Stuart Kaminsky: Now You See It

Marcus Keller

I looked across at the magician who said, “It’s a challenge. Marcus Keller is not someone who would be honoring me. He considers himself a rival, and he has both spoken at meetings and written letters to magic magazines attacking me and my show.”

“Why?”

Blackstone considered, touched his mustache with a slender finger, and said, “He is-and this is charitable-a third-rate parlor magician with a family fortune in furniture manufacturing. His real name is Calvin Ott, the name I gave you yesterday when I called. Ott took his stage name from my mentor, the great Keller, claiming that he had given him the secret to all of his illusions. It was nonsense. I made the mistake of saying so to my friend Dunninger, the mentalist. My remarks were over-heard by some people and …”

“It got back to Keller …”

“Ott,” Blackstone corrected.

“Ott,” I acknowledged.

“That was three years ago,” said Blackstone. “The man is more than a little demented, a prankster who has bought, flattered, and muscled his way into the office of Conjuror of Los Angeles Friends of Magic. With determination, money, and a devious personality, Calvin Ott has succeeded in making more enemies than Tojo.”

“So why is he honoring you?”

Blackstone shrugged and smiled.

“He most certainly isn’t.”

“You’re going?” I asked.

“I’ve already accepted. We have no show Saturday night. Ott knows that. The theater has been booked for a Sinatra concert.”

“And you want us to …?”

“I have a romantic attitude toward challenges,” Blackstone said with a grin. “Normally, I’d just do it and take whatever comes, but the same day I accepted the invitation I received a call at my hotel threatening to sabotage my show if I didn’t reveal to him the secret of my illusions. The hint of personal danger was also very much a part of the conversation.”

He told me then about the call and the man who’d threatened to show up at the theater to embarrass him unless he agreed to reveal all his secrets.

“How were you supposed to give him this information?”

“He said he would have someone at the theater to get it just before the show.”

“You called the police, got to Sergeant Seidman and he suggested that you call us?”

“Correct.”

“You think the invitation and the threat are connected?”

“I believe in coincidence,” said Blackstone, “but I don’t trust in it. No one has ever threatened me before. And Ott’s jealous rivalry is at least a bit mad.”

I pulled a pad of paper and one of the two sharpened pencils I had placed on the table over to me, took a sip of coffee, and got some background information on Blackstone.

Onre Boughton was born September 27, 1885, in Chicago. One of seven brothers, his father was a Civil War veteran who had fought with the Union Army. His mother was a milliner, and his father made men’s hats. Their company, Bouton (the ‘gh’ removed) and Adams was successful and later became the Adams Hat Company.

“Unfortunately,” Blackstone said, “my father could not stand prosperity. He supported the saloons of Chicago’s South Side instead of his family. I went, at the age of seven, to live in the Home for the Friendless. My father died when I was fifteen.”

Blackstone had apprenticed himself to a Halstead Street cabinetmaker. After seeing a performance by the Great Keller, the young Onre Bouton decided to become a magician. When he was 17, he and his younger brother Peter put together a vaudeville act in which Harry did magic tricks and Pete followed with a comic version of the same trick.

In 1910, at the age of 25, Harry, using his skills at slight of hand and cabinetmaking, created his first big illusion show.

“Pete and I put it together with scrap wood, borrowed props, secondhand costumes and a pile of unwanted handbills for a long defunct magic act called Fredrik the Great. I remained Fredrik the Great till World War I, when it no longer was a good idea. And the rest is …”

“… history,” I said looking up.

“Mystery,” he corrected with a smile.

I also learned that Blackstone now made his headquarters, workshop, and home in Colon, Michigan, in St. Joseph County, where he owned 208 acres of woods, fields, and beachfront on Sturgeon Lake. There was more, lots more. I filled four pages before the door opened and Phil stepped in.

I introduced them. My brother shook hands, nodded at the magician, got himself a cup of coffee, and sat at the table.

“Calvin Ott is a nut,” Phil said, sitting back and running his right hand over the gray bristle of his military haircut. “Calls himself Marcus Keller. He’s got a long list of people he doesn’t like. He writes letters, makes speeches, brings lawsuits that go nowhere and spends a lot of his family’s money making life miserable for people who have made the mistake of existing on the same planet with him, including a tailor, a magazine editor, three different actors, a producer, an actress, and …”

“A magician,” Blackstone finished.

“More than one,” Phil said, working on his coffee. “But you in particular.”

I pushed Blackstone’s invitation to the dinner in front of him. Phil had already seen it, but he looked at it again. “I think I should have a talk with Calvin Ott,” he said.

Blackstone didn’t know, but I did, that “a little talk” to Phil was a few questions and then, if he didn’t like the answers, woe to the other guy.

“Why don’t I do that?” I said. “You stay with Mr. Blackstone and….”

There was a knock at the door, and a short, pudgy man with thick glasses, very little hair and a half-smoked cigar stepped in without being invited. Shelly Minck was wearing a once-white short smock with small but distinct splotches of blood in a decorative line across his chest.

Shelly was a dentist. At least he had a dental degree. There were those who called him less respectful things than “dentist.” His technique was clumsy, his office less than clean, his manner insensitive, and his enthusiasm unbridled. Until a month ago, when my brother joined me, I had rented a small cubbyhole inside Shelly’s office down the hall.

Shelly had spent years inventing devices to improve the dental health of the world while, on a personal one-on-one level, he did his best to undermine the mouths of those who mistakenly let themselves be drawn into his chair. One of Shelly’s inventions had actually paid off. He had sold it to a medical products manufacturer in Iowa or Nebraska. He wasn’t quite rich, but he was close to it. I had tried to persuade him to retire and devote himself to inventing. I had failed and, in so doing, doomed who knows how many innocent and guilty mouths.

“I can’t abandon my patients,” he had explained. “They count on me. They trust me. My skills are legendary. You know that, Toby.”

He was right, but the legend was Sleepy Hollow.

“I’m interrupting?” Shelly asked, looking at Blackstone.

“Yes,” said Phil.

“Just take a minute,” Shelly said, moving forward, adjusting his glasses on his nose before they slipped off.

“Shelly,” I tried.

He held up a hand and said, “Grieg.”

“Grieg?” said Phil, turning his body in his chair to look at the dentist.

“Edvard, the composer,” said Shelly.

“You’ve got Grieg in your office?” I asked.

“No, no,” Shelly said, sitting down uninvited and glancing at Blackstone.

It was clear Shelly was trying to place the magician. I prayed to whatever gods might be that recognition didn’t come.

“I think Grieg is dead,” said Shelly. “Good point though. I’ll check. Maybe we can go into partnership. Toby, like all great discoveries, the telephone, penicillin, liverwurst, it came to me by accident. Had the radio on. That guy who plays the piano in the afternoon. Had Mrs. Westermanchen in the chair. She just closed her eyes. Music played.”