The Case of the Vanishing Beauty

by Richard S. Prather

  "Nobody but you, Shell." Her fingers played with the middle button on my shirt. Little shivers grew out of nowhere and danced along my spine. She put one cool hand on each side of my face and pulled my face gently down to hers.

  "Mañana," she breathed, and kissed me gently on my cheek, on my lips, on my throat. "Mañana, querido."

  Hell, what with one thing and another, I didn't get out of there till damn near five o'clock.

  Chapter Seven

  I CLIMBED INTO THE Cad and stared at the windshield. I was plumb tuckered out.

  It had rained again, but the skies were brightening and it looked as if Sunday might be crisp and clear. I started the car, drove up to Sunset, and turned east, listening to the tires humming on the wet street.

  There were a lot of things I had to do, but the one really important thing was: What had happened to Tracy? She was a girl I'd never seen, never even heard of till Saturday afternoon. I'd only known about her for fifteen hours, but I was starting to feel responsible for her. So far she was just a face and a description. Georgia had left two color photos—a portrait and a full-length study—and Tracy's description with me when she'd left the office.

  In the portrait, the face was that of a young girl with wide-set, intelligent eyes and brown hair fashioned in a feather cut. It was a face like that of a fine porcelain doll, and the eyes were the color of jade in moonlight. She was smiling; a pretty smile, but a little sad, and there was a small mole at the side of her mouth. Not beautiful, but pretty, attractive.

  The full-length study was of a small girl with a slim, curved body—a woman's body, but curves that were fashioned with restraint. She was wearing a bright print dress and was leaning against the arm of a chair on the lawn of the Martin home.

  The description: age, 19; height, five feet, two inches; weight, 110 pounds; eyes, green; hair, brown; identifying marks, mole left side of mouth, small scar inside left wrist.

  And that was Tracy Martin. But where was she? And why? And how the hell was I going to find her? Los Angeles is the largest city in area in the United States, covering 452 Square miles. If she was in L.A., that narrowed it down to 452 square miles. Great.

  And she could be in the morgue.

  There was a pattern, though, so far. And if she fitted into the pattern, there was a way. A damn-fool, stupid way, but it was the only one I knew. There was so much I needed to know, so much that was missing. But I'd give it a whirl.

  First, though, I was going to get religion. I was about to become a lamb fat for slaughter. I headed for Silver Lake Boulevard and the temple of the Inner World Society of Truth Believers. Narda, you'd better be good.

  He was good. And everything leading up to his appearance was intelligently planned and executed for its ultimate effect. And that was a surprise. It was to me, anyway, because Southern California is a mecca and melting pot for half the cults and societies of the civilized, and sometimes uncivilized, world. Maybe you live here or you've been here and know about it, and maybe you don't. I was born in this town. A quarter century ago, when I was a towheaded kid starting to kindergarten, Los Angeles and Hollywood weren't what they are now. Pepper trees lined Hollywood Boulevard and the movies were silent, flickery things. L.A.'s city limits were a fraction of what they are today, and the population was only about half what it is now.

  I've watched it grow, and as it grew, and as people from all over the States and even the world poured in, a rash of religious, vegetarian, mystic, and occult healers and savers sprang up like no other part of the States ever saw. Messiahs sprang up out of the ground, milked the suckers dry, then faded out of sight. Healers laid on hands, read the stars for propitious signs, and stood on their heads to save the downtrodden and, incidentally, make a fast buck.

  Don't get me wrong. Some of them were sincere, tried to do good, and believed everything they preached. But most of them were just out for the almighty dollar. And they got it.

  So I was in a skeptical frame of mind when I pulled into Silver Lake Boulevard, found a "For Sale" sign on a house a block or so from the temple, and parked my too distinctive Cadillac in the driveway. I walked up and took a fast look at the headquarters of the Inner World, or IW, Society. It looked the same as it had a few hours before when I'd trailed Miguel out here. Real fancy, what I could see of it in the darkness. Sam had told me the sessions were held behind the temple, so I went over to the white-graveled drive and on down to the end of it looking for people. I didn't see any mob, but there was a light over to the right behind the building, and a white-robed figure stood there holding a candle. I walked over. It was a woman, rather an attractive woman with a cute, round little face like a pixie's. She was dressed in white, flowing robes that covered her entire body, almost to the ground.

  I didn't know whether I should say, "Good morning," or "Holier than thou," or "Where's the meetin'?"

  I said, "I am Francis Joyne. I understand, ah, that there was to be, ah, a meeting. Ah…"

  She said, "Of course. The entrance is really on the other side at the top of the rise. Off Apex Street. It often happens that people come in this way." She had a soft, quiet voice. "Please follow me," she said.

  She held the candle over her head and led the way up a sloping hill behind the temple, along a path worn into the grass. It was dark except for the dim light from the moon and stars, and the candle flame flickered brightly in the darkness. It was a strange feeling, following the soft-voiced woman through the night, the candlelight making her shadow bob and swirl on the ground, and picking highlights in the folds of her robes. It was alien, eerie.

  I could hear music coming from up ahead now. Organ music. I hate organ music. It gives me the creeps. We kept walking and the music got louder. I felt almost like looking over my shoulder to see if another woman in long robes was floating after us. Or maybe just robes.

  Usually I'm a pretty levelheaded guy. I don't mind walking under ladders, black cats are just cats that are black, and I don't believe in spooks or haunts. But I could have picked a better setting for a morning stroll. Creepy was the word.

  The woman turned to the left and I saw up ahead an arched entrance in what looked like a wooden wall. Another woman, clad in the same kind of white robes and also carrying a candle, stood in the entrance. My guide walked with me up to the other woman, turned, and left me without saying a word. The other woman turned, also wordlessly, and walked inside the enclosure. I followed her. She paused and held the candle over a small table on which was an open book and a quill pen and ink. Scrawled signatures were halfway down the left page of the book. Apparently I was to sign the damn thing. I scribbled Francis Joyne and a phony address on Alvarado in the places allotted, the pen scratching in the silence. I looked up.

  In the faint light from the woman's candle I could see that wooden chairs were placed inside in rows facing east. People were there ahead of me, but there wasn't a sound other than the organ music. The candle stopped beside an empty chair on the aisle up which we'd been walking. I stopped and opened my mouth to speak.

  The woman turned her head slightly to the side and quickly raised one hand and held it palm out, fingers curled before her face. It was as if she were saying, "Not one word." I sat down quietly.

  She went away with a whisper of robes and seemed to float through the darkness and out the archway. With her leaving, even the meager light from the candle was gone and I sat in darkness relieved only by a faint glow from the sky.

  I looked around me. I could make out the shapes of perhaps ten or fifteen other persons sitting in the chairs, and there must have been more that I couldn't see. I wondered if I'd have to sit here quietly in the darkness till the sun came up before anything happened.

  The woman came in again carrying the candle and followed by two people. It was a man and a woman, and in the faint light they looked old, close to seventy. They were seated and the woman went out again.

  Minutes dragged by.

  Then, again through the archway, the woman came. Only this ti
me another was with her—probably the same woman who'd led me here from the temple. They walked down past the front row of seats and stood facing the crowd, separated from each other by about four feet. They were perhaps no more than twelve or fourteen feet from me. They stood holding their flickering candles while the organ continued to play.

  As if on signal, the candles went out.

  The organ music stopped.

  Then, overhead and a few feet behind the spot where the two women stood, light began to grow and illumine a large mass I couldn't make out at first. Then as the light increased in intensity, I could see that it was a huge face. A massive painting or photograph, at least fifteen or twenty feet long and high. It was the face of a man who seemed to be looking directly down at us from his position of eminence, out of deep, glowing eyes, a white turban upon his head. The light increased in intensity only enough so that the outlines of the picture could be seen and the face seemed to be hanging unsupported in the darkness.

  Nothing else happened for what was probably only a minute or two, but seemed longer. Then, with startling suddenness, a beam of light flashed down from somewhere up above and fell full upon the face and shoulders of a man standing four or five feet above the level of my eyes. His face was the face in the picture that seemed suspended in the air behind him, and on his head was a white turban. His arms were upraised and his head was bent down toward the people below.

  There wasn't a sound anywhere around me. And then he spoke.

  "Disciples. Disciples. Listen to me. Listen to me."

  The voice was deep, resonant. A soothing murmur that reached my ears easily and without strain, as if I were heating it more from within my head than from that strange figure above me.

  I put my head down and shut my eyes. Scott, old boy, I said to myself. Take it easy, chum. Don't get carried away here. The guy's got a big blow-up of a studio portrait behind him like a billboard, and he's probably standing on a rickety platform put up by nonunion labor. There's a baby spot stuck up on a beam or a tree limb, shining down on his kisser, and he's wondering what the take's going to be. Don't forget what you're here for.

  I looked up at the turbaned figure again and my mind flashed back to pictures I'd seen of another mass hypnotist, a guy named Hitler, who used to perch himself up above the crowd with a big blow-up of his mug behind him, and scream of the place Germany was soon to take in the world.

  So this was Narda. He was good. And he'd been reading books, I'd have bet my Cad against his turban that half of them had something to do with crowd psychology and hypnosis. You know hypnosis? It's not black magic anymore, or country-fair shenanigans; it's a tool of psychiatrists and psychologists, even doctors and dentists and advertising men who write the nauseous but effective air-wave commercials. It's a mental scalpel, anesthetic, medicine—a lot of things. And most of the favorite clinical techniques invariably include eyestrain, repeated suggestion, and a monotonous voice. I was beginning to appreciate Narda—the conditioning I'd been put through before he appeared, the strain on my eyes as I looked up at him, his words and the sound of his voice like the rise and fall of the surf as he launched into his spiel, which stretched credulity if you were looking for flaws, but was pretty good if you were willing and even anxious to believe him.

  He didn't speak with the wild ravings of the hillbilly revivalist, the hoarse, impassioned scream of words with the tight, quick gasp for breath at the end of each phrase, but rather with the monotonous, hypnotic chant of a priest. Sometimes the words had less meaning than his voice. He could have been singsonging Latin or Esperanto, but I found myself listening to him in spite of my skepticism.

  "Disciples. Disciples. Listen to me. Listen to me. I shall lead you into the world of Truth that has so long been hidden from you. Yea, hidden, even though it has forever lain fallow beneath the surface of your consciousness. Listen to me. The power and the strength that is in you has but to be stirred and it will awaken and flower into such force as belonged to the ancients; a force that has withered through neglect and is dormant on the vine of mortal consciousness.

  "Listen to me. Listen to me. Ye shall follow whither I lead and I shall make you whole. Ye shall follow me; ye shall follow me; ye shall follow me. Ye shall follow, and I will lead you to the Cosmic Truth that is all-present and all-pervading.

  "Listen to me. The mind is all. The mind is all.

  "I will take your hand; I will lead you; I will strike away your fetters. Follow me. Listen to me. Follow me and I will make the Great Mysteries your Truths.

  "I, Narda, say it, and it is therefore so."

  There was more, a lot more, but all of it in the same vein. I jerked my eyes away from Narda and looked around me. On my left an elderly woman stared fixedly up at Narda, her lips parted, breathing deeply as she watched him. The people all around me appeared rapt; they didn't seem to notice my inspection.

  I vaguely heard Narda saying, "As Christ, the Great Healer, the Son of God, gave unto His disciples food and drink, so shall I, Narda, give unto you." He talked on, but then I noticed the two women down front were again carrying their lighted candles, this time on trays burdened with glasses of liquid and what looked like cheese crackers.

  Goody, breakfast. Old Narda was doing this thing up brown.

  The women passed among the seats, giving each person food and drink, as Narda put it. Me, I could have used some prime ribs. The woman who'd led me across the grass extended the tray to me. I took a cracker and a glass and started to raise the glass to my lips. She quickly raised one hand before her face, palm out, fingers curled. This was the second time I'd seen that cute "No!" I'll bet they practiced in front of mirrors.

  Apparently Narda was to give the signal. I looked back up at him and noticed something. No picture. Apparently while he'd talked, the light on the picture behind him had faded slowly till now Narda was alone, suspended, floating over our heads. Then he brought his hands into the light, holding a glass and a wafer. He placed the wafer on his tongue and slowly drank from the glass.

  He didn't have to tell anybody. Of common accord arms raised around me and everyone I could see followed suit. Me too. I still guessed the wafer was a cheese cracker, and the liquid tasted like flat limeade, bitter as hell. Cheapskate. Keep down the overhead.

  On my right, a middle-aged man drank fervently, his eyes closed and his Adam's apple gliding up and down accompanied by horrible noises issuing from inside his throat, glurk, glurk, glurk. Then he lowered his arm and returned his fixed gaze to Narda.

  I liked to bust out laughing. It struck me funny, but I knew if I let out a peep I'd probably land on my behind outside. That made it worse; I came close to strangling. Nobody even looked at me. I wasn't there; I'd missed the cloud.

  The girls collected the glasses quietly while Narda continued his spiel. I wondered how he was going to end this thing.

  He did all right. He spoke for another minute, then stopped and threw back his turbaned head, his arms raised high. In that resonant voice he cried, "I, Narda, say it," and the light on his face winked out. A fiery corona suddenly grew around his head like a halo.

  I blinked and tried to figure it out. Cute. The big picture behind him had blocked out the eastern horizon, toward which we faced. Timed to the split second, Narda had waited till the just rising sun would outline his head and upper body. Then, down with the picture, out with the spot. Miracle. I had to hand it to him.

  The women very neatly herded us out and got the people started on their dazed way. I hung around outside. This was just the beginning for me. I felt a little dazed myself, and I was dying for a smoke.

  I dug in my pocket, found a cigarette, lit it, and dragged deep while I thought about Narda. I took a couple more big drags and damn near threw the cigarette over the fence. Ugh, I stopped myself just in time, lit a match, and looked at the weed. It was the little item I'd picked up in Maggie's office. I pinched it out and stuck it in my inside coat pocket.

  The women were off in the direction of the str
eet, getting the last stragglers on their way. I leaned up against the fence and waited for them to come back. There was a little cold, murky light from the rising sun, so I slipped back inside the enclosure and walked over to the spot from which Narda had made his speech. There was a platform draped in black cloth, steps leading up from behind it. Farther back was the huge picture flat on the ground. Overhead I could barely see a dark blob that was probably a spotlight. I scooted back outside and waited.

  The two women came back chatting together as if they were telling about their operations. I stepped away from the fence and conversation died a miserable death. They stopped still and gawked at me as I walked up to them.

  "You may not remember me," I said. "You showed me the way here."

  The women looked at me as if I had nine heads and they were all bald.

  I added, "For which I shall be eternally grateful."

  I went back to one head.

  "I am Francis Joyne," I went on. "You may have heard of me, of my philanthropies. I feel that," I raised my eyes and lowered my voice, "Narda," I lowered my eyes and raised my voice again, "is leading a great work. I am most interested. I should like to help."

  I think the best word I used was "philanthropies." They looked a little more interested, at least.

  "If I could discuss the movement with you, or with someone else connected with the movement…I do not expect, of course, that Narda himself would…but anyone. I was extremely moved." I didn't tell her where I was moved, but I let myself choke up a little. All I had to do was think about the taste of that damn cigarette.

  "Come," one said, and led the way.