So. Did the Synth have a Cloaked Conjuror–hunting season? They might well, Max believed. He’d found a possible target. Now he had to find the potential perpetrators and figure out what they planned and where and when.
“Speaking of ‘messages,’” Max said, “that’s why I’m here. You could be closer to ending the way that you fear. Someone cut the Phantom Mage’s cord at Neon Nightmare.”
“That’s why the act went dark a couple months ago!” CC couldn’t convey expressions, but Max could almost see a lightbulb winking on above his heavy-maned head. “And why you made the remark about your memory.”
“Right. I could have been killed, and I’m putting the why and who and how together. My mask certainly didn’t keep me safe. What about your mask, any known imitations out there?”
“I don’t just have one mask, I have three. One to wear, one in the shop, one at the cleaners. They’ve been marketed as Halloween masks, but I don’t really have the kiddie audience.”
“The full head?”
“No, just my adorable kisser.”
“I’m thinking of full head masks, with voice-altering capabilities. That Darth Vader vibe.”
CC leaned back, folding his arms over his impressive chest. Here, without his boot platforms and gauntlets, the character’s roots in the entertainment wrestling game were more evident. “Nothing commercial. Some of my fans buy pricey kids’ helmets like that, supposed to be Darth Vader or Septimus Prime from the Transformers franchise.”
“Those would be shiny plastic, mechanical-looking masks, not animalistic strips in flocked stretch velvet dotted with tiny Austrian crystals like yours.”
“No. The Vegas Strip glitz is subtle and costly. But my fans are cagy and devoted. Craft store adhesive felt and dollar-store glitter work wonders when my fans get a hold of them for a redo. But most of those costly toy helmets have voice mechanisms that are more an echo chamber effect than a real alteration. And you’d be surprised how many adults fit into them and get a kick out of playing a kick-ass character.”
Flashback.
Swooping down fifty feet to hover above an awestruck crowd, cape billowing, face masked, while even the air vibrates with the heavy bass beat rocking the triangular-shaped inner space of Neon Nightmare, and neon lights of the zodiac wash every person there with pulsing colors.
“You’re right. I enjoyed doing the Zorro bit at Neon Nightmare.” Max smiled as he recalled the kick. “But it made me an easy target, as you are every night.”
“I know it. And you just proved that again tonight. Is there a reason you’re trying to make me insecure?”
“I’m trying to make you safer.”
“Why?”
“I know what it’s like. I made myself a target of professional killers at seventeen.”
The Cloaked Conjuror whistled in surprise, a common reaction. The mask made the sound into an eerie high-pitched wheeze. “You were a pro at magic that early?”
“Magicians aren’t usually a target. No, it was because of my naïve ideals.”
“You at least had some. I always just wanted to be a magician, but I wasn’t very good at it.”
“So you became good at debunking it.” Max smiled. He wondered how often the Cloaked Conjuror saw that ordinary expression off a stage. Perhaps he had call girls in. “Proves the axiom. ‘Those who can do; those who can’t … criticize.”
“I thought the old saw went, ‘Those who can’t … teach.’”
“Not in this Internet age.”
“Yeah, the threats on my life are up four hundred percent with my name out there for ‘instant feedback’ on hundreds of sites.”
This time Max whistled, and it worked so well, the dressing room door banged open. Two musclemen bearing major small arms filled the doorway and scanned the room, weapons at the ready.
From the glowers they gave Max, his magical aerial entrance next to their boss rankled mightily. It must rankle even more that Max had turned out to be a bosom buddy, so to speak.
“That’s okay,” CC’s weirdly emotionless voice said. “Old friend. Get a couple drinks in here.”
CC rested his booted feet on an unoccupied chair drawn up to the dressing table. For him, this must be an unexpected but pleasant social occasion.
“Thanks for shaking up my guards, Kinsella. I owe you. In fact, I should put you on my payroll to test my security regularly.”
“Don’t need the money, but, sure, I can do that anytime you want a drinking partner.” Max hoped CC’s invisible grin match his own. Meanwhile, he was getting an outside-in look on his own life.
They remained silent until a New Millennium sexy robot girl waitress in silver body paint sashayed in with a tray, a bottle, and two crystal low-ball glasses. She deposited the burden on the dressing table as CC pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his palm and let it waft down to the empty tray.
“Thank you, Tiger,” she said with a very nonrobotic wiggle and a smile, and bustled out again.
“Irish whiskey all right?” CC asked, opening the bottle and pouring.
“Slainte,” Max said, painfully aware of his last pub visits on Irish soil, of solid but not spectacular ale, of pursuit and death. “To your health.”
With CC, that was always a sincere toast.
CC picked up a flexible aluminum straw and inserted it in the drink before he sipped whiskey through the mask’s mouth slit.
“Is it worth it?” Max asked.
“I don’t know. I thought so when I was younger. I can retire. And may soon, in a flash of fire.”
“Not literally, I hope.”
“Not at the hands of enemies, I hope. No, I want to go the way you exited the Goliath Hotel gig. Finish the contract one night and be gone the next. People always wondering … where I went … who I was … how I’m spending all my money.”
“And then you’ll return as your own self to Vegas and play the high roller at all the casinos, still gaming the odds.”
CC laughed, the only sound the mask made that seemed happy, as if it came from a mechanical Santa.
Flashback.
Max crawling through the Goliath air duct system, having spied an anomaly in the cameras above the gaming tables. Max and his double, old and new Max, crawling like an infant in a rut through the same hidden paths two years apart.
“I had to leave that way,” he told CC, told himself. “I had assassins on my trail.”
“Well? Am I different?”
“You aren’t. We aren’t.”
CC thrust his expensive glass forward for a rough toast. Max made the gesture but avoided the close contact of breakable glass. He wondered if that described his life.
“If you want me to save you,” he told CC, “you’ll have to show your hand, and heart, if not your face.”
CC lifted and wriggled his bare fingers. “Most people think I’m a gauntlet, not flesh. And heart, it’s all in my work.”
“One of your men died, during that science fiction convention held here at the New Millennium.”
“TitaniCon,” CC said promptly, not showing much heart.
“One of your assistants fell, or was beaten and fell, or was pushed from the upper reaches of the stage mechanisms. He was wearing a costume that mimicked yours, that also suggested a ‘Khatlord’ from an insanely popular science fiction TV show.”
“Silliness.” CC sucked hard on his straw of Irish whiskey before continuing. “Those costumed TV characters were supposedly from an alien race that was a cross between a Star Trek Klingon warrior and … me and my mask. The hotel PR department wanted to play up the similarities. I went along. It seemed harmless at first blush.”
This time emotion had colored the mechanical voice. Bitterness.
“Barry died,” Max said.
The Cloaked Conjuror didn’t respond for a moment. “You know magic shows are based on doubles. Barry was my body double. The police never started a murder investigation. There wasn’t any evidence. People in the circus, people on window-washing rigs, people in high-steel construction sometimes fall, and sometimes die.”