Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“And you couldn’t argue, of course,” she told him, “when their target turned out to involve my job and my reputation. You’re clever, Max. Couldn’t you have talked them into ripping off some other hotel that hadn’t given me the best PR contract of my life?”

“I’m clever, but they made it clear that it was this or nothing. Of course, I didn’t know then that you’d been hired for this exhibition. When I found out, it was too late to pitch another treasure. It would have looked suspicious, and they already have their suspicions about me.”

“Just asking you to do this pretty much blew your cover. Who else besides you could have engineered that death-defying aerial ballet of thievery, rescue, and tragic death?”

“God!” He drank half the fruit juice glass in one gulp. “I could not hold on to that lightweight woman one more second. Her cat landing on my back, all four feet splayed out, and scratching me to ribbons was the last claw.”

“Everyone could see that you—Zorro, the masked man, the superhero—saved the Cloaked Conjuror and almost saved Shangri-La. And still snagged the scepter. Maybe saved it too. Frankly, I’m toying with spinning it for the press as a Robin Hood sort of feat. The earlier death proved someone was interested in robbing the exhibition and the booby-trapped platforms tonight show that some kind of plot was still live and lethal.”

“The masked man stole the scepter to save it?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re the clever one, Temple.” His expression, bleak until now, softened into a smile. It quickly vanished. “Watching those white robes flutter like a leaf to vanish into the matching marble floor below were the longest moments of my life. I wished—I really, really wished—that I was a real magician, that I could have waved a hand and kept that from happening.”

Temple kept silent. A death not prevented was a life lost forever, for no reason. She tried a different tack.

“Maybe she was always the target of the falling set pieces. Shangri-La did work the shady side. She must have at least been complicit in the kidnapping of me and Louie and the truckload of designer drugs we were spirited away in. Who knows who put her up to that and maybe wanted to punish her for failing?”

“She still didn’t deserve a fatal fall to a cold stone floor. She was no friend to either of us, but at least we know she wasn’t in on this caper or she’d have saved herself.”

“She was working with the Cloaked Conjuror. The Synth would have considered her a traitor.”

Max nodded and sipped again. “Maybe they meant to off all three of us in one blow. I’m still not sure that my ‘test’ wasn’t a way to get rid of me.”

“What’ll they do now?”

“What can they do? Welcome me into their ranks as promised. I did steal the scepter, whatever the cost. From their viewpoint, Shangri-La is no loss and rescuing the Cloaked Conjuror is no feather in my cap to them. . . . I’ll say I needed him out of my way to complete the job of stealing the scepter, so I was ‘forced’ to save him.”

Temple shivered a little at the idea of justifying saving someone. “If it was obvious to me that it was you up there, you know that Molina will be right on that and go after you for this.”

“She’d be going after me for something else anyway.”

“No. I negotiated a deal with her during that Teen Idol charade where I was locked up in a mansion with a TV crew and her daughter and twenty-eight rival unnatural blondes. If I watch-dogged her daughter Mariah, she promised she’d lay off you.” She squirmed, knowing that the deal was off because Molina now suspected Max of being her stalker, but she figured that Max had enough on his plate at the moment. He was surely wary and wily enough to elude the Blue Ice Queen.

Max’s own blue eyes paled in the lamplight as he studied her. “I didn’t hear much about that caper. Sorry I couldn’t be there.”

“It worked out. But Molina can’t ignore that there are very few people at large in Las Vegas who could stage that surprise guest appearance at a floating magic show. This is the second death at the White Russian exhibition. Major Las Vegas mojo will come down on the police to solve them both. You are the prime suspect.”

“Good. I’d hate to give up my crown as the town’s perennial Number One Suspect.”

Max leaned forward, took one of Temple’s hands. “Whatever the Synth is, they’re formidable. Forget you ever heard of them, Temple, as you ought to forget me. I’ve got to get out of sight again.”

“I won’t say anything about you. You know you can count on me. Ducking out of sight for a while is wise. But . . . for how long?”

“Maybe . . . forever.”

“Max! What are you saying—?”

“A woman is dead, Temple, one I never meant to hurt.”

“It was obvious to anyone who saw that you were trying to save her!”

“Or trying to kill her? Both actions resemble each other. Don’t they?”

“You threw a safety net around the Cloaked Conjuror and saved his life.”

“Or a snare that only by chance, or mischance, kept him from falling.”