Cat On A Hyacinth Hunt

Chapter 43

Vanishing Act

When Temple's ring disappeared, Max Kinsella's internal illusion warning system went on red alert. The missing ring or watch trick was laughably common, but that wasn't what had alarmed Max.

Maybe it was the primal shock of seeing his ring to Temple vanish, but he didn't think he was that possessive.

It was that the vanishing act happened too soon, like a suspiciously rushed preliminary.

Usually the canny magician made a big production of the ring being present before making it vanish. This ring might never have existed. Temple might be a planted shill, for all the audience could tell. Not a wise way to run a magic act.

Max shrugged out of his sport coat. He seized Temple's program from the empty seat beside him, grabbed her half-consumed drink and balanced it atop the horizontal program.

When the onstage action was drawing all eyes, he stood, stooped at the knees so his height wasn't a distraction. Then he darted waiter like down the row, bending here and there as if delivering a drink. Bewildered show-goers watched phantom drinks hover and disappear as swiftly as departing UFOs.

Sensing a distracting moment on stage, Max darted forward again, heading for the stairs leading up to the dim-lit apron at stage right.

The dialogue between Temple and Shangri-La ricocheted like a racquetball through the house, but despite the mike's booming amplification that distorted the everyday into the unreal, Max sensed Temple's dawning unease before even she felt it.

Beside the stairs he stooped to put down glass and makeshift tray, tearing the elastic from his hair at the same time. He had no ninja mask, but his black turtleneck sweater and pants, and his loose, long dark hair would look sufficiently Oriental, sufficiently sinister, to blend with the ninja assistants for the few moments he needed.

As the trick box was wheeled on stage with every creaking tradition of distracting ritual, Max rolled up onto the dark stage floor, then sprung instantly to his feet alongside the drawn folds of black velvet stage curtain. He risked a glance at the audience. Their faces were tilted as one to the focal point on stage: Temple in her slim hot-pink jumpsuit, her red hair a flame atop a gaudy birthday-cake candle. Temple looking small and wee inside the painted Oriental scroilery decorating the box inside and out, until Shangri-La swept down like a silk tsunami, and Temple was gone.

As the ninja contingent spun the now-closed box like a top, Max slipped behind the curtain, hunting the backstage stairs to the lower level.

***************

Hands caught her, held her.

Silk circled her mouth and drew tight as a hangman's noose. Temple started to struggle, but a quick click bound her hands before her in the harsh metal bangles of handcuffs.

She was lifted, and then lowered again into darkness, cushioned darkness, and then she heard the darkness shut above her, and her world was spun away. She was dizzy, disoriented, and a fugitive prick at her inner elbow told her that she was also drugged. And that was that.

****************

"Why aren't they making her appear again?" Matt wondered.

He wasn't asking Molina so much, as thinking aloud.

"Maybe it's part of the act," she answered him. "Part of the suspense."

"It's more suspense than I like."

"You're ... oversensitive on the subject of seeing more of Temple Barr."

"Am I? Look down to their first row seats, Lieutenant. I know you marked the spot. Where's Max Kinsella?"

"Damn!" Molina stood, oblivious to hissing audience members behind her.

She pressed a hand to one ear, spoke into her palm. "Any sign of the suspect?"

Matt hadn't realized she was wired. Talk about unobservant. But then his attention had all been on Temple, like the lovesick swain he was. The sick part of the cliched phrase was growing alarmingly concrete in his gut.

He eyed the elaborate stage scene, a finale of Oriental kites swooping everywhere in silken profusion, like demented paper bats. The eye feasted, but came away empty. Not only was Temple missing, but so was the magician, Shangri-La. Ninjas leaped everywhere, like athletic ants.

Molina abruptly turned to leave. She had forgotten Matt, she heard nothing but the sweet nothings hissing over her hidden receiver. He followed her, their sight-blocking exit drawing more boos and hisses.

For the first time in his life, Matt didn't give a damn about appearing rude.

In the tiny lobby there were also lots of milling men in black, but not Shangri-La's serpentine ninjas. These were heavyset men, or maybe men who just looked heavyset because they were armored in vests reading "Drug Enforcement Administration" that probably covered bulletproof vests underneath.

"They're moving," one said, the moment he spotted Molina. "What's going on in there?"

"The show isn't over," she protested, then shook her head as if to clear it. "We didn't see the suspect. I'll follow up on what's happening here. You guys take it as far as you have to."

They split, the men pouring out the front door like a gang, Molina going to dragoon an usher.

"Get us backstage. Now!" Her ID case was as black as an old stigmata in the palm of her hand.

"Yes, ma'am."

The teenager in the cheesy Chinese pajama outfit--black satin pants, jacket and boxy Philip Morris cigarette-boy hat (except for the phony pigtail snaking down his quaking back)--raced down some narrow, unlit side stairs and then through a maze of hallways.

Molina trailed him like a shadow, Matt a doppelganger behind her.

She stopped the kid as the hallway opened into the stage's shadowed underbelly.

"Got a flashlight?"

"Yeah. I mean, yes, ma'am."

"Out of here."

The kid's footsteps pattered away like a shuffle off to Buffalo as a rope of yellow light whipped through the darkness.

Against it, Matt saw Molina seem to scratch her back.

It took a moment to realize she was now armed and ready.

He supposed she had forgotten him. She faced a maze of stage props, magical mystery machines lined up for tricks done and not yet done. Upright coffins painted up like tarts.

Gleaming swords ready for defying the eye and slicing a confined body into mince-meat.

"You too," she said. "Outa here."

But he couldn't leave. He said nothing. Did nothing. He stayed.

***************

Temple sensed movement. Never-ending movement.

Whether it was in her head, or beyond it, she couldn't tell. She was spinning, spinning, spinning. Inside the magic box. Nothing would stop spinning. But the box was moving too, on its ever-ready wheels. Every jolt mashed the metal handcuffs into her tender wrist bones Where was that glamorous handcuff of another sort? Her ring. Stolen. She had let it be stolen so easily.

Hadn't even felt it sliding away. Surely those long, predatory fingernails would have scratched her flesh. She should have felt something.

Feel? Only movement, and the bizarre upward tingle of some scary snakebite at her elbow.

She was like the young Cleopatra in her concealing rug with an iridescent dreamsnake as a hint of the future.

No! Think! They hadn't wanted her to think, why else the prick of fangs at her inner elbow?

Her feet were free. She kicked at the edges of her confinement. Soft, upholstered fabric, like the lining of a coffin. Then where were the hyacinths? There should be hyacinths. The-symbolism was all wrong if there weren't hyacinths. Where are the clowns? There ought to be hyacinths.

Don't worry. Be happy. Kick!

Spinning again, and then bumping up stairs, up a stairway to heaven lined with blue-purple hyacinths, and Effinger there to greet her, wearing wings. . . water wings.

Moses in the bulrushes. Temple's coffin became a boat, and lurched forward into rocking motion. She could almost go to sleep. Sleep of the Deep. Deep, deep sleep.

Where was her ring? That had been the first to go. Why? Petty theft? Or major felony? That sounded like a character from the old board game called "Clue," didn't it? Major Felony. Look here, Major Felony, Miss Crimson is in the funeral parlor with the handcuffs. Won't you find her, please?

***************

The gun cocked like a castanet in the understage darkness.

"Put up your hands," Molina ordered.

The flashlight followed a lean dark figure as the arms lifted, and pale, naked palms were crucified with light.

"I don't think you want that, Lieutenant," Max Kinsella said.

The light pinioned his face, making his eyelashes flinch.

"I've got two of your suspects by the pigtails," he added.

A broader sweep of the light revealed paired ninjas, their natural pigtails tied together.

Molina addressed her hand again. "Backup below-stage. Two to go. One to get ready."

"Keep your hands up," she ordered Kinsella.

He obliged, but Matt felt it was more out of form than fear.

"Where's Temple?" Matt asked anyone who would answer.

Max turned his face sideways to avoid the interrogative light of the flashlight. "Not here. Not any more. Maybe the lieutenant has an idea."

"Where's the damn backup?"

She whisked the flashlight behind them. It picked up hunched-over figures heading toward them.

"The pigtails secure?" she asked Kinsella.

"They're not going anywhere."

"Then we are. Come on."

They met the three uniformed cops, guns drawn.

"Two tied up, back there. Approach with caution," she warned them.

"What about the one to get ready?"

"He's with me."

The cops eyed Kinsella and Matt as they followed her and the dancing flashlight beam, not sure which one was the temporarily paroled desperado.

The usher was quaking in his fallen house when they came up the stairs into the lobby. More uniforms had gathered.

"Where'd the DEA go?" Molina asked one.

"Vehicular pursuit."

"Get me wheels."

The man nodded. Molina made for the entrance, pausing only to fix Kinsella with a look half-warning, half-challenge. "Follow if you can."

He sprinted out the door before her and collared a valet in an ersatz Oriental uniform. "The black Taurus. A hundred bucks if you have it here in one minute flat."

With a screech of brakes, a white Crown Victoria careened slantwise across the street.

Kinsella swore like a sailor and then he swore like a French legionnaire.

"I'm going along," Matt squeezed into the backdraft from the obscenities.

"Watch those taillights as long as they're visible." Kinsella sent a look after the Crown Vic that Matt hoped never to be on the other end of this side of Purgatory.

The Taurus screeched up in its turn. Matt barely got around to the passenger side before it took off in a squeal of tires and the flutter of a hundred-dollar bill.

"Left onto ninety-five, in the left lane," Matt said, still straining to see the impossible as he jerked on the seatbelt.

The Taurus wove through the late-night traffic like a ninja armored in sheet metal. They must have been doing seventy.

Matt glanced at Kinsella, who grinned. "Had it upgraded. They're using a Taurus platform at NASCAR, did you know?"

"No." Matt cared little about cars.

"It's what's not visible that counts."

Matt nodded, straining to spot the right pair of red taillights among a host of beady red beams.

"There! Is it them?"

Max nodded. "Look. They're putting the cherry on top. Thanks, Lieutenant."

"Not for us?"

"Not for us. For speed. But they won't shake us. We'll run in their wake like Ahab after the white whale."

Matt couldn't suppress his nervous bark of laughter. The big white Crown Vic was very like the Moby Dick of the automotive world.

"What's happening?" he asked, hating to ask Kinsella but needing to know more than he needed his pride.

"Drug bust. That was the principal deal. The rest--you and Molina--were ride-alongs."

"And Temple?"

"Unscripted. Wild card."

"Is she--?"

Kinsella shook his head. He'd probably forgotten his loosened hair, why ever he'd done it, and didn't realize he resembled a wild man of Borneo. Matt took in his primitive streak, and wondered about Temple. Wondered about himself. Molina he didn't wonder about. She was doing her job. The rest of them were trying to save their own lives. And maybe each other. He had to give even Kinsella credit for that.

They accelerated like a whip-snake into the on-ramp lane, then were greased lightning on Highway 75, heading north.

Kinsella eased up on the gas. "Don't want to make the cops paranoid."

"She knows we're coming."

"She knows we'll try."

Suddenly they were "we." It gave Matt chills. What if Temple's death were the one thing that could draw them together?

"You're sure she's not back there--?"

"The game is distraction. The aim is a moving target. If Temple were back there, she'd be dead."

"God! Don't say that!"

"It's the truth. As long as someone is running, there's a chance Temple is worth something to them."

Matt grew silent. He couldn't drive like a demon, not without a vehicle; he couldn't pull a gun and flash a badge, not without a license. All he could do was pray. And be there. For whatever would be.

"More taillights at the same speed." Kinsella's chin jerked to-ward the windshield. "It's a caravan. Major bust. Molina and her case is icing."

"And Temple?"

"Temple is ... an innocent bystander and the point of the game."

"Then you know who?"

"I know who the target is. I don't know why."

Kinsella's hands left the wheel, then pounded back onto it in a death grip.

Matt knew dread, and knew for the first time in his life that prayer was not enough.

******************

Temple rocked and rolled in her padded cell.

Temple despaired. She shouldn't have had that scotch and water. With all this motion, all this stress, all this hallucinogenic high, she might have to go to the bathroom. And if she died, well ... it would be embarrassing. If she lived, it would be even more embarrassing.

Amazing what really mattered.

Not being a kid. Not losing it. Not freaking out. Not... choking to death on your own fear because you were locked into this human-size jewel case in the dark, bouncing back and forth like heisted emeralds, only emeralds don't have to go to the bathroom, afraid you might die and afraid you might live and never live it down, this awful claustrophobia, this turning of yourself inside out, this delirious buzz that's supposed to be a kick if you pay for it but is sheer hell if someone does it to you.

Oh, Lord. Think how disappointed everyone would be if she died? Poor Max. Guilt would move right in and pay rent. Poor Matt. Another guilty party. They could blame themselves for decades. And her poor aunt Kit, who would blame herself for ever letting Temple leave New York City for the Wild West. And her mother and father, who always knew she should never go off on her own, especially with a man. Especially with That Man. And her brothers, who started all her phobias by holding her under the fruit crate when she was four, and threatening to never let her free, and laughing.

She guessed they didn't really mean it. But it had felt like it at the time, because she was smaller and a girl, both things they didn't seem to like much at their grand ages and sizes of ten, twelve and thirteen . . . she had hated the dark and closed-in places ever since . . . remember how she had grabbed Matt's arm in the haunted house? Not so very long ago. Much more recently than she had encountered her terror in a fruit crate.

Those creepy ninjas, masked men. Weren't going to get her down. Okay, she was down. She was almost out. But she was conscious. Sort of. And her feet were free. Maybe she could pry the lid open. Wriggle her wrists out of the handcuffs. But she'd tried, and it's like they knew her wrists were small. All she did was wear off her skin. And the upholstery was up, down and all around. Muffling.

No one would hear her. She tried chewing the silken gag into a narrow strip and shouting around it. But it was spiderVweb strong, the silk and all she managed were a few puny mews, like a sick cat.

Sometimes she thought the dark and the drug haze and the endless nauseous motion would gag her. Or that she'd stop breathing. Just because. And then her heart raced until her ears pounded. And she thought, no, someone wanted this to happen to her, and the last thing she wanted was to give in to someone who wanted her to give in. Did that make sense? No.

They would be so sad that she'd had to leave them. She could hardly stand it. She could face leaving, but she couldn't face leaving them alone, with only sadness to remember her by.

All right. She wasn't dead yet. They could have killed her, but they didn't. She was still alive, and she wasn't quite crazy, although the possibility of that seemed the scariest of all. And her feet were free. And they were wearing very spiffy shoes. If she died, she'd be put in a funeral casket, and then no one would see her spiffy shoes.

Not to be tolerated.

She kicked off one of the shoes, put both hands to her mouth and pulled on the tight rope of silk until it seemed her lips would peel off. But finally she managed to work one side over her chin.

Her handicapped hands tussled the fabric down to her neck, where it hung like a cowboy's kerchief.

Her face and mouth were sore, worn, but it was great to know she could really holler if she had to.

And then she curled her toes, flexed her knee and worked the loose shoe up, up the cushy side of the rolling coffin to her hip. She caught its pointed toe with her fingertips.

She brought it, heel first, to her head.

Temple took a deep breath. It was harder to strangle without a gag in your mouth. And now she could yell. But should she, right now? Better to wait until she sensed that someone beside ninjas might hear her.

The shoe lay on her chest, between her handcuffed wrists.

Now what? It couldn't spring steel. Maybe she could work her-self half upright and pry away at the upholstery. There must be wood underneath, and nails or screws. She fought the flutter in her stomach at the word "screws." Screws were hopeless.

No, screws were harder, but not hopeless.