Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Inside, the visitor pushed through crowds milling in an exotic jungle landscape, complete with monkeys and birds, in which the ringing of slot machines chimed like dimly heard temple bells.

“Impressive,” Max agreed as they passed the elephants. “I’ve always wanted to make an elephant disappear.”

“Better you make us disappear.” Rafi was terse, and tense. “Remember. If you get into any fisticuffs in the hotel surveillance underbelly, it’s my rear.”

“There’s only one anatomical site I’m interested in here, and it’s a murder site, past tense.”

“I was in on the capture of a murderer at the Dancing With the Celebs reality TV show here recently. That was in the theater area.”

“Good for you.” Max smiled. “Don’t worry. I won’t jinx your career in security. According to maddeningly vague references in Gandolph’s home computer, there’ve been a string of unsolved deaths that have nagging connections to … me.”

“Oh, great. And here I volunteered to be your backup buddy.”

“It was a paid position.”

“Originally. And now?”

“And now, if Gandolph’s notes and my need to figure out who tried to kill me at the Neon Nightmare club helps solve this string of rather bizarre but possibly related deaths over the past two years, I can see you get cred with Molina for the breakthroughs. That’ll melt the Iron Maiden of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s stony heart into raspberry slush, or at least into giving you visitation rights with your daughter.”

“You underestimate the calcification of Carmen’s mercy muscle, but I’m working on it,” Rafi said with a grin. “If we go trolling around the Oasis together for too long, though, it’ll look like I’ve got a new boyfriend.”

“‘Prospective employee,’” Max said. “I just need to see the Oasis’s revamped sexy pirate girl show and inspect the ship that comes round the bend to sink so spectacularly.”

“Most tourist guys want to inspect the sexy pirate girls.”

“I don’t think they killed anybody, do you?”

“The tourist guys or the sexy pirate girls?”

“Either.”

“It’s a popular attraction, night and day. Who knows what evil lurks in randy tourists.”

*   *   *

Rafi led the way out of the hotel and through the usual milling throngs. The pirate ship show was free, which accounted for the tourist hordes lining the sidewalk outside the hotel. A wooden walk-the-plank bridge connected to a hotel entrance over a broad moat of water.

The attraction had resembled a set for a pirate film long before Captain Jack Sparrow went viral, so Max knew what to expect. His six-foot-four height made it easier to see over the hundreds of heads, even with many arms extended straight up to record phone videos of the show.

“Do we start,” Max asked, “by ogling the nearly naked girls in the crow’s nest or the naked female figurehead on the sinking ship’s prow?”

“We’ll check out the enemy ship that comes around the bend in the landscaping just to sink later. This script is cheesy. ‘Lusty Ladies and Laddies’ at war. The special effects aren’t.”

Rafi, who’d obviously had a chance to watch the attraction on slimmer attendance days, or nights, pointed out the obvious. “This used to be a rousing, family-friendly all-out action battle between freebooting pirates and the pursuing government ships.”

“I remember those days.” Max surveyed the bikini-clad “sirens” clambering over the three-masted sailing ship that anchored the show. “Now it’s become an arousing battle between the sexes. The only suspense factor is what will stay put longer, the pirate showgirls’ mic packs or their same-sized bikini pieces.”

“I sure wouldn’t take my teen daughter here to see good role models.”

“Parenthood makes new men of us all. These chorines have been trained into pretty solid athletes,” Max said after observing the action. “Those swordfights and fiery dives from the top rigging are tough routines.”

“Nothing new for you. Didn’t you have the usual magician’s assistants who could go topless for the late show?”

“No. I preferred to invent less blatant distractions for my audiences. I worked alone. More cerebral.”

“Art imitates life, huh?”

Max grinned at Rafi’s comeback, then craned his neck to see the show again. “I think the climax is coming for our hip-slinging crew of seductive beauties on the anchored ship set—I glimpse a ship of lusty male pirates sailing around the bend, to be sunk. Ahoy! The ship is called The Bull. Not too subtle.”

Max peered through and over the packed tourist crowds. The boys’ ship was basically a large 3-D stage set running on an underwater track. The prow’s figurehead of a large-bosomed naked mermaid personified Las Vegas.

“Imagine,” he told Rafi, “a man is bound like a mummy against that figurehead.”

“White wrappings?”

Max nodded. “Probably. Molina would have access to the details and Grizzly Bahr at the morgue would have the bindings filed away.”

“Man, that was harsh. The guy was probably conscious, but gagged. Blindfolded too?”

“Not by sadistic killers like this.”