hurried across the barker’s platform, beneath a banner that proclaimed
THE BIGGEST FUNHOUSE IN THE WORLD! He descended the wooden steps, went
past the red-and-black ticket booth, and paused for a moment near the
boarding gate where sever al ticket holders were stepping down into the
brightly painted gondolas that would carry them through the funhouse.
Conrad looked up at Gunther, who was standing on a six-foot-square
platform to the left of the boarding gate and four feet above it.
Gunther was waving his long arms and growling at the marks below him,
pretending to threaten them. He was an impressive figure, better than
six and a half feet tall, more than two hundred and fifty pounds of
bone and muscle. His shoulders were enormous. He was dressed all in
black, and his entire head was covered by a Hollywood-quality,
Frankenstein monster mask that disappeared under his collar. He was
also wearing monster gloves–big, green rubber hands streaked with fake
blood–that extended beneath the cuffs of his jacket.
Suddenly Gunther noticed Conrad looking up at him, and he turned,
favoring him with an especially fierce growl.
Straker grinned. He made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his
right hand, giving Gunther a sign of approval.
Gunther capered around the platform in a clumsy monster dance of
delight.
The people waiting to board the gondolas laughed and applauded the
monster’s performance.
With a fine sense of theater, Gunther abruptly turned vicious once more
and roared at his audience. A couple of girls screamed.
Gunther bellowed and shook his head and snarled and stamped his foot
and hissed and waved his arms. He enjoyed his work.
Smiling, Straker turned away from the funhouse and walked into the
river of people that flowed along the midway. But as he drew nearer to
Zena’s tent, his smile faded. He thought of the dark-haired, dark-eyed
girl he’d seen from the barker’s platform a short while ago. Maybe
this was the one.
Maybe this was Ellen’s child. After all these years, the thought of
what she’d done to his little boy still filled him with a fiery rage,
and the possibility of revenge still made his heart beat faster, still
caused his blood to race with excitement. Long before he reached
Zena’s tent, his smile had metamorphosed into a scowl.
Dressed in red and black and gold, wearing a spangled scarf and a lot
of rings and too much mascara, Zena sat alone in the dimly lighted
tent, waiting for Conrad. Four candles burned steadily inside four
separate glass chimneys, casting an orange glow that did not reach into
the corners. The only other light was from the illuminated crystal
ball that stood in the center of the table.
Music, excited voices, the spiels of pitchmen, and the clatter of the
thrill rides filtered through the canvas walls from the midway.
To the left of the table, a raven stood in a large cage, head cocked,
one shiny black eye focused on the crystal ball.
Zena, who called herself Madame Zena and pretended to be a Gypsy with
psychic powers, had not a drop of Romany blood in her and actually
couldn’t see anything in the future other than the fact that tomorrow
the sun would rise and subsequently set. She was of Polish
extraction.
Her full name was Zena Anna Penetsky.
She had been a carny for twenty-eight years, since she was just
fifteen, and she had never longed for another life. She liked the
travel, the freedom, and the carnival people.
Once in a while, however, she grew weary of telling fortunes, and she
was disturbed by the endless gullibility of the marks. She knew a
thousand ways to con a mark, a thousand ways to convince him (after he
had already paid for a palm reading) to shell out a few more dollars
for a purportedly more complete look into his future. The ease with
which she manipulated people embarrassed her. She told herself that
what she did was all right because they were only marks, not carnies,
and therefore not real people. That was the traditional carny
attitude, but Zena could not be that hard all the time. Now and then