Cat With An Emerald Eye

Chapter 39

Ghostwriter in the Sky

Max's voice on the phone reverberates as from an echo chamber; it sounds like a communication from a ghost. Temple hasn't heard him on the phone for months. He sounds like a stranger again.

"You never did get to wear your prize shoes at the Crystal Ball at the Phoenix after the Halloween seance," he begins.

"No," she agrees. "But who told--?"

Max is a man less worried by who than by what. "Why don't you dig them out"--[he knows her closet]--"and well go out for dinner tonight?"

"But--"

"I can make out-of-the-way personal appearances, and I assume you're not a wanted woman . . . yet."

"Where can I wear such elaborate shoes?"

"Wherever you want to. You didn't worry about that before."

"I didn't have these shoes before. Max, I need to know where we're going so I know what else to wear."

"A classy little out-of-the-way place. Wear whatever goes with the shoes. I'll come by at seven."

Temple listens to the lull of the dial tone until the telephone wrangles at her to hang up.

Max is even more mysterious than before. She used to love his spur-of-the-moment social style.

It seemed spontaneous, fun. Now she understands that his sudden whimsical turns were dictated by grave considerations she never saw. Still, Max found the shoes; he deserves to celebrate his feat. Her feet. The Midnight Louie shoes.

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

Temple is ready by six-thirty and discovers that she can't sit down because Midnight Louie has left fine black hairs on every horizontal surface. She's wearing the ankle-length, stretch-velvet dress that never saw the lights of the Crystal Ball, and it's black anyway, but she doesn't want it to be furry too. Max isn't used to cat hair.

Tonight she's pinned a black enamel panther-head pin with emerald-green eyes a couple inches below the dress's soft turtleneck. Except for the Shoes, that's her only jewelry. She should be appropriately dressed for anything from Caesars Palace Court Continental restaurant to Three O'Clock Louie's at Temple Bar. She used to get so excited wondering where mysterious Max Kinsella would take her; now she's just worried. Should he be doing this? Is it safe? For him? For her?

He rings the doorbell, like a good lad.

She realizes she's never opened the door for him in this place. It does feel a little like prom night, only any flowers she'd get from Max would be paper.

He's wearing a matching black turtleneck, not velvet, and black blazer, slacks, shoes.

She can't help smiling. "We look like we're going to a mime's funeral."

"Except for your shoes." He looks down and she turns, the flared skirt swinging out.

"Spectacular, but I hope you don't think the real Midnight Louie should have a night out too."

"No. He's resting comfortably in the bedroom."

Max wanders in, looks toward the room under discussion. "I suppose he regards it as his territory now."

Temple thinks, and decides to leave that unanswered.

Max turns. "Ready?"

For what? "Sure."

She picks up her only evening bag, a silver minaudiere on a black satin string.

"Coat?"

"How cold can it get?" She holds out her arms in their wrist-length sleeves.

"You'll be all right."

She hopes so.

Locking the door behind her seems ostentatious, especially when she drops her key-heavy chain into the shallow black mouth of the tiny purse.

On the way down in the elevator Max leans against the polished wood. Temple wonders what kind of wheels he uses now.

It's cooler and darker outside than she had expected. In the parking lot, her aqua Storm is parked next to Electra's pink Probe; together they look like an ad for a Miami Vice rerun. Next to them sits a new Taurus that looks ... black.

Max opens the passenger door. "Gandolph's."

"Can you just use it?"

"I'm his heir," Max mentions after he gets in and pulls on the seat belt.

"Won't that be awkward? Won't you have to show up in court eventually?"

"No." Max doesn't explain further, and his voice, his profile don't encourage Temple to probe.

She stares ahead, thinking that the evening feels all wrong, that the Taurus isn't Max and it isn't her, it's a dead man's hearse. It's a dead relationship's hearse. The little purse sits on her lap like a dead thing, heavy and still. She curls her hands around it, not being used to carrying small purses, or sitting in a well-upholstered sedan with velour upholstery, or feeling like she's in a magazine ad for something.

Only when the car makes several turns does she look at Max.

"Ah, is this place we're going to on the west side?"

He nods. She'll have to get used to that ponytail in profile. It doesn't look bad, just different.

Like the car. Temple is terribly afraid that they are heading in the wrong direction, but doesn't know how to say so, so she says nothing, not even when the Taurus turns into the parking lot of the Blue Dahlia.

Disastrous! Temple is speechless. Sick. Shocked. Does not dare say anything. Then she glances cautiously at Max, and suddenly suspects that he knows exactly-- exactly --what he is doing. He grins at her like Sean Connery as James Bond, insouciantly pleased with himself, with her.

"I just discovered this place. Quite unusual."

Temple nods in a daze, trying not to notice the place in the lot where she and Matt collapsed with laughter at the idea of Molina the singing policewoman.

This is getting interesting. Just how much does Max know about the Blue Dahlia, and who sings there sometimes, and when Temple might have been there and with who? Whom?

Whoever.

She is demure as he lets her out like a large little gentleman.

They are like two coiled springs trying to guess when the other will make like a Slinky and flip ... right for the stairs and a hasty exit.

They enter the restaurant, are shown to a table for two lit by the small coral-shaded lamp she remembers from last time.

"This is darling," she remarks, as she probably did last time.

"It's fairly new. Since my ... sabbatical."

"Is that what you're calling it?"

He settles into the chair, which he has to push back from the table to accommodate his legs, as usual. "It's as good a term as any. Do you like it?"

He means the restaurant, of course. Temple looks around. The small dance floor is empty, but a few musicians are shaking out their arms and their instruments under the spot lit stage area. A lone stool sits at the side, unoccupied.

Temple strokes the cold metal purse on the white tablecloth. She should probably tell Max they have to leave now, that Molina could come in at any moment, but when she looks at him he seems so at ease, so in control, so sure of himself that she can't quite warn him.

Besides, then he'd ask her how she knew Molina sang here and she'd have to explain she'd been here before, which would ruin the "surprise" aspect of the evening, always a big thing with Max. And then he'd ask with who--whom?--not out of jealousy but because he always wants to know everything about everything; that's what makes him a master magician, always knowing every situation inside out.

And she'd have to say it was just a dinner out with Matt, hating that "just," because that seemed to put Matt down and he didn't deserve it.

Better to let Molina nab Max and let him break himself out of jail afterward, Temple decides morosely, than to ruin the present with an autopsy of the recent past.

"You seem more serious than usual," Max says.

"Just worried."

"About what?"

"Our being out in public like this. Your being out like this."

"Let me worry about me; I've been doing it for a while." Max's smile could cut through fog.

"Come on, you want to show off those shoes, don't you?"

He takes her hand to draw her up and onto the tiny parquet dance floor.

No one else is there, but Max is used to solo numbers in the spotlights. The musicians have indeed got it together by now and are playing something familiar and forties and vaguely Brazilian (fascinatin'rhythm).

Max can dance and, as he's proving tonight, has even mastered some ballroom moves.

Temple thinks that she is doing the samba or something similar, but it doesn't matter what she thinks she's doing, because Max's lead is so smooth and so strong that she is doing just the right thing no matter what. She had forgotten how easy it was to dance with Max, because she is so small and he isn't. He's right; they'd be great on stage together if she could stand to be locked in cramped cabinets and wear fishnet hose. Well, maybe she wouldn't have to wear fishnet hose...

Max can slow-dance too, and Temple is swung out and drawn in, whatever the music and moment dictates, until she stops worrying and looking out of the corner of her eye to see if the stool is occupied yet or if any yellow-haired ghosts are watching from the sidelines.

They are of course making a spectacle of themselves, exactly what Max shouldn't be doing for his own good, but then her shoes might be drawing a tad of attention away from him.

Midnight Louie would like that.

"You're finally smiling," Max says when the music has them swaying together cheek to shoulder again.

"I haven't danced like this in a while."

"Me neither."

When the fourth number starts and they leave the floor, a smattering of applause accompanies them.

"Honestly." Temple unfolds her napkin with one mighty wrist shake and arranges it carefully on her delicate velvet lap. "What an exhibitionist. You couldn't remain undercover in a dust storm."

While Temple is taking her worry out on the table linen, Max has folded his napkin into an intricate star-shape, which he presents to her like a bouquet. In the center is one breathlessly perfect, perfectly pink fresh rosebud.

She stares at him with the proper amazement, not so much for the trick and the posy, but for the underlying meaning. And suddenly the night is not a dream, but the opening act for just what she needed, distance and a sudden snap back to reality, time for a discussion:

"For your sterling performance among the mediums the other night," Max said.

" Magnifique. "

"You ... you were there?"

"Who do you think stage-managed the entire thing?"

"Max, you couldn't have."

"Of course I could have. It's what I do."

"But you were home, asleep."

"I should have been," he agreed as the cocktail waitress sashayed into place, flouncing her abbreviated ruffles into his shoulder.

"Temple?" he asked.

She waved her hand. "Surprise me."

Max took the waitress's order pad and wrote something on it. She dipped with a wink and vanished.

"How did you even know about the second seance?"

"I didn't, until I called Electra that morning to see if you'd gotten home safely."

"Max, you didn't!"-

"She told me you were resting for the seance that night. She seemed particularly pleased to hear from me."

"I bet she did."

"Asked if I'd been spending a lot of time at the library lately, and what I'd been looking up."

"Grrrr."

"Do you have any idea what that was about?"

"Electra's unquenchable curiosity. Okay, so you then hie over to the haunted house and set up. Didn't the Glory Hole boys get in your way?"

"So you're responsible for that added complication! We were working at cross-purposes, apparently, but it came out all right in the end. The old guys didn't come along until after ten o'clock, so I was mostly set. I just had to make sure they didn't see my illusions in motion and blow the whistle."

"What did you hope to accomplish?"

"I don't know. I only know that magic has always worked for me when I most desperately need it. I hoped, I guess, to flush out the conscience of a killer."

"And succeeded beyond your wildest dreams, as always."

"Not always. I still have some wild dreams left."

Temple toyed with the cut rose at her place. "What effects exactly did you produce?"

He looked as if he didn't know where to start. "The panther."

"Where did you get a panther? You're not working with one now."

"No, but a lot of magicians do. Nice size cat, very dramatic, easier to handle than a lion or tiger.

Kahlua was on loan for the night."

"Then ... the fireplace was lined with mirror ... or you had installed a false back."

Max shrugged modestly.

"But, Max, you were the walking dead when I left you at Gandolph's house."

"And after I talked to Electra I'd had, oh, four hours sleep, so I walked right over to the haunted house and started setting up. You know how much intense effort is involved installing a magic show; same thing. I'm used to working under pressure."

"But how could you know that the psychics would react to the phenomena?"

"Modesty is not one of my weaknesses, of which there are many."

Temple rolled her eyes.

"I guess you know that from experience," Max added modestly. "I happen to believe that any competent magician--and I am far, far more than competent--can outdo any fraudulent medium. I figured if I put their tawdry tricks to shame, they'd be so unnerved they'd begin to believe they had conjured something real. Even fake mediums hope for genuine success. They wouldn't be in the spook business if they didn't half believe."

"Well, it worked like a charm, Kinsella. I'd have you take a bow, but you're a wanted man."

"Wanted here right now, I hope."

Temple glanced toward the stage. "I hope not."

"She's not coming."

"What?"

"I love it when you're surprised silly and trying not to show it. You do such a good job, but not quite good enough. Molina isn't singing tonight."

"You know about her performing here?"

Max nodded. "She's on a case; not a chance in homicide that she'll turn up."

"And you brought me here, with me thinking you were walking into the lion's mouth? Why?"

"It's a fun place. It's where I wanted to be with you, sans the songstress, of course. Why should I let a detail like Molina stop me? All I had to do was check the duty roster--"

"In the police computer!"

"Right. It's never magic, Temple. It's just damn good planning."

Like magic, a drink in a footed glass appeared in front of Temple. Foamy, pink. A Pink Lady.

The waitress dipped to position a matching green drink in front of Max. A Grasshopper.

Together, the two drinks looked a lot like Electra's Probe and Temple's Storm: Miami Vice colors.

"I think you got it wrong this time, Kinsella." Temple sipped her drink through the straw.

"Dessert first, substance later."

"The mediums and son of medium nicely confessed, didn't they?"

"To harassing Gandolph to death. None of them necessarily killed him, or even meant to. No arrests, no trial, no case closed. No vengeance either."

"The book will be vengeance. I'm hoping you can help me with it."

"With the writing?"

"Nope. Oh, maybe some light editing. No, I need a front woman."

"A flack to hype it?"

Max shook his head. "A ghostwriter to take credit. I don't care to be in the limelight. You'll do nicely. Of course it will be a coauthor credit with Gandolph the Great."

"Max, it's a pity you can't do it; you'd be much more promotable as co-author."

"Can't. Anyway, I won't be able to finish it for a year or so. Gary had lots of research and notes to cull through. At least the project will keep me off the public streets."

Temple picked up the rose she'd laid by her water glass to inhale the indescribably wonderful scent again.

"Aha! What about the bats, the hundreds and hundreds of bats?"

"They did scare the goblins right off the rafters and tangled my many lines of illusion. I assume they were imported to have at the happy haunted-house patrons. Or has Houdini adopted a familiar?"

"Not a genuine bat in sight when I did my tour of duty at the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead, and nothing to do with Houdini, or Welles. Some protesters were picketing the Halloween attraction for vilifying spiders and snakes and rats and bats. I bet the zealots salted the empty premises with a brood of bats once the attraction had closed to make a point how peaceful the critters are."

"As you have made a point." Max bowed his head in her direction. "I'm delighted that I didn't suffer the slings of bat guano for some more sinister reason."

"So you created everything: the panther, Houdini's second appearance, the flying martial arts weapons, the fog, the figure in space."

"Or amplified what was already there. What figure in space?"

"The Gandolph-like figure in the Edwina hat and cloak that everybody saw floating in the darkness and the distance."

"Mass hysterical delusion." Max dismissed the phenomenon. "Didn't hurt the impact of my effects, though."

"I think there was something there."

"Of course. There's always something there when people see things. Reflections, or just an expectant state of mind."

"No. That figure was real. I saw it at the previous seance, in three stages: boy, man and elder prophet. So did Agatha Welk. The others saw something then too, but they took it for a hologram programmed by the haunted-house operators. They never saw it with the detail I did, especially when it appeared last behind Gandolph, before he was dead, the mouth saying something--"

"Temple, you've had a trying time. Sit back, relax, drink your drink."

"You're sounding complacent, Max, and I find that annoying."

"I know better than to annoy a redhead, unless she wants me to."

"Well, you're rubbing me the wrong way now. I know what I saw. I mean it! I finally know what I saw, and it wasn't Houdini and it certainly wasn't phantoms from the ingenious mind of Max Kinsella."

He was silent.

Temple picked up the rose. "This is lovely. Thanks. But.. .you gave it to me for the wrong reason."

"How so?"

"You remember when I was trying to come up with the word?"

"Wonderfully ingenious. I had no idea you had researched Houdini enough to know the whole Rosabelle routine. Worked perfectly with my illusions to unhinge the mediums. That's what finally did the trick and loosened their tongues. When you came up with 'Rosabelle.'"

"That's just it, Max. I didn't come up with 'Rosabelle.' "

"But... you said it."

"No, I started to say something like it, and the mediums jumped on it. We've all been looking for the wrong ghost. It's like you always say. People see what they expect to see. People hear what they expect to hear. Even Max Kinsella. Sometimes."

He was listening now, his face serious, sober.

"I was trying desperately to remember the one true thing I saw at the other seance: the figure through the window. And the last time I saw him, the last thing I saw was his lips forming a word over and over. A last voiceless word. He stood right behind Gandolph, and I think he was trying to warn him of danger."

"Why would any ghost want to warn Gandolph.. . unless it was his dead mother--?"

Temple shook her head. "This ghost has a lot in common with Houdini and Gandolph. And you. 'Ghost' isn't an adequate word. 'Spirit' is better. This was a spirit that would not be quenched in life, despite many reasons. A man who was born in Wisconsin on a date very near Houdini's amended birth date. A man who was deeply attached to his mother, though she died when he was still a child. A magician with an intimate connection to Gandolph, and even to you.

"And I didn't realize that until I searched for the word. I work with words. I write them. I used to say them in front of a camera. I can't lip-read, but I have a certain instinct. So I was trying to sound out that unspoken two-syllable word."

"Not 'Rosabelle'?" Max looked bewildered, but like a believer.

Temple shook her head.

"I was just getting it when they interrupted me and declared it to be 'Rosabelle.' But it wasn't."

"What was it, then?"

"One word, a last word, from long ago."

"Temple, don't tease me."

She took a deep breath and inhaled the rose's scent first. And last.

"Rosebud."

Max and Temple were back on the dance floor, stunned in the spotlight.

After a long time, Max spoke.

"The arguing voices the neighbors heard Halloween night."

"Yes?"

"I have an idea, but we'll have to go back to the house."

"Fine."

"Can you wait until after dinner?"

"No."

"Too bad we're not talking about something else."

"First things first."

"I still can't believe it."

"I don't expect you to."

"It changes everything."

"Not everything, but a lot. We'd better go."

Max pulled her closer and rested his chin on the top of her head. "One more number; it helps me think."

"That's a new one."

"The music. Cryptographers use music to get themselves in a decoding mood. Very mathematical and inspiring, music."

Temple smiled. After what she'd told Max, she felt like being held, because the implications were very scary. Being held on a dance floor was both stimulating and safe. Max seemed to think so, too, as they swayed together.

"Oooh! What was that?" Temple asked after a dramatic move.

"A dip. I understand that they're all the rage."

"Where'd you learn to do a dip?"

"Danny Dove isn't a bad example."

"You were all over the romance convention too?"

"Maybe I needed to learn a thing or two."

"I don't think so."

They spun in a tight circle as the music shifted into the intro for another instrumental.

Words were running through Temple's mind. Rosebud. Halloween. Ghosts. Midnight Louie.

Black magic. Spells. That old black magic . ..

Those last words weren't thought, or merely mouthed without sound, or even spoken. They were sung! Temple looked up, appalled, at Max.

He was staring over her head, appalled. "Damn! She's supposed to be investigating a transient murder on the north side."

Instead, Molina's contralto was crooning softly over the micro-phone.

Max backed them out of the light and off the dance floor. They slunk along the sidelines to the door, where Max thrust some bills at the headwaiter.

"Emergency. Got to leave. For that table over there. Waitress in the ruffly thing."

"Max, they're all in ruffly things," Temple whispered as they tiptoed out, much good as discretion did now. "Did she see us? I couldn't bear to look."

"She's onstage. The lights are in her eyes. She wasn't expecting us."

"And vice versa. So she couldn't see us."

"Probably did." Max sounded resigned.

"My purse!" Temple stopped dead in the parking lot.

Max reached into his jacket and produced it.

"Oh, thank God."

She stopped again. "My rose!"

He reached into his pocket, came up with a ten-dollar bill folded into a rose. "I'll have to make you another one."

Temple shook her head. "If she's seen you?"

"What can she do?"

"Arrest you."

"Find me first." He let her in the car and went around. "Sorry about dinner."

"At least we hadn't ordered yet."

"I've still got the linguini Alfredo."

"Done."

The drive back to the house wasn't as self-conscious as the earlier drive.

"I'm almost afraid to go in," Temple commented when they stood in the garage before the connecting door to the house.

"It's not haunted."

The kitchen was so big and impressive it was impossible to be scared once Max had turned on all the under- and over-counter lights.

He rummaged in the cabinets, then turned to consult her. "Do you want to eat here or on the opium bed?"

"You don't eat on that priceless bed?" Temple envisioned cracker crumbs in the fretwork.

"Ah, no," Max admitted. "I thought we could eat... after."

"I think we better talk ... first."

"First wine, then." He ducked through the glass door to emerge with another rare bottle of something. "At least we can drink on the opium bed."

"You seem a little fixated."

"It's comfortable. Besides, all Gary's furniture is huge and clubby. It's my turn to confide a few home truths; let me choose the confessional, at least."

Glasses and wine bottle accompanied them to the bedroom where the opium bed provided the exotic centerpiece.

Temple had to step out of the Midnight Louie shoes like a good little geisha girl before climbing onto the embroidered satin coverlet. The bed was built like a latticed house, even a sort of gazebo, with open roof and sides. It was as cozy as a children's playhouse on a rainy day, despite the inlaid cinnabar and mother-of-pearl Temple could see why Max liked lounging there; it was vast enough to accommodate his length both ways. He installed the wine bottle on a table behind the bed's low back, then settled into a pillow-piled corner.

Temple sat cross-legged beside him, sipping her wine.

"What's your theory?" he asked.

"I think that Orson Welles's ... spirit felt protective toward Gandolph. It also was drawn to Houdini."

"Welles called himself 'The Great Orson' when he performed magic. And he was born, forty-one years after Houdini, a month later, to the day: May sixth, nineteen-fifteen."

"And of course Halloween is a key date for him, too."

"The Martian-landing radio broadcast on Halloween in nineteen thirty-nine that half the country took for real. It was the first time he shocked the world, but not the last."

"The 'noises' heard here on Halloween night, that could have been a spectral radio replay!

And Welles, like Houdini and Gandolph, was devoted to his mother. Didn't he live mostly with her as a child?"

"Yes. She was a superb singer, a very cultured woman."

"So, given these similarities and Houdini's death on Halloween and his tremendous will, I think Orson Welles's spirit drew somehow on this conjunction offerees and learned that Gandolph could be in danger."

"Then he appeared to warn him. But he didn't save him."

"How do we know he didn't? The battle-ax might have killed him otherwise. What no one--

and maybe not even a spirit---could know was Gandolph's cardiac vulnerability. He had no history of heart disease, but I think the stress of the seance killed him."

"Hmm." Max nodded and poured more wine in his glass.

"There's something you're not telling me."

"For one thing, I've had the advantage of poking through Gary's files on mediums. He had all your seance partners on disk."

"And--?"

"They all did have motives for killing him. Obviously, Wayne Tracey might have had much more lethal feelings than he confessed to, but Oscar Grant was not simply the respected host of a rather unrespected television show, he--"

"Had a gang history in LA. Maybe drugs. Maybe still drugs today."

Max let his eyebrows lift in tribute. "Very good. Very true. And of course the treacherous bitch--"

Temple interrupted him again. "How did you know about that?"

"You think I would rig the room and neglect a microphone and tape recorder? Anyway, the lovely Mynah's extramarital affairs were legion, including a revived encounter with her own ex-husband, Oscar. I wouldn't be surprised if she was getting it on with the spirits in between more fleshly engagements. Exposure would not have helped her, and besides it could hav endangered her marriage."

"Why would she care?"

"Because William Kohler made all the money. He financed her New Age retreat."

"No! That... slouch potato? Where'd he get the money?"

"He's a stockbroker, and not a very ethical one, according to Gary's investigation. He also operates a lucrative financial newsletter. A scandal about Mynah and her New Age psychic and physical escapades would undercut his creditability."

"And the others?"

"Well, D'Arlene Hendrix seems to have done some good on the psychic front, but the reason the police took her in for questioning is that they discovered that Gandolph had been questioning police departments she worked with about her methods. That sort of thing makes the police suspicious, and his inquiries certainly weren't helping her reputation with law enforcement. Her work is her life, so..."

"So Gandolph was a real threat to her, simply by investigating. But surely Agatha and the professor--"

"Oh, tried and true, each in their own field; but Mangel is up for a prestigious chair and now soft-pedaling his approval of psychic phenomena, which made any possibility of appearing in a Gandolph investigation troublesome. In fact, he hasn't participated in a seance for two years, which makes one wonder why he would come to Las Vegas for such a public stunt just now--"

"Unless he knew Gandolph was living here and expected him to find the Houdini Halloween seance irresistible. Is anyone really that serpentine?"

"Tem-ple," Max rebuked her with great green cat-eyes.

"And Agatha? I'm afraid to ask."

"Simply put: quite crackers. She tried to poison some tea-reading subjects, under the assumption that they would make good contacts in the spirit world if she had sent them there herself. She was ultimately released from the mental hospital, but you know how overcrowding permits premature release of all sorts of people."

Temple sat bolt upright, clutching at her throat.

"Temple?"

"Poison in the tea? Max, I drank her tea, when she did her reading and warned me about a short dark man who was a secret ally. Hey, maybe she meant 'male,' not man. That could have been Midnight Louie!"

"Like all objects of predictions, you're finding ways to justify them. How long ago did you drink tea with Agatha?"

"Two days ago, but--ahh! I feel as if I'd swallowed a bug, or at least a marijuana joint; either way it's a roach."

Max patted her on the shoulders. "Two days? Drink your wine, then, and bless your lucky stars that dear Agatha didn't consider you good spirit fodder."

"Well, they all could have killed Gandolph, then."

Max topped off her glass, and then refilled his own empty one.

"Aren't you hitting that a little heavy?"

"Yes. Yes, I am. You see, there's another means and motive that could have killed Gary. I still suspect human intervention, only I can't prove it, and I doubt any trace will be found. But to explain my theory I can't research dead magicians' lives or their computer files. I can't rely on the spirit world showing me the way. I have to exhume some rather painful parts of my own life."

Max smiled a bit crookedly at Temple. "Want to help me turn over some of the auld sod?"

She just nodded.

Max stared past her, into the opium bed's farthest corner. Temple wondered what ghosts might haunt an artifact like this, what dreams, what nightmares. Maybe that was why Max liked it; it took his mind off his own dreams and nightmares.

"What you call my Interpol summer,' when I was sixteen-going-on-seventeen: our families sent my cousin Sean and me to Ireland our senior summer before college. You know my full roster of given names. Michael Aloysius Xavier. Sean got Patrick Donnell too. Our families were fourth-generation American, but their hearts were still in the homeland.

"Sean and I were best buddies. The summer was to be a last lark before hitting the books for real. I was going to major in communications and earn money on the side with magic shows.

Sean was going to become a history professor. Our families' blessings and a list of a few hundred cousins all over the auld sod accompanied us on our first big trip away from home."

"It must have been a fabulous opportunity."

"It was. Except two teenagers loose in a foreign land will try anything: passing for overage in pubs, dating every colleen that clog-dances, talking passionate politics We were appalled at the oppression in Northern Ireland. Most American sympathies are with the Irish, because so many of us fled here during the Famine.

"It's a long, sad story, so let me boil it down for you. We got to hanging around with the wrong elements; we got caught up in the uncivil war over there. It was all so involving, so eye-opening, so exotic. We didn't know how to walk the thin line between orange and green, we didn't even see it. Sean was blown up in an IRA hit."

"No!"

"I would have been there to be blown up too, except... there was a girl we both met, both flirted with. She was a bit older in years, and decades in experience. I was off with her when Sean died. We'd had a real fight about it, bloody knuckles and everything. Sean stormed off, went to the wrong pub, and that was that."

"Max, that's awful. But how did you end up suspected of being part of the IRA?"

Max swigged the expensive wine as if it were beer. "I joined the IRA, determined to find the ones who had killed Sean. Then I would turn them in."

"What? But you sympathized with the IRA."

"Not then."

"There's a name for that."

"Counterespionage. I doubt I could have spelled it then. It was a guilt-offering. I'd gone home for the funeral. Of course we'd each written home all summer, and Sean had written of our romantic triangle. I discovered he'd always taken it more seriously than me. If I'd have known I'd have bowed out, but it seemed like a game, a friendly competition. Anyway, at the funeral it was obvious that Sean's parents blamed me. My folks, of course, were fiercely partisan on my behalf. So the war came back to Wisconsin. My family didn't want me to go back to Ireland, but our two families had always been close. I couldn't stand the carnage, so I left."

"And became a teenage spy."

"There are no teenagers in Ireland, north and south, Temple. At least not in those days, and not for centuries before. Children fight that guerrilla war, and pay for it and die for it. I was in way over my head, but I did finally trace the cadre of men who had bombed that particular pub.

All my magic practice proved to be quite useful, after all. Then I turned them over to the British."

Temple propped her elbows on her thighs and put her face in her hands.

"I know. For the fantasy of avenging Sean and purging myself of guilt I put my entire life into a meat-grinder. I didn't even understand yet that the particular bombers didn't matter, that it was a conflict that had been bigger than anybody in it, including me, for centuries."

"How did you survive?"

"I didn't. I ran, to the Continent, and that wasn't far enough. In some circles what I did was considered an accomplishment, because I was finally found and offered a 'scholarship* by...

another organization."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't say much more. There are those who oppose terrorism in any cause, in any place.

Nations, commercial concerns, individuals. They offered me sanctuary; they offered me an education all over Europe, a chance to become a real magician; they offered me a family, and a more positive career in global espionage. Gary was allied with them. One of my first tutors. He could have been killed for that past, and there would be no trace."

"But he was retired, even from his magician career, wasn't he?"

"There is no retirement. I tried, and you saw what happened."

Temple nodded slowly. "I was your retirement."

He reached for her hand. "You weren't very retiring, though. That's why Gandolph has to have a book out; not just because the subject was dear to his heart, and he deserved a life after his many years of service and risk, but some... elements might fear what he would write. If this rather innocuous book on mediums is published, that will lull their suspicions. They will think that was all that was in his mind and his computer files."

"This is insane! You have to go through the rigmarole of publishing an entire book just to mislead someone?"

"Not for Gary's sake. It's too late. For mine. The more normal I can make the life around me, the more chance I've got of escaping the old life."

"But you were a public person, a performer before."

"And that was tolerated as long as they knew where I was and what I was doing. I wasn't a danger to anyone. You're only dangerous when you drop out. I might have tried for a new identity ultimately. That's why I was so unfair to involve you, but I was tired of life on the run, of being aloof from anybody human, from love. I guess I reverted to being a stupid teenager again when I met you, Temple, and that was that."

"No one has ever told me that it takes a stupid teenager to get involved with me."

"You know what I mean. I have no business being with you now. So if you have something...

compelling going on in your life, just tell me, and you'll never hear from me again."

"Oh, fabulous. It's either all or nothing with you. And this noble renunciation doesn't ring very true when you seem fairly obsessed with us getting back to where we used to be ... in bed together."

"Oh, absolutely," he admitted. "In a New Delhi minute. No lies or obfuscations there. I just don't know if I can be there tomorrow, or the next day, or if it's safe for you. I'm tired of other people paying for knowing me."

"And in a way you like it: popping in and out of people's lives like a stage magician, mystifying them, confusing everyone, your friends as well as your enemies."

"Maybe you're right." Max finished his second glass of wine. "We'll find out."

"How?"

"I'm staying this time, Temple. I'm not running again. I may have to lie low. I may have to work some not-so-legal magic, but I'm going to get to the bottom of everything that's worked against me in the past. Do you have any problems with that?"

There was only one possible answer.

"We'll find out," she said.