Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (4 page)

And he'd escaped the cuffs later in her car, anyway, when events announced over the police radio made his arrest clearly unnecessary. Thanks to his slippery magician tricks, he'd left her cuffed to her own steering wheel.
Molina's mind winced away from recalling her struggle
to reach the handcuff key he had left by the passenger
door. Good thing she had long arms. She was still hoping the long arm of the law would reel in Kinsella one day. Hers, God willing.

But she enjoyed impudence if it was genial, like
Larry's. He was refreshingly upfront, unlike most of the people—men—she'd dealt with lately. So far.

Chapter 3

Swinging
for It

Max stared down through the glass window into the lightning lit pit eighty feet below. It resembled a medieval vision of hell but it was just the mosh-pit madness at the nightclub.

In the name of a good night's work, Max leaped down into that mélange of writhing bodies and flashing lights and pounding music almost every day now.

When you're a double agent with two physical per
sonas, you're in constant danger of meeting yourself
coming and going. Rather like having two portrayers of James Bond in the same movie.

As the cloaked and masked Phantom Mage, Max
walked on air and juggled fireworks at the dark apex of the nightclub called Neon Nightmare.

As himself—the Mystifying Max, stage magician on
hiatus—he'd crashed the hidden offices, spy galleries,
and rooms beyond the noise and the neon of the club's
 
public spaces. Private rooms were strung along hidden tunnels through the pyramid-shaped building for the use of Neon Nightmare's secret owners, a consortium of magicians.

Max as himself—bare-faced, clad in matte black civvies—was due to make another in-person appearance before the claque, the cabal, the clique of disgruntled old-school magicians called the Synth.

From the outside, Neon Nightmare was a dark moun
tain of architectural pyramid topped by the pyrotechni
cal display of a neon horse at the apex. Inside, it was designed like its ancient Egyptian role models. Once you were past the central open core where the bar and dance
floor dominated, hidden paths led to unexpected cham
bers. If dead pharaohs didn't await, career-dead magi
cians did, brooding over the wrongs of a world that now
favored the naked revelation of magical illusions over
the ancient tradition that cloaked stage magic in the
mystic.

Max found his way to the center of the Synth's secret world, an eternally stuffy Colonial club room, where the stout and storied sat and smoked and sipped and relived old triumphs.

He pushed the pressure point that turned black, unre
lieved wall into a featureless door, then moved into a
room that glowed the deep claret of a full wineglass. Crimson carpet, black leather, and ruby-stemmed glassware . . . it was like an Edward Gorey illustration, elegantly Edwardian and etched in black, white, and gray, except for the telling blood-red accents.

“Max! We were just talking about you.”

That would do for the opening salvo in a war of words.
Having been "just talked about" made one the outsider in
an instant. The inconstant lover. The philandering hus
band. The betrayer.

“
Where have you been?" the dramatic-looking woman
he had nicknamed Carmen demanded before he could answer.

“Certainly not onstage," said the mentalist named Cza
rina Catharina. She wore the caftan and turban that hid an
aging woman's thinning hair and thickening waist. "No
professional demands keeping you away. No excuses,"
she added coyly.

He shrugged and slipped into an oxblood-red leather chair, happy to fold his telltale six-foot-four height into lounging level. "I have matters to attend to anyway," he said.

“Matters?" Carmen's question was sharp.

“Financial."

“Ah." The portly old gentleman by the bar cart who'd performed as Cosimo Sparks smiled tightly. "He now performs illusions with numbers, in private."

“You must have made an obscene amount of money," Carmen speculated, her husky voice softening with lust, whether for love or money it was hard to tell, but Max's dough would be on the filthy lucre.

“Money isn't everything. And the stock market." Max sighed, spreading his fingers so eloquently that the assembled magicians stared at them as if seeing money melting away.

It had melted away too when he'd poured it into global counterterrorism actions after 9/11. Not into any specific government's efforts, but into the same shadowy, idealis
tic nonpartisan group that he and his mentor Gandolph
had supported for years.

“You know what we are," Sparks said.

“I think I do. Does anyone ever fully know another?”

“Exactly. But we need to really know you."

“Aren't I enough of an open book for my fellow, and sister, magicians? You all know that I got caught in 'a situation' the night my performing contract closed at the Goliath. I was unfortunately seen too close to a couple of thugs attempting to rob the casino, who inexplicably shot each other. It was flee or face charges. And so my career came to a dramatic end.”

The bitter twist to his mouth on the last sentence was particularly effective, and truly felt. Honesty was always the best disguise among enemies.

“Your career was ruined," Czarina agreed. "But new ones beckon."

“Oh?"

“Join us."

“I thought I had.”

Sparks
answered for Czarina this time. "You've been tolerated, man, but remain unproven."

“We require a trifling . . . initiation ritual," the older woman put in.

“I found you in this rats' maze, didn't I?”

Sparks
shook his head. Not enough. "We require more than fine discernment. We require risk."

“You're talking to me about risk?"

“
Granted. But perhaps you've grown complacent be
hind your anonymity."

“Perhaps. I wouldn't bet on it."

“We're not. We're betting on you living up to, and sur
passing, our highest expectations. Once you complete
your assignment.”

Max chuckled. It wasn't a reassuring sound. "I haven't had an 'assignment' since high school."

“
We are Ph.D. level," Carmen noted languidly from
her corner. Her working name was Serendipity and he supposed he'd better get used to it. She went by Serena among friends. "We require absolute loyalty, dazzling ability, and, oddly enough for magicians, transcendent honesty. To the Synth, anyway."

“What do you want?"

“The Czar Alexander Scepter." The slightly British accent of Cosimo Sparks slapped the words onto the table like a gauntlet.

Max snorted, delicately. "The centerpiece of the forthcoming White Russian exhibit at the New Millennium? You're joking."

“
No," Czarina said. "We want you to get it for us.”

“I'm not a thief."

“
But you could be, an exquisite one," she coaxed him.
"We don't care about the value of the piece. We care
about the value of the act of taking it. You can return it, if
you like."

“Or keep it."

“
Or sell it and share the wealth with us, which would
be a nice gesture.”

Max fanned his fingers to produce a feathered bird of paradise, a faux one. No awkward droppings. "Magicians appreciate the nice gesture." He presented the bird to the Czarina.

“Then you'll do it?" she asked.

“
I'll do it if I study the situation and decide it's do
able."

“We should warn you:' Sparks said in his fuddy-duddy way. "None of us has come up with a foolproof method.”

“I'm your court of last resort?"

“You're our pledge, Mr. Kinsella. If you can't cut our initiation rite, you'll have to take our hazing.”

The threat was unmistakable.

“
I don't take anything," he warned back, "except what
I want to. So I'll leave now and examine the situation at the New Millennium that has stymied you all." He stood to go.

“Just a minute.”

He paused, looking impatient. "Do you want this trinket, or not?"

“We want your undivided attention."

“Have you seen the new act here at Neon Nightmare?" Serena, lying back on the room's sole sofa in a gown out
of a Sarah Bernhardt portrait, practically purred the
question.

“Besides yours?" Max asked back, sardonically.

“Tut-tut." Czarina intervened. "No need to get testy.
You're an untried factor. We must be sure you're reli
able."

“
So." Sparks was looking excited and a bit nasty.
"Have you seen the Phantom Mage perform here?"

“
No, and with that impossibly hokey name, I don't
want to. I'll be going."

“
I hope not." Serena uncoiled herself to rise and take
his arm, a seductive gesture that was also custodial.
"Why in such a rush to leave us?" she purred. And her voice did indeed rumble deep in her . . . ah, chest.

“
You want me to steal the most prized object in Las Ve
gas
or not?"

“Stay just a while," she coaxed. "You might find this new fellow interesting."

“I find little that is common interesting. I must be off.”

“No." The tone and the glance was commanding.

Max removed Serena's arm from its entwined position on his.

“Yes."

“It's imperative you stay." Sparks stood as well.

“Come to the window," Serena cajoled, entwining him again, like a velvet boa constrictor. Max was very glad he'd decided to drop the nickname Carmen for her. She
was acting completely out of character for the Carmen
he knew.

He made her work to draw him toward the tinted rectangle on one-way glass that framed the dark upper pyramid of Neon Nightmare.

“I really have better things to do. . ." But he let the sentence trail off.

Everyone was watching him, like rats at a cheese tray.

He stared out over the empty darkness, glancing at his watch without seeming to. The Phantom Mage was scheduled to start a set just about now. . . .

Everyone behind him had tensed, as had Serena, so
close and yet so far.

Max kept his own tension bottled, his limbs as loose as
linguini. He could see Serena frown as she detected this.

Don't worry, lady,
he thought,
I can produce the requisite tension when needed. . . .
Which was not now, when everyone expected one and only one outcome for this
charade: Max would fail because the Phantom Mage
would fail to appear.

He knew they suspected that Max and the Phantom might be one and the same person. The Phantom's per
forming gear, mask, and cloak certainly made his identity
doubtful.

Beyond the glass, music was ratcheting up to introduce
the night's featured act: the Phantom Mage, aka Max.

Inside the glass, someone smiled pleasantly at the Czarina.

Max.

Breaths were held. Not his.

The space beyond the window remained mere space.

Then! A caped form swooped past the window, caroming off the dark sides of the narrowing apex of the pyramid-shaped building, strewing light wands and iridescent glitter.

He came plunging directly toward the one-way glass window. He saw it as only another of the Lucite mirrors
positioned to reflect the neon fireworks. He touched toe
to the surface and rappelled off like a mountaineer in Batman guise.