The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 44

I can’t believe my eyes and yet… he’s gone. I spend the next forty-five minutes searching – for him at first, and then for how he did it. Initially, I scan the landscape, thinking I’ll catch sight of him again, that he’s toying with me, like before. It doesn’t happen. Then I explore the mausoleum and all the surroundings – the trees, the shrubs, the gravestones. I even stand at the lakeside and look into the water. I search for any place he could have hidden himself, even for a moment, trying to figure out how he could have pulled off his vanishing act. But I find nothing.

I approach other visitors to the island and its surroundings. Many of them saw The Piper, heard his flute, even saw me chasing him – but no one saw where he went. No one saw him disappear.

I don’t believe that, of course. I know he didn’t disappear. It was a trick, an illusion. He left the Hollywood Forever brochure in my car; he knew I’d be coming to the cemetery. He had plenty of time to make any kind of arrangements he wanted to in advance. He set up the display with the knights and the toys, waited for me to look at it, then led me on a chase. He knew where I’d go, because he was leading. But still – how did he do it? I can’t find anything – anything – that would have enabled him to vanish like that. But he’s a magician, after all.

Given a day or a week, maybe I could figure out how he did it, but I don’t have time. I’m still shaking my head when I drive out of the cemetery and head for LAX.

Mike Aguilar is a laid-back Chicano who doesn’t hold it against me that I’m fifteen minutes late.

“The traffic here, man?” He shakes his head. “You try to keep too locked on to a schedule, you make yourself crazy.”

The bartender brings us a couple of Bohemias, chips, and salsa.

“So you’re interested in this guy Mertz,” Aguilar says. “Matter of fact, he’s an innarestin’ guy. I’m not surprised somebody wants to take a look at the man.”

“I understand you confiscated some videos from him and he sued to get them back.”

Aguilar shakes his head. “He sued all right, but we didn’t take them off him. We took the videos off an employee of his, a Japanese photographer who was coming to the U.S. from Croatia or some damn place. The videos are tucked into bogus slipcases, y’know? I think one of them was The Lion King. That’s what made me take a look. I thought it was probably pornography, right? Because this guy didn’t look like he was into kiddie stuff.”

“So what happened?”

“We screened a couple of minutes of each video, and then we seized them.”

“So it was pornography.”

“No. It was worse than that. By community standards – and I don’t care if we’re talking about L.A. or Fargo – those videos should have been burned.”

“But-”

“What it was… Mertz paid this guy to go around, making videos in places like Bosnia, Albania, Sierra Leone. So what you had were people being tortured and killed – on camera, real time! It was like a snuff flick, but without the sex. No politics, no context. Just ninety minutes of people dying in close-up. The impression I got: this guy went from detention camps to makeshift prisons, paying bribes and directing the action.”

“And the judge let him keep that?”

Aguilar nods. “Yeah. Said it was art.”

“And that was it? No investigation?”

The customs agent gives a hopeless shrug. “Nothing we could do. Mertz’s lawyers were all over the case as soon as we grabbed the videos. We had the initial intake interview with the photographer, and that was it.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

“Not much. The only thing I got out of it was that it wasn’t just Mertz. It was like there was a club or something.”

“What kind of club?” I ask.

The customs agent shakes his head. “I don’t know. The photographer was going nuts when I grabbed the videos. So he started throwing out names, yelling – the people he works for are going to have my job. Mertz was one of the names he threw out. But there were others. A sheikh. Some Russian oil guy. People like that.” He rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “Big bucks,” he says. “Fingers in a lot of pies.”

I press Aguilar for the names.

“Sorry, man, I just don’t remember.”

“What about that interview – you have a tape?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, we lost the case, right? Those tapes get purged.”

“One more thing. What nationality is Mertz? French?”

Aguilar shakes his head. “Belgian.”

I get an idea, stuck in traffic on Sepulveda. Maybe I can make Mertz come to me.

I catch John DeLand as he’s leaving the Castle for lunch. “Just a quick question.”

“Sure.”

“This guy Mertz – he collects stuff about the rope trick. Is there a particular book he’d want?”

“Something he’d really covet as a collector? Let me think.” He thinks for a minute, but then shakes his head. “You know, I really should ask Kelly. Let me see if I can get him.”

DeLand puts the question to Kelly Mason, shouting into the phone. Then he’s writing something down. “Can you spell that? Okay. Thanks, Kelly. Okay. Okay.”

DeLand turns to me. “There is something, but Kelly says to warn you – he’s never seen a copy.”

“What’s the book?”

DeLand looks at his note. “The Autobiographical Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangueir.”

“Could you spell that?”

Instead, he hands me his note.

“In case you can’t decipher my hen scratch, the book was written in the seventeenth century,” DeLand says, “but the edition Mertz is after is a translation by an Englishman, name of David Price. Published in 1829. According to Kelly, it contains one of the most complete descriptions of the rope trick that has ever been reported.”

“How much would something like that go for?”

He thinks for a moment. “Rough guess? Hmmmmm. It’s rare, but there’s not that much market. Copperfield might bid for his museum, so that would drive it up a bit. Something of that vintage, that difficult to find? I should think Mertz might pay five thousand for it and be happy with that.”

“I owe you a drink.”

“I see where you’re going, Alex,” he says. “Be careful.”

It takes me a few minutes to establish an e-mail account at Yahoo! under a name I pick out of the phone book, Daniel Helwig. I execute a quick Google search to come up with the shortlist of dealers who specialize in rare books about magic, then fire off an e-mail to the group.

Using the pseudonym, I offer a first edition of the Jahangueir for five thousand dollars, but note that the book will only be available for two days. After that, “Daniel” writes, he’ll be leaving for an extended stay abroad – which is why he’s selling the book. To make that stay even more extended.

With the e-mail on its way, there is nothing for me to do but bide my time – and in a burst of optimism, buy a gun.

Liz hates guns, hates the very idea of them – she never let the kids have toy guns, although her distaste obviously doesn’t extend to swords. She grounded Sean one day when he playfully shot at her using a banana. Because the idea that I owned a gun was driving her crazy, I got rid of the old British Bulldog revolver my grandfather gave me. Gave it to one of my cousins. His wife belongs to the NRA.

Grandpa taught me to shoot and how to care for a gun. He didn’t hunt, but he lived in the country, way up in northern Wisconsin, and despite opposition from my grandmother, he was of the opinion that everybody ought to know how to handle “a firearm,” as he put it.

I stop by an ATM and then head for Plummer Park. I went right by it on my way to the cemetery, so I find it without any trouble – a leafy green spot in the midst of the concrete city. It was a little more hard-edged two years ago, when we were here filming on the Russian mob, but I still think I can do business. Walking around, I see that the place remains a hangout for Russian émigrés, playing chess and schmoozing and arguing under the park’s trees. From the whispered consultations and the occasional coat pulled open to display something, I can see that’s it’s also still a marketplace of sorts, the right place to go if you want to buy a used Rolex, a hot Mercedes… or a gun.

I walk by the tennis courts where two Latino kids belt the ball back and forth with unbelievable power.

I sit down on a bench where half of the graffiti scratched into the green paint is in Cyrillic letters. Ten minutes later, a kid with big baggy pants slings himself down on the bench next to me. He wears a leather jacket, despite the heat, and he lights up a cigarette, then leans toward me: “You want something, man?”

“Maybe.”

“Smack or crack?”

“I want a gun.”

He shrugs. “Give me a minute.” His hands are covered with tattoos, and I can see the tendrils of several extending above his collar as well. The tattoos are crude, the do-it-yourself kind you get in prison. He holds up a finger. “Cash money. Three hundred bucks.”

I give him a noncommittal nod. “If it’s right. I want a forty-five.”

He comes back five minutes later carrying a Burger King bag. He looks a little nervous.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him, “I’m not a cop.”

He laughs. “I don’t give a shit about that,” he says. “I’m flying back to Moscow end of the week anyway. I get busted? – all that happens, they deport me.” He smirks. “Maybe I get a window seat.”

I look inside the bag. It’s a.38, not a.45, a fact I point out to the kid. I pull out the clip. “And it’s only got three bullets.”

He shrugs again. “You’re welcome to shop around. This is what I got, one hundred percent. Take it or leave it.”

I take it.

And now there’s really nothing for me to do but check and recheck my e-mail and messages, waiting for a response. It’s a long night. I finally get a bite at 9:22 in the morning.

A dealer in San Francisco has a client who is interested. Depending on the book’s condition, cost is not an issue.

I reply with an e-mail of my own, seeking the client’s name and address. I can send the book for his examination. He could have it by tomorrow morning.

But, no. The dealer is unwilling to give up the information, undoubtedly fearing that he’ll lose his commission on the book. If you’ll send the book to me, the dealer writes, I can show it to my client in the afternoon. Naturally, I’ll reimburse you for the cost of shipping and insurance.

But it’s impossible. There is no book. Nor, for that matter, is there any guarantee that the prospective buyer is Luc Mertz. Even so, it’s the only lead – and the only plan – that I have.

I think about flying to San Francisco to meet with the dealer, but… it’s not going to work. Without a book to look at, the dealer’s not going to listen to anything I’ve got to say.

Which leaves the information broker. Because one thing is certain. The dealer – qjwynn@coastal.com – must have contacted his client after learning of the book’s supposed availability. So they must have spoken to one another.

I call the broker, who confirms that he can find out who the dealer called the day before – but not until the end of the phone company’s billing cycle. “Until they collate the data, I can’t get at it,” he explains.

Frustrated, I telephone a friend who knows a lot about databases. A friend from my college days, Chaz designs computer simulations – war games – for the Pentagon. But as it turns out, he doesn’t have a clue as to how I can get a list of the bookdealer’s phone calls. “And, anyway,” he says, “how do you know he phoned him? Maybe he sent him an e-mail.”

Good point. “So how do I get into his e-mail?”

Chaz thinks about it. “You know his user ID?”

“Yeah.”

“Then all you need is his password.”

“And how do I get that?”

“Depends. If he’s got an e-mail program that lets him use unencrypted passwords, you could download an automated dictionary word list – and let it roll. But that could take you days, and you’d probably be caught.”

“Why?”

“Because if they’ve got intruder detection on (and they probably would), you’d be beeping the system console every three seconds and time-stamping your IP address to the file server error log.”

“Which is not good.”

“You’d probably be arrested.” Chaz pauses. “Of course,” he says, “you could always try to guess it.”

“Guess it?”

“The password,” he says. “Nine out of ten people – almost everyone – uses the same passwords.”

“Like what?” I ask him.

“Password. That’s the most common. And changeme – that’s big, too. So is changethis. And the names of pets. Does he have a dog?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “He might.”

“Try Brownie and Blackie. Jack.”

“Get outta here. I’m not gonna try Brownie.”

“Then don’t. So what’s he do for a living? I’m telling you – guessing passwords is not rocket science.”

“He’s a bookseller. Mostly books about magic.”

“Try Houdini. Like that.”

And so I do. I try them all, including Brownie. When none of them works, I try the names of magicians mentioned in the books I’ve read about magic.

blackstone

kalang

thurston

kellar

copperfield

siegfriedandroy

siegfried &roy

siegfriedundroy

blaine

maskelyne

sorcar

lanceburton

penn &teller

pennandteller

johndeland

karlkavanaugh

Zilch. I try a different tack:

abracadabra

opensesame

sesame

hocuspocus

pocushocus

Immediately, the page opens.

Going to the dealer’s inbox, I see a dozen e-mails from the day before. Among them is one from lxmertz@sequoia.net.

I’m interested, of course, but I’ll have to see the book first. Are you sure the offer is genuine?

I read it, and I read it again. But that’s it. There’s nothing more to be gotten from it. Switching from the bookdealer’s account to sequoia.net, I work for an hour, trying to crack Mertz’s password – but it’s no use. The Belgian is too clever to use anything someone could guess.

Then it occurs to me: sequoia.net is a business address of some kind. Using the Anywho search engine, I take a look, first for Sequoia Net and then for Sequoia Networks, and then for Sequoia Enterprises and so on, down the list of generic corporate names. I’m guessing the company is somewhere in California. (Otherwise, the dealer would probably not have promised to show the book to his client the next afternoon.)

And there it is:

Sequoia Solutions, Ltd.

11224 Fish Rock Rd.

Suite 210

Anchor Bay, CA

I pop over to MapQuest and ask for driving directions and a map. I copy the directions on the hotel’s pad, and take note from the map that Anchor Bay looks to be only a few miles from Point Arena – where Byron’s postcard to Diment was mailed. Eureka – where the Sandling boys escaped at the shopping mall – isn’t that far, either. I think it’s possible that Byron and the Sandling boys were headed for Mertz’s at the time.

It’s possible the connections I’m making are hopeful and tenuous. Maybe Mertz simply has business concerns in northern California and doesn’t live here at all. Maybe Mertz and Boudreaux parted ways long ago. Maybe Boudreaux is still here in L.A. Maybe it’s all smoke, as Shoffler would say.

But I don’t think so.

It’s five hundred forty-five miles from L.A to Anchor Bay. A very long drive. If I can get a flight anytime in the next couple of hours, I should fly to San Francisco and drive from there.

I’m on the computer for twenty minutes, and ready to book a seat before I remember – the gun.

I consider driving, but it would cost me eight hours, at least. I think about tossing the gun, but now that I have it, I want to keep it.

I book the flight, then head out to Vons. I buy a box of Wheat Thins, two corkscrews, a pair of scissors, a kitchen drain stopper, stainless steel scouring pads, and a roll of aluminum foil. Cargo luggage is scanned, true, but mostly to detect explosive devices. I knew from a piece Fox ran not long ago that lots of criminals transport guns in checked luggage. It’s easy to disguise a gun by putting it in a box along with other metal items and jamming the open spaces with wadded-up foil, then wrapping the entire box in several layers of foil. The scanner sees it as a metal shape with various densities.

I dump the crackers out and in five minutes, I’m packed and ready to go. An hour and a half later, I’m in seat 23A on United 1421, heading north.