Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

The light, sound, and action here is so manic that a dude of my persuasion strolling into the open raises no more of an eyebrow than a chain-smoking, hooka-pipe-hooked caterpillar did in Alice in Wonderland.

Speaking of Alice, there are no little girls in ballet slippers and full skirts here. I am seeing lots of skin, much of ittanned (one way or another), tattooed, and pierced. The same goes for the dudes.

When they are not gyrating in the flashing neon strobes on the central floor, they are hunched around too-tiny tables importing illegal smokes, tokes, and cokes of the non-capitalized kind.

I cannot feel too superior. I do like a little nip now and then myself. It has even been known to turn me head over heels, quite literally. But this is a small vice I indulge in the privacy of my own home, provided for me quite legally by my thoughtful roommate, who herself does not indulge in anything illegal other than meddling in police matters. And maybe sporting incendiary hair, an invitation to arson of a temperamental sort.

Although I understand that my Miss Temple has been snooping around such debased environments as strip clubs lately, I am glad that she is not here to see this: Mr. Max slinking along the perimeter to disappear into a door as invisible and matte black as his own attire.

Mr. Max does slink almost as well as I do, for a two-leg. I know he is investigating the premises, but it still saddens me that he must hang out among such dissolute individuals.

I decide to go forth and do likewise, however, for I have this pet theory. Okay, it is very pet and very much theory. I believe that Hyacinth and her evil magician-mistress Shangri-La are links to the Synth.

They have been turning up at the fringes of several cases like a bad dream now for months. In fact, Hyacinth has been turning up in my personal bad dreams like a case of kitty acne. (You know, that nasty black rash that shows up under the chin. No problem in my case, as black is my business, my only business, but it provokes a major depression in my pale-coated kin, believe-you-me!) So I am determined to stick around this joint until I learn more than I should.

Granted, that is a dangerous position to be in, but if you are a solo operative, danger is often the only way to go. I may not get anywhere tonight, but at least I will see Mr. Max safely home after whatever he is up to is over.

My Miss Temple would appreciate my thoughtfulness, and I will know as much as Mr. Max does, which strikes me as a very good thing.

Chapter 21

… Magic Fingers

If the people in the room were surprised to see Max appear in their concealed doorway, he was pretty nonplused himself.

It was like looking into one of those small worlds in a glass globe that could make snowflakes fall when shaken, not stirred.

The room was paneled in cherry wood and glowed like fine claret. Flames flicked against a soot-black chimney. Max noticed that the disembodied fingers of fire fueled gas logs, but otherwise the effect was British Empire clubhouse, and quite inviting.

To add to the ambiance, the men gathered on an array of tufted leather couches and Empire satin-and-gilt chairs were all in their middle years and dressed in black tie.

Only two women were present. One woman was Hispanic, perhaps mid-thirties, sleeker than a polished ebony hair comb, matte black in her own way, with pale skin like a mask, raven eyebrows drawn in perfect arches, and a wide, crimson mouth. Her eyes were as dark as tar. She too wore black tie, with a man’s formal suit.

The other woman matched the age of the men present, her torso relaxed into middle-age spread, wearing a paisley turban and a black caftan. She reminded him a bit of Electra Lark, Temple’s much more colorful landlady at the Circle Ritz. But her hair was concealed by the turban, and it was difficult to assign her an exact age. A middling-preserved sixty, he would think.

“I see I’ve not dressed for the occasion,” Max said, taking the initiative. He stepped inside, bowed, and shrugged.

“You weren’t expected,” the Hispanic woman spoke in a husky tone that outrasped Temple’s slightly foggy voice.

“Nor were you,” he answered with another slight bow. Max immediately, from some impish impulse, decided to nickname her “Carmen.”

They regarded each other, the assembled magicians, for Max recognized faces that went with familiar posters. These were long-established magicians– One could say over the hill. Steady, reasonably well-known professionals who had not, and never would, front a major hotel act in Las Vegas.

The good old boys. The pre-pyrotechnic crowd. Performers who didn’t have a gimmick, as Gypsy Rose Lee and her stripping sisterhood had found essential. His kind of magician, really. His youthful idols.

They were the Synth.

Of course.

He had found them.

Or had they found him?

Old-fashioned though they were, it wouldn’t do to underestimate them.

“How did you get in?” a Colonel Mustard type asked from the fireplace.

“Who are you?” Carmen demanded, her strident voice overriding the duffer’s.

Max answered the old fellow first. “I blundered in. I’m a magician. I find a door with no visible hardware, I play with it, looking for the trick. Magic fingers.” Max liftedand waggled his own particular set of those useful appendages. “Every puzzling thing I see is an illusion I have to figure out. It’s my vocation. That’s all there is to it.” He turned to the Spanish rose with thorns. “I was known, at one time, as the Mystifying Max.”

Of course they all knew that. He was a renegade. A true solo artist. Everyone knew of him, and no one knew him. And he was one of them. A professional magician of the old school.

“You vanished,” Carmen observed with an Elvis-like S-curled lip.

“I gave up the art, for a while.” Max paused. “It’s changed. Now it’s more fashionable to mock magic than to practice it.”

That was the party line, of course. Yet he believed it enough to sound sincere. He had grown up in the old traditions. Even if he hadn’t been forced to flee after the murder at the Goliath over a year ago, he had already begun to wonder if he could move fast enough for the shell game that magic in the media age had become. Or if he even wanted to.

Heads were nodding around the room, grizzled, balding heads. One belonged to the man who had interviewed the Phantom Mage and said, Don’t call us; we’ll call you. Apparently Max had not lost his touch for changing his personality, his stance, his mentality with each new role he played. Max winced internally. Problem was, now in his own persona, he wasn’t playing the role as much as he should be. He hadn’t identified with this generation; he had revered it. Now, he wondered, had he joined it?

The older woman’s turbaned head also nodded, as much in sorrow as in agreement. “Magic isn’t what it used to be,” she added in the fruity, post-menopausal tones of an Ethel Mertz.

Max took a deep but shallow breath, so no one would notice. He would be accepted here. He realized that meant they thought he was passé, that they had no reason to think he might not be as disgruntled as they were.

An upsetting thought. Not that he had finessed them into accepting him under false colors, but that they knew his performing persona and found it quite logical that the Mystifying Max should be part of a retrograde magicians’ coven, driven by dissatisfaction and bile, angry at progress, set on preserving the past at any cost.

Could it be that truth was the best disguise?

“Come to the fire,” Colonel Mustard invited.

The invitation triggered a memory. Sparks, the man’s performing name had been. Cosimo Sparks.

“Have some brandy,” suggested the turbaned woman, lilting her thinning eyebrows and a snifter at the same time.