“She had special powers of insight that enabled her to traverse the pathways of my memory.” He frowned. “Sadly, she was never the same again.”
“I totally believe that, Max.”
“That I had swallowed an elixir during my illness was a logical answer to the question plaguing me, since my master had devoted years of study and experimentation to the problem of immortality. And also since, when not feverish, I touched his cooking as little as possible.”
“But he had not, I gather, shared the winning recipe for slow aging with you?”
“No. Indeed, I think it entirely possible he never even knew he had succeeded to such an extent. As I’ve mentioned, his mind was a bit foggy with advanced age when I fell ill.”
“So you’re walking around very, very long-lived,” I said, “but with no idea what was in the potion that made you this way?”
“No idea,” he agreed wearily. “I experimented for years. And every few decades, I submit to more tests on my person performed by members of the Collegium in search of an answer.” He rubbed his head as if it was starting to ache, and repeated, “No idea. No idea. I don’t even recall what the elixir tasted like. I was very disoriented for more than a week in my illness, and my master and his servant fed me a variety of brews. It could have been any one of them.”
“Or a combination?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“A combination,” I repeated. “That would certainly explain why he never drank the elixir himself, nor even knew he’d invented it.”
“Having thought of this, for years I experimented with countless combinations of potions, some of them quite unpleasant, before realizing that it made no sense to keep wasting, in this fruitless fashion, the long life with which I’d been gifted.”
“So then you turned to fighting Evil?”
“I made it my priority,” he replied.
“And now…” I said. “Now there’s Evil here.”
“Esther, this is New York. There’s always Evil here. It just happens to be focused in this puzzling manner at the moment.”
“Is this why you’ve come here? The disappearing—Oh, no, it can’t be them. You were already living here when Golly disappeared on Saturday, right?”
“I was indeed. But this is, in the larger sense, why I’ve come. A year ago, I was sent here as a representative of the Collegium, entrusted with the sacred mission of confronting Evil in New York City.”
“How many representatives of the Collegium do we have in New York?”
“Including all five boroughs?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Just me, really.”
“I see.”
“And it turns out that it’s a very big job.”
“No doubt,” I said.
“Much bigger than I anticipated.”
“Indeed.”
“That’s why, last year, I requested an assistant,” Max said.
“Horatio?”
“Hieronymus.”
“Right. Where is he?”
“He may be upstairs asleep. We both keep rooms above the shop, mine on the second floor, his on the third. But he’s a very dedicated, serious young man, deeply devoted to his duty,” Max said. “So it’s possible he’s out patrolling the city, even this late at night.”
“In search of Evil?”
“Yes, he often does that.” Max added, “And sometimes he goes sightseeing.”
“What,” I asked, “does Hieronymus think about our problem?”
“He’s most intrigued. He’s researching vanishings of a similar nature.”
That caught my attention. “Are there vanishings of a similar nature?”
“None whatsoever, so far as he can ascertain.”
“Oh.” I let my shoulders slump.
Seeing this, he added, “But our researches only began a few days ago, Esther. After Miss Gee disappeared. We’ll no doubt find a precedent soon, and that will lead us to a culprit, I promise you! Perhaps even a whole army of culprits!”
“Just one will do for me, Max.”
“Meanwhile, we can rest assured that Cowboy Duke will not perform his disappearing act again while this Evil lurks among us.”
“Barclay Preston-Cole III won’t perform it again, either,” I said. “At least, not until he’s sure it’s safe.” Poor Barclay. I wondered if he’d have to forgo his big break and cancel his appearance at the Magic Cabaret.
“Barclay Preston-Cole III?”
“The Great Hidalgo. I met with him after you left me that clipping.”
“Ah! And, of course, upon learning from the young lady with many facial piercings that you were Miss Gee’s understudy and destined to perform the act in her place, I took steps to discourage you—”
“You terrified me.”
“—from entering the crystal cage. And now that we have disabled it, we will not need to, er, terrorize whoever might have tried to go on in your place.”
Despite the mild night and the warm fire, I felt a chill come over me again. “But you said there’s been another disappearance tonight? You felt it, sensed it?” When he nodded, I asked, “Was it near us, then? Somewhere near the Waldorf?”
“I don’t think so. I think the effect of these disturbances is becoming more noticeable to me as the fabric of this dimension becomes increasingly unstable with each new disappearance that is orchestrated.”
“How do we pinpoint the latest one? I mean, how do we find tonight’s victims so we can help them?” And how would we explain the situation to them without sounding like dangerous crackpots?
He started to rise. “We’ll need to—yah!” Max jumped when the phone rang. He closed his eyes and said, “I believe I shall never get used to that.”
“The phone ringing?”
He nodded, walked over to where it sat on the desk on the other side of the shop and answered it.
I didn’t really hear the conversation, which was brief. After hanging up, he called to me from behind the bookcases separating us.
“Esther?”
“Yes?”
“I know who tonight’s victims are.”
CHAPTER
5
“Dr. Zadok, thank you so much for coming,” said Darling Delilah. “It means so much to me that a busy man like you just dropped everything and came straight to my aid as soon as I called. Of course, I became hysterical as soon as it happened tonight. There was no dealing with me at first. So I can’t tell you what a comfort it is to have you here now. I telephoned you because Satsy said that if anyone can help me, surely it’s you.”
Max nodded and smiled graciously at this effusive speech. Then he turned and asked Satsy, whose bulk required her to sit a little away from the table, “How did you know of me?”
“Well, I come to the bookshop all the time,” Satsy said with a smile, “don’t I? You have the best supply of occult books in the whole city! That’s why I knew we should consult you.”
I was surprised Max could forget someone of Satsy’s remarkable appearance. He said, “I’m sorry, I know most of my regular customers, but I can’t quite place—”
“Oops!” A sheepish chuckle. “I guess I’ve never gone into the shop dressed for work, have I?”
Max beamed at the drag queen. “Ah! That explains it.”
Following Satsy’s advice, Darling Delilah, a performer who’d had the shock of her life earlier tonight, had summoned us here to the Pony Expressive, a nightclub on West Fourth Street. The joint was jumping at the moment, the customers enjoying themselves, the musical act onstage holding their cheerful attention.
I asked Delilah, “I take it no one else here knows what really happened?”
“Nope, just the two boys—and us,” she said, gesturing at the little group seated around our corner table. “The two boys” were part of her act, but they weren’t sitting with us.
In addition to me, Max and Delilah, our table included Khyber Pass, who looked barely twenty and was dressed like a harem boy, if there wa
s such a thing; Whoopsy Daisy, blond, leanly muscled and wearing daisies over his crotch and nothing else; and Saturated Fats—Satsy—who weighed over three hundred pounds and was dressed in a long purple caftan, a long purple wig and long purple eyelashes. All were performers at the club—the exact nature of which I wasn’t sure Max entirely understood. Though I was still wearing Virtue’s costume, even some of the club’s clientele were dressed more colorfully than me, never mind the entertainers.
“And if it wasn’t for all of you,” Delilah said, glancing around gratefully at the five of us, “I don’t know how I’d bear this.”
Darling Delilah’s drag was darn convincing. A lot of women don’t ever look that good—me included. She was about five foot ten, with a slim elegant figure and smooth café-au-lait skin. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders in lush curls, and her coquettishly feminine gestures were charming rather than absurd. She was a sloe-eyed vamp with a sensuous mouth and a stylish evening dress that suited her figure.
Max was quite taken with her. When she patted his hand while expressing more gratitude to him, he forgot his next question and fell into bashful incoherence. He and I were going to have to have a talk later.
“So, Delilah,” I said, “can you walk us through what happened?” Though she’d obviously made an effort to repair her makeup before our arrival, I could see that tears had been part of the hysteria she’d experienced earlier.
“Well, the act started out perfectly normal,” she said. “Exactly the way we’ve been rehearsing it. It’s a new act. Tonight was the debut. We were so…Sorry. Sorry. I won’t…” She blinked away some gathering tears, cleared her throat, and then began describing the act. “The lights come up, the music swells. Sexy Samson is dragging me onstage.” She cast Max a sultry smile and said, “Wearing almost nothing.”
“You or Sexy Samson?” Max asked, taking notes.
“Max,” I said, “how is that relevant?”
“Any detail, however minor it seems, might be relevant,” he said.
Delilah leaned toward him and breathed, “Me.”
He swallowed. “I see.”
“He ties me to the Twin Pillars of Hercules—the two boys, both painted gold. They’re in a number of the acts.” She pointed toward the stage, where they were right now. Sparkly gold all over and, by remarkable coincidence, also wearing almost nothing.
Max watched their antics for a moment, then said, “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Mmm,” said Whoopsy Daisy.
“Please continue,” I said to Delilah.
“Then Sexy Samson whips me.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?” Max repeated.
“I struggle, escape my bonds and start running around the stage while he keeps whipping me, and the two boys move around some of our props,” Delilah said. “We do a levitation routine, some sleight-of-hand, a few rope tricks.”
“Are the two boys involved?” I asked.
“No, they’re basically pretty grips.”
Max said, “I beg your pardon?”
I explained, “Grips are stagehands. They move furniture and props, keep the show flowing.”
Delilah continued. “In the last of the rope tricks, I turn the tables on Samson, and now he winds up tied to the Pillars of Hercules and I whip him. But with each lash of the whip, a piece of his clothing disappears. Vanishes! Until there’s nothing left but his G-string.”
I thought I’d kind of like to come see this act one night, if we ever managed to reunite Darling Delilah with Sexy Samson. For some reason, I wondered how Detective Lopez would react to the Pony Expressive if I brought him with me.
Blandly, I decided. He was a cop, he’d probably seen it all before.
“Then,” said Delilah, “with the final flick of the whip, Samson’s hair disappears.”
“He goes bald?” Max asked.
“No, I cause his long hair to be shorn, thus depriving him of his strength.”
“I see.” Max kept scribbling.
“So I can have my way with him.”
“Of course,” Max said.
“And what is your way?” I asked.
“I put him in the prop box and make him disappear.”
“It’s a gorgeous box,” said Satsy.
“Looks like a tiny Philistine temple,” said Khyber.
“We’ll need to examine it,” said Max. “But please, do continue.”
The rest of her story was quite familiar by now. She somehow knew Samson had disappeared. She felt it when it happened. Opening the tiny temple and searching for him merely confirmed what she already knew.
“Knew,” Delilah repeated. “Then I screamed and became hysterical.”
After a brief period of confusion, she was hauled offstage, and the master of ceremonies told the audience there’d been a little accident during the act, but no serious injuries. The rest of the show continued.
“But I didn’t perform during the second set tonight, of course,” Delilah added, her eyes tearing up again.
After a moment of contemplative silence, Satsy asked, “So what do we do?”
“I’d recommend panicking,” said Whoopsy Daisy, “but we’ve already tried that.”
“Which is why we’ve called you, Dr. Zadok.”
Delilah put her hand over Max’s. “Please, tell me the truth. Do you think Samson is…” Her voice failed her.
“No,” I said firmly. “Definitely not. It’s our theory that the, er, disappearees are just being moved between dimensions, not being hurt.” I had no idea what I was saying, but Delilah looked close to a meltdown now, and I saw no reason to be negative just because we knew nothing.
“Disappearees?” Khyber repeated.
“Do you mean…” said Satsy.
“Are there others?” asked Whoopsy.
I glanced at Max. He looked lost in thought. I glanced around—the club was noisy and no one was paying any attention to us. I gestured for my companions to lean forward so I could lower my voice a bit, then I took a deep breath and explained everything. After their initial exclamations of shock upon learning that Sexy Samson was the fourth victim, they listened to me in taut, stunned silence. When I finished my account of the scant and bizarre facts, everyone remained quiet for a moment.
Then Whoopsy zeroed in on what he found to be the most startling fact of all: “So Golly Gee is really a woman? I would have sworn that was just bad drag!”
“Girlfriend, tragic drag,” said Satsy.
The phone rang, waking me up. Without opening my eyes, I fumbled for it on the nightstand beside my bed. “Hullo,” I mumbled.
“You’re through in this business! Do you hear me? Through! Through! THROUGH!”
Needless to say, I was by now holding the phone well away from my ear. When gurgling sounds followed these threats, as if my caller was strangling on her own rage, I brought the receiver within speaking distance and said, “Thank you for your concern, Matilda. Yes, I’m still feeling quite weak.”
“I’m at the theater, Esther! I’ve seen the crystal cage!” Gaining volume again, she screamed, “What the hell do you think you’re up to?”
I was so tired that, for a moment, I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I remembered the night’s events, including watching Max turn the expensive prop into a twisted, charred vestige of its former self. I sat up in bed, rubbed a hand over my face and tried to think while my producer kept abusing her vocal cords.
When there was a break in the regularly scheduled programming, I said, not even needing to disguise my voice to sound frail and shaky, “What are you talking about, Matilda?”
It took a little time to convince her of my ignorance; but, hey, I’m an actress, I’m good at this. She may not have abandoned her suspicions, but she did at least abandon her accusations.
In a tone that was only middling hostile now, she informed me the crystal cage was on its way back to Magic Magnus’s shop for repairs. “Again, Esther.”
“Maybe it would be a good idea to ha
ve two of them,” I said.
“We can’t afford two of them!”
“Does Magnus think he can fix it?” But preferably not very soon? I thought, biting my lip.
“He thinks so. For a sum equivalent to the national debt of Thailand.”
“When will it be ready?” My stomach churned.
“I don’t know. Magnus says he’s giving it top priority. But it would be too much trouble for him to give me an ETA, of course.”
Top priority. I might not have as much time as I’d hoped.
Matilda said, “But I want to make one thing very clear to you, Esther.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t care if you’ve got the plague. When that prop box is returned to us, you’d better be here, waiting for it, in costume and ready for a complete run-through of the show.”
“I will be.” I crossed my fingers.
“Because if you’re not—”
“I will be,” I repeated, hoping it was true.
“I swear on my husband’s grave—”
I frowned. “Uh, did Joe die since last night?”
“—I will not only fire you—”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“—I will not only ruin your name and make sure no respectable producer ever gives you another job—” she continued, gathering steam.
“Matilda…”
“—I will not just destroy your career to such an extent that you’ll feel lucky to play a condom in a porn film—”
“Do they use condoms in porn films?”
“I will sue you, Esther. For every penny you’ve got—”
“I don’t have many pennies, I work for you,” I muttered.
“—and for every penny you may ever earn. I will sue you all the way through the end of this lifetime and into the next one. My lawyer will pursue you through eternity, be it through heaven or through hell!”
I’d had no idea she was so religious.
“Do you hear me?” she shrieked.
“If I don’t show up for work when the crystal cage is ready, you’ll sue me,” I said.
“And fire you!” she shouted.
“Yes, I hear you. Everyone south of Forty-second Street can probably hear you,” I said. “I understand the terms. And now, Matilda, I am extremely ill and in no condition to continue this chat, so I’m hanging up. Goodbye.”
Disappearing Nightly Page 8