The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  Will I recognize her? I know she resembles Tim in posture and face, that her hair's the same length, that she's shorter but moves in a similar way. I recall how I mistook her on Mission Street the day I cleaned out Tim's studio. Yes, I think, if I see her I'll know her right away.

  Eyes shielded by my heaviest shades, I commence my search, pausing every so often to peer into shops. The crafts stores don't interest me, but I'm impressed by the multitude of galleries. According to my guidebook, San Miguel is a town obsessed by art. For years I've heard about the Instituto Allende, which attracts painters from all over the world. When I find it, I'm touched; it's small, beautifully situated. San Miguel, I understand, is a city of colors—contrasting pinks, ivories, mustards, terra-cottas. Most likely it's these chalk hues that draw the artists. Still I'm content with the wondrous clarity of the light. The town strikes me as the perfect place for a surprise encounter, an unexpected meeting with a lover or an enemy.

  Four days without success—I'm discouraged. At dusk, seated by El Jardin, nursing a coffee, I despair of accomplishing my mission. Exhausted by lengthy walks and late nights spent in earsplitting discos, I ask myself whether the time hasn't come to give it up. I'm here, after all, only because someone I don't know told someone else he thought he saw Ariane. Maybe he did, and she's moved on. Maybe she's here, and doesn't go out. Maybe she was never here and the sighting was a mistake. Still I'm haunted by the coincidence with Tim's remark that he would retire to San Miguel when he gave up working the Gulch.

  Suddenly it comes back to me—the smile on his face when he told me he had a house picked out. I think: That's it! It wasn't just a fantasy; he and Ariane had it planned. They would come here together. Perhaps they already owned the house.

  I struggle to recall Tim's description: church and jacaranda tree on the corner, sharp angle in a narrow street, old stone wall, carved wooden door with coat of arms above, courtyard "dripping with bougainvillaea," pots overflowing with flowers hanging from iron balustrades.

  I grow excited. This is a place I know, a place I've passed numerous times! I sit back, try to visualize it, then understand my error. Of course I know it! It's a generic description applicable to nearly every block in town. All of San Miguel looks like that. Have I yet walked down a street here that doesn't?

  What to do? I ask myself how Joel would find the house, or Hilly, San Francisco's new "smartest cop." It's easy: go to the registry of deeds, backtrack house sales, discover if anyone named Lovsey owns property here. I know I can't do that myself, but I can hire someone who can. Excited again, I gulp down my coffee and walk swiftly back to my hotel, where, with the assistance of the phone book, I find a single listing under the rubric Agencias de Detectivos: Julio Manolo Mondonado, "especialista en investigaciones matrirnoniales."

  Sitting in his shabby office across from the railroad station, I feel like a character in a cheap Mexican film. Manolo, on the other side of the desk, is a hulk, has a thick accent, an even thicker musklike scent, a lounge lizard's mat of shiny black hair and a mustache so wide, bushy and black as to rival the tail of a mink. But more off-putting than his facial hair and odor is the complicated contraption of straps that crisscross his shirt, from which an enormous black revolver protrudes. I wonder: Is this what a Mexican client expects in a private eye?

  "Call me Paco," he says, with a fake grin. My new friend, I surmise, fancies himself quite the ladies' man. A pale, anorexic young thing, introduced as María, sits slumped beside his desk interpreting and scribbling notes as we converse.

  I peer around. The windows are filthy, the venetian blinds uneven and cracked. A dusty fan hangs lifeless from the ceiling. A huge, black, scarred, old double-door safe broods against one wall.

  As I explain what I want, Paco leans back, grin fixed upon his face. When I'm finished, he sits straight again, furrows his brow, then quotes me the gringo price: "A thousand dollars U.S."

  "That's crazy," I tell him, standing.

  "Please, not so fast. We will make you a courtesy accommodation."

  "How much?"

  He strokes his chin. "If my operative takes care of it"—he gestures toward María—"for you, señora, two hundred cash up front. A very good price for a records search. Believe me, we don't need business here."

  Still way too much, but I agree since it's a task I can't accomplish myself. Handing over the money, meeting María's submissive eyes, I smile at the notion that she's an "operative."

  After a trek around town and a leisurely lunch, I find María waiting in the lobby of my hotel.

  The moment she spots me she shakes her head. "No owner by that name," she says meekly. "I am sorry."

  I thank her, turn to go upstairs, when I feel her tug at my sleeve.

  I turn back.

  "Perhaps I can help you, señora." Her English, I note, is very good.

  "You have an idea?"

  She shrugs her narrow shoulders. "Perhaps if you tell me your story I shall think of something that can be done." She peers into my eyes. "No extra charge." She pauses, then, beneath her breath: "He is a brute."

  This remark wins me over. We adjourn to the hotel terrace, where she reveals that she's a graduate of the Xultan School of Investigatory Detection in Mexico City, that her dream is to someday own her own agency in Guanajuato and that meantime she's serving her apprenticeship with Manolo, whom she loathes.

  "He is a womanizer, incompetent, ignorant, corrupt, but for now he is the cross that I must bear. He has no inkling of this, but one day soon, after I learn his secrets, I shall leave him and set up on my own. Then I shall become his rival. He will be surprised. I shall steal all his business. The beast will learn what it is to be vanquished by a woman, one who smiles sweetly while harboring rage within her heart."

  What have I stepped into here? María, waving her hand to dispel ugly thoughts, turns her attention back to me.

  "At Xultan we learned that the most essential task of an investigator is to listen closely to the client. If you will kindly tell me your story, perhaps I shall hear something that will lead me to a solution."

  She's attentive to every nuance of Tim's description of the house, in the end agreeing there's insufficient specificity. In response to her question about the habits of the woman I seek, I describe Ariane' s expertise in stage magic and kinky sex-for-hire.

  "There is no such woman here," she says gravely.

  "No commercial sex?"

  "True, there is, but not like that. Also I would think that a woman who lived that kind of life would come to San Miguel to live differently."

  Certainly that's what Tim had in mind. I peer at María. I'm impressed. Perhaps I have underrated her and the Xultan School of Investigatory Detection of which she's such a proud diplomate.

  "Purgation," she says. I stare at her. "Our subject, to begin anew, may have felt a need to purge herself."

  "There's a place for that here?"

  "Not in San Miguel, but nearby at Atotonilco. Men and women at separate times make pilgrimages to the santuario to cleanse themselves of sin. They stay a week. The food is simple. They sleep on stone floors, silence is required and many use disciplinas, little braided whips, to scourge themselves. Some wear actual crowns of thorns and approach the sanctuary on knees made bloody by sharp stones. The fascinating thing is that those who do this so enjoy it. You can see their pleasure"—María's eyes widen—"in their eyes."

  We set off by taxi. Our journey, less than ten miles, takes us by roadside bathhouses set up beside hot mineral springs. The village of Atotonilco is small and dusty, but the church is huge, looming above the plaza.

  María leaves me alone in the gloomy echoing nave choked with statues and religious murals. She is off to the convent behind, photo of Tim in hand, to ask the nuns whether a foreign woman who resembles him has made pilgrimage in recent months.

  Waiting, peering around the vast brooding space, I'm astounded by the many images of suffering. Saints exhibit bloody wounds; Christ figures display whip-m
arked backs. The paintings range in style from academic to naive, but there is one constant: an obsessive savoring of martyrdom and pain.

  María returns. Yes, she says, a light-haired American, vaguely resembling Tim, did come on a woman's pilgrimage in the autumn. Though thousands have since come and gone, several nuns remember her since it's so rare for a gringa to come as a pilgrim, and on account of the fervor with which she practiced her devotions.

  At last, proof Ariane has been here! And if she is starting life anew, that may explain why I haven't seen her in the discos, and why she refused to recognize Courtney Hill's friend on the street. But, I realize on the road back to San Miguel, I'm no closer now to finding her than I was before.

  "I'm so sorry," María says, when we part at my hotel. "I wanted so much to solve this case."

  "You've helped me a lot, María." I press a hundred dollars into her hand. She tries to return it, but I insist. "You're on your way to becoming a fine detective. Save this, add to it and soon you'll have enough to open your own agency."

  Her smile is so brilliant it could blind.

  My final afternoon in San Miguel: I walk the streets, camera in hand, trying to capture the unique flavor of the town. During magic time I sit on a bench in El Jardin, watch the paseo until the last light drains from the sky. Then I walk slowly back toward my hotel to pack, intending to depart for Mexico City on an early morning bus.

  Church and jacaranda tree on the corner. For perhaps the twentieth time I pass that combination. Sharp angle in a narrow street. There're so many sharp street angles here. Pots overflowing with flowers hanging from iron balconies. All balconies here are iron, and nearly all support overflowing pots of flowers. Carved wooden door with coat of arms above. I have seen innumerable heraldic devices in San Miguel, from the elaborate coat of arms on the palace of the Counts of Canal, to crude little shields dangling above tourist shops.

  But suddenly I realize that there' s something else I know, something important I've forgotten. I stop, stand still at the bend in the street, close my eyes to allow the memory to flow back. Not something architectural like the street and balcony and coat of arms, rather something subliminal from another dimension appealing to another sense. Not visual but aural. Sound. Music—yes! Now I remember! Those operatic arias that flooded the stairwell in the building where the twins lived on Mission Street in San Francisco.

  I hear an aria now when I strain my ears, faintly in the distance. Am I imagining? I backtrack a few steps, pause, listen, hear it again, faint still yet present. I move forward fifty feet, stop; I can no longer hear it. I walk back, pick it up again. Yes, it's real!

  Slowly I circle the block. On the street behind I hear the music faintly at first but growing in volume as I approach an old walled house. Moving carefully, trying to position myself as close as possible to the source, I finally recognize the voice and song: Maria Callas singing "Morrò, ma prima in grazia" from Un Ballo in Maschera. It was Callas's voice too I heard in that tenement stairwell.

  I approach the door. There's a coat of arms above. I push it open, enter a paved courtyard, solitary fig tree at its center surrounded by fallen fruit. The stone floor is illuminated by an electrified lantern hanging from a wall.

  Immediately I'm suffused by the aroma of bougainvillaea. The opposite wall actually does seem to "drip" with it. Now the music is clearly audible.

  Following the sound, I move to a set of stone stairs, mount them, find myself on a covered balcony overlooking the court. The song is full now, close, so very close. I approach a door, press my ear to it. It's coming from within, the room just behind.

  I pause, step back, knock.

  At first nothing, no reaction, no sound of approaching steps. The song, in fact, seems to increase in volume. I take in the lyrics: ". . . ma queste viscere, consolino i suoi baci—let his kisses console this body."

  Slowly the door opens. A slim young woman in silk robe stands poised in the doorway, a glowing room behind. She peers into my eyes, no trace of surprise on her face. Finally, slowly, she nods her head.

  "I know who you are. You're Kay," she says quietly. She smiles as if expecting me, then steps back so I can enter.

  For a while we simply stare at one another while the music echoes off the high curved ceiling, a dark celestial canopy studded with gleaming painted stars. The floor too is dark, the wood glossy and rich; the stucco walls are white. No pictures on them, just an old wooden crucifix at one end, a stone fireplace at the other. Embers glow in the grate.

  She sits very still, as if displaying herself. A dozen thick church candles, set in holders upon the floor, send flickering shadows across her face. She has, I note, the body of a model, but I'm frightened by what I see above: Tim's features, but with something added that makes her face distinctive—ferocity in the eyes and a devouring aspect to the lips and mouth. No perfect mirror image of her twin, she looks stronger, more savage.

  "I thought one day you might turn up," she says, "if you cared enough . . . and since we've never met, I couldn't know." She smiles. "He spoke of you often. He liked you very much. I believe he even loved you in his way—which was curious, wasn't it? His way, I mean. He was so gentle." She shakes her head. "Not at all like me."

  She gazes into my eyes. I look away. The furnishings in the huge room are sparse—a wooden table, several colonial-era chairs, nothing more.

  "You look as I imagined, Kay. He described people very well. He could be funny too about people's flaws, but he never said a mocking word about you." She pauses. "We were lovers. I suppose you know that now." She pauses again. "It must have been very difficult to find me. You must be a clever person and have cared a good deal to take the trouble."

  I gasp. She speaks too casually of things that to me are monumental—Tim's and my feelings for one another, my tortured quest for him that became a search for her.

  "I know," she says, "you must think I'm awful." She shrugs. "Perhaps I am. But then who isn't really—when you come down to it? Shall I turn off the music? I'm sure you have questions. If not I can't imagine why you've come."

  She moves to the table, flicks off the stereo. The great room goes silent. She pulls her chair up close so that we sit but a yard apart, places a footstool between us, rests her slippered feet upon it.

  "Put yours up too," she urges.

  I shake my head. She shrugs.

  "I see my words have hurt you. I only wanted to let you know how much he cared. He told me so, and how tempted he was. But for people like us, you see, abstinence is always more expressive than seduction."

  She pauses, shows me her full face in repose. She's so stunning, intense, I can't take my eyes off of her . . . and wish I could. I would like to get up now, leave. But if I do, I know she'll haunt me forever. Coming here in search of Tim, I've found someone entirely different. Yet physically she is Tim in female form. It's this contradiction that's got me so confused.

  "Why didn't you claim him?" I ask.

  "His body?" She tosses her head. "Timmy and I weren't into dead bodies much. We figured once you're dead that's it. Also I was hiding. A little later I fled." She shrugs. "Anyhow, I heard you had things well in hand."

  "You could have called me."

  She blinks. "I probably would have one day."

  "We scattered his ashes at sea."

  "Yes . . . that's fine."

  "David deGeoffroy came."

  She laughs. "Oh, I'm sure!"

  I can't believe how disinterested she is, am angry too at her reaction that it was okay to leave town without a word since I had taken on the bereavement duties.

  "What happened," I demand, "between you and Tim and Crane? How did all this come about?"

  She turns away, and as she does her face seems to harden even more. Still her eyes, I note, are stunningly beautiful, deep, opaque, like Tim's. I wonder: Who is this woman and why do I feel so uneasy in her presence?

  "They called Crane 'Dome' on account of his being bald, which he was too vain to show. A m
an hires hustlers off the street, then he's too embarrassed to take off his toupee." She sneers: "Pathetic! Anyhow, Dome fell hard for Timmy, which bored Timmy no end. One thing to be desired, another to have a client who's obsessed. Dome was crowding him, would have suffocated him if Timmy had given him half a chance. Dome wanted Timmy all to himself, offered to set him up in his love nest, make him his full-time pet. Timmy wasn't interested, didn't care about money—silly boy! He enjoyed the game too much, the hustle. Control was fine, but once they groveled he'd get bored. Too many new bodies to explore, fantasies to fulfill. So he turned Dome down. And that, it seems, made Dome very mad.

  "One day he saw Timmy with a rival, another rich guy they called 'J.J.,' for Jaguar John—on account of how he picked up hustlers in his Jag. The next night Dome sought Timmy out on Polk, demanded he stop seeing J.J. Timmy laughed, told him he'd see whoever he liked, that J.J. had offered to take him to Key West over Christmas . . . which was true. Dome said he'd do better than that, take him to Paris, Rome, anywhere he liked. Timmy explained that wasn't the point, J.J. would take him to those cities too if he wanted . . . then let him hustle for himself. In fact, he told Dome, J.J. liked to watch him do it—which, I guess, infuriated Dome even more. Though, of course, he didn't show it. According to Timmy he went all wet-eyed and limp."

  This doesn't sound like the slick Marcus Crane I've observed. "Was Crane really in love with him?" I ask.

  "As much as someone like that is capable of love."

  I think back to Knob's confession, the bizarre moment when Crane tried to take Tim's head. "What happened?"

  Ariane grins. "Dome decided he wanted to do it with us both. We charged a grand for a Zamantha—that's what we called it. I guess David told you about our old Zamantha substitution trick. A Zamantha, as you can imagine, is a sex act in which the john starts out in the arms of one and ends in the arms of the other. People liked it. It freaked them out. We liked it too. It was fun, made us giggle."