“Yes.”
“Looks like someone tried to.” Roger stood in the shadows of the proscenium, looking like a young Odin, with a patch over his left eye, and his pet raven, Lenore, on his right glove. “Sweet Joker-Jesus, Sam, what happened to you?”
Sam sighed, pulling up on his sleeve where the seam had been ripped out at the shoulder. “Some of your fans just tried to play Stretch Armstrong with me.”
“Hey, that’s my shtick!” Paul protested.
Sam ignored him, turning to his brother. “What the fuck’s going on out there?”
“It’s a long and complicated tale,” Roger began, coming forward from the shadows. “I’m not certain where to start. . . .”
“Britney Spears got food poisoning!” Alec exclaimed, then started to laugh, nearly braying. “Puked Pepsi all over Bob Dole!”
Paul giggled, then made a strangled ralphing noise, followed by a perfectly inflected, girlish, “Oops! I did it again!” The wild card had elasticized his vocal cords along with his bones, giving even more justification for his nickname, a talent for mimicry rivaled only by his vocal range. “Yeah, and she was supposed to be over at Radio City tonight doing the Halloween show for Mtv!”
Alec nodded wildly, his Mohawk bobbing like a sail. “But, puking Britney—they had to cancel.”
“And our video just trashed everyone on Total Request Live!” Paul exclaimed, bouncing up and down on his crutches.
Alec continued to nod, the motion revealing that the bowsprit of his coiffure was actually a spiraled ivory horn, hidden like the Purloined Letter just below his forelock. “And Britney said she thought Paul was cute!”
Paul grinned from ear to ear—literally. “And we were having a concert tonight anyway, so they moved the show here!”
“In a nutshell . . . yes.” Roger stroked Lenore, smoothing down her ruffled feathers and keeping a tight hold on her jesses. “Chaos told us the deal when we got back from dinner.”
It was all a little bit much to take at once, surreal in fact, and Sam just took it in stride when a parade of thirty women, all dressed like Topper, filed by in back of the band.
“The Rockettes,” Jim explained. “Mtv said if they paid for them, they were going to use them, and they already know all the Irving Berlin numbers anyway.” Jim smiled. “We didn’t see the nutshell Roger said they came in, but I’m guessing it was a big one, kind of like the giant flying seashell Dr. Tachyon uses.”
“Oh,” said Sam. Topper just stood there in stunned silence, watching the seemingly endless display of top hats.
Alec angled his Mohawk towards her and stroked his equally long, silky and silly goatee. “You’re not a Rockette, are you?” He loomed over Sam. “Going to introduce us to your friend, Swash?”
“Uh, yeah.” Sam shook his head, realizing he’d been forgetting his manners. “Guys, this is Topper. The ace.”
“Alec,” said Alec, bending down to shake hands, “the joker.” Their size differential made them look like Teniel’s illustration of Alice and the Unicorn, except Alec was only horse-faced in the nat sense and Alice didn’t wear a top hat and fishnets. “Or ‘Alicorn,’ if you want my joker name.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, his hand enveloping hers as they shook. “I remember seeing you at Starfields.” Sam saw her glance to Alec’s immense Mohawk-impaled top hat and immediately discount the possibility.
“People tend to do that,” Alec remarked as he straightened back up and uncricked his back. “It’s the height.”
Topper nodded. “People overlook me. Same reason.”
“That’s not true,” said Jim. “Paul kept looking at your legs. He said they looked totally hot, which kinda confuses me, ’cause in fishnets you’d expect they’d be cool.”
“Jim!” Paul exclaimed, his voice jumping three octaves. Then he looked to Topper, blushing furiously. “Pardon me while I curl up into a ball and die of embarrassment. . . .” He glanced to Jim. “No, Jim. I’m not really going to. It’s just a metaphor. People don’t really die of embarrassment.”
“Yes they do!” Jim protested. “Don’t you remember Margie? From the orphanage? Five years ago she got her period and stained her choir robe and she said, ‘Oh God, I’m so embarrassed, I’m going to die!’ Then she did die, right there next to us in the middle of church. She drew the black queen, and Father Squid said it was embarrassment that made her card turn, just like she said. And he had a whole sermon next Sunday about the evils of shame and how it kills jokers.” Jim’s lip began to quiver. “And I’ve seen you curl up into a ball. You can even bounce.”
Paul gave Jim a look halfway between sympathy and exasperation. “It’s okay, Jim. I’m not going to die. And shame doesn’t really kill jokers. Usually.” He paused then, taking a deep breath. “And none of us are latents anymore anyway. Even Roger’s drawn his card.”
“I haven’t,” said Jim, blinking at tears. “I’m still a completely normal. . . .”
“Jim, you’re an ace. A crazy powerful one.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not,” Jim insisted.
Paul let it drop, and there was an uncomfortable silence, which Roger broke with the rolling tones of a born showman: “I believe we were in the middle of introductions. If I may, allow me to introduce Jim and Paul, alias Gimcrack and Pretty Paulie. And this is my assistant, Lenore,” he said, gesturing to his raven. “While as for myself . . .” Roger held up his left hand, showed the glove’s palm then the back, then with a flourish, produced a business card from thin air.
Lenore snatched it from him, holding the card in her beak.
“Give it to the nice lady, Lenore,” Roger coaxed, holding the raven towards Topper. “Give it.”
Lenore looked at Topper, then at Roger, then defiantly took the card in one claw and began to shred it into confetti. Roger caught it in his left hand, squeezed tight, then opened it with a flourish, presenting the card to Topper, miraculously restored, if missing a corner. “For you, my good lady. The Amazing Ravenstone, at your service.”
She accepted it with a smile. “A fellow conjurer, I see.”
“But nowhere near your level of skill, I’m afraid.” He retrieved the last corner from Lenore’s beak. “I’m afraid my ace at present only extends to parlor magic. But I’m working to expand my repertoire.” He handed the torn corner to Topper. “Would that I had your skill. Or that of your grandfather.”
“Likewise,” Topper said, putting the missing corner to the card and seeing that they matched. “I only pull rabbits out of my hat, not tigers.”
“The legendary Blackwood Conjure. . . .” Roger gave a wry smile. “A most impressive feat, especially since Lafayette Blackwood accomplished it without apparent access to curtain, trap door, or gimmicked stand—and this years before the advent of the wild card.” Roger gave her a sidelong glance from his unpatched eye. “I know that almost all his props and effects were destroyed in a fire, but did he ever by any chance pass on the secret personally?”
“Grandpa took it to his grave, I’m afraid.” Topper gave a sad shake of her head. “He always said that a magician’s secrets were meant to be lost, stolen, or traded for one equal, never given out-right or sold for cheap.”
Roger nodded, then quoted, “‘For to do so would cheapen the magic and destroy the wonder, and the world needs mysteries, now more than ever.’”
Jim applauded wildly, then smiled at Topper. “That was the end of the ‘History of Magic’ spiel he gave when we worked at Dutton’s Magic and Novelty Shop.” Jim smiled wider. “Roger always said it just before trying to sell people ‘Topper’s Big Box of Ace Magic Tricks.’ He got a commission.”
“Oh God,” said Topper, “they’re still selling those? I thought the license expired years ago.”
“Mr. Dutton bought up the warehouse. He told us to jack the price and call them collectibles, and if we could unload them, we got an extra twenty percent.” Jim smiled. “I worked there too. I sold more X-ray specs than any other employee.”
Roger glared. “That’s because you used your ace to make them actually work, Jim.”
“I did not,” Jim protested. “They work just fine for anybody, so long as you adjust them right, and it’s not my fault if people keep breaking them after they leave the store.”
“Jim, regular people can’t see through walls.”
“Sure they can. All they need are X-ray glasses. Or windows.” Jim glared at Roger. “You said the same thing when we were kids and you were upset because your sea monkeys didn’t look like the ones on the package and mine did. Just because I know how to follow directions and can get products to work the way they’re supposed to doesn’t make me an ace.”
Roger left the statement unchallenged, as did Sam. There was no point in arguing with Jim, especially when he got in a mood, since the flipside of absolute gullibility and literal-mindedness was absolute faith, and when the universe catered to your belief in it, this was not necessarily misplaced. Even if that belief was mostly in the outrageous promises of advertising, particularly the products in the backs of comic books and supermarket tabloids.
Jim still looked hurt. “You should remember what it’s like, Roger. You were a latent too, before the wild card gave you a black eye.”
Topper looked at Roger, incredulous. “A black eye?”
Roger nodded. “Jim is being accurate here. I got a black eye.” Roger raised his hand and flipped up his eyepatch. His left eye was black, totally black, without trace of white or iris. “As you can see,” Roger said with a wink before hiding the eye again, “Raven-stone is not just my stage name or my nom de ace,” He tapped the brim of his hat, “but also my nom de joker.”
Topper looked at his hat. “Nice hat,” she remarked. “Finchley’s Fifth Avenue?”
“Of course,” said Roger. “The classic magician’s hat. And a good old New York firm too.”
“May I see it? I collect hats.”
“You and Cameo should talk,” Paul remarked.
“Our costume designer,” Roger explained, doffing his hat to reveal a pair of small black horns. “She also collects. Though not just hats.” He handed his to Topper. “She found our costumes for the show.”
“Or made them,” Alec added. “Hard to find my size, even in Jokertown.”
“And she wouldn’t punch holes in a vintage number anyway,” Roger pointed out. “She’d consider it murder.” His eye flicked to Sam’s mangled hat. “I suggest you ask for a loaner, Sam. We may want to drag you on stage later and I can’t have my brother dressed like that.”
“On stage? Oh please.”
“You’re our cover artist. Take your bows.” He smirked. “Besides, we may need a backup singer, in case Alec suddenly gets hoarse. . . .”
“Please God no . . .” said Alec.
Sam was in agreement. “I don’t sing that well, Roger.”
“Better than Alec would,” Roger said. “Besides, you know all the songs.”
“Thank you,” said Topper, returning Roger’s hat and saving Sam from further argument. “May I?” Jim and Paul showed her their hats as well, but Sam knew from her expression that theirs weren’t hers either. “Of course,” she added, “the hat thing is just a hobby. I was hoping you boys could help me with something else. I’m a private investigator, and I was looking for a woman you may have seen at Starfields—who incidentally also wears a top hat. Swash, could you show them your illustration?”
Sam took his cue and opened the sketchbook. The ink had smeared even more and the pages were almost glued together, bits of paper tearing off in little shreds, but at last he showed them the sketch of the Vinyl Vixen.
“I remember her,” said Jim. “Paul said she was totally hot too. But that made sense, ’cause she’s wearing all that latex.”
Paul blushed slightly. “So I’ve got a thing for rubber. Go figure.”
Roger shrugged. “If I recall, she stumbled into the waiter. Likely couldn’t see much with that mask. I helped her up and returned her hat, and last I saw, she ran off for the ladies room, presumably to wash off the Takisian margarita he’d spilled down her back.”
“Presumably,” Topper said.
“I bet she was a fan,” Alec said. “She kept looking at you, Roger, like she was thinking about asking for your autograph.”
“Roger was looking at you the same way,” Jim told Topper.
Roger gave Jim a withering look, then glanced to Topper. “Well, I’ll admit, I am a fan. Though mostly of your grandfather. The man was amazing.”
“So are a number of things,” Topper said, glancing to Roger, then Sam. “Joker-deuce brothers. The odds are what? One in a thousand? Ten thousand?”
“Somewhere in there.” Roger flashed his devilish smile. “Scarce as hen’s teeth and twice as weird.”
“Not that we’re complaining,” Sam added. “The Croyd outbreak killed our parents and left us infected and unadoptable. Same with lots of kids, actually. After I drew my card, I was afraid I was going to lose Roger. After all, look at the odds.”
“We survived. That’s what counts.” Roger stroked Lenore’s feathers. “And the same with some of our friends from the orphanage.” He nodded to Jim, Alec and Paul.
“We didn’t just survive—we’re freakin’ huge!” This last was said, without apparent irony, by Dirk Swenson, alias Atlas, drummer for the Jokertown Boys, who despite a face with delicate, almost Takisian, features, had shoulders about as wide as he was tall, with muscles to match. “I just carried Jim’s piano out on stage and snuck a peek through the curtains and you won’t believe how many girls are out there!”
“And let us not forget our loud friend from the New York School for the Arts . . .” Roger said in an aside to Topper.
Dirk was loud in more than one sense of the word. He’d swapped out of his custom tail coat and tux shirt and into a sun-burst tie-die, presumably for the set up, and Sam wondered if the rumors were true, that he was Starshine’s lovechild. Certainly they had the same fashion sense, thought that just might be due to the fact that the muscleboy had been raised following the Grateful Dead until Jerry Garcia died and Dirk’s mom had moved back to the Village to take over The Cosmic Pumpkin.
“I can’t freakin’ believe it!” Dirk boomed. “This is absolutely wild!”
Sam was in agreement, but from a slightly different angle, since ‘wild’ was a pretty accurate description of the nat girls they’d encountered out front.
“Dirk?” Roger said, getting his attention. “Allow me to introduce you to Topper, the famous ace conjurer. Topper, Dirk, our piano-lifting drummer. Dirk, I need you to get back into costume before we do a sound check, but before you do, Topper was wondering if you’d seen the woman in vinyl from the bar.” He pointed to Sam’s illustration.
“Oh, yeah, Bondage Girl,” said Dirk, looking at the illustration. “She was hot.”
“We’ve established that,” Topper said. “Do you know her? Did she by any chance say anything?”
“Nah,” said Dirk, “I think she was doing the mime trip. But I gave her one of the flyers Sam did for the show. I hope she gets in,” he added, “Chaos said it’s, like, going to be standing room only, and the shows around us’ll have to deal with our overflow.”
“The toilets are going to back up?” asked Jim.
“Nah,” said Dirk, “that’s theatre talk. Means girls who can’t get in will go to other clubs.”
Topper looked more than slightly alarmed at this, but only said, “Is that your coat and hat over there? Let me get them for you.”
“Cool. Thanks.” Dirk pulled of his tie-die, revealing musculature like a classical statue of Atlas reinterpreted by an eighties comic book artist, while Topper went to where his ordinary hat and incredibly huge shirt and jacket had been laid over an amp. She came back with them, but Sam could tell from her look that Dirk’s hat had been eliminated from the running as well.
“Here you go,” she said, handing him his clothes. “Mind if we go sneak a peek at the audience? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many . . . girls . . . in one place ever before, and I’d like to see them all before the fire marshal turns anyone away.”
“Yeah, go greet my fans,” Sam said, pulling at the lining hanging out of the torn pocket of his coat.
“Sure,” Roger said, “we need to go over some stuff anyway. Glad you could make it after all—and nice to meet you.” Roger tipped his hat to Topper and he and the boys went over to the stage area and started a sound check. Meanwhile, Sam and Topper slipped around the edge of the proscenium, coming out past the red velvet curtain. There were cheers and screams almost immediately: “Roger! Roger!” and “Show us your horns!”
Sam didn’t oblige, just looked out at the main floor of the club. He had never seen so many girls in his life. Girls in black formal-wear and fishnets, leather and lace, shiny patches of vinyl and acres of bare midriffs, with mime masks and dominos and occasional headbands with animal ears or maybe just joker ears sticking out beneath their hats. Top hats. Everywhere. And there were more girls and more than a few boys pouring in all the time, forming a sea of high silk hats on either side of the runway that led forward from the main stage, taking seats at the tables in the upper mezzanine, or swarming through the shadows of the upper balcony.
“Oh my God . . .” said Topper, stricken. “I haven’t seen this many possible suspects since the Democratic National Convention. . . .”
Sam watched the bouncing, waving, shimmying sea of fans. “Well at least my brother and my friends have been lined out.” He glanced to her. “They have been lined out, right?”
“Sorry,” Topper admitted. “First rule of detective work—everyone’s a suspect until you solve the crime. Or the innocent mix-up. But if we don’t figure it out soon, it may become an unsolved mystery. . . .” She looked out at the sea of top hats. “Can you spot our mystery woman?”
Sam looked. “No. I’d need opera glasses.” He glanced back to Topper. “Got any?”
“If I had my hat, that would not be a problem.” She smiled to the crowd and managed a feeble wave. “But if I had it, the point would be moot.” Topper’s smile looked like it had been affixed with a staplegun.
“We could ask Cameo,” Sam suggested. “If anyone has some, she would.”
“Cameo?” She looked glad for any excuse to look away from the audience. “The costumer for the band?”
“And the Jokertown Players. And Broadway. And the Jokertown High theatre department.” Sam held up his right glove and waggled his fingers, girls in the audience screaming in response. “Made me these. Even recommended Roger and the rest of the guys for the School for the Arts.” He waved again, eliciting more screams from frenzied girls, which was sort of fun now that he wasn’t in the middle of them, but only slightly. “She always has this bag of props. Seen her pull out everything from a feather boa to a frying pan.”
“Worth a shot,” Topper said. “But you ask. I don’t want anyone else to have even a chance of knowing what’s going on.”
“Sure thing.”
She pulled Sam back past the edge of the curtain and sighed, then looked at him. “You know what, Swash? The girls out there are right—you are cute. Way too young for me, but cute.” She gave a nervous grin. “Now let’s go see about those binoculars, Mr. Teen Idol.”
Sam felt a blush stealing into his face. “Sure thing.”
It took a bit of asking around backstage, but they finally located Cameo in the wardrobe room. “Got a sec?”
“No, but tell me what you need anyway.” She emerged from behind a rack of costumes, dressed as a twenties flapper in a fringed tea dress and cloche hat, her only departures from cutting the perfect IT girl figure being a tape measure in place of a string of pearls around her neck and the sudden expression of shock on her face as she stopped, gaping. Then the moment passed. “Sam! What have I told you?” She went over to him, clucking her tongue, clearly more distressed by the rips in his jacket than the scratches on his face. “Old clothes are like old people. You have to treat them gently.”
“Tell that to Roger’s fans.”
Cameo just shook her head. “You take that off before you do any more damage to it.” The cloche hat framed her face, beautiful as a nymph from a Mucha poster, a few spit-curls of golden hair pulled loose to make it a mirror of the face on the cameo she wore on a choker around her neck, her one constant amid her constantly shifting display of vintage outfits and recreations. “I’ll find you a loaner till I can fix it. Something black you can’t stain.”
Topper looked around at the racks of clothes and the stacks of hats, including a huge number of top hats, lingering for a moment on a collection of wigs, one long blond one in particular. “Nice collection,” she said, turning at last. “All this yours?”
“Heaven forfend,” Cameo said, “I do not have the space. Most of this is on loan from Dutton’s Theatrical Supply. We’re in rehearsals for The Boyfriend.” She turned to face a rack of tuxes and rifled through them. “Alec misplaced his cummerbund. I was hoping there might be one he could borrow.”
Topper stared at Cameo’s throat until she turned. “That’s a lovely brooch you have there. Antique?”
“Why yes,” Cameo said, her hand going to it. “Family heir-loom.” She dimpled. “And source of my nickname. My real name’s Ellen.”
“Melissa,” Topper said, her eyes flicking to Cameo’s golden spit-curls. “Were you at Starfields earlier?”
“Me?” said Cameo with a slightly alarmed expression. “You must be joking. I can’t stand eating in restaurants. The tables are never clean enough for me, and the silverware . . . Ugh! Just the idea of how many people have had it in their mouths . . .” She shuddered delicately. “Give me a nice new styrofoam box and disposable chopsticks any day.”
Sam nodded. “You’re talking to the Queen of Takeout here.”
“Too true,” Cameo sighed, going back to her search. “Call it an eccentricity, but until they invent a fashionable hazmat suit, the most I’ll be able to stand is the occasional stand-up buffet with plastic champagne glasses and cocktail pics.”
Topper gave her a long look. “Aren’t you an ace?”
Cameo chuckled. “If I say ‘yes,’ Marilyn Monroe’s lawyers will sue me. Word to the wise, but never accuse an international idol of card sharkery on national television. Especially if the only proof you can give is ‘revelations from the spirits.’”
“So you’re not an ace?”