He stood up. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself about. And that’s what living is all about.
Chapter 16
… Men in Black Too
Max ducked into a narrow hall, and then found a service closet. The place was packed with them. No major soundand-light show operated in an electrical vacuum.
He peeled off the Phantom Mage’s mask and cloak, stripping to his naked face and black-clad form. Then he bundled the items into a ball and left them on the floor behind a pink neon palm tree.
He hoped to retrieve the Phantom Mage before he left. For now he planned to merge with the civilians packing the dance floor and in that innocent guise do some serious snooping.
If he was caught … hey, just a juiced night-dubber wandering into forbidden territory.
There had to be more to the building than the central neon core and the balcony offices.
At the moment, the center was incredibly loud, the crowd action more like a rave than an ordinary dance club. A deep bass beat vibrated every part of the building. Even the neon lights seemed to spit and hiss and tremble.
Then a herd of gigantic horses came galloping down from the pyramid’s peak. Max studied the illusion. Giant TV screens ringed the apex, each broadcasting the image of the single external neon horse to make a herd. A vivid rainbow of colors cascaded in its flying mane and made its eyes into manic flares.
The “nightmare” of the place’s title had come to life. Max had never seen neon so liquid, so mixed, so electric.
The crowd dancing below was the same, except it was also mostly under thirty. His partner of the moment was a sleek, model-tall black woman wearing tattoos and a filmy designer sari. They gyrated apart, nobody seeming to dance with anybody in particular, which suited his purpose. With every step he took, Max was moving to a wall opposite the entrance, his eyes searching through the strobe-light effect.
The control booth was probably on high, like the casinos’ Eye in the Sky snooping parlors, but there had to be ground access to a physical plant, to whatever powered the hyped-up soundand-light show.
The lower walls were covered in classic neon advertising designs. Pink flamingos. Signs announcing BAR. EATS. He stopped cold to recognize the Blue Dahlia’s fabled signage, then realized that it was an outmoded design. All these pieces were vintage neon, throwaways redeemed. Neon had been what made Las Vegas hot for a long time. Now it was not. Perhaps Neon Nightmare would make it cool again. Like going through a light cycle instead of a life cycle.
The major neon companies were still in business, but now they were fabricating computerized digital light shows, like the canopy over Freemont Street downtown. The new culture-driven megahotels spurned the obvious glitz of million-dollar neon light paintings for more subtle, if no less expensive lighting effects.
Max would guess that some of the neon classics before him had been plucked from storage in the Boneyard, a lot behind YESCO, Young Electric Sign Company, one of Las Vegas neon’s founding firms. Max had visited it when scouting props for his magic act. He had found Wonderland in a wasteland, marked by such gigantic landmark icons as Aladdin’s gilt lamp from the original Aladdin hotel and the gigantic Sliver Slipper. Both were studded with the dotted Swiss of lightless neon bulbs, piled together among other defunct signs like old drunks abandoned to the sun and the sand. Civic hopes foresaw a neon museum in the future. In the meantime some of the most unique signs had been dismantled and lost.
Were the Synth magicians feeling as outmoded as neon signs in the new Las Vegas? Was the Synth not some mystical ancient conspiracy but a response to the contemporary downsizing affecting every segment and part of the country?
Max noticed more men not dancing in the room, all as quietly attired as he. House security. They seemed to be looking for something. .. .
About time he quit mooning over old-time neon and found what he was looking for.
Then he spotted it. As always, the obvious was the best disguise. The three rectangular sides of a hot-pink neon doorway framed an actual door painted the same matte black as the walls.
Max leaned back against the space, his hands behind him feeling delicately for an opening mechanism. At last he found it, the kind of magnetic latch that responded to a sharp push by bouncing the door outward.
Clever. One would never suspect a full-size door operating on a principal designed for cheesy audio-video cab-inets.
Max stepped past the neon outline to vanish into a black blob of unadorned wall. He checked out the men in black opposite. They were staring at his former dancing partner, who was doing a vintage Watusi in the center of the floor, all by herself.
All by himself, Max turned sideways and slipped through the ajar door, pushing it only as far open as his slim frame required.
He stepped into utter darkness.
And then he heard a sharp metallic click.
Chapter 17
… Unfixed Females
What a pretentious joint!
I take one gander at the wild, neon-eyed mare galloping over the top of this pyramid-shaped building and then I ogle the black velvet rope keeping the wretched refuse of the Las Vegas Strip from pouring into the place.
Among the guards up front I recognize a figure whose very name is a curse word among my humans, Mr. Rafi Nadir, whom it was my not-so-great pleasure to spy (while he did not see me) at Rancho Exotica a couple of harrowing cases back. Still, he has done my Miss Temple a semi-decent turn a couple of times now and I cannot bring myself to indulge in my most utter loathing.
Hmmm, I wonder in my wicked way … would it not be interesting if his ex-squeeze, the torch singer Carmen, aka Homicide Lieutenant Molina, were to get a yodeling gig at this place. Sigh. (I have to think my sighs.) No such luck. She likes her anonymous moonlight’ g stints at the Blue Dahlia too much to go slumming at the latest hot spot.
Of course no velvet rope intended to keep out the hoi polloi can bar Midnight Louie from going where and when he pleases. I am the koi polloi and invisible until I strike!
So I stroll among the mingled Manolo Blaniks and Nikes entreating entry with low success. I am the same color as most of their pant legs or boots or platform shoes or what have you.
I am soundless midnight fog drifting past their ankles and calves. I manage to almost sideswipe Nadir himself, who is clad in black denim, so tacky for the guardian of a supposedly upscale place .. .
In a minute I exchange the spotlighted, overheated, pushing, whining hubbub of the Uninvited for the morgue-icy, over air-conditioned, strobe-lighted cacophony of the Insiders.
In here it sounds like a herd of wild horses amplified on rock-concert speakers, and indeed a neon wave of such creatures washes continually over the walls. There is no ceiling as such, as the interior narrows to a black vanishing point.
Actually, I am right at home in the pyramid structure. My ancestors were mummified and enshrined in just such triangle-shaped tombs a couple millennia back, and there is some ancient stirring in my blood at the modern, noisome desecration of my ancestral traditions, not to mention my royal roots.
Call this place Luxor West, or maybe Memphis West, as Elvis himselvis would probably groove on it. Meanwhile, I have all I can do to keep my tootsies and penultimate member from being stomped upon by dancing humans. I cannot understand why they consider the equivalent of smashing a cockroach an exercise, entertainment, and art form. And they would not even eat them afterward! Another signpost of the wasteful Ugly American.
However, native customs are not my reason for reconnoitering this venue. Nor am I interested in the menu, at the bar or underfoot. I am interested in what Mr. Max is: any signs of the Synth.
I have heard enough about this mysterious organization to form some notion of its composition. If we are talking hidden, sinister magicians, as opposed to home-grown, known-quantity ones like the Mystifying Max, I can think of no better candidate than the Asian Athena, Shangri-La, who entered our communal consciousness by shanghai-ing Miss Temple and myself, and most successfully making off with Miss Temple’s precious opal ring from Mister Max. I always knew that opals were unlucky, but would anybody listen to me? No.