It’s made from a Lance Burton napkin, its petals ingeniously scalloped, the stem tightly coiled paper. Veranek beams at me.
“You just made this… here? That’s pretty good.”
“Works better with the ladies, I guess,” Veranek says with a smile. “Hey – I saw you at Showgirls of Magic, saw you at Penn and Teller. Figured you’re a fellow illusionist. Am I right?”
“Not exactly – but I can see that you are.”
Veranek smiles, shrugs. “You might say. I’m a retired engineer. I used to do magic as a hobby, but it’s become a second career. I do kids’ parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, the occasional cruise or trade show. Helps, given what happened to my portfolio. Now, that was a disappearing act.” He laughs and I join him. “So if you’re not a magician,” he says, “you’re what? A magic junkie?”
I tell him that I’m a private investigator. That I’m looking into a murder. I no longer bring up my kids if I can help it, hoping to sidestep the predictable sequence that follows disclosure of my nightmare. Recognition and the obligatory expression of sympathy give way to fascination and then to a barely disguised repugnance. The fascination is easy to understand: it’s the instinct that makes us stare at car crashes. The repugnance is similar to what cancer victims or the disabled must recognize: Despite the fact that whatever is wrong is not contagious, there’s nevertheless a fear of contagion. A terrible thing happened to me: No one wants to catch my bad luck.
“A murder?” Boyd Veranek squints at me, as if he’s not sure whether I’m joking or not. “And all of these magic shows fit into this investigation… how? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I think the killer is a magician.”
“Oh, boy. There goes the neighborhood. A professional? An amateur?”
I shake my head. “Don’t know. But I have some sketches. Mind taking a look?”
“By all means.” He squints, studies the sketches, shakes his head. “The murder was here? In Vegas?”
“Nearby. It was about three years ago. Showgirls murdered out in the Red Rock Canyon. You might have heard of it.”
He frowns, but any memory of the murders has been replaced by some fresher brutality. “Boy. I’m hitting all these shows to see if I can get a new wrinkle or two for my act, and you’re doing it… wow… to track a killer.”
I nod.
“You really want to know about magic – you ought to talk to Karl Kavanaugh,” Veranek says. “He lives here in Vegas and he knows everything.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a magician, although he doesn’t perform much anymore. He works for Copperfield – who has a museum of magic here.”
“Really.”
“It’s a private museum, but the point is Karl knows everything about magic – A to Z. He’s a magician’s magician. He might be able to help you. Might even recognize your guy.”
“You have his number?”
“I don’t. Not on me. He’s probably in the book – Karl with a K, Kavanaugh, also with a K. If not, give me a call, because I can probably track down his number for you. I’m at the Luxor. Veranek, with a V.”
“Okay, thanks a lot.”
It’s only a few minutes until showtime and the crowd begins to drift into the auditorium. I’m about to join them when Veranek thrusts a glass into my hands. “Here comes my wife. Would you hold this for a sec?”
He’s fiddling with his program, doing something fast and furious with his hands. Moments later, a sweet-faced woman squeezes through the crowd and appears at his side.
“There was a line,” she says, “in the little girls’ room.”
“I’d say you just got out in time,” Veranek says. “Look what you picked up in there. Must have come outta the plumbing.” He plucks something from her shoulder and holds it in his cupped hand. An ingeniously fashioned frog crouches there. Somehow, he makes it jump.
“Oh, Boyyyyyd.” The woman giggles like a teenager.
I stare at the frog, which reminds me powerfully of the origami rabbit I found on the boys’ bureau.
A jolt of paranoia hits me. This guy approached me, not the other way around. He looks nothing like my sketch of The Piper, but he is tall. He makes folded animals. He does magic tricks.
“That’s amazing,” I hear myself say. “That frog, that’s really good.”
“Nah – it’s not very good. I’m way rusty. Mostly I do balloon art these days. Origami’s kind of faded. Too bad, in a way. Folding has a very long history in magic. It kind of figures – you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“For one thing, it requires dexterity,” Veranek says, “and if nothing else, magicians are good with their hands. Also – it’s a transformation. Just a few folds and you turn a flat piece of paper into a bird, an animal. People like that. But you don’t see much folding anymore. It’s all balloons these days.” He smiles. “Same idea, though.”
I feel a sense of pressure in my head, as if I’m underwater. “Can you do a rabbit?”
“Boyd,” the sweet-faced woman says, “I don’t want to miss the beginning of Lance.”
“Don’t worry, honey; I can make a rabbit in thirty seconds flat.”
And he does. With impressive manual dexterity, Veranek tears the back of his program into a square. Seconds later, he’s transformed it into a cute little bunny. It looks nothing like the rabbit I found in the boys’ room. I tell myself that it proves nothing, not really, but my suspicion of Boyd Veranek evaporates.
The lights in the foyer begin to flash.
“That’s amazing,” I say, admiring the rabbit perched on the back of Veranek’s hand.
“Boyd,” his wife says. “Come on.”
Veranek executes a little bow and – I don’t see it happen – makes the rabbit disappear.
CHAPTER 26
Karl Kavanaugh is in the book, and I arrange to meet him the following morning. He suggests the Peppermill, which he tells me is on the upper Strip across from Circus Circus.
The restaurant occupies a shaggy shingled building, vintage Seventies, that seems to be crouching between its massive neighbors. Inside, blue velvet banquettes are shaded by faux cherry trees.
Kavanaugh waits for me just inside the entrance, a tall graceful man in a blue suit. “I’m in my sixties,” he told me on the phone. “I wear aviator sunglasses.”
We shake. Kavanaugh’s hand is large and strong, with long, elegant fingers.
“Boyd likes to lay it on,” he says. “But I’m no magician’s magician or whatever he told you. What I would claim is that I’m a student of magic.”
A young woman escorts us to a table. She wears a short pleated jumper and white blouse, a kind of sexualized version of a Catholic school uniform.
“Do you perform here in Vegas?” I ask him.
“No. I’m retired, more or less. I came here – well, I came here because I was following the craft.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, some industries stay put,” Kavanaugh says, “geographically speaking – like the motion picture industry, or maybe steelworking or shipbuilding, but magic keeps changing its capital. And right now it’s here in Vegas.”
“And before?”
Karl’s eyes brighten. “At the turn of the century, it was New York,” he says, “which makes sense. The stages were there, theatrical agents, gossip columnists, magic shops, vaudeville. Not to mention the big audiences. Remember, movies didn’t exist yet, so live entertainment was the only entertainment. So you’d get someone like Houdini, he’d draw huge crowds. As would his competitors and imitators. There was no copyrighting or trademarking back then, so there were plenty of Howdinis and Hondinis and Houdins – and they drew big crowds, too.”