“What did you do?”
“I was trying to figure that out, when P’tol P’kah descended from the ceiling and started growling,” she said. “The creep let go of me and ran out of the place; I don’t know why. And I went home, sprayed on an ex trathick layer of tan, and hoped he’d never come after me.”
“That’s why you were so hostile when we knocked on your door,” Shawn said. “You thought we were government agents working for him.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “You I was scared of. Mr. Dead Cow.”
“I’ll have you know I put a lot of thought into that story,” Shawn said. “I thought the punch line worked exactly as it was supposed to.”
“Which is why I broke down right then and there and told you everything you wanted to hear.”
Gus could sense that this conversation was slipping away from where they needed it to go. Before Shawn could parry back at her point, he stepped in. “So when you saw the chubby guy floating dead in the tank, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was hoping it was all over. And I couldn’t afford for anyone to know who I really am. Because this,” she said, gesturing to her clean, bronze arms, “is who I really am these days. I couldn’t risk that just because I wanted to hang out at the Fortress for old times’ sake. Now please, I’ve told you everything I know. Let me go on with my interview. Let me go on with my life.”
Shawn thought it over, then gave her a nod. She scurried through the parking lot to the clubhouse, spraying her arm with a mist of tan goo as she went.
“That was an awful lot of time to get us exactly nowhere,” Gus said.
“Really?” Shawn said. “We get the piece of information that’s going to crack this case wide open, and you say we’re nowhere?”
“Which piece of information is that?” Gus said as he started back toward the Echo. “The name of the dead guy? Oh, right, we didn’t get it. The agency he worked for? The reason he was following P’tol P’kah?”
“We know he worked for the federal government and that he suggested strongly he was in Homeland Security,” Shawn said. “Which sounds an awful lot like the thing Major Holly Voges told Jules and Lassie. Maybe whatever they do is what this case is really all about.”
Gus froze with his hand on the car door handle. “You think P’tol P’kah really is a terrorist?”
“Whose secret plot is to destroy America by entertaining us all to death?”
“Then what?” Gus said.
“Remember the basic rule to all magic?”
“That the reason you can never figure out the secret to a trick is because it’s so obvious,” Gus said. “You’ve only mentioned it about six thousand times.”
“We saw P’rupert P’upkin dissolve in a tank of water,” Shawn said with a hint of triumph in his voice. “What is the simplest possible explanation of that trick?”
“Obviously, that he didn’t really dissolve.”
“One of these cases we should really change positions,” Shawn said, opening the car door and slipping into his seat. “Then you can have all the really brilliant insights and I can be wrong all the time.”
Shawn slammed his door closed before Gus could say anything. Gus pulled his own door open and leaned in. “And then you can be helpful and supportive, and I can be a smug jerk. And I can dress badly, too.”
Gus slid behind the wheel, slamming the door behind him.
“You don’t have to take it so personally,” Shawn said.
“I don’t have to, but I choose to,” Gus said. “Just like you choose to be annoying.”
Gus started the car and headed off the country club’s property. He didn’t even waste a glance on Shawn. By the time they were approaching the freeway, Shawn was fidgeting in his seat.
“You still haven’t asked what the solution is,” Shawn said.
“No, I haven’t,” Gus said.
“It’s really good,” Shawn said.
“I’m sure it’s delightful,” Gus said. “I hope you enjoy it.”
Gus drifted onto the on-ramp and merged in with the light midday traffic. He flipped on the radio and found a lite-jazz station. Gus hated lite-jazz, but he knew that to Shawn it had the same pleasing aural effect as a thousand dentists’ drills, so he cranked up the volume.
Shawn reached over and slammed his fist into the radio button, nearly punching it through the dashboard. “Okay, fine, I’ll tell you,” he said.
“Not on my account,” Gus said. “I’m good.”
Gus reached to turn the radio back on, but Shawn batted his hand away.
“Okay, okay,” Shawn said. “Gus, I have a theory about the solution to this case, and it would help me greatly if I could discuss it with you.”
“In that case, Shawn,” Gus said, repressing his grin of triumph, “I would be honored and delighted to hear your theory.”
“Yes, you would,” Shawn said, then quickly corrected himself. “What I mean is this: I’ve been saying all along that the solution to a magic trick is the most obvious one. In this case, we’ve been looking at a magic act and trying to figure out how he made it look like he was dissolving himself in a tank of water when he really wasn’t. But what if we were making the very mistake the green guy needs his audience to fall for?”
“Which is what?”
“Thinking that he didn’t really dissolve himself,” Shawn said.
Gus waited for Shawn to finish, but there didn’t seem to be any more words coming.
“So your theory is that the secret behind the illusion that P’tol P’kah could dissolve himself in a tank of water is that he really could dissolve himself in a tank of water?” Gus said finally.
“You have to admit, it has a certain elegant simplicity,” Shawn said.
“The original Volkswagen Beetle has a certain elegant simplicity,” Gus said. “The Nike Swoosh has a certain elegant simplicity. The ending of the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes has a certain elegant simplicity. Your solution is just plain giving up.”
“Really?” Shawn said. “The statue of Abraham Lin coln with a monkey face? Do you want to explain what that meant? That while the guy from Boogie Nights was escaping from a planet ruled by apes, the simians were busy rebelling on Earth, and they worked so fast they managed to remodel all of Washington DC before he could get home?”
“It makes more sense than your current theory,” Gus said. “People can’t dissolve themselves. And if they could, they can’t reassemble themselves later.”
“That’s where the government comes in,” Shawn said. “What if they could?”
“What, dissolve people?”
“And reassemble them.”
Gus decided to let himself follow Shawn’s reasoning, despite the screaming from the logic centers of his brain. “It would be one of the greatest technological breakthroughs in the history of human civilization. We could effortlessly transport people and goods anywhere on the globe. For the first time in human history, physical distance would not be a factor in our movements. We could go anywhere instantly.”
“As long as we made sure there were no flies going along with us,” Shawn said. “What kind of value would such an invention have to the military?”
Gus thought that through. “I guess the first use would be as some kind of death ray. You could simply dissolve away vast swathes of enemy soldiers and their equipment. But it might be even more useful as an espionage tool. At the very least, you could transport one man into the heart of enemy operations. Imagine how much earlier the Second World War would have ended if we could have teleported one soldier with a bunch of hand grenades into Hitler’s bunker.”
“And in that case, if a fly got mixed in, it would be even better,” Shawn said.
“If the device were larger, you might even be able to get an entire company behind enemy lines,” Gus said. “An army equipped with this kind of technology would be almost completely unstoppable. But if something like that actually did exist, wouldn’t we have heard of it?”
“Not if it was still experimental,” Shawn said. “They wouldn’t want anyone to know they were working on anything like it.”
“So they test it out in a Vegas showroom?”
“Remember what I said about Major Voges being here on her own?” Shawn said. “She had made some kind of terrible mistake and she was trying to fix it before anyone found out?”
“You think she suspected someone had stolen the technology and was using it in a magic act?”
“It would be one way for the thief to give public demonstrations for potential buyers without fear of anyone else realizing what they were seeing,” Shawn said.
“And it also meant he’d never have to reveal himself to buyers who might decide it would be cheaper just to kill him and steal the device,” Gus said. It all made sense, as long as you didn’t dwell too long on the central impossibility of the dissolving ray. “That’s why he went to such great lengths to set up that impenetrable identity.”
“Chubby Dead Guy and Major Voges must have suspected that he was using their stolen toy, but they weren’t quite certain,” Shawn said. “That’s why he went to every performance. And then that one time, the green guy saw him in the crowd and knew he’d been figured out. He needed an escape plan.”
“So he set up the performance at the Fortress of Magic,” Gus said. “And when it was time for the climax, he dissolved himself out of the tank-and dissolved Chubby Dead Guy in. It would have been instantaneous, so he wouldn’t even have had time to hold his breath. That explains why he drowned so fast.”
They were coming up to their exit, but Gus didn’t feel like getting off the freeway. Right now, driving with the sparkling blue ocean outside his window, he could feel the solution to this mystery falling into place. All of it was making sense. But he knew the second he pulled into a parking place and turned off the engine, the part of his brain he needed for driving would rush in to focus on the problem of P’tol P’kah, and it would find all kinds of holes in Shawn’s theories.
But even though oil prices had been falling, Gus was still feeling uncomfortable about the idea of wasting gasoline. And he knew that no matter how far they drove, eventually he’d have to put his entire mind to work on the problem. A quick glance over at Shawn showed him that his partner was having some difficulty with the theory, too.
“It does sound good,” Gus said. “I mean, the internal logic all works out pretty well. But we can’t really go with it until we can reconcile it with reality.”
“That’s not what’s bothering me,” Shawn said.
“What, the fact that what we’re talking about is physically impossible?” Gus said. “That’s not the problem?”
A look at Shawn’s grim face convinced Gus that this was no time for a brain-sucking joyride. He clicked on the signal and drifted across the lanes to his exit.
“That would actually be a good thing,” Shawn said. “Because if I’m actually right…”
Shawn let his sentence trail off.
“What?” Gus said finally.
“If I’m actually right, there’s a crazy man wandering around somewhere out there with an unstoppable death ray,” Shawn said. “And we got purple Popsicle on his white carpet.”