“How fiendishly clever,” I replied. I admit I said it quietly. I was saving my wittier ripostes until there was pavement under my feet again.
I hadn’t been to the Rabbit Club in a while, and was faintly depressed at the changes. I suppose on the salary the school board forked out Emily didn’t get out much, because she seemed quite taken with the place. Actually, set against the rather faded glories of the club—its heyday had roughly paralleled that of the Brooklyn Dodgers—she looked far more natural than me in my leather jacket and jeans. With her strapless cocktail dress and horn-rimmed glasses, she might have been sent over by Central Casting.
As I mused, she said something I didn’t quite catch, and I realized I had stopped in the middle of the aisle to admire her shoulders (I have always been a sucker for a faint dusting of freckles). I hurried her toward a booth.
The show was not the sort to make anyone sit up in wonder, but the club was one of the few places left in town where young magic talent could get a start. Looking around the darkened room, I felt a certain nostalgia for my own rookie days. Over the following hour we watched a succession of inexperienced prestidigitators fumble bouquets out of their sleeves and make coins jump across the backs of their hands while hardly ever dropping them. I nursed a soda water—rewarded for my choice with a restrained smile from my companion—but Emily drank two and a half glasses of champagne and applauded vigorously for one of the least sterling examples of the Floating Rings I’d ever seen. I decided sourly that the young (and rather irritatingly well-built) magician’s no-shirt-under-the-tux outfit had influenced her appreciation.
After the break, during which the tiny house band wheezed through a couple of Glenn Miller numbers, Fabrizio Ivone was announced. The headliner had not changed much since the last time I’d seen him. He was a little older, of course, but aren’t we all? His patter was delivered with a certain old-world formality, and his slicked-down hair and tiny mustache made him seem a remnant of the previous century. Watching him work his effortless way through a good group of standard illusions, it was easy to forget we were living in an era of jumbo jets and computers and special effects movies. When he finished by producing a white dove from a flaming Chinese lacquer box, the smallish crowd gave him an enthusiastic ovation.
I took Emily backstage on my arm (at this point she was a wee bit unsteady on her pins) and quickly located the dressing room. Ivone was putting his brilliantined hair, or at least the part that wasn’t real, back in its box.
“The world of Illusion,” said Emily, and giggled. I squeezed her wrist hard.
“That was a splendid show, Mister Ivone. I don’t know if you remember me—we worked a bill together in Vegas about ten years ago, at the Dunes I think it was. Dalton Pinnard—Pinardo the Magnificent?”
“Ah, of course.” He looked me up and down and went back to taking off his makeup. He didn’t look like he cared much one way or the other.
“And this is my friend, Emily Heltenbocker.” I took a breath and decided to go for the direct approach. “Her father was Charlie Helton.”
A plucked eyebrow crept up that eggshell dome of a forehead. “Ah. I was sad to hear about him.” He sounded about as sorry as he’d seemed glad to see me again.
“We were wondering if you might know anything about the book he was writing,” said Emily. “Somebody stole it.” She gifted Ivone with a dazzling smile. It was a good smile, but I couldn’t match it since I was wincing at her sledgehammer approach.
The old magician gave her a look he probably used more often on sidewalk dog surprises. “I heard it was full of slanders. I am not unhappy to hear it has been stolen, if that were to be the end of it, but I have no doubt it will soon appear in the gutter press. If you are asking me if I know anything about this sordid affair, the answer is no. If you are insinuating I had anything to do with the theft, then you will be speaking to my lawyer.”
I trod ever so gently on Emily’s foot, preparing to steer the conversation in a friendlier direction. My new initiative was delayed somewhat by the wicked elbow she gave me back in the solar plexus. When I could breathe again, I said: “No, Mister Ivone, we don’t think any such thing. We were just hoping that you might be able to tell us anything you know about Charlie’s relationship with other magicians. You know, so we can decide once and for all if there’s anything sinister in the disappearance. But you, sir, are of course above suspicion.”
He stared at me for a moment and I wondered if I’d overdone it. The cold cream was caked in his wizened features like a bad plastering job. “I would never harm anyone,” he said at last, “but I must say that I did not like your father, young woman. Even in the Savini Academy—yes, we studied together—he was never serious. He and his friends, they were all the time laughing in the back row.”
“And who were his friends in the Academy?”
Ivone shrugged. “I do not remember. Pranksters, guttersnipes, not true artists. He was the only one of that sort who graduated.”
I let out a breath. So if Charlie had known the other two men at school, they hadn’t been close chums.
Ivone was still in full, indignant flow. “He did not show the respect for our great tradition, not then, not later. Always he was making jokes, even when he was on the stage, silly riddles and stories, little puzzles as though he were performing to entertain children.” He placed his toupee in its box as carefully as if it were the relic of some dead saint, and solemnly shut the lid. “I have appeared before the crowned heads of Europe and Asia in my day, and never once on the stage have I made a joke.”
I didn’t doubt him for a moment.
“I wish you’d kept your mouth shut,” I said. It didn’t come across as forceful as it sounds, since Emily had already pulled away from the curb and I was frantically groping on the floor for the other half of my seatbelt.
“Don’t be rude—you’re an employee, remember. Besides, I didn’t like him. He was a very small-souled man.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not the point. After you’d just gone and blurted that out about the book he wasn’t going to give anything away. I couldn’t very well ask him where he’d been when your dad died, for instance.”
Emily made a face. “But I know that already. He was onstage at the Rabbit Club—he’s been performing there for weeks. I checked.”
“What?”
“I checked. I called the Performing Artist’s Guild after you told me his name. He was working the night my father was killed.”
I stared. The trained fingers I had once insured (okay, only for five thousand bucks on a twenty-six-dollar monthly premium—it was a publicity stunt) itched to throttle her, or at least to pull those stupid glasses off and see if she drove any better without them.
“He was working? Fabrizio Ivone, this supposed murderer, was on the other side of town pulling coins out of people’s noses when your father died?”
“Yes, I just told you that I called the Guild. Don’t get so defensive—I didn’t expect you to do all the work, just the stuff that needed expert knowledge.”
I threw myself back against my seat, but our sudden stop in the middle of an intersection catapulted me forward again microseconds later. “I can’t believe I’m wasting my time on this nonsense,” I growled. The light had turned green again, but Charlie’s daughter seemed to be waiting for a shade she liked better. “The point I’m making, Emily, is that Fabrizio Ivone has an alibi. As in, ‘Release this honest citizen, Sergeant, he’s got an alibi.’”
She shook her head pityingly, as though I had just urged her to buy heavily into Flat Earth futures. “Haven’t you ever heard of hired killers?” We lurched into motion just as the light turned red once more.
You just can’t trust clients. It happens every time. They come through your door, wave money under your nose and make lots of promises—then boom! Next thing you know, that little party you were hired for turns out to be a smoker, and you’re doing card tricks for a bunch of surly drunks because the stripper hasn’t sho
wed up.
Yeah, I’m a little bitter. When you’ve been around this business as long as I have you get that way. You splurge on a Tibetan Mystery Box some guy swears is just like new and when you get it home it’s riddled with woodworm. You order a shipment of doves from the mail order house and they forget to punch air-holes in the box. And women! Don’t even talk to me about women. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been standing around backstage somewhere, ten minutes before curtain for the Sunday matinee, arguing on the phone with my latest assistant, who isn’t there because she’s got water-bloat, or her boyfriend’s in jail, or because I introduced her as “the lovely Zelda” the night before and her name’s really “Zora.”
“Pull over,” I snapped. “And try using the brakes instead of just glancing off streetlights until the car stops.”
She followed my advice. (In fact, she used the brakes so enthusiastically that I wore a very accurate impression of the dashboard grain on my forehead for hours afterward.)
“Get the hell out, then,” she said. “I knew you were a loser from the moment I first saw you crawling around on the floor.”
“Well, I may be a loser...but you hired me.” The effect of my clever comeback and sweeping exit was diminished slightly by the fact that I hadn’t unbuckled the safety belt. The ensuing struggle also allowed me time to cool down a little. After I finally worked free and fell onto the sidewalk, I turned to look back, expecting to see the tears of a helpless woman, or perhaps a momentary glimpse of Charlie’s features in hers, which would remind me of the old friend whose desperate daughter this was. Emily wasn’t such a bad kid, really. I was half-ready to have my gruff masculine heart melted.
“Shut the damn door,” she snarled. If there were any tears, I definitely missed them.
She did manage to run over my foot as she drove away.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised, I reflected as I limped home. I had fallen out with Emily’s father much the same way. Nobody in the whole damn family could admit they were wrong.
Charlie Helton had been a wonderful guy, my mentor in the business. He’d helped me find my first agent and had shared many of his hard-won secrets with me, giving me a boost that few young performers got. He’d been everywhere almost, had done things few other people had even read about, and could tell you stories that would make your eyes pop out. But he could be difficult and stubborn at times, and as Ivone had so vividly remembered, he had a rather strange idea of fun. After he and Emily’s mother had broken up he had lived a solitary life—I hadn’t even known he’d been married until several years into our friendship—and like a lot of bachelor-types, his life revolved around what other people might consider pretty useless hobbies. In Charlie’s case there were two: puzzles and practical jokes.
Unfortunately, not all of his jokes were funny, at least to the victims. One such, a particularly complicated operation, had involved my booking for a show at a naturist colony in the Catskills. I was very uncertain, since it required me to perform naked except for cape and top hat, but Charlie convinced me that a lot of big entertainment people were weekend nudists, and that I would be bound to make some great contacts.
When I arrived at the resort the night of the show I was met backstage by the club manager, who was definitely naked. He was a big fat guy of about fifty, and knowing that people like him could do it helped me wrestle down my inhibitions. See, when you perform, if the stage lights are bright enough, you hardly see the audience anyway; the manager assured me that it would be just like doing a show in my own bedroom. So, I stripped, squared my shoulders, calmed my quivering stomach, and marched out onto the stage.
And no, it wasn’t a nudist colony, of course. It was a regular Catskills resort, median audience age: almost dead and holding. The “club manager” was a confederate of Charlie’s who’d taken off as soon as he’d finished his part of the scam.
The audience was not amused. Neither was I.
The sad thing was, Charlie and I fell out not because of the prank itself, nasty as it had been, but because I refused to admit there was anything humorous about it. I guess his pride was wounded—he thought he was the funniest guy in the world.
Things started to go downhill for me after that, but not because of my premature venture into performance art. I just caught some bad breaks. Well, a lot of bad breaks.
Maybe Charlie had been feeling guilty about our parting all these years, and about not being around to help me get back on my feet. Maybe that was why he’d told his daughter that if she ever needed someone to trust, to seek me out.
There was something else to consider, I suddenly realized. On the infinitesimal chance that Emily Heltenbocker was right and everyone else was wrong, maybe Charlie had been snuffed because one of his jokes had offended someone. Maybe he’d made a bad enemy, and it didn’t have anything to do with his manuscript at all.
I was pleased with this genuine detective-style thinking. Despite the misery of my long trudge home, I began to consider whether I should allow Emily—if she was suitably contrite—to rehire me. Charlie and I had been through a lot of good times before the bottom fell out. Maybe his daughter deserved a little patience.
Not to mention that she owed me for at least one night’s work.
“Your girlfriend’s on the phone,” shouted Tilly.
I put down my self-help bankruptcy book and unhurriedly picked up the receiver. I had known Emily would come crawling back, but I wasn’t going to let her off too easily.
“You still have my father’s graduation photograph,” she said in a tone like a whip-crack. “Send it back immediately or I’ll come over there and break your arm.”
She was playing it a little more cagily than I’d expected. “Don’t hurt me,” I said. “My health insurance lists attack-by-schoolteacher as an Act of God, and it’ll be hell getting them to pay.”
“Just send me the picture. Right now.”
I was sure I detected an undercurrent of playfulness in her voice, albeit well-camouflaged. “How about if I drop it by in person? Then we can discuss last night’s little difference of opinion.”
“If you come within a mile of me, you’re going to have to learn how to make balloon animals with your teeth.”
She hung up loudly enough to loosen a few of my fillings, but I knew I basically had her.
Thus it was that after only a few dozen more phone calls (and a slight strategic modification on my part which might have been mistaken by some unschooled observers for a cringing apology) Emily Heltenbocker and I resumed our partnership.
“Tell me their names again.” She revved the engine, although the light was still resolutely red.
I’d finally pinned down the other two mystery men, through laborious research in various trade booking guides. “Sandor Horja Nagy, the Hungarian Houdini—he’s the one we’re going to see right now. The other’s Gerard O’Neill. And, just for your information, they were both doing shows on the night in question, just like Ivone. Two more airtight alibis.”
“For goodness sake, Pinnard, you’re so unimaginative. We’re talking about magicians—people who disappear and reappear elsewhere for a living. Honestly, if this were a murder mystery in a book, you’d be the idiot cop they always have stumbling around to make the detective look good.”
“Thank you for your many kindnesses.” I reached into my pocket for my cigarettes. Emily had finally tendered my retainer and I had splurged on a whole carton. “Whatever you may think, a stage magician nearing retirement age cannot disappear in the middle of a downtown performance, catch a cab to the suburbs, murder an old classmate, and be back before the audience notices. And he can’t spin straw into gold or turn a pumpkin into a horse-drawn carriage either, just in case you still harbor some misconceptions about what real magicians do.” I leaned back and withdrew my new, top-of-the-line disposable lighter.
“Don’t you dare light that in my car. I don’t want my upholstery smelling of smoke.”
Obviously she had
no similar problem with the scent of self-deceit and denial. I didn’t say that, of course. Long years of working with the public have taught me that, although the customer may not always be right, only a fool behaves otherwise before he’s been paid in full. “Look,” I said, “I’m just being sensible. You’re a nice lady, Emily, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. The police say it was an accident. The coroner said it was an accident. And all your suspects have alibis. When are you going to face up to what that really means?”
She started an angry reply, but bit it off. She stayed silent for a long while, and even when the light finally turned green, she accelerated with none of her usual gusto. I was pleased that I had finally made her see sense, but not exactly happy about it, if you know what I mean. Sometimes when something goes very wrong, we humans desperately want there to be a reason. It’s not fun being the person who takes that possibility away.
“It’s just not like my father,” she said at last. “Suicide, never. Not in a million years. So that leaves accident. But you knew him too, Pinnard. You know how carefully he planned everything.”
I had to admit that was true. Watching Charlie work up an illusion was like watching Admiral Nimitz setting out his bath toys—no detail too small for obsessive consideration. “But sometimes even careful people get careless,” I pointed out. “Or sometimes they just don’t give a damn any more. You told me he was having real bad financial problems.”
“You are too, but I don’t see you getting your throat slit.”
“Not when I’ve got a whole carton of cigarettes,” I said cheerfully. “I prefer my suicide slow.”
“That’s not very funny.”
I immediately felt bad. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. Look, let’s go see this Nagy guy. Even if it turns out you’re wrong about the murder angle, you’ll feel better if you know for certain.”