“It was attempted homicide,” Max said, “and believe that I take that personally.”
Now, it was attempted interference with a major Vegas hotel’s prize attraction, and that would be taken personally by some very big powers, including law enforcement.
Max took a deep breath. He paused, having used his legs and feet—and toes—more than he had in months and feeling it. He’d commandeered some stage rigging to attach a rope to his waist, but doing a “Dracula climbing down the castle walls face first” act was no longer second nature.
Max would rather be compared to the master vampire than a human fly, but he had to roll with what meager audience he had these days.
“Thugs didn’t do this,” he said softly. His baritone voice carried well around water. “Muscle is required but doesn’t make up for dexterity and skill. Could you lower a trussed body over the prow?”
Rafi shuffled to the ship’s pointed front and leaned over the gilded gingerbread decoration applied to the exterior.
“Yeah, but it would hang straight down. Unless you got the guy rocking back and forth like a pendulum, it’d be hard to snug him up against the naked lady.”
“That’s what they did, then.” Max’s questing hand had found enough niches in the elaborate façade to work himself under the figurehead, face-to-face with … considerable frontage.
“Look,” Rafi said. His voice sounded way too close.
Max looked up to see Rafi perching on the mermaid’s head with its carved ripples of flowing hair. Rafi was dangling a prop trunk dripping faux jewels from the deck by a rope. It spun and swung, threatening to swing right into Max’s head.
“Three guys,” Rafi went on, whispering. “One on each side of the prow with ropes, one above to lower the corpse-to-be. Yeah? Right?”
Max grunted an affirmative. Working under a slanted surface, no matter how strong or fit you were, was the hardest position to maintain possible. He grabbed the swaying trunk by the rope around its middle and threaded another dangling piece of performance rigging through the gap his grip had made. The bulky object stopping swinging and started spinning left and right.
Assuming Effinger had still been alive at this point, the method of impending death was beginning to look like medieval torture. Who’d taken a low-level creep like Effinger’s life in such a ritual, wrenching way? Why?
“I’m hearing something.” Rafi’s voice was a warning rasp. “I’ve got to—”
Max heard scrapes on the deck boards above as Rafi’s words cut off.
Great. Here he was, dangling almost upside down, linked like a spider to a thread of web, a rope, trying to figure out what was happening far above his miniature world.
Only one thing to do: cut loose from the safe harbor that had been so deadly for Effinger and swing out like a footloose, freebooting pirate.
Max used his legs to rappel off the mermaid’s, hmm lips and hips, and around the ersatz ship’s side. Amazingly, the stunt worked.
No time to rest on his laurels, or legs. Rafi could be in trouble.
He scrambled hand-over-hand up the rope.
For a dead stage set, the Bull’s deck was suddenly swarming with unlicensed boarders. Max used the rigging rope he still clutched to barrel into the three figures surrounding Rafi, scattering them like bowling pins. Only now they were separated, so while Rafi pummeled one, the other two were coming at him.
His momentum swung him high out of reach. As he plunged into the inevitable low of his returning arc, he had no choice but to use his legs as battering rams, one to each oncoming chest.
Impact. Shock and awe and … pain. His whole frame shuddered. Max gritted his teeth. He’d urged Nadir into this and he’d get him out of it. No more bodies left behind.
He dragged a foot on the decking, a bit too late. He was headed into another wild, uncontrolled arc over the dark water.
Then he looked down. One of his attackers had hit the waterline with a splash and came surging up to the surface, almost walking on water. Maybe a great white shark had grabbed a bite from below.
The man’s scream turned into high-pitched stutters. Max watched his body stiffen and sink with an audible sizzle.
Max’s set his teeth and sucked breath between them in a matching hiss of air. What the hell is going on? He was out there on a rope, and now a prayer, swinging over open water. Water that had been electrified. His heartbeat drummed in his ear as he tried think over the thud.
Someone must have overridden the ground fault interrupter for the whole damn water attraction. Raw electrical current was flowing. The cove was a giant bathtub into which someone had thrown a hair dryer.
That had happened in dozens of low-end crime films. The unsuspecting victim lowers her/himself into the drawn bath and … the quick toss of a hair dryer or electric razor, into the water. Zapped.
Max’s madly pedaling legs swung him back over decking. The ship, built of wood as in days of old and molded plastic pieces as in the stage sets of today, couldn’t conduct electricity. Yo, ho, ho, and an oaken cask of rum. He dropped onto the deck, rolling to take the brunt of the landing, his legs scrambling for purchase on the rubberized no-slip surfaces installed for the dangerous stunts.
Rafi grabbed his arm and pulled him upright.
The last deserting “rat” was scrabbling over the ship’s side to the shore. Max could swear a small agile dark form was hot on his heels, but Midnight Louie was safely away in Chicago. Rafi grabbed his arm, distracting Max before he could be sure he’d seen anything odd.
They looked back toward the dark water on the same impulse. A sacklike form floated there. Max grabbed a prop belaying pin and threw it into the water. No reaction. It merely sank.
As he and Rafi followed the vanished thug into the tangled landscaping, alarmed voices and running footsteps were fast approaching the ship.
A high-powered flashlight beam swept Rafi. He beat Max to the draw with an expletive.
“I’m made,” he said. “The water’s dead now, but so is that guy. Get away!”
“No—”
“Go! I can explain myself being here better than I can me and you. If you ever needed a disappearing act more, it’s now.”
Max remained frozen and indecisive, out of flashlight range. The beam had steadied and fixed on Rafi. The moment felt like deserting Garry again.
“Get away!” Rafi’s low-toned snarl finally pushed Max to the bordering elephant ear plants. Their four-foot leaves could hide a Brink’s armored truck, or a rhinoceros. Pick your poison. Not ivy, he hoped. He ducked and dodged into the rubbery, flagellating dark, moving fast so no sign of shivering foliage would reveal his getaway path.
Max heard the shouts calming into talk, and then barked orders. He kept working around the hotel building’s thick greenery until he heard nothing but his own rustles and heartbeat. He emerged in the rear parking lot, looking for a low black roof amid the pumped-up SUVs and pickups.
The Volkswagen was near the second row of parking lights, halfway between two lurid pools of greenish illumination, just the way he liked his rides placed, on the down low.
Max got in, started the engine, and sat awhile before putting it in gear.
Someone had tried to kill him. Again.
This was getting monotonous.
Chapter 29
Bye-Bye Windy Kitty
At last.
We are back in the hot, dry, lizard-loving arms of McCarran Airport. No more O’Hare, or undignified inspections.
So there I am, no longer wearing leopard pattern, but wrapped up in a black-and-white and flamingo pink carrier customized by Miss Krys Zabinski for maximum embarrassment.