“We all know misdirection is the secret of any great magician’s art.”
“I’ve got proof!” Rudge said, suddenly remembering. “I videotaped every one of P’tol P’kah’s performances that I saw.”
Now both the youth and the sidekick looked interested. Rudge pressed his point. “I can give them to you. I can take you to them right after the party.”
For a moment, the youth looked like he was going to give in. Then his face hardened. “I think we should go now.”
“Why?”
The youth pointed back at the house, where Jimmy Eisenstein’s father was storming out through the glass door, carrying the still-dripping rabbit cage. Behind him, there was a path of bleached drops on the carpet.
“You drive,” Rudge said.
Chapter Fifteen
“ VHS?” Gus looked down at the huge pile of vid eocassettes on the desk in front of them. “Who uses VHS tapes anymore?”
“Probably someone who earned his last three-digit paycheck right after they stopped making the Beta max.” Shawn was on his back, reaching up behind the credenza on which the TV sat, searching with his hands for a free set of inputs to which he could attach the rented video player. With a grunt, he managed to force the jacks into their sockets, then stood up and pushed the credenza back against the wall.
“Ready for the magic,” Shawn said. “And by ‘magic,’ I mean a crummy video of some cheap stage trick.”
“Are you back to that?” Gus said, walking over to the machine and slipping in a tape. “Because I saw your face after the Dissolving Man. You were as amazed as anyone else.”
Gus pressed PLAY, but all the TV showed was a screen full of snow. Shawn was about to dive back behind the credenza when there was a clunk as the tape reached its end and started to rewind.
“First of all,” Shawn said, “I thought I was quite clear that any amazement I might have been registering was dedicated almost entirely to the sight of the chubby dead guy floating in the tank.”
“Almost entirely?”
“I’m being honest,” Shawn said. “I was also amazed that people pay two hundred bucks to sit through that act.”
“So now you’re going to tell me you know how he disappeared?” Gus said.
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will,” Shawn said. “And when I do, everyone who was impressed is going to feel pretty stupid.”
“What is it with you and stage magic?” Gus said.
“It’s a fake.”
Gus stifled the desire to say “and so are you”-first, because Shawn was completely aware of that, and second, because he was interested in the answer to his question and didn’t want to see the conversation spin out in another direction.
“Luke Skywalker’s a fake,” Gus said.“Batman’s a fake. Bugs Bunny’s a fake. He doesn’t even look like a real rabbit, but that doesn’t stop you from laughing every time he dresses up as a woman and kisses Elmer Fudd.”
“Because there’s no one standing outside the theater saying, ‘Come in here and see a real rabbit dressed as a human seducing a bald guy,’ ” Shawn said. “Which is just as well, because if they did, everyone involved would end up in prison.”
“So your entire problem with stage magic is that people pretend it’s real magic?”
Before Shawn could answer, there was a thunk from the VCR as the tape finished rewinding. Shawn grabbed the rental remote and hit PLAY. The machine whirred into life, a sideways green triangle appeared in the upper-right corner of the frame, but the rest of the screen stayed black.
“That’s great,” Gus said. “He’s probably been storing his tapes next to his magnet collection.”
“Worse,” Shawn said. “Look.”
Gus peered at the screen and saw a tiny pinhole of light in the center. The hole was moving, bobbing up and down in a jerky motion. “What is that?”
“I’m guessing it’s the buttonhole in a raincoat,” Shawn said. “You can sort of see the stitching around the edges.”
Gus went to the TV and brought his eyes a couple of inches away from the screen. There were stitches around the sides of the image.
“He recorded the entire act through his buttonhole?” Gus said.
“That would explain why he taped it so many times,” Shawn said. “Maybe he got a different inch of the tank every time and he was planning on stitching them together later.”
Gus was reaching for the EJECT button when the lighted hole stopped moving around on the screen, and then went out altogether. After a moment of blackness, the TV was filled with the image of P’tol P’kah’s stage set, the water-filled tank at the back.
“That’s a little better,” Shawn said. “As long as he doesn’t need to hide the camera from security again.”
The edges of the screen went dark as the houselights went down, and a roar of applause came through the TV speakers. After a moment, the green giant stomped out onto the stage. He was every bit as compelling on the small screen as he had been in person, Gus was surprised to discover, and his presence just as strong.
P’tol P’kah lifted his mammoth green arms for silence, and then started rushing around the stage faster than any human could do. It wasn’t magical; it wasn’t scary. If anything, the Martian’s movements seemed comical. It seemed like a strange strategy for someone who understood stagecraft as well as he did. And then Gus realized that the speed wasn’t P’tol P’kah’s doing.
“Stop fast-forwarding,” Gus said, reaching to snatch the remote out of Shawn’s hands. “I want to see this.”
“What we need to see is the Dissolving Man,” Shawn said. “That’s the end of the act. And while I’m sure our client would be happy if P’erry P’mason could get people to fork over two hundred bucks for a three-minute show, I’m going to bet we’ve got a long way to go until we get there.”
“Maybe I’d like to see his other tricks,” Gus said.
“Maybe you’d like your name on the building,” Shawn said. “Then you could say how we run our investigations. But since it’s my name on the building, I get to decide.”
“Your name is not on this building,” Gus said.
“I didn’t say which building my name is on,” Shawn said.
“Sorry, I must have forgotten about the Shawn Spencer Towers downtown,” Gus said.
“It so happens that my name graces one of the finest examples of Spanish Revival architecture in Santa Barbara,” Shawn said.
“Which one?”
“The police station,” Shawn said.
“The police station is now named for you?”
“I didn’t say it was named for me. I said my name was on it,” Shawn said. “And it is. Prominently in blue marker.”
“Because you put it there,” Gus said. “You wrote ‘Jules Hearts Shawn’ on the back wall by the Dump ster and then spent the next day trying to scrub it off before anyone could see it. And when you finally realized what indelible really meant, you took the ‘Re served for Head Detective’ sign off Lassiter’s parking space and covered it up.”
“Only until such time as the statement can be determined to be completely accurate,” Shawn said. “I’m a stickler for facts when I deface public property. Anyway, that’s not why we’re not going to stop fast-forwarding before we get to the Dissolving Man.”
“So what is?”
“The fact that we’re already there.” Shawn pressed PLAY just as P’tol P’kah wheeled a more ornate version of the airplane steps up to his tank. “At two hundred bucks a head, you’d think he could afford an assistant to help with the manual labor.”
Gus stared at the screen, transfixed, as P’tol P’kah performed his signature illusion. He tried to make himself study the act for flaws, for the momentary bit of distraction that would reveal the real secret of the trick, but he kept getting lost in the spectacle. It was almost as astonishing to see the Martian dissolve on video as it was live. As it had in the Fortress, the performance ended with a great explosion of light and sound. The video image flamed into white as the sudden brightness overwhelmed the camera’s sensors. But this time when the image came back, just as the houselights were rising, there was an audible gasp from the audience, and then a burst of applause.