In fact, when Basque was reading about Gacy, he stumbled across an article in a 2008 Nursing Standard magazine in which Dr. Penny Curtis, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, had found that children were universally frightened of clowns.
Not some, not most, but all of the children in her study were scared of clowns. Stephen King capitalized on the fear people have of clowns in his book It.
So, if you wanted to gain the trust of a child, becoming a clown was not exactly the ideal way to go about it.
And although clowns were frightening to children, one of the things they do actually did serve to engender trust.
And in this case, that’s what Richard was interested in.
He parked, dropped a few coins in the meter, and crossed the sidewalk toward one of the last locally owned magic shops anywhere along the East Coast.
For a number of years he’d been quite close to a federal agent who, unfortunately, was no longer among the breathing, and Richard was well aware of how sophisticated the Bureau’s online tracking capabilities are.
He’d often thought that if people knew how much information the government collects on their online activity, they would probably never surf the Web again. Certainly never to child porn sites.
So Richard made no Internet orders.
Used no credit cards or checks.
Only cash transactions at small businesses that didn’t use video surveillance.
He entered Ryan’s Magic Emporium.
“Can I help you?” The stringy-haired twenty-something kid behind the counter looked bored, but was expertly vanishing and reappearing a coin in his hand even as he stared at Richard.
“Yes, I’m looking to learn a few tricks.” He swept his arm around the store. “I used to do this — sleight of hand, that sort of thing — when I was young. I always wanted to be a magician.”
“Didn’t we all.” The young man sighed lightly, held the quarter out, closed his fist, blew on it, and when he opened his hand the quarter was gone.
“Nice,” Richard said.
The guy closed his fist again, turned his hand over, and, with a flourish, flattened his palm against the counter. When he lifted his hand, five nickels were lying there.
“Very nice.”
“Thanks.” The kid yawned. “So, what? You want to do walk-around gigs? Birthday parties? Not too many people do the big effects anymore, the escapes, you know. Except for that guy.” He gestured toward a poster of a magician stepping through a wall with four words stamped across the bottom of the poster: THE JEVIN BANKS EXPERIENCE.
The kid continued, “That dude, man. He’s the real deal. Apart from him, the stuff he does — you can find out how to do almost any of the big effects — the walk-around ones too, for that matter — on YouTube. Everything’s posted these days. Some magicians thought it would be cool to break the magicians’ code and reveal all the tricks. Problem is—”
“It takes the fun out. For the kids.”
“For everyone.” The boy gathered up the five nickels. “See, the thing is, we say we want to be in on the trick, but as soon as the audience is—”
“It’s like guessing the end of a book — readers want to guess how it will end, or how it will get to the end, but secretly they want to be wrong. They’re disappointed if they’re right.”
The boy looked impressed. “Yeah, exactly. So it’s a game we play with the audience, right? A game of deceit.”
“So where is the quarter?”
He got a small gleam in his eye. “Where do you think?”
“In your right jeans pocket,” Richard said, though he knew it was the left one.
The boy smiled. “No, I saw your eyes. You were watching closely. You saw, didn’t you?”
“No,” Richard lied.
He pocketed the nickels. “Anyway, what kind of tricks you looking for?”
“Rope tricks.”
“Oh. Cut and restore, make the knot move down the rope, close-up effects, street magic, that sort of thing?”
“That sort of thing. And I’d like some that are reasonably easy to learn. I only have twenty-four hours before the big performance.”
“Hmm… which is?”
Richard smiled. “You hit the nail on the head earlier. I’ll be performing at a little girl’s birthday party.”
“Well, I’ve got a few you can buy, and really, you shouldn’t have to worry, most of ’em are easy to learn.”
“I’d rather learn them from someone who knows what he’s doing. What would you charge for a little lesson?”
The boy scoffed lightly and looked around. “It’s not like people are knocking down the door to get in here.” He went to the wall, ripped open a plastic bag with a rope in it. “Okay, so, how much time do you have?”
“As much as I need.”
“Tell you what, we’re supposed to close at five, but go ahead and flip the sign on the door.”
“To closed?”
“Yeah. That way no one will interrupt us.”
“Perfect.”
Richard took care of the sign.
“Well,” the kid said, “like I mentioned before — deceit. It’s all about deception and misdirection.” He looked at Richard good-naturedly. “Think you can handle that?”
“I think so.”
Richard felt a mixture of emotions. Before this night would be over, this young man was going to be dead and he had no idea how short his life span had become. If he knew, what would he do? What phone calls would he make? Would he cry or pray or go outside to look up at the sky and enjoy its majesty one last time? To Richard it was always a fascinating question.
Sometimes he told people exactly when they were going to die, just to see their reaction.
Usually, it was denial at first, but eventually it turned to fear, then desperation. And then, in a few cases, to peace. Mostly though, to unassailable terror.
However, Richard decided he wasn’t going to tell this young man. He would let him die while innocently, obliviously, teaching his tricks, which was something that he seemed to like doing. How many people get to exit this life really enjoying themselves?
In a way, it was a small recompense for the favor he was doing of giving this private lesson.
Richard decided to use the rope. After he’d learned a few tricks from the boy, he would show the boy a few of his own.
36
Lien-hua was out of the ICU and in a new room on the second floor when Tessa and I arrived at the hospital.
I carried the wedding invitations I’d picked up on the way, the ones with her last name finally spelled correctly. I also had a candle that I now set down out of sight. On the way over here I’d decided to give it to Lien-hua a little later, when we were alone.
Tessa brought the rather formidable cardboard box containing the fifteen desserts we’d purchased. She laid it on the chair beside the bed.
Lien-hua looked at her quizzically. “What’s that?”
“Something I think you’re going to like.” She gestured for Lien-hua to go ahead and open the box, which she did.
Inside were pieces of chocolate cake, three each from five different bakeries, all nestled in recycled cardboard containers — that little detail had been very important to Tessa.
“Friday night you promised me we were going to go cake tasting,” Tessa explained. “I’ve been waiting to do it ever since.”
“And,” I interjected, “as long as I was going to be here I figured I’d pitch in.”
“Well, you two just made my day.”
The next twenty minutes brought a nice respite from the case. We celebrated Lien-hua’s move from the ICU and the fact that she was a good recoverer, and in the end, she chose the double chocolate cake with white cream cheese frosting and yellow frosting chrysanthemums from Weber’s Bakery.