“Impressive,” I said as he led me down the hallway past more posters.
On my left was the wide-eyed face of a man wearing a large turban with a bright emerald green stone in the middle of it. The words on the sign read: Alexander. The Man Who Knows.
On the right was a poster of a smiling man with cartoonlike ghosts floating around him: Do Spirits Return? Houdini Says No And Proves It.
We moved past colorful posters of Brush the Mystic and His Hindu Box; Carter The Great Beats The Devil; Floyd, King of Magic; Dante; Levante, Long Tak Sam.
Ott stopped and faced the last one on the left at the end of the hallway.
“Probably my favorite of all.”
It was a color illustration, depicting a clean-shaven smiling man in a tux with a white flower in his buttonhole walking next to a white shrouded skeleton looking at him. A pot of fire sat next to them with little drawings of someone in an electric chair, a guillotine, and a man about to be lowered into a glass vat of water. The name Steen ran across the top of the poster, and there a phrase in French on the bottom.
“The man who is amused by death,” Ott translated, stepping into a large white-carpeted living room with ceiling-to-floor windows at the end.
The matching plush furniture included two armchairs and a sofa, with a large low round table between them. On the table was a skull nestled on a well-polished dark wooden base. The room was lined with shelves filled with gadgets.
Ott pointed to one of the chairs. I sat. It was comfortable. He clapped his hands and the chair began to shake. I held onto the arms to keep from falling.
“Spirits?” he asked, eyes widening.
He clapped again and the shaking stopped.
“Spirits?” he repeated. “Sherry? Something stronger? A beer?”
“Pepsi,” I said. “If you have it.”
The skull had turned slightly and was looking at me.
“That’s the skull of Bombay The Great,” Ott said, a small smile on his face. “Bombay perfected the flying carpet illusion. He lost his head in a train wreck outside of Turin in 1883. I gained his head forty years later. Pepsi?”
“Yeah,” I said, meeting Bombay the Great’s hollow gaze.
“Be right back,” Ott said, his grin growing, his eyebrows raised. “Amuse yourself, but don’t touch.”
When he left I got up and looked at the gizmos on shelves. There were glasses-both the kind you drink from and the kind you wear-books, lamps, an open straight razor, a package of gum, a long knife with a fancy ivory handle and a curved blade, matchboxes, a typewriter, cigar boxes, small statues of African figures and Greek warriors. A glassed-in cabinet held neatly arranged pistols and knives.
I was looking at a compact wooden radio when Ott returned with my Pepsi glass and a glass of something amber for himself.
“That’s the Anderson Surprise Radio,” he said, sitting and crossing his legs. “You turn it on and it works. You turn the dial and the top pops open with a loud electrical sizzle and a shower of spring-activated colorful balls. The company went out of business two years ago. An old man tried to get H.V. Kaltenborn on that radio, had a heart attack instead of the news.”
“Fascinating,” I said, raising my glass.
“Isn’t it?” he said, raising his.
“And the guns?”
“Cigarette lighters, flares, guns for making loud noise and lots of smoke. That’s what audiences like. The smell of smoke. The noise. The danger they know isn’t really danger and yet can think, ‘What if something goes wrong?’ Something could always go wrong. And sometimes it actually does.”
I drank and felt something on my chin. The glass was leaking. Ott beamed and grinned. I put the glass down in front of Bombay the Great.
“Dribble glass,” Ott said. “Can’t resist it. Sorry.”
He didn’t look sorry. I wiped my chin and neck with my sleeve, trying to show nothing.
“Get you another one?” he asked, starting to rise.
“No thanks,” I said.
He looked around the room with satisfaction.
“World’s largest collection of practical jokes,” he said with a sweep of his hand.
“Practical?”
“Yes, I’ve always wondered why they were called practical jokes too,” he said. “But I’ve learned to accept life’s small mysteries. You?”
“I try to solve them,” I said. “Unanswered questions give me stomach cramps. Why are you hosting a dinner in honor of Harry Blackstone?”
He nodded, reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case and a small matching lighter. He took a cigarette from the case, put it in his mouth, and flicked on the lighter. A tiny pink umbrella popped up from the lighter.
“Funny?” he said with a grin.
“Hilarious,” I said.
He put the lighter and case back in his pocket, played with the cigarette for a second and offered it to me.
“Don’t smoke,” I said.
“Just as well,” said Ott with a wide toothy grin. “It would have exploded.”
“Blackstone,” I reminded him.
“Bygones are bygones,” he said, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “He insulted me. I’ve learned to accept insults. Grudges are useless. Blackstone is a fine magician.”
“I didn’t see any Blackstone posters in the hall.”
“I respect him. I don’t admire him. My moods, my opinions change constantly. I can be laughing one minute, crying the next. Would you like some peanuts?”
“No. I’d like some answers.”
He let out an enormous sigh and stood up, taking a long drink from his glass and then placing the glass on the table.
“What do you see before you?” he asked.
I saw a slightly looney man with a lot of money and time.
“Calvin Ott,” I said.
“No,” he shouted, his face turning red. I think I jumped in my seat. “No,” he repeated calmly. “You see Maurice Keller, Illusionist Extraordinaire.”
“When’s the next show?” I said, forcing myself to grin and sit back.
“I don’t perform in public,” he said. “I may have something special in honor of Blackstone, however.”
“Mind if my brother and I show up?”
“No,” he said, happy again. “You’ll be welcome. In fact, I insist.”
I got up, looked at Bombay the Skull, who turned away from me. Ott was grinning.
“Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Your loss,” he said as I turned toward the hallway. “You can show yourself out?”
“I can.”
“There’s no door handle,” he called as I walked down the hallway of posters. “Just say the magic words.”
“Abracadabra,” I said standing in front of the door.
“No,” called Ott. “That’s for getting in. The other words.”
“Open Sesame,” I said.
The door swung open suddenly, missing me by a few inches.
Behind me Ott said, “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed before someone got hurt.”
I went outside. The door closed. The stone gargoyles watched me leave.
I drove home, Mrs. Irene Plaut’s boarding house on Heliotrope in Hollywood. I hadn’t let onto Ott, but the dribble glass had done more damage than I let show. My shirt was soaked with sticky Pepsi. I had to change.
I found a Bill Stern sports report on the radio. Bucky Walters of the Reds was on his way to winning 30 games. A bunch of pitchers looked like they were going to win 20 including George Munger of the Cards, Bill Voiselle of the Giants, Rip Sewell of the Pirates, Ted Hughson of the Red Sox, Hank Borowy of the Yankees, Hal Newhouser of the Tigers, and Bill Detrich of the White Sox. It was a pitcher’s season.
There was a parking space right in front of Mrs. Plaut’s. It was small, but so was the Crosley. I hadn’t picked up a parking ticket in almost two years, which is quite an accomplishment given the Los Angeles traffic regulations that seemed to be designed to guarantee an unlimited source of revenue from drivers who couldn’t keep it all straight.
The Los Angeles speed limit was twenty miles an hour in business districts, twenty-five miles an hour in residential districts. Right turns were permitted against the red from the right-hand lane after a full stop, but pedestrians and vehicles proceeding with a signal had the right of way. There was no parking along red or yellow curbs, three-minute parking along white curbs, fifteen-minute parking at green curbs. Along unmarked curbs, you could park for forty-five minutes in the Central Traffic District from seven in the morning till four-thirty in the afternoon, but there was no parking in the district from four-thirty to six p.m. Parking was unlimited from six p.m. till two a.m. From two to four a.m. there was a thirty-minute parking limit, but parking was unlimited from four till seven a.m.