Really, this mission is getting to be like herding people. Blackie and Blackjack are ever ready to go off task, speculating about the reason for the tunnel, and then oohing and aahing like tourists when we hit the huge storeroom I anticipated would underlie the Neon Nightmare.
I am not about to waste time explaining a giant neon-sign graveyard to the uninitiated.
“Start climbing, and make it snappy,” I order. “This is not a kit playground. This abandoned jungle gym for giants could be dangerous.”
Above us, the ceiling that is the Neon Nightmare floor vibrates with the thump of deep bass speakers. Occasional flashes of the nightclub fireworks penetrate the depths.
My two intrepid assistants run under a giant 3-D high heel to hide.
“Thunder and lightning, Mr. Midnight,” Blackjack whines. “Ma Barker would never let us out in it.”
“Ma Barker is not here, and I am. Would I hide behind a human woman’s footwear, no matter how large, like even Miss Lieutenant Molina size? I would not! Now get out and get moving. I need every set of shivs and fangs available.”
“Ma Barker runs our clowder, Mr. Midnight,” Blackie says. “The rules are rules, and we obey, or we get a home fixing, and I do not mean a nice hot meal.”
“Great. I have robo-mice for muscle. I guess I will have to do some home fixing myself.”
“Nooo, Mr. Midnight!”
I rush the arch where they are cowering and suddenly notice that the two sets of green-eye reflections I am rushing are now … three. And the third set has a half-moon on one side.
“Ma Barker is here,” a raspy voice announces. “B and B, get yourselves back in the open.”
“Where are the rest of the troops?” I ask. “My partner is missing.”
“Which one?” Ma asks.
“Miss Louise. I have not seen her since we did some reconnaissance here a couple days ago.”
“Not good. Where is Three O’Clock?”
“Uh …” I cannot betray my threatened gender. “He is guarding the tunnel’s other exit at the Crystal Phoenix.”
I fix Blackie and Blackjack with a fierce glare and a significant mitt gesture. They gulp and keep their mouths shut.
“What about your human partner?”
“She was headed here, bearing arms.”
“They all have arms. We all have legs. What of it?”
“No, Ma. Firearms. Well, just one.”
“Your red-cream is carrying … carrying something besides that giant tote bag of hers? Not good.”
“Have you found the secret hallways to the big club room at the top of the pyramid?” I ask.
“We were guarding the exit of this tunnel on the main floor and nearly putting our hearing out,” she answers.
“Up above is where I last saw Miss Midnight Louise. That is where the suspect club called the Synth meets.”
“Then that is where we will go,” Ma says. “Onward Blackie and Blackjack, to join Blackbeard and Blacktop, then it is up, up, and away to the roof on this crazy pointy-topped joint.”
Ma Barker as Santa Claus? Please. But she does know how to crack the whip.
So we are soon to be six strong and storming Synth headquarters. I scamper along, newly invigorated. Knowing the head-strong ways of Miss Midnight Louise, I am sure that she is lurking somewhere ahead.
Armed and Dead
Temple felt she had walked onstage in the middle of a play.
Probably the climax of a murder mystery.
She had entered the room between two huge bookcases, putting her in a shadowed niche, and the lights were dramatically dim.
So she kept as still as if in a childhood game of “statue” and took in the scene.
Five people in profile were in the midst of an intense scene, three arrayed on or near the room’s furnishings, two in front of a wood-paneled wall that had obviously also concealed a door.
Of the two seated women, one obviously was the femme fatale, the usual slinky brunette. Why were blondes and brunettes always slinky and redheads just … cute? The other woman was a chubby Electra Lark caftan-wearing type: electric and eclectic and eccentric in dress. Where Electra spray-dyed her halo of white hair rainbow colors, this lady wore a large paisley turban on her perm-frizzed gray hair.
A Max-tall man about twenty-five years older than he, wearing a chocolate brown suit and rust silk T-shirt, stood by a gas-log-equipped fireplace, the leaping flames making his face a craggy mask.
And then there were the two Darth Vader types in floor-length black cloaks and Cloaked Conjuror full-head masks, holding sleek handguns on the three apparent club residents. Double Darths. Double firepower. How … not nice.
Temple’s right hand still clutched the top of her purse. In only a few quick motions she could open it and draw the gun. So few seconds and yet far too many; she saw that now. Any movement on her part threatened to uncork the physical violence that was still frozen into verbal exchanges.
Unless … she started her moves now and nobody noticed, which seemed most unlikely too. Instead of being armed and dangerous, she could end up being found armed and dead.
Both parties were staring exclusively at each other, the way lovers do. Or haters.
“We know nothing about the money stash,” the older woman in the ridiculous turban said wearily. “Cosimo handled all that. He was the main contact with … you people abroad.”
“If they are the real contacts,” the tall man said. “Can your gazing crystal tell us that, Czarina?”
The other woman present ignored him to taunt the intruders in a calm contralto. “Did you start by murdering the Phantom Mage?” she asked the masked pair. “Then Cosimo? Now us? That’s the way to get your damn stockpile of money, all right.”
“The money is not ours,” one bizarre, androgynous voice answered. “It was held in trust for our just cause.”
“ ‘Just cause,’ ” the standing man echoed. “That’s a laugh. You needed our magical bag of tricks for the most astounding multicasino heist in Las Vegas history, and were prepared to pay us ‘royally’ for preparing and carrying it off on your command.”
One of the gun barrels lifted.
“Hal, Carmen,” Czarina cautioned in a low, trembling tone, “we’re in no position to argue.”
“We’re in every position to argue—for our lives,” said the fiery brunette named, of all things, Carmen. No wonder C. R. Molina hated her given name. “We know nothing of where the funds were kept, or in what form. Cosimo Sparks was our leader, our emissary to you people. And you killed him.”
“We did not,” the voice of the other figure in Darth drag answered. “That doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of killing you. Perhaps one of you wanted all the funds—they’d been just lying there for so many years—and killed Sparks in an attempt to get them.”
“And then,” the other Darth’s twin voice suggested, “you moved everything. The cash, the bearer bonds, the guns, and explosives.”
“There were explosives?” the brunette asked, astounded.
“Of course, Carmen,” Hal answered her. “The actual robbers would have needed them for the heist, and we would have needed them as a distraction to turn the Strip into a bigger sound and light show than the Fremont Street Downtown Experience while the robberies were going down.”
“ ‘Lying there for so many years’?” Czarina asked. “That’s absurd. The Synth has been active for only the last three, when Cosimo recruited us and a—”
“There are more members than you?” one cloaked figure demanded.
“None that knew of the scheme or the stockpile of money and weapons,” Hal answered. “Only some disgruntled minor prestidigitators we convinced to be part of our ‘mystical, magical’ alliance, so we’d have ‘extras’ to deploy for our Grand Strip Illusion, which would be the talk of the nation and the world. We are the Synth, the synthesis that old alchemists dreamed of, the creators of a method to turn base material into gold. Only we were after taking a golden parachute out of the demeaned profession that magic has become in these days of media manipulation.”