“Mister Pansy, I…”
“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 proceededto 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. Mischiefwas 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.”