And again, that strident, unnerving voice from behind her: “Only box I want to get into is yours, baby.”
“Okay. C’mon, now. This is all getting a little crude.”
“The lady is right, Piggy.”
Piggy cackled low and dusty, but kept his mouth shut.
And that was good, because the very sound of his voice was beginning to make Kitty’s flesh crawl in slow waves. Maybe it was her, but the room seemed suddenly too close, too claustrophobic, too something. Like a coffin, narrow and moldering and airless.
“I can’t help thinking I’ve met you before,” Ronny said to her, fixing her with those eyes, that twisted mind behind them that could make dummies move from across the room.
“You’ve probably seen me in the audience,” she said. “I rarely miss a show. Particularly since this assignment began.”
“Yes, that must be it.”
Piggy started laughing. “Oh, I don’t think that’s it at all. She looks like someone, Ronny… haven’t you guessed who?”
Kitty slapped her notebook shut.
She had to get out of there, out of that damn confining room. It was like being trapped in the mind of a lunatic.
“Well, I want to thank you,” she said. “Ha, both of you.”
“Oh, the pleasure’s been ours.”
“It has,” Piggy said. “And don’t look so grim, chippy. You’ll be seeing us again, maybe sooner than you think. Keep your window open, I might come into your bedroom some night. Then I’ll show you some real tricks. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
But Kitty was certain she would not have liked that at all.
There was something positively obscene about that dummy. The idea of it creeping into her room by moonlight was enough to make her teeth chatter.
She let herself out, Ronny staring intently at the floor.
After the door closed, she could hear the dummy laughing in there.
5
It took Kitty some time to come down after that.
Truth be told, she’d always found mannequins, dolls and puppets more than a little unnerving. Ventriloquist dummies topped the list because they talked. Their mouths opened and shut. Their eyes moved. But they were only wood and plastic animated by clever artifice. The real disturbing thing about the dummies were the ventriloquists themselves who created personalities for them, imbuing them with a disturbing sort of half-life. Mostly, she knew, it was harmless. Just because they did this so effectively did not mean they were schizophrenic or suffering from multiple personality disorders. And it was only in the movies that the ventriloquist channeled his evil, subconscious, murderous desires into his dummy. That was comic book stuff.
This is what she kept telling herself.
But being that Gloria had worked with Ronny M. and Piggy just before she disappeared, Kitty didn’t necessarily believe it. There was something strange about this act and something far stranger about a ventriloquist who could make his dummy not only talk from across the room, but move.
There was something here and she planned on finding out what.
6
Charlie Bascomb ran his agency out of a crumbling office building in the Loop. He was on the second floor, sandwiched in-between a cut-rate goldsmith and a sex novelty distributor. It wasn’t a very good neighborhood and Kitty brought along a little .32 automatic in her purse.
You just never knew these days.
There was no one in the outer office at the receptionist’s desk, so Kitty went through a door marked PRIVATE. Right into the lair of Charlie Bascomb, a guy who’d once handled some real talent, but these days was barely making a living keeping the after hours clubs supplied with strippers and low-rent stand-up acts.
He was on the phone when Kitty came in. He waved her into a chair. Charlie Bascomb was small and plump, but cagey-looking, predatorial. He was arguing with someone about a band he was managing, saying that the days of ten percent cuts were history. All the real agencies hacked off twenty before they even looked at a client. A moment or two later, he slammed down the phone. “And what do you want?” he said.
“Your receptionist wasn’t there, so I just walked in,” Kitty told him.
Bascomb laughed. “She’s out to lunch. Hell, even when she’s here, she’s out to lunch.” He sighed, cleared a space on his desk for his hands. He looked Kitty up and down like a dog deciding whether an available bone was worth chewing on. “Well, I’ll tell you, honey. Your tits are too small for a dancer… but you’re pretty, sultry even. You do any singing?”
Kitty laughed now herself. “I’m not here for representation, Mr. Bascomb. I have no talent, trust me.”
“Neither do my clients,” he admitted. “Okay, what do you want?”
Kitty sat there a moment, wondering that very question herself. “I understand you used to handle ventriloquists.”
Bascomb stared at her long and hard. “I did, but I don’t anymore.” He lit a cigarette, fanned the smoke away with his hand. “I’m not sure what your interest is in this, Miss—”
“Seevers, Kitty Seevers.”
“—Seevers, but I don’t mind saying between you and me and the clock on the wall, that those ventriloquists are a strange bunch. Temperamental is a word for them and so is crazy.”
Kitty nodded. “I’m actually interested in one act in particular.”
“Oh? And which one is that?”
“Ronny M. and Piggy.”
Bascomb just sat there looking at her. Looking at her and through her like he could see the doorway beyond right through her head. He was ruddy-faced, pink-cheeked… but the mention of those names drained all the color from him. He leaned back in his chair, that crooked smile locked on his lips. You would have needed a chisel to get it off. He brought his cigarette to his lips and his hand was shaking.
“Mr. Bascomb?”
He swallowed, kept swallowing. He looked like he’d just been told there was a tumor eating away his guts. “Who,” he began, trying to regulate his breathing, “who sent you here? Tell me who it was.”
Kitty held up her hands. “No one. I just came because—”
“Because why?” The fear or shock was gone now, what was left behind was something like anger, like hatred. “You tell me who the fuck sent you!”
Kitty thought he was going to come right over the desk at her. “Listen, Mr. Bascomb… nobody sent me. I don’t know what you’re getting so riled about… I just came to ask a few questions about an act.”
That seemed to soothe him. He pulled off his cigarette, breathing hard. “Yeah, I used to handle McBane and I don’t anymore. And that’s all I got to say on the matter.”
But Kitty hadn’t come this far to back away now.
What she needed here was bait.
So she laid it out for him, knowing she’d have to put her cards on the table, confess before she’d get a confession. “I’m looking for my sister, Mr. Bascomb. She was Ronny McBane’s assistant. That’s all I know. She disappeared five months ago and I’d like to know why.”
Bascomb softened. “Did you go to the police?”
“Oh yes, several times. But there’s nothing there. It’s not like they found her body or anything. She just disappeared, cleaned out her things at the room she was staying in and became a statistic.”
“And you think McBane has something to do with it?”
“Yes,” Kitty said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but something tells me I’m not.”
Bascomb stared off into space. “Well, I’m sorry for your sister. I really am. But what do you want from me? I haven’t handled McBane in three years, closer to four.”