“We’ll stop him,” said Jeremy confidently.
I tried to imagine Jeremy in a tuxedo. I couldn’t.
“You have a moment?” he asked, reaching into his pocket.
I knew what was going to come out, but I really had no choice.
“Sure,” I said. “A poem?”
“It isn’t long,” he said, unfolding the sheet. “It’s called Magic.”
The Farraday did not suddenly go silent, but the persistent clatter and clang didn’t stop Jeremy Butler from his poem.
“It is not real magic we expect
but the illusion. We desire to be fooled,
are pleasured to know the miracle
we are about to witness is a trick
inside of which are hidden wheels.
‘How did he do that?’ we ask.
But do we really want to know?
In theater darkness, looking up,
we are transported to a Camelot
where belief is truth and truth belief.
A man told me he knew there was a God.
‘Miracles prove this truth.’
‘Today I believe there is no God,’ I said.
‘How do you know there is no God?’
‘I do not know, I tell you what I believe.
You tell me what you believe
and declare that it is truth.’
The magician asks us to believe
for only the space and time of illusion.
He does not ask for endless faith.
We need more magicians.”
He folded the sheet of paper neatly and put it back in his pocket.
“We need more magicians,” I said.
I didn’t understand most of Jeremy’s poems and this one was no exception.
“I have to revise it,” he said, moving back to his floor polisher. “I fear there are too many magicians like Mr. Ott and they are not all on the theater stage. Many of them are on the stage of life.”
“Yep,” I said, feeling the rumble of forgotten taco in my stomach, the hole in my molar, the slight but distinct ache in my shoulder. “You going to publish it?”
“When I revise it,” he said. “Perhaps it should rhyme.”
“Good idea,” I said. “You make it rhyme, and people know for sure that it’s poetry. See you tonight.”
I headed for the door. Behind me, the polisher rattled back to life.
“He’s right.” I heard a familiar voice say behind me as I stepped onto Hoover.
I turned my head to see Juanita.
“I heard the poem,” she said. “He’s right. At least about some of it.”
Juanita was a seer. Born seventy years earlier in Brooklyn, she had grown up as a nice Jewish housewife with a solid husband, and, when he died, a second solid husband who also died. She had not chosen to have visions, but they had come-on her fiftieth birthday, to be exact. She had then migrated to Los Angeles, rented an office in the Farraday, and handed out little printed cards. Now she had a running clientele, mostly Mexicans and Eastern European refugees. Juanita could see into the future.
“It comes in little flashes, like waking dreams or just words,” she had once told me. “I don’t know.”
The problem with Juanita’s visions was that they almost never made sense till they had taken place, and, by then, it was too late to do anything about them.
“Gift, curse, who the hell knows, you know what I mean?”
Now overly made-up, gypsy dressed, with bangled earrings tinkling, the slightly pudgy Juanita stood at my side and looked at the passing parade of cars, servicemen on leave, people going out to late lunch. She sighed.
“I was looking for you,” she said.
“Juanita,” I almost pleaded.
She shrugged.
“You don’t want to hear, you don’t want to hear. Who’s going to force you?”
“You are,” I said.
“Force is too strong a word,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“He’s going to be dead, but he isn’t going to be dead, but he is going to be dead,” she said, looking at me.
“What?”
“Soon,” she said. “And the other guy. In what my first husband used to call a penguin suit.”
“Tuxedo,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said with a dismissive wave of her heavily ringed and scarlet-nailed hand. “He’s here. Darkness. Light. He’s there. Darkness. Light. He’s back over here again. You’ll see. You’ll be there. Lots of penguins. You’re a penguin, too.”
“Very helpful.”
“My pleasure,” she said. “No, my duty. Got no choice in the matter. I was heading to Manny’s for a taco. I’ll buy you one.”
“Just ate a couple, thanks,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” said Juanita. “Just watch out for that dead penguin.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Juanita took a few steps toward Manny’s and then turned around suddenly.
“Don’t wait for the pain,” she said earnestly.
“What pain?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you’ll have warnings. You won’t listen to them, but you’ll have warnings.”
“If I won’t listen to them,” I said, “why tell me not to wait for the pain?”
“You think I know?” she said with a shrug and a shake of her head. “I see it. I tell you. It happens. I’m a seer, not a magician.”
“I know a magician,” I said. “Maybe he can help me.”
“You’re kiddin’ me Toby,” she said, “but, kiddin’ aside, your magician’s got his own worries, let me tell you. I’m hungry like an ox.”
This time she did move toward Manny’s. I considered calling after her to be careful of pebbles in her taco, but decided she might think I was making fun of her.
I headed for the car and was at County Hospital about twelve minutes later.
Blackstone was standing next to Gwen’s bed when I went through the door of her room. He was wearing a blue suit with a red bow tie. She was laughing. He was smiling. He held a rabbit in his hand. He handed it to her and she looked up at me.
“Look,” she said, cuddling the white ball of nose-twitching fluff. “He’s mine. He pulled him right out from under my pillow.”
“We haven’t given him a name yet,” said Blackstone.
“I’ll call him Tyrone,” Gwen said. “After Tyrone Power.”
She was sitting up, a little pale, but not the least like someone who had been shot the night before. She stroked the animal and rubbed her nose against his.
“We’ve been talking about what happened last night,” Black-stone said. “Very curious.”
“Very curious,” I agreed.
The magician pursed his lips and looked at his hands before he said,
“The killer of Mr. Cunningham used a 9mm weapon, correct?”
“Correct,” I said.
“But Gwen was shot at close range with a pellet gun,” he went on. “As were you.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Which suggests that the killer switched guns and chose one unlikely to kill Gwen,” he said.
“Or,” I said, “there were two shooters.”
“Working together?” he asked.
“Could be. Another thought,” I threw in. “Our shooter only wanted to make it look like he was trying to kill the witness. He shot Gwen because it made sense to go for the one person who could identify him.”
“But he didn’t want to kill her,” said Blackstone. “Suggesting that he wanted her alive to identify him. But why would he want to be …”
“You got it?”
“Got what?” Gwen asked looking up from the rabbit.
“Describe the man who shot you again,” I said. “Was it the same man you saw shoot Cunningham in the dressing room?”
“Yes,” she said. “Well, I think so. Tux, beard, turban.”
“That’s what you told the police?” I asked.
“Yes.”