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.