Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Friendly Fire

“What is she doing here?”

Max’s annoyed tone roused Garry Randolph from the humble task of coiling a rubber snake of electrical cord in one corner of the New Millennium’s exhibition area scaffolding, fifteen feet above the construction-littered floor.

This place wasn’t just a room, that was for sure.

The whir of power drills backgrounded their conversation. A faint miasma of sanded Spackle dusted their workmen’s white jumpsuits a whiter shade of pale.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Garry, who once had performed as Gandolph the Great.

“Two,” Max said grimly, looking up, and then back down again. “The worst part is that they’ve both seen me, one more than the other.”

Gandolph followed Max’s quick flick of eyelashes both up and down.

Up, the problem was obvious. A lithe figure in pale tights and leotard was cavorting like the Sugar Plum Fairy on a distant tightrope invisible against the flat black ceiling of the museum-to-be.

“I don’t know where Shangri-La came from,” Garry admitted, “but I know you had an unpleasant run-in with her months ago—”

“More than one, and the last one way too recently,” Max interrupted, looping his own length of cable into the tight coil of a striking cobra.

Garry eyed his one-time apprentice at both magic and counterterrorism work. The painter’s cap hid Max’s thick dark hair. Spackle dusted the arched Faustian eyebrows. His eyes were their natural blue. He expertly hunched his four inches over six feet into a droop-shouldered stance that kept him from literally standing out in a crowd, rather like Sherlock Holmes on a stakeout.

“Where did you last see her?” Garry asked.

“At the Cloaked Conjuror’s estate. Creepy old place near a cemetery. Keeps the tabloids and the tourists away. Crazy young woman, always wears her stage makeup. We had a little talk, she and I, and it wasn’t peace negotiations.”

“What happened?”

“A few months ago, she lured Temple up on stage in her act in an audience-participation gig.”

“Always a crowd-pleaser.”

“Not that time. She did the take-the-item switch, only it was the Tiffany ring I gave Temple in New York. And not only that but she whisked Temple into a transformation box.”

“That’s risky to do with a civilian. Going down that trapdoor in the floor.”

“And then into another cabinet and into a departing semi trailer loaded with magic box illusions and illegal designer drugs. Also napped was Temple’s cat, Midnight Louie.”

As Gandolph regarded him with gaping jaw, Max said, “Don’t ask. I mean it. I got them back again, but it didn’t help my low profile with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.”

Gandolph chuckled. “Low profile was always a job for you. So, I get the lethal lady in the sky. What’s the problem on the ground?” Max shrugged in a direction that directed Gandolph’s attention down over his shoulder to a cluster of people way overdressed for the floor of a resort hotel and casino with summer coming on.

Gandolph frowned at the men in suits. FBI? No. Open-necked shirts. Still, pretty boardroom for the New Millennium main floor. And who else? Max would never worry about executive suits. A blond head at three o’clock caught his eye.

Garry reeled off his diagnosis. “There’s the odd one out in that crowd. That little gal. Has to wear high heels for the top of her head to reach the shortest guy’s shoulder. Cute.”

“Don’t say that! She’d kneecap you if she heard it.”

“That your Temple?” Gandolph straightened in surprise, even though it strained his back. At sixty and two-hundred-sixty pounds, life was not a cabaret when it came to sudden motion. Good thing he had retired from the stage. So to speak.

“Maybe,” Max said mysteriously.

“Ah. I saw her at the séance where I ‘died’ last Halloween. She was a redhead then.”

“She is a redhead.”

“Adorable girl. And she’s a blonde now because—?”

“I don’t know,” Max said, visibly trying not to let the tension in his jaw affect his voice. “Obviously, having her on the scene is a huge kink in our operation.”

“Perhaps you should find out why she’s here,” Gandolph said quietly. “And you last saw her as a redhead when—?”

“Just two weeks before last and way too many nights ago.” Max tossed the drills and cords in a long metal workbox the size of a coffin for a midget.

He glanced up to the deceptively frail female figure twirling above. That was Max Kinsella these days. Caught between heaven and hell, only hell happened to be on high in this latest scenario. With Temple on the scene, his assignment for the cadre of magicians he was infiltrating had just become three times more difficult.

He tried not to straighten up fully as he and Gandolph climbed down and shambled out, their blue-collar shift over, right on time.

All right, lady! he challenged Shangri-La from above. Bring it on!

But first he had to catch up with Temple, fast.