Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 9

Close Encounter

Had he always been a nightcrawler? Max Kinsella wondered about that as he wandered the brightly lit gaming aisles. The Goliath, an older Las Vegas hotel-casino, looked as tired as an aging bookie despite being tarted up with new carpeting and gaudier lighting fixtures.

He’d spent the day wandering the Strip, staring at familiar Las Vegas icons until his eyes could hardly focus. It worked like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together.

The Crystal Phoenix stirred rough cuts of Temple from a handheld movie camera, her red hair, her red car, her laugh. Memory hallucinations of Lieutenant Molina and her haunting ex, Rafi Nadir appeared suddenly at other locations, even the elusive glimpse of a black cat.

The person or persons unknown who’d arranged his almost-fatal fall probably hoped he’d remain a walking blind spot forever.

Now, though, he was back at the Goliath, where he’d performed the main magic show for a year, and it was feeling alarmingly familiar, like he belonged here. The up-late energy of a frenetic casino in the very wee hours seemed to spark even more memories.

A few passing faces looked vaguely familiar. Joy pulsed through him like a drug high. His traumatized memory was tiring of being a drag. It was starting to spark into life. He looked around, cherishing the familiar for the first time since he’d been back in the United States.

What a crazy scene Las Vegas was. He and his fellow post-midnight travelers were awash in a galaxy of winking lights, hearing computerized whoops and zings, pings and rings, inhaling stale cigarette smoke. Gaming, drinking, and smoking were the Three Musketeers of Vegas good times. The casinos would never ban smoking, so despite the air-conditioned chill, the scene was vaguely hellish.

Max weaved through crowds of grinning Vegas Strip zombies, haggard and staggering people refusing to admit it was nearly 3 A.M., when all good boys and girls should be at home and in bed with their significant others.

“Max Kinsella!” a hearty male voice hailed him. “What dead-end alley have you been hiding in?”

Hester Polyester, a dedicated octogenarian player of the cheapest slot machines, heard his name called too and looked up from the cartooned fruit and other icons floating before her red-rimmed eyes.

Max stopped and stared at the elderly woman. Her name and claim to fame were just “there.” Could it be this easy?

Meanwhile, someone reached to grab and stop Max in his tracks just as Max realized he recognized the voice, Thumbs Kerrick, a veteran Goliath pit boss.

Max winked at Hester to put her next on the greeting list. He turned toward Kerrick and his question, which was being repeated.

“Where the heck have you been, you Mystifying Max, you? Just vanished after your gig was up. Not polite.”

“Your shift over?” Max guessed.

Kerrick pulled him toward a couple empty slot machine spots. “On break.” He released Max’s arm in its linen sport coat. “Best biceps in the business still,” Kerrick said, grinning. “For a tall skinny dude, you’re deceptively strong.”

“I’m a magician. We’re all deceptive.”

“You haven’t been a magic man in this town lately. No, seriously. I thought you and your act would be moving up-Strip.” He lowered his voice. “Then it went to hell. Rumor was the police were hot to question you on the dead guy found in the, you know—” Kerrick jerked his head toward the light-bristling ceiling.

Bells and chimes whooped from various areas of the casino, the siren sound of someone else winning far away.

“My contract was up that night,” Max said. “I was gone the minute the greasepaint was off. So who died?”

“Mr. Nobody. Maybe that’s why the Goliath became Cop Central. This tall lieutenant was all over the staff like a cheap leisure suit, gave the word ‘grilling’ the sniff of the Spanish Inquisition and burning at the stake. Sure wanted to talk to you bad.”

“So in my absence, he endeared me to the staff by putting the heat on them. Sorry, Thumbs. I didn’t know. I was long gone.”

“She.” Thumbs eyed Max like he would a potential card counter, with suspicion. He may have overdone the innocent act. “The lieutenant was a she.”

“Good-looking?”

“Ah, Max!” Laughing, Thumbs punched him on the cast-iron biceps. “That’s why you skedaddled, isn’t it? Woman trouble. I knew it.”

Max considered, then nodded. “You’re right. Woman trouble. And, Thumbs, this jacket is designer linen. It wrinkles easily.”

“Well, I won’t wrinkle your wearables again.” Thumbs patted down the lapels like a tailor. He’d always been a hands-on kind of guy. Ex-muscle for the mob, went the rumor. “Still, it’s good to see you. Some of us wondered if there were two dead guys in that incident, but only one body was found.”

“I know I seemed to vanish. Too bad the murder happened the same night my contract was up. I heard about it later, but I didn’t want to tangle with that pit bull of a suspicious cop. I needed to go away to reinvent myself.”

“You’re like a cat, Max. Always another life to live.” Kerrick lifted a palm to slap Max’s arm again, then just wiggled his meaty thumbs in a signature farewell wave.

Max remained still as Kerrick moved on.

What he’d confirmed to the pit boss was true enough. A woman had been in trouble, and would have been in more if he hadn’t left town. Someone had been after him, and would have soon leaned on his innocent significant other if not drawn away by his disappearance. From what Temple had admitted just recently, Max didn’t move quite fast enough. The thugs found her, and Matt Devine was there for her when Max was just some absconding guy without the decency to leave a good-bye note.

He sighed. It had been the only way. If some men’s pasts were checkered, his was shamrock-patterned, none of them the lucky, four-leafed variety.

Turning, he approached Hester Polyester.

“That Kerrick,” she told him in a cigarette-hoarse rasp as soon as he was within hearing range. “Always Mr. Friendly, but he keeps an eagle eye on things.”

Her face had the surface of a suede walnut shell, all furrows. Bifocals made her pale eyes child-huge as they looked up at him through the upper portion. She knew the Strip like the myriad lines on her wrinkled palms, but still seemed an innocent.

“He moves me along,” Hester said with a grumble, “so I don’t become a ‘fixture.’”

“You aren’t a fixture, Hester,” Max told her. “You are a legend.”

He smiled as he pulled over an empty stool and sat to give his less-than-rock-hard quads and calves a break. He could walk without a hitch in his step now, but the cut-bungee-cord fall still took a toll.

“So what’s new here?” he asked Hester.

“Besides you coming back and the nickel slots clinging on in the old town like dandruff on a fancy Afghan hound?”

Max smiled, knowing that any casinos Hester didn’t cover in her daily and nightly rounds, her husband, Lester, did. The “Polyester” surname came from the ’60s-vintage sherbet-colored leisure suits the pair wore. Probably purchased at the Goodwill.

Characters like this were becoming rarer on the Strip, diluting the place’s rich, eccentric flavor.

“That’s a tasty mint green pantsuit you have on, Hester,” Max told her.

“Exactly right, honey. ‘Mint.’ As in moneymaker. My lucky suit. Nobody knows that shade of color no more. You never miss a thing, Max Kinsella, not even about what a lady is wearing.”

“That’s because I’m a metrosexual.”

“I’m too old to care where you have sex. I’m a suburban-sexual myself. You are still as charming as ever, Max. Now get outta my face and let me whip this rotating fruit salad on the ridiculous computer screen into tutti-frutti Jell-O.”

Laughing, he obeyed and headed through the casino for the lobby entrance, glad he’d put in an appearance so word would get out: Max is back. He was through with keeping a low profile.

He’d always been a high-risk kind of guy. Now that he’d tucked Temple Barr safely back in her cozy life as a PR whiz and newly engaged girl, he was ready to draw out his most lethal enemies for one last hand-to-hand showdown, including Kathleen O’Connor in any one of her myriad disguises.

He moved confidently onto the lobby’s marble floors, hearing his feet hit the stone sharp and clean with no hesitation. Yes indeed, Max is back.

He stopped dead.

The last person on earth he’d expected to run into here was now moving toward him. There was no place to hide for either of them.