“Call me Pete or Peter, please, Howie.”
“Pete, whoever done murdered Gerald Tannon was good. I mean, real good at magic, the way it happened and all. The po-leece is looking wrong at it. Mis-die-rec-ted, jes like with sleight-a-hand in a card trick.”
“Tell me how it looks to the police.”
“Gerald designed a trick for my act that he wuz demonstratin’ that night on his compound. There was five of us a-watchin’. As I was told t’ do, I cuffed o’ Gerald’s hands behind his back, and bound his ankles with duct tape. He was standing on a oversized black silk body bag that me and Gabe zipped up over his head. I tied it with a large gold twistie. Gerald’s voice came through the bag kind’a muffled like, o’ course, but he told us to take the hangman’s noose, set it around his neck, then place the looped other end over a hook hangin’ from this sixty-foot crane. When finished I was t’ step back behind the rail. Then, Leon, his assistant, started the crane’s engine, engaged the winch, and hoisted the loaded bodybag to about fifty feet. We all stood there just a’watchin’, wonderin’ what the gag was goin’ to be. Pretty soon the bag starts jerkin’ around a little, and we laughed.”
“What made you laugh?” I asked. “I would think it was pretty serious.”
“Not when you know good and well he was going to escape. Hay-ell, that’s what we wuz there for. His escape.”
“What happened then?”
“Well sir, the jerking gets real violent then stops, so I turn to Leon: ‘Okay, what’s goin’ on?’ Leon shrugs and says, ‘I don’t know,’ says it weren’t the way it was supposed to go. I says, ‘Well, get his ass down!’ ’Bout that time my cell phone rings. It was Gerald, laughin’! ‘Howie,’ he says, ‘I’ll see you on the Strip later. Quit starin’ up at that empty bodybag. I switched places with the dummy up there.’ So then Gerald’s car starts up in the parking lot, the lights come on, the horn honks twice, and he drives off. Hot damn!, the guy’s good. As we wuz leavin’, we made some comments about how stupid you feel when you been had. My buddy Karl said it best: Bein’ slickered by the master don’t change the fact none that you done been slickered.”
“Who discovered the body?”
“Leon, Gerald’s assistant.” Leon had come to work the next morning, started the crane, swung the boom around, lowered the dummy into the prop area behind a small shed, and went about his work in the shop. At about noon he went out back and saw two coyotes “tearin’ at the body bag. It must’a been a fright. They wuz gnawin’ on Gerald’s arm and neck and lowgrowlin’, shakin’ their heads from side-to-side trying to tear off flesh. When they heard Leon, they run off, and poor old Leon, he could see Gerald’s face gnawed on and his unblinkin’ ol’ dead eyes.” Howie went silent after this telling of events, as if trying to wipe Leon’s description from his memory bank.
“What’s your take on it, Howie?” I asked.
“The cops said it musta been a recording of Gerald’s voice the sonofabitch killer played over my cell phone to draw us away. Shee-it, is what I say. It was Gerald who drove off in his car, I know it. He is, was, that good. Somebody killed his ass and planted him back on the crane. Damn po-leece won’t listen.”
“The trick was built for you. Do you know how it works?”
“Nope, I never performed it. The secret went out with Gerald. We got to get us a technician to figger it out now.”
I sent Howie off to make a few phone calls and try and locate a trick master, as he had called it. In the kitchen, Kam and I sat down to a cup of coffee. I asked about the other bizarre events he had mentioned on the phone.
“The first crazy thing,” he said, “was one night driving on East Flamingo. Howie stopped for a red light, which then proceeded to cycle through red, yellow, and green. But each light stayed on for only a few seconds. After about twenty cycles, the light went solid green. The minute Howie made it across the intersection, his airbags deployed. He lost control and jumped the curb.”
I said, “That’s strange all right, but a bit benign.”
“Agreed. But a few days later at the Louvre Hotel and Casino, downtown, he gets on an elevator and presses the fourth floor button. The elevator goes all the way to eighteen, the top floor, stopping on all the even-numbered floors. However, the elevator door never opens. On the way down, same scenario, only with the odd-numbered floors, all the way back to one. Then the elevator went to the fourth floor and the door opened.”
“Again, rather harmless. Could happen to anybody.”
“Now get this, Weird Happening Number Three. Saturday, Howie drives his Ford Explorer to the gym, and when he comes out there are five identical Explorers parked side-by-side in the lot. None of them his. His turns up in the Police Compound, after being towed from a No-Parking zone. How about that?” I was beginning to wonder myself. “The police brushed the incidents off as pranks against Howie. They didn’t feel they were tied to the murder.”
We didn’t hear Howie enter the kitchen. He started talking while pouring himself a cup of Joe. “It ain’t that mysterious, Pete,” he said, “when you hear this. I found a remote-controlled detonator that activated my airbags.”
Kam added, “Howie drives East Flamingo almost every night, same time. It was simple to rig the light sequence and set it off when he pulled up to the intersection. So whoever it was, had to be close by.”
“Yup, and my office is in the Louvre Hotel,” Howie said. “Easy to program the elevator’s computer, then ambush me to pull the stunt.”
“And I suppose you go to the gym at the same time every Saturday?” I asked.
“Sure do.”
“Well, no more regularly scheduled events for a while. Deal?”
“Deal!”
He seemed so grateful for a partner in this mystery. Mischief was mischief, but murder was cold and calculating. “You two seem to feel the murderer is a trick master, what with the pranks going on. But the killer would need no knowledge of the trick to kill and then place the body back on the crane. Couldn’t he have been spying on Gerald, and follow him as he drove away from the demonstration?”
“Could,” Kam said. “Unless you’re wrong, Howie, and the voice you heard on the phone was a recording, or an impersonation. Then someone who knew the trick could have sabotaged it, and it was Gerald up on the crane all along, no dummy in place.”
“Damn, it could’a happened either way, sure enough.”
“Are you sure it was Gerald’s voice, Howie?”
“It sure sounded like him, Pete. But, I dunno, couldn’t swear to it. How in the hell do we find out?”
“I start nosing around and earn my keep, that’s how. By the way, what happened to the dummy that was supposed to be in the bag?”
Howie and Kam looked at each other sheepishly, as if to say why didn’t we think of that. Kam sighed, “That’s my Peter,” and grinned.
I figured the best place to start was at the scene, so I jumped in the Jag and beat it over to Gerald’s compound. Leon didn’t know who I was. I became a reporter from L.A. “Freelance,” I told Leon, handing him my card. “Name’s Anthony Nucase. You’ve probably seen my byline in some of the rag mags.”
“What can I do for you, Mister Nucase?”
“I don’t think the local press has given this story its due. They’re missing the boat not putting the emphasis on your perspective. I’d like to make you an offer for an exclusive.”
“I’ve told all I know. How could an exclusive be made of that?”
“You leave that part to me, son. Did you read the story about then-President Clinton having a lovechild with a blonde Martian? That was my scoop.”
Leon agreed to five hundred up front and two thousand upon publication.
“Show me around first, after which we can sit awhile and refresh your memory about what you saw that night.”
I was taken for an intimate tour of the lot, and Leon let me in on some of the secret illusions still in the works. “I’m not in Gerald’s league, yet,” he said, “but I’m
gonna get there, you wait and see.”
“Do you know how the stunt worked that killed Gerald?”
“I already told the police I didn’t.”
“That was the police, and there’s no sense making a good stunt public, right? But you must have some inkling as to how it was pulled off. Good apprentice like you.”
“No sir, I sure don’t. Some things Gerald held real close to his vest and didn’t let on about at all. He worked all kinds of crazy hours, just so no one would be around while he was testing stuff. That included me too.”
I got the feeling he was lying.
It’s amazing what you can do with a few innocent words taken out of context. By the time my conversation with Leon was over I had enough info to do a great piece for next week’s supermarket edition of The Inquiring National Globe. You see, I really did write that piece about Clinton and a blonde Martian, based on fact, and a very innovative interpretation (my own) of the actual statements made (the interviewee’s own). Please note that the statements used were all attributable, but not necessarily made on the same day, at the same place, or about the same subject matter, or to the same interviewer. Anthony Nucase was real, sort of, and possessed enough clout to publish any time he wanted. Truth be known his … my … sister Angelica owns the paper. She also made up my pseudonym. Sis used to call me a nutcase, then Mr. A. Nutcase. Mr. A. Nutcase became Anthony Nucase, my byline.
That evening back at Kam’s, I said, “What time are you through with your last show?”
“My last stunning appearance is at 2 a.m. Why?”
“Let’s take a hard, close look at Gerald’s compound, unannounced and unexpected. I believe we can figure out how that stunt worked ourselves, and Howie needs to be there too.”
“Meet me in the hotel lounge at 2:15,” Kam said. “I’ll need a few minutes to freshen up my lipstick.”
“Cute,” I replied.
“Dazzling, actually,” he said, and walked off. He turned dramatically in the doorway. In his best Mae West, he said, “Oh, by the way, some old friends of yours will be there tonight. You might want to come early and have a few dances.”
I did! It was a great crowd.
At 2:45 Howie, Kam, and I parked about a mile from our destination and walked in. The three of us were damn near ready for anything. Kam had provided night-vision head gear and ultraviolet search equipment. He had his Glock; I had Golda, my gold-plated .357, and Howie was armed with a brace of throwing knives in a quick-draw rig, the likes of which I had never seen.
After a quick look-around, I asked Howie, “Exactly where was Gerald standing when you zipped him into the body bag?” He looked around to get his bearings. “Someone done moved the crane, but I believe it was right there. So he musta been standin’ … about there.” He walked over to a spot and pointed down. “Yup, there’s the crane tracks, and with the boom a’leanin’ forward, it had to of been within a few feet of right here.”
“How in the hell could you cause something to disappear from this spot?”
“On stage you’d have a trap door,” Kam answered. “Out here, well, I guess you could have a trap door.”
The three of us were a sight, down on all fours, scratching the dirt and examining the ground with ultraviolet, crawling around in an ever-widening radius. Kam hit pay dirt, no pun intended. “Look at this,” he said.
It was the outline of a square something, the outline highlighted by two different color sands under the UV, not visible to the naked eye.
“What do we do now, dig?” asked Howie.
Kam, still down on his knees, looked up. “If this is a way in, there’s got to be a way out.”
“This here place covers ’bout twenty acres, so where do we look fer t’other end?” Howie answered his own question: “Starting where no one could see you when you come out,” he offered. “Behind, or inside, one of these structures, in order for Gerald to reach his car unseen while we watched the stunt.”
Twenty minutes more of intense searching turned up the entrance, which led down to a tunnel. Another twenty minutes underground, and we discovered twelve more entrances, a labyrinth of tunnels connecting them, and a large (twenty-foot by thirty-foot) workshop, with a twelve-foot ceiling. Lying under the main trapdoor was the dummy, two more intact body bags, and a thirteen-channel remote control, each channel controlling one of the trap doors.
“Damnation!” came from Howie when we sat down at the desk in the underground workshop. “I been comin’ here for years, and never had nary a clue this stuff was here.”
Viewed together, the dummy, the body bag, and the trapdoor yielded the trick’s mechanics, and although we were now aware of the how, they shed no light on whether the murder had taken place on or off the crane. One thing for certain, the murderer knew of this underground labyrinth, and I believed Leon knew more than he was letting on. How much more was anyone’s guess.
After a little shut-eye, we went to the Peppermill for breakfast and discussion. I said, “Put the compound under surveillance. That murdering joker is bound to be egotist enough to return.”
“Better idea,” Kam rebutted. “I take leave from my show for a few days and plant myself in the tunnel system. Besides being present if the creep shows, I can examine what’s down there. Whoever it was more than likely left traces of the visit.”
“How in the hayell do we figger out if Gerald was up there all the time, or planted after he was dead?”
“That will fall into place when we have all of the pieces,” I answered.
“I kin get a bootleg copy of that there po-leece report,” Howie said.
“Go for it. And while you’re at it, get all the info you can on the deceased: His family, heirs, business dealings, friends, enemies, and the like. And Kam, do as you suggested and visit the labyrinth. If you find something, call. If not, we’ll meet at your place in forty-eight hours. Meantime, I’ve got an article to write.”
Murdered Magician Communicates With Apprentice by Anthony Nucase
“It was as if his voice came to me from inside a tunnel,” Leon Hastings told this reporter. “It happened after hoisting him up with the crane. The noose was tied around his neck, I shut off the engine, and started climbing down from the cab when I heard it. ‘It’s as plain as the dirt beneath your feet,’ it said. I also saw something in the dark over by the office, but I didn’t pay attention to any of it, thought my mind was just playing tricks. But …”
There was enough innuendo in the article to let anyone who had knowledge of the labyrinth know that I had knowledge of it too.
I telephoned my sister as soon as the article was finished and asked for its inclusion in this week’s edition, which was due out on the stands in three days. Knowing full well the magazine was ready to go to press, but that it could be done, I expected a playful hard time from Sis and was not disappointed: “Why certainly, Mister Nutcase, for you, anything. Stop the presses and all that jazz, just like Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in whatever movie that was. Well, this is no movie. What makes you think you can call out of the clear blue and get anything you want? Just because you’re my favorite only brother, is that it? Well … okay! Now, you owe me one. No, make that another one. Ta-ta for now, Peter darling.”
At this point it became a waiting game for me: for Kam to call, for Howie to get back, and for the article to come out. Speaking of which, when Howie came back that afternoon, he invited me out for dinner and dancing. Quite an incredible night. Vegas is one hell of a place to wait.
At 10:45 the next morning I was awakened by a call from Kam. Damn, I never sleep in like that, and I didn’t even hear Howie leave.
“Sounds like I woke you, bro. Whatever did you … ?”
“Never mind. What’s up?”
“Been reading through a bunch of notes Gerald left behind, a lot of technical magic stuff, a locked box I’ve been wondering whether to open, and several tricks in varying stages of completion. What do you think?”
“Bring the box and pape
rs, and come on back to the house, we’ll figure it from here.”
“Right. Oh by the way, Howie called me and told me how precious you looked when he left this morning.”
“Prick!”
“Thank you, dear, I’ll be home soon.”
Kam and Howie showed up at the same time. There wasn’t a flicker of the goings-on from last night. It was straight to business, as Howie pitched an envelope onto the coffee table.
“That, mah dear frayends, is the po-leece report. And, Jacob Finegold, Gerald’s and my lawyer, done tolt me he’s gonna read Gerald’s will tommorra. If’n we want ta hear it private-like, be at his office at nine in the mornin’. Plus I got a whole lotta other info, too.”
“First let’s dust this box I found for prints,” Kam said. “I’ve handled it gingerly, so any prints left should be undisturbed. He placed the metal safe on top of the police report and in short order lifted two sets of prints. He drove them over to another of Howie’s friends, who made a special run on them. Neither set was Kam’s.
The box was a medium security office type, the kind used mainly for protection from fire. We forced it open with the help of a drill, chisel, and pry bar. In it we found Gerald Tannon’s life story. It was in note format, handwritten, and in chronological order: the makings of his autobiography, and possibly the unmaking of his murderer.
The police report, when Howie got it, held nothing special. It stated that the autopsy showed Gerald Tannon had died of asphyxiation from the noose placed around his neck during the execution of a special effects stunt. Approximate time of death matched the timeframe within which the stunt had been performed. The only reason to suspect foul play was the phone call received by Howie Tabor, the caller claiming to be the deceased, and also the deceased’s car being driven off while he was hanging from the crane. It also stated that currently there are no suspects.
The additional information Howie gleaned was another matter. Our victim had a first cousin living in Vegas, with whom he had a very vocal and hostile relationship.