Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery Page 8

  We all looked at Mrs. Plaut, who adjusted her glasses and continued to eat with a fury that made it clear she had a sudden attack of starvation, or else she was doing her best to hide behind the blend of carrots, Treet, and eggs.

  Blackstone shook his head and smiled before looking at me.

  “Simon Adaire was an amazing magician,” he said. “I saw him in Chicago when I was about twelve years old. He performed an illusion, a brilliant trick, which no one has to this day been able to duplicate.”

  Mrs. Plaut was now gulping tepid coffee.

  “He placed his wife,” said Blackstone looking at Mrs. Plaut, “in a glass sphere about the size of an armchair. A steel mesh surrounded the sphere. And then …” Blackstone let his right hand lift toward the ceiling, “in full view and with his wife clearly visible, he had the sphere raised by a golden rope high above the audience. There was a drum roll and with a shout of ‘Kabow’ Irene Adaire disappeared.”

  “Kapow,” Mrs. Plaut corrected. “Not ‘Kabow’.”

  “Kapow, yes,” Blackstone said. “An instant, no more than a heartbeat later, Simon Adaire called out ‘Lights.’ The house lights came on and he pointed to a spot in the audience. From a seat, not an aisle seat, Irene Adaire stood up wearing the same costume she had worn in the sphere. I waited at the stage door till the show was over,” said Blackstone. “Adaire shook my hand and I told him I wanted to be a magician. His wife shook my hand. That’s when I saw the small birthmark, the tiny purple star.”

  “It’s not a birthmark,” Mrs. Plaut said. “It’s a tattoo.”

  We were all looking at Mrs. Plaut now.

  “You were lovely,” Blackstone said.

  Did Mrs. Plaut blush? Maybe.

  “Simon Adaire died two years or so later,” Blackstone said. “My brother and I have tried for years to duplicate that piece of magic. We’ve come close, but never quite got it. Others have tried. Cheap and obvious imitations. Eventually, people began to think that the original Simon Adaire’s Woman in the Sphere illusion had been one of those cheap imitations. But it wasn’t. I was there.”

  “More coffee anyone?” Mrs. Plaut asked, rising with her cup and saucer in hand.

  In the hundreds of pages of Mrs. Plaut’s family history, there had not been a mention of anyone named Adaire, had not been a word about Adaire, whom she must have been married to before she married “The Mister” who had died about fifteen years ago.

  “Amazing,” said Blackstone. “The wonders of the world of magic are nothing compared to the tricks of fate that God plays on us. To find you after all this time, after all the hands of women I have looked at, all the … forgive me.”

  “I’m having more coffee,” said Mrs. Plaut, moving toward the kitchen.

  “Mrs. Adaire,” Blackstone said. “You are almost certainly the only living person who knows the secret of the Woman in the Sphere.”

  “Drat,” Mrs. Plaut said with a sigh, returning to her seat.

  Blackstone laughed, a deep laugh showing even, white teeth.

  “I thought when I found you I would beg you to tell me the secret, offer you whatever amount you wanted, tell you that I would forever attribute the illusion to Simon Adaire whenever I performed it,” said Blackstone. “And now …”

  “You don’t want to know,” said Mrs. Plaut.

  “That’s right,” said Blackstone. “How did you …?”

  “That’s just what Thurston said when he found me,” she said. “He used a private detective named Richard Olin who charged him a sincere sum. Thurston never even asked me to tell him. Mr. Thurston said, ‘Even magicians need some magic in their lives.’”

  “Especially magicians,” said Blackstone.

  “I’ve written the secret in a letter,” said Mrs. Plaut. “The letter is in the safe of my lawyer, Mr. Leib. When I depart this vale of woes, good food, and Eddie Cantor on the radio, Mr. Leib will give the letter to Mr. Peelers who can do with it as he believes best.”

  She looked at me and added “Accompanying the letter is a chapter of my family history about Simon. I have no more to say.”

  “And I have no more to ask,” said Blackstone.

  “Well, does anyone want more coffee or not?” she asked.

  “I’ll have some,” said Bidwell.

  “And I,” said Gunther.

  Mrs. Plaut nodded, looked at Blackstone and said, “You do the buzz saw better than Simon. You do it all better than Simon, except for the girl in the ball. That’s all he really had.”

  Mrs. Plaut disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Amazing,” said Blackstone. “To find Irene Adaire on the same day … Mr. Peters, can we go in another room?”

  We could and we did move into the parlor on the other side of the hall beyond Mrs. Plaut’s rooms.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t wait till you got to your office, but I thought you or your brother should know immediately. You were closer to the hotel.”

  Phil lived in the Valley, North Hollywood, across the hills.

  “I got a call at the hotel at five this morning,” Blackstone said. “A man. He said that at the testimonial dinner for me tonight the audience would be watching the death of a magician. He said, his exact words, ‘And that will be the finish of Harry Blackstone.’ And then he hung up.”

  “Was it Ott?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Why would he warn you?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t a warning,” said Blackstone. “It was a challenge, a challenge I intend to accept.”

  Chapter 8

  Place two identical glass bottles on a table. Borrow a dollar. Put the dollar over the middle of the mouth of one of the bottles. Turn the other bottle upside down and balance it on the mouth of the other bottle with the dollar between them. Announce that you can remove the dollar without disturbing or even touching the bottles. Challenge your audience to do it. Let them try if they wish. Solution; When you place the dollar between the two bottles, do not put the bottles on the center of the bill. Take the long end of the bill, draw it taut. Holding the end of the bill, raise the other hand above the dollar. Hit it in the middle and out comes the dollar.

  From the Blackstone, The Magic Detective radio show

  “ARE WE READY?” Phil asked, running his thick palm over his short-cropped steel gray hair.

  I knew Phil was controlling his lack of approval of the group of misfits who sat around the round conference table in the new office of the new firm of Pevsner and Peters.

  The office was large, one of the largest in the building. It wasn’t, however, a suite, just one big room whose last renter was now in prison.

  Jeremy Butler, our landlord, was seated at the table, and had set up a blackboard against the wall. Phil rolled a fresh piece of chalk in his hand and looked at us before he began.

  I sat on Phil’s left. Next to me was Jeremy, large, bald, and serene. I was afraid he had written a poem for the occasion. I was reasonably sure he had or would. Jeremy, the ex-wrestler, was a poet for all seasons and reasons. I hoped he didn’t decide to read his latest work for this more-or-less captive audience.

  Next to Jeremy sat Gunther, nattily dressed, tiny, erect, dignified, and ready with pencil in hand and pad of paper in front of him.

  On Gunther’s left sat Shelly Minck, fidgeting with his thick glasses, wearing a fresh white dental smock, gnawing on an unlit cigar.

  The last person at the table was the one neither Phil nor I wanted there. His name was Pancho Vanderhoff. Pancho was thin, old, wearing a long-sleeved purple shirt and what looked like a thin red scarf draped around his neck. Pancho’s face was unlined, his badly dyed black hair thick.

  Shelly had introduced Pancho as a screenwriter “with lots of great credits.”

  Shelly—now in the chips with money from a company that had bought one of his dental hygiene inventions, money from his recently dead wife Mildred, and money from the sale of his house at a hefty profit—had hired Pancho to write a movie about Shelly’s life, a movie which She
lly would produce.

  “Pancho’s just going to observe,” Shelly had told me in the hall when I told him about the meeting. “This will be a great chance for him to see me in action as a detective. That’s what he’s going to concentrate on. You know, respected dentist by day, fearless private investigator by night, and on weekends.”

  “You’re not a private detective,” I had reminded Shelly on the landing outside his office.

  “I know. I know,” he had said impatiently. “But we’ve worked together on so many cases. I’ve helped a lot. You know that, Toby. I’ve helped a lot.”

  That was true, but he had also nearly gotten me killed more than once, and I had been called upon at least five times to keep him from getting killed or sent to prison.

  “Pancho’s in your old office,” Shelly had said earnestly.

  I had rented a cubbyhole with a door and window in Shelly’s office till Phil and I had become partners. The cubbyhole was big enough for a desk and two chairs, one behind the small desk, one in front of it.

  “You’ll love him,” Shelly had assured me, thick hand on my shoulder. “I’m telling you. Have I ever led you wrong?”

  “Always, Shel,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, waving it away, “That was in the past. Pancho’s worked with the best. He’s Dutch.”

  “I see the connection,” I said.

  “Good,” Shelly had said, adjusting his glasses.

  I knew he had a patient in his dental chair, waiting. Even with the door to his office closed and the inner door shut, I could hear some poor victim gently moaning.

  “You should get back to whoever’s in there,” I had said.

  Shelly looked at his office door as if he had never seen it and then smiled sadly.

  “Mrs. Shmpiks,” he said, shaking his head. “Molars like rotten little rocks. A challenge. But I’m up to it.”

  “You always are,” I said. “Pancho can stay in his office when we meet.”

  “Toby, please,” Shelly said, putting his hands together. “I’m pleading with you. This is important to me. He’ll be quiet.”

  “I don’t think Phil will go for it,” I said.

  “He’s your brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Toby, after all we’ve been through together,” said Shelly.

  There were actually tears in his eyes. The door to his office had opened and his receptionist, Violet Gonsenelli, who also took messages for me and Phil, stuck her head out and said flatly, “I think your patient is dying.”

  “She’s not dying. She’s not dying,” Shelly said. “She’s hurting. It’s natural. She’s fine.”

  “I think she’s dying,” Violet said.

  Violet was young, brunette, pretty, and the wife of a promising middleweight whose climb in the ratings had been postponed by the war. Rocky was somewhere in the Pacific.

  “Okay, Shel. I’ll talk to Phil. Don’t be late.”

  And now Pancho Vanderhoff sat at our conference table.

  On the wall behind my desk in the corner were two things: a painting of a woman holding two babies, and a photograph of a young Phil, me, and our father with Phil’s German shepherd, Kaiser Wilhelm, in front of us. Our father was wearing his grocer’s apron. He had an arm around each of us. Young Phil didn’t look any happier in the photograph than he did standing next to the blackboard. The painting was a genuine Salvador Dali, given to me by Dali in appreciation for a job I did for him. Only a few people knew knew it was a real Dali. Three of them—me, Gunther and Jeremy—were seated at the table.

  There was coffee in large reinforced Dixie cups and three bags of tacos from Manny’s down the street. All of this would go on Blackstone’s bill.

  Everyone but Gunther was working on a taco. Phil and Gunther also worked on their coffee. Pancho Vanderhoff had consumed three tacos by the time Phil said, “Okay, let’s get started.”

  It was a few minutes after noon.

  “Toby and I went to the hotel this morning to check out the space at the Roosevelt. The dining room, lobby, kitchen, toilets, exits,” Phil said.

  He turned to the blackboard and drew a rough but accurate sketch of the spaces. Then, in the box labeled “dining room,” he drew a rectangle and then made eight circles in front of the rectangle, numbering them from one to eight. He said, “These are the tables. There’ll be eight people at each table. Here….”

  He pointed at the rectangle.

  “Here, on a three-inch high platform, Calvin Ott, also known as Marcus Keller, will be seated with Blackstone.”

  “Ott is the one we’ll be watching,” said Shelly with a knowing nod.

  “No,” said Phil. “Ott is the one Toby and I will be watching. Jeremy, you’ll be at table four, near the kitchen. You watch the kitchen door, the people at your table and tables five and six and the exit door near the kitchen.”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “Gunther, you’ll be at table one, watching the entrance to the dining room, and tables one, two, and three.”

  “I understand,” said Gunther.

  “Minck, you’ll be at seven, watching that table and eight plus the exit behind you.”

  “Why do I only get two tables?” Shelly asked. “The others get three.”

  I knew what Phil was thinking. He paused, held it in. He didn’t want Shelly watching any tables, but we were running thin on free help.

  “Those two tables are the most likely ones to have people who might want to hurt Blackstone,” Phil lied.

  He had been a cop for nearly thirty years. He was a better liar than I was, and I’m pretty damned good.

  Shelly nudged Pancho Vanderhoff, who was working on his fourth taco. Pancho nodded.

  “Toby?”

  “Wear tuxes,” I said. “If you don’t own one, rent one. Blackstone will pay.”

  I knew Gunther had a tux. I knew Phil and I didn’t. I didn’t know about the others.

  “Pancho will be there,” said Shelly.

  “This dinner is for magicians,” Phil said.

  “Something might happen,” said Shelly. “It could be a big scene in Dentist in Disguise. I’ll pay for his ticket and his tux.”

  “It is a dinner, isn’t it?” asked Pancho, cheeks full.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you happen to know what will be on the menu?” asked Pancho.

  “No,” Phil said.

  I knew he was close to throwing them all out. There was the voice of a demon ominously lurking behind his words. I got up.

  “Other questions?” I asked.

  “What do we do if we see something happen?” asked Gunther.

  “Stop it,” said Phil.

  “Where will you and Toby be?” asked Jeremy.

  “Here and here,” said Phil, pointing to a spot next to the kitchen and another one at table six. This last was directly in front of the rectangle that marked the platform on which Ott and Blackstone would be sitting.

  “We’ll be watching Ott and Blackstone,” he said.

  “You’ll have guns?” asked Pancho, sensing the meeting was almost over and pocketing a wrapped taco.

  “You don’t need to know that,” said Phil.

  We would be armed, though there was almost no chance that I would shoot with a room full of people. I’m not a bad shot, I’m a terrible one. I’ve accidentally shot myself twice on cases. Phil was a good shot, but he far preferred to use his hands and fists. Phil took crime very personally.

  “We meet in the Roosevelt lobby at seven-thirty,” Phil said. “Come earlier, if you like, but no later. That’s it.”

  I took a final bite of the taco I had been working on and bit into something hard. I fished what looked like a small gray pebble from my mouth and dropped it in the wastebasket near the table.

  Everyone rose. Shelly whispered to Pancho as they left. Gunther and Jeremy, as unlikely a pair as a man could imagine, left together.

  When the door closed, I started to gather taco wrappers, bags, napkins, and coffe
e cups.

  “If Cawelti gets wind of this, of me working with them …” Phil said, looking at the closed door and shaking his head.

  “He’ll make some stupid jokes,” I said.

  “If he does, I’ll punch a hole in his stomach,” said Phil, moving to his desk and sitting.

  There were three small framed photographs on his desk facing his chair. One was of him, his dead wife Ruth, his two sons, and his baby daughter. The baby, Lucy, was in Ruth’s arms. They were all smiling. There was a wedding photograph of Phil and Ruth and one more photograph he never explained to me. That last photograph which had turned a brownish color, showed three men in muddy uniforms looking down at a square box in a muddy field. All three men held helmets in their hands. Phil had been in the First World War. He had come back making it clear that he was not going to talk about what he had seen and done.

  “You check the waiters, the kitchen staff for weapons,” Phil said.

  “Right.”

  “I’ll be at the door to the dining room,” he said. “I’ll check the magicians for weapons.”

  I knew Phil had no intention of actually patting down the magicians, not because he was afraid of coming up with a rabbit or white pigeons, but because he knew they wouldn’t stand for it. It didn’t matter because Phil could tell with about a two percent margin of error if someone was carrying a gun. I had seen him do it with people whom I could have sworn were clean. He could spot the smallest bulge, the slightest abnormal motion that would signal a concealed weapon. He could also detect the hint of guilty sweat or overconfident swagger. My brother was a master of suspicion. Everyone was definitely guilty until he decided they were innocent.

  I moved my tongue to the tooth that had bitten down on the pebble. It felt like something was stuck between the teeth. I felt with my finger. Nothing was stuck. A piece of my upper right molar was missing, leaving a jagged remnant. It didn’t hurt. I knew I’d have to take care of it. I hadn’t been to a dentist in at least twenty years, but I’d find one when I had time. Shelly was not an option.

  My plan was to go to the hospital and talk to Gwen Knight. Phil’s was to go home, spend the afternoon with his family, have dinner with them, and put on a tux.