Below him the bad vibes ratcheted up to a piercing, wounded falsetto howl.
“The music of the night,” as the Master had said.
Max swung out and down, into the pulse of a strobe light above a floor of writhing forms.
They looked like imps in hell, but were mostly teenagers and wished-they-were-still teenagers.
Max landed as light as a thistle-down in a swath of magenta spotlight.
He released two dozen bat-shaped balloons that sped to the building’s peak, farting air unheard in the uproar. They seemed to vanish even as they fell like used condoms, unnoticed, to the floor below, to be trod underfoot.
The Prince of Darkness had arrived.
He was cheered by the drunken crowds for this tawdry, second-rate illusion, and then the dance went on. He unfastened his belt line and left it dangling invisibly for retrieval later.
By strobe light he moved from the floor to the entry area, and there he was, thank God, intercepted.
“Lounge act, or magician?” he was asked.
“A little of both. It’s a cross-media world.”
“Indeed,” said the black-tails-attired round little man who had accosted him. “I applaud your entrance, but we are a private club. Can you pass muster?”
“I don’t know the qualifications, but the place, like the music, hath its charms.” Max loathed the frenetic blend of hip hop and jazz. He favored Respighi, Rimsky-Korsakov, Vangelis, and the lugubrious poetic charms of Leonard Cohen.
“Hmmm. May I escort you to our clubrooms? We are always interested in new would-be members.”
Max recognized that the exact opposite was true, but he was here to overturn custom.
“Please do. I am not often a member of anything, but I do like your ambiance.”
“Ambiance is our specialty. This way.”
Max found the dance music muting as he followed the man up a spiral that reminded him of the interior of a giant conch shell. The spiraling upward path both confused and enthralled, like a fun house attraction.
The trick was the same as in a maze. The route bore only in one direction, no matter how many times it seemed to twist in another. This was a left-handed maze, perhaps in tribute to the left-handed art. Magic. And sometimes, the occult.
Max arrived at as commonplace a destination as any club might boast: a wood-paneled, four-square room at the heart of spiraling darkness.
One wall was solid glass, and it overlooked the madly lit dance floor below.
As he stepped nearer to analyze the view, he noticed other faintly lit windows onto the chaos positioned at irregular intervals in the upper darkness.
A soft whirr made him check the room behind him in the black mirror of the glass wall. A desk was rotating into view.
By the time he turned, it was in place and occupied.
A man in a business suit sat behind it in a silver mesh chair. Its spare, ultramodern shape and bristling levers reminded Max of an aluminum praying mantis. Or preying mantis? Ordinary man. Extraordinary chair. Max began to feel less melodramatic in his Phantom getup.
“New to Vegas?” the man asked.
Max nodded.
“New to magic?”
“Not quite.”
“Not new to the spotlight.”
“I did circus work for a while.”
“Trapeze?”
“Some.”
“High-wire act?”
“Always.”
“This is a private club.”
Max turned his head over his shoulder to regard the masses gyrating to the music unheard up here.
“That’s the paying public,” the man said. “They take us for a New Age disco. We are much more.”
“I’d heard.”
“Are you much more than you appear to be?”
“I hope so.”
The man leaned back in his airy chair, steepling manicured fingers, the epitome of a businessman: overstuffed, well-suited, conservatively groomed, losing a little hair. Ultimately nondescript.
Such men never projected personalities strong enough to seem capable of running anything. Such men were always dangerous to underestimate.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“You mean the Phantom Mage doesn’t do it for you?”
“Not bad. I like the Mage part. It’s different. Implies real magic. You know anything about real magic?”
“I take my magic seriously, if that’s what you mean. I’ve worked hard to make my move into the profession. I have some illusions that no one else does. I was thinking, if there’s a magician’s club starting up in Vegas, like the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, I’d like to be in on the ground floor.”
At this the businessman laughed. “You can’t. Our magician’s club is as old as time, or at least as the Dark Ages.”
Max tried not to over-or underreact. This is what he had been hunting. He must have managed to remain encouragingly still, neither overwhelmed or underwhelmed, because the man went on speaking.
“Alchemy, religion, philosophy, superstition. All played their parts in developing magic over the centuries until it reached our rational age.”
“Not so rational that there still isn’t room for wonder.”
“True. And I wonder who you are and why you’re here. You haven’t given me a street name.”
“I don’t like mine. Why else would I reinvent myself?” No answer. “It’s John. John Dee. As in Sandra, if you remember back that far.”
“Ever been in the military?”
“No.”
“Done time?”
Max paused for effect, and to hint at a slightly shady past. “No.”
“You must have studied magic in its older forms to have taken the nom de illusion of ‘Dee.’ “
Max could have both kicked and kissed himself.
The bland inquisitor was right; Max’s subconscious had dredged up the name of the most notorious alchemist of the Middle Ages and claimed it for his own: Dr. John Dee.
Actually, if he examined his unconscious, when he had said “John D.” He’d been thinking of Rockefeller. Or MacDonald. The titan or the ‘tec writer.
“I am intrigued,” Max admitted, “by magic’s ancient theosophical roots.”
“They were also political,” the man corrected, “and we modern-day offspring do not forget that.”
“I am, at heart,” Max said with perfect truth, “a very political animal.”
“Then we may get along well together. In the meantime, allow us to consider your membership.”
John Dee, aka the Phantom Mage, bowed profoundly in agreement.
The Mystifying Max recognized a kiss-off when he heard or saw one. They would try to investigate “his” background. Good luck.
He left the chamber, already planning further investigations right here at Neon Nightmare, more convinced than ever that something sinister was going on.
Chapter 15
… Play “Misty”for Me
Even after three Bloody Marys, Leticia Brown, aka Ambrosia, Sibyl of on-air Sympathy, was as smooth and cool as chocolate-mint ice cream.
Matt watched her field callins and select the just-right song to soothe the savage breast. Her motions on the console were as liquid as her voice. It was a ballet in the dark, lit only by the various red, blue, and green lights sparkling like Technicolor stars in the studio’s half-light.
Matt sat in with her, knowing to keep quiet. Their reflections in the big glass window were ghostly. Nightly voices in the dark were half ghosts to begin with, phantoms of the air waves. The host’s voice was like a baton, urging on the shy triangle section, coaxing the violins to soar, toning the brasses down.
The words, the moves, the songs she chose to play for each caller were a ritual that calmed Matt, both unexpected and comfortingly predictable.
In the secular world, it was a bit like saying the mass.
Ritual mystery and revelation at the same paradoxical moment.