Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

One never knows when or by whom the sanctity of one’s home will be violated. Mr. Max had a way of breaking and entering as an expected unexpected guest. That method had much in common with my comings and goings, plus it gave my Miss Temple the frisson of unpredictability. We suave dudes know how to keep a dame interested.

Big Mama Molina apparently just rang the doorbell and walked right in. So crude and rude!

I eye the abject form of a plastic baggie on the sofa. A lowly commercial object representative of our plastic culture nowadays, which I might sometimes allow to entertain me for a few moments while my shivs staple holes into it until its ziplock closure begs for mercy.

Now it is weighted with a small object that would make it quite bat-worthy, even for a dude of my serious size and dignity. Unfortunately, I recognize a precious object and know better. I edge near to examine this item, once stolen and held for ransom, to refresh my sometimes delinquent memory.

It is a subtle, fiery gemstone set into a white-gold circumference small enough for my Miss Temple’s size-five feet and fingers. She wears the same size in shoes and rings, which is handy for dudes who wish to shower her in Jimmy Choos and Fred Leightons. (She has, however only one each of these two gentlemen’s high-end foot and finger fripperies, and many of her shoes nowadays are from resale shops.)

Again seeing my Miss Temple’s long-withheld keepsake of Mr. Max and what harassment she must put up with in his absence only makes me more determined to settle the hash of these Neon Nightmare Synth people and solve the tri-venue tunnel murder all to my mistress’s greater glory and ability to further lord it over the official fuzz, like Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina.

Miss Temple has always been right. The Molina eyebrows are way too furry for a lady.

Breakfast of Champions

“I’ve had a breakthrough,” Max told Garry Randolph at breakfast in the hotel the next morning.

“What?” Gandolph, startled, sprayed the word into his cup of morning hot chocolate.

Watching him mop up the ring around the cup, Max felt the painful nostalgia of finally surprising the man who, he guessed, had always surprised him, at least during his vulnerable younger years after O’Toole’s Pub.

“Freud was right,” Max opined. “Dreams are the key. At least mine were. I’ve recovered some pretty vivid memories from before my engineered fall at the Neon Nightmare. I dreamed a whole cast of characters. Old-school magicians or charlatans … Cosimo Sparks?”

“ ‘Old-school’ is right. Cosimo was strictly minor, even in his heyday. Retired to Vegas from better days in the Midwest. Did social-club benefits and auctions. Thought when they said how the mighty have fallen they meant him. A stumble maybe, but his career successes were mostly in his own ego.”

“Carmen?”

“Ah. Your type, right? Femme fatale. Poisonous young thing, once. When I was still working, which is several years ago, as you know, she tried to seduce me into replacing Gloria Fuentes as my assistant. Indeed! Give up a trained veteran who still looked PDG.”

“PDG?”

“Pretty damned good. At my age, you appreciate women who manage that, and some do into their nineties now. It’s in the head,” he said, tapping his right temple. Max winced, sensitized to the word temple now. “Anyway, I don’t dump a loyal partner for a few crow’s-feet when I’m all over sags and bags.”

“That’s so encouraging,” Max said.

“You just twinkled, wicked boy! Making fun of your old partner in a double-edged way. Go to it! That’s the spirit. ‘Curse, if you must, this old gray head… .’ ”

“Enough, ‘Barbara Frietchie.’ I had that poem in grade school too. From what you tell me, we both honored our ‘country’s flag,’ as in that old poem, more than the average.”

“Charmin’ Carmen.” Gandolph mused. “That moniker came later when she conned the guy who made a mint becoming the Cloaked Conjuror into taking her on. Ramona Zamora was her real name. Oh, she was tasty, though. Nineteen and hungry. But what was really in it for me to dump Gloria for a young thing but a few blow jobs and a kiss-off?”

“Garry! Have I ever heard you talk that way before?”

He had the grace to look apologetic. “No.” He rubbed a hand over his weary features, giving them a passing face-lift. “I used to respect women more, and the world.”

“Didn’t Gloria die?”

“Hardly. She was killed last year. Only fifty-eight. Police couldn’t find her murderer right away and probably retired the case. Woman accosted and killed in a parking lot. It’s the major unsolved cliché crime of our time.”

“Helluva time,” Max muttered.

“Don’t let me hang up your dream memories. I can’t believe your subconscious has dredged up those familiar names from my days of yore. I helped you set up the Phantom Mage persona and act at the Neon Nightmare. We knew the Synth members met there, or even owned the place, but you never reported names back to me. Just questions about the Synth, which I’d never heard of before. Who else has your memory conjured?”