She stopped unpinning her hat and turned back to him to say, “All right. There’s a dining room right downstairs. Guess what I mean to serve you for dessert.”
He didn’t argue, yet. He waited until they were seated in the dining room and she was sipping her mucho gusto before he told her, “I hope you won’t get sore enough to bust plates over my head, honey, but as I told you when we first met, I ride for the Justice Department.”
She smiled wickedly across the table at him and said, “They sure taught you a lot about riding, dear. But didn’t you say you’d be off duty by the time I finished for the day?”
“I did, but my boss is an infernal spoilsport. He asked me to check something out for him this evening and I reckon I have to, unless we want him pounding on your door just as we’re starting to enjoy ourselves.”
Susan didn’t answer as the waiter came over to take their order. He was one of those snooty-looking hotel waiters who acted like a ration of chili con carne over a T-bone was an unusual order. He seemed to think Susan’s notion of trout and string beans was more civilized. When he’d left she asked Longarm what Billy Vail wanted him to do on her time, damn it.
He said, “Maybe nothing. Remember me telling you about them wicked young gals who got away whilst I was tracking down their men-folk? I don’t recall if I told you they was vaudeville entertainers or not.”
“You did, while we were getting our second wind. Is that why you just invited me to watch a vaudeville show with you, for heaven’s sake?”
“You don’t have to come along if you got better things to do,” he said. “I figured to sort of combine business with pleasure by inviting you along. There’s only a bare outside chance I’ve guessed right, and there won’t be no danger, either way. If I picked the wrong three-sheets, we’ll be able to leave early and be back upstairs in no time. If my wild hunch pays off, it won’t take more than an hour or so to book the wicked gals. So how’s about it?”
She hesitated. Then she said, “Well, I wouldn’t want you to think I’m a poor sport, and it does sound sort of exciting. Who told you those bad girls might be at that theatre this evening?”
He smiled modestly and said, “Me, Knowing the bills had just changed yesterday, I took a noonday walk the length of Larimer and read all the three-sheets. You was right about poodle dogs and trained seals. Slapstick comics and jugglers seem to be in oversupply this season as well. But there was only one place with a magic act on the bill. There was no matinee this afternoon, so I had to take the doorman’s word that none of the gals in the all- gal act are redheads. You got to admit, though, that an all-gal act is sort of unusual.”
The waiter brought their order, sniffed at Longarm, and left them alone some more. Susan said, “Oh, dear, I’m afraid I’ll have to sit through small-time vaudeville in vain. You told me you only knew what one of those girls you’re after really looks like. Wouldn’t she be terribly stupid to show her red mop in the same town you patrol, dear?”
He frowned and said, “I don’t patrol Denver, they got boys in blue to do that. I said it was a long shot. There’s no law against putting on all-gal magic acts. On the other hand, a mess of strange gals boarding in town with no visible means of support could attract more attention than they want to attract and, since magic acting is the only honest profession they have-“
“I said I’d tag along,” Susan cut in with a sigh. “I certainly hope you’ll be as good a sport, later. For there’s something I read in a wicked book that I’ve always been sort of curious about. I’ve been waiting for a good sport who doesn’t seem easy to shock before I got around to really trying it.”
Chapter 21
“This is really dreadful,” Susan was saying from the vantage point of their private box as she and Longarm watched a couple of men in baggy pants slap each other with slapsticks. Longarm had been able to spring for such luxury because his office would be paying for it. A box seat cost more than it was worth, even in such a second-rate house. At least half the audience below them needed a bath and the rest were smoking tobacco worse than old Billy Vail admired.
Longarm glanced down at his printed program and soothed, “I’m sorry the Brothers Malone are so dreadful. They’re almost finished.”
As if to prove his point, one of the Brothers Malone dropped his slapstick, hauled a soda-water syphon out of his baggy pants, and chased the other one offstage, squirting at him, as the orchestra gave them a rousing send-off. A couple of folk in the audience even clapped their hands.
Then a young gal in a rainy-Suzie spangled skirt came on stage to change the cards on the easel set up to one side. She got more applause, in one minute, than the Brothers Malone likely had since they’d first come west.
The new card announced the act of Fata Morgana and Company, and the orchestra commenced to play sort of spooky oriental music as a gal sitting center-stage in a harem outfit on a magic carpet slowly rose, carpet and all, to thundergast the audience. As she hovered in midair with the limelight centered on her, two other gals dressed even more shocking ran out from the wings with a long length of red silk stretched between. They kept running as they passed the silk over the hovering gal to show her carpet wasn’t suspended on wires. She made snaky movements with her bare arms and tore after them on her flying carpet as yet another gal tore out the other way to do cartwheels as the limelight followed her in turn. Longarm yawned as, at his side, Susan gasped and said, “Now that was pretty good. How do you suppose she made her carpet fly like that?”
He said, “Easy. They got a sheet of plywood under it to keep it flat. She had her waist through a hole in said plywood. The legs crossed atop the carpet were fake. Her real legs were in black tights. All she had to do was stand up and run offstage before anyone wondered why nobody passed silk under her on a half-dark stage.”
The woman sharing the box with him gaped at him in wonder and asked, “How did you know that? You told me on the train you were a lawman, not a magician.”
He shrugged and said, “I’ve been studying the subject more than most, of late. Once you know there’s no such thing as real magic, you sort of get the hang of it. Touring magic shows have to keep their tricks simple. Theatres just don’t have all the secret trapdoors and overhead cranes the audience is watching for. Let’s see what they do next.”
Fata Morgana and her troupe mostly waved silk streamers about, as far as he could tell. The streamers kept changing colors and it was hard to judge how many were in the act, let alone where half those streamers were coming from or going to. Longarm had to agree it was a run-of-the-mill show for a small-time show house. He was pretty sure he’d never made love to any of those three, or was it four gals, by the time he’d watched them flash their silk-clad figures all over creation without really doing much. Then, as if they too sensed it was about time to do something to top that first trick with the magic carpet, they dragged two big boxes, painted red and gold, out from either wing. As two of ‘em picked up one box to tilt toward the audience—as if it was as empty as it looked— Longarm nodded, folded his program into a paper glider, and let fly.
