Stuart Kaminsky - Now You See It

“Jeremy, no one comes through the kitchen but waiters,” he said. “Understood?”

“Perfectly,” Jeremy said.

“Look for bulges,” Phil said. “Weapons.”

Jeremy nodded.

“Everybody sit down,” he said.

They went to their assigned seats. Phil and I went to the ballroom door. Phil checked his watch. We could hear voices on the other side of the door. A few people tried the handle.

“You’d think you’d find one magician out of the sixty out there who could open a locked door,” I said.

Phil tugged his collar angrily, grunted, and opened the door. I stood on one side. He stood on the other. They came in one at a time, handing us their invitations. Phil and I checked for weapons. The magicians were of all ages, but mostly over fifty, and wore their tuxedoes as if they put one on every night, which some of them probably did. They were fat, thin, bushy-haired and bald. They had beards, mustaches, or were clean shaven. They chatted their way in, smiled as if they had a secret, and made their way to their tables. A few table-hopped. Some nodded across the room or held up a hand.

Ott, in a white tuxedo, didn’t come in till everyone was seated. In his hand was the black satchel he had shown to me and Phil, the one containing ten thousand dollars. He was accompanied by his assistant, the little guy named Leo, who took Ott’s black cape when Ott was sure that all eyes were on him. The cape came off with a swirl. There was a beat of silence as the assistant took a seat near the door and Ott marched to the platform without looking at any of his fellow magicians. He sat in one of the two chairs, placed the satchel on the floor next to his chair, and looked at the empty seat next to him, Blackstone’s seat. Then Ott looked at the door.

Harry Blackstone’s entrance was far less flamboyant than Ott’s. He wore a black tux with a white tie and a white handkerchief in his pocket. He looked exactly the way he looked for every performance of his that I had seen. He walked, not marched, past tables, exchanging a word or two at each table, nodding at Phil, smiling at me. When he did get on the platform and sit, Ott turned to him and smiled, as false a smile as was inhumanly possible and passable.

When it was clear that no one else was coming, Ott rose as waiters moved from table to table with bowls of biscuits.

“Fellow prestidigitators,” he said. “We are here to honor a man who truly needs no introduction.”

Polite applause.

“Harry Blackstone is a legend,” Ott said. “There are few true legends in our profession. And most of them fade into a mysterious cabinet called Time and are heard of no more. Many of them fall before their time because someone of imagination tests them, humbles them. None have yet been able to do that to the man we honor today. But, to make the evening one to remember, I have issued a friendly challenge to this man we so admire. There will be a surprise. But first, a few of our members have agreed to perform new feats of magical legerdemain. Wayne Dutton.”

Polite applause.

A roly-poly man with a bushy head of hair and mustache rose from a table near the podium. He moved to the open space in front of Blackstone and Ott, turned to the roomful of magicians and pulled out a red ball tied to a piece of string about two feet long.

Someone groaned and whispered, “Not the dancing ball.”

“The dancing ball,” said Wayne Dutton in a very high voice that guaranteed he would never have a career in show business, at least not as a magician.

He held up his hands. His shirtsleeves were too long. He held the string and let the ball down in front of him. The ball quivered a little. Then it began to move from side-to-side and then suddenly the ball went straight up in the air and the string stiffened. The ball was balanced at the top of the string. Wayne Dutton smiled beneath his bushy mustache.

Polite applause again. One of the magicians at our table leaned over to me and said, “There’s not a man in this room who couldn’t do that when he was twelve, with the exception of old Wayne.”

“How?” I asked.

“At least four different ways,” the man said, continuing to applaud as the ball suddenly dropped and the string became a string again. “Wayne is Ott’s number two sycophant, next to Leo.”

Two other magicians presented tricks, one who kept plucking playing cards out of the air and another who made lighted cigarettes suddenly appear and disappear.

Ott stood when the applause stopped and said, “We’ll have our dinner now, unless our honored guest wishes to entertain us with a feat of magic to start the evening, though it is obviously doubtful that he could top the marvel just performed by Wayne Dutton.”

Blackstone shrugged, stood up, raised a hand and as he flicked his wrist, the lights went out. I started to get up, but the lights came back on almost instantly.

Blackstone was gone.

There was a snap of fingers at the ballroom door and there stood Blackstone, thirty feet from where he had been only a second earlier. All eyes were on him as he grinned and the lights went out again. Again it was an instant before the lights were back on again. Blackstone was no longer at the door. He was back on the platform standing behind the podium.

The applause was more than polite. A few people rose. Blackstone swept back his tuxedo tails and took his seat next to Ott, who forced himself to smile. He whispered something to Blackstone, but I was too far away to hear what it was.

Salad came and went. Tomato soup came and went. I kept my eyes on Ott who smiled, eyes darting around, looking very satisfied. The main course was served.

I was spearing a potato, my eyes on Ott who was leaning forward slightly, when the lights went out again. Again they came back almost instantly. We all looked for Blackstone on the platform, expecting a repeat of the trick he’d already done, or some variation on it. But there Blackstone sat exactly where he had been. Next to him Calvin Ott was slumped forward, his face pressed against his plate, eyes closed, a knife buried deeply in his neck.

“There!” someone shouted.

The ballroom door was open. Someone in a brown jacket stood in the doorway for a beat, turned and ran.

“Don’t let him get away!” Sixty magicians, a dentist, a landlord, a tiny translator, a phony screenwriter, and two private detectives ran for the open door. I glanced back. The satchel was still next to the dead Ott’s chair. Blackstone was hurrying toward us.

I pushed past four or five people and went through the door. I could see a man in a brown jacket running across the lobby. I ran ahead of the crowd and through the door to the street. The runner was going down the sidewalk, pushing people out of the way. I closed the distance between us, but he was younger than me and in better shape. A blur of black and white passed me, caught up with the runner, and jumped on his back.

I was panting when I caught up. Passersby stopped to watch. Magicians caught up with us. The young magician who had caught the man stood up. He had a thin mustache and wasn’t breathing hard.

Phil caught up just as I was kneeling to double check the man in the brown jacket, who was lying on his back.

“Who the hell are you?” Phil asked, grabbing his neck.

The man wasn’t even a man. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and he was frightened.

“Nordman, Michael Nordman,” he said. “It was a joke. My head hurts.”

“A joke?” I asked.

“Or something. I don’t know. A guy gave me fifteen dollars and told me to stand outside the door. I was supposed to watch under it, and, when the lights went out, open the door, stand there for a second or two, then run away as fast as I could.”

“What guy?” asked Phil.