“I thought when I found you I would beg you to tell me the secret, offer you whatever amount you wanted, tell you that I would forever attribute the illusion to Simon Adaire whenever I performed it,” said Blackstone. “And now …”
“You don’t want to know,” said Mrs. Plaut.
“That’s right,” said Blackstone. “How did you …?”
“That’s just what Thurston said when he found me,” she said. “He used a private detective named Richard Olin who charged him a sincere sum. Thurston never even asked me to tell him. Mr. Thurston said, ‘Even magicians need some magic in their lives.’”
“Especially magicians,” said Blackstone.
“I’ve written the secret in a letter,” said Mrs. Plaut. “The letter is in the safe of my lawyer, Mr. Leib. When I depart this vale of woes, good food, and Eddie Cantor on the radio, Mr. Leib will give the letter to Mr. Peelers who can do with it as he believes best.”
She looked at me and added “Accompanying the letter is a chapter of my family history about Simon. I have no more to say.”
“And I have no more to ask,” said Blackstone.
“Well, does anyone want more coffee or not?” she asked.
“I’ll have some,” said Bidwell.
“And I,” said Gunther.
Mrs. Plaut nodded, looked at Blackstone and said, “You do the buzz saw better than Simon. You do it all better than Simon, except for the girl in the ball. That’s all he really had.”
Mrs. Plaut disappeared into the kitchen.
“Amazing,” said Blackstone. “To find Irene Adaire on the same day … Mr. Peters, can we go in another room?”
We could and we did move into the parlor on the other side of the hall beyond Mrs. Plaut’s rooms.
“I’m sorry I didn’t wait till you got to your office, but I thought you or your brother should know immediately. You were closer to the hotel.”
Phil lived in the Valley, North Hollywood, across the hills.
“I got a call at the hotel at five this morning,” Blackstone said. “A man. He said that at the testimonial dinner for me tonight the audience would be watching the death of a magician. He said, his exact words, ‘And that will be the finish of Harry Blackstone.’ And then he hung up.”
“Was it Ott?”
“Perhaps.”
“Why would he warn you?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a warning,” said Blackstone. “It was a challenge, a challenge I intend to accept.”
Chapter 8
Place two identical glass bottles on a table. Borrow a dollar. Put the dollar over the middle of the mouth of one of the bottles. Turn the other bottle upside down and balance it on the mouth of the other bottle with the dollar between them. Announce that you can remove the dollar without disturbing or even touching the bottles. Challenge your audience to do it. Let them try if they wish. Solution; When you place the dollar between the two bottles, do not put the bottles on the center of the bill. Take the long end of the bill, draw it taut. Holding the end of the bill, raise the other hand above the dollar. Hit it in the middle and out comes the dollar.
“Are we ready?” Phil asked, running his thick palm over his short-cropped steel gray hair.
I knew Phil was controlling his lack of approval of the group of misfits who sat around the round conference table in the new office of the new firm of Pevsner and Peters.
The office was large, one of the largest in the building. It wasn’t, however, a suite, just one big room whose last renter was now in prison.
Jeremy Butler, our landlord, was seated at the table, and had set up a blackboard against the wall. Phil rolled a fresh piece of chalk in his hand and looked at us before he began.
I sat on Phil’s left. Next to me was Jeremy, large, bald, and serene. I was afraid he had written a poem for the occasion. I was reasonably sure he had or would. Jeremy, the ex-wrestler, was a poet for all seasons and reasons. I hoped he didn’t decide to read his latest work for this more-or-less captive audience.
Next to Jeremy sat Gunther, nattily dressed, tiny, erect, dignified, and ready with pencil in hand and pad of paper in front of him.
On Gunther’s left sat Shelly Minck, fidgeting with his thick glasses, wearing a fresh white dental smock, gnawing on an unlit cigar.
The last person at the table was the one neither Phil nor I wanted there. His name was Pancho Vanderhoff. Pancho was thin, old, wearing a long-sleeved purple shirt and what looked like a thin red scarf draped around his neck. Pancho’s face was unlined, his badly dyed black hair thick.
Shelly had introduced Pancho as a screenwriter “with lots of great credits.”
Shelly-now in the chips with money from a company that had bought one of his dental hygiene inventions, money from his recently dead wife Mildred, and money from the sale of his house at a hefty profit-had hired Pancho to write a movie about Shelly’s life, a movie which Shelly would produce.
“Pancho’s just going to observe,” Shelly had told me in the hall when I told him about the meeting. “This will be a great chance for him to see me in action as a detective. That’s what he’s going to concentrate on. You know, respected dentist by day, fearless private investigator by night, and on weekends.”
“You’re not a private detective,” I had reminded Shelly on the landing outside his office.
“I know. I know,” he had said impatiently. “But we’ve worked together on so many cases. I’ve helped a lot. You know that, Toby. I’ve helped a lot.”
That was true, but he had also nearly gotten me killed more than once, and I had been called upon at least five times to keep him from getting killed or sent to prison.
“Pancho’s in your old office,” Shelly had said earnestly.
I had rented a cubbyhole with a door and window in Shelly’s office till Phil and I had become partners. The cubbyhole was big enough for a desk and two chairs, one behind the small desk, one in front of it.
“You’ll love him,” Shelly had assured me, thick hand on my shoulder. “I’m telling you. Have I ever led you wrong?”
“Always, Shel,” I said.
“Well,” he said, waving it away, “That was in the past. Pancho’s worked with the best. He’s Dutch.”
“I see the connection,” I said.
“Good,” Shelly had said, adjusting his glasses.
I knew he had a patient in his dental chair, waiting. Even with the door to his office closed and the inner door shut, I could hear some poor victim gently moaning.
“You should get back to whoever’s in there,” I had said.
Shelly looked at his office door as if he had never seen it and then smiled sadly.
“Mrs. Shmpiks,” he said, shaking his head. “Molars like rotten little rocks. A challenge. But I’m up to it.”
“You always are,” I said. “Pancho can stay in his office when we meet.”
“Toby, please,” Shelly said, putting his hands together. “I’m pleading with you. This is important to me. He’ll be quiet.”
“I don’t think Phil will go for it,” I said.
“He’s your brother.”
“Yeah.”
“Toby, after all we’ve been through together,” said Shelly.
There were actually tears in his eyes. The door to his office had opened and his receptionist, Violet Gonsenelli, who also took messages for me and Phil, stuck her head out and said flatly, “I think your patient is dying.”
“She’s not dying. She’s not dying,” Shelly said. “She’s hurting. It’s natural. She’s fine.”
“I think she’s dying,” Violet said.
Violet was young, brunette, pretty, and the wife of a promising middleweight whose climb in the ratings had been postponed by the war. Rocky was somewhere in the Pacific.
“Okay, Shel. I’ll talk to Phil. Don’t be late.”
And now Pancho Vanderhoff sat at our conference table.
On the wall behind my desk in the corner were two things: a painting of a woman holding two babies, and a photograph of a young Phil, me, and our father with Phil’s German shepherd, Kaiser Wilhelm, in front of us. Our father was wearing his grocer’s apron. He had an arm around each of us. Young Phil didn’t look any happier in the photograph than he did standing next to the blackboard. The painting was a genuine Salvador Dali, given to me by Dali in appreciation for a job I did for him. Only a few people knew knew it was a real Dali. Three of them-me, Gunther and Jeremy-were seated at the table.