Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery (3 page)

From the
Blackstone, The Magician Detective
radio show

T
HREE
D
AYS
E
ARLIER

A
LOT OF PEOPLE WERE DYING
on continents two oceans apart with America in the middle. In the Pacific, the battle for control of the Coral Sea was going badly, from the Bonin Islands to the Philippine Sea, for Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, His Imperial Majesty’s Naval Minister, who had taken personal control of the fleet. Thirty Japanese Royal Navy ships had been sunk, fifty-one seriously damaged, seven hundred and fifty-seven aircraft downed and thirteen landing barges on the way to Saipan destroyed in two weeks. Across the other sea, a week after D-Day, the American army had taken Cherbourg. A Japanese radio report explained that “in France, the Allied Armies are retreating haphazardly inland.”

Harry Blackstone, in a dark business suit and blue tie, his hair brushed flat, sat at the round table in the office of Pevsner and Peters on the fourth floor of the Farraday Building.

I sat across from him. The office was large, roomy enough for Phil’s desk and mine and the round table with four chairs. It had been the headquarters for the inventor of the aoelean trafingle, a goofy electronic gizmo that made weird almost musical sounds when you touched it, sounds that reminded me of dying plumbing. The echoes of the damned thing still haunted the place.

It was almost ten in the morning. Phil was about to be walking in any second. He was out running down information about a man whose name Blackstone had given us over the phone.

Blackstone had been touring for the U.S.O. since the beginning of the war, with a show almost every day, sometimes two. He had also been able to tuck in some dates of his own at major theaters. His five days at the Pantages, which would begin that afternoon, was the longest booking he had scheduled for one theater since 1939.

One of the latest amenities of the new P & P agency was a hot plate in the corner and an aluminum pot of warming Maxwell House. Blackstone had a cup in front of him. So did I.

He took a sip, paused and waited while I examined the four-by-four card he had sent by messenger the day before.

        The Los Angeles Friends of Magic invite you to attend a reception and dinner in honor of HARRY BLACKSTONE at the Roosevelt Hotel on Saturday June 28 and 8 p.m. Formal Attire. R.S.V.P.
Marcus Keller

I looked across at the magician who said, “It’s a challenge. Marcus Keller is not someone who would be honoring me. He considers himself a rival, and he has both spoken at meetings and written letters to magic magazines attacking me and my show.”

“Why?”

Blackstone considered, touched his mustache with a slender finger, and said, “He is—and this is charitable—a third-rate parlor magician with a family fortune in furniture manufacturing. His real name is Calvin Ott, the name I gave you yesterday when I called. Ott took his stage name from my mentor, the great Keller, claiming that he had given him the secret to all of his illusions. It was nonsense. I made the mistake of saying so to my friend Dunninger, the mentalist. My remarks were over-heard by some people and …”

“It got back to Keller …”

“Ott,” Blackstone corrected.

“Ott,” I acknowledged.

“That was three years ago,” said Blackstone. “The man is more than a little demented, a prankster who has bought, flattered, and muscled his way into the office of Conjuror of Los Angeles Friends of Magic. With determination, money, and a devious personality, Calvin Ott has succeeded in making more enemies than Tojo.”

“So why is he honoring you?”

Blackstone shrugged and smiled.

“He most certainly isn’t.”

“You’re going?” I asked.

“I’ve already accepted. We have no show Saturday night. Ott knows that. The theater has been booked for a Sinatra concert.”

“And you want us to …?”

“I have a romantic attitude toward challenges,” Blackstone said with a grin. “Normally, I’d just do it and take whatever comes, but the same day I accepted the invitation I received a call at my hotel threatening to sabotage my show if I didn’t reveal to him the secret of my illusions. The hint of personal danger was also very much a part of the conversation.”

He told me then about the call and the man who’d threatened to show up at the theater to embarrass him unless he agreed to reveal all his secrets.

“How were you supposed to give him this information?”

“He said he would have someone at the theater to get it just before the show.”

“You called the police, got to Sergeant Seidman and he suggested that you call us?”

“Correct.”

“You think the invitation and the threat are connected?”

“I believe in coincidence,” said Blackstone, “but I don’t trust in it. No one has ever threatened me before. And Ott’s jealous rivalry is at least a bit mad.”

I pulled a pad of paper and one of the two sharpened pencils I had placed on the table over to me, took a sip of coffee, and got some background information on Blackstone.

Onre Boughton was born September 27, 1885, in Chicago. One of seven brothers, his father was a Civil War veteran who had fought with the Union Army. His mother was a milliner, and his father made men’s hats. Their company, Bouton (the ‘gh’ removed) and Adams was successful and later became the Adams Hat Company.

“Unfortunately,” Blackstone said, “my father could not stand prosperity. He supported the saloons of Chicago’s South Side instead of his family. I went, at the age of seven, to live in the Home for the Friendless. My father died when I was fifteen.”

Blackstone had apprenticed himself to a Halstead Street cabinetmaker. After seeing a performance by the Great Keller, the young Onre Bouton decided to become a magician. When he was 17, he and his younger brother Peter put together a vaudeville act in which Harry did magic tricks and Pete followed with a comic version of the same trick.

In 1910, at the age of 25, Harry, using his skills at slight of hand and cabinetmaking, created his first big illusion show.

“Pete and I put it together with scrap wood, borrowed props, secondhand costumes and a pile of unwanted handbills for a long defunct magic act called Fredrik the Great. I remained Fredrik the Great till World War I, when it no longer was a good idea. And the rest is …”

“… history,” I said looking up.

“Mystery,” he corrected with a smile.

I also learned that Blackstone now made his headquarters, workshop, and home in Colon, Michigan, in St. Joseph County, where he owned 208 acres of woods, fields, and beachfront on Sturgeon Lake. There was more, lots more. I filled four pages before the door opened and Phil stepped in.

I introduced them. My brother shook hands, nodded at the magician, got himself a cup of coffee, and sat at the table.

“Calvin Ott is a nut,” Phil said, sitting back and running his right hand over the gray bristle of his military haircut. “Calls himself Marcus Keller. He’s got a long list of people he doesn’t like. He writes letters, makes speeches, brings lawsuits that go nowhere and spends a lot of his family’s money making life miserable for people who have made the mistake of existing on the same planet with him, including a tailor, a magazine editor, three different actors, a producer, an actress, and …”

“A magician,” Blackstone finished.

“More than one,” Phil said, working on his coffee. “But you in particular.”

I pushed Blackstone’s invitation to the dinner in front of him. Phil had already seen it, but he looked at it again. “I think I should have a talk with Calvin Ott,” he said.

Blackstone didn’t know, but I did, that “a little talk” to Phil was a few questions and then, if he didn’t like the answers, woe to the other guy.

“Why don’t I do that?” I said. “You stay with Mr. Blackstone and….”

There was a knock at the door, and a short, pudgy man with thick glasses, very little hair and a half-smoked cigar stepped in without being invited. Shelly Minck was wearing a once-white short smock with small but distinct splotches of blood in a decorative line across his chest.

Shelly was a dentist. At least he had a dental degree. There were those who called him less respectful things than “dentist.” His technique was clumsy, his office less than clean, his manner insensitive, and his enthusiasm unbridled. Until a month ago, when my brother joined me, I had rented a small cubbyhole inside Shelly’s office down the hall.

Shelly had spent years inventing devices to improve the dental health of the world while, on a personal one-on-one level, he did his best to undermine the mouths of those who mistakenly let themselves be drawn into his chair. One of Shelly’s inventions had actually paid off. He had sold it to a medical products manufacturer in Iowa or Nebraska. He wasn’t quite rich, but he was close to it. I had tried to persuade him to retire and devote himself to inventing. I had failed and, in so doing, doomed who knows how many innocent and guilty mouths.

“I can’t abandon my patients,” he had explained. “They count on me. They trust me. My skills are legendary. You know that, Toby.”

He was right, but the legend was Sleepy Hollow.

“I’m interrupting?” Shelly asked, looking at Blackstone.

“Yes,” said Phil.

“Just take a minute,” Shelly said, moving forward, adjusting his glasses on his nose before they slipped off.

“Shelly,” I tried.

He held up a hand and said, “Grieg.”

“Grieg?” said Phil, turning his body in his chair to look at the dentist.

“Edvard, the composer,” said Shelly.

“You’ve got Grieg in your office?” I asked.

“No, no,” Shelly said, sitting down uninvited and glancing at Blackstone.

It was clear Shelly was trying to place the magician. I prayed to whatever gods might be that recognition didn’t come.

“I think Grieg is dead,” said Shelly. “Good point though. I’ll check. Maybe we can go into partnership. Toby, like all great discoveries, the telephone, penicillin, liverwurst, it came to me by accident. Had the radio on. That guy who plays the piano in the afternoon. Had Mrs. Westermanchen in the chair. She just closed her eyes. Music played.”

“Grieg,” said Blackstone, intrigued by this rotund vision.

“Yep,” said Shelly, pointing at Blackstone. “Worked on her cavity. Molar. Deep. Not a peep. Not a scream.”

Patients, except for the most stoic and those who enjoyed pain, frequently screamed under Shelly’s care.

“Tried it again with three other patients,” he said. “Worked. Grieg knocks them out. There’s a fortune here somewhere and a medical breakthrough and … the possibilities are goddamn staggering and.…”

He stopped suddenly and looked at Blackstone.

“Can I trust this guy?”

“Minck, go away,” said Phil.

Shelly got up.

“I just told the biggest secret of my life to a stranger,” Shelly bleated.

“I’m accustomed to keeping secrets,” Blackstone said, obviously amused.

“I can believe this guy?” Shelly asked, looking at me and readjusting his glasses.

“You can.”

Shelly turned to the magician, looked at him, and suddenly placed him.

“Blackstone,” he said.

Blackstone nodded.

“The magician. Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Maybe we’ve got something here. Fate. Something. You’re here. Fate. I figure out the Grieg stuff. Fate. Juanita says when things like this happen, it means something.”

“Juanita?” questioned Blackstone.

Shelly ignored him and said,

“I’ve got it. Magical dentistry. The Blackstone & Minck secret of painless dentistry.”

“Minck, get the hell out of here,” Phil said, rising from his chair.

Phil’s face was pink. Soon it would turn red. When it did, it would mean disaster for one babbling dentist.

“Go,” I said. “Now, Sheldon.”

“But …”

“Now,” I insisted.

“Fine, fine, fine,” he said, moving to the door. “A revolution in dentistry comes through your portals and you turn it away.”

Phil was standing and facing him now.

“I’m going,” said Shelly, his hand palm out at Phil to hold him back. “Mr. Blackstone, I’m right down the hall. Let’s talk.”

And Shelly was gone.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No,” said Blackstone. “That was the funniest performance I’ve seen since I was on a bill with Raymond Hooey, the comic chiropractor, in Provo, Utah.”

Phil refilled his coffee cup and mine and offered Blackstone some. Blackstone declined, lost in thought.

“A dental illusion,” he said. “A man, no, a woman strapped into a dental chair. A few people from the audience onstage. A dental drill making that familiar drilling sound. It looks as if I’m drilling. They would swear I was drilling or even removing teeth. Yes, I remove the teeth, show them, and put them in a small urn. The patient opens his mouth to a few people from the audience who have come onstage. Front teeth are missing. The patient’s mouth is closed and when it opens, the teeth are all back, no longer in the urn and then the patient.…”

Blackstone stopped, suddenly out of his reverie and said, “That’s a ridiculous idea. That dentist is infectious.”

“He can be,” I said. “I suggest when you leave here you hurry past his door before he convinces you that you need bridgework.”

We fixed a fee, forty dollars a day plus expenses plus a two hundred-dollar retainer, shook hands, and Blackstone and Phil headed for the door. As they were about to leave, I said,

“Sure you don’t want to just call off Ott’s party?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Blackstone said, with more than just a twinkle in his eye.

        
Place a saucer and a drinking glass 1/4 full of water on a table. Drop a coin in the saucer. Pour 1/2-inch of water from the glass into the saucer. Ask a member of your audience to remove the coin with his or her fingers and not get the fingers wet without lifting the saucer. Solution: Take a piece of paper. Hold it over the empty glass. Strike a match. Drop the burning paper in the glass. As soon as the paper is finished burning, place the inverted glass in the saucer over the coin. The glass will suck up the water. The coin will be dry and can be picked up
.