He ordered a beer for himself, surprising Temple. Had she actually drawn a moderate drinker she could pump for half an hour without him making a pass or sliding slowly to the mirror-black floor?
Her Spanish coffee arrived in a footed glass mug, looking like dark Irish Guinness stout with a head on it. Max-mission appropriate.
“Footed,” he pointed out. “Thanks for not proving me a liar. I’m Steve Fox, by the way, boy-wonder programmer. My company sent me out here for three months of skill upgrading.”
Temple had left all rings at home. Clutching her lethal purse in her lap with her left hand, she produced her right for a shake. “Temple Barrett. I do PR around town.” Okay, she would pull out the cliché: “You come here often?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact. The company suite-hotel makes one hope for bedbugs for entertainment. This place changes the neon show nightly. They used to have this wildman masked magician on a bungee cord who could do amazing illusions bounding all over the interior. Best free show in town.”
Temple sipped the warm, comfortingly sweet foam atop her dark, bitter, strong drink. Her heart was soaring and sinking at the same time. That magic man had to be Max.
“Why aren’t they advertising a primo attraction like that?” she wondered aloud.
“Maybe because I haven’t seen him in almost two months. Unsung when he performed, forgotten when he left.” He eyed her again. “What made you put on the Ritz and come sit at the bar here when you don’t want to be picked up? Don’t claim you’re a habitué. I’d know better.”
“Got me!” Temple laughed unsteadily. “I have an assignment, too, writing up trendy bars. I’d heard about your magician, but not that he wasn’t performing.”
“The Phantom Mage,” Steve recalled, sipping his brew. “Kinda hokey name. Smart psychology, though. You didn’t expect much and then, wham!”
“What was he doing here?” Temple mused, almost under her breath.
Steve had a fox’s sharp ears. “Making a buck. You’re not going to write about a dead act, are you?”
“I might.” Temple bit her lip at the double meaning she heard in Steve’s question.
“Drink too hot or too strong? Coffee will keep you awake and rum will keep you happy.”
“Exactly right. I better get down to business. Those neon fireworks up top are spectacular. Is that where the Phantom Mage made his entrance?”
“Right. And exit. Now that you say his name again, I guess it suited his act.” Steve squinted up into the light show. “I think there are invisible balconies up there.”
“Balconies?” That fit with Rafi’s seeing people “vanish” into the walls at all levels.
“You know, perches. He seemed to be walking on air at times.”
Temple’s heart clutched as her left hand fisted on her lap purse. That illusion was right from the Mystifying Max’s Goliath act, where he used strobe lights, like some of those that flashed over the dance floor here, to seem to fly.
“These strobe lights are so disco sixties,” Steve commented.
“Yeah. They pulse on and off, so people’s motions seem jerky.”
“Too bad a lot of them are jerks,” Steve said.
“You don’t like the bar scene either.”
“No, I’m a nerd, basically. Came here to see the light show and the flying magician. I just drink my two beers and people-watch. I’m heading home soon. You’re the first girl I’ve bought a drink for, Temple.”
“You’re the first guy I’ve let buy me a drink in … forever.”
They smiled at each other.
“You’ve got someone,” he said.
“He’s out of town. You too?”
“He’s back home in Oshkosh.”
Oh-kay. And here she’d been angsting about picking up guys in bars.
“Will I see ‘Temple Barrett’ in the next issue of Out and About in Las Vegas?” Steve asked.
Temple laughed. “Just a small-type credit at the very bottom, if I’m lucky. Have a nice trip back.”
“Thanks. I’ll try ordering a Spanish coffee in Oshkosh.”
“Good luck,” Temple said, “but I don’t think that will fly at most bars or restaurants.”
“Why not? It’s hot and bracing. Just what Cold Country needs. Don’t stay up too late.”
She sat and digested what Steve had told her after he left, studying the pyramid’s flashy interior. The interior was magician-made, both smoke and mirrors. Black reflective Plexiglas walls and floors, black mirrors, and bright lights—a giant magician’s illusion box. Of course there must be “balconies” along the interior sides. Although this pyramid was hollow, it must harbor plenty of room between the interior and exterior walls for light-and sound-show equipment and maintenance.
The dead body at the Goliath the night Max’s magic-show run had ended was found in one of those above-casino crawl spaces. The thought that Max might have been trapped here in a similar situation, and maybe even died here, made her determined not to leave this building until she knew what … and who … it concealed.
It wasn’t impossible that Max was also using the gig as training wheels for a new act. He’d been determined to unmask the Synth, and this was where he’d picked to do it … and where somebody got angry or alarmed enough to sabotage his investigation and try to take his life.
Temple sipped her Spanish coffee as slowly as possible to study the possibilities. Apparently her tête-à-tête with Steve had marked her as “taken.” Guys might be thinking he’d only left for the men’s room. The not-quite-empty beer bottle still sat in front of Steve’s empty barstool. That’s the kind of escort she liked in a place like this. Invisible.
Great. She was a free agent now. She eyed the dance floor, considered the advantages and disadvantages of performing over an audience’s head. When the Phantom Mage came sweeping down, they had to have looked up at the motion. What did they see?
She saw the dance floor as a wall-to-wall mob swept by glaring neon spotlights and winking strobe lights. It wasn’t all couples. Whoever pushed onto the deceptive, reflective surface could gyrate alone, with his or her image in the floor below, or with a cooperative stranger of any nearby gender.
Gosh! She wished things had been this informal when she was in high school and college.
She left two bucks on the bar to join Steve’s tip and slid off the high stool, never her most graceful moment, even in wedge heels, and even less so while clutching a purse for dear life. Or death.
The slick floor unnerved her, but she edged onto it, bobbing tentatively. It vibrated with the beat like a subterranean heart. Someone behind her bumped butts. Oh, rescue me! She gyrated around and faced a dreadlocked black guy doing the … Swim? Oh, retro me! Temple swam farther into the center of the dance floor, looking up.
The scene was as psychedelic as she’d heard the sixties were. Lights above, reflections below. You hardly knew where up and down ended. That was Max’s magician territory: confusing, sense-flooding, mystifying.
The pyramid sides were a blur of neon flashes. If she’d seen anyone “vanishing” into those walls, as Rafi had, she’d have thought of ghosts and freaked. Steve, sharp left-brained observer, had been right. There had to be perches for a flying magician to rest on before bounding into thin air and back to the wall again.
The impact of man with wall that Rafi had described reverberated with the driving, relentless rock/rap music in her head.
No one could survive that. Unless it was an illusion. Unless it had been Max doing the illusion.
She eyed the apex of the pyramid. Must be five stories. The neon lights at the peak spun around, making her eyes burn and her feet shuffle for solid ground beneath them.
She’d seen PBS shows about the solar system and the galaxies resembling this. Standing here in this mating swarm of loud music and shimmying torsos was like being in a science museum’s astronomy exhibition, if you actually looked up and enjoyed the light show.