“You were the one who thought it was so impressive.”
“Shawn!”
“Okay, fine,” Shawn said, plopping himself on a plush, down-filled leather sofa. “Let’s assume that P’tato P’tahto isn’t really a Martian. He’s just another stage magician. What do we know?”
“That the Dissolving Man is a trick.”
“And?”
“And the reason we can’t figure it out is because the solution is too obvious,” Gus said, settling down in an overstuffed armchair.
“So if we take away all the razzle-dazzle, the basic illusion is that the magician is locked into some kind of cabinet, the lights go out, and he slips out through some secret exit. Meanwhile, he’s got a device that instantly clones him and delivers the clone wherever the beam is pointed.”
“That’s the solution that’s so obvious, no one would ever figure it out?” Gus said.
“It is to anyone who saw that Hugh Jackman movie,” Shawn said. “Although it’s also possible he has a twin brother who hides out in the audience. But do Martians even come in twins? There’s a lot of basic research that hasn’t been done on that issue.”
“Yes, I’m sure it’s the cloning machine,” Gus said. “You’ve nailed this one. Except for one thing-the lights never went out.”
“Sure they did,” Shawn said. “Remember that blast of light at the very end? It blinded us all for a few seconds-plenty of time.”
Gus thought back and realized that anything could have happened in that time and he never would have known-he was not only blind, but the roaring sound could easily have covered just about any noise.
“So P’tol P’kah did his trick as usual. Then instead of appearing in the audience, he ran,” Gus said. “That’s what I was saying. He wanted to get away from this gilded cage, and he set up the entire Fortress of Magic show as a ruse to allow him out. But where did he go? And more to the point, who’s the dead guy in the tank and how did he get there?”
“I have an idea on that,” Shawn said. “But let’s hold off on the dead guy for a minute. Instead we should-”
“Let’s not,” Gus interrupted.
“What do you mean, ‘Let’s not’?” Shawn said. “This is my theory, and I get to lay it out however I want to.”
“Sure, when you’re talking to Lassiter or to Chief Vick or to a client,” Gus said. “Then you can lay out your explanation step by step, making sure every piece is in the perfect place to build audience expectation. Then you hit them with the big finale, and everyone’s left thinking you’re a genius. But you don’t need to sell me, so why don’t you just say who the dead guy is now?”
“In the time it took you to lay out that objection, I could have explained everything.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Gus said. “You couldn’t explain a cheese sandwich in less than five minutes.” Gus pressed his fingertips to his forehead and scrunched up his eyes as if he’d been hit with a migraine. “I’m sensing something. It’s a condominium. No, wait, it’s a comic book. No, close to a comic book. It’s-it’s a condiment! Yes, I’m sensing mayonnaise. It’s saying, ‘Put me next to the lettuce.’ ”
“Those explanations are what brings in the lettuce for both of us,” Shawn said. “And why are you getting so irritable, anyway?”
Gus got up from the couch and stalked to the refrigerator. He opened the freezer and put his head next to the ice tray, trying to cool down.
“I don’t know,” Gus said. “Maybe it’s that we’ve promised a dangerous man we’d find his client, and now we realize that the client was actually trying to get away from him, and our client only wants us to find him because he wants to kill him.”
“And you think that puts us in an awkward position morally?” Shawn managed to excavate himself from the sofa cushion he’d sunk into and walked over to the refrigerator. Gently he pulled Gus back from the freezer and closed the door.
“I think it could make us accessories to murder,” Gus said.
Shawn opened the freezer again, then reached in and pulled out an unopened box of grape Popsicles. He tore open the box and offered it to Gus, who accepted one. Shawn unwrapped a Popsicle for himself, then put the box back in the freezer.
“You can relax,” Shawn said. “P’tontius P’kilate isn’t running away from Benny Fleck.”
“P’tol P’kah,” Gus said, more out of reflex than any hope that Shawn would ever get the name right.
“Yeah, right, that guy,” Shawn said.
Gus waited for an explanation. Shawn sucked on the Popsicle, his lips turning purple.
“How do you know that P’tol P’kah isn’t running away from Fleck?” Gus said finally.
“Because,” Shawn said, “he doesn’t exist.”
Chapter Eleven
“ Yes,” Gus said.“I think we’ve already determined that he’s not a real Martian.”
“It’s not that he’s not a real Martian,” Shawn said between sucks on the Popsicle. “It’s that he’s not a real person.”
“We’re standing in his apartment.”
“Are we?”
Although Gus was pretty sure he knew the answer, he took one long look around the luxury suite just to confirm that the walls hadn’t melted away to reveal that he was actually in his own bed, having an insanely elaborate dream. “I can’t speak for you,” he said, “but my feet are definitely on the thirty-ninth floor of the Outer Space Hotel and Casino in an area that’s been turned into an apartment for the exclusive use of P’tol P’kah.”
“Then why hasn’t he used it?” Shawn said. “Look how clean this place is.”
“So Martians are better housekeepers than you,” Gus said. “Besides, the hotel has an entire staff of chambermaids.”
“Okay,” Shawn said. “So when he wants to watch Wheel of Fortune, do the chambermaids come up and act it out for him?”
Gus stared at him blankly. Shawn gestured with his Popsicle at the enormous flat panel on the wall. “That TV isn’t hooked up to anything,” he said.
“Maybe it’s wired into the wall,” Gus said.
Shawn went over to the TV and fished around in the space between its bottom edge and the top of a long credenza. He came up with a sheaf of loose cables. “It’s not wired into anything.”
Gus tried to apply part of his mind to the idea that this had some significance. But mostly he was staring at the bright purple Popsicle that Shawn was holding over the white, white carpet.
Shawn walked over to the closet and pulled one of the mammoth sport coats off its hanger. “He’s got all these clothes, and he hasn’t worn any of them,” Shawn said. “The pockets are all sewn shut; the shirts are all folded and still pinned.” He pulled a shirt off the shelf and tossed it to Gus. When he caught it, Gus could feel the crackle of the manufacturer’s tissue between the layers of cotton.
“So maybe he’s decided the codpiece look works for him,” Gus said, remembering how the Martian was dressed-or, rather, not dressed-at the Fortress of Magic.
But Shawn wasn’t listening. He’d found a small door set into the back wall of the closet. “Cool,” he said.
“What’s cool?” Gus chided himself for letting Shawn change the subject, but he couldn’t help responding to the interest in his friend’s voice.
“Laundry chute,” Shawn said. “Looks like it goes all the way down. Want to see?”
Gus felt a new wave of vertigo just thinking about peering down a thirty-nine-story shaft. “You can describe it to me.”
“Well, it’s a chute,” Shawn said. “And it looks like they’ve thought of everything. They’ve even got rungs built into the sides so you can retrieve your shirt if you decide it’s not really dirty.”
“That’s not a laundry chute. It’s an emergency exit,” Gus said.
“Well, that explains why no one ever sees him leaving the hotel. But still, once he’s out, you’ve got a seven-foot-tall green man walking down the Strip essentially naked, and no one has ever noticed?” Shawn said, pounding his point home by waving the Popsicle. “There’s never been a single photo of him out in public.”
Gus tried to imagine a reason for that, but his mind was mostly occupied by the sight of Shawn’s Popsicle. And particularly by a small corner at the top, where the tip of the stick was showing through. There was a small crack in the purple ice, and it was growing every time Shawn employed the frozen treat as a pointing device.