Disappearing Nightly Read online

  “Okay, you’re right,” Lopez said to his caller, “I don’t want to. Now I have to go. I’ve got—”

  He was interrupted by a voice on the other end of the line, loud enough that even I could hear it. The caller sounded like a woman.

  Some of the show’s nymphs had been openly interested in him, and although his behavior couldn’t be called unprofessional, he’d obviously enjoyed their flirting. He’d been caught off guard by the same sort of interest coming from a couple of the satyrs, but he’d nonetheless been courteous about it.

  “No. No. No!” Lopez sounded exasperated. “Look, what part of ‘no’ didn’t you—” He sighed and closed his eyes, listening again. After a moment, he said, “Why do you persecute me like this? Why, why?” A pause. “Besides that.”

  Two cops hauled someone past me who looked like a rapper. A very annoyed rapper.

  “Look, this isn’t a good time,” Lopez said into the phone. “Can we—” He winced.

  Even I winced. His caller’s voice was getting shrill.

  Lopez took a deep breath and said, in a voice filled with dark despair, “Mom, I can’t talk now. Goodbye…Bye.” He scowled and said, “I’m hanging up now. Right now.”

  The voice was still squawking as Lopez gently placed the receiver in its cradle. Looking a little paler than when I’d arrived, he turned to me and said, “Now, what can I do for you, Miss…”

  “Diamond. Esther Diamond. You took my statement Saturday night at the New View Venue on Christopher Street.”

  “Oh, yeah! Miss Diamond.” His gaze traveled over me slowly, then he grinned. “You look different without all that green body makeup.”

  “I’m also wearing a lot more clothes today,” I said, noticing where his eyes lingered.

  He raised them to my face. “And much less glitter.”

  “Have you made any progress on the case, Detective?”

  “That singer who disappeared—Gosh Darn?”

  “Golly Gee.”

  He smiled at me, and I realized he’d been kidding.

  “She’s still missing,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “No ransom demands?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you heard from her family? I’ve tried to get a hold of her mother, but—”

  “Oh, I doubt that Golly was of woman born,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Um, her mother’s in Europe just now. Golly’s manager got a hold of her yesterday. She hasn’t heard from her, either.” I shrugged. “She’s really missing, Detective.”

  He nodded. “I’ve filed a missing persons report.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It’ll be compared to any likely Jane Doe that turns up.”

  “You mean, like…a body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  He said, “Her family—or her manager—might consider hiring a private investigator.”

  “I see.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Yes. This is a little strange….”

  He raised one black brow. “Last week you told me that a woman had vanished into thin air in front of hundreds of people—”

  “Not hundreds. Our house wasn’t that good.”

  “But you’re afraid that what you’re going to tell me now is a little strange? I can hardly wait.”

  I pulled out the note and handed it to him. He read it over briefly and then frowned at me.

  “This came in the mail?”

  “No. Someone left it at the theater for me.”

  “Did you get a description?” he asked.

  “The assistant stage manager, who accepted the envelope from him, says he was a short, slightly chubby, white man, at least seventy years old. Lots of white hair and a beard. He wore a fedora and a duster.”

  “A what?”

  “You know. One of those long coats they wear in cowboy movies.”

  “Oh. Anything else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “‘As you value your life, do not go into the crystal cage,’” Lopez read aloud. “‘There is Evil among us.’ It has a certain ring to it. But why does this guy think you intend to go into the cage?”

  I explained. When I was done, Lopez studied me speculatively. His silence got on my nerves, so I asked, “Do you think it’s important?”

  “What?”

  “The note,” I snapped.

  “Well, it provides a new theory.”

  “So you no longer think Golly walked off on her own?”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what I think happened. According to the statements I took, Miss Gee is a temperamental twenty-three-year-old who’s got less fame than she wants and less sense than she needs.”

  “That hardly—”

  “She’s got cash flow problems, and she’s deep in debt—mostly to plastic surgeons and diet clinics. She’s also got a police record—mostly minor drug busts. Two of the Kennedys have had to slap restraining orders on her, and—”

  “You’ve checked up on her!” I shouldn’t have sounded so surprised. He looked insulted.

  “Yes, Miss Diamond, I did. But now I find myself obliged to concentrate on more mundane matters—assault, murder, armed robbery, extortion and so on.” As he gestured to the mountain of paperwork on his desk, a clerk dropped another armload of files onto it. Lopez stared after her with a tragic expression.

  “But what about the note?” I said. “Do you think—?”

  “I think it’s a hell of a promotional opportunity for an off-Broadway show with overextended producers and an ambitious understudy.”

  “You think I had something to do with this?”

  “I have to consider all possibilities.”

  Okay, I had seen enough cop shows on TV to know that. So I tried not to take offense. “Look, I’m not reaping any benefits from this fiasco. Joe Herlihy is refusing to perform the show again.”

  “He didn’t get along with Golly Gee, did he? She insulted him, humiliated him, upstaged him and accused him of attempting to set her on fire that very night.”

  “Surely you don’t think Joe is behind this?”

  “I’m still not even sure what ‘this’ is,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Look, we know the girl was in the cage before it was rolled offstage. A dozen witnesses backstage saw no strangers, no violence, nothing unusual. The only people who touched that cage were you, Herlihy and the other nymph.” He paused before saying, “As it happens, Herlihy hates her, and you wanted her job.”

  “Joe and I were onstage the whole time!” I said.

  “And besides Miss Gee, does anyone in the cast know that prop as well as the two of you do?”

  “I’m the one receiving threats!” I waved my note in his face.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said courteously.

  Getting exasperated, I said, “Look, just tell me if you think it’s safe for me to get in the cage.”

  “I thought you destroyed that thing? It was all your producer could talk about.”

  I grunted. “It’s being repaired.”

  “I see.”

  “Listen,” I prodded, “can’t you at least turn this note over to the lab and see what they can find out?”

  He looked at it for a moment, then shook his head. “We have no proof that a crime has been committed, Miss Diamond. Unless further evidence comes to light, I can’t submit this for forensic examination. Besides, it’s not a threat, it’s a warning.”

  “Should that comfort me?”

  “It’s probably from a superstitious fan or a religious fanatic—someone who believes that Golly Gee really did vanish into thin air and that anyone else who does that trick will follow her into oblivion.”

  “You’ve been a real help, Detective.” I stuffed the note into my purse and turned to go.

  “Uh, Miss Diamond?”

  “What?” I said over my shoulder.

  “If the show does re
open…”

  “Yes?”

  He hesitated, then lowered coal-black lashes over those deep blue eyes as he said, “I’d like to come see you in it.”

  “Book your seat,” I said. “The show must go on.”

  I returned to the theater for a musical run-through with the cast and orchestra. Without Joe, there wasn’t much else we could do. Then, ignoring the dirty looks I received, I slipped out of the Equity meeting early and went to Joe’s place. He and Matilda had the entire second floor of a brownstone all to themselves on the Upper West Side. Everyone knew it was her money, not his, that paid for this luxury. He wasn’t a successful magician, and I suspected that only his recent second marriage to an ambitious producer had provided him with an opportunity like Sorcerer! He was in his late thirties, an age at which many performers feel time is running out for them to achieve success in our youth-oriented society. I knew Joe craved name recognition, national tours and television specials. Just like me, he was hoping that Sorcerer!’s initial run would be successful enough for us to move the show to a major Broadway theater where we’d enjoy a higher profile.

  His behavior baffled me. Joe was neurotic, sure, but I knew how much the show meant to him. If he blew this chance—and cost our backers a bundle in the process—he could probably count on playing nothing but birthday parties and Renaissance fairs for the next thirty years. If I let him live, that was. With Golly gone, this was my big chance, and no high-strung, rabbit-in-the-hat asthmatic was going to ruin it for me. That’s why I had to talk to him. We both wanted the same thing. I was sure I could get through to him, reason with him, convince him to go on with the show. And if reason didn’t work, then I’d make sure he understood that whatever he feared might happen onstage was nothing compared to what I would do to him if he closed down the show.

  It was obvious upon arriving at Joe’s place that I was desperately needed there. No wonder Matilda wasn’t making any progress. Why do married people behave in ways specifically designed to drive each other crazy?

  “Darling, Esther’s here,” Matilda crooned loudly as she let me into the foyer. She turned to me and added in a stage whisper that they could probably hear as far away as Cleveland, “Try not to upset him. He’s very sensitive about the whole subject right now.”

  “Tough,” I said.

  “What subject?” Joe demanded, shouting at us from three rooms away.

  “Why don’t you come here and greet Esther, darling?”

  “No! What subject?”

  “He’s been like this since Saturday night,” she mega-whispered at me again.

  “Like what?” Joe shouted. “What have I been like?”

  Luckily, the phone rang. The combatants went to their separate corners, so to speak, while Matilda answered it. Unfortunately, she came out swinging only a moment later, and this time she was aiming for both of us.

  “Darling, it’s Magic Magnus’s shop calling,” she bellowed down the hallway. “The crystal cage—you know, the one Esther smashed to bits and pried apart? It’s ready to be picked up. Isn’t that wonderful, darling? You can rehearse with it tomorrow!”

  While Joe screamed an emphatic negative, she turned to me and added, “It was horribly expensive to repair, Esther.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Considerably more than your salary.”

  “That’s easy to believe.”

  She frowned at me, then bellowed, “Shall I tell them you’re coming, dear?”

  I don’t think Joe heard her. He was still shouting. So I said, “Tell them someone will come for it. If he won’t go, I will.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it’s the least you can do.”

  “Look, Matilda, someone had to get Golly out of—”

  “She wasn’t in there, if you recall,” Matilda said through clenched teeth.

  Joe heard that. “Go on, remind me, remind me, just keep reminding me.” He hurled the words at her, coming down the hallway toward us. “Just keep rubbing it in that I made a woman vanish!”

  Matilda glared at him and went back to her telephone conversation. I stared at Joe, thunderstruck.

  “Wait a minute! Wait just a minute!” I realized I was shouting, too, and lowered my voice. “What’s going on here, Joe? Are you having delusions of godhood? Do you honestly believe—do you even entertain the possibility—that Golly really vanished? Abracadabra, a puff of smoke and oblivion? Do you believe all your own hocus-pocus publicity?”

  He had the good grace to look sheepish. “You don’t understand, Esther. She…I felt…There was…”

  I took him by the shoulders and shook him hard. “Joe! Pull yourself together! Let’s have a reality check here!”

  Matilda put down the phone. “The shop closes at six o’clock. You’ll have to hurry.”

  “But she did vanish,” Joe insisted.

  “She didn’t vanish!” I snapped. “She…wandered away. Maybe she felt an urgent need to speak to Robert Kennedy Junior. Maybe she thought she saw Elvis. Maybe she was abducted by one of those plastic surgeons she owes so much money to.”

  “Huh?” Joe said.

  “Or maybe she’s just trying to get a raise,” Matilda said.

  I stared at her. “Good God, there is evil among us.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Forget it. Give me the keys to your truck. I’m going to go get the crystal cage,” I said. “It, and I, will be at the theater tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp for a full dress rehearsal. And so will you, Joe, or I will come here and get you—and this time the beautiful assistant will saw the magician in half!”

  “Beautiful assistant” is an exaggeration in my case. Indeed, being fitted into Golly’s wardrobe that morning had driven that point home like a wooden stake: her costumes were all a little too large in the chest and extremely tight everywhere else. I figured the girl must never eat. The wardrobe mistress advised me to suck in my stomach—and give up the Ben & Jerry’s.

  At five foot six, I was also shorter than Golly, so all the costumes had to be hemmed. Some of the colors would never look quite right on me, since I’m fair-skinned and brown-haired. I wondered if I’d be given a wig to play Virtue, since my simple shoulder-length hairstyle didn’t resemble Golly’s waist-length blond ringlets (which, in my darker moments, I had described as “hooker hair”).

  I inherited my father’s brown eyes and my mother’s good cheekbones. The result is a face which, as one of my acting teachers put it, is more versatile than beautiful. Still, I was rather flattered when Golly asked if I’d had cheek implants. (The feeling wore off when she told me she knew a doctor who could fix my nose.)

  As I drove downtown, I wondered how a young woman Golly’s age knew so much about fake body parts. She must have had a pretty dreadful life. Now that she wasn’t around to irritate me, I felt kind of sorry for her.

  I guess I felt kind of guilty, too. Except for a few stunned moments Saturday night, I hadn’t worried about Golly at all since her disappearance. Mostly I’d gloated over getting her job.

  Now I tried to imagine what could have happened to her. How had she disappeared like that? And why? And where was she now?

  And what about that note? Lopez was unmoved by it; but then Lopez was an overworked cop with other cases on his mind. Besides, he half suspected me of perpetrating Golly’s disappearance. And his smile wasn’t charming enough to make up for that insinuation, I thought grumpily. Anyhow, easy for him to make reckless accusations—he wasn’t the one being threatened. Or warned. Or whatever.

  He was right about one thing, though. The notion of “Evil among us” did suggest an unbalanced person. But was I right, too—did it suggest a dangerous person? Anyhow, just because someone’s unbalanced doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about.

  Do not go into the crystal cage.

  Why the cage? I wondered. Did the author of the note mean that the prop itself was dangerous? Did he think that Golly’s disappearance was due to its faulty mechanism rather than t
o a mental breakdown or foul play?

  I shook my head to clear it as I double-parked the truck outside Magic Magnus’s shop on Worth Street, in Tribeca. I felt a headache coming on and decided to forget the whole mess for a while. If I kept up this merry-go-round of speculation, I’d wind up beating my head against hard objects before long, just like Lopez. And that habit didn’t seem to be doing him any good.

  I had assumed Magic Magnus’s shop would be a dusty little storefront selling tricks and supplies. I was surprised to discover that the magic business filled an entire five-story building. The structure was one of those nineteenth-century relics of cast-iron architecture, when they found that buildings could be built more quickly and cheaply by using iron beams rather than heavy walls to hold the weight of the floors. This left more space for windows, not to mention fabulously decorative facades. Inside even the grubbiest and most run-down buildings in this area, you can find Renaissance columns, baroque balustrades and Second Empire ornamentation. I know all this because I once went on a blind date with one of the Friends of Cast-Iron Architecture.

  Tribeca isn’t quite as gentrified as Soho, but many of the buildings down here have been renovated. Magic Magnus’s place wasn’t one of them. In fact, as I pushed open the door and entered the vast ground floor showroom, I thought even the dust looked nineteenth century. I assumed that Magnus must be doing good business if he could afford to operate in this part of town, but I doubted he did much trade with walk-in customers. A couple of dusty display cases held old-fashioned props: wands, hats, cards, false-bottom cups, that sort of thing. One wall was lined with a long row of costumes of astonishing vulgarity. The rest of the showroom was filled with a bewildering variety of poorly displayed props and many boxes, crates and cartons. Judging by the markings on these containers, Magnus got shipments from all over the world.

  I looked around for a shopkeeper or clerk but saw no one. Walking toward the main counter, I tripped over something on the floor and nearly flew headfirst into an Iron Maiden. A little stunned, I examined the thing and realized it was just a grisly version of something Joe used in Sorcerer! You stick a girl inside and run swords through her. I shook my head in disgust. This whole business of magic tricks always seemed to involve mutilating a half-naked woman.