Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Normally, Temple admired women of steel. In Shangri-La’s case, she made a significant exception. The woman was associated with an incident involving a semi-load of stolen designer drugs. People often forgot that Las Vegas catered heavily to the Pacific Trade. Asians were fevered gamblers, and had become treasured high-roller clients of every major hotel-casino along the Strip.

With that came the Asian mafia, the drug trade, and every evil flower of crosscultural international corporate/gangster contamination. So, what was Shangri-La’s game here? Besides spinning like an entombed butterfly above a fabulous treasure trove of Russian artwork? She couldn’t ask the Cloaked Conjuror such blunt questions, but she could skirt around them.

“Your solo act was a huge hit, exposing magician’s tricks. Why add an element?”

Even through the cumbersome mask, CC’s laugh was rueful.

“My shtick is great. I’m big, I’m anonymous, I’m half man, half mystery. Even the death threats work into my mystique. And the big cats. Audiences are all unconsciously waiting for that Roy Horn–Manticore moment, though they’d never admit it. Ask NASCAR drivers. But look at me. All this disguise paraphernalia weighs me down. My act needed a certain lightness of being. Shangri-La and Hyacinth provide that.”

Temple was surprised to hear CC use a literary phrase, but she nodded. “Yin and yang. Always appealing, always commercial.”

“And this blend of fine art and illusion is another yin-yang combo. Very potent. Very exploitable.”

“Very volatile maybe.”

“For that dangling dead man, yeah. I earn millions per year, Miss Barr. I pay my crew a rock star’s ransom. The hotel has millions sunk into my act. But there’s a person in here behind all this theatrical bluster. I don’t want anyone else to die on my set. Ever.”

“You think the death of your TitaniCon crewman and this unidentified stranger are connected.” Temple did not put a question into her voice.

“I do.”

“Part of the magicians’ vendetta against you?”

“Maybe. But I suspect it’s even more than that.”

“Why?”

“Instinct? In this getup, that’s what I rely on, more than my senses.”

“It must be hell, being a literal prisoner of your success.”

The huge head was eerily still for several long moments.

“I didn’t understand,” the mask said in its altered voice, “when I got into this thing.” CC’s gauntleted hands struck his Batman-molded chest. “It seemed like a straight drive to success after years of fringe action. So what? James Earl Jones’s voice got fab reviews for Star Wars . Let me tell you, Darth Vader is not a cushy part.”

“Surely at home you can ditch the equipment.”

“And wouldn’t everybody think that way, and go after me there? Tabloid photographers. Blackmailers. Hired killers.”

“Maybe. You really think that if they solve the murder of this poor guy they might close that TitaniCon case?”

“Probably. But I’m not sure ‘they’ will have anything to do with it.”

“Who, then?”

CC couldn’t smile, grin, grimace, or change his expression a scintilla in the lordly leonine mask with its tiger stripes. Temple had heard of lion-tiger crosses: tigons and ligers. The Cloaked Conjuror was his own rare breed.

His leather-gloved forefinger tapped her on the breastbone, his intended gentle tap nearly pushing her over.

“Why not you? You’re enterprising, small, mobile, curious, just the kind of cat who could sniff out this murderer.”

His suggestion was interesting but not alarming. Enterprising, small, mobile, curious. He could have been describing Temple’s sometime secret shadow on the scene of a crime, Midnight Louie.

Still, she was highly flattered to hear this huge, menacing man express such confidence in little her. Max had, but he wasn’t around much anymore for ego boosting.

“Maybe I’ll do just that then,” she said, sounding impish but feeling dead serious.

It was her job as well as CC’s to run a steady ship on this show and she disliked lost lives as much as he did. Besides, Temple was more than ready to wade hip-deep into anything that might unmask Shangri-La and any ulterior motives that mysterious creature might have.

Dead Man Falling

It is always a pleasure to watch My Miss Temple talk her way into—or out of—any situation.

Unfortunately, talking is not an option for me.

So, I follow her as discreetly as I can, past growling guards who would be neutered overweight Dobermen in other lives. I cling to the walls and the concealing curtains of the costume racks, etcetera, until she vanishes into the Caped Conjuror’s dressing room.

I am perfectly content to trust her to handle a seven-foot-tall icon. She has managed Mr. Max Kinsella for these two years, and he is only six four, not to mention way more challenging than poor old CC in his dead Big Cat mask.

My role here is to investigate the hidden underbelly of the act.

Which underbellies may be decidedly feline. I am thinking of the evil Hyacinth, with whom I have crossed nail sheaths before, and the new kid on the block, this seemingly innocent “Squeaker.” Both, however, are Siamese, if you please (and if you remember the song from the classic Disney dog fest, The Lady and the Tramp .)

I would never call a lady a tramp, but then I am talking felines here, not dogs.

I know why my Miss Temple is so disturbed by the recently dead dude in the webbing above the exhibition site. There was a dead man falling at TitaniCon, where both she and I were active in allowing Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina to capture a murderer on site.

Both air-borne murders link to our mutual acquaintance, the Cloaked Conjuror. I have nothing against the dude. He is the usual Larger-Than-Life Las Vegas attraction. It started with Elvis, or maybe Frank. No, Elvis. That guy is so much more larger than life that many folks think he is still living.

Me, I would like to think that too. We have a passing acquaintance, Elvis and me, and he was always first and foremost the “Memphis Cat.” We share a certain misconception with the public. I had a dead twin myself, as a matter of fact. Not everybody knows that, thank you verra much. We back-alley cats do not have a high survival rate.

But Elvis has left the building and the New Millennium was not even here when he strode the old town. I will have to deal with the younger generation, which is alarmingly female. Not that I am alarmed by the female. Au contraire . Still, these New Age babes do make me rush to relevance. I remain convinced that they know more than they are telling me.

So. Where are they likely to be housed? I slink past CC’s dressing room, where My Miss Temple is handling things in her own inimitable way. I am looking for the ladies in the case.

My nose does its duty and soon it is snuffling under the door of another dressing room. Perfume, smerfume. Pheromones, share-mones . I can track my species anyplace on earth, and especially among a tsunami of humans, who generally stink, in my view, most often of preparations intended to make them not stink.

I must duck under a frill of peasant petticoats on a neighboring costume rack when an attendant busts open the door to the dressing room to deliver an anchovy pizza. But I slither in on his departing heels to find myself alone with the nuked fish, the sodium overload, and a distinct odor of feline femininity.

Which wench is it, though? Hyacinth and her curare toenails, or Squeaker and her strained high notes?

“Louie?”

Her voice was ever soft, sweet, and low . . . for a purebred Siamese. I ankle up to Squeaker and settle beside her to dispatch a selection of previously dispatched anchovies. I do love fast food.