Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

„I suppose some people have good reason to hide what they did in the war.“

He paused by the front curtain. „I don’t expect you to understand, Mallory. You weren’t there.“

„You knew Futura was in the Resistance. They asked you to keep an eye on him, right? You were his watcher.“

He turned to face her. „Very good, Mallory. Yes, some people were concerned about Franny’s timid nature. But that’s what made him a personal hero to me.“

„How many people knew about your connection to the Resistance?“

„Four men. Three of them are dead.“

„And Futura wasn’t one of them. That’s why you were surprised that he would know. Who would trust him with a secret like that? You didn’t. That was pretty obvious.“ Still his face gave up nothing useful. „I don’t think you and Prado traveled in the same circles with Futura. Neither one of you has seen him since the war. Am I right?“

St. John nodded. „The theater closed down after Louisa died. That was the end of everything. We were all – “

„When Futura said you were in the Resistance, Prado wasn’t surprised.“

„Well, Nick always knew. I made good use of his forgeries.“

„You missed my point. I was watching Prado’s face. He wasn’t surprised that Futura knew. Your old friend was the one who told him. And now you’re asking yourself – when did Prado give you up? Was it last week? Or during the occupation? When did he give your secret away to that frightened little man?“

Yes, she could see a tiny fault line in the wall of magicians. Emile St. John would have to wonder about that betrayal, and wondering was all he would ever do. She knew he would never ask Prado any questions. He would simply live with the doubts – the damage. That was the man’s style.

There was a deep sadness about him; it went to the bone in the way of damp weather – and chilled him, though the shudder was very slight. „You’re better than I ever was. You were born to the job.“

This was not entirely a compliment – Mallory understood that. Emile St. John had already explained it to her: She was the cop of all cops, the monster knocking at the door of Franny Futura’s nightmares.

Mallory stood at the opening in the back curtain and watched him walk away from her. When he had traveled up the center aisle and the door swung shut behind him, she set her glass down on the carnival mirror. Her eye caught the movement of her reflection in the glass, a face distorted in a smeary elongation. The image grew more grotesque as she moved, contracting her features in an aspect of cruelty. She bobbed her head, looking for another way to see herself, but there was no normal woman in this mirror.

A light rush of cold air moved through her hair, as if someone had passed behind her. She turned to look at the backstage window. Its frames of glass were missing, and a sheet of plastic covered the opening. Thin streams of wind whistled around the edges between tenpenny nails.

Mallory reached inside the platform to pull the chain for a lightbulb dangling from the low ceiling. Like Max Candle’s version, a round tin shade made a bright pool of light on the floor and left the ceiling in shadow. Along the walls, the platforms did not differ in the design of grooves and pegs – She looked up at the trapdoors, barely able to distinguish the shadowed edges. The levers and latches were all on the top of the stage – just like Max Candle’s original. She finished collecting statistics on the room, needing no drawings, only numbers she could feed to her computer.

At her back, she felt the inrushing air of the closing door. She turned too late.

No!

It was shut tight. Also like Max’s platform, this one had no interior doorknob. She pushed on the wood, but the center panel would not give. Her fists beat on the door to the rhythm of Stupid, stupid mistake!

Even as a child, she had known better than to turn her back on a door. By the age of eight, she had learned to avoid any room without a second exit to escape the baby-flesh pimps and the lunatics on the street. The child had suffered beatings to earn this hard lesson, and then she had crawled off to lick wounds and review what she had learned from experience and pain – trust no one – never turn your back.

Never! Never! She pounded on the wood again.

How could this have happened to her? She should have propped the door open.

Stupid mistake.

Now she beat on the wood with one fist, just hard enough to hurt her, but not to break her hand. Pain was good. It cleared her mind. Mallory pulled a cell phone from her blazer pocket, but there was no dial tone. She was standing in a dead zone.

St. John had said that Charles and Riker would return soon. But would they stay if they thought the theater was empty, if the party was obviously over? This room had a tight enough seal to prevent the stink of Richard Tree’s body from escaping. Was it airtight? Was it soundproof too?

Mallory heard the spit of electricity above her head. The lightbulb died, the room went black, and she had to remember to breathe.

Though she knew every inch of this room, she could not conquer the idea that one misstep would plunge her into an abyss. There was no up or down in absolute darkness, no marker for the solid world. Her arms hung useless at her sides. And her lungs were also failing her, taking air in shallower sips. A sensation of fluttering insect wings brushed the walls inside her chest.

But she would not call it panic; she called it remembrance.

This was every vacant building where she had made herself into a tight ball of a child, holding her breath and waiting for dangerous feet to pass her by in the dark. Then came a little girl’s life-and-death decisions about staying too long or leaving too soon. The magic men were right – timing was everything.

Was the platform airtight? If she stayed too long – One hand rose by force of will, and not her own. Kathy the street child was taking over, forming one tiny hand into the hammer of a fist and pounding on the wall. Mallory stood off to one side of her mind and listened to the outraged little girl. Young Kathy was screaming, „Let me out, you bastards! Let me out!“

The platform was not soundproof. Mallory could hear noise on the other side of the wood. Running feet were coming toward her. The child was hollering at the top of her tiny lungs, a torrent of anger and obscenity; but the woman, absent all emotion, coolly pulled out her revolver and aimed it at the place where the door would open.

The light was a wide painful crack in the wood.

Riker’s startled eyes were fixed on the muzzle of her gun. „Well, it can’t be something I said. I just got here.“

Charles Butler wondered if it was just the dubious perk of a very large nose, for he was the only one who seemed to be put off by the faint odor, that stale souvenir of yesterday’s dead man emanating from the platform room. Riker was unaffected. The detective chewed on his pastrami sandwich as he stood by the open door.

Charles forced a smile, knowing full well that every happy expression made him look like a circus clown on medication. He hoped it might assuage the cold anger in Mallory’s face. „Locked yourself in?“

Oh, wait. That was the wrong thing to say. It implied an error on her part.

„No, I didn’t!“ She turned away, dismissing him as she spoke to Riker. „Someone locked me in and cut the electricity.“

Riker stopped chewing, his eyes clearly saying, What?

Charles looked up at the rack of burning spotlights overhead. And beyond the opening of the back curtain, he could see the glow of footlights and the brilliant chandelier, all clear indications of uninterrupted energy. But he was not inclined to point this out to Mallory. „Well, you know the wiring is new. There might be a problem with – “