“Sherlock Holmes is fiction, too, Carlton,” O’Hara said.
Shawn clapped his hands over Gus’ ears. “Don’t say that,” Shawn said. “I haven’t told him yet.”
Gus shook Shawn off his head in time to hear Lassiter say, “We’ll look into this woman. We’ll check her out in every way. But for right now, there’s only one explanation that makes sense, and that’s that her FCC ID is a cover for some secret position. If that turns out not to be the case, we’ll take turns dunking her into that tank until she talks. Until then, let’s err on the side of national security.”
Detective O’Hara thought it through, then jammed her gun into her purse unhappily. “I’m not getting chased off this case.”
“I’m not, either,” Lassiter said.
“Us, neither,” Shawn said.
“Oh, joy,” Lassiter said.
Shawn and Gus left the detectives standing outside the showroom, facing off silently against Major Voges and her agents until a uniformed officer could be found to take guard duty. As they walked down the steep hill to the parking lot, this time unmolested by electronic guard dogs, Gus tried to figure out what had just happened.
“Do you really think that scary woman is from the government?” Gus said.
“Definitely,” Shawn said. “Did you see her shoes? Plain, dull, comfortable, and moderately priced. The hallmark of the government worker.”
“But is she with the FCC or Homeland Security?”
“That depends on who P’Torky P’kig really is.”
“P’tol P’kah,”Gus sighed, knowing that Shawn wouldn’t explain any further without the obligatory correction.
“Right, that guy,” Shawn said. “If he’s a holographic projection from a new kind of projector, she’s probably with the FCC.”
“We felt the floor tremble when he walked.”
“So probably not a holograph,” Shawn said. “Which means she could be who she doesn’t say she is.”
“Why would Homeland Security be chasing a missing magician?”
“Maybe he really is a Martian,” Shawn said. “Or maybe he’s a spy. He uses the magic act as a cover to travel from town to town, stealing secrets and passing them to his undercover contacts wherever he goes.”
“A brilliant idea,” Gus said. “Except that he didn’t travel from city to city. He never left Las Vegas. What kind of secrets can he steal there?”
“Which casino has the best buffet?”
“Couldn’t the undercover contacts just try all the buffets and find out for themselves?”
“Not if they had a small budget,” Shawn said. “Despite what you might think, some of those places are really expensive. And then they put a lot of cheap items up front so you’ll fill up on bread before you can get to the good stuff, like the crab legs and lobster tails.”
“Let’s come back to this later,” Gus said.
“Good. Because I’m suddenly hungry.”
They reached the car and Gus fished in his pocket for his keys. “But if she really is from Homeland Security, how did you get her to back off?”
“She didn’t want publicity,” Shawn said. “You saw that.”
“So why didn’t she just arrest us all?”
“Because whatever she’s doing here, it’s not an official DHS operation,” Shawn said.
“And you know that how?”
“The little d on top of her plane ticket,” Shawn said. “It’s a fare code. She flew DC to LAX in a full-price business-class seat,” Shawn said.
“Last I heard the government had lots of money,” Gus said. “At least they act like they do.”
“Right,” Shawn said. “So if this really was a crisis involving national security, she would have taken a DHS jet.”
“How do you know they have one?”
“Their budget is like fifty billion dollars,” Shawn said. “Can you imagine having fifty billion dollars and not buying at least one jet? And even if they didn’t, they would have sent her on a military transport.”
“Maybe it’s not an emergency.”
“In which case she would have flown coach,” Shawn said. “Federal officials aren’t allowed to fly business class.”
Gus hit the remote on his key fob and the car doors popped open, but he didn’t want to get in until he was sure he understood what Shawn was saying. “They’ll spend millions buying a jet, but they wouldn’t spring for a business-class ticket? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then I must be wrong,” Shawn said. “Oh, wait, this is the federal government. I’m right. Can we get out of here now?”
Before Gus could answer, Shawn opened his door and got in. If Gus wanted any more answers, he’d have to get in, too. He buckled himself into his seat, but he didn’t start the car.
“Okay, fine,” Gus said. “What else?”
“There’s more?”
Gus waited until Shawn gave in.
“Did you see the upper lip on that agent?” Shawn said. “It was bright white, while the rest of his face was tanned. Which means he had a mustache until a day or so ago.”
“And?”
“And another one of the agents had a dragon tattoo running down his arm,” Shawn said. “At least, I assume it ran down his arm. The tip of the tail was sticking out of his sleeve, and it’s hard to imagine anyone having just the tip of a dragon’s tail tattooed on his wrist.”
“Which means what?”
“Homeland Security agents can’t have tattoos or facial hair,” Shawn said. “These are rental guys she picked up in LA.”
“So she’s a phony.”
“Not necessarily,” Shawn said. “It’s quite possible that Major Voges had some vacation time coming and she decided to spend it interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation.”
“That one doesn’t work for me.”
“Then how about this?” Shawn said. “There’s something terribly, terribly wrong, and whatever it is, it’s something that Major Voges was supposed to take care of. She probably even told her superiors that she had. But she screwed up, and now it’s worse than either of us could ever possibly imagine.”
“Like what?”
“Did you miss the part about it being worse than either of us could ever possibly imagine?” Shawn said. “That means I can’t imagine what it is. But think of everything that Homeland Security has screwed up that no one got fired for. And now imagine that Major Voges is afraid she will be if anyone finds out what she’s done.”
Gus thought about it and shuddered. “We’re doomed.”
“I think that’s probably right,” Shawn said.
“What are we going to do?”
“I’m thinking about a nice game of pin the tail on the donkey.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was about the art. About the precision of his movements, the subtlety of his misdirection, the speed of his fingers, and the stealth of his hands. It didn’t mat-his fingers, and the stealth of his hands. It didn’t matter whom he was performing for. He had astonished the crowned heads of Europe and amazed the jaded jet-setters of Monte Carlo, but their reaction was no more important to him than that of any other group who sought release in the presence of miracles.
There were those who claimed to pity Barnaby Rudge. He could hear them whispering in the Fortress of Magic. He, the great Rudge, who had traveled to India to meet the guru, if not quite with the Beatles, then at least with Herman’s Hermits. Rudge, who had been painted by Warhol and filmed by Jodorowsky, who had exchanged phone numbers with Anita Pallenberg and Bianca Perez-Mora Macias before losing both beauties to Keith and Mick. Rudge, who would have electrified an entire nation when he performed his greatest illusion, the Groovy Gap, on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on April 11, 1969, if only those idiots had shut up about the Vietnam War for one more week instead of getting themselves cancelled.
Now, he had heard the whisperers say, Rudge was so forgotten, people assumed he stole the idea of using a Dickens title for his stage name from David Cop- perfield, when it was so obviously the reverse. He was reduced to playing to tiny crowds for peanuts. He had lost everything.
But Rudge knew he had lost nothing. As long as his fingers could still move, his art was still alive. And his art was all that mattered.