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 t.i.tle 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, n.o.body 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 cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.sics 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 oper ating on a princ.i.p.al designed for cheesy audio-video cab inets.

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 moonlight' g 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, push ing, 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 rock-concert 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 c.o.c.kroach 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-quant.i.ty 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 j.a.pan) 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 a.s.signment!

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 a.s.sistant, 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 gla.s.s. On the big schoolhouse clock affixed to the wall the seconds were ticking toward zero hour: mid night. 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 los ing his innocence with an intimidatingly gorgeous call girl who called herself Va.s.sar?

Could Va.s.sar really be sixteen hours dead?

A trick of reflection momentarily pasted Va.s.sar's haugh tily 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 Va.s.sar 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.

Matt suddenly knew what to do. "No trouble is so bad it can't be helped by talking to someone else about it. What kind of bad is it?"

Very bad. She thought she was pregnant. She was in high school. Her boyfriend, forbidden of course, was older and wanted nothing to do with her or her condition. Her parents would never understand. She didn't dare confide in a girlfriend; she didn't have many . . . any . . . of those.

The cla.s.sic story had also been cla.s.sic in the New Testament. The church had resolved it with the concept of the Virgin Mary. Sadly, no other unwed mother since then had received a similar dispensation. In the Holy Land, they were still stoning them to death.

"Just once," she was saying. "Honest. I never thought . . . just once."

If there could be a virgin mother, could there be a sinless sinner? Not in any religion he knew. There could be an innocent sinner. That he had reason to believe.

He coached her into giving birth to some options: a drugstore pregnancy test. Buy it out of the neighborhood, off the Strip. If it came out positive, talk to a school counselor. Her writhing protest was clear even over the phone line. Planned Parenthood, he suggested in desperation, aware that were he still wearing a Roman collar, even figuratively, that would be anathema. But where does a girl desperately seeking impersonality go with this most personal of problems? To people she doesn't know, since the ones she does have made clear through sixteen callous years that they don't really care enough about her to inspire any kind of confidence at all. That was the real sin. It starts at home and spreads beyond to school and the larger society. Once the human hen yard decides that you are the chick to be picked out and pecked to death it only gets worse and your predictably nervous behavior only reinforces the bullying.

Matt recalled the awful incident Ambrosia had mentioned of the Pakistani teenager gang-raped by the village elders. If a pregnancy resulted, that fact would only further condemn her, even and especially in the eyes of her own family. She would be doubly dishonored. For this the G.o.d of Christians had made himself human and died by torture, to reflect and reject humans' inhumanity to humans, and two thousand years later it still went on.

His caller was sounding a little more hopeful. Not a lot. A little. She had a plan, a mission. A test to buy. Information. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe she'd go to Planned Parenthood.

Maybe, Matt thought, her self-destructive spiral could be halted by contraception. He had mixed feelings about that issue. He knew many "good" Catholic couples who had rationalized using it despite the church's stand against it. Many others had tried natural family planning methodswith great or not-so-great success. Being orthodox in any religion was always a balancing act.

But given that this girl on the phone, this child, had been conditioned to not care much for herself, preventing her from having another person in her care until she had matured seemed a necessary stopgap.

"Thanks for listening to me, Mr. Midnight," she was saying, gushing, high on the idea that she had places to go, things to do, that she wasn't necessarily alone.

"A lot of people would listen to you, if you take a chance. But pick them carefully."

"I know. Not everyone is mean, is what you're saying, even if it seems that way. Chuck-" She hadn't meant to mention his name, not ever and especially not on the radio.

Matt couldn't help smiling at the notion of all the "Chucks" out there in the listening audience who were doing hasty examinations of conscience.

"I never thought I could get caught. I never thought, I guess. I need to figure out why I did that, and how not to get caught again, right?"

"You need to figure out who you are and what you want and need and care about."

"Everybody says that: figure out who you are. They never say how."

"Look at what makes you happy. Look at what makes you hurt. Think about your future, not just now. Think about what you owe to yourself, not anybody else."

"Isn't that selfish?"

"No. That's self-knowledge. We're all working on it. Every day in every way. We don't always get it right. Making mistakes is how we learn."

"Have you made mistakes, Mr. Midnight?"

"Many."

"But here you are, rich and famous."

"Not so much of either, but more than I ever thought."

" 'More than I ever thought.' Maybe that's it. Being more than you ever thought. Hey, thanks. And say 'Hi' to Elvis for me."

Matt shook his head at her parting shot. A regular listener, there even when "The King" or a darn good imitation had called in a few times. This was Las Vegas. What do you expect if you hang out a counseling shingle on the airwaves? You are going to get what you asked for. The lonely, the lost, the Elvis freaks.

"Only the Lonely." Was that an Elvis song? Maybe, maybe not, but clearly Elvis had been so lonely he had never been alone until he died that way in his own throne room.

The next caller was a crank, insisting that aliens had taken over the famed Area 51 outside Las Vegas and were all masquerading as Elvis impersonators.

G.o.d save him from Elvis freaks.

Another caller was back in the all-too-real world. She was, she said, a devout Catholic widow. But the Social Security system screwed seniors out of their earned benefits, so she was going to live without benefit of matrimony with Stanley, who wasn't Catholic and had no problem with it, so they'd both collect the SS they needed to underwrite their monthly prescription-medicine bills.

Both of them had distant adult children they would tell they were married. They hated lying to the kids, but wait until the juniors found out what prices the seniors had to put up with.

Matt heartily encouraged her. To live so long and still find the courage to bond and then pay a survival-threatening penalty struck him as the heart of social injustice.

He couldn't believe how much this job forced him to endorse positions contrary to Catholic doctrine. He was out in the real, secular world now, not within the enchanted circle of a parish. He had faced a true ethical dilemma, and come out of it more uncertain and confused than ever. Was Miss Kitty winning? Or was he coming to terms with things he had been able to avoid in his vocation? He wouldn't know until, like his first caller, he went through the process, took action, found himself.

The phone line clicked as another caller came on. "Mr. Midnight."

The clock said eight minutes to go on his expanded two-hour stint.

"I'm here." It had become a catchphrase for his show.

The station had commissioned new billboards around town with those two words. Mr. Midnight is here for you. (Even if he isn't here for himself, Matt would add whenever he drove past one of the billboards.) They ran spot ads on radio stations the nation over, wherever his program was syndicated. "I'm here."

That's why he had to be here, tonight, the hardest time he'd ever put in. He should have been somewhere with Va.s.sar, even if it was at the city morgue. Ashley Andersen, she had told him, finally, last night. Confessed her true ident.i.ty. Ashley Andersen from Wisconsin. On scholarship to Va.s.sar and never fitting in. And look at her now. Glamorous. Well-off. Scandalous. Dead.

I'm here. Sometimes. Strictly by schedule.

"Play 'Misty' for me."

Of course she would call back. Especially now. "You're dialing the wrong show. Ambrosia's off the air. I don't do music, just chat."

Ambrosia was making frantic throat-cutting motions, but he shook his head just as definitely. Va.s.sar's death had made him angry for her, and ultimately, wonder of wonders, for himself. Let the games begin.