"Few." With a dramatic clap of his hands, Professor Mangel compressed the fanned Tarot cards into one solid deck. The Magician under discussion vanished into the mass. "However, in the practice of the psychic arts the female of the species has always had an edge. A special ear, as it were, for the less seen, the less heard, the less regarded. The less-often believed. Houdini may be regarded as the epitome of the male magician, reenacting symbolic escapes from castration and death. We must also remember that the greatest influence in his life--and death--was his mama. He was tied to her... heartstrings, so that he did not survive her by very long. Perhaps his lifelong quest of the ultra masculine was a flight from the feminine within himself. He was not so much a magician as an escape artist, and his legend still strives to escape the one trick that does in us all. So we have inducted into the annual Halloween Academy of Attractions the usual Recall of Houdini Seance, even here in Las Vegas, where there are many more pertinent ghosts to recall, such as--?"
Suggestions erupted now like the Mirage's volcano. "Elvis!" "Marilyn Monroe!" "Frank Sinatra!" "Hey, he's not dead!" "Yet--" "Bugsy Siegel!" "Jersey Joe Jackson!" someone contributed. Not Temple. Who had called out his name? she wondered. Jersey Joe Jack-son was ancient history in this town.
"On a note of dead celebrity, we will end this inquiry into the mantic arts," the professor said, checking his watch. "Thank you for coming."
Temple studied the dispersing undergraduates while waiting for Mangel to disengage from a couple who had run up to speak to him afterward. She was not that long removed from their ranks, but they seemed so young as they bustled by, their small talk studded with expressions only hip among the teenage set.
"Nice to meet you close up, Miss Barr." Professor Mangel was standing beside her, smiling at her eye to eye, glasses frame to glasses frame. "Your interjection of the Fool enlivened the forlorn slate of guesses just when I desperately needed some sign of invention. Pity you were not one of my students."
"I was for a few minutes. And I enjoyed it."
He grinned. "At least my subject matter can compete with Geraldo and Close Encounters and Sightings. Television shows! Who would have thought transistors would replace the groves of Academe?" He gestured to the low-profile panorama of the desert campus. "Shall we walk while we talk?"
They did, while Temple tried to calculate the last time she had heard the verb "shall."
Despite his academic speech, Mangel was younger than his bald head implied; his walk, his talk, his mental agility added up to a dynamic masculine energy that made being short, shortsighted and prematurely bald immaterial. Temple would bet that many a female freshman had developed a crush on him.
He settled his papers and Tarot cards into a soft black leather case as they walked. "I like to do these guest seminars on local campuses when I travel, though my study of paranormal matters is considered 'popular' education. So you're interested in information on mediums and the immaterial world for a hotel theme park?"
" 'Theme park' is a pretty grand term for what I have in mind. It would be part of a Jersey Joe Jackson attraction at the Crystal Phoenix."
"The Crystal Phoenix I've heard of. Jersey Joe Jackson, no. I take it back: let's sit and chat. I may want to take notes."
"Me too." She pulled a stenographer's notebook from her tote bag as they settled onto a low stone bench in an area devoted to landscaping. "That's a beautiful tarot deck you had."
"Isn't it, though?" Mangel pulled a black velvet pouch from his case, then slipped out the cards. "The Tarot of the Cat People by Karen Kuykendall."
"That's what the design on the back was! Cats--but with blue-and green-striped bodies!
Rather Cheshire Cat-looking. Can I see the Magician close up? And how did you draw it blind?"
"Magician's trick, of course. You've got to perform to keep the modern student's attention.
Psychology professors are a lot less intriguing than web browsers and computer games these days."
He handed her the correct card, face up. The Magician was an exotic figure, his full robe patterned with a rainbow of bubbles, his hair an enormous black Egyptian wig surmounted by the jeweled figure of a spotted cat. Levitated before him were a pentagram, a chalice and a sword.
Temple studied the card. "Something about the figure reminds me of Beardsley's drawing of Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist."
"Grisly analogy," he said, taking the card back again to view it. "But I see what you mean.
Perhaps it's the central figure's intense concentration."
"You mean that magicians and murderers must both be obsessed?"
Mangel's watery hazel eyes, so light they were almost alley-cat' yellow, sharpened with interest. "Another intriguing analogy, but apt. No one is more obsessive than a magician."
Temple pointed to the floating objects in the picture. "I see the chalice of the priest, and I suppose the sword could represent the criminal, but the pentagram is a poor symbol for an actor."
"I don't know; it takes magic to command a stage. David Copperfield considers the magician first and foremost a performer, and that conviction has made him enormously rich."
"What about mediums and psychics? Are they magicians? Criminals? Priests and priestesses?"
"Assuredly, Temple, if I may call you that?"
"Assuredly, if you'll tell me if professors have first names."
His laughter was abrupt and brief. "Yes, I am always 'the' professor, seldom 'Jefferson.'"
"And never 'Jeff?"
"Never! It doesn't go with my PhD."
"So, Jeff, what about psychics and mediums, fortune-tellers and tea-leaf readers? Are they for real, or frauds?"
He carefully tucked the tarot deck into its pouch, even more carefully selected his next words. "I sense that you are seeking more than some lurid details for a hotel attraction. So I'll tell you what I wouldn't tell pompous academics: yes, most of these people are frauds, many are self-delusional frauds and a few, a precious few are ... ambiguous at best."
"I thought you were a gung-ho advocate--"
"That's the popular assumption. No, I'm a gung-ho hunter of the rare real thing."
"As the late Gandolph was a gung-ho hunter of the unreal thing?"
"Poor man. Do you realize that he became what he abhorred to track it down? The Edwina Mayfair persona was decently well known, even respected, in psychic circles. Everyone wondered, when Gandolph came out with one of his sudden exposes of a particular practitioner, how he had gathered the goods. Nobody dreamed he had done his groundwork undercover, and under such potentially comic cover too." Jeffs face sobered. "Of course it wasn't comic when he died in character."
"No one suspected Edwina Mayfair of being anything other than she was? Isn't that a little hard to believe?"
"The psychic field is filled with extreme personalities who pursue extreme positions. There were never any rumors that Edwina was anything other than she seemed to be."
"Given the theatricality many mediums seem to cultivate, how can anyone seriously believe in any of them, or their effects?"
"You mean, how can I? Simple." He rummaged in his case and drew out a vending-machine packet of peanut-butter-filled cheese-flavored crackers. After he pulled the red opening strip f the cellophane package, he offered Temple one of the crackers as nonchalantly as if he were extending a cigarette. She would have preferred a cigarette to the salt, flavoring and dye-laden cracker before her, and shook her head.
"You see," he went on, happily munching and strewing orange cracker crumbs on his jeans,
"I'm not that different from Houdini." He caught her expression, which had gone from being appalled by his snack to being appalled by his statement. "Oh, I'm not confessing to being an unreformed mama's boy or even a magician. And you've got to remember that Houdini spent the most impressionable half of his life in the nineteenth century, when mother-worship was sentimentalized. It's just that when it comes to the notion of contacting the dead, I'm a hopeless optimist while rem
aining about as skeptical as a rattlesnake."
"Houdini was as skeptical as a rattlesnake? Then why did he even entertain a hope of anyone returning from the dead?"
"That old obsessive personality. Mama. He desperately wanted to see Mama again. She had died while he was out of the country, and at a time in the family drama when he was about to disown his brother Leopold for marrying his brother Nathan's ex-wife. See, they had dysfunctional families even then, but they labeled it "sin" instead of "sickness." If Houdini's mother had asked him to accept the new couple to avoid a family chasm, he would have. He had hoped to be there when she died, and had hoped that her last word to him would have been
'Forgive.' "
"Did he forgive Leopold?"
"No. Houdini had been the family patriarch since his father's death when he was seventeen.
His mother was the only person who could persuade him to accept what he perceived as a family betrayal. But she died without speaking to him, so he banned his brother's body from the family plot and even cut his photo out of the family pictures."
"No!"
"Houdini was never one to do things by halves, and he had a disturbing history of turning on those nearest him, especially on those he had once idolized. Eventually, he became his only idol, the only one he strove to outdo, and he died trying to do just that, a competitive personality to the last. That's what gave him his almost legendary reputation. Many people of his time thought that Houdini had paranormal powers, you know. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle insisted--to Houdini himself--that he must unconsciously draw on dematerialization powers to accomplish some of his feats."
"I had read that. Still, it's hard to believe of the creator of Sherlock Holmes."
"Don't look so disappointed. Toward the end of his life, Conan Doyle became a thoroughgoing Spiritualist, and sincerely believed several things that people today consider crackpot." Jeff Mangel smiled and crunched the last cracker to crumbs. " 'Course, you've got to remember I believe in post death presences myself, or at least surviving energy."
Temple shook her head as if to clear it. Like all decent academics, as opposed to insufferably smug ones, Jeff Mangel relished contradictions. She could see the precocious twelve-year-old squinting through glasses almost as thick as today's at the lurid, tall-tale pages of True magazine, in which he kept his place with a report card bearing straight A's.
"Okay," she conceded, "but do you believe in mediums?"
"A more germane question. And more specific. You mean do I believe in the mediums at the seance?" He peered at her as intently as she imagined his preteen self perusing True magazine.
"I get the distinct impression that your interest in my opinion has more to do with the recently dead Ms. Mayfair/Mr. Gandolph than the long-dead Mr. Houdini. Oh, well, in my profession I take what female attention I can muster. It's like this, if you want to boil down what I believe, it's a thick stew of murky probabilities: Agatha Welk, a likely Self-delusional; D'Arlene Hendrix, a real Probable. Oscar Grant, a possible ... Emmy winner for unconvincing reality-programming emcee." Temple couldn't help thinking that Grant's flashy looks influenced that summation.
Mangel had another thing in common with Houdini, uncommonly short stature, though she'd never met a man less affected by it.
"What about Mynah Sigmund?"
Something flashed in the eyes miniaturized by the lenses that allowed them to see better, but to be seen less. "Did I forget her? How unforgivable. A definite Maybe."
"Really?"
"I understand your skepticism, especially being a female. Remember that in the paranormal world, normal is a disguise."
"As in Las Vegas, loud clothes are a better disguise than outright nudity."
Mangel nodded until he had to anchor the bridge of his glasses against his nose. "Exactly right, and well put!"
Temple could hardly credit the Mystifying Max.
"But, heck." Mangel grinned again. "I may be wrong about the White Widow. I would have rated Edwina Mayfair a very strong Possible. She/he was good." His firm hand held out a card between two fingers. "If you want me for an opening lecture when your supernatural attraction debuts, just give me a call. I love doing un-academic things publicly. It wouldn't hurt to have some mediums on hand, or even a good magician. Good luck with the ghosties and goblins."
She shook his hand and then he was up, striding across campus, innocent energy and insouciance and inquiring mind personified. Temple remembered Jeff Mangel's own advice about his field: the normal was suspect. So: was the peanutty professor act a diversion? A lot about Professor Mangel seemed a diversion, mostly for himself.
And how could any man have "overlooked" Mynah Sigmund? she wondered. Of course, Max had often pointed out that most women tend to deal with a vixen in the henhouse by blaming the roosters for their gullibility. And why did Mangel call her the White Widow? Did it refer to the fact that she was not very faithfully married?
Temple pulled out her trusty reporter's notebook and studied the next suspects--oops; candidates--on the list. The most "normal" medium, and therefore the most suspicious, according to Mangel, would be refreshing herself from a hard day at the psychic fair at her hotel: Agatha Welk was staying at the Debbie Reynolds.
Only Oscar Grant remained, and he had suggested six o'clock cocktails at the Mirage. Temple eyed the large, accusing face of her wristwatch. Would she have time to go home and change before meeting the suave Mr. Grant, or should she use any spare time to check in on Max back at the Welles house? Time, she decided, would tell.
Chapter 31
. . . And Ladies of the Seance
Temple tap-danced into the Debbie Reynolds' Hotel and Hollywood Museum, ready to do a Fred Astaire glide right into the registration desk. The light and airy lobby sparkled under its trio of chandeliers on high, as long and elegant as the pale-powdered and bejeweled ladies' hairdos from the Marie Antoinette era.
The hotel's air of nostalgic, slightly used elegance would suit a sensitive woman like Agatha Welk, Temple decided. Agatha struck her as someone who would suffer from the Specter Mountain High atmosphere most Strip hotel-casinos cultivated, where a rock-band intensity noise level and an amphetamine-overdose action level were models to be envied.
Here the chink/clink of slot machines was discreet, and if the Chairman of the Board eyed the action over the lobby balcony, Ol' Blue Eyes was both blind and deaf, being a mannequin togged out in a vintage Sinatra suit.
Agatha's room was on the fourth floor, and when Temple arrived, Agatha was in it, with a room-service tea table laid out on white linen like The Streets of Laredo's deceased cowboy.
"I travel with my own teas," she explained when Temple stopped dead to eye the elaborate array. "They rarely serve herbal brews anywhere, and of course, never loose-leaf."
Temple sat and shook out a white napkin as big as a chessboard. "This is so nice of you--"
"I always relax with tea after a day out of town, whether it's for a psychic fair, of which I do very few, or a... private consultation. Green or gray?"
"Gray will be fine," said Temple, whose legal addiction of choice was coffee.
Agatha Welk pushed back the trailing ruffles on her three-quarter-length sleeves and filled a stainless-steel tea ball with dried leaves that resembled tobacco. "Redheads always prefer gray to green tea. Perhaps they feel their coloring requires subduing at teatime."
"Not me. I've heard of Earl Gray tea, but I'm ignorant of any other kind."
"What a pity." Though not an Englishwoman, Miss Welk was the refined sort of old-school woman who would use the word "pity," and who, one felt, really ought to be one.
While her hostess did civilized things with the tea paraphernalia, Temple noticed a beige horn bangle pushed up above one elbow, from which trailed a green chiffon scarf. Though the fluttery accessory suited its wearer, Temple had never seen such a style. She checked out the hotel room (not a personal effect in sight, darn!) and her hostess for further eccentricities.
Agatha We
lk was the quintessential old maid, a breed Temple, in her brash youthful confidence, had thought extinct. Her aunt Kit, for instance, was certainly an old maid by age and marital status (sixtyish and none, ever). She herself was perhaps a candidate-in-training for this ancient title, though she supposed no one could suggest that until she had reached forty. She had never seen marriage as a goal, but she had always regarded it as a likely eventuality; now she had begun to wonder. She was as curious about Miss Welk as a freshman might be about a senior at a brand-new college.
The woman's antique air did not seem feigned, but Professor Mangel had warned her about that. Agatha Welk reminded Temple of the first silent-film actresses, those tiny, big-eyed waifs who were always tucking their chins into their chests and dropping their eyelids in shy reaction.
Lucky thing, too, they had such gestures; like Miss Welk, their chins were both short and receding, a fact that enhanced large wounded-doe eyes and an air of girlish reticence.
Although Temple had seen women whose dress and appearance perpetuated the styles of their youth, it was usually 1970's Flower Child, which even in extremis was a youthful model; Agatha Welk's image seemed mired in the 1930's. Even if she was a well-preserved seventy, the thirties wouldn't have quite been her heyday. Yet she wore the period's drooping crepes and chiffons, wan florals dragged down by limp ruffles; shapeless, flour-sack styles with nary a pad anywhere to keep the wearer from looking round-shouldered and flat-chested, beaten by life into a paper doll of her own image. Even spirits would seem too robust company for such a personality.
"Not my kind of china," Agatha Welk said dryly, handing Temple the thick restaurant-ware cup.
Temple saw the steam rising like a curtain, and set the cup on its heavy cream ceramic saucer. The tea had been brewed molasses-dark, and the cup was filled almost to the brim.
"If you like," the medium added, "I can read your leaves when we're done."
Oh, no! Temple thought . I'll have to slog down all this strong tea to find my future! Not that she believed in tea-leaf reading. Jeff Mangel had listed it last, as the least significant mantic art.
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