Max was beginning to wish he’d booked a room at Planet Hollywood and had stayed there.
The house was rambling and rang no bells of recognition with him. Instead, it felt creepy.
He wandered from the kitchen, which his memory had populated with a glimpse of Temple Barr sitting on the granite island like a ghost on a marble monument, or a Goth girl perched on her idea of a kinky sex site, to the bedroom closet with its hanging shreds of his knifed former clothes.
Where was Garry Randolph’s presence? If he was going to be haunted by ghosts, Gandolph’s was one he’d welcome.
Max began to realize that from the moment he’d awakened with amnesia in the Swiss clinic, he’d almost never been alone. When Garry hadn’t been shepherding him, he’d been on the run with Revienne Schneider, the Sexy Shrink, from the Alps to Zurich. Then there’d been Temple Barr, Girl Guide, awaiting him at the airport.
This Max Kinsella he didn’t much know had been a lucky guy. For a loner with a double life as stage magician and counterspy, he’d had help from a lot of friends.
He hurled himself away from the symbolic carnage in the closet back to the kitchen. Garry had been something of a gourmet. Jerking open the door to the wine cabinet, he hoped to lay his hand on a bottle significant to his mentor’s memory. But the labels were cuneiform script to him. Presumably he’d shared some of Garry’s tastes, but that was gone, and Garry wasn’t here to aim his hand aright.
Max pulled a dark bottle from the rack, feeling unsettled by the meat-rich dinner. He had to search six drawers to find the corkscrew. Pathetic! He slammed a flat hand down on the granite counter, his palm stinging like hell.
At least he remembered how to use a corkscrew. This had better not be a red wine. He stared down the round lip of the bottle. Bullet-hole entry wounds could look almost this neat and intentional. He’d seen the real and brutal results of Garry’s head wound on the car window to his right, blood spattered like rain in a misty Northern Ireland night.
Max poured the bottle contents into a water glass from the first cupboard he’d opened. He wasn’t going to search every one for a wine glass.
White wine, more like lymph fluid than blood. He gulped some down. Where would he sleep tonight? The futon had been fine for a man without injuries to nurse. Garry’s former bedroom had obviously been turned into the paraphernalia storage room, thank heaven for that. He wanted no dead man’s bed for a resting place. That left the opium bed, more of a stage setting than anything. At least it might spur memories of the nonresident sprite.
He was surprised to find his lips smiling as he thought of Temple. She had a lot of guts to take him on in this condition, with a fresh new fiancé to explain to. Or maybe she didn’t answer to anybody. Maybe she’d bring him sweet dreams in that opium bed. That was one new thing he’d learned since coming back to Las Vegas. She knew his recent past as well as Garry had known his distant past. Max would have to probe her memories to regain his own.
Would the fiancé like that? Matt Devine could go to hell.
Max had finished the wine, drinking it down like the water that normally filled the tall, narrow glass, when a barely detectable sound chilled his veins.
Faint. So faint most people would dismiss it as a distant outdoor noise or the house settling. Faint as a single revolver barrel clicking a bullet into place fifty feet away.
Max set the glass down on a hand towel he’d whipped to the stone counter. He bet he’d used to know how to soundlessly traverse this furniture-scape in the dark. He moved stealthily toward the main room, his stance wide to keep his trouser fabric from hissing against itself, flat-footed to counter any shoe squeaks.
The scraping sound came again, from the front hall. What the hell? A key?
For a heartbeat he hoped that … Gandolph had pulled off another resurrection.
Max plastered himself to the living-room wall. He’d abandoned the shot-up car with the body near the Belfast address of a long-ago counterspy network contact. People didn’t tend to move as frequently in the Old World as in the States. He’d hoped.
Maybe Garry had still been revivable, and found.
The hall was too narrow for an opening door and two people. Max’s blood was pulsing through his carotid arteries, pounding in his eardrums. Maybe Gandolph. Maybe Gandolph.
Whoever … he needed to startle and control the body that came past this break in the house wall.
He heard the door open and shut. The newcomer paused, his or her senses routinely checking the empty house for any change. Max nodded mentally. A pro of some sort. Not the redhead deciding she wanted a return fling in the opium bed. He weighed the slow oncoming footsteps. As precise and cautious as his own.
This was interesting. Who or what would expect this empty house to offer more than vacancy? The white-noise hum of the air conditioner muffled the visitor’s approach. Suddenly a presence blocked the archway, just oncoming bulk and darkness.
Max jumped into the opening, pounding a fist into kidneys, right on target, needing to disable the trunk before the struggle quickly came down to the intruder’s hale legs against his weakened ones. He heard the man’s grunts, but the guy torqued his torso away before Max could get in any more cheap shots. Max pushed his sharp forearm bone across the man’s windpipe and used the opposite wall as his own buttress. Had to exercise some care. He wanted to overcome and question, not kill.
The guy’s elbows were pummeling his ribs. Max slid aside, letting the intruder hit his own crazy bones against the wall. During the expected cascade of curses, he spun the guy against the wall, knee to nuts, and let up on the windpipe.
“Enough already,” the intruder gasped. “You know the turf, and you’re tall enough to be Max Kinsella, in person.”
“And you are—?”
“Your damn house sitter. My contract with Randolph covers my medical costs, so ease off before you run up a bill even you can’t pay.”
Mention of Garry’s name was like saying a password to Max. He lifted his arms and backed away.
“Mind if I turn on the living-room lamp?” he asked the unknown man.
“Hell no! I wanna see how much I can sue for. Freaking idiot. No one called me to say you’d be coming back.”
Max turned and found the lamp he’d noted on his tour of the house, fumbling for what should be a familiar on switch. He let himself sit on the couch arm, relieving his legs but still projecting the impression nothing was visibly wrong with them.
In the weak lamplight, he confronted a sturdy guy, five-ten maybe, 190, and enough five-o’clock shadow for a Latino, with a cop stance, more curious than pissed.
“Man,” he said, “you look like death warmed over and served as sliced jellied aspic. Why’d you attack me?”
“I didn’t know Garry Randolph had contracted for your services, whatever they are. Must be watering the yard and fine-tuning the air-conditioning. Can’t be security.”
“Now that’s where you’re off base. There was nothing to secure here but the house, until you showed up. Where’s Randolph? He e-mailed me saying he’d rendezvoused with you in Switzerland and you were both heading to the British Isles, last I heard.”
Max leaned his head against the wall. “When was that?”
“More than a week ago, U.S. time.”
“Who are you?”
“The guy who helped Randolph get you out of the Neon Nightmare club and then the country.” The man shifted his pummeled body. “I gotta say you recovered pretty damn well from that so-called ‘fatal’ accident in just a little over two months. I figured you’d never walk again, much less threaten the family jewels.” He glanced around. “Where’s Randolph?”
“Who are you?” Max asked again.
“You’d seen me around. Rafi Nadir.”
Max just shook his head.
“My regular job is assistant security chief at the Oasis. Randolph did me a good turn and recommended me for the position, in exchange for maintaining the house so it didn’t deteriorate while he was trying to get you back on your feet again at some fancy Swiss clinic.” He glanced at Max’s legs. “Guess that worked.”
“Somewhat,” Max said. “I’m still compensating. That’s why I hit you like a ton of bricks. I’m still mostly bark and not bite.”
“Pretty nasty bark. But why don’t you know this? Where’s Randolph? Where’s the old guy? He’s some character, but he knows his beans.”
“Dead,” Max said.
Rafi took a deep breath and leaned against the hall wall in his turn. “Shit. I liked that guy. He gave me a second chance.”
“Me too,” Max said. “A couple times.”
“How did he die?”
“Shoot-out with the ex-IRA and alternate IRA in Belfast. Our car got caught in the crossfire. I lived and Garry didn’t.”
“Shit,” Nadir said. “Nothing personal. I mean the situation. Bad. That old guy moved the world for you.”
Max said nothing. Just took a deep breath.
Nadir said, “Sorry. I’m guessing the admiration was mutual.”
That brought Max’s head up, business on his mind.
“I don’t know what Garry’s arrangement with you was. I don’t know you … who or what you are or how you’re involved. My legs were smashed and my memory is … a vast wasteland. I know what happened after I woke up from a coma at that Swiss clinic, yet almost nothing of my life before, just the … static … of the inane march of pop culture. Nothing important.”
“So you’re a blank slate?” Nadir said. “I know some things. I know someone wants to kill you bad enough to follow you from Vegas to Europe. You say your legs are iffy and your mind is an empty playground? Cheer up, Kinsella. That’s just the bad news. The good news is you have me to depend on.”
The stranger named Rafi Nadir grinned.
“And my ex thinks I’m utterly undependable.”