Disappearing Nightly (20 page)

“And then?”

She swallowed. “We felt like we learned something in the first session, and the
re were only three more to go, so we wrote the check. It wasn’t expensive, it didn’t take much time…Come to think of it, I haven’t really thought about it since then, even though it inspired us to work up a whole new act.”

“A blind?” Lysander suggested to Max.

“It sounds like it.”

“What’s a blind?” I asked.

“The perpetrator…This, uh, coach. He probably made sure Delilah
wouldn’t
think about it much once the sessions were over. Made sure that he would seldom come to mind.”

“How?”

“Any number of ways,” Lysander said. “The easiest would be to use mystical influence in tandem with a hypnotic or hypnagogic suggestion.”

Max asked Delilah, “Was there anything in the sessions that resembled, oh, a relaxation technique or—”

“Yes! That was quite a lot of what we did, in fact. He said it would help improve our focus.”

“When did all this happen?” I asked.

“About two months ago. We started developing the new show after that—a show that included a disappearing act. In fact, we’d specifically wanted to improve enough to add it to our act. We’d practiced it before, but it had always been clumsy and unpredictable until we hired that coach.”

“Garry?” Whoopsy said. “Are you all right? You look a little…”

I glanced at Goudini. He was staring at Delilah with an expression of such horror that I realized the truth. “You were lying! You
have
seen a coach!”

“Um…”

“
This
coach!”

He let out his breath in a rush. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I have. I didn’t intend to…” He shrugged. “It’s a little embarrassing. Someone like me. Famous.”

“Famous?” Khyber repeated doubtfully.

“Accomplished. Experienced. I didn’t want anyone to…” He shook his head. “Look, I said
no
to him at first. I thought he was some nutty fan or fruity wannabe. But something about him was convincing. He had insights, he had confidence.”

“But he wasn’t brash,” Delilah said. “His manner was kind of intellectual and humble.”

“Nerdy,” Goudini said.

“When did he approach you?” Max asked Goudini.

“About three months ago. Made me the same offer that he made to, er, Samson and Delilah. Just four sessions, reasonably priced—and the first one was free if I decided I didn’t want to finish the course.”

“How did he approach you?” I asked.

“I first bumped into him at my supplier’s shop. A guy called Magic Magnus who—”

“Magnus?” I blurted.

“Zounds!” Max cried.

“You guys know Magnus?” Goudini asked.

“Is this coach a friend of his? A colleague? A confederate?”

Goudini blinked. “No. Magnus didn’t like him, wouldn’t let him post flyers in the shop, told him not to pester customers. Insisted he leave when he pestered
me.
”

“I’ll bet you that’s how this guy met Joe,” I said. “And Barclay. They’re both customers of Magnus’s, too. I’ll bet
anything
that this guy was Joe’s coach. And Barclay’s committed to improving his act, has been working hard on it and could certainly afford a coach.” It all fit. When we got hold of Barclay, he would undoubtedly confirm that he, too, had hired this guy within the past few months.

“But what about Duke?” Satsy asked. “He doesn’t know Magnus.”

“Duke’s a wealthy magic aficionado who devotes time and money to his hobby and has many contacts among amateur magicians,” I said. “He’s been in New York for a couple of months, and he’s flamboyant, someone that people notice—someone that other magicians probably talk about.” We’d ask Duke, too, later tonight; but I knew in my bones that he’d confirm our theory.

“Yes,” Lysander said. “He would have been an easy quarry for our villain to spot.”

“And the sessions?” Max asked Goudini. “They were similar to what Delilah has described?”

“Yes. Also…well, like her, I didn’t think about
them much once they were over, even though I felt my work improved as a result of them.” He shuddered. “So that guy has been crawling around in my head? Using me as his conduit?”

“But how?” I murmured.

After questioning Goudini and Delilah for a while, Max determined that the conduit had been created by coaching them in the use of psychological “tools” to be employed before rehearsing or performing the act: mental phrases they used to clear their heads and mental exercises they did to focus their concentration.

“I have
always
been suspicious of this kind of New Age ‘empowerment’ shit,” Whoopsy said.

“Oh, but it really worked, Whoopsy!” Delilah protested.

“Sweetie, it really worked,” he pointed out, “because some demonic perpetrator of Evil was hexing you with supersonic mystical mojo.”

“And then,” Khyber added, “he used that opening to make Samson disappear.”

“Which brings us back to the question of
why?
” I said.

“Ah. Yes.” Lysander frowned. “Unfortunately, knowing
how
has not actually brought us any closer to knowing
why.
”

“It’s puzzling,” Max admitted.

“Maybe if we knew who?” I said. “I mean, who is this guy?”

“He said his name was Philip Hohenheim,” Delilah said.

Goudini snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that was the name!”

Max let out a wordless exclamation. Lysander said, “Of all the nerve!”

I asked them, “You know him?”

Lysander’s expression suggested I was so ignorant that it pained him to speak to me. Max said, “Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim is the real name of Paracelsus.”

“Who’s Paracelsus?” I asked. “And just how dangerous is he?”

“My God,” Lysander said, “the condition of education in this country is appalling!”

“Paracelsus was perhaps the greatest alchemist of the sixteenth century,” Max said.

“Ah.
Was.
Five centuries ago. So he’s not our perpetrator,” I guessed. “I gather our guy is enjoying a little joke by using that name?”

“And insulting the memory of a great mage,” Lysander said with a scowl.

“Either way,” I said to Delilah and Goudini, “we can assume Phil isn’t his real name. But let’s call him that for the sake of convenience.”

Whoopsy frowned. “We’re calling the villain Phil?”

“Yes.”

“Phil?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It seems somehow anticlimactic.”

“Maybe Magnus will have some clues about who he is,” I mused, “if the guy was making a nuisance of himself at the shop.”

“Yes, we should consult with Magnus,” Max agreed.

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear from us again,” Lysander said.

“So, shoot, girlfriends,” Satsy said to Delilah and Goudini. “What did Phil look like?”

“Ah! Description.” Khyber nodded. “Good idea.”

“White male,” said Delilah.

“Mid-thirties,” Goudini said.

“No,” Delilah said, “younger than that.”

“Average height,” Goudini said.

“A little shorter than that,” Delilah said.

“Average weight.”

“No, kind of thin,” Delilah said.

“Black hair and a moustache.”

“Dishwater-blond hair and a beard,” said Delilah.

Lysander said, “Well,
this
is certainly a useful exercise.”

Khyber wondered, “Are we dealing with
two
Phils?”

“No,” I said, realizing the truth. “Phil wore disguises.”

“Oh!” Khyber frowned. “So he’ll be hard to recognize, to identify, won’t he?”

“Actually, what he
looked
like isn’t what I remember most about him, anyhow,” Goudini said.

“Me, either,” Delilah said.

“Ah,” Lysander said. “You remember his power, his presence?”

“Did he have an aura?” Max asked. “Or tattoos that looked like ancient script? Or a strange odor, perhaps?”

“A strange odor?” I repeated.

“Sulfur, for example.”

“Oh.”

“No, nothing like that,” Goudini said. “But he did have…” His eyes met Delilah’s.

She nodded. “Yes, it was definitely the most noticeable thing about him.”

“What?” Max asked her.

“Well, it seems a little snide to mention it. Samson and I were very careful to avoid noticing it during the training sessions.”

“What?”
I prodded.

Delilah said, “He had just about the most pronounced speech impediment I’ve ever heard.”

O
f all the times for Lopez to be out investigating a homicide, I thought irritably. “No.
Hohenheim,
” I said into my cell phone.

“We should not be involving the mundane police!” Lysander insisted, trying to get the phone away from me.

I shoved at the mage while I said to the cop at the other end of the line,
“H-O-H…”
Lysander shoved me back and reached for my phone again.
“…E-N…”

“Please, no violence!” Max cried as the two of us continued wrestling.

“She’s trying to involve this…this
Lopez
and his police force in the sacred duty of the Collegium!”

Since I had just been put on hold, I said to Lysander, “We don’t know where Hieronymus is! We don’t know what he plans to do next! We have no idea where to look for the disappearees—or,
God forbid, their corpses!” I wanted to bite my tongue when Delilah gave an anguished gasp and sank clumsily into a chair with a dreadful expression on her face.

“Tactful as always,” Lysander snapped at me.

“No, no,” Delilah said in an awful voice. “We have to face this Evil thing. You mustn’t pussyfoot on my account.” A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

Goudini extended a hand toward Delilah, hesitated, pulled it back, frowned, and then gave in and reached out to pat her back gently. When she sniffed, he pulled a handkerchief out of the air and handed it to her. That made her smile a little.

“Thanks, Garry.”

I said, “We need help, Lysander! Someone who can stop or detain or inconvenience Hieronymus, in case we can’t! Otherwise we may never find the victims—or find out what happened to them!”

“The police are not equipped to deal with mystical matters!”

“But they
are
equipped to prevent someone from getting on an airplane or renting a car!” I shot back.

“Do you think that will stop a true adept from fleeing?”

“Yes, I’m still here,” I said into the phone. “No, Hohenheim is his alias. His real name is Hieronymus…” I glanced at Max to get the surname.

“Don’t tell her!” Lysander said.

“I don’t know his last name,” Max said.

“Max,”
I said.

“No, I really don’t! The last time I even remember hearing it was when I was informed by the Collegium of his imminent arrival.” He tugged at his beard. “What
was
it? Blogenviek? Burblenamen? No…”

“Delilah.” I directed her attention to Lysander. “
He
knows. Get the name from him.” Into the phone, I said, “Yes, sir, it’s coming. Let me give you a description while I’m waiting for the surname.”

Despite the shock, horror and confusion that followed our discovery of “Phil’s” identity, Satsy, Khyber and Whoopsy had left for the Pony Expressive to get ready for their first show of the night. I’d insisted on this. The entire cabaret would have to be cancelled if they all went AWOL; and there was nothing they could do about our problem at the moment, if they remained here.

“Young woman…Er, Delilah,” Lysander was saying as the beautiful drag queen wept against his chest and pleaded with him to cooperate with the authorities and find the evil wizard who was killing and torturing innocent disappearees. “Now see here. We
cannot
involve the police. For the love of Empedocles, we don’t even know if the poor boy is guilty! I can’t—”

“Wake up and smell the elixir, Lysander!” I put my hand over the receiver for a moment. “How many white male adepts are currently in the Greater New York area who have a pronounced speech impediment and the kind of power needed to pull off these disappearances?”

“Anyone or anything with that kind of power could have mimicked Hieronymus’s unfortunate disability with the intention of creating precisely this sort of confusion and erroneous blame, foreseeing the possibility that we might get this close to the perpetrator’s trail!” Lysander insisted, looking increasingly uncomfortable as Delilah clung to him.

“If Phil was imitating Hieronymus to create suspicion,” Delilah said, raising her lovely, tear-streaked face to gaze into his eyes, “why did he wear multiple disguises? Why did he cast a spell to ensure we seldom even thought of him after our training was over?”

I said into the phone, “Yes, his distinguishing feature is a very noticeable speech impediment. He lisps, and he can’t pronounce the letter
R.
”

Delilah continued. “I’ve never even seen Hieronymus. He hides in the cellar and speaks to almost no one. Why does he do that, if he’s innocent?”

“Because he’s shy.”

Once again on hold, I said to Lysander, “Don’t you get it? It’s not a personality problem, like I thought—well, no, actually, I guess Hieronymus has a much more severe personality problem than I ever suspected. But why does he always skulk in the cellar when we’re here? So he won’t encounter anyone who might recognize him, that’s why! He’s been avoiding Delilah, Barclay and Duke.”

“And me,” Goudini said.

“You only arrived late this afternoon,” Lysander said dismissively.

“And no one has seen Phil since,” Goudini pointed out.

“We don’t know that he
is
Phil,” Lysander insisted.

I said, “Once we all started hanging around here, Hieronymus could scurry in and out of the shop occasionally without too great a risk of discovery, but only as long as he kept his head down and was surly and sulky—didn’t talk. After all, most of us have never seen ‘Phil,’ and those who
have
seen him have only seen him in disguise. But he couldn’t afford to open his mouth around any of the magicians!”

Goudini said, “We’d have noticed
that
resemblance to Phil right away.”

“And the fewer people who heard him speaking at all, the better,” I said. “Remember Satsy saying that Hieronymus would scarcely say a word when they met unexpectedly today? If Hieronymus’s speech impediment was known to everyone, he’d soon be exposed as Phil. Yes, Officer,” I said into the phone, “I’m still here. No, Detective Lopez is working this case. Uh-huh, classified as Missing Persons. No, Hieronymus what’s-his-name isn’t a victim, he’s the kidnapper.” I rolled my eyes. “Couldn’t I
please
just have Detective Lopez’s cell-phone number? I’m positive he’d want you to give it to me.”

“If that’s true—” Lysander began.

“Oh, it is,” Delilah said. “Lopez has a thing for
Esther, we’ve all noticed it. He’d want her to call him direct.”

“No, I mean if it’s true that Hieronymus’s speech impediment means he must be Phil, then why did it take this long to make the connection?” Lysander said. “Perhaps we’re simply grasping at straws in our desperation. Perhaps Esther’s leap-of-faith assumption is wrong, and Duke, Barclay and Mr. Herlihy did
not
train with Phil. Perhaps Barclay and Duke didn’t even
have
a coach. Perhaps we’re jumping to exactly the same sort of wild, unfounded conclusions that led us to break into Magic Magnus’s shop for no good reason last night!”

Delilah plucked at his collar. “That’s a lot of perhapses, honey.” She snuggled closer and whispered into his ear, “Please. Just tell us his last name.”

“We almost never talk about it,” Max said suddenly.

Blushing as Delilah ran her fingers over his cheek, Lysander croaked, “About what?”

I put my hand over the phone as my gaze met Max’s. “That’s right,” I said, realizing. “We try not to mention it.”

“What?” Lysander asked faintly as Delilah licked her lips.

“The poor boy’s unfortunate problem,” Max said.

“Exactly!” I said. “You always refer to it in that oblique way, if you even refer to it at all. After Dixie met Hieronymus, she commented that she coul
d understand why he was so shy; but she never said anything more specific than that. Even you,” I said to Lysander, “when talking to me about how Hieronymus’s problem prevented him from saying certain incantations, never
named
his problem.”

Delilah murmured to Lysander, “I had no idea Hieronymus had a speech impediment until tonight—after I told you all about
Phil’s
speech impediment. I’d heard Hieronymus was rude, shy and sullen—but not that he lisped or couldn’t say
R.
No one ever mentioned that.”

“Being rude and sullen were his choice, so I figured they were fair game for comment,” I said. “But he couldn’t help his speech impediment.”

“We try to be tactful about it,” Max said.

“To be sensitive,” Delilah added, nodding. “The same way that Samson and I always pretended not to notice Phil’s speech impediment when he was coaching us. In fact, we never even really talked to each other about it.”

“You felt it would be unkind to talk about it,” Max said.

“Exactly.”

“Even
I
tried to pretend I didn’t notice Phil’s problem,” Goudini said, sounding surprised at his own consideration.

Remembering my first impressions of Hieronymus, I said to them, “And he made sure we didn’t want to talk about it. He made sure we knew he was
sooo
sensitive about it. Huh? No, Officer, not you,” I said into the phone. “It doesn’t? You don’t? Well, how long does a murder take?” Seeing the expressions on my companions’ faces as they all looked at me, I covered the receiver and said, “I’m asking when Lopez will be back.”

“Maybe we should just ask for another cop to take over our case,” Goudini suggested.

I shook my head. “I really can’t see myself explaining this case to another cop.” Even bringing Lopez up to date was going to take considerable force of will, since I knew his opinion of our theories.

“If Hieronymus is innocent,” Delilah asked, “where is he now?”

“Out investigating a lead,” Lysander said. “And if he’s not innocent, we’ll deal with him when he gets back.”

Delilah said, “What makes you think he’s ever coming back?” When Lysander responded with a flinch of surprise, she pressed her advantage. “People who can identify him as Phil are coming here daily now. And sooner or later, someone’s bound to stop being so tactful about his speech impediment, and then he’d be exposed. Unless he’s a fool, he knew his time was running out. Whatever he’s up to, he must have known for days now that he couldn’t continue operating from here for much longer.”

“That’s right,” Max said, his eyes widening.

“And now,” Delilah said, “he’s simply, er, disappeared. Left without saying a word
to anyone. So, honey, what in the world makes you so sure he’s going to come back here so you can deal with him?”

“No, Officer,” I said into my phone, “we’re thinking about it, but right now, we haven’t the faintest idea where he might be. Or where he’ll go…Well…if you don’t mind, I’d rather just explain that to Detective Lopez when I talk to him. Yes, the name is Hieronymus…Just a minute.” I looked over at Lysander again. “Well?”

“Please,” Delilah said. “Samson’s mother is so worried about him. So am I.”

“And I’m worried about Alice,” Goudini said. “By now, it’s more than twenty-four hours since her last meal, and she’s accustomed to a very consistent schedule.”

I hoped Sarah Campbell wouldn’t start looking appetizing to Alice, if they were both still alive somewhere.

Lysander sighed and gave in. “Blankenberg.”

“Hieronymus Blankenberg!” I said into the phone. Then I got Lysander to spell it for me.

“So you’re saying Hieronymus would have to keep track of when the performances were occurring,” I said to Max and Lysander, “in order to work his mojo and cause the disappearances—but he wouldn’t need to be physically present at the performances?”

“Not once he’d established the conduit, no,” Max replied. “The coaching sessions woul
d have secured his mystical connection to the magicians and their disappearing acts.”

I said, “And we’ve established that Hieronymus was never
here
at the time of the disappearances.”

“No, that’s sheer speculation, young woman,” Lysander said. “For instance, Max was interviewing Cowboy Duke at the Waldorf when he sensed Sexy Samson’s disappearance, and we have no idea whether Hieronymus was here at that time.”

“Allow me to rephrase,” I said irritably. “We know there were disappearances that occurred when Hieronymus was
not
here.”

“Agreed,” Lysander said, “but that does not qualify as a pattern.”

Delilah held up her phone. “No luck, Esther.”

“Did you try with Garry’s phone, too?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Goudini waved his cell phone at me. “Same thing. No response at all.”

Since I still wasn’t able to reach Barclay or Dixie—or Duke, either, I’d discovered—we were trying with other phones. The bookstore phone got no response when calling their numbers, either.

“That’s weird,” I said. “Why would all three of their cell phones have stopped working?”

“Could they be stuck in a tunnel?” Lysander suggested.

Delilah said, “If they were, we should still be able to leave messages for them. But all we’re getting when we dial their numbers is dead air.”

“I don’t understand this,” I said, feeling uneasy. “I know those are the right numbers.”

“Well, I’ll see which company Dixie’s service is with, and Duke’s is probably the same one,” Delilah said. “I’ll find a customer service number, call and ask if the company knows what’s going on.”

“Good idea.” I looked at Max. “Okay, what were we talking about?”

“Um.”

“Oh, I know. Where was Hieronymus during the disappearances? If he didn’t have to be at the performances, then why wouldn’t he simply have been lurking here in the cellar at those times?”

“Hmm. Good question,” Max said. “After he established the conduit, he would have needed to focus and concentrate to make the victims disappear. Creating the conduits gave him the tools to exercise his power through the magicians and their acts, but he still had to do the work when the moment was at hand. And causing a disappearance through a conduit would have been
work.
” Max gasped. “No wonder he’s been looking so tired lately!”

“Do you mean,” I said, “that if Hieronymus had been asleep or distracted or busy doing his homework when Joe Herlihy performed the disappearing illusion that night, Golly wouldn’t have vanished?”