Nor could we afford to postpone our plans. The perpetrator of these disappearances had to be stopped as soon as possible. We hoped to rescue all the disappearees; but even if the victims didn’t survive for long after disappearing, there was still a chance we could rescue tonight’s victim—if we acted fast.
So now Lysander and I, wearing dark clothing and low-brimmed hats from Max’s personal collection, strolled arm in arm along Worth Street trying to look inconspicuous. I was glad Magnus’s shop wasn’t on one of the more fashionable streets in Tribeca. It would have been impossible to break into it unnoticed if it had been two doors down from Robert De Niro’s restaurant on Greenwich Street or squatting amidst some of the hot spots on Hudson.
As it was, even after midnight, we had to stroll tensely up and down the street a few times before it was deserted enough for us to approach the magic shop without risk of exposure. I kept a lookout while Lysander, pretending to browse the dark window, muttered incantations to open the locked door. We’d decided he should do this instead of Max, in case we were seen—or in case there was a security camera somewhere—since Max was so distinctive-looking and was known to Detective Lopez. Lysander was bitter about this part of the plan. However, we kept our heads down and our fedoras pulled low, and I thought it unlikely that we could be identified.
After a moment, I heard the clatter and click of the door unlocking. I looked over my shoulder to see it swing open by itself. Though I’d been expecting it, the sight still made me feel disoriented and a little jumpy.
We entered the shop and closed the door behind us. I autodialed Barclay’s number on my cell phone. He and Max were around the corner, awaiting our signal. When Barclay answered his phone, I said, “All clear. Meet us inside.”
“Roger. Over and out.”
“I can’t see a thing,” said Lysander.
“No light,” I warned, putting my phone in my pocket. “Not until we get upstairs.” The windows above the ground floor were all covered, but someone might see us if we used a flashlight down here.
“Are the stairs this way?” Lysander asked.
“Um…”
“And where are you?”
“Maybe you should hold still for now.”
“If I could just orient my—oof!”
A split second after he bumped into something, a huge, glowing monster face appeared out of the darkness. It laughed and waved hideous, hairy spider legs at us while bells clanged overhead.
“Arrgghh!” Lysander screamed.
“Yaaagh!” I screamed.
The door opened. Max and Barclay came racing into the shop. They saw the thing confronting us and both started screaming, too.
After a few seconds of mindless terror, I realized it was a stage prop. A pretty silly-looking one, in fact. But effective, appearing suddenly out of the dark as it had. Very effective, considering the way Lysander was still screaming.
In the glow it gave off, I oriented myself and saw the stairs leading up to the second floor. “Come on!” I shouted at my companions. “Up there!”
“That’s just…evil!” Barclay said, trying to shake off his shock. He nervously adjusted the fedora he was wearing.
“Lysander,” I said.
“I wonder if something like that would work in my store?” Max mused. “A most effective deterrent. Any sensible thief would leave immediately.”
“Lysander!” I said.
Barclay asked, “Er, does that mean we should leave immediately?”
“No,” Max said. “We could not hope that our presence here would go undetected for long. Not considering the strength and cunning of our adversary.”
“Thanks to Stealthy Feet over here,” I grumbled, taking Lysander’s arm, “our secret infiltration lasted all of five seconds.”
“Still, we must attempt to search the building before Magnus interferes,” Max said. “Excelsior!”
I had to admire his courage as he charged up those stairs, the flaps of his duster flying, his hat set at a rakish angle. He was unarmed, half Magnus’s size, and about three hundred and ten years his senior, but those disadvantages didn’t even make him pause.
Barclay dashed after him. I dragged Lysander with me. “Come on,” I urged, “keep up!”
When Max reached the top of the stairs, he shouted down to me, “You’re right! I hear voices and footsteps overhead! I’m going up!”
“Be careful!” Using the railing to guide me, I hauled Lysander the rest of the way up the dark stairs.
When we reached the landing, I let go of Altoona’s savior and fumbled around for the stairwell light, since our presence was no secret to anyone by now. I could hear scrambling and shrieking overhead, Max’s thunderous progress up the stairs, and Barclay cursing as he stumbled.
I flicked the light on, started up the next flight of stairs, and looked up just in time to see Max reach the third floor. Then a large, dense, squirming mass of something fell down on him from overhead, hissing and writhing. Snakes! He screamed and fell backward, tumbling down the stairs and taking Barclay with him. I heard louder screaming overhead and many feet racing upstairs to the next floor, but I didn’t really pay attention. Seeing Max and Barclay hurtling toward me in a rolling mass of writhing, hissing snakes terrified me into sheer horrified paralysis. I was standing rock still, openmouthed and flat-footed when the whole messy heap smashed into me.
I fell backward down the stairs, then hit the floor with an agonizing crash that should have broken every bone in my body, especially with the weight of two grown men on top of me. After a moment of panicky revulsion, I realized that the “snake” on my face was plastic. As soon as the air puffing it up finished escaping, it stopped squirming and hissing. Now it lay over my nose and mouth like a plastic baggy, suffocating me. I started shoving clumsily at Barclay and Max, eager to free an arm and remove the plastic snake from my face before I passed out.
It took several long, painful, expletive-filled moments for the three of us to sort out our tangled limbs and get up off the floor. Then Barclay slipped on the slick bits of deflated plastic that were now everywhere and fell back down. He lay there for a minute, winded and disheartened.
“Come on, you three!” Lysander cried. “Don’t just muddle around down here! I hear people in distress up there! Into the breach!” He charged up the stairs.
Max and I helped Barclay off the floor.
“Okay,” Barclay said, looking like he might vomit. “I’m…I’m…I’m ready.”
“Take a moment,” Max panted. “Get your breath back.”
“I think I have a concussion,” I said.
“You know what’s interesting about this?” Max said.
“There’s something interesting about this?” I said.
“What’s interesting is that Magnus has gone to a lot of trouble to discourage unauthorized visitors after hours, yet none of these elaborate wards is magical in nature.”
“You mean,” Barclay said, holding on to his ribs as if they hurt a lot, “these are the sort of booby-traps he’d install if he was exactly what he says he is—a magician who’s retired from the stage?”
“Yes!”
“But these, er, wards are elaborate, Max, as you said.” I rubbed my aching head. “What has he got here, or what is he doing here, that’s so secret he’s going to this much trouble to protect it?”
We heard more screaming overhead. Then Lysander shouted, “Max! Help! Help!”
“We’re about to find out!” Max turned and headed up the stairs again.
We followed. We reached the top of the stairs, rounded the corner, and climbed the next flight, following the sounds of Lysander’s shouts, some thuds and a number of other people shouting. When we reached the fourth floor, we were confronted by a confusing scene.
Lysander lay on the floor, unconscious. Eight people crowded around him. One was the snake-wrapped lady I had seen before. She and her snake looked much as they had the last time we’d met. She and five of the people were Asian. The
other two people, a man and a woman, looked Middle Eastern. No one was speaking English. One of the Asian women was standing over Lysander with what appeared to be a long, thick, bamboo pole. She had apparently clubbed him. Now she was arguing with a man who was kneeling over him, examining his head injury. When the woman with the deadly pole saw us, she dropped it, raised her hands as if we were pointing guns at her, and spoke rapidly to us with obvious anxiety. I wasn’t sure what the language was. She seemed to be disclaiming all knowledge of how Lysander had wound up unconscious at her feet while she held a heavy weapon over his head.
The other people in the group raised their hands, too, evidently thinking this a wise posture to assume in such awkward circumstances.
“They seem to be surrendering to us,” Barclay said.
“They’re under the impression that we’re immigration authorities,” Max said.
I looked at him. “How do you know that?”
My question was answered when he started conversing with the six Asians in their own language, which he later identified to me as a dialect of Chinese. The other two people spoke Farsi, which was not a language Max knew, but they had enough Arabic to communicate reasonably well with him.
“I always meant to learn another language,” Barclay said wistfully.
After several minutes of discussion, Max said to Barclay and me, “I’m afraid we’ve been operating under a misapprehension. These people are neither Magnus’s victims nor his partners in a scheme to inflict harm on anyone. They’re performers—magicians and illusionists—who’ve been persecuted in their own countries. Magnus uses the cover of his worldwide business, which includes receiving shipments and supplies from many different countries, to smuggle them into the U.S., where they may pursue their profession without fear of oppression.”
“He’s…smuggling magic acts into the country?” I said.
“Persecuted magic acts,” Max said. “From countries ruled by governments that do not protect the rights of all artistes to express themselves through their work. Once he gets them into the U.S., they hide here in the upper floors of the shop until he can place them discreetly in shows around the country. With, I assume, forged immigration papers.”
“He’s smuggling magic acts?” I repeated.
Noting my incredulity, the lady who had clubbed Lysander picked up her big bamboo pole again.
I fell back a step. “Now wait a minute!”
Her eyes widened and she spoke in a nervous tone and made a gesture indicating she intended no harm. Everyone else made similar gestures and comments. Then she balanced the pole on the floor and climbed up it. When she was about six feet off the ground, she turned upside down. Then she did a little flip and landed on the floor while holding the pole across her back. She said something and indicated that Max should translate.
“She says she can make the pole disappear.” He added, “There is, I gather, a suggestive sexuality about that portion of the act which disturbed the authorities in her native land.”
“I see.”
“In any case, she says she can’t demonstrate the disappearing illusion here, because she needs more props and the right set for it.”
“Speaking of disappearing,” I said, “we can’t assume this means Magnus isn’t guilty. We know he had access to at least two of the prop boxes involved in the disappearances.”
“Hmm, yes, we need to question him.”
Barclay’s eyes widened as we heard a bellow from below and someone started charging noisily up the stairs. “I think now’s our chance.”
Magnus appeared at the top of the stairs moments later, his hair wild, his teeth bared, his eyes menacing. He was carrying a medieval-looking mace (a mace? I thought) and making guttural noises. He stopped in his tracks when he saw all of us.
“Dear me,” said Max, “this is rather awkward.”
When Magnus recognized me, his eyes bulged. Then he dropped his mace on the floor. “I might have guessed.”
“You thought I did what?” Magnus said.
Max explained our concerns again.
“You thought I did what?” Magnus said again.
He, Max, Barclay, Lysander and I were sitting in his office downstairs as Max attempted to make him understand why we had broken into the magic shop after midnight and terrified his illegal aliens. Lysander was sitting morosely in the corner clutching his aching head while Max walked Magnus through the basic facts of our problem once more.
Then Magic Magnus said to me, “Exactly what kind of lunatic fringe are you involved in? I mean, sure, I thought you were a little weird, but I had no idea….”
“He’s telling you the truth,” I said wearily.
Magnus asked me, “Tell me, that cop who’s hot for you—does he know you’re this troubled?”
“It was my impression, too, that Detective Lopez rather likes Esther,” Max said chattily. “But apparently this attraction comes into conflict with his duty, and he seems to be, at heart, a serious young man devoted to his profession.”
“Look, I don’t mean to be judgmental,” Magnus said, “but I must ask—are you all insane?”
“You are the only person we’ve come across who had access to all the prop boxes,” I said testily.
“All of them?” He frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Um…” I looked at Max. He looked at Barclay.
“No, I’m asking seriously,” Magnus said. “If it’s true, if you found an evidence trail leading to me, then I want to know about it. Because that cop—Lopez?—will find it, too. He seems like a thorough son of a bitch. And forewarned is forearmed. I don’t want to get arrested for something I didn’t do.” He looked upward for a moment and added, “I also don’t want to get arrested for what I am doing. Are we clear on that?”
“You mean…” I frowned. “You want to cooperate with our investigation?”
“‘Want’ would be a wild exaggeration,” he said. “But I have decided to cooperate, in order to serve my own interests—i.e., avoiding nasty surprises from the cops. So, how many vanishing boxes are involved. Four, you said?”
“Five, as of tonight,” Max replied. “But we don’t yet know who the fifth victim is.”
“Well, Joe and Barclay got their boxes from me, we all know that,” Magnus said. “Give me the names of the other two magicians.”
He’d never heard of Duke Dempsey or Darling Delilah. Duke’s rhinestone-studded horse and Delilah’s little Philistine temple sounded unfamiliar to him—though he’d like to see them sometime, he said with professional interest.
“You’re bluffing,” I said, trying to sound cop-like. “Hoping to get rid of us.”
“Esther, I am decidedly eager to get rid of you. But what would be the point of my bluffing, when you’re certainly going to ask your friends if they know me?”
“Oh. Right.”
“And they’re going to tell you they don’t know me. I’m not the, er, evil perpetrator you’re looking for, folks.” Seeing our dejected postures, he sighed. “Look, if you can give me some more details about the disappearances, maybe I can figure out how it was done.”
Max shook his head. “It wasn’t done your way, young man. It was done my way.”
“It looks like we’ve wasted an evening,” I said morosely.
“And I’m going to waste tomorrow morning cleaning up the mess you’ve made of my place,” Magnus grumbled.
“Serves you right,” I said. “Those hokey booby-traps.”
He grinned. “And you only had time to stumble into a couple of them.”
My cell phone rang. I glanced at the time—nearly two o’clock in the morning—and realized who must be calling. “Hello?”
“Esther, it’s Satsy. I’ve just come out onto the street for a few minutes to check my call log. You were trying to reach me a few hours ago?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “It’s been a busy night. We’ll swing by the club and make a report.” So much for going straight home and to bed, I thought.
“We’ll be here.”
“Time to go,” Max said. He settled his hat on his head. We all did the same, including Lysander.
Magnus looked at our hats and asked, “Is there some kind of dress code in your group?”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I said to him.
“And why is your face all dirty, Esther?”
I brushed self-consciously at my cheek. Ink wasn’t easy to wash off. “I won’t tell anyone you’re smuggling illegal aliens into the country—”
“Persecuted magic acts,” he corrected me.
“—if you don’t tell Matilda the crystal cage is ready until I tell you it’s okay to do so. Agreed?”
“I can’t stall her forever,” he warned me.
“I know. But I need a little more time. And you don’t want to do time. So do we have a deal?”
He sighed and nodded. “We have a deal.”
So one problem was solved, at least. However, by now, it seemed like an awfully small problem.
CHAPTER
11
It seemed I had only just fallen asleep—in a post-dawn, headlong crash into my mattress—when my doorbell rang. The loud, bone-jarring buzz made my whole body do an improbable leap straight up into the air. I landed facedown on my bed and contemplated staying there. Forever.
Predictably, though, the buzzer disturbed me again a minute later. I groaned and heaved myself out of bed. As I headed for the bedroom door, staggering with exhaustion and pain—last night’s adventures at the magic shop had taken their toll on my body—I caught a glimpse of myself in the dresser mirror and flinched.
I was a sight that would send small children fleeing in terror. My hair was matted. There was a red scrunchy so thoroughly woven into the tangles that I didn’t even bother trying to get it out. I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, navy blue sweatpants and a gray T-shirt. The shirt was stained with the glass of red wine I’d spilled on myself during our war council at the Pony Expressive around three o’clock in the morning. There was a big, dark bruise on my arm, from last night’s tumble down Magnus’s stairs; I could feel other bruises elsewhere, hidden beneath my wrinkled, dirty clothing. My face was pale and still liberally smeared with tabloid ink. My eyes were bloodshot, puffy, and had dark circles under them. I looked like some hideous hag from the bizarre drawings reproduced in Max’s occult books.
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