anytime you want a drinking partner.” Max hoped CC’s invisible grin match his own. Meanwhile, he was getting an outside-in look on his own life.

They remained silent until a New Millennium sexy robot girl waitress in silver body paint sashayed in with a tray, a bottle, and two crystal low-ball glasses. She deposited the burden on the dressing table as CC pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his palm and let it waft down to the empty tray.

“Thank you, Tiger,” she said with a very nonrobotic wiggle and a smile, and bustled out again.

“Irish whiskey all right?” CC asked, opening the bottle and pouring.

“Slainte,” Max said, painfully aware of his last pub visits on Irish soil, of solid but not spectacular ale, of pursuit and death. “To your health.”

With CC, that was always a sincere toast.

CC picked up a flexible aluminum straw and inserted it in the drink before he sipped whiskey through the mask’s mouth slit.

“Is it worth it?” Max asked.

“I don’t know. I thought so when I was younger. I can retire. And may soon, in a flash of fire.”

“Not literally, I hope.”

“Not at the hands of enemies, I hope. No, I want to go the way you exited the Goliath Hotel gig. Finish the contract one night and be gone the next. People always wondering … where I went … who I was … how I’m spending all my money.”

“And then you’ll return as your own self to Vegas and play the high roller at all the casinos, still gaming the odds.”

CC laughed, the only sound the mask made that seemed happy, as if it came from a mechanical Santa.

Flashback.

Max crawling through the Goliath air duct system, having spied an anomaly in the cameras above the gaming tables. Max and his double, old and new Max, crawling like an infant in a rut through the same hidden paths two years apart.

“I had to leave that way,” he told CC, told himself. “I had assassins on my trail.”

“Well? Am I different?”

“You aren’t. We aren’t.”

CC thrust his expensive glass forward for a rough toast. Max made the gesture but avoided the close contact of breakable glass. He wondered if that described his life.

“If you want me to save you,” he told CC, “you’ll have to show your hand, and heart, if not your face.”

CC lifted and wriggled his bare fingers. “Most people think I’m a gauntlet, not flesh. And heart, it’s all in my work.”

“One of your men died, during that science fiction convention held here at the New Millennium.”

“TitaniCon,” CC said promptly, not showing much heart.

“One of your assistants fell, or was beaten and fell, or was pushed from the upper reaches of the stage mechanisms. He was wearing a costume that mimicked yours, that also suggested a ‘Khatlord’ from an insanely popular science fiction TV show.”

“Silliness.” CC sucked hard on his straw of Irish whiskey before continuing. “Those costumed TV characters were supposedly from an alien race that was a cross between a Star Trek Klingon warrior and … me and my mask. The hotel PR department wanted to play up the similarities. I went along. It seemed harmless at first blush.”

This time emotion had colored the mechanical voice. Bitterness.

“Barry died,” Max said.

The Cloaked Conjuror didn’t respond for a moment. “You know magic shows are based on doubles. Barry was my body double. The police never started a murder investigation. There wasn’t any evidence. People in the circus, people on window-washing rigs, people in high-steel construction sometimes fall, and sometimes die.”

“I’m the poster boy for that fact,” Max said. “What about your late performing partner for the hotel’s signature Russian artifact exhibition?”

The Cloaked Conjuror kept statue-still. It must be torturous to remain always behind the mask, behind the façade, literally caged by his costume, his larger-than-life persona.

“Perhaps people around me are fated to die,” the mask intoned.

“Perhaps,” Max said, leaning forward intently, “people associated with magic and who dabble in aerial illusions are fated to be killed in this town because something is killing them.”

“Besides hubris, you mean?” The flat of CC’s palm hit the dressing table. “Did you see Shangri-La perform?”

“On a couple of occasions.”

Major flashback.

“And—”

Max found talking to CC, talking to a fellow magician, like Gandolph, produced ripples of recovered memory. This time he saw a flying woman falling from grace, from life to death.

He knew what to say. “She was … amazing in performance. She managed to combine the gravity-defying martial arts moves of the artiest recent Asian films with classical magic illusions.”

“Yes.” The CC’s shoulders lifted with a sigh. “She was a tiny thing, but fierce, like that trick Siamese cat of hers that could balance on a wand, or so it seemed. Hyacinth and Shangri-La were much more interesting than rabbits and top hats. Everything in her act was a delicate Asian watercolor overlaid on a samurai sword. She died because of an attempt on my life.”

She died attempting to take your life, Max’s memory spoke up. She had already taken Temple’s ring during an onstage trick and then kidnapped Temple and Midnight Louie, the cat who was hardly a tiny thing, but fiercely devoted.

Max’s memories were becoming quite a chorus. He could hardly think past their jumbled, tumbling rush to escape the lockbox in his head. He could hardly talk for the oncoming noise.

“Why remind me of that awful loss?” CC’s deepest inhuman voice asked, with justification.

“Because I don’t think the deaths are done.”

“Deaths are never done, you know that, Max. Part of magic is the constant reversal of death. The rabbit is gone, the rabbit is there. The girl in the box has been sawn in half, the girl in the box is whole. Shangri-La—or the Phantom Mage—is defying gravity. Shangri-La—or the Phantom Mage—falls to a harsh death. Only you didn’t die and Shang actually did.”

Max sat there stunned. “Only I didn’t,” he repeated.

But he’d been there at the New Millennium, had tried to save her. Was it actually Shangri-La who died while working with CC’s aerial magic show above the Russian jewels exhibition?

Or a body double under that heavy Asian face paint that even the Cloaked Conjuror had probably never been permitted to see past?

Chapter 36

I’ll Have a Double … Agent

Max ordered a drink at the bar, cozied up to it, and proceeded to let himself mourn his lost profession of top-ranking Vegas magician.