The Eyes of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

serving the dinners. The choice was filet mignon with Bernaise sauce or lobster in butter sauce, because Las Vegas was the one place in the United States where people at least temporarily set aside concerns about cholesterol. In the health-obsessed final decade of the century, eating fatty foods was widely regarded as a far more delicious—and more damning—sin than envy, sloth, thievery, and adultery.
    By seven-thirty the backstage area was bustling. Technicians double-checked the motorized sets, the electrical connections, and the hydraulic pumps that raised and lowered portions of the stage. Stagehands counted and arranged props. Wardrobe women mended tears and sewed up unraveled hems that had been discovered at the last minute. Hairdressers and lighting technicians rushed about on urgent tasks. Male dancers, wearing black tuxedos for the opening number, stood tensely, an eye-pleasing collection of lean, handsome types.
    Dozens of beautiful dancers and showgirls were backstage too. Some wore satin and lace. Others wore velvet and rhinestones—or feathers or sequins or furs, and a few were topless. Many were still in the communal dressing rooms, while other girls, already costumed, waited in the halls or at the edge of the big stage, talking about children and husbands and boyfriends and recipes, as if they were secretaries on a coffee break and not some of the most beautiful women in the world.
    Tina wanted to stay in the wings throughout the performance, but she could do nothing more behind the curtains. Magyck! was now in the hands of the performers and technicians.
    Twenty-five minutes before showtime Tina left the stage and went into the noisy showroom. She headed toward the center booth in the VIP row, where Charles Mainway, general manager and principal stockholder of the Golden Pyramid Hotel, waited for her.
    She stopped first at the booth next to Mainway's. Joel Bandiri was with Eva, his wife of eight years, and two of their friends. Eva was twenty-nine, seventeen years younger than Joel, and at five foot eight, she was also four inches taller than he was. She was an ex-showgirl, blond, willowy, delicately beautiful. She gently squeezed Tina's hand. "Don't worry. You're too good to fail."
    "We got a hit, kid," Joel assured Tina once more.
    In the next semicircular booth, Charles Mainway greeted Tina with a warm smile. Mainway carried and held himself as if he were an aristocrat, and his mane of silver hair and his clear blue eyes contributed to the image he wished to project. However, his features were large, square, and utterly without evidence of patrician blood, and even after the mellowing influences of elocution teachers, his naturally low, gravelly voice belied his origins in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood.
    As Tina slid into the booth beside Mainway, a tuxedoed captain appeared and filled her glass with Dom P é rignon.
    Helen Mainway, Charlie's wife, sat at his left side. Helen was by nature everything that poor Charlie struggled to be: impeccably well-mannered, sophisticated, graceful, at ease and confident in any situation. She was tall, slender, striking, fifty-five years old but able to pass for a well-preserved forty.
    "Tina, my dear, I want you to meet a friend of ours," Helen said, indicating the fourth person in the booth. "This is Elliot Stryker. Elliot, this lovely young lady is Christina Evans, the guiding hand behind Magyck!"
    "One of two guiding hands," Tina said. "Joel Bandiri is more responsible for the show than I am—especially if it's a flop."
    Stryker laughed. "I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Evans."
    "Just plain Tina," she said.
    "And I'm just plain Elliot."
    He was a rugged, good-looking man, neither big nor small, about forty. His dark eyes were deeply set, quick, marked by intelligence and amusement.
    "Elliot's my attorney," Charlie Mainway said.
    "Oh," Tina said, "I thought Harry Simpson—"
    "Harry's a hotel attorney. Elliot handles my private affairs."
    "And handles them very