Sleuths (16 page)

"It is said to be worth a minimum of four hundred thousand Straits dollars. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars, American. Tanya Kasten's buyer in Luzon, whoever he is, may even have been willing to pay more. To some men, such a rarity is worth any price."

"I suppose so."

"The money, too, would tempt many men. Particularly one with a past such as yours. Yet you chose to come to the
polis
,
to help us recover the figurine, instead of attempting to keep it for yourself. Why, Mr. Connell?"

"Does it really matter?"

"I would like to know."

"All right, then. The main reason is Larry Falco."

"Your former partner?"

"My
dead
former partner," I said. "A nice guy, with a lot of ideas about making an honest living from an air cargo company, who died because I had other ideas—like transporting a load of contraband silk to a treacherous jungle airstrip at midnight. He tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't listen. I could land a plane anywhere, I told him, under any conditions. Well, I was wrong and it cost him his life instead of mine."

Tiong nodded slowly and said, "I see."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I did not really care one way or the other.

(with Michael Kurland)

T
he three of us–Ardis, Cedric Clute and I–were sitting at a quiet corner table, halfway between the Magic Cellar's bar and stage, when the contingent of uniformed policemen made their entrance. There were about thirty of them, all dressed in neatly pressed uniforms and gleaming accessories, and they came down the near aisle two abreast like a platoon of marching soldiers. Most of the tables that front the stage were already occupied, so the cops took over the stack of carpet–covered trunks which comprise a kind of bleacher section directly behind the tables.

I cocked an eyebrow. "Most saloon owners would object to such an influx of fuzz," I said to Cedric. He owns the Cellar, San Francisco's only nightclub devoted to the sadly vanishing art of magic.

"Policemen have a right to be entertained," he said, smiling.

"Their lot, I understand, is not a happy one."

Ardis said speculatively, "They look very young."

"That's because they're most of the graduation class of the Police Academy," Cedric told her. "Their graduation ceremony was this afternoon, and I invited them down as a group. Actually, it was Captain Dickensheet's idea." He indicated a tall, angular, graying man, also in uniform, who was about to appropriate a table for himself and two other elder officers. "I've known him casually for a couple of years, and he thought his men would enjoy the show."

"With Christopher Steele and The Amazing Boltan on the same bill," Ardis said, "they can't help but enjoy it."

I started to add an agreement to that–and there was Steele himself standing over the table, having appeared with that finely developed knack he has of seeming to come from nowhere.

Christopher Steele is the Cellar's main attraction and one of the greatest of the modern illusionists. I don't say that because I happen to be his manager and publicist. He's also something of a secretive type, given to quirks like an inordinate fascination for puzzles and challenges, the more bizarre the better. Working for and with him the past five years has been anything but dull.

Steele usually dresses in black, both on stage and off, and I think he does it because he knows it gives him, with his thick black hair and dark skin and eyes, a vaguely sinister air. He looked sinister now as he said, "The most amazing thing about Phil Boltan, you know, is that he's still alive. He does a fine job on stage, but he has the personal habits and morals of a Yahoo."

Ardis' eyes shone as they always did when Steele was around; she's his assistant and confidante and lives in a wing of his house across the Bay, although if there is anything of a more intimate nature to their relationship neither of them has ever hinted at it to me. She said, "You sound as though Boltan is not one of your favorite people, Christopher."

"He isn't–not in the least."

Cedric frowned, "If you'd told me you felt that way, I wouldn't have booked you both for the same night."

"It doesn't matter. As I said, he is a fine performer."

"Just what is it that you find so objectionable about Boltan?" I asked as Steele sat down.

"He's a ruthless egomaniac," Steele said. "Those in the psychological professions would call him a sociopath. If you stand in his way, he'll walk over you without hesitation."

"A fairly common trait among performers."

"Not in Boltan's case. Back in the 40s, for example, he worked with a man named Granger–"

"The Four-Men-in-a-Trunk Illusion," Ardis said immediately.

"Right. The Granger Four-Men-in-a-Trunk Illusion premiered at the Palladium before George the Fifth. That was before Boltan's time, of course. At any rate, Granger was getting old, but he had a beautiful young wife named Cecily and an infant son; he also had Phil Boltan as an assistant.

"So one morning Granger awoke to find that Boltan had run off with Cecily and several trunks of his effects. He was left with the infant son and a load of bitterness he wasn't able to handle. As a result, he put his head in a plastic bag one evening and suffocated himself. Tragic,
  
very tragic."

"What happened to the son?" Cedric asked.

"I don't know. Granger had no close relatives, so I imagine the boy went to a foster home"

Ardis asked, "Did Boltan marry Cecily?"

"No Of course not He's never married any of his conquests."

"Nice guy," I said.

Steele nodded and leaned back in his chair. "Enough about Phil Boltan," he said "Matthew, did you have any problem setting up for my show?"

"No," I told him "All your properties are ready in the wings"

"Sound equipment?"

"In place."

"Ultraviolet bulbs?"

"Check," I said. The u.v. bulbs were to illuminate the special paint on the gauze and balloons and other "spook" effects for Steele's midnight séance show. "It's a good thing I did a pre-check; one of the Carter posters fluoresced blue around the border, and I had to take it down. Otherwise it would have been a conspicuous distraction."

Cedric looked at me reproachfully. "I suppose you'd have removed the Iron Maiden if that had fluoresced," he said, meaning the half-ton iron torture box in one corner.

"Sure," I said. "Dedication is dedication."

We made small talk for a time, and then Cedric excused himself to take his usual place behind the bar; it was twenty past ten. I sipped my drink and looked idly around the Cellar. It was stuffed with the paraphernalia and memorabilia of Carter the Great, a world-famous illusionist in the '20s and '30s. His gaudy posters covered the walls.

The stage was rather small, but of professional quality; it even had a trapdoor, which led to a small tunnel, which in turn came up in the coatroom adjacent to the bar. The only other exits from the stage, aside from the proscenium, were curtains on the right and left sides, leading to small dressing rooms. Both rooms had curtained second exits to the house, on the right beyond the Davenport Brothers Spirit Cabinet–a privy-sized cubicle in which a tarot reader now did her thing–and on the left behind a half-moon table used for close-up card tricks.

At 10:30 the voice of Cedric's wife Jan came over the loud-speaker, announcing the beginning of Boltan's act. The lights dimmed, and the conversational roar died to a murmur. Steele swiveled his chair to face the stage, the glass of brandy he had ordered in one hand. He cupped the glass like a fragile relic, staring over its lip at the stage as the curtain went up.

"Oh, for a muse of fire . . ." he said softly, when The Amazing Boltan made his entrance.

"What was that?" I whispered, but Steele merely gave me one of his amused looks and waved me to silence.

The Amazing Boltan was an impressive man. Something over six feet tall and ever so slightly portly, he had the impeccable grooming and manners of what would have been described fifty years ago as a "born gentleman." His tuxedo didn't seem like a stage costume, but like a part of his personality. It went with the gold cuff-links and cigar case, and the carefully tonsured, white-striped black hair. He looked elegant, but to my eyes it was the elegance of a con man or a head waiter.

Boltan's act was showy, designed to impress you with his power and control. He put a rabbit into a box, then waved his hands and collapsed the box, and the rabbit was gone. He took two empty bowls and produced rice from them until it overran the little table he was working on and spilled in heaps onto the stage floor. He did a beautiful version of an effect called the Miser's Dream. Gold coins were plucked out of the air and thrown into a bucket until it rattled with them; then he switched to paper money and filled the rest of the bucket with fives and tens. All the while he kept up a steady flow of patter about "The Gold of Genies" and "The Transmutations of the Ancients of Lhassa."

When he was finished with this effect, Boltan said to the audience, "I shall now require an assistant. A young lady, perhaps. What about you, miss? That's it–don't be afraid. Step right up here on stage with me." He helped a young, winsome-looking blonde across the footlights, and proceeded to amaze her and the rest of the audience by causing sponge balls to multiply in her closed hand and appear and disappear from his.

He excused the girl finally and asked for another volunteer: "A young man, perhaps, this time." I could tell by the pacing of the act that he was headed toward some impressive finale.

A bulky bearded man who had just pushed himself to a table at the front, and was therefore still standing, allowed himself to be talked into climbing onto the stage. He was dressed somewhere between college casual and sloppy: a denim jacket, jeans, and glossy black shoes. He appeared to be in his late twenties, though it wasn't easy to tell through his medium-length facial hair.

"Thank you for coming up to help me," Boltan said in his deep stage voice. "Don't be nervous. Now, if you'll just hold your two hands outstretched in front of you, palms up . . ."

The bearded man, instead of complying with this request, took a sudden step backward and pulled a small automatic from his jacket pocket.

The audience leaned forward expectantly, thinking that this was part of the act; but Steele, who apparently felt that it wasn't, jumped to his feet and started toward the stage. I pushed my own chair back, frowning, and went after him.

Boltan retreated a couple of steps, a look of bewilderment crossing his elegant features. The bearded man leveled the gun at him, and I heard him say distinctly, "I'm going to kill you, Boltan, just as someone should have done years ago."

Steele shouted something, but his words were lost in the deafening explosion of three shots.

Boltan, staggering, put a hand to his chest. Blood welled through his fingers, and he slowly crumpled. A woman screamed. The uniformed police cadets and their officers were on their feet, some of them starting for the stage. Steele had reached the first row of tables, and was trying to push between two chairs to get to the stage. The bearded man dropped his weapon and ran off stage right, disappearing behind the curtain leading to the dressing room on that side.

The entire audience knew now that the shooting wasn't part of the show; another woman screamed, and people began milling about, several of them rushing in panic toward the Cellar's two street exits. Blue uniforms converged on the stage, shoving tables and civilians out of the way, leaping up onto it. Steele had made it up the steps by this time, with me at his heels, but his path to the stage right curtain was hampered by the cadets. Over the bedlam I heard a voice shout authoritatively, "Everyone remain calm and stay where you are! Don't try to leave these premises!"

Another voice, just as authoritative, yelled, "Jordan, Bently, Cullen–cover the exits! Let no one out of here!"

I could see the stage area exit beyond the Spirit Cabinet, the one from the dressing room area stage right to the club floor; in fact, I had kept my eyes on it from the moment the bearded man had run off, because that was the only other way out of that dressing room. But no one appeared there. Steele and the cops pushed their way through the stage right curtain just as several other cadets reached the exit I was watching. Any second now they would drag the bearded man out, I thought, and we could start to make sense out of what had just happened.

Only they didn't emerge, and I heard shouts of surprise and confusion instead.

"He's got to be in here somewhere."

"He's not here, damn it, you can see that."

"Another exit . . ."

"There isn't any other exit," Steele's voice said.

"Well, he's hiding in here somewhere."

"Where? There's no place for a man to hide."

"Those costume trunks–”

"They're too small to hold a man, as you can plainly see."

"Then where the hell is he? He can't have vanished into thin air!"

Subsequently, however, it appeared that the man who had shot The Amazing Boltan in full view of more than thirty cops had done just that.