As a lowly chorus girl in an off-Broadway show, Esther
Diamond dreams about hitting the big time and waits for the
day her break will come. And then it does. Esther is cast
as understudy to Golly Gee, a teenage pop star with little
talent but big press, big following and big....well, you
get
the idea.
One night during the show Sorcerer!, a magic act in
which Golly is supposed to disappear and then triumphantly
reappear for the finale, she disappears on cue as usual but
the big reentrance never happens. Golly has ostensibly
vanished in a puff of smoke. The cast and crew think Golly,
in their minds a little on the flaky side, has simply
walked out on them for parts unknown, and diva that she is,
will return in her own good time. Joe, the hysterical
magician, insists he "felt" her vanish. In a panic, the
producer puts Esther in the lead roll. After all, the show
must go on. Before the first performance, Esther receives a
cryptic note warning her to beg off the show. Worried, but
not enough to quit, Esther goes to see the lead detective
on the case.
Overworked and underpaid, Detective Connor Lopez has more
important cases to work than tracking down a missing
teenage drama queen who apparently walked off the job of
her own free will. His interest in the case is piqued when
he meets Esther. Lopez tries to keep things professional,
but to no avail. Try as he might, he can't help his growing
fascination with Esther.
In less than a week, several more disappearances occur and
Esther, unhappy with the progress or lack of in the
official investigation, takes matters into her own hands.
Esther finally meets the author of her mysterious note, a
centuries-old magician named Max. Max and Esther team up
with the other magicians who have "misplaced" the
assistants in their disappearing acts and after some
bumbling about come up with what seem to be some solid
leads.
Lopez follows Esther and her merry band of Baker Street
Irregulars as they careen about the city of New York.
They're not hard to keep track of because havoc and mayhem
seem to follow them wherever they go. As Lopez tries,
mostly in vain, to keep up with the determined band of
performance artistes, Esther and her friends set to solving
the mystical crime, retrieving the victims from dimensions
unknown, thwarting evil and preventing a truly vile man
from making NYC his personal playground.
An excellent read! Resnick's one-liners had me laughing out
loud throughout the book. The plot is rock solid and the
cast of characters couldn't be better. DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY
is just the thing to pick up for yourself while you're out
doing holiday shopping.
Also
psychotics, vamps, orphans, hookers, housewives and -- on
one memorable occasion -- a singing rutabaga. It was never
my ambition to utilize my extensive dramatic training by
playing a musical vegetable.
However, as my agent is fond of pointing out, there are
more actors in New York than there are people in
most other cities.
Translation: Beggars can't be choosers.
This
explains how I wound up painting my body green and prancing
around stage half-naked the night Golly Gee, the female
lead in the off-broadway show "Sorcerer!" disappeared into
thin air.
Literally.
Now other performers are also vanishing,
and a mysterious stranger is warning me: There is evil
among us. But the producers want me to take over
Golly's
part.
Looks like I'm going to need a little magical
help if I want to keep my starring role...
Excerpt
Idespise movies where the heroine is threatened and simply
ignores it, acting as if there's nothing to worry about. I
mean, if you got a mysterious note telling you not to go
into the attic, and you knew that the last person who'd
gone into the attic had gotten into a whole lot of
trouble — well, would you really just shrug, toss the note
aside, and head for the attic without another thought?
If you would, then frankly, you're the kind of person who
deserves what's going to happen to you up there.
So naturally, when I received my mysterious threatening
note, I gave it my full attention.
It arrived a few days after Golly Gee disappeared.
The night of the performance the stage manager had brought
the curtain down in front of a surprised audience, the
hapless house manager had announced that there'd been an
accident backstage and the show was over, and we had spent
the rest of the evening giving our statements to the
police — who were less interested in the case than you
might suppose.
Golly wasn't all that stable to begin with, and her recent
discovery, during hypnotherapy, that she had been Marilyn
Monroe in a previous incarnation had resulted in some very
strange behavior, including a marked obsession with the
Kennedy family.
The police seemed to think Golly had walked out in the
middle of the performance and gone off on some bizarre
quest. Since there was no sign of violence or foul play,
the good-looking detective who interviewed Joe and me
evidently didn't plan to do much more than file a missing
persons report if Golly didn't reappear (so to speak) in a
couple of days.
I didn't necessarily agree with Detective Lopez's view of
the matter, but I hardly knew Golly and certainly couldn't
claim to miss her. Besides, with the leading lady missing
(and in breach of contract), I finally had that big break
I'd been fanta-sizing about since the beginning of
rehearsals: I'd be playing Virtue from now on. If, that
is, we could get Joe back onstage.
The night Golly vanished, Joe had been too hysterical to
give a coherent statement to Detective Lopez — who had, in
any case, not seemed to expect much coherence from any of
the actors. (I sensed that our being painted green and
covered in glitter affected the detective's impression of
us.) Joe seemed to blame himself for Golly's
disappearance, and he refused to do the show again.
Consequently, Matilda was forced to cancel our next few
performances while she tried to talk some sense into him.
We didn't have an understudy for Joe. He was the show.
We couldn't even get him into the theater for the
rehearsal I had requested. I didn't want to go on as
Virtue without a complete run-through. For one thing,
there had been several changes in the show since my last
rehearsal in the role. More importantly, I wanted to make
sure I could trust Joe to pull himself together before I
let him saw me in half, balance my body on the point of a
sword or do the flame-throwing routine with me. Things can
go terribly wrong onstage when people lose their
concentration. Actors have been stabbed to death while
playing Richard III. They've been shot to death with mis-
loaded prop guns, as well as strangled to death in
malfunctioning harnesses. It's a much riskier profession
than you might suppose, and I was determined not to be
among the ranks of thespians whose reviews read "R.I.P."
It was in this frame of mind that I read the messages
handed to me by the assistant stage manager as I arrived
at the theater on Tuesday. The first note informed me that
Joe would not be at rehearsal today. The second note
advised me that there would be an Equity meeting that
afternoon to discuss our circumstances; in other words,
the actors would all get together to fret about whether we
were going to lose our jobs, as well as to make empty
threats about what we'd do to management if they folded
the show on us just because a pop singer had gone AWOL and
a magician was having a nervous breakdown.
The third note was handwritten on expensive monogrammed
paper, initials M.Z. It was written with a black fountain
pen in elegant, archaic-looking script. It read:
As you value your life, do not go into the crystal cage.
There is Evil among us.
"I'm looking for Detective Lopez," I told the uniformed
sergeant at the muster desk. The precinct house was
chaotic and noisy, just like in the movies. I had
practically sprinted here from the theater on Christopher
Street. The desk sergeant sent me upstairs to the squad
room, a large, cluttered, overcrowded area painted a vile
green.
I spotted Lopez right away. He was sitting at his desk,
apparently begging a chubby white man with a loud tie not
to force a large, overflowing box of file folders on him.
The man, whose expression was irritable, dropped the box
on Lopez's desk and walked away. Lopez, looking like he
wanted to weep, lowered his head and banged it against his
desk a few times.
Perhaps I had come at a bad time.
However, the mysterious note was burning a hole in my
pocket, and there was no way I was going to turn around
and leave without reporting it to the police.
I took a breath and squared my shoulders as Lopez lifted
his head and reached for his ringing phone. After a
moment, he cradled the phone between his ear and his
shoulder and, still talking, started unpacking the
overflowing box. It appeared to contain a lifetime supply
of old paperwork — dog-eared, a little dusty and flaking.
Frowning, Lopez brushed something away from his face and
kept unpacking the box while he continued his phone
conversation.
I crossed the room, nearly bumping into someone whose
hooker costume looked really authentic, right down to the
runny mascara and handcuffs. Lopez, whose gaze was fixed
on his mountain of paperwork, didn't see me. His jacket
was slung over the back of his chair. He wore a holster
over his shirt; the gun inside it looked really authentic,
too. I stared at it while he kept talking on the phone.
He had the body of an athlete — soccer or tennis, perhaps,
a sport that required lithe muscles and physical grace. He
was around thirty years old, and he had a dark, strong,
slightly exotic face framed by thick, straight, jet-black
hair. His eyes were blue, and just as I was wondering
where that trait had come from, I read the nameplate on
his desk: Detective Connor Lopez.
"Connor?" I said in surprise. He didn't look like a
Connor. He glanced up and saw me. There was no look of
recognition, but my use of his name must have made him
realize I was there to see him. He gestured to a
utilitarian chair next to his desk, and I sat down.
"Uh-huh," he said into the phone. "Yes. No. What time?...
Can't you get it to me any sooner? I need it before I can
apply for a warrant."
Someone called across the squad room, "Lopez, line four!"
He raised a hand in acknowledgment, then closed his eyes
and rubbed his forehead as if it ached. Well, he had
banged it rather hard against the desk. "One hour," he
said firmly. "No, one hour. Please." He grinned after a
moment and said, "I almost love you right now." Then he
hung up and said to me, "I'm sorry, miss, I'll be with you
in a minute." He hit another phone line and
said, "Detective Lopez."
It was clear from his expression a moment later that the
call was personal. "Hi. Uh-huh... What?" His expression
darkened. Turning away from me, he said, "No, I can't."
Though I could tell he didn't remember me, he had
certainly made a memorable impression on the cast of
Sorcerer! the night he'd questioned us.
"Okay, you're right," Lopez said to his caller, "I don't
want to. Now I have to go. I've got —"
He was interrupted by a voice on the other end of the
line, loud enough that even I could hear it. The caller
sounded like a woman.
Some of the show's nymphs had been openly interested in
him, and although his behavior couldn't be called
unprofessional, he'd obviously enjoyed their flirting.
He'd been caught off guard by the same sort of interest
coming from a couple of the satyrs, but he'd nonetheless
been courteous about it.
"No. No. No!" Lopez sounded exasperated. "Look, what part
of 'no' didn't you —" He sighed and closed his eyes,
listening again. After a moment, he said, "Why do you
persecute me like this? Why, why?" A pause. "Besides that."
Two cops hauled someone past me who looked like a rapper.
A very annoyed rapper.
"Look, this isn't a good time," Lopez said into the phone.
"Can we —" He winced.
Even I winced. His caller's voice was getting shrill.
Lopez took a deep breath and said, in a voice filled with
dark despair, "Mom, I can't talk now. Goodbye... Bye." He
scowled and said, "I'm hanging up now. Right now."
The voice was still squawking as Lopez gently placed the
receiver in its cradle. Looking a little paler than when
I'd arrived, he turned to me and said, "Now, what can I do
for you, Miss..."
"Diamond. Esther Diamond. You took my statement Saturday
night at the New View Venue on Christopher Street."
"Oh, yeah! Miss Diamond." His gaze traveled over me
slowly, then he grinned. "You look different without all
that green body makeup."
"I'm also wearing a lot more clothes today," I said,
noticing where his eyes lingered.
He raised them to my face. "And much less glitter."
"Have you made any progress on the case, Detective?"
"That singer who disappeared — Gosh Darn?"
"Golly Gee."
He smiled at me, and I realized he'd been kidding. "She's
still missing," he said. "I know."
"No ransom demands?" he asked. "No."
"Have you heard from her family? I've tried to get a hold
of her mother, but —"
"Oh, I doubt that Golly was of woman born," I said.
"Excuse me?"
"Um, her mother's in Europe just now. Golly's manager got
a hold of her yesterday. She hasn't heard from her,
either." I shrugged. "She's really missing, Detective."
He nodded. "I've filed a missing persons report."
"That's all?"
"It'll be compared to any likely Jane Doe that turns up."
"You mean, like...a body?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
He said, "Her family — or her manager — might consider
hiring a private investigator."
"I see."
"Anything else?" he asked.
"Yes. This is a little strange...." He raised one black
brow. "Last week you told me that a woman had vanished
into thin air in front of hundreds of people —"
"Not hundreds. Our house wasn't that good."
"But you're afraid that what you're going to tell me now
is a little strange? I can hardly wait."
I pulled out the note and handed it to him. He read it
over briefly and then frowned at me.
"This came in the mail?"
"No. Someone left it at the theater for me."
"Did you get a description?" he asked.
"The assistant stage manager, who accepted the envelope
from him, says he was a short, slightly chubby, white man,
at least seventy years old. Lots of white hair and a
beard. He wore a fedora and a duster."
"A what?"
"You know. One of those long coats they wear in cowboy
movies."
"Oh. Anything else?"
"I don't think so."
"As you value your life, do not go into the crystal cage,"
Lopez read aloud. "There is Evil among us." It has a
certain ring to it. But why does this guy think you intend
to go into the cage?"
I explained. When I was done, Lopez studied me
speculatively. His silence got on my nerves, so I
asked, "Do you think it's important?"
"What?"
"The note," I snapped.
"Well, it provides a new theory."
"So you no longer think Golly walked off on her own?"
"Actually, that's exactly what I think happened. According
to the statements I took, Miss Gee is a temperamental
twenty-three-year-old who's got less fame than she wants
and less sense than she needs."
"That hardly —"
"She's got cash flow problems, and she's deep in debt —
mostly to plastic surgeons and diet clinics. She's also
got a police record — mostly minor drug busts. Two of the
Kennedys have had to slap restraining orders on her, and —"
"You've checked up on her!" I shouldn't have sounded so
surprised. He looked insulted.
"Yes, Miss Diamond, I did. But now I find myself obliged
to concentrate on more mundane matters — assault, murder,
armed robbery, extortion and so on." As he gestured to the
mountain of paperwork on his desk, a clerk dropped another
armload of files onto it. Lopez stared after her with a
tragic expression.
"But what about the note?" I said. "Do you think — ?"
"I think it's a hell of a promotional opportunity for an
off-Broadway show with overextended producers and an
ambitious understudy."
"You think I had something to do with this?"
"I have to consider all possibilities."
Okay, I had seen enough cop shows on TV to know that. So I
tried not to take offense. "Look, I'm not reaping any
benefits from this fiasco. Joe Herlihy is refusing to
perform the show again."
"He didn't get along with Golly Gee, did he? She insulted
him, humiliated him, upstaged him and accused him of
attempting to set her on fire that very night."
"Surely you don't think Joe is behind this?"
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