Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“I do?” Max was astonished. “Don’t you have to ask for that?”

“Anybody who wants can ‘follow’ you,” she said. “It helps,” she added seductively, “if you follow back.”

“That’s just it.” Max threw up graceful hands, his long fingers the envy of most of his peers for their dexterity. “I’m a magician, not a PR flack.” He winced internally to think of Temple Barr hearing those words from his lips. “I just want to do my job in peace, without some parasitic imitator trying to ‘expose’ me when he’s getting great notices and rich for doing it.”

“Hear, hear.” Hal pumped a fist into the air.

“Even worse,” Czarina said, watching him with all the shrewdness in her soul, which was considerable, “we think we lost our house magician to an assassination.”

“That’s ghastly,” Max said, “and worth prosecuting. Why haven’t I seen any media on the case? I must have still been out of town when this happened.”

“Out of town, where?” Czarina asked.

“Out of the country, actually.”

“Oh, where? I swear I got a couple cryptic messages from you.” Ramona lifted raven’s-wing eyebrows.

“Did you? I didn’t roam as far as anyone might think. North of the border.”

“Oh, clever,” Hal said. “Nobody looks for anyone up there in Canada but aging Vietnam War protesters. Good show.”

Max detected the triumvirate exchanging flash glances again. His story was holding up because of its very humdrum nature. Why had he said Canada? It had felt so right and reasonable, and wasn’t someplace spectacularly suspicious, not as if Max had claimed to be on the run on the Continent.

“You think someone is bumping off your membership?” he asked. “Someone did die here.”

“The Phantom Mage was a mere hireling,” Czarina said, all heart. “Probably a Cirque reject. That flashy bungee cord swishing around did distract the drinking crowd, but his magic technique was nothing to get excited about.”

“Some of us,” Hal said, “thought he was a spy.”

“Some of us,” Ramona added, “thought he was you. But then he died, or was killed, and you weren’t, unless you’re now a vampire or a zombie.”

“Excellent ideas for my new act, Ramona. ‘The Mystifying Max: Back from the Dead.’”

“We don’t know the Phantom Mage was killed,” Hal said.

“Really?” Max felt his muscles tensing for a rapid getaway. Had they invited him up here for an interrogation and possible extermination?

“He could have gotten careless,” Czarina admitted. “He seemed overconfident.”

“And you never suspected it was me,” Max chided with a smile, an overconfident smile.

The silence was uncomfortable. He’d confronted the weakness in his story head-on, like the Phantom Mage had faced his apparent death, but that crushing impact had been too convincing for any doubt, thanks to Rafi Nadir’s falsely official presence and diagnosis.

Max nodded soberly. “Perhaps the revolving lights of the signs of the zodiac disoriented him. They sure distracted me from my troubles. Did you know you’ve repeated one?”

“Repeated?” Czarina asked.

“I was slow to be served and had nothing to do but watch the mirrored bar-top light show. That’s the idea, I know, but I counted thirteen of those zodiac glyphs going around. It was like counting sheep, only the ram kept showing up, and the fish and the scorpion and the boa constrictor and the lion.”

“You were sure in your cups, my friend,” Hal said, chuckling, “if you were seeing snakes in the zodiac. What’s your sign?”

“I never paid much attention to bar pickup lines.”

Czarina snorted. “You wouldn’t. You’ve never needed to do that. Born between the first day of spring and the anniversary of the Oklahoma federal building bombing and assault on the Waco cult, dates of new life and hope as well as political insanity, you are obviously Aries. That’s a sign of power and fearless strength, a muscular body and mind. You seek thrills and challenge, but you can be deceptive. Am I right?”

“I hope so,” Max said modestly. “At least I was born in the first half of April. All of those traits sounds useful for a magician. So the symbol of my zodiac sign is a—”

“Ram,” Ramona said lustily.

“And the boa constrictor I glimpsed in passing?”

Hal was happy to instruct. “That is Ophiuchus, my Aries friend. The ancients identified it as a constellation. The ‘ophidian’ coils indicate the biological suborder Ophidia or Serpentes, from the Greek ophis: a snake. Some versions of the zodiac do show it, but it’s always been the unlucky thirteen in a set of signs that fit the twelve months of the year. So, despite some tabloid buzz recently when an astronomer suggested it needed to be made room for, it’s a lost sign that we have taken for our symbol of forgotten magic and magical powers.”

“Cool.” Max nodded. “An apt symbol. Best that it stay out of the common parlance. Besides, who’d want to murmur ‘Ophiuchus’ in someone’s ear at a bar when they could whisper Aquarius or Virgo, and roar Leo or Taurus.”

“See, my dear boy,” Czarina said, “you know more of the zodiac than you thought.”

And he also knew why the Synth had adopted a man-crushing snake as its poster glyph.

“So what form will your revenge take? Do you plan to disrupt the Cloaked Conjuror’s performances at the New Millennium? I’m not saying kill the man, merely show him up.”

“You’re right,” Hal said. “We are not about killing, but we are being killed. Just a couple weeks ago, Cosimo Sparks would have been here.”

“Yes,” Czarina said morosely, “wearing his white tie and tails, adding class to the assembly.”

“You wore that in your Goliath act,” Ramona said. “Ultra classy. I still think you needed a dancing-on-air partner.”

Max nodded slowly. From what he remembered of her, she’d been an able illusionist.

Ramona blinked at him after giving him a good long stare, like a cat. “No longer determined to be a one-man band?” she asked.

He blinked back. “Maybe not. What do you expect to accomplish, then, besides sitting around this attractive hideaway mourning your losses?”

“We’re a lot more organized than we look, young man,” Czarina said.

“Just how many members do you have?”

Czarina laughed. “Don’t make the mistake of taking our lot as the sum total. We’re the leaders, but we have a lot of unemployed magicians and their assistants and technicians to call on when we make our big move.”

“We’re more than the Neon Nightmare owners and operators,” Hal added. “We have a couple hundred investors and we can call on that many ‘extras’ if we need to. The idea was to get a nightclub going, introduce a magic act, then use the building as a daytime facility for small but magical birthday and retirement parties, special convention outings, weddings, small fund-raisers. Make money for all the ‘little people’ who got pushed out by the big shows, and now are blitzed by the recession.”

“Meanwhile,” Max said, “chasing some legendary pots of Vegas gold wouldn’t hurt.”

Hal leaned forward in his chair, intent, recruiting. “We have powerful sponsors. There are forces in Las Vegas who want to take a lot of money out of it because a lot of money is stashed here in hidden places.”

“The mob? If you work for them, you’ll need to corrupt a forensic accountant,” Max said. “The magic of numbers isn’t my game.”

“No, not the mob in that respect, although they’d love to take over our venture if they knew the details,” Ramona said, leaning forward also, although her plunging neckline when she did it was a lot more convincing than Hal Herald and his plaid bow tie.