Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“And—?”

“Me and Pitch solo, Three O’Clock and Blacula put the shadow on the trio.”

“Three O’Clock? He could not tail his own shadow!”

“I did not need all wet-ears on this job. He did fine.”

“So. What was the result?”

“We split up, we crawled on our bellies like snakes to trail these secretive humans all over Vegas, and we were there when each of the three landed for what remained of the night. You are right, O Ancient Sage. There is some master plan these Synth people are putting into motion.”

“And you know this because…?”

“They all,” she says sourly, “and we all ended up at the same destination.”

I control myself and do not anticipate her answer. Las Vegas has just too many sites that are ripe for crime and chaos.

“And—?”

“It appears they are going to knock off the Oasis Hotel.”

I play flabbergasted. Not only is the Oasis an old established venue, far from the nouveau flash of the Aria and Palazzo, but few see it as a prize target, although a heist at any Vegas hotel-casino will be rich takings … for the scant half hour the crooks have to enjoy lifting the loot before the combined fist of the casino security and police surveillance comes down on them as hard as the Cloaked Conjuror’s gauntlet.

I can believe the mob having such designs, but …

“This is crazy,” I tell Louise. “Why does a cheesy group of magicians think they can keep the heist cash? One of their own is dead, struck down in his white tie and tails in an empty underground safe, and their mysterious masked backers are about to cut the connection with bullets. Obviously, I must hie myself back to the Oasis and investigate for myself.”

“I will show you the site of the recent attack on Mr. Max aboard the ship.”

“I have already done my derring-do on that location, Louise, for an earlier case. You must keep an eye on the Goliath, because I would not put it beyond the Synth to try to make Mr. Max the fall guy on any schemes they have going.”

Of course, I do not mention that the house mascot at the Oasis is the lovely and lithe Topaz, she of the black velvet gloves and golden eyes. She has already clued me in that the mob is a clear and present danger, not a bunch of rogue magicians. Some might point out that Midnight Louise herself benefits from that sublime coloring, but since she claims to be kin, she is off my wish list for good.

Her loss.

Chapter 41

Sob Sisters

Newsrooms nowadays were quiet and orderly compared to when they filmed All the President’s Men about the Watergate political scandal. Temple sat in the one chair pulled up beside Louise Dietz’s tiny cubicle and scanned the newsroom’s mixture of empty and occupied matching cubicles. No-drama Cinerama. Columnists and feature reporters worked from home nowadays.

Louise Dietz was a poised forty-something blond woman secure enough to let a few silver hairs show through.

“So you’re the PR rep for the Crystal Phoenix Hotel, but you have a tip on the latest CCF profile?” the reporter asked, pulling out a manila file and a narrow reporter’s notebook.

“I used to be a TV reporter,” Temple said, knowing “public relations” people were suspect to print journalists.

“Me, too.” Louise smiled wryly. “Obviously long before your day. I got a bit ripe for on-camera, so I moved into print media just before newspapers started sinking into the Great Recession.”

“Bad timing,” Temple said sympathetically.

“It’s been grim, but I have this job now, and here you are to help me do it. What’s your tip?”

Temple knew you had to give to get, in all areas of life and work. “A weird message showed up on Miss Fuentes’s corpse in the morgue. It never got reported.”

“Really?” Louise was staring down through her reading glasses, pencil poised for a note.

Temple smiled, so glad to see that long-honored notebook and pencil instead of a tablet computer. Since she loved vintage everything, beyond mere clothes, she lamented that everybody was stuck in the same computerized mass-market mode these days. Not that she’d want to break her fingernails on stiff manual typewriter keys.

“You laugh at my ‘stone tablet and chisel.’” Louise noted. “You get to my age, you’ll see your brain works best on what it learned young. I need that hand motion to get my little gray cells churning in think-and-remember mode.”

Remember mode. Maybe handwriting would help Max.… He could transcribe his adventures from the time he came out of his coma in the Swiss clinic. She’d suggest that ASAP. And she’d be first in line to read them.

“You’re smiling,” Louise said. “Is my method so laughable?”

“No, not at all. I’m smiling because I like that idea. I’m not laughing.”

“So how does a PR gal know this inside morgue information?”

“It’s because I’m in PR. There have been … deaths on my watch at events I’m responsible for. Think about it. Almost forty million people a year hit Vegas, or did before the economic downturn. Many of them attend conventions where you can have twenty to eighty thousand people milling around. What are the odds of … unexpected death, given the heat, the excitement, the long hours, the fevered hype, and after-hours overindulgence in food, gambling—”

“And sex,” Louise added. “So you see your job as supervising this giant aquarium of predators and prey.”

“That’s a bit colorful. Let’s say I run into the occasional great white. Mention my name to Coroner Bahr. B-a-h-r. No relation.”

“Makes me reevaluate the nickname ‘flack’ we journalists give those in your profession.” Louise smiled at Temple like a colleague. “So Grizzly Bahr is on your speed-dial too? He’ll just swear me to secrecy on this postmortem message. It’s the only way the cops have a prayer of solving the Fuentes murder.”

“Maybe there are other unsolved, and related, Vegas crimes you could look into.”

“Maybe you could suggest some.” Louise Dietz’s pencil was poised.

“First, I could use more information on Gloria Fuentes’s personal history.”

“Deal,” Louise said. “Not much there. She’d retired from being a magician’s assistant a few years earlier when her longtime boss took his last bow onstage.” Louise flipped through her notebook. “The guy worked as ‘Gandolph the Great.’ I can’t find what became of him.”

Temple glossed past that. “Do you think Gloria wanted to retire or…?”

“Yes. Like me,” Louise said, “she was probably considered too old for a ‘visible’ job. And she didn’t just need her face on camera, she needed her whole bod in condition for fishnet hose and Playboy Bunny thong leotard. She’d gotten away with the Vanna White look for the old-timers’ shows.”

Louise tossed a promotional eight-by-ten-inch color photo on her desk from a drawer folder.

“Gandolph worked in white tie and tails!”

“What did you expect of a traditional magician?”

“I don’t know. Given his wizardly name, maybe a velvet robe with long, flowing sleeves. Gloria was lovely. And her floor-length gown is strapless.”

“Leggy is where it’s at in Vegas today. You know that.”

“Yeah. Where’d you get this photo? I know a fan of Gandolph’s act who’d love a copy if I could scan it.”

“Really?”