Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery Page 3

  CALVIN OTT LIVED IN SHERMAN OAKS. I had called him and said I was on Blackstone’s staff and wanted to make arrangements for the reception.

  He readily agreed to see me and said to come right over. He sounded happy to hear from me.

  My cramped Crosley made its constipated and reluctant way up the winding roads, threatening to slip backward into the hillside oblivion when the road was too steep for its refrigerator engine.

  I listened to the radio and drove through modern Los Angeles, a mess of architectural styles and convulsive growth. There were survivors of the post-Civil War era with their cupolas and curlicues, brownstones from the 1880s with elaborate ornaments and great bay windows with colored glass, and a never-ending number of frame bungalows and boxlike office buildings from the first two decades of the twentieth century. Not to mention the pseudo-Spanish homes and apartment buildings from the boom back in the ’20s that also brought skyscrapers, movie palaces, and bizarre restaurant designs. There was a restaurant shaped like a derby hat, another one shaped like a rabbit, a third like an old shoe, another like a fish and one like a hot dog sandwich. There were also modern houses and steel, concrete and glass buildings. The landscape was also dotted in much of the County of Los Angeles by huge gas tanks, gaunt and grimy oil derricks, and silver power lines.

  KMTR radio news told me the Chinese had stormed the Japanese North Burma base of Mogaung. The Soviets were closing in on Minsk. French patriots had killed the Vichy Minister of Information and Propaganda, Phillipe Henriot, in his bed in Paris, and the Chicago Cubs were at the bottom of the National League standings with an 18-34 record.

  I passed houses with wrapped bundles of scrap paper pilled on the narrow sidewalks for pickup. The day was clear. Wet paper wasn’t accepted. I didn’t know why.

  Near the top of the hillside, the baritone voice on the radio told me that a Mrs. Elizabeth Koby of Whiting, Indiana, a $24-a-week Standard Oil employee, had received her two-week check. It was for $99,999.52. She returned it.

  In Augusta, Maine, Ralph E. Mosher, who’d won the nomination for state senator on both party tickets, reported his total campaign expenses as eighteen cents including ten cents for a beer to “relax tension.”

  In Los Angeles, a few miles down from where I was driving to the domicile of Calvin Ott, the police were investigating the robbery of $251 from Jim Dandy’s Market. The robber left one clue, his heel prints.

  Now well informed, I pulled onto the cobblestone driveway I was looking for and parked alongside a heavy blue four-door Pontiac.

  The house wasn’t big, not for this neighborhood, but I didn’t think there were many to match it in the neighborhood. Stone gargoyles stood on either side of the entrance. Their heads were turned so their blank eyes would meet approaching guests. The high doorway itself was made of dark wood. Cut deeply into the wood was the figure of another gargoyle. There was no handle that I could see. No knocker and no bell.

  I raised my hand to knock, but before I could, a deep voice from above the door said,

  “Your name?”

  “Toby Peters.”

  “Say the magic words that opens the door of the cave.”

  “Open sesame,” I tried.

  “No,” came the voice.

  “Give me a hint.”

  “It’s ‘abracadabra,’” came the voice.

  “Abracadabra,” I said.

  The door opened. A thin man in a white suit, white shirt, white shoes, and black tie stood in front of me. He had a glass of clear liquid in his left hand. His face was smooth and pink, his hair receding. He was about forty.

  “Calvin Ott?” I asked.

  “Maurice Keller,” he said, with a shake of his finger to suggest that I was being intentionally naughty. “Come in.”

  The brightly lit wood paneled hallway was covered with large, colorful eye-level posters, evenly spaced.

  “That one,” Ott said beaming as he closed the door behind me, “is my favorite.”

  The poster showed a nearly bald man sitting in a wooden chair. The man’s head was floating away from him. The words on the poster read: Keller In His Latest Mystery. Self-Decapitation.

  “A favorite,” Ott said, pointing to the poster. “The master. A brilliant illusion.”

  “Impressive,” I said as he led me down the hallway past more posters.

  On my left was the wide-eyed face of a man wearing a large turban with a bright emerald green stone in the middle of it. The words on the sign read: Alexander. The Man Who Knows.

  On the right was a poster of a smiling man with cartoonlike ghosts floating around him: Do Spirits Return? Houdini Says No And Proves It.

  We moved past colorful posters of Brush the Mystic and His Hindu Box; Carter The Great Beats The Devil; Floyd, King of Magic; Dante; Levante, Long Tak Sam.

  Ott stopped and faced the last one on the left at the end of the hallway.

  “Probably my favorite of all.”

  It was a color illustration, depicting a clean-shaven smiling man in a tux with a white flower in his buttonhole walking next to a white shrouded skeleton looking at him. A pot of fire sat next to them with little drawings of someone in an electric chair, a guillotine, and a man about to be lowered into a glass vat of water. The name Steen ran across the top of the poster, and there a phrase in French on the bottom.

  “The man who is amused by death,” Ott translated, stepping into a large white-carpeted living room with ceiling-to-floor windows at the end.

  The matching plush furniture included two armchairs and a sofa, with a large low round table between them. On the table was a skull nestled on a well-polished dark wooden base. The room was lined with shelves filled with gadgets.

  Ott pointed to one of the chairs. I sat. It was comfortable. He clapped his hands and the chair began to shake. I held onto the arms to keep from falling.

  “Spirits?” he asked, eyes widening.

  He clapped again and the shaking stopped.

  “Spirits?” he repeated. “Sherry? Something stronger? A beer?”

  “Pepsi,” I said. “If you have it.”

  The skull had turned slightly and was looking at me.

  “That’s the skull of Bombay The Great,” Ott said, a small smile on his face. “Bombay perfected the flying carpet illusion. He lost his head in a train wreck outside of Turin in 1883. I gained his head forty years later. Pepsi?”

  “Yeah,” I said, meeting Bombay the Great’s hollow gaze.

  “Be right back,” Ott said, his grin growing, his eyebrows raised. “Amuse yourself, but don’t touch.”

  When he left I got up and looked at the gizmos on shelves. There were glasses—both the kind you drink from and the kind you wear—books, lamps, an open straight razor, a package of gum, a long knife with a fancy ivory handle and a curved blade, matchboxes, a typewriter, cigar boxes, small statues of African figures and Greek warriors. A glassed-in cabinet held neatly arranged pistols and knives.

  I was looking at a compact wooden radio when Ott returned with my Pepsi glass and a glass of something amber for himself.

  “That’s the Anderson Surprise Radio,” he said, sitting and crossing his legs. “You turn it on and it works. You turn the dial and the top pops open with a loud electrical sizzle and a shower of spring-activated colorful balls. The company went out of business two years ago. An old man tried to get H.V. Kaltenborn on that radio, had a heart attack instead of the news.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, raising my glass.

  “Isn’t it?” he said, raising his.

  “And the guns?”

  “Cigarette lighters, flares, guns for making loud noise and lots of smoke. That’s what audiences like. The smell of smoke. The noise. The danger they know isn’t really danger and yet can think, ‘What if something goes wrong?’ Something could always go wrong. And sometimes it actually does.”

  I drank and felt something on my chin. The glass was leaking. Ott beamed and grinned. I put the glass down in front of Bombay the Great.
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  “Dribble glass,” Ott said. “Can’t resist it. Sorry.”

  He didn’t look sorry. I wiped my chin and neck with my sleeve, trying to show nothing.

  “Get you another one?” he asked, starting to rise.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  He looked around the room with satisfaction.

  “World’s largest collection of practical jokes,” he said with a sweep of his hand.

  “Practical?”

  “Yes, I’ve always wondered why they were called practical jokes too,” he said. “But I’ve learned to accept life’s small mysteries. You?”

  “I try to solve them,” I said. “Unanswered questions give me stomach cramps. Why are you hosting a dinner in honor of Harry Blackstone?”

  He nodded, reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case and a small matching lighter. He took a cigarette from the case, put it in his mouth, and flicked on the lighter. A tiny pink umbrella popped up from the lighter.

  “Funny?” he said with a grin.

  “Hilarious,” I said.

  He put the lighter and case back in his pocket, played with the cigarette for a second and offered it to me.

  “Don’t smoke,” I said.

  “Just as well,” said Ott with a wide toothy grin. “It would have exploded.”

  “Blackstone,” I reminded him.

  “Bygones are bygones,” he said, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “He insulted me. I’ve learned to accept insults. Grudges are useless. Blackstone is a fine magician.”

  “I didn’t see any Blackstone posters in the hall.”

  “I respect him. I don’t admire him. My moods, my opinions change constantly. I can be laughing one minute, crying the next. Would you like some peanuts?”

  “No. I’d like some answers.”

  He let out an enormous sigh and stood up, taking a long drink from his glass and then placing the glass on the table.

  “What do you see before you?” he asked.

  I saw a slightly looney man with a lot of money and time.

  “Calvin Ott,” I said.

  “No,” he shouted, his face turning red. I think I jumped in my seat. “No,” he repeated calmly. “You see Maurice Keller, Illusionist Extraordinaire.”

  “When’s the next show?” I said, forcing myself to grin and sit back.

  “I don’t perform in public,” he said. “I may have something special in honor of Blackstone, however.”

  “Mind if my brother and I show up?”

  “No,” he said, happy again. “You’ll be welcome. In fact, I insist.”

  I got up, looked at Bombay the Skull, who turned away from me. Ott was grinning.

  “Would you like to see the rest of the house?”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Your loss,” he said as I turned toward the hallway. “You can show yourself out?”

  “I can.”

  “There’s no door handle,” he called as I walked down the hallway of posters. “Just say the magic words.”

  “Abracadabra,” I said standing in front of the door.

  “No,” called Ott. “That’s for getting in. The other words.”

  “Open Sesame,” I said.

  The door swung open suddenly, missing me by a few inches.

  Behind me Ott said, “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed before someone got hurt.”

  I went outside. The door closed. The stone gargoyles watched me leave.

  I drove home, Mrs. Irene Plaut’s boarding house on Heliotrope in Hollywood. I hadn’t let onto Ott, but the dribble glass had done more damage than I let show. My shirt was soaked with sticky Pepsi. I had to change.

  I found a Bill Stern sports report on the radio. Bucky Walters of the Reds was on his way to winning 30 games. A bunch of pitchers looked like they were going to win 20 including George Munger of the Cards, Bill Voiselle of the Giants, Rip Sewell of the Pirates, Ted Hughson of the Red Sox, Hank Borowy of the Yankees, Hal Newhouser of the Tigers, and Bill Detrich of the White Sox. It was a pitcher’s season.

  There was a parking space right in front of Mrs. Plaut’s. It was small, but so was the Crosley. I hadn’t picked up a parking ticket in almost two years, which is quite an accomplishment given the Los Angeles traffic regulations that seemed to be designed to guarantee an unlimited source of revenue from drivers who couldn’t keep it all straight.

  The Los Angeles speed limit was twenty miles an hour in business districts, twenty-five miles an hour in residential districts. Right turns were permitted against the red from the right-hand lane after a full stop, but pedestrians and vehicles proceeding with a signal had the right of way. There was no parking along red or yellow curbs, three-minute parking along white curbs, fifteen-minute parking at green curbs. Along unmarked curbs, you could park for forty-five minutes in the Central Traffic District from seven in the morning till four-thirty in the afternoon, but there was no parking in the district from four-thirty to six p.m. Parking was unlimited from six p.m. till two a.m. From two to four a.m. there was a thirty-minute parking limit, but parking was unlimited from four till seven a.m.

  Having parked legally, I plucked at my moist shirt as I walked up the sidewalk to the porch where Mrs. Plaut, tiny, thin, ancient and determined, sat on the porch swing, a pencil in one hand, and a pad of lined paper in the other. That meant one of two things, neither of which boded well for me. She was either working on her family history, which was now several thousand pages long or she was doing a grocery list.

  If it were the history, I would soon be getting a pile of neatly written pages to read and approve. Mrs. Plaut, more than a little hard of hearing and often in audio contact with a world the rest of us couldn’t hear, believed that I was two things, a book editor and an exterminator. She did not think the combination odd and had once told me that the long-gone Mr. Plaut had once been a prospector, stagecoach driver, and tree surgeon at the same time.

  If she were working on her grocery list, it would mean a trip to the nearest Ralph’s, which I didn’t mind. What I minded was the mind-numbing explanation of the rationing system, which Mrs. Plaut had mastered and I was expected to remember.

  “Mr. Peelers,” she said, looking up at me.

  I had long ago decided not to correct her.

  “It is I,” I said.

  “I was going to give you this list this evening, but as luck would have it, here you are.”

  “Here I am, as luck would have it,” I said. “I need a shower and a change of clothes.”

  She looked at me and said,

  “You need a shower and a change of clothes.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Shopping list,” she said, handing me the sheet she had been working on. I didn’t look at it.

  “We’re having beef heart stew tonight, if you can do the shopping this afternoon.”

  “I’ll do the shopping this afternoon,” I said.

  She reached into the crocheted purse next to the wooden chair and came up with three one-dollar bills, which she handed to me along with the dreaded ration coupon book.

  I looked at the list:

  Beef hearts, two lbs.

  40 cents

  20 oz. loaf, bread

  10 cents

  Hot dogs, one lb.

  19 cents

  Ritz crackers, one lb.

  19 cents

  Armour’s Treet, 12-oz. can

  27 cents

  Super Suds, large

  23 cents

  Cuticura skin ointment

  37 cents

  Squibb Aspirin (200)

  69 cents

  Miracle Whip 16 oz.

  19 cents

  “The Cuticura is a necessity,” she said. “My hands.”

  “I’m sure,” I agreed.

  In truth, Mrs. Plaut did have delicate hands and long fingers.

  “The ration calendar,” she said.

  The dreaded ration calendar. There was no escape so I simply listened, min
d growing numb.

  “Processed food,” she said, without reference to notes. “Blue A8 through V8, book 4, is now valid at 10 points each for use with tokens. You understand?”

  “Perfectly,” I said.

  “W8, X8, Y8, Z8, and A5 became good July 2.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Meats and fats,” she said. “Red A8 through W8, book 4, are now valid at 10 points each for use with tokens, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agreed.

  “And you should know, Mr. Peelers, that A-10 coupons are now valid for gasoline. Rationing rules now require every car owner to write his license number and state on all gas coupons in his possession as soon as they are issued to him. And here.”

  She handed me about thirty additional sheets of lined paper.

  “A chapter about Wooley in England,” she said.

  “Wooley?”

  “My second eldest brother, now deceased,” she said, with a shake of her head to indicate that this was information I should have possessed. “I would appreciate your reading it this night.”

  “May I take a shower and change now?” I asked.

  “You won’t need any change,” she said. “The three dollars will be quite enough.”

  I didn’t answer. I went inside and headed for the steps. On my left were Mrs. Plaut’s rooms. Inside, her caged bird was screeching. She changed the name of the bird with cycles of the planets, the changing of the tides, the fortunes of war, the sudden emergence of long-forgotten friends. The current name of the bird, she had informed us at dinner the night before, was Admiral Nelson. It was as certain to change by breakfast tomorrow, as it was that Dewey would get the Republican nomination for president.

  On my left was the parlor, decorated in the latest furniture and fashion of the year right after the Civil War.

  I went up the steps and to my room where I put Mrs. Plaut’s grocery list, coupons, and the chapter of her book on the small table near the window. Then I took off my shirt, selected another one that seemed to have no missing buttons and was reasonably clean, and headed for the bathroom down the hall. Stripped, door secured by the flimsy hook and little eye, I showered and sang A Little On The Lonely Side, at least the words I could remember.