Black Glass (13 page)

‘Oh, Luella — absolutely. She's been a mine of info. Thanks for that connection, Rochelle.'

‘My pleasure. This can run tomorrow, prime slot — all agreed?'

‘Yep.'

‘Sure.'

‘Yeah. So let's see your second piece.'

‘This one's about that street-kid porn guy. My working title is
Who's Your Daddy?
but you're welcome to change it, of course.'

‘I don't mind that title. Catchy.'

‘Luella got me the shrink for this one. Keep an eye out, guy with the frizzy hair. Great talent. And wait till you see the little kid. One of my fixers found her. Breaks your heart.'

‘Let's have a look, it's almost ten.'

‘Okay.
Arr-hem. Bloodhound TV advises that the following footage maaaaayyyy distress some viewerrrrrs
.'

‘Ha-ha.'

‘Good stuff.'

‘Alright, Damon, just play it, please.'

[Main Tent, Carnie District, The Quarter: Grace | Merlin | Peep | Esmeralda | audience members]

Out beyond the footlights the audience was settling into place, all murmur and rustle. Parents fussed over seats; sly kids threw popcorn; old couples waited, hands folded in laps. Grace watched through a gap in the curtains. Her breath was coming light and fast, like some mammal scanning the desert heat, alert to everything. Merlin was nowhere to be seen, and the tent was almost full.

They'd spent three days rehearsing in the hotel basement amongst hissing pipes and filthy mops before he'd pronounced her ready. Merlin was patient but exacting, correcting her miscues and mix-ups, nodding when she began to get the routine right. Her role would remain simple until she gained experience, he said — and unlike the dummy, she would not speak.

‘No lines?' she'd asked politely, as if it didn't really matter.

The dummy had answered her: ‘You can say so much without using your voice.' It hunched its shoulders and stared down at the basement floor. Its gaze drifted over broken buckets, jars of nails, a cemetery of cleaning chemicals, surveying the junkscape with an air of defeat. Then its eyes snagged on something: her own face. At once its whole being lit up. The shoulders lifted a fraction, the limbs took on a jaunty tilt; its hands flew over its heart and its head tipped back in delight, as if breathing her in like oxygen. The thing had shifted from despair to joy in mere seconds, without uttering a word.

‘Now you try,' Merlin had instructed solemnly.

Grace had mimicked the act without thinking, like a reflex. Like pretending was what she was born to do. As a child she'd always been wary of masks and puppets, not trusting the mismatch between surface and depth, but the gaze she now shone onto Peep did not feel false. Merlin had nodded as the dummy applauded.

‘She's a natural, boss,' it had announced in its high voice. ‘Just don't let her cut my lunch.'

They had set up in a smallish tent near the front entrance. A chalkboard outside plugged their act. Midway between
Zigzag the contortionist
and
Esmeralda the snake lady
, there they were:
The Extraordinary Magic of MERLIN and PEEP.
And squeezed just below in green chalk, in smaller letters:
+ the Enchanting Violet!
She'd always wanted a stage name. She hadn't picked it, but she knew it was a good fit.

Where was Merlin? The soundman was glancing at his watch, the ice-cream sellers hawking their last cones. Onstage his props waited: the old-fashioned mic, the wheeled black box with its compartments for magic cups, sticks, ropes and balls, card decks and silk scarves, a long-stemmed rose and a watch — all the innocent paraphernalia of magic. The briefcase on top, with the puppet folded into its foam contours like a foetus. And somewhere, in the lightless depths of the box, the white bird.

Then Merlin was at her elbow, soundlessly, accompanied by a floating smell she knew too well: rum. (An image of Max ghosted up from the past: him slumped low in front of the TV, rattling ice-cubes in a plastic tumbler; she felt a brief sting, then nothing.)

‘Ready, my dear?' asked the old man beside her, glancing up sharply from beneath white brows. However much he'd swallowed, he clearly wasn't drunk. Grace nodded. Merlin gave the signal, music began to whirl overhead and a recorded spruiker's voice boomed from all corners of the room.

Laaaadiesandgentlemenbooooysandgirls … Hang on to your hats and watch your watches! … Prepare to be astonished, bedazzled and flabbergasted! Please give a thunderous welcome for Merlin the spectacular and his cheeky sidekick Peep!

(If she stuck around for a fortnight, Merlin had promised, he'd consider her formally hired and commission a new intro.)

Grace ducked out of sight as Merlin swept the curtains aside with great drama and commenced a series of gallant bows that took in every corner of the room. Applause sputtered out. Through the gap she watched him hush the crowd with one finger, all eyes turned to the tiny figure in the oversized top hat. Onstage, he was another man.

Listening carefully as he introduced his first trick, Violet smoothed her blue velvet dress and waited for her cue.

Later, it was the applause she remembered: a sound like rain, but quicker to fade away. Merlin had summoned her out from behind the curtain, bowed low and presented her to the audience like a fancy cake. Down in the dank basement he'd taught her the theatrics of bowing, an alternating high–low movement, half summons and half surrender; now Violet improvised, adding her own touch, a showgirlish twirl of the wrist. A kid in the front row waved the soggy remnants of her fairy floss; a young guy with glasses propped against a tent-pole, holding a tiny spotted puppy slung over one shoulder, clapped an open palm against one leg. Even Esmeralda, the lady who did the next show with the beautiful green-and-gold python, had appeared near the side of the stage, minus her snake, to watch their act. She was clapping too, and she looked like she meant it.

All those hands winking back and forth in the light, a sharp whistle cutting the air from the back row, then the sounds dying out as the curtain dropped, and it was over.

It was almost midnight when they wheeled the black box through the backstreets of the Quarter and into the fluorescent glare of the tunnel walkway. Down below, through the thick plexiglass, cars streamed past in a steady off-key drone. Merlin was a slow walker, and the box was almost half his size, but it was surprisingly light and easy to manoeuvre. Every now and then he pulled out a hipflask and took a dainty sip.

Two security guards smoking near the walkway entrance nodded as he passed, one shooting a glance at Grace: her stage make-up, her grubby sneakers and jeans, the backpack in which the velvet dress and shiny black heels were now safely tucked away.

‘I'll push,' she offered as they reached the slight incline that marked the cheap hotel strip of the Interzone's north, but Merlin shook his head.

‘
An idle soul shall suffer hunger
,' he'd pronounced, like it was a line from a song.

Grace fished for a reply. ‘I'm kind of hungry,' was all she could come up with.

‘
Proverbs 19:15
,' he said, then fell silent again. Merlin did this, she had noticed: made a dramatic announcement then went quiet. He was always courteous but slightly too formal, and he never asked her questions about herself. Peep did, though: in fact, she thought, Peep could be quite nosy. Yesterday, for example, he'd asked her if her hair colour was real or a dye job.

Sixty bucks a show, four shows a week, plus sixty for rehearsals. All up, she reckoned, around $300 a week. Rent would burn up the first hundred, but if she was careful, she'd get by. Just.
And then what?
came the thought.
Get by for what?
But she quashed it and kept walking, concentrating on the rhythm of her feet.

The day's heat was still rising off the footpath, and as they passed a row of terrace houses Merlin paused for breath. Silhouettes moved at red-lit windows; Grace knew this street, made sure she walked right past Tiffany's without turning her head. A door slammed, heels tapped on cement. And there she was, stepping out: the blonde woman wearing a polka-dot dress — a dark red-wine colour this time, but the same style and cut — walking away from them. Grace recognised her shape immediately: all curves and long lines, a short jacket cut close, like a lady from an old detective film.

Merlin made a disapproving noise in his throat, but the woman was already gone.

‘I've seen her before,' said Grace. ‘She stays at the hotel.'

‘Indeed,' said Merlin coolly.

Grace waited. A taxi pulled up, and two men got out. They bent and spoke quietly into an intercom, then went into one of the red-lit houses. Merlin snorted in disgust, set off again, Grace keeping pace with him.

‘You know that lady?' she asked.

‘They call her Macy,' was all he said. They passed older houses with broken railings, a hot-dog van, a building site, a doorway stinking of urine, before he spoke again. ‘My advice, my dear, is to stay above the line. We're hovering just above it, you and I. An honourable enough place to be — but sink into sin and you're done for. Believe me, I've seen it happen.'

But Violet wasn't listening to the old man. Her mind had wandered back to the tent: the smell of canvas and popcorn, the dust rising in the hot beams of the stage lights. The zing of adrenaline as she waited for her cue to walk onstage, the surging rattle of strangers clapping in the dark. Tomorrow night she would wear the green dress.

CHAPTER 6:
BIRDLIFE

[Notebook entry: Tally]

In those old films Grace loves, the detective is always a guy. Sits at a desk with a big old dial-up phone in a poky office with a hatstand, glass door with his name painted in black letters. In the drawer there's some whiskey and a gun for when things get stressful or the bad guys turn up. Which could be anytime, you never know.

Sometimes he's got a lady helping him, with her own desk out the front, hair all neat and wavy. She'll pass on messages, figure out a clue or two with her female intuition. The detective guy would say,
Hey, doll-face, you're one smart cookie, what would I do without ya?
But she always stayed in the office and he did all the dangerous stuff. Yeah right. I reckon she'd get pretty bored.

Grace and me we'd stay up late watching those old movies. I liked the forensics shows too but she reckons they got no class, zooming in on smashed-in skulls and maggots. Still they got good gadgets, they can track you by your DNA, your eye-print, even air that you've breathed out.

Anyway old or new it always starts with someone dying. Then the guy has to solve a mystery and find someone. People sneak around the streets and peep through curtains. Ladies come to visit, dames he calls them.
Some dame was askin' for ya.
They smoke long cigarettes and say stuff that's maybe true and maybe not, you can't be too sure with dames.

So I remember all that — the bars, the clothes, the hats and everything. What I don't remember so good is how they solved stuff. How'd he figure it all out? Walked around a lot, I guess. Watched people, followed them, kept a low profile. Sat up late frowning, thinking real hard with a drink and a cigarette. Showed photos to bartenders, wrote stuff down on bits of paper then burned it in an ashtray so nobody else could read it. Cos you got to be careful.

A detective's gotta have a plan. You got to keep your eyes peeled, find clues, follow leads and sooner or later they all start to join together like a line of footprints left behind — real faint but if you look hard you can see them. Sure you get stuff wrong, make mistakes, even get hurt sometimes but in the end you'd always find what you were looking for. A place or a name or an answer or a person. There's a special trick to it: the trick is you can't give up.

[External msg system: client communication, N-Vision Marketing]

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: ludicrous bill

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Aim: Hi!
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