Stuart Kaminsky - Now You See It

We all looked at Mrs. Plaut, who adjusted her glasses and continued to eat with a fury that made it clear she had a sudden attack of starvation, or else she was doing her best to hide behind the blend of carrots, Treet, and eggs.

Blackstone shook his head and smiled before looking at me.

“Simon Adaire was an amazing magician,” he said. “I saw him in Chicago when I was about twelve years old. He performed an illusion, a brilliant trick, which no one has to this day been able to duplicate.”

Mrs. Plaut was now gulping tepid coffee.

“He placed his wife,” said Blackstone looking at Mrs. Plaut, “in a glass sphere about the size of an armchair. A steel mesh surrounded the sphere. And then …” Blackstone let his right hand lift toward the ceiling, “in full view and with his wife clearly visible, he had the sphere raised by a golden rope high above the audience. There was a drum roll and with a shout of ‘Kabow’ Irene Adaire disappeared.”

“Kapow,” Mrs. Plaut corrected. “Not ‘Kabow’.”

“Kapow, yes,” Blackstone said. “An instant, no more than a heartbeat later, Simon Adaire called out ‘Lights.’ The house lights came on and he pointed to a spot in the audience. From a seat, not an aisle seat, Irene Adaire stood up wearing the same costume she had worn in the sphere. I waited at the stage door till the show was over,” said Blackstone. “Adaire shook my hand and I told him I wanted to be a magician. His wife shook my hand. That’s when I saw the small birthmark, the tiny purple star.”

“It’s not a birthmark,” Mrs. Plaut said. “It’s a tattoo.”

We were all looking at Mrs. Plaut now.

“You were lovely,” Blackstone said.

Did Mrs. Plaut blush? Maybe.

“Simon Adaire died two years or so later,” Blackstone said. “My brother and I have tried for years to duplicate that piece of magic. We’ve come close, but never quite got it. Others have tried. Cheap and obvious imitations. Eventually, people began to think that the original Simon Adaire’s Woman in the Sphere illusion had been one of those cheap imitations. But it wasn’t. I was there.”

“More coffee anyone?” Mrs. Plaut asked, rising with her cup and saucer in hand.

In the hundreds of pages of Mrs. Plaut’s family history, there had not been a mention of anyone named Adaire, had not been a word about Adaire, whom she must have been married to before she married “The Mister” who had died about fifteen years ago.

“Amazing,” said Blackstone. “The wonders of the world of magic are nothing compared to the tricks of fate that God plays on us. To find you after all this time, after all the hands of women I have looked at, all the … forgive me.”

“I’m having more coffee,” said Mrs. Plaut, moving toward the kitchen.

“Mrs. Adaire,” Blackstone said. “You are almost certainly the only living person who knows the secret of the Woman in the Sphere.”

“Drat,” Mrs. Plaut said with a sigh, returning to her seat.

Blackstone laughed, a deep laugh showing even, white teeth.

“I thought when I found you I would beg you to tell me the secret, offer you whatever amount you wanted, tell you that I would forever attribute the illusion to Simon Adaire whenever I performed it,” said Blackstone. “And now …”

“You don’t want to know,” said Mrs. Plaut.

“That’s right,” said Blackstone. “How did you …?”

“That’s just what Thurston said when he found me,” she said. “He used a private detective named Richard Olin who charged him a sincere sum. Thurston never even asked me to tell him. Mr. Thurston said, ‘Even magicians need some magic in their lives.’”

“Especially magicians,” said Blackstone.

“I’ve written the secret in a letter,” said Mrs. Plaut. “The letter is in the safe of my lawyer, Mr. Leib. When I depart this vale of woes, good food, and Eddie Cantor on the radio, Mr. Leib will give the letter to Mr. Peelers who can do with it as he believes best.”

She looked at me and added “Accompanying the letter is a chapter of my family history about Simon. I have no more to say.”

“And I have no more to ask,” said Blackstone.

“Well, does anyone want more coffee or not?” she asked.

“I’ll have some,” said Bidwell.

“And I,” said Gunther.

Mrs. Plaut nodded, looked at Blackstone and said, “You do the buzz saw better than Simon. You do it all better than Simon, except for the girl in the ball. That’s all he really had.”

Mrs. Plaut disappeared into the kitchen.

“Amazing,” said Blackstone. “To find Irene Adaire on the same day … Mr. Peters, can we go in another room?”

We could and we did move into the parlor on the other side of the hall beyond Mrs. Plaut’s rooms.

“I’m sorry I didn’t wait till you got to your office, but I thought you or your brother should know immediately. You were closer to the hotel.”

Phil lived in the Valley, North Hollywood, across the hills.

“I got a call at the hotel at five this morning,” Blackstone said. “A man. He said that at the testimonial dinner for me tonight the audience would be watching the death of a magician. He said, his exact words, ‘And that will be the finish of Harry Blackstone.’ And then he hung up.”

“Was it Ott?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why would he warn you?” I asked.

“It wasn’t a warning,” said Blackstone. “It was a challenge, a challenge I intend to accept.”

“Are we ready?” Phil asked, running his thick palm over his short-cropped steel gray hair.

I knew Phil was controlling his lack of approval of the group of misfits who sat around the round conference table in the new office of the new firm of Pevsner and Peters.

The office was large, one of the largest in the building. It wasn’t, however, a suite, just one big room whose last renter was now in prison.

Jeremy Butler, our landlord, was seated at the table, and had set up a blackboard against the wall. Phil rolled a fresh piece of chalk in his hand and looked at us before he began.

I sat on Phil’s left. Next to me was Jeremy, large, bald, and serene. I was afraid he had written a poem for the occasion. I was reasonably sure he had or would. Jeremy, the ex-wrestler, was a poet for all seasons and reasons. I hoped he didn’t decide to read his latest work for this more-or-less captive audience.

Next to Jeremy sat Gunther, nattily dressed, tiny, erect, dignified, and ready with pencil in hand and pad of paper in front of him.

On Gunther’s left sat Shelly Minck, fidgeting with his thick glasses, wearing a fresh white dental smock, gnawing on an unlit cigar.

The last person at the table was the one neither Phil nor I wanted there. His name was Pancho Vanderhoff. Pancho was thin, old, wearing a long-sleeved purple shirt and what looked like a thin red scarf draped around his neck. Pancho’s face was unlined, his badly dyed black hair thick.

Shelly had introduced Pancho as a screenwriter “with lots of great credits.”