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Max thought he knew his man, but he thought some more. His fingertips tapped a rhythm on eight buttons. Nothing happened. The girl sighed heavily behind him. He tried three more combinations. The fifth unlocked the door, which he pulled open to admit her before him. Always the gentleman, but this was the riskiest part of the plan.

Two heavyset men who probably held black belts in several varieties of exotic martial arts and also held high-caliber automatic weapons bracketed the door.

They didn’t have a silver-metal almost naked girl, though, and from the looks on their stolid faces, this was the best part of their day.

Knowing her power, the waitress approached without hesitation. From the next look on their faces, she had smiled at them.

“Legacy liquor-crafted cocktails from Mr. Akihiro on a radiant performance,” Max intoned in an insufferably snobby English accent. The major Vegas hotels could charge thousands for drinks made from obscenely aged liquors.

Max knew their voices would be piped into the next room. So did the cocktail waitress, who probably believed this entire farce was the gesture of an immensely rich “whale.”

The interior keypad allowed the door to be cracked enough for Max to again usher his glamorous guide right through.

And like that, he was in the fortress of the Cloaked Conjuror’s dressing room.

As the door shut automatically behind them, Max took the cocktail tray and placed it on the dressing table. The next moment, he wrenched off the helmet and made a deep bow with it playing the part of a cavalier’s hat.

“Yo, Max Kinsella!” The man in the massive easy chair rose slightly. “Testing my security again and finding it lacking. I’ll have to put you on retainer.”

Max gave another courtly bow. “I live to serve.”

“What did you use to take out my doormen, a Vulcan neck pinch? A bit physical for you, isn’t that?”

“Nothing crude and violent. My intercepting you coming offstage last time made that route null and void, so I improvised with a lovely distraction, the trick of our common trade.”

“Jolly good.”

The waitress flashed Max an approving look and offered another to the Cloaked Conjuror, who’d retained his helmetlike but animalistic head mask after leaving the stage for the night.

“Have a seat, and your gorgeous cocktail waitress friend can fetch you any drink you desire.”

“Sparkling water,” Max ordered. “In fact, I see some on ice on your dressing table. That’ll do,” he told the waitress.

He fancied he would have seen CC’s eyebrows rising if the magician hadn’t been wearing the head-encompassing mask.

“You a teetotaler suddenly?” CC asked, incredulous. Max was probably the only drinking buddy he had.

“Just for the moment.” Max accepted the Baccarat crystal goblet showcasing totally unalcoholic bubbles fizzing like mad.

When the heavy door shut behind the departing cocktail waitress, Max set down the glass and leaned toward CC. “I followed you following her last night.”

“Me? Out following someone?” The mask’s voice-altering mechanism made CC’s laugh sound like a pack of Santa Clauses on a toot. “Max, you’re good, but you’re not so good you can follow a figment of your imagination.”

“The figment of my imagination was my first thought about the identity of the portly guy who trekked from the Goliath to the Treasure Island to the abandoned Neon Nightmare to the New Millennium here. I actually thought at first it might be Gandolph.”

“And why wouldn’t it be? He’s a foxy fellow and could have led you a merry chase.”

“He was shot and killed in Belfast a few weeks ago.”

“God, no.” CC slumped back in his chair, the sagging of his costumed shoulders conveying sorrow, but in an exaggerated way, like a forlorn clown. “I’m sorry, Max. I know how much he meant to you.”

“Then take off that mask and talk to me face-to-face.”

The Cloaked Conjuror put his bare hands to the striped sides of his leonine face mask. Then they paused. “You broke in here, but you’re also going to have to break out, if I say you can’t go.”

“I’m aware of that.” Max finally drank some water, never taking his eyes off CC and the mask at his graceful fingertips. Magicians were used to making flourishes.

“Risk.” CC pulled off the headpiece. “Always your long suit, Max. I envied you that. My risks are well cloaked, and I don’t have any sense of personal credit when I win.”

“I’m not after credit. I’m after justice and truth.” Max heard himself and laughed. “And the American way.”

“You’d make a good Superman, but I don’t think red and blue are your colors.” CC chuckled, setting his iconic headpiece on the dressing table.

Black greasepaint circled his eyes and nose so they’d blend with the mask, and red surrounded his mouth, which made him look like a part-time member of Kiss. Sweat shone in his hairline. Max doubted it was fresh.

“Cheers,” said CC, leaning forward to click his drink glass with Max’s. He sat back. “So how did Garry Randolph come to be shot in Northern Ireland?”

“We weren’t just magicians when we toured the Continent years ago.”

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