The Hidden Man (11 page)

This time he only had to repeat that success and go home. Take the trunk somewhere and get rid of it, of course, but then go home. Because if he allowed himself to touch the horror of that girl’s death for one second, his skin would stick to it like a tongue on a frozen pump handle.

His battleground was the stage. As long as his memory held up well enough for him to line up the right setups with the right triggers, he could coast through this one and take his bows—then go deal with the loaded costume trunk somewhere at the edge of town and hide until he figured out what to do.

It struck him that the elixir was really straightening out the old negative attitude. He felt a brief pang of guilt over his earlier lack of appreciation. Now as he reentered his familiar performance world and prepared to step out into the concentrated spotlight beam, he decided that everything was looking pretty good, all in all.

Suddenly, he felt as if he could not launch into the show quickly enough. He remembered that the folks out there were friends. All of them, friends, out there in the house and looking up at him. Each one of them had doubts about his powers, and yet was also ready to be amazed, hungry for the state of head-smacking disbelief.

Duncan knew why. If he confirmed their belief in unseen things, in powers that some people called magical, then by implication all their other intangible beliefs might also prove just as true.

When he demonstrated invisible mind control over perfect strangers, these poor sophisticates were lifted from the humdrum existence of a doubting Thomas and stepped, if only for a moment, onto the grassy turf of faith that was proved true, right there before their own eyes.

Out there on the stage once again, with the exquisite tingles of the concentrated spotlight beam ricocheting around inside of him, he could practically feel the thick leather reins draped through his fists. He had control. He clearly felt it. He was squarely in command of his faculties, and ready to drive this audience like a wagon team. They would find out where the open road took them all, together.

INTERMISSION

THE PACIFIC MAJESTIC THEATRE—SAN FRANCISCO’S FINEST

N
EITHER
V
IGNETTE NOR
M
ISS
F
RESHELL
felt like venturing into the lobby’s pressing intermission crowd, so they kept to their seats. Vignette would have been content to spend the whole time watching the people making their way in and out of the theatre, but once their row of seats was otherwise empty, Miss Freshell leaned close to her. She spoke in a soft and very private voice.

Vignette could smell the powder on her skin.

“I don’t know about you, but I think that I’ve seen a change in Randall since you agreed to work with us at the Ladies’ Hospitality League. I think he’s relieved.”

Vignette’s head whipped around toward her. “Relieved over what? That I’m getting stuck with a bunch of wax mannequins posing as nice married ladies? Or is he just relieved that you’ll leave him alone about it now?”

“No need to bite my head off. I am simply convinced that this is the best thing for the family.”

“The family?” Vignette glared at her for a moment, rejecting a whole list of responses, and finally settled for saying, “Why?”

“I told you, I like for Randall to be happy.”

“Yes of course,” Vignette replied, her voice rising a bit too high. “Especially since Shane and I don’t give a damn about him. We don’t care whether he is happy or not, do we?”

“That is certainly not what I meant, dear.”

“Vignette.”

“…What?”

“It’s ‘Vignette.’ Not ‘dear.’”

“I see. You prefer blunt conversation.”

“I prefer honest conversation. If you’re such a big writer, why is honest conversation so difficult for you?”

“You are being too personal, Vignette. I cannot help but note that you have consistently been that way since Randall and I met.”

“That was only a few weeks ago, Miss Freshell. A few weeks.”

“And?”

“And now we need
you
to monitor whether or not we’re doing our best to make Randall happy?” Vignette leaned in close and fixed Miss Freshell’s eyes in her gaze.

“Lady, just tell me, one woman to another: Who the hell are you?”

She would not have been particularly surprised by a slap across the face, but she was still unprepared for the reaction she got. Miss Freshell’s veneer of benign affability melted off her like a thin layer of wax under a flame. The visage that it revealed was hard and cold. The eyes were made of flint.

“I’m the one who will be taking Randall back to New York City once the exposition is over, as soon as we are married.”

“He’s never mentioned that.”

“He doesn’t know.”

Vignette barked a sarcastic laugh. “Well, that was honest!”

“I thought honesty was your calling card, dear.”

“All right, what if he refuses to leave San Francisco?”

“I don’t believe he will.”

“No, tell me. What if he won’t go to New York? Do you still want him then?”

Vignette noticed that Miss Freshell stared at her as if she were a piece of three-day-old fish while she considered her reply. She finally spoke in measured tones.

“Here is what we’re going to do, dear. We’re going to tolerate each other for the next ten months while I am writing and promoting this book, and until the exposition is over. Then we will say a fond farewell when I take Randall and the new book back to civilization.”

“If you’re willing to be honest, or blunt, or whatever you want to call it, why don’t you tell Randall that you have these plans all worked out for him?”

“I intend to, so don’t bother threatening to tell him yourself.” Miss Freshell shifted on her, again. This version was poisonously sweet. “Vignette Nightingale. Both names are made up, correct?”

“Vignette. Just Vignette.”

“What, not Nightingale, as well?” Freshell smirked. “You two don’t look like brother and sister to me. No resemblance at all.”

“Don’t pretend that you know anything about us!”

“I don’t need to. The point is that we are women. We understand illusion as an essential tool of life. A touch of makeup, a good corset. Illusion lubricates our way.”

“Please. You sound like one of the Ladies’ Hospitality League.”

“I am one of them. You know that.”

“Do you have to sound like it?”

“And most of them already know what you are still waiting to find out—that in a world dominated by men and their brutality, we of the fairer sex must protect each other. Illusion is the main thing that protects all of us. Illusion is also something you understand, dear, in your own way. And just as well as the rest of us.”

“You haven’t said anything about your feelings for him.”

“Romantic love? Like the plays they put on here?”

“You see something wrong with that?”

“Nothing that most of the women performing those plays don’t already know.”

“I am not following you at all.”

Miss Freshell’s face took on an expression that managed to be sour and sultry at the same time. “They understand the particular comfort that a woman frequently finds with another female. They enjoy the ironic fact that society allows us to walk, hand in hand, touch, laugh, flirt, even lie down together, and accepts it all as harmless.”

“It’s not?”

“It is,” she laughed. “Of course it is! But not in the way that the men think. It’s harmless because there’s nothing wrong with getting comfort where you can. Especially under their noses.”

“Under the men’s noses…”

“That’s it,” she fairly sang. “It’s been harmless for centuries, Vignette.”

She laid her hand directly over Vignette’s. “And it will be harmless for Randall, as well.”

Vignette’s stomach slowly dropped while she absorbed that, but before she could come up with any sort of reply, a large man and his wife came back to reclaim their seats and needed to step across them. That squashed the conversation.

Miss Janine Freshell, who had lost at that moment all chance of outliving the title “The Eastern Whore,” gave Vignette’s hand one final pat. She then pulled her legs in to allow the couple to pass. Vignette did likewise. The wife passed first, and Vignette watched the Eastern Whore flash an utterly charming smile at the husband when he sidled by. Some old married man.

He smiled back at the Eastern Whore, surprised by the intensity of her gaze, then managed to make himself look away. Of course he failed to stop himself from looking back. He was snagged by her illusion—as if that fat old man was a nineteen-year-old buck and Miss Janine Freshell was spread out naked before him—as if maybe the two of them would meet up out back and run off somewhere together. Vignette watched the flickers of fantasy cross his face, just as if the Eastern Whore had loaded the moving pictures into a nickelodeon.

A sense of the woman’s power overwhelmed her. Without a doubt, Miss Janine Freshell could teach the Great Mesmerist a thing or two about making people see things that are not really there. That frightening command of illusion was the only aspect of the Eastern Whore that Vignette no longer called into question.

There was very little backstage activity during the intermission; J.D. worked alone in these close-up presentations. The stage manager was back there, but without a backup cast or supporting players to oversee, he tended to his check-board and pretended to work while a couple of black-clad stage hands quickly swept the stage.

J.D. had the hallway outside his dressing room all to himself, except for Detective Randall Blackburn and his assistant Shane something. Night-bird. Nightingale. The two men politely stood back near the offstage wings and gave J.D. plenty of room to pace, which he continued at a frantic rate.

He only traveled a few steps in each direction before turning around, so that he remained close to the door of his dressing room. People were less likely to get curious about the contents of that big trunk in there if they never saw it in the first place.

So for now, basic tasks: keep them away from the dressing room, finish the show, wait until everybody is out of the theatre, remove the trunk, take it far away, get rid of it, go back home, sleep for days.

A simple schedule, by God. One that made sense. With plenty of time to figure out everything later on. Deduce the why of it. A dead woman, complete stranger, hiding to steal his elixir.

Or perhaps he would drop it all into that same dark pit where so many other memories had been disappearing of late. How would that be? Let the cursed affliction serve some purpose, eh?

“Perhaps it’ll even give old J.D. a whiff of luck and let him forget her altogether,” he said out loud.

“Excuse me?” replied Detective Blackburn.

“What?”

“Who is it you want to forget, Mr. Duncan?”

“Oh that. Nothing! A line! I do lines before the show starts again! Warming up and all! You understand!”

“Sir, if you could hold still a minute and have a conversation with us—”

“Go right ahead, Detective!” Duncan cried, pacing like a man trying to make up for lost time. “I do this! Intermission! Keep the blood all fired up, eh? You understand!”

“Yes sir.”

“I know you understand!”

“All right, then. Mr. Duncan, we’ve looked at every single audience member tonight. If anybody plans to cause trouble, so far they aren’t doing anything to give themselves away. Nothing suspicious at all.”

“Perhaps because of you, eh? Good, gentlemen! Good work!”

“The thing is, sir, there are a lot of the big rookie officers who would like nothing better than to do body guard duty for you.”

Not even J.D.’s labored pacing kept him from noticing that Blackburn’s assistant was staring. It felt like a spotlight beam. He could feel the heat of it.

“Detective, did we not have this conversation? You come highly recommended!” He clapped his hands twice in a row to relieve a little more of the energy overload, wiped the sweat from his hairline, poured water from a pitcher into a tumbler, replaced the pitcher, and drained the glass, all without breaking stride.

“Just ignore the jumping shadows,” J.D. reminded himself.

“I don’t see any jumping shadows, Mr. Duncan.”

“What? No!
Lines,
remember? Reciting. So forth.”

“Mr. Duncan, I wonder if you could tell me who recommended me for this? It’s some sort of a mistake, that’s all. Then we can match you up with some guy who is a real bulldog. Any one of them would jump in front of you before they would allow you to take a bullet.”

J.D. clapped his hands together. He hit them extra hard without meaning to, but noticed that the concussion released a little explosion of energy. He clapped hard again, felt a bit more of a release, and immediately began to clap once with every other step. Stomp, stomp, clap. Stomp, stomp, clap.

He remembered that Blackburn had just asked him a question. So he raised his voice over his own background noise.

“Come now, Detective! There’s got to be worse duty than guarding me—eh?” Stomp, stomp, clap.

“Of course. It’s not that.”

“Because I have to tell you, she expected you to see more of the potential in this assignment!” Stomp, stomp, clap.

“She?” asked the other one, Night-something.

This is why you don’t talk to people when you’re like this.

“She, he, whoever it was, I’m not saying, I can’t recall, it doesn’t matter.” Stomp, stomp, clap. Stomp, stomp, clap. “Just please watch them as they leave the theatre, don’t let anyone come back here after the show. No fans, no autographs.”

“You said ‘she,’” Blackburn interrupted, taking a step toward him. “There aren’t any women in the command chain, Mr. Duncan.”

J.D. stopped pacing. It felt good for the truth to be out. One less thing. A rush of affection for Detective Blackburn washed through him, filling him with empathy for the man’s plight. A manly fellow such as this detective would surely take offense at having his fiancée meddle with his career. How sad, he thought with an inward sigh, that Detective Blackburn could not allow himself to appreciate the fruits of his woman’s ambition. So many men suffered from that character flaw.

J.D. walked over to Detective Blackburn and embraced him. The detective stood still for a moment, then gently pulled his arms from around his neck and stepped back. J.D. could not repress a sad little laugh.

“It’s a real shame, Detective. She meant well.”

“Who did, Mr. Duncan?”

“See? You just said ‘who,’ but you didn’t ask. It wasn’t really a question! Oh my friend, we are brothers in the fools that they make of us, are we not?”

That Shane fellow spoke up again. “You are referring to Miss Janine Freshell?”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please! She wanted it kept from you, but I have no doubt this is the best way. Trust in me! Go home and embrace her! Give her your thanks!”

Detective Blackburn cleared his throat and found his voice. “Mr. Duncan, why would my fiancée have any influence in this department?”

“I don’t know that she has any at all, Detective. But she is a published author, here in San Francisco to write her next book. If anybody is listening to her, I’d guess that it’s not the department officials, but the local politicians they work for, eh?”