"Then it's a legitimate act."
"How could a magic act be legitimate? In a sense they are all frauds."
"I mean a known act."
"Even known acts come and go. Look at one of the greatest." Temple waited expectantly.
"In this very city, not many months ago, the Mystifying Max played his last night at the Goliath and was seen no more."
"Oh."
"You don't seem impressed."
"Was he really one of the greatest? Magician-wise?" Temple hated use "wise" in this make-fashion manner, but sometimes there was no way around bad syntax.
Mangel nodded. "Original. Always original. No practitioner of what l call the 'elephant effect'
You know, making pachyderms and helicopters and major American landmarks disappear. But an elegant sleight-of-hand and happenstance artist." The professor leaned back in his chair and chuckled without using the computer keys. "No muss, no fuss, that could have been his motto. I find it oddly fitting that he just . . . stopped. No more appearance dates, no retirement announced. It was as if he had never been there. An apt withdrawal for a magician. Either make a production of it, like Houdini lingering on his deathbed for days until dying on Halloween. Or make nothing of it at all."
Temple nodded, sobered. She knew the bleak necessity behind the mysterious career
"withdrawal" of the Mystifying Max.
On the computer screen the words Shangri-La blinked like a theater marquee. Her withdrawal had hardly been the low-profile disappearing act that Max had managed, though Mangel couldn't kkow about the dead body Max had left in his wake at the Goliath Hotel.
She found her fingers massaging the base of her third finger, left hand. Where was the ring?
In Rio? Nothing elegant about out-and-aout theft. A wave of rage threatened to clog Temple's throat.
A shill, Max had called Shangri-La and all her works. A cover for a drug-smuggling operation.
But a shill had ripped off, ripped away, the only engagement ring Temple had ever had. Or almost-engagement ring. She thought. Sort of. Max had never exactly made clear what the ring had represented. Another elegant withdrawal?
Temple suddenly realized that the rage she felt wasn't just for herself. The past had ripped away Max's profession. She'd always thought he had been good at it; now the professor's elegy on Max's career added a serious second to Temple's instincts. Max was used to losing, she realized- Relatives, identities, professions. One golden ring would be the least of it.
"What's the matter? Are you being hypnotized by the computer screen?"
Temple blinked. "No, l was just thinking how fascinating it all is. So this Shangri-La could work under many different names?'"
"Doing many different acts."
"What about the . . . supporting cast? The ninja acrobats--"
"Ninja acrobats? You make me sorry I missed this show."
Temple shrugged. "It was pretty predictable, really, but I'd appreciate your letting me know if she turns up in your database again."
He shut down the computer search, then turned to face her seriously. "You were never fully satisfied, were you?"
"What do you mean?" The question seemed highly personal.
"About Gandolph's--Garry Randolph's--death during the Halloween seance."
"Oh, that. It was rather amazing. All those different psychics claiming to have disrupted the seance for their own motives and in their own ways."
"Sort of like gang assault. No one did it, and everyone did it.
I did hear Garry was working on his memoirs about his psychic- busting days." Mangel's lively eyebrows did a caterpillar cha-cha.
"Maybe somebody else did too."
"You believe it was murder, after all?"
"Let's just say the jury's not in."
"I'll say! Especially since no one was charged."
"I bet you'd get a kick out of looking at my Gandolph collection. Did you ever see him perform?"
"As a magician? No."
"Come on, we'll collect our cooling tea mugs--it was too hot to drink right away, wasn't it?
And then l can show you. I have a large ephemera collection."
Temple rose to follow him.
The professor had been right. The tea had cooled nicely. She cosseted the mug, her tote bag straps slung over her shoulder and staying there for once, while they wandered through a gallery of framed performance posters and circus bills and other transitory paper trails of magical careers from the early 1800s until the 1990s.
Huge but light frames swung out from the wall like the leaves of oversize books, offering an album of the art's latter practitioners.
"That's Gandolph?"
"Back in the days when even I had hair."
"He was a distinguished looking man."
"Magicians need that maitre d' sort of dignity. That's why all the tails and white ties."
"And I thought they were there to hide concealed doves."
"The profession was not in high repute in the early days. Gandolph's heyday was the late sixties, before the tie-dyed brigade took over for a while, before psychedelic drugs gave onstage illusion a run for the money. Here he is, performing at the old Dunes."
"Wait! Don't flip that frame!"
"It is a rather good photograph of him."
"Maybe, but . . . who's she?"
"Ah, Gloria. Gloria Fuentes. What they used to call a 'doll.' Look at those long-stemmed legs.
They don't make even chorus girls like that anymore, and Gloria was never that. Always a magician's assistant, and Gandolph's main lady until he retired in 'eighty-four."
"Oh my. Do you have a smaller photograph of her I could copy?
Any newspaper clippings?"
"I suppose so. Why?"
"I know someone who's been looking for someone just like her."
"A theatrical historian?"
Temple mulled it over. "l guess you could say that." When singing at the Blue Dahlia, Molina was theatrical, and you could call a homicide cop a historian of sorts.
Gloria Fuentes was neither of those.
But she was a much younger version of the sketched face of a dead woman in today's newspaper.
**************
"You wanted to see me?" Temple asked demurely over the telephone.
"No," Molina said. "There's something I want you to see."
"What a coincidence. I was about to tell you the same thing."
"I suppose you had better come downtown."
"Always such a treat!"
"Your voice sounds a little husky. You don't have a head cold or anything, do you?" Molina sounded solicitous, almost motherly.
"No. It's always husky. And I've been drinking peppermint tea."
"I see." Molina clearly didn't, but wasn't about to admit it.
They made a date for later that afternoon, and Temple hung up. She had called from the lobby of the university building, a sheaf of papers hot off the brand-name copier still warm in her hand.
What Temple herself had to show and tell, she guessed, would be much more interesting than what Molina wanted with her.
Chapter 35
Imagine Seeing You Here
Temple sat on the edge of the insufficiently padded chair, tote bag clutched on her knees.
Lieutenant C. R. Molina was wearing a forest-green suit today that did nothing for her morning-glory-blue eyes. This woman needed a personal wardrobe consultant, but Temple was no masochist. Then again, Molina was career-driven enough to consider personal attractiveness a disadvantage. In public relations, being neat, clean, and articulate always counted for something. Not that Molina wasn't all of the above. It was just that neat, clean, and articulate didn't seem to do a thing for her. In that respect,
Molina was rather like a Double-mint Twin on a TV ad: bland beyond belief.
The notion of Molina with a twin sent Temple's mind on a free fall of speculation, so she hardly heard the operative question.
"What about my nose?" she asked too late to appear connected.
"Matt Devine speaks highly of it."
"Really?"
"At least he thinks you might be able to identify the source of an odor on a dead woman's clothing."