Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Max sat on a sleek aluminum-and-leather stool. “I shouldn’t have.”

“But you did even though you shouldn’t have. What kind of siren is this Temple Barr, anyway?”

That question made Max smile. “Remember Charlie Brown’s ‘little redheaded girl?’ She’s like that, only all grown up, with sense and spirit.”

“Hmmm. And she knows about your past?”

“Pretty much.”

“Never all, though. We can never tell all.”

“No.” Max pulled an apple, a red Roman Beauty, from the wire fruit bowl playing centerpiece on the cold stainless-steel countertop. He balanced it on his fingertips for a moment, as if contemplating making it vanish. Instead, he bit into it.

The crisp sound echoed in the hard-surfaced kitchen.

Garry turned to the huge industrial stove to pour batter into a copper-bottomed pan sizzling with melted butter.

“I’m in training again:’ Max complained mildly. “I should be on protein and complex carbohydrates.”

“Even the Olympic athlete deserves dessert once in a while. It is so good to be back in this kitchen.”

“It’s good to have you back. Your supposed ‘death’ fooled me completely. I thought your new career of exposing fraudulent mediums had finally pushed you over to the Other Side.”

“No, no, no, Max. I genuinely hate phony mediums, of course.”

“It was nice to know that you’d retired to such a benign pursuit.”

“So that you could too, with your little redheaded girl?”

“That was the general idea. Once, a year or so ago, before the past caught up with me.”

“I saw the notices of your ‘abrupt departure’ from Vegas. What happened?”

Max took another bite of the apple and chewed over his thoughts before speaking again.

“I was finishing up a run at the Goliath. I never told anybody this, but the Crystal Phoenix was offering me an even bigger bundle and a multiyear contract to develop a new act for them, a boutique magic show, small and stunning, a one-man Cirque du Soleil. Anything I wanted to work up.” Max found a rueful smile on his face. “I never told Temple. She’s got an in at the Phoenix.

We almost would have been working together.”

“And-? Because none of this happened, did it?”

“The past showed up. Two IRA hit men.”

“Took ‘em long enough to finally catch you. What? Sixteen years?”

Max picked another apple from the basket. And one more. He began juggling all three.

“It turned out they wanted money first, then murder.”

The aromas of butter and brandy on the crepes almost made Max miss an apple. But he didn’t.

“I used my magical arts, under duress, to get them into the crawl space under the Eye in the Sky setups over the Goliath

casino floor.”

“And then?”

“Why do you think there’s an ‘and then’?”

“Max, my boy, you are never less than four-dimensional.”

“I led them over a highdollar craps table where they could observe the money-changing-out routine. Only it’s always easier

to enter air-conditioning ducts than to get out again, unless you’re double-jointed. I left. They didn’t. But that turned out not to be such a clever act, after all.”

Garry turned from the stove to slip two pairs of fruit-filled crepes onto two crystal dessert plates. “Yes?”

“They tried to shoot me.”

“In an air-conditioning duct? What idiots.”

Max caught one spinning apple and held it between his thumb and little finger while keeping the other two apples bouncing between his hands and the ceiling.

“One shot the other, which should have gotten both of them off my back, except the deadweight of the victim fell through the flimsy ceiling panels right smack onto the middle of the hot craps table.” He caught the second apple, and held it.

“Not discreet.”

“Not discreet. I got out of there, but I couldn’t go home again.”

The last apple came to rest in the palm of his free hand. Max heard his own voice, hard and ironic. He’d been an exile for seventeen years, and still found new places, and people, to be exiled from.“So you left the little redheaded girl and fled …

where?”

“Canada.”

“Refuge for many a conscientious objector.”

“The only thing I was objecting to was false imprisonment. I worked as an itinerant corporate magician/comic and didn’t dare contact Temple for almost a year.”

“So you lost her?”

“No.”

“No? She waited for you, despite hearing nary a word?”

“Redheads are stubborn. And Temple is tougher than she looks.” Max took the extended plate artfully drizzled with raspberry sauce and melted dark chocolate. “Let’s just say she took exception to a certain relentless homicide lieutenant who thought I’d done the dirty deed and that Temple had to know why and where I’d gone to. Ah. You haven’t lost your gourmet skills.”

“Very satisfying work concocting a difficult dish. I could be content to remain … er, dead, and allowed to indulge my palate, here in this house that my fellow gourmand Orson Welles once owned. I feel quite willing to let my legend rest in peace.” “I can’t understand how you managed to quit the counterterrorist game, Garry. God knows I’d do it if I could.”

“Being presumed dead helps, Max. But I haven’t quit. Not at all.”

Max stopped enjoying the seduction of tender, sweet, warm crepes on the tongue.

“Damn it, Garry. You had retired. That’s why you gave me the use of this house that time forgot, and luckily everybody else. You were off to see the wizard, unmasldng phony mediums.”

“Tut. Just a cover, my boy. I’m glad even you accepted it. I’ve never retired.”

“But your book.” Max was standing now, angry as much as surprised. “Your book on fraudulent mediums. I was finishing it in your honor. In memoriam.”

“Such a nice thought, my boy. I’m quite touched.”

“I’ve been banging away at that computer keyboard like a cow in boxing gloves. I’m no typist, no writer. It’s the toughest

thing I’ve ever tackled.”

Garry chuckled through the forkful of crepe he’d hoisted into his mouth like a prize. “Very flattering, Max. In every way. If

we both survive the next, critical few months, I’ll certainly share a byline with you on it.”

“I don’t want a byline, I want a life!”

“I’m afraid, my lad, that the only way you’ll get it is by courting Lady Death one more time.”

Max frowned as he nodded in concession. It was Temple he should be courting now, before it was too late. From what Gandolph said, though, this one last assignment would make him a free man, And, ultimately, that would make Temple a happy woman.

Chapter 14

Clean Sweep

Midnight Louise and I pussyfoot through the empty lot that is dead center across from Maylords.

“Coyote,” she declares after a long sniff of the ground. “So what else is new? That Wild Bunch runs this town after dark.” “Might be a witness.”

“You that eager to see a coyote after one almost made you the main course?”

“A witness is a witness,” she says. “Besides, that other one would never have come within shiv range had I not been thrown from the motorcycle saddlebag and knocked out.”

“Well, you were, and it is lucky that I was around to face off Fangpuss.”

“Good job, Popster! His two front teeth must have been older than your latest whisker growth, though.”

“That was a primo coyote and you would have been Instant Appetizer, had I not been there. Next time you may not be so quick to

secretly tail a bad actor. That motorcycle joyride into the desert dark could have fricasseed your fantail. If I had not been tailing your tail they would not have been able to peel you off the asphalt in the morning.”