Now You See It

Chapter 6

At the L.A. county hospital emergency room, a kid doctor plucked the pellet from Gwen’s chest and said she would have to stay overnight. Then he took the pellet from my shoulder and patched me up.

“I’ve never seen so many scars on a living human,” the kid said.

“And each one has a story,” I said.

“War?”

“No, mostly mistakes, bad timing, stupidity,” I said.

The pellet had barely penetrated the flesh. At the distance I had been shot, that was about the best the shooter could have hoped for other than hitting my eye.

“You’ll be fine,” said the kid doctor dressed in crumpled whites who looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. “In Casino if that had been a bullet, we would have pulled it out, splashed on some iodine and a bandage and handed you your rifle.” No overnight for me.

Two waiting uniformed cops took me to the Wilshire Station.

I knew the Wilshire Station. My brother had been a captain there. That was right after he had been a lieutenant and right before he had been busted back to lieutenant again.

Lieutenant John Cawelti, he of the pocked face, red hair parted in the middle, and perpetual look of badly concealed hatred for all things Pevsner or Peters, sat behind a desk in a small office.

He pointed to the chair on the other side of the desk and got up to close the door and stepped over to me.

“Where do we start?” Cawelti said standing over me.

The office hadn’t changed much since Phil had left it less than a month before. Same desk with a murky window behind in and a view of a brick wall. Same three chairs, one behind the desk, two in front of it. The top of the desk had a full in-box in the left corner and a full out-box in the right, with a few files laid out unevenly between them. A coffee-mug stain marked the top file. The only change I could see was the plaque on the wall across from the desk.

I turned my head to look at the plaque, ignoring Cawelti who hovered over me with Listerine breath. The plaque read: To John Merwin Cawelti, in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the Los Angeles Police Department’s annual picnic for the widows and orphans of our comrades who have fallen in the line of duty. Both the Mayor and the Chief of Police had signed it. About half the members of the department had the same plaque.

“Where do we start?” Cawelti insisted.

“Merwin?” I said turning my head and looking up at him.

He pointed a finger at me and jabbed it into the spot where the pellet had struck. I did more than wince. I clamped my teeth together and almost passed out.

“I want my lawyer,” I said.

“Why?” he asked. “You haven’t been accused of anything yet?”

“Then I want to leave,” I said, starting to get up.

I leaned quickly to my right to avoid the jabbing finger.

“You shot Birmingham,” he said.

“Cunningham, and I didn’t shoot him.”

“You shot him and went after the girl because she saw you shoot him. Then you shot her.”

“And then I shot myself,” I said.

“Yeah. And pitched the gun. We’re looking for it.”

“Ask the girl,” I said. “She’ll tell you I didn’t shoot her.”

“And she’ll tell me you didn’t shoot Cunningham, right?”

“The girl saw the shooter. She’ll give you a description.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Beard, turban, bullshit. We’ve got the beard and turban where you dropped them on the steps.”

“I was onstage about to be sawed in half by a buzz saw when Cunningham was shot,” I said.

“We don’t know exactly when he was shot.”

“Check with the doorman. Check with Gwen. They’ll tell you I couldn’t …”

“And I’ll tell you you could,” he said. “You’re working for the magician. Cunningham was trying to blackmail him. You shot him. Then you went after the witness.”

“I helped her, and who do you think shot me?”

“Shot yourself,” said Cawelti, face inches from mine.

“And threw the pellet gun away? Did you find it?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“You’ve got the other gun?” I asked.

“What other gun?”

“The one that was used to kill Cunningham,” I said. “That was no pellet hole.”

“You had plenty of time to dump it,” he said, finger hovering over my arm.

“Time for my lawyer, Merwin. Martin Raymond Leib,” I said.

Cawelti’s face was bright crimson. He reached out for my wounded shoulder, and I shuffled my chair backward. He took a step toward me.

The door behind him opened. I couldn’t see who it was. Cawelti was between me and the door. He stopped, turned his head, and came flying past me, hitting the wall.

Phil stood there, door open behind him.

A couple of detectives I recognized were in the doorway.

“You’re under arrest,” Cawelti shouted at my brother.

“For what?” Phil said.

“Assaulting a police officer,” Cawelti said, pushing himself away from the wall.

“You fell,” I said.

“Looked that way to me,” said one of the detectives in the door, a big bald sergeant named Pepperman, who had been mustered out of the army in 1919, the same year as my brother.

“Didn’t see it,” said the man next to him, Bill O’Keefe, who Phil had once pushed out of the way of the knife of a drugged-out Mexican kid named Orlejo Sanchez.

“Get the hell out of my office,” Cawelti said, taking a step toward Phil and then thinking better of it.

“You alright?” Phil said, ignoring Cawelti and looking at me.

“Lovely,” I said.

“Your brother killed a man tonight and shot a woman,” Cawelti said. “You don’t get out, you’re under arrest for interfering with a murder investigation.”

Phil turned his unblinking eyes on him.

“You’ve got nothing,” Phil said.

“At the least,” Cawelti said. “At the goddamn least, I’ve got him for leaving the scene of a crime, two crimes.”

“I was chasing the killer,” I said.

“Chasing yourself?” Cawelti asked.

“We’re going,” said Phil, motioning to me to follow him.

“Hold it,” said Cawelti. “You’re not a police officer anymore. I’m in charge here. I’m the law. You do what I goddamn tell you.”

“Ask nicely,” Phil said.

I knew the look. So did Cawelti. So did the two detectives standing in the doorway. Phil might be arrested. He might even be shot, but, if he lost his temper, John Merwin Cawelti would be in need of a very long period of recuperation.

Cawelti was breathing hard now as he said between his teeth,

“Please get the hell out of here.”

“Not without Tobias.”

“He’s now officially under arrest for murder,” said Cawelti. “You want to help him escape?”

Phil’s fists were clenched. He stepped toward Cawelti again. Cawelti retreated back, but this time he didn’t back down.

“He’s under arrest,” he said.

Phil stopped and said,

“He’ll be out of here in an hour.”

“Maybe,” said Cawelti.

“I’ll be outside,” Phil said. “Right outside.”

The two detectives in the doorway made way for him to leave. Cawelti strode across the room and closed the door. Then he turned to me.

“Tell me a story,” he said.

I told him about Calvin Ott, otherwise known as Maurice Keller. He wasn’t impressed. I told him about the missing buzz saw blade. He was even less impressed. I told him I wanted my lawyer. Twenty minutes later, Martin Raymond Leib, decked out in a perfectly pressed blue suit and a red-and-blue striped tie-all 300 lbs of him-entered the small office with a small smile of satisfaction. He was thinking of what he was going to bill Peters and Pevsner for his legal services.

I was thinking about my aching shoulder.

Marty told me to step out of the office. I did. Phil was there.

We waited while Marty-slowly, I was sure, and with a patient smile-earned his fee.

Marty Leib could afford to be slow and patient. He got paid by the hour. Pepperman brought us cups of coffee in nonmatching diner mugs and asked me about my shoulder, and asked Phil how things were going.

About fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Marty, hand still on the knob, said, “Come on.”

We followed him through the squad room past working cops and empty desks. Marty, the size of a small rhino, cleared the way.

On the landing outside the squad room, Marty turned to us and said, “Lord, I so enjoy sending dear old John C.’s blood pressure into the stratosphere. He is so easy to intimidate. I would almost do it for nothing.”

“It’s a deal,” I said. “Nothing, and I promise to get in as much trouble with Cawelti as I can to bring a little entertainment into your busy life.”

“I said ‘almost,’” Marty reminded me. “We are almost finished with the war. We are almost a neighbor of the planet Mars. It is almost midcentury. It all depends on the definition of ‘almost.’”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Poor J. C. has no evidence, no witness, and no weapon to connect you to the Cunningham shooting. I suggested that we all visit the young lady in the hospital and ask her if you were the one who shot her. I suggested strongly that if she did not so identify you as the person who shot her or the man who came out of the dressing room where Robert Cunningham was shot, I would immediately bring suit for false arrest. Detective Cawelti went from combative to surly to reluctantly and grudgingly cooperative.”

“Send us the bill,” said Phil, unfolding his arms.

Marty nodded, patted me on the shoulder, the one that just had the pellet removed from it. He didn’t know. I tried not to pass out and succeeded.

Marty moved down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, out of sight, he sang, “The things that you’re liable to read in the bible, they ain’t necessarily so.”

“Lousy voice,” I said.

“Don’t have fun,” Phil said, unfolding his arms.

“What?”

“You’re enjoying this,” he said. “You’ve been shot, almost cut in half by a buzz saw and arrested for murder. A man’s been murdered. A girl was shot, and we just ran up a lawyer’s bill.”

“You’re right,” I told my brother, but I thought he was dead wrong. “Except I wasn’t almost cut in half by the buzz saw. That was an illusion. And we can bill Blackstone for Marty’s services.”

“Let’s go,” Phil said with a sigh that suggests a lot of things to a brother. It meant “Why did I decide to go into partnership with my infantile brother?”

I didn’t have to ask where we were going. We both knew.

Twenty minutes later, we were standing between the two stone gargoyles under the light of the almost full moon. It was about one fifteen in the morning.

Phil held up his fist to knock. I put my hand on his arm and lowered it.

“Magic,” I explained and said, “Abracadabra.”

The door opened. In front of us stood a bearded man in a white suit, wearing a turban with an emerald green stone in the middle.

“You’re late,” the man said.

The turbaned man turned and started down the corridor. Phil reached out and grabbed his arm spinning him around.

“Look Ott,” Phil said softly. “I …”

“He’s not Ott,” I said.

He was too short and heavy to be Calvin Ott.

“I don’t give a damn who he is,” Phil said, nose to nose with the now wide-eyed man. “I want to know where he was all night, every goddamn minute.”

The man looked at me hopefully.

“Phil, whoever shot Gwen and me dropped the turban and whiskers. Cawelti’s got them.”

“There could be a second set,” said Phil.

“There are seven sets,” the man said, his voice rising. “And I don’t know any Gwen and …”

“Leo, who was at the …?”

A man stood at the end of the corridor, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

“That’s Ott,” I said.

“Keller,” Ott corrected. “The name is Marcus Keller.”

Keller or Ott wasn’t wearing a turban or a beard. We weren’t looking for a man dressed like the one who had shot Gwen. We were looking for someone who had lost the disguise.

“Would your friend please release my guest,” Ott said, pointing his drink at Phil whose right hand was now firmly around the turbaned man’s neck.

“He’s my brother,” I said. “And my partner. And he has a very bad temper.”

“And a voice of his own,” said Phil, letting the man go. “What the hell is going on here?”

“I understand you were a policeman,” said Ott, emphasizing the word “were.”

The man Ott had called “Leo” staggered back. It was not a magic moment for him.

“I could call a real policeman and have him take you away,” said Ott, sweeping his cigarette-bearing hand in a broad arc.

“Not before I convince you to tell us what the hell is going on here,” Phil said, taking a menacing step toward Ott who stood his ground.

“It’s the anniversary of the death of Dranabadur,” Ott said, looking at a poster on his left.

I remembered it now from the last time I had been here. The turbaned man, the emerald, the whiskers. I looked at it again. Dranabadur’s dark face filled the poster with the words: Dranabadur, the Orient’s Master of the Singing Blade of Death.

“Leo, are you alright?” Ott asked casually.

“Yes,” Leo gasped, moving past Ott.

“Come,” Ott said with a smile I didn’t like as he turned his back on us and began to walk. “Dranabadur was a little known genius. Died twenty-seven years ago at exactly one-fifty-three in the morning, if the hospital report is to be believed.”

We followed him as he talked.

“Dranabadur’s real name was Irving Frankel,” Ott said. “Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, of less than noble or Oriental origin. He was a genius and went to his death without revealing the secret of his most famous trick, the singing blade.”

“What killed him?” I asked.

“The blade, of course,” said Ott, stepping into the living room that looked the same as when I’d last seen it, except it was now full of people. There were seven of them, all men, or, at least, I thought they were all men. They were all wearing white suits, beards, and turbans with a green stone. They were also all standing and facing us. Some of them had drinks in their hand.

The little chubby one called Leo, who had greeted us at the door, moved to join the others.

“Where’s your costume?” Phil asked Ott.

“I never wear one for these events,” he said. “I lead the service. And I provide the reward of fifty thousand dollars to the one who solves Dranabadur’s illusion of the singing blade, solves it and gives me exclusive and binding rights to it.”

He looked at his watch.

“Hey,” Phil said, stepping in front of Ott who smiled more broadly, a mistake when dealing with my brother.

I could see that Phil was giving serious consideration to committing mayhem.

“We can talk after the memorial service,” said Ott, taking a step to his right so that he could see past Phil.

I touched Phil’s arm, realizing too late that instead of restraining him, it might turn him on me.

“We’re about to begin,” Ott announced.

“Oh Christ,” sighed Phil. “This is bullshit, Tobias.”

I shrugged. One of the Dranabadurs standing near the wall on our right reached up and flicked a switch. The room went dark. Then a dim green glow came from the ceiling. Light danced green on the well-polished head of the dark skull of Bombay, still sitting in the same place he had last faced me.

“Magic,” said Ott, his face green, his smile more than a little nuts. “We live to perform, to dazzle, to mystify. We honor at the anniversary of their moment of departure those who have come before us, those who have achieved.…” He hesitated trying to find the right words.

“The highest plateau of deception,” one of the whiskered group supplied.

“Yes, thank you,” Ott said. “The highest plateau of deception. Dranabadur’s singing blade remains among the list of eighteen illusions of magic that have never been duplicated, the secrets of which have never been revealed and have gone to the grave with their creators.”

There was a pause during which Ott took a long drink, looked at Phil and me and then back at the group of costumed guests.

“Another year,” said Ott. “Has anyone solved the mystery? Can anyone claim the reward?”

“Yes,” came a voice from the corridor behind us.

A startled Ott swung around, the remains of his drink spraying me. In the green glow, a figure stepped out of the corridor and into the room.

“Stephen, the lights,” Ott called.

The green glow disappeared. There was an instant of darkness and then light.

The man who had stepped out of the corridor was Blackstone.

“I didn’t invite you,” said Ott, clearly shaken, his voice rising.

Blackstone was wearing his tux and tails from the show. His white hair billowed. His mustache caught the light.

“The singing blade,” Blackstone said.

“You don’t know how it was done,” Ott said.

“But I do,” said Blackstone. “And it is not for sale, nor do I ever intend to perform it. There are some secrets which are better not revealed. The legend of Dranabadur would be gone.”

“You lie,” Ott challenged, his voice quivering.

“No,” said Blackstone calmly, facing the frozen costumed group in front of him and looking at them as he named “Wayne, Paul, Walter, Milton, Steven, Bill, Richard, Leo.”

“What do you want?” Ott demanded.

“What do I want? A man of questionable motive and character was murdered at the theater tonight during my performance. A young woman in my troupe was shot tonight by a man dressed as …”

He pointed dramatically at each of the people in front of him.

“… Dranabadur. Knowing of this annual party, it seemed a reasonable place to come for answers.”

I watched Ott’s face. Tension. Then a series of quick contortions and decisions. Throw the magician out of his house? This was Blackstone. The eight men in costume behind him might not want to take part of the blame from throwing Blackstone out. They might even go with him. Ott’s face loosened a little. Phil and I had been hired to find out why Ott had set up the testimonial dinner for Blackstone. How would it look if he threw out of his home the man he was going to honor on Wednesday?

“Forgive me,” Ott said. “I was … of course you are welcome, anytime.”

“Mr. Pevsner, Mr. Peters,” said Blackstone. “I assume you are here seeking the same answers. Please.”

Ott moved to the side to sulk and pour himself another drink. The stage had been taken from him. I think he was shaking.

“How long have you been here?” I asked the group.

They looked at each other and one, the one named Stephen who had operated the lights, said,

“Since about eleven. I mean most of us started to arrive about eleven. I came about ten minutes earlier. Marcus wanted to go over my handling the lights.”

No help there. Anyone in the room could have shot Cunningham and Gwen and been here by eleven.

“I’d like to talk to everyone here alone, one at a time in some nice quiet room,” said Phil.

“No,” said Ott, regaining a touch of courage. “This is my house. You are not the police. These are my colleagues. The gathering is over. The mood is destroyed. I am feeling decidedly drained. Please leave, depart, go, and I shall see you all on Wednesday night.”

Slowly, led by the little chubby one called Leo, they moved past us giving good-byes, exchanging a word or two with Blackstone. Phil didn’t try to stop them though he gave each one his look that said, ‘I know you’re guilty.’

When they had all left, Ott faced us and said, “Anything else?”

He was very calm again. I didn’t like the latest smile. He had something up his sleeve, probably an ace of spades.

“Why did you come to the Pantages tonight?” I asked. “The show was almost over.”

“A whim, to see a little of the master at work,” he said with a thick layer of sarcasm.

“Just happened to be the night someone was murdered,” said Phil.

“Didn’t discover that till I entered the theater and was stopped by a police officer,” said Ott.

“Didn’t know the dead man, Cunningham?” I tried.

“That’s what the police asked me. I’ll give you the same answer I gave them, no. More questions?”

“Someone was supposed to be at the theater, someone who had threatened to ruin my show if I didn’t turn over my secrets,” said Blackstone.

“You think it was me?” asked Ott, pointing to himself.

“Yes,” Blackstone said.

“Why not the man who was shot? Or the one who shot him?” asked Ott smugly.

“Pieces of the puzzle,” said Blackstone.

“Well,” said Ott with an overdone sarcasm, “if anyone can put the pieces together, it’s the great Blackstone. I am, as I said, drained. I will see you all on Wednesday night,” Ott said, holding his glass up in a toast to Blackstone.

We went to the front door. I was about to say “Open Sesame” when Blackstone simply clapped his hands and the door opened. We stepped out into the night past the gargoyles. The doors closed.

“I hate to say it,” said Blackstone, “considering the murder and Gwen’s shooting, but I enjoyed that.”

We moved to the street. The cars that had filled the driveway when we arrived were gone. There was one, lone dark Buick parked in front of Phil’s Ford. Pete Bouton stood next to it.

“Alright?” he asked.

“Fine,” said Blackstone.

“A question,” I said. “Do you really know how to do the singing blade trick?”

“Ah,” said Blackstone looking at his brother. “Pete?”

“I’d say there are maybe eight or nine people here in the United States, four in Europe, one in Australia and who knows how many in China who could do it,” said Pete.

“Then why don’t they?” Phil asked.

“It’s not much of a trick,” said Blackstone, looking back at Ott’s house. “Any really competent illusionist could figure out how it was done. The technology has come a long way since Dranabadur. But, that said, there are still brilliant illusions, which have endured for centuries. The singing blade, however, is not one of them.”

“Ott’s an idiot?” Phil asked.

“Mr. Ott is a wealthy amateur in the worst sense of the word,” said Blackstone. “Given the opportunity, he would reveal every one of Peter’s and my illusions.”

“So he’s just jealous,” I said.

“Not just of me, but I do seem to have become his obsession. I did not like the way he recovered in there.”

Blackstone looked back at the house.

“Wednesday night,” he said. “Gentlemen, you have work to do.”

“You knew all those people who were here tonight?” said Phil.

“Yes,” said Blackstone. “Local magicians, not professionals.”

“Can you give us their names? Full names?” asked Phil.

“I’ll have a list in your office in the morning.”

Blackstone got in the car with his brother and they drove off. Phil and I did the same. We didn’t talk. There was nothing to say except good night when he took me back to my car parked behind the Bluedorn Apartments.

I got back to Heliotrope and parked half a block down from Mrs. Plaut’s at a little after two. There was one more surprise waiting for me before I got to bed.