CHAPTER ONE

January 25th, 1915

*  The Majestic Pacific Theatre – San Francisco’s Finest  *

     The famed mesmerist James “J.D.” Duncan paced backstage, practicing his And Now You Are Hypnotized! glare, the one that people recognized from his posters and always wanted to see in person. Each time he passed over the thin crack in the floor that ran across the backstage area, he carefully adjusted his stride to hit it on the mid-sole of his boot. At a moment when his confidence needed to be at its peak, it reinforced his faith in himself to tempt the stage gods with an arrogant disregard for stepping on cracks.

At least the boys in the stage crew had followed their strict instructions, this time; clear the backstage floor of any obstacles, then leave the “Master of the Secret Powers of Mesmerism” alone to pace and concentrate, prior to the show.

J.D. sipped away on his customary pre-show tea, to warm up the old throat. But he still felt thirsty, dried out even, while he strode back and forth in the darkness.

He paused to listen in on the announcer, who was busily warming up the crowd like a man in love with his own voice. The house was packed with over a thousand of the city’s most elite residents, so the silver-tongued devil out there was taking forever to get around to the introduction. J.D. hated it whenever some local blowhard Master of Ceremonies sapped the energy out of the folks before the star of the evening arrived onstage. It sometimes forced him to use up half of his show on audience humiliation gags, just to get them stoked back up to a workable energy level.

It occurred to him then, that he was feeling extremely annoyed over tonight’s delay. His fingernails dug into his clenched fists. He could sense the urge to action, deep in his muscles, and he thought what a welcome relief it would be to feel the announcer’s cheekbones crush beneath his knuckles.

Then abruptly, as if with the flick of an electric light switch, he found himself full of strange sensations. His skin began crawling with anxiety, ready to break out in a heat rash. This was odd, on a winter evening, backstage – where no heaters were permitted.

An unpleasant vibration came from somewhere deep in his skull; he was grinding his teeth, biting down hard. He forced his jaw muscles to relax, but within seconds his teeth were clenched again.

     When a slight movement caught at the far corner of one eye, he whipped around in reflex and found himself facing the backstage fire door. The exit led to the back alley, next to the trash bins. It seemed as if the door clicked back into place just as he turned around to face it.

But someone leaving? Unlikely. Civilians were not allowed back there. As for the crew, who would leave by the backstage fire door when a show is underway, and risk being heard out in the house? Nobody who wanted to keep his job.

So he had believed. Now his heartbeat boomed inside of his chest. Duncan told himself to relax. But before he completed the thought, another bit of motion caught at the corner of his eye, from the other side. This time, there was nothing there.

That made him wonder if he had just imagined the first one, whatever it was. He could not be certain now.

His sense of anxiety grew worse. His body was an electrical motor fed with a steadily increasing flow of current. He had no way to turn it down. His skin broke into a hot sweat and a second flash of body heat took him by surprise.

This never happened before a show. James “J.D.” Duncan was always cucumber cool under pressure; it was how he kept ahead of the folks.

     He took the last quaff of the tepid tea, but instead of calming him, it burned him inside. The feeling of heat radiated through his gut and gathered in his bones. His body seemed to gain ten degrees of temperature in that single swallow. He felt as if he must be glowing in the dark.

Only then did he realize that he was pacing in a furious circle, with his footsteps barely covered by the droning announcer onstage. The man cruelly pontificated about the evening’s cause for celebration: “San Francisco’s First Intercontinental Telephone Line -- All The Way to New York!”

Still, J.D. knew that the folks out there, born high or low, were each waiting for him, right where he wanted them, needed them to be. Every single one of them had come hoping to be amazed by this new American phenomenon of public hypnosis. Despite any worldly poses that an individual audience member might strike, he knew that every one of them hoped that ol’ J.D. really would deliver just as it was promised in the advance ballyhoo – and that his spells would truly Give Strength to the Weak!

Thus the folks came primed to expect hypnotic spells with the power to tap each individual’s essential life force and “open it like a valve in a pipeline!” Tonight – like every performance night – J.D.’s bubble of a reputation would only survive to the extent that he successfully walked the tightrope between what people would barely tolerate and what they would reject outright.

At least the tightrope was wide. After all, the new century was promising that the 1900’s would bring an age of scientific miracles. Such things seemed to be emerging in every direction. Why, in less than a month, the entire world would be focused upon the City of San Francisco, freshly reborn after the devastating Great Earthquake and Fires of 1906. Soon, because of the coming world’s fair: The Pan-Pacific International Exposition, the new city would be ablaze with all the fanciest wonders of the technological era.

Everybody in the audience had arrived at the theatre with their disbelief already surrendered, primed to witness unusual things. They all knew that their young century was entering a time of great expectations. To mesmerize such people did not involve any penny-ante sleight of hand; the skill probed much deeper that that. He knew that good mesmerism was truly sleight of mind.

Even the hard-noses in the audience lived in the same world as everybody else, and each one carried their own expectations of encountering the next manmade eye-popper on any given day. The power of that very sense of expectation was the raw clay of J.D.’s work. How fine it was to be up there on that stage, invisibly sculpting the folks’ sense of social inhibition, then standing back and watching their bodies happily dance along, released.

     He jerked – startled – another bit of motion caught at his attention. It was as if a shadow darted past. He whipped around to confront the source but again found nothing. This time, the sense of frustration made him cringe.

J.D. searched for a reason to remain calm, assuring himself that these sensations did not necessarily mean that he was coming down with some sudden illness. They even seemed suspiciously familiar, an exaggerated version of those slight visual anomalies and odd sensations that he had experienced on a few rare occasions.

It only happened back in the beginning, when he got careless in his measurements and took a bit too much of the elixir. Experience soon taught him that a few extra grains could be enough to make the dose feel excessive.

But tonight, an overdose of the elixir, even a pinch, was impossible. He had never taken it before a show. Never.

     J.D. checked the announcer’s patter again. Finally, the man was nearing the point of calling out his introduction. But now it was a different sense of urgency that overwhelmed him; he had to know what was happening to him before he faced a crowd of a thousand of the city’s elite.

He fled to his dressing room, just a few yards down the hall, but he stopped cold in the doorway. He stood staring into the room, toward his dressing table, where there was a dire message spelled out by the objects placed there. Its meaning was as threatening as a graffito scrawled in blood.

His fine leather pouch, the one filled with the precious powdered elixir – it was sitting out. Right there in the open. The god-forsaken thing was smack in the middle of the tabletop, in front of his makeup mirror!

This was also an impossibility. He never left the elixir sitting out, anywhere.

Worse: a little of the powder had been spilled about the bag itself and onto the table. Who on earth would spill it like that, wasting it? And why had they expected him to have it, in the first place?

Is it the Germans? Do they want it back?

His stomach lurched; somebody had found out about his secret hiding place. Not only that, they had been foolish enough to get their hands on a medicinal substance like this one, only to abandon their big find. This was no casual robbery. He had been invaded by someone who realized on some level that J.D. could not pursue the matter with the police – that would compromise his need for secrecy regarding the elixir. More importantly, it could reveal the condition that made it necessary for him. His image would become a joke.

Whoever had done this, he felt certain that they understood little or nothing about the substance. They would have stolen it, otherwise. And if they didn’t know what it was, why would they load my tea with it? What could they gain by any of it?

With that grim question, J.D.’s own logic confronted him. He felt his spirits plummet. The conclusion was terrible but true, like his mirror reflection on a hung-over morning, and it left him with a single, ugly conclusion.

Nobody could have done this except for him.

It was self-evident. The problem was the stubborn fact that he had never once taken his elixir before a performance. He had a healthy fear of its power. It had to be used with great care, each dose trimmed to the minimum for effectively clearing his fogged brainpan and re-acquiring his powers of recent memory. That was all.

Even under the proper dosage, he sometimes succumbed to overpowering urges to jump and dance, or to fall into spontaneous bursts of giddy laughter. These things, in front of the public, in front of an audience, could do more than threaten his respectability; they could ruin his legacy – precisely the opposite of the elixir’s purpose in his life.

The crystalline powder saved his life every day by allowing him to hide the terrible symptoms, but the stuff was not entirely controllable. He had always known that it was unsafe for performance situations.

     So why did the open bag sit there, mocking him?

He hurried over to it, re-tied it and re-locked it into the false bottom of his makeup kit. He decided that this time he would carry the entire makeup kit with him and leave it offstage, just outside of the audience’s view, where he could keep his eye on it throughout the show.

     He snapped down the lid and stood up, ready to return to the stage area, but he was moving too fast. The blood rushed down and out of his brain, and seemed to swirl away through his feet. The walls swayed like window curtains. He fought to regain his balance.

Ever the professional, J.D. also took advantage of that moment of inactivity to listen for his cue… and noticed to his horror that everything was silent. The idiot announcer had just called out his introduction while he stood there too stunned to hear them.

Fear of failure sent a helpful blast of adrenaline through him that steadied his balance and cleared his vision. Habit overtook him. He rushed out through the stage wings, automatically straightening his coat and tie.

But things began to happen too fast. Everything that he looked at seemed to be extra shiny, as if somebody had put a coating of wax over life itself and then buffed it to a high gloss. His eyeballs felt a size too big; there was a slight tickle in his eye sockets whenever he shifted his gaze.

     J.D. felt a wad of dread hit him. “Elixir” or not, there was far too much of the stuff in his system, much more than anything he had ever experienced. He was in no condition to get onto a stage. He could hardly predict his own reactions.

He had no business being out in public at all. In his present state, he belonged in his private hotel suite, or perhaps even a hospital bed, but certainly not downstage center.

Some of the audience members were even on the very board that held his contract for nearly a year’s worth of employment. It included his luxury suite at the Fairmont Hotel and his generous per diem.

How many doses is this, all at once?

It struck him that it made no difference. The fact remained that J.D. was committed to giving this performance, in this time and in this place. It simply could not be allowed to matter that he might very well be reduced to incoherence by the overdose, or that he might suffer a seizure and die onstage as his opening number.

     He dropped the makeup case where he would be able to see it, just barely offstage, then paused in the last bit of shadow before stepping out into the glare. Habit carried him through his last-moment ritual. He went over his very first line and simultaneously checked his fly. Then he steeled himself with the reminder that the elixir was made very far away, in Germany, and that it was only a couple of years old. There was no danger that the audience knew it even existed, let alone had any idea what its effects might be.

Therefore, he reminded himself, they will only decide that something is amiss if you fail to deliver the entertainment. Whether or not anybody was aware of a new chemical substance named methylenedioxymethamphetimine, everybody knew when they were bored.

     That’s the secret, he reminded himself while he took that first step out onto the stage. Just don’t let them get bored. They will forgive anything else.

The strong spotlight swung toward him while he stepped into view. Its beam was generated by the theatre’s brand new all-electric Direct Current illumination system, and after the light was concentrated through the powerful Fresnel lens, it hit him so hard that it sent a rush of golden sparkles swirling through him.

A sudden wave of ecstasy pounded into him. It was all he could do to remain on his feet. No matter that he was already in full view; nothing could stop such powerful waves from washing through him. He planted his feet and doubled over, writhing with the irresistible sensations.

Everything good so far, J.D. reassured himself. He knew that during the first moments of any show, the audience was so ready for entertainment that they would play along with practically anything. He called that time period the Golden Moment, and the secret of its forgiving magic lay in understanding that the Golden Moment was always short. You could get away with all kinds of slips and false starts, but whatever it was that you asked the audience to play along with during the Golden Moment, you had damned well better be able to tie it all up before the end of the show.

If you do, they will love you.

If you don’t, they will mock you out of town.

J.D.’s time-leash tended to be a bit longer than those of other performers, because his audiences were always primed for weird experiences in the mysteries of hypnotic trances. He had to hope that during tonight’s Golden Moment, the audience would interpret any odd behavior on his part as being some kind of exotic preparation ritual.

It worked, to an extent. Everyone fell silent in fascination while he gyrated and jerked in response to the overwhelming physical sensations storming through him.

A little luck arrived; the social scale of that particular audience was such that no rude noises came from the house, in spite of his unique behavior. No unkind observations were spoken in that special sotto voce of the theatre world, that false display of discretion intended to be overheard. Throughout the packed house, dignity trumped common impulse. Except for some confused muttering, the respectful silence held – for the moment.

By the time that J.D. regained enough control to proceed to the podium, he knew that he was still inside the Golden Moment, but just barely. He gazed out over the audience with an equal mix of elation and terror.

Still there was no other course but to press straight ahead. He knew his routine well enough to hope that if he let himself run on sheer experience – and did not put too much thought into anything – he might somehow fake his way through the evening without stumbling so badly that no recovery was possible.

That small hope consoled him well enough that once he began calling out his customary opening lines to the rapt audience, his fear at finding himself in this situation was not as bad as the realization that he still had no memory of taking the elixir. Certainly not mixing it into his tea. Or of forgetting, unforgivably, to put the bag away.

No. He realized in that instant that he had been wrong to doubt himself. If the elixir were in his tea, somebody else had to have put it there. Someone else did it, despite the fact that he had never met anyone on the American continent who was even aware of its existence.

J.D. knew the elixir’s effects well enough, but the knowledge did little to protect him from it. After being exposed to such an amount, he felt his trademark sharp mental skills turning to dust.

One last, semi-coherent thought ran though his head before he surrendered to the situation and attempted to run through his show under a combination of ingrained memory and force of habit. The thought was that as soon as the performance was over, he should be sure not to forget about something. Backstage, seeing a door closing from the corner of his eye.

     But by this point, his vision was filled with tiny heat waves. The faces in the audience appeared to be painted on balloons.

     And yet the Golden Moment carried him, for awhile. His standard opening run of hypnosis jokes came out of his mouth as easily as his breath. Their sole purpose was to relax and disarm the audience, to get them synchronized. And during the familiar introduction, he was able to sit back inside of himself and let the long years of practice guide his performance while the hidden man ruminated behind the mask.

Something about a door backstage, but what? Did someone sneak in just to slip this massive dose into my tea? Why would anyone know about this incredible elixir, and not steal it?

But before he could expend any energy on the mystery, he had to demonstrate the color of his smoke and the glint of his mirrors to the movers and shakers of San Francisco. He had to give the folks a solid sample of what they had bought from James “J.D.” Duncan for the full duration of their Panama Pacific International Exposition.

If he failed to give them a show, an entire year’s worth of steady work be lost. Worse: the gossip factor would be unendurable.

Now that he was in his sixth decade among a population who frequently lived no longer than that, any sort of sullied reputation – say a story about an aging performer who might be losing his special powers – would be a kiss from the Grim Reaper. James “J.D.” Duncan could not afford to take any backward steps at this late point, or backward might well become the only direction that the folks allowed him to travel in.

So he kept his mouth moving with the familiar words, tried not to listen to himself too hard – and hoped like hell that he was making sense to the folks out there in the house.

CHAPTER TWO

Simultaneously

*  The Majestic Pacific Theatre – San Francisco’s Finest  *

Detective Randall Blackburn was in a dark mood. He was a damned homicide investigator, far too valuable to be wasted on an evening of private guard duty for some show business bigwig. He tried to remember when he had ever suffered through such an idiotic waste of his time, even back during his days of walking a beat. Nothing came to mind.

Blackburn stared out through the hallway window on the theatre’s second floor, but the late evening darkness was thickened by an inbound fog. There was little to look at. Along the upper reaches of Market Street, where the streetlamps were still only powered by fragile gas lines, the best that the lamps could do was to provide glowing place markers in the featureless night. He could see the faltering yellow-orange gaslights for no more than two blocks in the distance, and between them only flat darkness littered with charcoal shadows.

     “Crime weather,” Blackburn muttered under his breath. He pushed his gaze a little harder into the night.

Pitch black. One of the two ways that criminals like it best. Pitch black, or sunny and clear. Rain keeps them home.

He pulled the silver watch from the inside chest pocket of his coat. The open face showed nine-twenty. The silver plating was rubbed through in some places, right where the fingers go. He had also replaced the crystal face six times, so far, courtesy of half a dozen of the countless petty crooks and vicious killers, over the years, who forced him to take them down with brute force. He pocketed the watch again, protecting it out of long habit.

At the age of forty-one, Blackburn knew that he could still dominate most men in their twenties. But he also felt the speed leaving his legs, felt the knees giving in to frequent snaps of pain that came out of nowhere. On some of the worst mornings, he awoke with knuckles too swollen to make a solid fist or to hold his nightstick with any real grip. He could work the fingers back into action, but it sometimes took a few minutes of vigorous rubbing.

And now he was a detective, by God. Entitled to thrill and amaze his superior officers by sniffing out criminals while leaving the eager up-and-comers to vie for the endless honors of flushing perpetrators from the shadows. Let them take the victory lumps and earn the useless purple hearts.

And yet tonight, the Department brass in their immortal wisdom had him on the sort of honorary “body guard” duty that made a great training exercise for a wet-eared rookie. Naturally, then, the Department was going to waste the services of a detective on such an assignment. No advance instructions, just “show up at the theatre and be prepared to work.” 

The runner with the orders had warned Blackburn that the Captain was meeting with Police Chief White about him, at that very moment. “Under no circumstances” was Blackburn to leave the second floor hallway before Captain Merced arrived.

But once he got up there, he was left to wait while the rest of the audience filed in, gradually finding their seats. Eventually, the heavy doorway curtains were pulled shut and the show began. Blackburn heard the strains of patriotic theme music, an announcer booming on and on about the Glorious Achievement of Instantaneous Communication by Voice, from One Side of the Country to the Other!

The renowned Mesmerist, James Duncan, then took over the audience. Duncan immediately began to shout and bellow from the stage, strangely forceful in his delivery. Blackburn casually wondered if this trait was part of the man’s usual act. He could not make out the words from his position, but the showman’s voice remained filled with bursts of fiery passion. He sounded like a half-crazed evangelist. The man’s emotional tone was unusual enough to tickle at Blackburn’s investigative sense, even though he could not see the stage.

Since he was under orders to play the role of personal escort to this showman, he tossed the question of onstage emotional levels into his mental “could be something” bin, just in case. It was an old habit. The bin was large.

Forty-five minutes of the Mesmerist’s one-hour show went by. Frustration compressed his head, but under orders from his Captain, he could only wait and quietly pace in a slow loop.

His boot heel lightly nicked something on the floor. He had just done the same thing moments before. This time, he looked down and saw that there was a hairline crack running all the way across the floor. It extended as far as he could see from that point. His heel had briefly caught on it because the floor on one side had taken a slight vertical drop – maybe an eighth of an inch. He had never studied masonry, but he knew that this was a fairly new building, brick and stone over a steel frame. It was built atop the ruins of the theatre that was demolished by the Great Earthquake, billed as a solemn testament to the need for worthy construction in this unstable part of the world. Here of all places, it seemed odd for such a long split to run through a new building’s floor. The fact that he noticed it at all was a grim marker of his level of boredom, but he made a mental note to report the crack to somebody back at the City Hall station.

At that point, his train of thought was finally derailed by the appearance of the Captain Christian Merced. The man puffed his short and portly body up the stairs, swiveling a domed head in all directions until he spotted Blackburn. When he did, he immediately locked onto Blackburn’s eyes. Merced was not imposing as a physical figure, but his momentary anger amplified his permanent sense of rank and made him a formidable presence.

Blackburn felt the same cold chill that he sometimes caught during card games. Nothing good ever followed it.

The Captain stepped toward the nearest curtained alcove, and without so much as a glance back at Blackburn, he flicked a silent gesture of commandment to join him. Blackburn’s cold chill deepened while he stepped over to him.

The moment that they were both inside the temporary alcove formed by the thick velvet sound curtains, Captain Merced stared straight up at Blackburn. His expression seemed to insist that Blackburn’s greater size would do nothing to protect him.

“Detective Blackburn,” Merced began, but he stopped and swallowed, making a visible effort to quell his emotions.

After a brief pause, he went on. “Tonight, Chief White was so upset and angry with me… that he actually questioned my competence. Do you hear me? Four years, he’s been in that position, and I have never heard one peep out of him. Not against me or my command!”

“I’m, ah…”

“Sorry! You’re sorry.” Merced took a deep pull at his cigar. He blew a long, tight exhale straight against Blackburn’s uniform.

“Of course you’re not really sorry, through, are you?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“But we’re about to take care of that. Because it’s all downhill for you after this, Detective.”

“For me.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t even be addressing you as Detective.”

“What?” Blackburn did not mean to yell. The word barked out of him in a burst of shock.

“Hold your voice down, damn it!” Merced’s words hissed like a steam pipe. “Or I will make good on that threat!”

“Sir, I have no idea what--”

“I know that you have no idea, Sergeant. I’m here to tell you! It’s that damned half-breed family or whatever kind of group you’ve got going on over at your house!”

Blackburn lost all sense of self-control and grabbed Captain Merced by the lapels, then whispered down onto his eyeballs, “My family, Captain. That’s all you have to say, if you want to refer to them. My family. That’s enough said.”

Abruptly, Blackburn regretted his choice of reactions and a sense of foolishness flashed through him. Along with the certainty that he had allowed himself to be bated and trapped.

But to his astonishment, the Captain’s expression shifted and he gave out a small laugh of delight. “No! Oh, no! There’s a whole lot more to be said, Detective. Because nobody really minded when your young ward or whatever he--”

“My son,” Blackburn corrected. “I adopted both of them, Captain.”

“Neither one uses your name.”

“They already had one.” He slowly released his grip on the Captain’s lapels, wondering where in the hell things were going to go after this.

Merced ignored that and continued, “Shane Nightingale was entitled to quit officer school. So he’s the ‘artistic type.’ Fair enough. No harm in trying.”

“He was mostly worried that I would be embarrassed because of it.” Blackburn could scarcely believe that they were talking this way, after he had just assaulted his superior officer.

“Exactly!” Merced replied with gusto. “He worried that he might have humiliated you by dropping out! But now, he won’t have that burden anymore! Gone!”

Merced was frighteningly delighted. He gave a fake gasp. “Poof! Is it a trick by the great Mesmerist down there, James Duncan? No! I’ll tell you what it is: The low water mark has just dropped by half a mile. Because at least your ‘son’ only failed after making an honest try.”

Blackburn did not dare to say a word, to move.

Merced kept talking, but his grin turned malevolent. “I suppose you call Vignette Nightingale your ‘daughter,’ then?”

Merced was far too happy for any of this. Blackburn did not bother to reply.

“Your ‘daughter’ is nineteen years old. Same age as Shane was, when he tried. But do you want to tell me how in God’s name she got the idea that she was going to be the one in your ‘family’ to make it through police training? Everybody knows the Department doesn’t put women in uniform. Everybody. If they don’t know it – say, they’re new in town? – we tell them. Right off.”

“Are you saying that Vignette tried to sign up for--”

“No, no! What I am telling you is, that beanpole of a young women looks like quite a bit like a young man when she cuts her hair off. That is what I’m telling you.”

By now Blackburn was completely at a loss. He had seen Vignette earlier that morning and she had plenty of hair. She was wearing it in a different style, but it was not a man’s haircut by any means.

“Captain, did she actually go down to the station and try to fool someone, so she could go through police training?”

“No, Sergeant. She did that two weeks ago, when she applied. Last week, her incoming class of candidates began their first day, and for all of that week, your ‘daughter’ lagged behind on physical strength tests, but scored right up near the top on most of the others. I’m told that the instructors went home on Friday looking forward to seeing how this new recruit was going to come off in the days to come.”

“… Vignette?”

“She was exposed by somebody, just today. Two of our officers brought in a note that explained it all. Otherwise, come Monday, she would have been back there, I suppose. With the other recruits! Out-shooting everybody at the gun range, for all I know!”

“Sir… Vignette has been attending police training… as a man?”

“A skinny one who doesn’t talk much. Half those recruits look like girls to me, anyway. Lot of soft young bastards.”

“And getting away with it?”

“You are not hearing this the way you ought to! Yes. She pulled it off for a few days. But she’s been ratted out, now. Good joke, right? Uh-huh, until tonight, when Chief White got wind of it and I got to eat a horseshit sandwich for dinner. My humor is very bad, Detective. That’s why I am giving you this news myself.”

“Does Vignette know she’s been found out?”

“Vign-- Forget her for just one minute! Mister James Duncan down there on the stage is the one who requested you as a body guard tonight. That’s why you’re here. And you could have gotten away with just hustling him around for a bit after the performance, then going on home, all finished, none the worse for wear.

“But no. One of your ‘family’ has embarrassed me, Detective Blackburn. And I find that the only way I can impress my unhappiness upon her is to make you so miserable that you go back home and do it for me.”

“Sir, if you could just talk to her.”

“We are far past the talking point. Here is what I will do. I am going to grant Mr. Duncan’s other request, which was for you to be supplied to him throughout the duration of the Exposition, for personal guard duty.”

“What is this? I’m a homicide detect--”

“Exactly! I would never have so much as mentioned it to you, otherwise. You would have kissed his arrogant ass for a while tonight, and tonight only, and then you would have been done with it. Now, you are going to be his personal, on-call bodyguard for the entire affair.”

“Ten months?”

Captain Merced’s only reply was to smooth his lapels back into place.

“Captain, if you want to bring me up on charges for grabbing you--”

“Forget that. Not interested.”

“You would throw away nearly a year of my--”

“Now you’re starting to get it, Detective! You are going to be my messenger to your ‘daughter,’ who wouldn’t be trying such nonsense if you had raised her right. And for the next year, the frustrations will go home with you every night.”

“Sir, any personal grievance you feel toward her is--”

“You will pay on her behalf, every day, and at night when you go home, I believe that you will eventually make her pay. Isn’t that perfect? It will appear to her as if she got away with her little game, just because the Department wants to avoid publicity. But she will eventually feel the consequences. And you have been elected to bring them back to her.”

“Captain. You were deliberately goading me over my family.”

The Captain spurted another short and nasty laugh. “What the hell do you do over in that house of yours? And what have you been telling those young people? Who told her it was all right to behave that way?”

“Does she know the game is over?”

“You are going to tell her it’s over. And also that she will never show up around a precinct house in this city, again, or we will arrest her on every horseshit charge that the boys in booking can dream up. Beyond that, let her think she’s getting away with this, if you want to indulge her. Personally, I think she ought to have to sleep out on the porch for a few months.”

“I don’t treat her like that.”

“That much is obvious. Possibly the main problem. So you go right ahead and give her a pat on the back for fooling the Department. I’m gonna bet that after you spend a couple weeks following around some stage performer, you’ll be filling her life with the kind of misery she deserves.”

“But she didn’t do any harm, right? She didn’t damage anything?”

“God-damn it, Blackburn, the Department’s reputation is something! We don’t need to have it tarnished.”

“I’m sure she’d be willing to offer an apology,” Blackburn said, not at all certain that Vignette would do any such thing.

“Here’s what you do,” Merced countered. “As soon as the show ends, report to Mr. Duncan and remain with him until he dismisses you tonight. He’ll give you your schedule for the rest of the week.”

“Sir, there’s got to be a better way to--”

“I’m not going to be the one to punish her, Detective.” Captain Merced fired up a large wooden match. He put a fresh cigar in his mouth and lit it, then tossed the match to the floor and ground it out with his heel. He finally permitted all of his outrage and contempt to flash out in a feral grin.

“You are.” This time he exhaled a thick cloud that filled the alcove. He left it behind him when he walked out.

Blackburn stood motionless, stunned. He refused to allow himself to react. If you begin moving – a single move – your legs will take over, and in ten seconds you will catch him and your hands will be around his throat.

He was helpless against his protective instincts toward Shane and Vignette. The sound of anyone speaking a word against either of them cut him to the bone. Now it was clear that Merced had showed up tonight already determined to pull this trick, whether Blackburn had been stupid enough to let the Captain bait him or not.

In which case, Blackburn realized that he probably could have gotten away with punching the little gnome, as long as it didn’t leave a mark. Maybe in the stomach.

He stood for a few more seconds, fearing that Merced might pop back into the alcove to dig in one last word. But when he finally allowed himself to step outside, the hallway was empty.

He sighed. This news about Vignette was too much. There was more here than he could sort out any time soon. He had to push her out of his thoughts until he could get home and find out what had actually happened.

Until then, he would have to deliberately keep himself busy with the job at hand. The first thing to do after the show would be to take issue with the lauded personage of James “J.D.” Duncan about this job as a grown man’s nanny.

In a burst of optimism, he wondered whether he might meet with this Duncan fellow and simply convince him that a homicide detective was not really the optimum choice for an entertainer’s personal body guard. After all, there was no reason for a stranger to request Blackburn, specifically. Maybe the man just wanted to be assured that he would be coddled by somebody who was really good at it, and since he had the city forces on his side, he requested a detective. With a little luck, the man might be made to understand that this was the improper use of Blackburn’s skills.

One thing at a time.

And then, if he could do a solid job of unraveling this ball of knots with Duncan, perhaps he might clear his head enough to go home and deal with Vignette. He tried to visualize himself asking her what the hell happened over at the cop school, and doing it some way that would not cause her to react by folding herself up into a silent box. She was capable of staying there for days, for weeks.

One thing at a time.

The most important thing was to avoid chasing down Captain Merced and throttling the arrogant bastard for casting such contempt onto Blackburn’s family. He was incredulous that the man would think that just because Blackburn was thrown into a ridiculous assignment, he would react by doing Merced’s dirty work for him, that he would blame Vignette for the miserable duty and take out his job frustrations on her.

One thing at a time.

He made a conscious effort to bolster himself with a deep breath, then headed downstairs to look for an usher to show him backstage. There, he could grab this Duncan fellow as soon as he finished his performance, and calmly – oh, so calmly – set him straight.

CHAPTER THREE

Also Simultaneously

*  The Majestic Pacific Theatre – San Francisco’s Finest  *

     The tall young man of twenty-one with the dark hair and slight build stood in the darkness along the side wall of the theatre. His position was down close to the front of the stage, and he stared up at James “J.D.” Duncan with a smile of fascination.

Shane Nightingale had spent the first few minutes of the show feeling too worried over what might be going on with Randall upstairs to be able to pay much attention to the stage show. But then at some early point, this Duncan fellow abruptly stopped his stage patter and took a long pause… before stepping to the front. It was odd enough to grab Shane’s attention.

From there, Duncan began to speak over the footlights and out to the audience. He moved his penetrating gaze over them all, as if each and every one of them were a beloved member of his closest family. That increased Shane’s attention right away; until that moment, the showman had struck Shane as being reluctant to even look at the audience. And from that moment onward, Shane’s interest was rewarded. The entire performance somehow tilted off center.

It was a subtle shift, but something suddenly felt dangerously out of place to Shane. The sensation was so potent that it rattled his body with a shiver.

Duncan had captured Shane’s attention by this point. The showman owned it altogether once he opened his mouth.

     “My dear ladies – my gentle men: I must reveal to you the absolute truth!”

The legendary Mesmerist held up his hands, palms out: a liar no more.

“I have just this instant realized that the best way to honor the forthcoming opening day of the Panama Pacific International Exposition is for me to cease this common performance of things. Hah – ‘things.’ Things anyone will be able to see throughout the Exposition. Not unworthy things, to be sure. Nonetheless, matters perhaps best left another day. The healing sessions? Well and good, but not tonight. The large scale demonstrations? I am always eager to do them, but they too must wait. Because I understand that what this august gathering truly deserves tonight, truly cries out for tonight in the depths of your spirits, is to See The Veil Lifted! Look behind the ordinary illusions and learn how to work with them yourselves!

     The audience released a collective gasp of delight and a roll of excited applause. He waited for them to get it all out before he continued.

“Tonight, I will not merely open up the energy that resides inside us all; I will show you how to do it yourselves! Not to eat a fish, but to catch a fish! This audience deserves a one time only opportunity to witness secret exercises such as I personally perform prior to my greatest and most challenging undertakings in the Mesmeric Arts!”

     Another roll of thrilled applause rose up from the house. Shane felt waves of anticipation run through the theatre like a sudden strong breeze. He had to stop himself from laughing out loud. Here was this James Duncan, who for all the world struck Shane as a glorified carnival act, yet he was being revered by an audience of the city’s top social register – all on nothing more than the combination of advance publicity and strange onstage behavior.

Whenever Shane glanced over at the faces of the audience, it was plain that the man up there on the stage was doing a thorough job of getting away with all of it.  But then, for the next several minutes, Duncan did little more than to make odd singing and breathing noises while demonstrating all sorts of stretching exercises. He seemed to be flexible and was capable of some unusual contortions, which he repeatedly invited the audience to remember and copy in the privacy of their own homes. From their beaming faces and nodding heads, the audience gave Shane the impression that later at home, yes indeed, they would be all be sticking their heads under at least one leg.

But before long, Shane found himself feeling troubled that Duncan’s “explanations” for his bizarre physicality did not seem to connect to anything. All Shane heard was what sounded like the products of an ungoverned stream of consciousness.

Nevertheless, whenever he turned back to look at the faces in the house, every one of them watched Duncan, enraptured. They all appeared to be convinced that they were truly learning “secrets of the universe” and demonstrations of mesmerism.

Meanwhile, Duncan was up there, sweating like a fever victim, wild-eyed, face flushed. The inside of his upper lip continually stuck to his top front teeth, while he talked in what seemed to be a long stream of instructions: how to make this particular move, or how to breathe in this particular pattern, in order to create some particular effect in his secret work.

Shane could not suppress a wide grin. This evening was turning out to be a lot more fun than he had expected. While the audience listened to Duncan’s ranting, each one was clearly hearing his or her own variations of “inspirational” content.

Shane doubted that any two members of the audience would tell the same story about what they “learned” at this special presentation, but they were all primed to go home satisfied. He had never seen a clearer example of crowd hypnosis. Even though Duncan claimed that he was giving up his planned demonstrations of group hypnosis in order to reveal his methods and exercises, the audience was unwittingly acting along in perfect group hypnosis itself, supplying their own meanings to his jumbled patter. Duncan had them mesmerized, after all.

Shane could hardly believe his luck. All he had expected to do was to accompany Blackburn to the theatre, then join him for whatever remained of the show. He had seen the posters plastered around the city in recent days, and had a vague idea of what James Duncan’s show would be like, but he never expected to be treated to such a potent demonstration of one man’s mental control over a large crowd of strangers.

He could only stare in admiring wonder. In the slow years since Shane’s terrible final night in the Nightingale house, he had managed to develop enough of a social veneer that he could function in most adult environments, if for short periods of time. But no matter how well he did it, he was never more than a visiting stranger, anywhere he went. He marveled at the amount of power that someone like James Duncan could hold in such abundance, when Shane himself had so little.

However, he also could not help wondering if that man up on the stage had the faintest inkling of what he was actually talking about. Duncan was continuing to rattle through his thoughts on all sorts of arcane subjects – always behaving as if he were formulating deep pronouncements. But at no point did he ever actually come out and say much of anything.

Shane had never seen anybody do this so well, or imagined anyone being so blatant about it. It reminded him of watching one of the martial arts masters down in Chinatown; everything was mixed into a flurry of spinning and thrusting. False starts, digressions, interjections – the man never paused long enough for any of it to settle. He blew past meaning through sheer emotional power. The intensity of his delivery was especially remarkable; he reminded Shane of a man pleading for his life.

Shane may have been ignorant of Duncan’s method, but he loved observing his skill and he was enthralled by the showman’s rambling double-talk. He decided that if Randall didn’t show up by the time Duncan’s show ended, he would just wait around for him backstage and look for an excuse to meet Duncan early.

Meanwhile, he felt like a field biologist who has just discovered an entirely new species. In his experience, anyone who could be so open and friendly and smooth in front of a crowd usually turned out to be quiet and withdrawn in private company, even somewhat cranky. But with the level of onstage energy that Duncan possessed, who could predict how high his flame would burn, offstage?