The Puppet Master

She frowned. 'Who was it made for then?'

I answered this time, embarrassed that I hadn't wondered myself. Given the expert fitting necessary, a Life-Tex mask was expensive. 'We don't know that, either,' I said.

'Find out,' she told me.

'Find out? Honey, that case is closed, and finding out would take time.'

'Try. It could be important.'

'Could be? You mean like, 'might possibly be'? Or do you think it is?'

'I think it may be.'

'Leave it here, Andy,' I said. She was, after all, a celebrity psychic and sometime crime consultant who got sizeable fees from her clients. 'After lunch I'll talk to Skip,' I told her, 'and see what he can do with it.'

* * *

She drove us to Mr. Ethel's, on North La Cienega. It wasn't far, and the food is excellent, even if the waiters are a bit overdone. I asked for a corner booth near the kitchen door: The noise would obscure our conversation if anyone sat down in the adjacent booth, and for the same reason, probably no one would. After we got our menus, she started on the questions, as I'd expected.

'What theater?' she asked.

'You mean where the mask was found? One of the Pussycat Theaters. On Hollywood, near Bronson.'

'What was the picture?'

She was fishing. When she senses something psychically and can't come up with it, she'll try to get some real-world information to help it surface. 'I've heard,' I told her, 'but I don't recall; it didn't mean anything to me. It'll be in the file though.'

Her eyes went unfocused—I notice things like that—and I kept my mouth shut to avoid disturbing her. Then the waiter came and took our orders, and we turned to other subjects. The mask didn't come up again until we'd finished our sandwiches.

'In Hiding,' I said.

'What?'

'That's the name of the movie. In Hiding.'

I hadn't realized it, but the waiter had just come out with our desserts, and overheard me. 'You see that flick?' he asked.

I looked up. 'No,' I told him, 'but I heard about it.'

'Some show! I mean . . .' He looked at Tuuli then, embarrassed. 'That Misti Innocenza is something else.' He paused defensively. 'She can act, too. Good enough, she could be in big-time flicks.'

I decided I'd misjudged Mr. Ethel's waiters; this one anyway.

'I'm sure she could,' Tuuli told him. He put down our sundaes and hurried away. 'My next question,' she said, 'was who's the actress. And we've got the answer.'

Misti Innocenza. Okay, but so what? Still, I felt a stir of excitement.

5

Life-Tex masks are carefully molded to the wearer's face, otherwise they're useless. This one had thickened the brow ridge, and given the face a broad, high-bridged nose and neat, reddish blond beard. So the wearer's hair was probably more or less blond. And the mask had a well-tanned complexion, which suggested the original didn't. For the camouflage effect.

At the lab I told Skip what I wanted, and left the mask with him. An hour later he buzzed me, and I went over. Using the computer, he'd developed a facsimile of the wearer's own face, and had tried three hair styles with it, printing off each of the versions.

I knew it at once, from my recent research.

'I've seen this guy,' Skip said, 'but I don't recall who he is. Someone on a magazine cover.' He paused. 'Or a tabloid.'

I nodded. 'Buddy Ballenger.'

'That's it.' Reaching, he touched a key on his intercom. 'Fidela,' he said, 'could you come to the lab a minute? This is Skip.' Fidela, who read the tabloids, confirmed the identification at once. When she'd left, Skip looked curiously at me. 'What's this all about?'

I shook my head. It looked like Ballenger might have had a sexual fixation on Misti Innocenza, a fixation strong enough, he'd gone to a porn theater to watch her perform. He could have called up the flick at home, if he'd wanted to. Maybe he liked the vibes and smell of a porn theater. And the mask would keep anyone from recognizing him. But why would he take it off before ducking out when the police arrived?

I'd been thinking out loud, and Skip answered. Life-Tex masks aren't as convincing in reality as they seem on the screen. In extreme close shots—shots that show little more than the face—even Life-Tex masks don't look lifelike when the actor is talking. In films and holos this is dealt with by a computer process, but live that doesn't help.

So apparently Ballenger, fearing he'd be questioned, got rid of the mask. His face wasn't that well known, except to people who watched his show or read the tabloids, and hopefully any cop who might stop him wouldn't be one of them. Of course, the odds of his being questioned had been next to zero—the police were looking for a small wiry Asian, not a big blond Caucasian—but Ballenger hadn't known that. He'd panicked, and left his mask behind.

Interesting. But being horny over Misti Innocenza wouldn't mean a thing in court, any more than her story