Monday, Monday, and the Orson Welles house was still his to occupy, but even Max was uneasy not knowing where Gandolph’s latest bolt-hole was, though he shouldn’t have been.
After all, his mentor had been playing the role of Invisible Man since before Max had been born.
Max was getting pretty good at the part himself, he reflected, brooding about how Gandolph’s sudden reappearance had interfered with Max’s time with Temple. Max’s personal life was suddenly on the back burner again. It was his fault for daring to have a personal life.
So Gandolph might just turn up on the doorstep of his former house when the mood took him, or when he felt it was safe. Max had let Garry in that first night they had connected in the labyrinth of the Neon Nightmare club with mixed feelings: excitement to be working with an old partner again, and with the nagging certainty that Temple was instantly cast as second fiddle for the immediate future.
Now the man who had been Gandolph, Garry Randolph, was on Max’s—his own—threshold again, and Max felt like it was a home invasion.
“You look distracted.” Gandolph shrugged out of the paint-spattered workman’s jumpsuit he wore over his usual slacks and sweater as a disguise for getting in where he wasn’t expected, or wanted. Dead, or alive.
“I’ve been printing out our ‘book’ so you can read it. I’m also working out seriously again, as you recall, for my new act.”
“My return has inspired a fresh yen for the stage? Wonderful news, my boy! I never approved of your ‘retirement.’ ”
“Not a career renaissance, I’m afraid. If the Synth is potent to any degree, we need to infiltrate it. I’ve got a gig, all right. The Phantom Mage is turning tricks nightly at Neon Nightmare.”
“Turning tricks?” Gandolph looked truly distressed.
“Cirque du ‘Inferno,’ dear master. I’ll be pushing these retired joints through acrobatic legerdemain high over the mosh pit at the NN.” Max sighed, then smiled. “I’m actually looking forward to inventing the magic act from hell. I confess: I’m a sucker for High Concept. Literally.”
“First things first,” said Gandolph.
“The kitchen?”
“Don’t I wish! This house has the finest kitchen I used to own. I suppose you only manage to boil water in it now that you have no sweet young thing to impress . . . never mind. What’s on my mind is the book, first, and your new act, second. You’ll have to be very, very good, and very, very different, to fool the Synth into thinking the Phantom Mage is someone totally new.”
“ ‘Someone totally new.’ That’s what I’ll have to become, isn’t it, if I’m going to infiltrate the heart of darkness? Not much room in there for someone totally old.”
“Nonsense, my boy! You’re not old at all at . . . what? Thirty-four now?”
But Max hadn’t been thinking of himself. He’d been thinking of Temple, who was good at coming here discreetly, with proper precautions, for improper purposes, and who hadn’t lately. At all. He needed to find out what was going on with her. Instead of the magician sawing the lady in half, Max had split his magical identities in order to masquerade at Neon Nightmare in hopes of finding out . . . what? Anything that was worth keeping Temple in the dark when he had promised . . .
“Listen,” Garry said. His rotund form rolled ahead of Max into the kitchen like the bouncing ball you’re supposed to follow when you almost know the words of the next song.
“Listen, Max. Separately, you and I have happened on the same trail.”
“The Synth. They are something sinister, then.”
“Oh, yes. Unless they simply like to think they are. They could be a senior version of this Goth kick the youngsters are on. Bizarre dress, arcane symbols, evil attitudes and all so much drama.”
“Then why am I risking breaking my neck to infiltrate them?” And risking breaking up with Temple, he added mentally. Where was she? She must be involved in something consuming to stay away so long. Or maybe she was involved with someone consuming, and he knew where to look for that usual suspect. Sure, she’d been calling him, but he hadn’t been able to answer. Yet. Damn and double damn!
“Are you listening, Max?”
“What? Yes. Of course. You’re saying the Synth is a paper tiger. A cheesecloth coalition. Smoke and mirrors, the smoke stale and the mirrors cracked.”
“How you put things! I can’t wait to read your additions to my book. I’m saying quite the opposite. I think the Synth is key to a number of things that have happened in Las Vegas since you followed me here, and they are definitely what has been up our alley all those years on the Continent.”
Max frowned. He’d been a green, angry boy when an IRA bomb had leveled a pub and his post-high school traveling partner, his cousin Sean, with it.
Max could have been there, johnny on the spot to save Sean or go down with him. But he’d won their stupid adolescent competition for a comely Irish lass named Kathleen O’Connor and he’d been off losing his so-called innocence while Sean broke apart and burned.
So he’d done what he could. He tracked the bombers and turned them over to the British. Unholy treason for an Irish-American boy, but also an impressive achievement.
He’d been recruited and whisked out of harm’s way by Gandolph and his associates in international counterterrorism. They worked to stop the bloodshed, not avenge it, and magic had been both man and boy’s cover. Gandolph explained how ideal that occupation was: one traveled, one moved mysteriously, one mastered the arts of subterfuge, even apparent invisibility. That appealed to Max, who had been an amateur magician since grade school.
“So we’ve ended up in the same fix again,” Max said finally. “On the run, occasionally presumed dead, and trying to save the world from itself. When do we get to save ourselves and our little worlds?”
“Now.” Garry’s dark eyes were gleaming in his plump Santa Claus face. “The Synth isn’t just disgruntled magicians uniting to fight the trend to expose the secrets of our ancient illusions, to bring down the Cloaked Conjurors among us. I believe that someone is using it for geopolitical purposes, and has been for some time. I think that if we find out who, and why, we will solve a lot of worrisome matters both here and abroad.”
Max groaned. “Good Lord, Garry. You’re saying I can save the world by swinging on a star at the Neon Nightmare every night?”
“Well, you’ll have to do more than swing, my boy. You’ll have to investigate. I’ll be there when I can, as backup. And I don’t say this assignment will be fast, or easy. But it could be more important than either of us guesses.”
“I bloody well know how important this assignment is.” Max had almost gritted his teeth.
Garry nodded, impressed by Max’s renewed vow of passion for the cause.
But Max the good agent wasn’t considering the global picture. He was thinking about the confined orbit of his own little life, a domestic life that he’d managed to build with Temple between the bullets and the subterfuge.
She wouldn’t wait forever for the normalcy he kept promising and failing to deliver.
Neither would anybody else, whether it was Lieutenant Molina, or Matt Devine.