Matilda plowed on. “If you upset Joe like this again—”
“Me?” I blurted. “He was the one who—”
“He has a very sensitive, artistic nature, and this ridiculous stunt that Golly pulled has ruined his nerves. He has given everything to this show, Esther.”
“Uh-huh.” I flushed the toilet and rose wearily.
“He has sacrificed his own career opportunities as a solo act for the good of the show.”
“Oh, come on.” I threw her an openly skeptical look before lurching toward the sink.
“He’s acquired all-new equipment, studied new techniques, worked with a coach, developed new standards, trained day and night, refined his abilities. And in return, you completely disrupt a dress rehearsal and throw a hysterical fit at the climax of the play!”
“He was the one who wouldn’t perform, wouldn’t even rehearse after Golly—”
“Don’t mention her name!” Matilda screamed. “I never want to hear her name again!”
I splashed cold water on my face and rinsed out my mouth. Feeling a little more rational, I said, “I’m sorry about what happened today. If I told you why I got so scared…well, it would only make things worse, especially for Joe.”
She glared at me. “I need to know what you intend to do about tonight.”
“I intend to go on,” I said with determination.
“Fine. Can we try that last scene again, then?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“There’s something I have to do before tonight.”
“What? In God’s name, what?”
I looked at my dripping image in the mirror. “I have to talk to the Great Hidalgo.”
It took all afternoon to hunt him up via various booking agencies (all of whom seemed stunned that anyone was interested in the Great Hidalgo). I finally got him on the phone, and he agreed to meet me at Fraunces Tavern, a renovated eighteenth-century establishment down in the Financial District. A nostalgic reminder of what Old New York must have been like two centuries and umpteen million people ago, the tavern’s location (and prices) virtually guarantee that you never bump into starving actors there. The Great Hidalgo, it turned out, was only a part-time magician; his real name was Barclay Preston-Cole III, and he worked for his father’s finance company.
“Miss Diamond?” A mousy young man approached my table in the corner.
“Barclay?” I didn’t even consider calling him Mr. Preston-Cole. He looked about sixteen, despite his twelve-hundred-dollar suit and his Rolex watch. He was a little taller than me, with wavy brown hair, fair skin, pink lips and big, brown, cow-like eyes. Kind of cute in a sensitive way. “Have a seat,” I said. I waved to the waiter and asked Barclay, “Are you old enough to drink?”
He flushed. “I’m twenty-two.”
He ordered a white wine spritzer, then insisted on picking up the tab for both our drinks. I let him. Mom had told me that the man always paid, and common sense told me that Wall Street bankers always paid.
“So, Barclay,” I said after he had relaxed a bit, “tell me about that society kid’s birthday party.”
He turned red again. “Oh God. Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod.” He looked around as if afraid we were being spied on, then leaned forward and whispered, “I swear to you, I’ll never do it again. Just don’t tell my father.”
I tried to look as if I was considering his request. “Well, I’ll have to know all the details before I make any promises.”
He swallowed and asked, “Who are you, anyhow? CIA? FBI? National Security Agency? NASA?”
The lad’s imagination was spinning out of control. “I’m with Equity,” I said.
“The actors’ union?” His voice broke. Everyone’s afraid of Equity.
“Special Investigative Branch.” Okay, I exaggerated a little. So sue me.
“Oh my God! I’m never going to work again, am I?” Barclay wailed.
“What do you care? You’ve got a good job on Wall Street. Nice office, your own secretary, expense account—”
“How do you know all of this?” he cried.
It had been a safe guess, but I said, “We have our ways.”
“I swear to you, I don’t know what happened! It’s not my fault!”
“Tell me about it,” I urged.
“I was really starting to get somewhere,” he said mournfully. “The act was getting better. All my hard work was beginning to pay off. I just got my first ever real booking!”
“Real booking?”
“You know, from strangers instead of society girls and old school chums.”
“Oh.”
“I’m supposed to perform at the Magic Cabaret on Saturday. It’s my big break! What am I going to do?”
“Can you work alone?”
“Not really. Besides, the disappearing act was my big finish, my best illusion! How can I face an audience without it?”
Seeing he was close to tears, I said, “This means a lot to you.”
He nodded. “I hate being a Preston-Cole. I hate banking and finance! All I’ve ever wanted to be is a conjurer. I’ve given everything to my art, and now it’s destroyed me!” He flung himself across the table and grabbed my hand. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“What happened to your assistant?” I countered, squeezing his hand as hard as I could. He winced.
“She vanished, I tell you! I use a simple, old-fashioned prop box for the disappearing act. I put Clarisse inside, and she never came out. The box never left my sight, and there was nowhere for her to go.” He downed half his spritzer in a single gulp. “I tore the thing apart, but she wasn’t inside. Then things got really grim. Little Betsy Broadmore started wailing like the damned, the Biddle-Bond twins physically attacked me, and the nanny kept screaming that I should be sued for reckless endangerment.”
“I see.”
“I just don’t understand what could have happened. Clarisse and I rehearsed that illusion dozens of times!” He downed the rest of his spritzer and reached for my drink.
“Could Clarisse be playing some sort of malicious joke on you?”
“She’s not that clever. Anyhow, Adelaide Mercer’s bridal shower was yesterday, and Clarisse never would have willingly missed that. They’re bitter enemies.”
Overlooking the baffling mores of the upper classes, I asked, “Was she nervous about your first real booking—performing at the Magic Cabaret?”
“No, she was looking forward to it. Planning what to do with her hair and makeup, that sort of thing.”
Still searching for a clue, I said, “You said your father doesn’t know about what’s happened?”
Barclay finished my wine. “He doesn’t even know I still perform. I promised to give it up after I graduated from Yale.”
“What about Clarisse’s family? Surely they’re worried about her?”
“The Stauntons? They’re still in Europe.” He started turning red again. “It’s a big apartment, but they’re bound to notice she’s missing when they get back, don’t you think? What am I going to tell them?”
“That’s a tough question.” I frowned at the table and wondered what logical conclusions could be drawn from any of this.
“Miss Diamond, why is Equity investigating this? I mean, Clarisse Staunton and I aren’t even members.”
I decided to tell him. He could obviously keep a secret, and perhaps his magician’s mind would recognize some common clue in the two cases that had eluded me. He ordered another drink (a Scotch and soda this time) when I told him about Golly, and he looked positively ill by the time I told him about the second message I had received before this morning’s rehearsal.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’m going to get into the cage tonight. What choice do I have?”
“You mustn’t! You’ll go wherever the other two went!”
“It could be a coincidence,” I said.
“You don’t believe that.”
“I find
it a lot harder to believe that the laws of physics have changed since last week.”
“Can’t you talk to Herlihy about this?”
“He’s hysterical,” I said.
“I don’t blame him. You have no idea what it feels like.”
“I can imagine how you feel.”
“No, I mean, what it feels like to make a woman disappear. What it felt like the moment she vanished. Because, you see, I knew. Before she failed to reappear, before I tore apart the box looking for her, I knew she had vanished for real. I felt it somehow.” He buried his head in his hands and mumbled, “I don’t know. There must be some kind of atmospheric disturbance or molecular dissolution when they dematerialize.”
“You have been watching way too much of the Sci-Fi Channel,” I said, not liking how believable he was making this lunacy sound to me.
“Then how do you explain it?” he shot back.
“I don’t know, but if I work on it long enough, I’ll think of something.”
“How long is ‘long enough’?” He looked at his watch. “You’ve got two hours till show time.”
Dressed in Virtue’s Act One finery, I stared at myself in the dressing room mirror and listened to the intercom as Joe and the chorus performed the opening number. I had about ten minutes, and I was so nervous I couldn’t remember a single line, lyric or piece of blocking.
“Calm down,” I ordered my reflection in a dry, husky voice that would never carry past the first three rows. Nothing eased my tension, not breathing exercises, vocalization, meditation or stretching. Not herbal tea, nor even the feel of Magic Magnus’s protective crystal resting against my skin.
I tried to look at the positive side of things. The vanishing act was almost two hours away. Anything could happen between now and then. Why, Joe was so nervous, he’d probably stab me or set me on fire before I had a chance to get into the crystal cage….
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” I told my hollow-eyed, red-cheeked, perspiring reflection. I was afraid I was going to toss my cookies again.
I turned away from the mirror just as a breeze ruffled my hair and made my wispy costume flutter. I looked up at the room’s single window. It was closed, as always. Judging by the intensity of the odors in the women’s dressing room, we figured that the window had been painted shut in Fiorello LaGuardia’s time. I looked over my shoulder. No, the door was closed, too.
“Pssst!”
“Yah!” I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Pssst! Over here!”
I looked around the room but saw no one. It was a man’s voice, though. I picked up a blow-dryer and waved it like a weapon. “Where are you?”
“I’m sorry. I’m having trouble materializing.”
“What?”
“If you’ll just be patient…”
“Patient?” I bleated. “Who is this? What’s going on?”
A voice behind me said, “Ahhh. There we go.”
I whirled and faced him, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. He had come out of nowhere! “Who are you?” I snarled with false bravado. “How did you get in here?”
“I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t intend to intrude this way,” he said. “I meant to wait for you outside earlier, but I’m running late today.” His voice was soft and scholarly, and he spoke with a slight foreign accent.
“Wait for me? Why do you—?” I stopped and stared. He was an absurd-looking figure. A small, slightly chubby white man, at least seventy years old, with unkempt white hair and a beard, he wore a fedora and a duster. “It’s you!” I screeched.
“We must talk. You can’t—”
“You!” I shrieked again, beside myself. Finally, here was someone upon whom I could vent my wrath. Surely this was all his fault. “Who are you? Why are you after me?”
“After you?” Great, furry, white brows swooped down when he frowned. “I assure you—”
“Writing mysterious notes! Sending me newspaper clippings! Lurking around the theater!”
“Lurking? I never—”
“I’ll have you arrested, you pervert!”
His eyes widened. They were sky blue, as clear and round as a child’s. “Pervert? I think you misunderstand—”
“How did you get in here?” I demanded, pointing the hair dryer at him.
“Now, let’s stay calm,” he urged, backing up.
“Freeze!” My hand tightened on the blow-dryer’s grip. I must have pressed the “on” switch, because it roared and started shooting hot air at the stranger.
“Arrrgh!” He dropped to the floor.
I squealed in surprise and hit him with the thing. His fedora flew off, and he crouched there, clutching his forehead while his long white hair blew around him in a wild torrent.
“Wait!” he cried. “I’m trying to help you!”
“By turning me into a nervous wreck? If I wanted that kind of help, I’d call my mother!”
“Excuse me?” He looked up, squinting against the blast of hot air. “Could you possibly turn that thing off?”
“Huh? Oh. All right,” I said, “but make one false move and you’re dead, pal. I’m obliged to warn you that I’ve got a black belt in kung fu.” I turned off the machine.
“So have I,” he said absently, hauling himself to his feet.
“Oh.” This worried me, since I had been lying.
“Now can we please talk? We have very little time.”
“How did you get past the guard at the stage door?”
“I transmuted and slipped through the wall. Now you must listen—”
“This wall?” I pointed to the foot-thick brick wall.
“Yes. I’m here to tell you that you mustn’t participate—”
“Wait just a goddamn minute. You’re trying to tell me you simply walked through this wall?” I thumped it with my fist.
“‘Walk’ would be a misstatement.”
“Oh, God forbid we should have a misstatement here. How would you put it?”
He stroked his beard. “Well, in classical terms, it’s generally referred to as transference, although the development of modern psychology has made that phrase a trifle—”
“Okay, buddy, that’s it. I’m calling Lopez.”
“Lopez?”
“The cop investigating—if you can call it that—Golly Gee’s disappearance.”
“No! You mustn’t!”
“Don’t touch me!”
“No police!” he cried, lunging for me.
I screamed and clobbered him with the hair dryer again.
“Ow! God’s teeth, that hurts!”
“God’s teeth?” I blurted. “No one has talked like that since the Restoration dramatists.”
“I’m a very busy man,” he explained. “I find it difficult to keep up with trends.”
“Never mind that. What about Golly? Are you responsible for what happened to her?”
“No, of course not.” He winced and rubbed his forehead. “I’m going to have a considerable lump, you know.”
“Serves you right.”
Over the intercom, the voices of the chorus swelled with the final notes of the opening number. The faint applause sounded like static. Just a couple of minutes left before my entrance.
I knew I should call our sole security guard and have the old man arrested, or at least thrown out of the building. But I had a feeling that this strange person could answer the question that was plaguing me. “What happened to Golly?”
“She vanished, of course.”
The brief silence on the intercom echoed through the room.
“What do you mean, ‘of course’? People don’t just vanish,” I snapped.
“Do you mind if I sit down, Miss Diamond? I’m somewhat fatigued. I find transmutation rather difficult.” He slumped into a chair in front of the mirrors.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“My name is Maximillian Zadok.”
“M.Z.”
“Yes.”
“What are yo
u doing here?”
He blinked. “Surely that’s obvious. I’ve come to stop you from going onstage tonight.”
I backed away from him. “Did you try to stop Golly, too?”
He shook his head and frowned. “No. I didn’t know she was in any danger. It was her disappearance that alerted me to the Evil among us.”
“There you go again.” I was annoyed. “Evil?”
“Yes!”
I studied him closely. “Look, are you on some kind of medication? Did you maybe forget to take your Thorazine or something?”
“No, no, no! I assure you, I’m quite sane. And frankly, considering the life I’ve led, that’s saying a great deal.” He shot to his feet with surprising speed and seized me by the shoulders. “Please, listen to me, Miss Diamond. I became alarmed as soon as I realized you intended to go onstage in Miss Gee’s place. You must believe me when I say that if you do that, you risk meeting the same fate that she did.”
“What was her fate? Where is she?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “I’m afraid I don’t know. Yet.”
My heart was thundering inside Virtue’s dress. My voice was barely a whisper. “Is she dead?”
“Not necessarily.” He was apparently trying to be comforting.
The Prince’s voice crackled over the intercom. “I’m looking for a woman of virtue,” he proclaimed.
My vision swam. “That’s my warning cue. I’m on in a minute. I have to go.”
“No! Please! You must believe me! She really did vanish! And so did the Great Hidalgo’s assistant!”
“I’ve got to go on. I have no choice,” I hissed, trying to get away from him.
He threw his arms around me. I struggled. He tripped me and bore me down to the floor. “Of course you have a choice! Especially considering what they’re paying you!”
I gasped and tried to roll away. “How do you know what they pay me?” I stuck an elbow in his eye.
“Please, we must stop this,” he said frantically. “I deplore violence!” Then he pulled my hair and got me in a half nelson.
“Ow! Stop it! They’re in the middle of a performance. If I don’t go on now, my career will be over! I’ll be lucky to play a cavity in a toothpaste commercial!”
“No! The performance must be stopped. There is great danger here. Oof,” he added as I kneed him in the stomach.
Disappearing Nightly Page 4