Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

As he forced CC to retreat, he passed, obscured, and moved beyond the empty entrance. When he turned and again flourished the scarlet panache of his cape lining, the treasure chest reappeared, spotlights flashing off its clear plastic surface and the crushed greenbacks filling the almost invisible dimensions.

Temple’s brain was whirling. She knew one of the dueling magicians was going to execute a final pass past the prize, the magical third time. Then the money would vanish and be gone for good. Most dramas had three acts, like fairy tales had three brothers.

There had to be an elaborate setup behind this illusion that jerked the crowd’s perceptions back and forth like a saw blade cutting through a magician’s case containing the endangered lady.

While she was thinking, something like a forefinger of King Kong—or a huge attacking serpent … the Ophiuchus serpent—whipped around her waist and lifted her up, up, and away, above the treasure chest, above the crowd, and into the glare of the lights and the rhythmic zodiac sign shadows, now recognizably only Ophiuchus … and she was the struggling human figure in the muscular, strangling serpent’s grasp.

She was the distracting magician’s assistant.

Her hands tried to grasp the snake’s coil, but it was too massive to curl around. Oh. This was an elephant trunk, and the pressure it exerted was amazingly delicate for such a thick and rough-skinned appendage.

Temple kept her hands on the living noose that had circled her. The motion as she was lifted over the beast’s high shoulder made her stomach dip. Before she could say “Dumbo,” she was perched on its surprisingly hairy back in front of the palanquin. She grabbed on to its draped, gilt silk cloth … a flimsy “rope” as prone to tearing as a belly dancer’s skirt. Far too far beneath, the animal tender was shouting commands even she couldn’t hear. The elephant flapped back an ear to heed him, apparently in vain. If the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye, as the song went, she was halfway up Jack’s beanstalk.

The elephant man suddenly screamed loud enough to attract the beast’s attention. Something black had climbed the elephant’s dangling headdress decorations and was now midway through a leap to … the elephant’s left scimitar of ivory tusk.

The elephant swayed its trunk, but Midnight Louie spun to hang under the tusk like a tree sloth. The behemoth uneasily shifted its weight from foot to foot. Above, Temple swung to and fro, a mere decorative tassel. Louie sprang upward to claw-cling to the harness on the elephant’s forehead and then to the top of the head, where he leaned down to yowl in an ear.

Midnight Louie was demanding a one-on-one.

The huge appendage flapped back. One edge slapped Temple in the dangling calf. It felt like being whapped by a canvas sail.

The triumphant tap-dancing guy on the ground bounced once and achieved a spot on the elephant’s shoulder blades. He bent to seize Temple around the waist—good thing she had a twenty-two-inch one—and bounced down to deposit her on the elephant tusk opposite the one Midnight Louie had used as a stepping stone before alighting beside the chest again.

Showtime! The elephant’s trunk swayed from side to side. It was used to passengers and was getting into its performing groove. In a moment, it carefully went down on one knee, then two. Rafi was waiting there to swing Temple back to ground zero.

She looked up the elephant’s kneeling form, anxious about Louie. Not to worry. He’d used his claws to climb farther and was sitting smack-dab center of the palanquin like a rajah, surveying the action below.

And what action!

The Vaders’ dark forms were falling to the ground under a wave of black cats that swarmed their cloaks, unseen by the tourist crowds, who nevertheless had been conditioned by countless Star Wars movies to join in and keep any downed Vader in black … down.

Meanwhile, the masked white tie and tails guys were tap-dancing forward in formation as the dueling magicians pantomimed lifting the treasure chest with their sweeping cloak action.

The chest elevated four feet off the ground, nothing beneath it but air, as the eight formally attired men separated into pallbearer formation. The crowd parted as they escorted the floating money chest down the entry lane into a waiting 1930s black hearse.

In an instant the rear doors slammed shut and the top-hatted white-tie guys vanished behind the vintage vehicle’s four doors, which also slammed shut as the hearse glided away.

Temple was as agape as everyone in the crowd, including the elephant handler.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned.

Rafi.

He pointed to a pale middle-aged man in an expensive dark suit turning a crank on a Plexiglas rolling chamber filled with slips of paper.

Invited, she drew one. Rafi handed her a portable mic.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she intoned, “the winner is … Mr. Joseph Merrick.”

The man in the suit had his impossibly anticlimactic moment in the spotlight. “Please come forward, Mr. Merrick, and we’ll complete the process in the casino offices.”

He seemed unconcerned about the disappearance of the prize money, and Temple knew why. The audience had accepted every moment as the usual Las Vegas overblown live theater. Joe and supporters rushed toward her. Beyond them, Rafi and security crew pulled downed Darth Vaders into custody. Onlookers melted away.

Besides having corralled a protesting group of black-cloaked street performers, Rafi’s security guys were left holding three empty masks and cloaks.

Temple stepped up to him. “I guess you’re not too worried about where the money went.”

“Looked like to the bank.”

“If you bank at Fontana Brothers, Inc., Rafi, you didn’t set this all up on your own. You needed maximum diversion from two major magicians, three amazingly diverse mammal groups, and one prominent Las Vegas family, as well as one poor lone working girl. I claim credit for Louie and providing comic relief, but you and the moonlighting magicians engineered it.”

Rafi’s smile was as big as a million dollars. “And no official police action involved. With a little help from my friends, this gets me the security chief job here, and a step forward in my crusade to reclaim my kid from the big, bad Molina.”

“Why did anybody need me? I was arm-candy for an elephant and did a three-sentence announcing gig.”

“Well,” Rafi said, “you had about—” He thought. “—about forty protective eyes on you, so it seemed a slam dunk.”

“Even the elephant’s trunk episode?”

“Sultana performs nightly with a petite woman.”

“So that’s two mammal groups down. What about the third?”

“We’ve all heard that ‘Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.’ I figured that might apply to domesticated wildcats. We needed them to soften up the Vaders, and someone assured me that they’d done the job before.”

“Someone?”

Rafi shrugged. “The Cloaked Conjuror keeps an artificially amplified ear to the ground.”

Chapter 47

After-Hours Nightmare

“I could use a good PR woman,” the voice on Temple’s phone said.

“For what assignment?”

“Closure.”

“Not in my job description.”

“You’ll like it. Trust me.”

“I always did. But Max, it’s almost one o’clock in the morning and we’re supposed to be recovering from a … strenuous public appearance. We might still be a little shaky, your legs and mind, my sanity and cat.”

“The closure is for the Synth.”

“Oh. That does sound tempting. Now?”

“Yes. At the Neon Nightmare.”

“Aren’t they still open now?”