Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery (15 page)

“First time,” I said, looking at myself.

“Not bad,” said Anita, moving to her couch and reaching for the glass of iced tea she had left on the nearby table.

“Hard to breathe,” I said.

“It’s supposed to be tight,” she said. “Sleek lines. Elegant. You planning to find a place for a gun under that jacket? It would show.”

“No gun,” I said.

Phil would have a gun. Phil could shoot. I owned a gun, a .38. I kept it in the glove compartment of the Crosley. I seldom carried it. The people I might try to protect were in as much danger from me as from some bad guy with a grudge.

“You’re a scrapper, not a shooter,” Shelly had once consoled me when I had been shot by my own gun. “Some of us are born with the knack,” Shelly had said.

That was before Shelly had shot and killed his wife with a crossbow in a public park.

“You want to throw something on fast,” I said, turning to her.

Anita sipped some iced tea and shook her head.

“I’m tired. I can’t throw something on fast, and it’s a little late to ask me,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“And I thought you said it was for men only?”

“It is,” I said, “but I have clout with all the wrong people.”

“I pass,” she said.

Anita was wearing a robe, green, maybe silk. I think it had belonged to her former husband. It was too big on her. I didn’t ask.

“I’m going to listen to Baby Snooks and
The Aldrich Family
and get to bed early,” she said. “Do me a favor Toby.’”

“What is it?”

She got up, walked over to me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. When we finished the kiss, she said, “Survive.”

“That’s my plan,” I said.

I got to the Roosevelt just before six-thirty and parked half a block away on the street. Not much of a space, but enough for the Crosley, which is a little bit longer than a refrigerator lying on its side.

The lobby was bustling with men in tuxedoes, men and women in military uniforms, a few elegant young women with elegant older gentlemen of a comfortable ilk. My tux-clad group was in a corner behind a wall of low potted palms. The wall didn’t protect us from glances and a few stares.

Phil looked uncomfortable, his thumb wrestling with his collar, his face pink and turning red. Shelly somehow managed to look rumpled, probably because his tux was a size or two too large. Pancho Vanderhoff, looking reasonably dapper, gave me a pleading look. Jeremy’s tux made him look even larger than he was, but he seemed reasonably comfortable, as did Gunther. We had all, except for Gunther who owned his own, borrowed our tuxedoes from Hy’s For Him. I had spent occasional nights alone in the dark aisles of Hy’s lying in wait to catch occasional employees who snuck back in after hours to cart off merchandise. This entitled me to a discount and the loan of a suit from time to time, on the condition that I returned it without a spot so Hy could clean, press it, and sell it for new.

Jeremy and Gunther were sitting. The rest were standing.

“You’re late,” Phil said.

“I’m on time,” I said.

“Let’s go over it one more time,” Phil said, tugging his collar.

We went through the plan, each of us saying where we’d be sitting and what was expected of us.

“Okay,” said Phil. “Let’s go in.”

Phil had arranged for the door to the small ballroom to be locked. We walked down a corridor, made a right turn, moved down the hall and turned right into the kitchen. The temperature went up about twenty degrees. Cooks were cooking. Waiters were waiting. They paused to look at us as we marched single file past ovens and steel-topped tables with Phil in the lead.

The ballroom was empty. Phil checked to be sure the tables were where they were supposed to be. When he was satisfied, he turned his collar and moved to the small platform against the wall. There was a table with a set-up for two on top of a white tablecloth that hung to the floor. A wide solid dark wooden podium stood to the right of the table on the platform set back almost to the wall. There was a rectangle of blue cloth pinned to the front of the podium; it had gold trim and the words “Greater Los Angeles Association of Magicians” stitched onto it in matching gold. Phil checked the podium, checked under the tablecloth.

“Jeremy, no one comes through the kitchen but waiters,” he said. “Understood?”

“Perfectly,” Jeremy said.

“Look for bulges,” Phil said. “Weapons.”

Jeremy nodded.

“Everybody sit down,” he said.

They went to their assigned seats. Phil and I went to the ballroom door. Phil checked his watch. We could hear voices on the other side of the door. A few people tried the handle.

“You’d think you’d find one magician out of the sixty out there who could open a locked door,” I said.

Phil tugged his collar angrily, grunted, and opened the door. I stood on one side. He stood on the other. They came in one at a time, handing us their invitations. Phil and I checked for weapons. The magicians were of all ages, but mostly over fifty, and wore their tuxedoes as if they put one on every night, which some of them probably did. They were fat, thin, bushy-haired and bald. They had beards, mustaches, or were clean shaven. They chatted their way in, smiled as if they had a secret, and made their way to their tables. A few table-hopped. Some nodded across the room or held up a hand.

Ott, in a white tuxedo, didn’t come in till everyone was seated. In his hand was the black satchel he had shown to me and Phil, the one containing ten thousand dollars. He was accompanied by his assistant, the little guy named Leo, who took Ott’s black cape when Ott was sure that all eyes were on him. The cape came off with a swirl. There was a beat of silence as the assistant took a seat near the door and Ott marched to the platform without looking at any of his fellow magicians. He sat in one of the two chairs, placed the satchel on the floor next to his chair, and looked at the empty seat next to him, Blackstone’s seat. Then Ott looked at the door.

Harry Blackstone’s entrance was far less flamboyant than Ott’s. He wore a black tux with a white tie and a white handkerchief in his pocket. He looked exactly the way he looked for every performance of his that I had seen. He walked, not marched, past tables, exchanging a word or two at each table, nodding at Phil, smiling at me. When he did get on the platform and sit, Ott turned to him and smiled, as false a smile as was inhumanly possible and passable.

When it was clear that no one else was coming, Ott rose as waiters moved from table to table with bowls of biscuits.

“Fellow prestidigitators,” he said. “We are here to honor a man who truly needs no introduction.”

Polite applause.

“Harry Blackstone is a legend,” Ott said. “There are few true legends in our profession. And most of them fade into a mysterious cabinet called Time and are heard of no more. Many of them fall before their time because someone of imagination tests them, humbles them. None have yet been able to do that to the man we honor today. But, to make the evening one to remember, I have issued a friendly challenge to this man we so admire. There will be a surprise. But first, a few of our members have agreed to perform new feats of magical legerdemain. Wayne Dutton.”

Polite applause.

A roly-poly man with a bushy head of hair and mustache rose from a table near the podium. He moved to the open space in front of Blackstone and Ott, turned to the roomful of magicians and pulled out a red ball tied to a piece of string about two feet long.

Someone groaned and whispered, “Not the dancing ball.”

“The dancing ball,” said Wayne Dutton in a very high voice that guaranteed he would never have a career in show business, at least not as a magician.

He held up his hands. His shirtsleeves were too long. He held the string and let the ball down in front of him. The ball quivered a little. Then it began to move from side-to-side and then suddenly the ball went straight up in the air and the string stiffened. The ball was balanced at the top of the string. Wayne Dutton smiled beneath his bushy mustache.

Polite applause again. One of the magicians at our table leaned over to me and said, “There’s not a man in this room who couldn’t do that when he was twelve, with the exception of old Wayne.”

“How?” I asked.

“At least four different ways,” the man said, continuing to applaud as the ball suddenly dropped and the string became a string again. “Wayne is Ott’s number two sycophant, next to Leo.”

Two other magicians presented tricks, one who kept plucking playing cards out of the air and another who made lighted cigarettes suddenly appear and disappear.

Ott stood when the applause stopped and said, “We’ll have our dinner now, unless our honored guest wishes to entertain us with a feat of magic to start the evening, though it is obviously doubtful that he could top the marvel just performed by Wayne Dutton.”

Blackstone shrugged, stood up, raised a hand and as he flicked his wrist, the lights went out. I started to get up, but the lights came back on almost instantly.

Blackstone was gone.

There was a snap of fingers at the ballroom door and there stood Blackstone, thirty feet from where he had been only a second earlier. All eyes were on him as he grinned and the lights went out again. Again it was an instant before the lights were back on again. Blackstone was no longer at the door. He was back on the platform standing behind the podium.

The applause was more than polite. A few people rose. Blackstone swept back his tuxedo tails and took his seat next to Ott, who forced himself to smile. He whispered something to Blackstone, but I was too far away to hear what it was.

Salad came and went. Tomato soup came and went. I kept my eyes on Ott who smiled, eyes darting around, looking very satisfied. The main course was served.

I was spearing a potato, my eyes on Ott who was leaning forward slightly, when the lights went out again. Again they came back almost instantly. We all looked for Blackstone on the platform, expecting a repeat of the trick he’d already done, or some variation on it. But there Blackstone sat exactly where he had been. Next to him Calvin Ott was slumped forward, his face pressed against his plate, eyes closed, a knife buried deeply in his neck.

“There!” someone shouted.

The ballroom door was open. Someone in a brown jacket stood in the doorway for a beat, turned and ran.

“Don’t let him get away!” Sixty magicians, a dentist, a landlord, a tiny translator, a phony screenwriter, and two private detectives ran for the open door. I glanced back. The satchel was still next to the dead Ott’s chair. Blackstone was hurrying toward us.

I pushed past four or five people and went through the door. I could see a man in a brown jacket running across the lobby. I ran ahead of the crowd and through the door to the street. The runner was going down the sidewalk, pushing people out of the way. I closed the distance between us, but he was younger than me and in better shape. A blur of black and white passed me, caught up with the runner, and jumped on his back.

I was panting when I caught up. Passersby stopped to watch. Magicians caught up with us. The young magician who had caught the man stood up. He had a thin mustache and wasn’t breathing hard.

Phil caught up just as I was kneeling to double check the man in the brown jacket, who was lying on his back.

“Who the hell are you?” Phil asked, grabbing his neck.

The man wasn’t even a man. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and he was frightened.

“Nordman, Michael Nordman,” he said. “It was a joke. My head hurts.”

“A joke?” I asked.

“Or something. I don’t know. A guy gave me fifteen dollars and told me to stand outside the door. I was supposed to watch under it, and, when the lights went out, open the door, stand there for a second or two, then run away as fast as I could.”

“What guy?” asked Phil.

“I don’t know his name,” the kid said. “My head hurts. I was working down the street at Hudson’s Restaurant yesterday. He came over to me and told me what he wanted. There was going to be an envelope with fifteen dollars for me at the hotel desk. It was there, so I did it.”

Around us, magicians were shoving, talking, shouting. Phil pulled the kid up by the arm, ripped his own collar off his neck, and started dragging Nordman back to the hotel.

Cars slowed down to watch us parade back through the lobby and into the ballroom. It was empty, except for Ott at the table facedown with a knife in his neck.

“That’s him,” said Nordman, pointing at Ott.

“The one who paid you to run away?” I asked.

“That’s him. What happened to him?”

No one answered.

“Get them out of here,” Phil said to Jeremy, nodding at the magicians. “Put them somewhere, but don’t let any of them go.”

Jeremy was next to me now. He heard what Phil had said and turned to wrestle the magicians back into the lobby.

“Can you handle it?” I asked.

Jeremy nodded calmly and began to herd the crowd away from the door. Phil moved quickly past the tables and stepped up on the platform.

The knife was deep in Ott’s neck, with blood—a lot of it—seeping from the wound. We didn’t have to check, but we did. No pulse. I wanted to lift Ott’s face out of the plate, but I knew better.

We looked at each other thinking the same thing. One of us had to say it.

“Lights were out no more than a second.”

“Only one person was close enough to do this,” said Phil, looking at the dead magician.

“Unless he was a contortionist and killed himself,” I said.

“Knife is straight down and deep,” said Phil.

“Blackstone,” I said.

“Blackstone,” Phil agreed.

“Phil,” I said. “The satchel’s gone.”

        
Ask for a coin. In your hand is a handkerchief spread over the fingers of one hand. Ask someone to place the coin in the center of the handkerchief. Poke it down showing that the coin is still there. Reach over with the other hand, snap the handkerchief. The coin is gone. Show that both your hands are empty, wipe your brow with the handkerchief and put it in your pocket. Solution: Before you place the handkerchief over your fingers, put a rubber band around your thumb and first two fingers of the hand, which will hold the handkerchief. As you touch the end of the handkerchief, let the rubber band slip over the coin. Snap the handkerchief. Show your hands are empty
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