Cat in a Neon Nightmare Read online

  It was easy to get maudlin at a late-night radio station. Ambrosia, pseudonym for a strong, lost soul, was a fantasy, but it worked for her and for her listeners.

  Mr. Midnight was a fantasy too. Matt didn’t know if it would work for him anymore. And in only two hours that simulacrum of himself would be “on.” Could he still do it?

  “Yes, honey, I hear you,” Ambrosia crooned in her soft, maternal, omni-ethnic voice like liquid jazz. “Life hurts. All the great artists knew that. That’s why we love them. That’s why they always made it hard for them. Here’s a little Ella for you. Go with the flow. Let go of the ‘no.’ Say, ye-ess to life.”

  Jazz. Beethoven gave him a headache. Duke Ellington gave him hope.

  Ambrosia looked up at him, and winked.

  The control board blinked.

  A call coming in.

  “Miss Ambrosia?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s a pseudonym.”

  “As Miss Red Riding Hood said to the wolf, ‘My, what big words your big teeth have got.’ What can I do for you, honey?”

  “Play ‘Misty’ for me.”

  Ambrosia’s mellow eyes snapped to Matt’s.

  They both knew the reference: Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut was a film of that very name. Play Misty for Me centered on a male deejay stalked by an obsessively possessive female fan.

  “What a golden oldie!” Ambrosia’s voice was still as smooth as whipped cream. “I don’t know if it’s on my play list.”

  “Maybe I’ll call back later and ask Mr. Midnight to play it for me.”

  “He doesn’t do music, dear. He just talks.”

  “Such a shame. I’d think he could play beautiful music if he set his mind to it.”

  “I play beautiful music. What do you want to hear besides ‘Misty’?”

  “Nothing. I want to hear ‘Misty’.”

  “I’ll find something just right for you, honey.”

  Matt waited, wondering what Ambrosia would come up with. She always surprised and always satisfied.

  Her long, artificial nails twisted a dial, punched a button. Matt had never paid attention to the mechanical aspects of radio. They pointed at him, he talked. They mimed cutting their throats, he stopped. He watched a clock. He listened, got lost in the river of voices. He was a dilettante.

  In an instant a sinister male voice was intoning, “I’ll be watching you.”

  Matt knew the song, loathed it, and so did Leticia. It was an eighties hit by the Police, a stalker’s anthem. The singer promised to observe every move and every breath the victim took, and tacitly threatened to end both.

  Anybody who knew anything about domestic abuse recognized the stalker mentality, and the song seemed to glorify the omnipotence of the deranged rather than indict it. It was raw threat, very real. And even more threatening after 9/11.

  Ambrosia’s Cleopatra eyes narrowed at Matt. She was aiming a stalker’s attitude right back at the caller. Both of them had instantly recognized Kathleen O’Connor, of course, who had called Matt’s show before to taunt him.

  Matt wasn’t sure about fighting fire with fire in this case, but he guessed Kitty the Cutter would get the unspoken message: the police will be watching you.

  Ambrosia made an up-yours gesture through the glass, and leaned into the mike, which was off-air now that the song was playing. “Guess your unwanted girlfriend will get the idea,” she cooed into the foam-guarded metal mesh.

  Matt managed a pale smile. Ambrosia had encountered Kitty only once. She didn’t know how lethal the woman could be. And he worried. Kitty had already stripped Ambrosia of a necklace. This act of on-air defiance might motivate a more personal attack.

  “You okay?” Ambrosia was asking Matt.

  “Yeah, sure. I was hoping this would be a therapy session, though.”

  “That woman does need therapy. A good rolfing.”

  Matt’s smile became a weak chuckle. Rolfing had been a trendy form of rough massage for decades. It was supposed to release inner demons. There were a lot of alternative physical and mental health therapies, but none of them addressed dealing with actual, outer demons.

  Matt started thinking exorcism.

  And then…the show rolled on. Ambrosia’s usual callers lined up to make the usual requests. In their voices, as if in a confessional, Matt heard the quiver of deep emotion expressed in half sentences and long pauses. There was nothing slick about personal pain. About losing a live lover or a dead child. They weren’t clever or glib, just honest. Just hoping a song and prayer would move someone’s heart, maybe even their own. Matt heard the truth beneath the hope: the fatal cancer that wouldn’t recede without more of a miracle than an upbeat song on the radio; the broken relationship that was obviously over with the other party, and obviously not with the caller. There were some happy calls, like McDonald’s Happy Meals: warming fast food for the soul. The thanks given for a relative’s recovery from a terrible car crash, for a child’s progress in physical therapy, for living with/loving/having “the best” man/woman in the world.

  Sophisticates might laugh at the hit parade of songs played to soothe or reflect the feelings on semianonymous display: John in Reno. Mary in St. Helens. Matt supposed people made these universal sentiments popular because they spoke to them as nothing else quite did, words and music in perfect harmony. It was a rite, like much of religion. Soul food.

  And…after a few hours of listening, he felt better. Other people had troubles. His might be a bit more extreme, but no different, really. Guilt. Loss. Hope. Fear. Hope was always the leveler for a mountain of helpless feelings. For him, there was another word for hope. Faith. He wondered how much of it he still had left. Perhaps enough.

  Radio stations signed off by playing “The Star-spangled Banner.” Ambrosia signed off her show at midnight by always playing one song. After five hours of mellow, it was an odd choice: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  In the aftermath of 9/11 and, personally, in the aftermath of Matt’s own disaster, it seemed to strike just the right note.

  She gave him a fierce thumbs-up through the glass, and then leaned into the mike again.

  “The hot seat’s all yours again,” she said. Threatened. Affirmed.

  He stood up. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself about. And that’s what living is all about.

  Chapter 16

  …Men in Black Too

  Max ducked into a narrow hall, and then found a service closet. The place was packed with them. No major sound-and-light show operated in an electrical vacuum.

  He peeled off the Phantom Mage’s mask and cloak, stripping to his naked face and black-clad form. Then he bundled the items into a ball and left them on the floor behind a pink neon palm tree.

  He hoped to retrieve the Phantom Mage before he left. For now he planned to merge with the civilians packing the dance floor and in that innocent guise do some serious snooping.

  If he was caught…hey, just a juiced night-clubber wandering into forbidden territory.

  There had to be more to the building than the central neon core and the balcony offices.

  At the moment, the center was incredibly loud, the crowd action more like a rave than an ordinary dance club. A deep bass beat vibrated every part of the building. Even the neon lights seemed to spit and hiss and tremble.

  Then a herd of gigantic horses came galloping down from the pyramid’s peak. Max studied the illusion. Giant TV screens ringed the apex, each broadcasting the image of the single external neon horse to make a herd. A vivid rainbow of colors cascaded in its flying mane and made its eyes into manic flares.

  The “nightmare” of the place’s title had come to life. Max had never seen neon so liquid, so mixed, so electric.

  The crowd dancing below was the same, except it was also mostly under thirty. His partner of the moment was a sleek, model-tall black woman wearing tattoos and a filmy designer sari. They gyrated apart, nobody seeming to dance
with anybody in particular, which suited his purpose. With every step he took, Max was moving to a wall opposite the entrance, his eyes searching through the strobe-light effect.

  The control booth was probably on high, like the casinos’ Eye in the Sky snooping parlors, but there had to be ground access to a physical plant, to whatever powered the hyped-up sound-and-light show.

  The lower walls were covered in classic neon advertising designs. Pink flamingos. Signs announcing BAR. EATS. He stopped cold to recognize the Blue Dahlia’s fabled signage, then realized that it was an outmoded design. All these pieces were vintage neon, throwaways redeemed. Neon had been what made Las Vegas hot for a long time. Now it was not. Perhaps Neon Nightmare would make it cool again. Like going through a light cycle instead of a life cycle.

  The major neon companies were still in business, but now they were fabricating computerized digital light shows, like the canopy over Freemont Street downtown. The new culture-driven megahotels spurned the obvious glitz of million-dollar neon light paintings for more subtle, if no less expensive lighting effects.

  Max would guess that some of the neon classics before him had been plucked from storage in the Boneyard, a lot behind YESCO, Young Electric Sign Company, one of Las Vegas neon’s founding firms. Max had visited it when scouting props for his magic act. He had found Wonderland in a wasteland, marked by such gigantic landmark icons as Aladdin’s gilt lamp from the original Aladdin hotel and the gigantic Sliver Slipper. Both were studded with the dotted Swiss of lightless neon bulbs, piled together among other defunct signs like old drunks abandoned to the sun and the sand. Civic hopes foresaw a neon museum in the future. In the meantime some of the most unique signs had been dismantled and lost.

  Were the Synth magicians feeling as outmoded as neon signs in the new Las Vegas? Was the Synth not some mystical ancient conspiracy but a response to the contemporary downsizing affecting every segment and part of the country?

  Max noticed more men not dancing in the room, all as quietly attired as he. House security. They seemed to be looking for something….

  About time he quit mooning over old-time neon and found what he was looking for.

  Then he spotted it. As always, the obvious was the best disguise. The three rectangular sides of a hot-pink neon doorway framed an actual door painted the same matte black as the walls.

  Max leaned back against the space, his hands behind him feeling delicately for an opening mechanism. At last he found it, the kind of magnetic latch that responded to a sharp push by bouncing the door outward.

  Clever. One would never suspect a full-size door operating on a principal designed for cheesy audio-video cabinets.

  Max stepped past the neon outline to vanish into a black blob of unadorned wall. He checked out the men in black opposite. They were staring at his former dancing partner, who was doing a vintage Watusi in the center of the floor, all by herself.

  All by himself, Max turned sideways and slipped through the ajar door, pushing it only as far open as his slim frame required.

  He stepped into utter darkness.

  And then he heard a sharp metallic click.

  Chapter 17

  …Unfixed Females

  What a pretentious joint!

  I take one gander at the wild, neon-eyed mare galloping over the top of this pyramid-shaped building and then I ogle the black velvet rope keeping the wretched refuse of the Las Vegas Strip from pouring into the place.

  Among the guards up front I recognize a figure whose very name is a curse word among my humans, Mr. Rafi Nadir, whom it was my not-so-great pleasure to spy (while he did not see me) at Rancho Exotica a couple of harrowing cases back. Still, he has done my Miss Temple a semi-decent turn a couple of times now and I cannot bring myself to indulge in my most utter loathing.

  Hmmm, I wonder in my wicked way…would it not be interesting if his ex-squeeze, the torch singer Carmen, aka Homicide Lieutenant Molina, were to get a yodeling gig at this place. Sigh. (I have to think my sighs.) No such luck. She likes her anonymous moonlighting stints at the Blue Dahlia too much to go slumming at the latest hot spot.

  Of course no velvet rope intended to keep out the hoi polloi can bar Midnight Louie from going where and when he pleases. I am the koi polloi and invisible until I strike!

  So I stroll among the mingled Manolo Blaniks and Nikes entreating entry with low success. I am the same color as most of their pant legs or boots or platform shoes or what have you.

  I am soundless midnight fog drifting past their ankles and calves. I manage to almost sideswipe Nadir himself, who is clad in black denim, so tacky for the guardian of a supposedly upscale place…

  In a minute I exchange the spotlighted, overheated, pushing, whining hubbub of the Uninvited for the morgue-icy, over air-conditioned, strobe-lighted cacophony of the Insiders.

  In here it sounds like a herd of wild horses amplified on rockconcert speakers, and indeed a neon wave of such creatures washes continually over the walls. There is no ceiling as such, as the interior narrows to a black vanishing point.

  Actually, I am right at home in the pyramid structure. My ancestors were mummified and enshrined in just such triangle-shaped tombs a couple millennia back, and there is some ancient stirring in my blood at the modern, noisome desecration of my ancestral traditions, not to mention my royal roots.

  Call this place Luxor West, or maybe Memphis West, as Elvis himselvis would probably groove on it. Meanwhile, I have all I can do to keep my tootsies and penultimate member from being stomped upon by dancing humans. I cannot understand why they consider the equivalent of smashing a cockroach an exercise, entertainment, and art form. And they would not even eat them afterward! Another signpost of the wasteful Ugly American.

  However, native customs are not my reason for reconnoitering this venue. Nor am I interested in the menu, at the bar or underfoot. I am interested in what Mr. Max is: any signs of the Synth.

  I have heard enough about this mysterious organization to form some notion of its composition. If we are talking hidden, sinister magicians, as opposed to home-grown, known-quantity ones like the Mystifying Max, I can think of no better candidate than the Asian Athena, Shangri-La, who entered our communal consciousness by shanghai-ing Miss Temple and myself, and most successfully making off with Miss Temple’s precious opal ring from Mister Max. I always knew that opals were unlucky, but would anybody listen to me? No.

  Now this makeup-masked minx (I understand the creature’s performing face paint is from the Noh drama of Japan) and her familiar, the Siamese siren Hyacinth, have reappeared in Las Vegas on the grounds of the Cloaked Conjuror’s secret estate. I am convinced that the Synth is emerging from the darkness to do evil. What is the point of being a secret, sinister organization if you cannot creep out once in a while and cause chaos?

  So let other gentlemen of the night cruise this Neon Nightmare hunting prey of the opposite gender. I am after loftier game in order to save my significant other. If I happen to run across the winsome Miss Hyacinth in less than her usual homicidal mood, I would not object to trying to establish some rapport in whatever way possible, all in the service of the greater good, of course.

  Am I glad I ditched that wet blanket Miss Midnight Louise for this assignment!

  She sniffs at my People’s Court appearance, but the fact is I came out of the humiliating episode that preceded our call for justice in very good shape. I had the latest in enlightened birth control methods forced upon me against my will.

  Luckily, this gives me what James Bond would kill for, excuse the expression, a license to thrill. Like Mr. Bond’s trademark martinis, I was shaken but not stirred. Unlike Mr. Bond, I am shooting blanks.

  Despite knowing this, Miss Louise has no tolerance whatsoever for unfixed females, and I am very sure that neither Shangri-La nor her nimble magician’s assistant, Miss Hyacinth, are in any way whatsoever “fixed.”

  Chapter 18

  …Play Mystery for Me

  Matt took a last look
at Ambrosia’s beaming face through the studio glass. On the big schoolhouse clock affixed to the wall the seconds were ticking toward zero hour: midnight. That’s when Mr. Midnight began answering call-in questions.

  He had some of his own tonight.

  Could he really be sitting here at the same table and microphone when only twenty-four hours earlier he’d been in a posh room at the Goliath entertaining the idea of losing his innocence with an intimidatingly gorgeous call girl who called herself Vassar?

  Could Vassar really be sixteen hours dead?

  A trick of reflection momentarily pasted Vassar’s haughtily beautiful white features over Ambrosia’s darkly stunning black ones.

  He stared at both women, unwilling to give either of them up for dead.

  But a radio show was just that: a show that must go on.

  And, if he had truly listened to his own advice all these months, he would believe that going on was the only reasonable response to loss.

  The canned intro resonated in his headphones, introducing “Mr. Midnight,” who brought personal counseling and humane advice to “The Midnight Hour.”

  Personally, he didn’t feel very human tonight. Or rather, all too human. Lord, I am not worthy.

  “Mr. Midnight?” The voices were always hesitant at first. Calling in was not easy for most, despite the numbers who did it. For people who sought the long-distance anonymity of a phone-in radio program, speaking up at all was not easy.

  He had to respect his callers, even if he had trouble respecting himself for conducting business as usual.

  “I’m here,” he said, to encourage her to talk, to affirm something to himself.

  “I am in such trouble,” the young voice went on. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Matt recalled Vassar saying very similar words only twenty-four hours earlier, after they’d gotten past the roles of buyer and seller, predator and prey (which one being which depending how you looked at their unique situation), man and woman.