John Case - The Murder Artist

“Resurrection or not, people didn’t like Carrefour’s basket trick?”

“No, they didn’t. As I said, Carrefour is a gifted actor, and I’m afraid it was just too powerful. His rage, the blood, the screams – it was all too real . That was his entire problem. He scared people. Of course he did have his admirers.”

“What admirers?”

DeLand frowns. “Hmmm. Let me think. I remember a little Thai fellow and a Russian woman. Olga something. There was a sheikh. A few Goth types – quite harmless really, but they do like blood.” He sighs. “This was years ago and I don’t remember names. Maybe somebody would. I could ask. Oh, except one: Mertz . I almost forgot Mertz – and he was Carrefour’s biggest fan. A real devotee. I don’t think he ever missed a night when Carrefour was on. And they usually left together, after the show. I only noticed because they were quite the odd couple.”

“What do you mean?”

“Carrefour, you know, he’s a tall fellow and quite striking to look at. Mertz, on the other hand, is short and powerfully built, bald as an egg and almost as wide as he is tall. Rich as hell. Drove a Rolls. ’Course they were both Europeans, so that was a bond.”

“What do you mean? Carrefour’s real name is Byron Boudreaux, and he’s not European. He’s from Louisiana.”

DeLand is shocked. “No. He’s French.”

I shake my head.

“You never knew Carrefour was a stage name?”

“Alain Carrefour – that was the only name I ever knew him by. Well, I’ll be damned. I’ve been around the block a few times, even spent a couple of years in France. I never would have suspected… I told you Carrefour was a gifted actor.” He shakes his head. “Maybe Mertz is a gringo, too,” he says, with a little laugh.

“Was Mertz a member of the Castle?”

The curator shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can check. He didn’t perform, but he may have been an associate member. Certainly, he was a regular. And he was quite serious about magic. And I don’t think, by the way, that he was really an American unless he, too, was a brilliant actor. French or something. Maybe Belgian.”

“How was he… serious about magic?”

“He collected rare books on the subject. Mostly about the old Indian rope trick. We talked about it a couple of times. He had some exceptional books in his collection. Things that were hard to find. And extremely expensive.”

“The rope trick?”

“Ah, yes,” DeLand says. “The legendary Indian rope trick. Marco Polo mentioned it in his journal – that’s thirteenth century, but it’s thought to be much older than that. Originated in China, probably, then brought to India on the Silk Road.”

The watch on his wrist emits a series of sharp beeps, and he peers through his reading glasses to find the right button to turn it off. A sigh. “I have to go. My periodontist beckons.”

DeLand stands. “Why don’t you come back tonight?” he says. “You can take in the show if you like. I’ll be back here in time to put together whatever info we have in the archives about Carrefour. Mertz, too, if we’ve got anything. I’ll have it ready – you can pick it up.”

DeLand’s phone rings. It’s his taxi. I follow him down the stairs. “And there’s a fellow who knew Carrefour – he’s on stage tonight: Kelly Mason. You might want to talk to him. He probably knew Mertz as well, because they had an interest in common.”

“What was that?”

“The rope trick – Mason’s written several articles about it and I believe Mertz allowed him access to his collection. So he might know where Mertz is, and then if you find Mertz…”

“Right,” I tell him. “Look – Mr. DeLand…”

“Oh, please. John .”

“John. Look, I really, really appreciate your help. This information about Carrefour and Mertz and any addresses you might have – that would be just great. And I’d be very interested to talk to Kelly Mason.”

“Happy to help,” DeLand says. I’ve followed him down the steps and outside. His taxi waits in the oval drive. “I’ll arrange a ticket for you,” he says. “You can pick it up at the box office.”

“What time?”

“Earliest show is at seven, but shall we say… eight? I’ll meet you in the bar.”

“Fine.”

“I should warn you,” DeLand says. “We have a dress code. Suit and tie.”

I lift my hand as the taxi rolls off, then watch the bright yellow car, now visible, now invisible, as it winds down the hill.

I’m thinking about Mertz as I get into my rental and head down the hill myself. I drive toward my hotel, which is way down Santa Monica near Venice, thinking about the whole idea of Boudreaux having fans .

And then it hits me. Boudreaux has fans, of course he has fans – and not just for performances at the Magic Castle.

I remember the medical examiner in Vegas telling me he thought Clara Gabler’s body had been severed by a table saw, and how odd that had seemed to him because a chain saw would have done the job. Barry Chisworth – he sat across from me, mojito in hand, speculating about how hard it would have been to transport the table saw, a platform to hold it, and a power source to run it, all the way up to Conjure Canyon. The M.E. had been baffled. Why would anyone bother? Even when I puzzled it out – that the murderer went to all that trouble because the Gabler twins were killed in the course of a performance – I never gave a thought to a key element of any performance.

The audience .

Byron Boudreaux may have stopped performing magic in public. But he didn’t stop performing. There would have been an audience on hand to see Clara Gabler sawn in half. A circle of spectators to witness the murders of Julio and Wilson Ramirez. Just as there will be an audience on hand to witness the spectacle when he murders my sons.

It must be that these hideous inversions of standard magic tricks are what Byron meant on his postcard to Diment, what he meant by the phrase real magic .

Do the members of this audience know that the illusions are not illusions? That lives are sacrificed in the course of the show? I think they do. I think they must . I think that’s the point.

Mertz. Mertz . What had DeLand said about him? He was French or something and rich and he collected books about the rope trick.

The rope trick. What I know about the rope trick could be written on the back of a postage stamp: It’s something they used to do in India. They threw a rope into the air, and it hung there. Then they climbed it or something.

And then I have a terrible sequence of thoughts. Mertz is Boudreaux’s biggest fan. Mertz is obsessed with the rope trick. And what did the Sandling boys tell me about what they did in the “humongous house” before they escaped? They exercised. For hours, every day. They… climbed… ropes.

Idrive to my hotel, a one-star joint down Santa Monica toward Venice. I check in, throw my stuff down, and take a look in the phone book under the heading Magic . I find two listings for bookstores specializing in books about magic and the occult.

The closest one is on Hollywood Boulevard, and it turns out to be the kind of place you have to ring a bell to enter. It’s small, and crammed floor to ceiling with old books. That old-book smell, an amalgam of disintegrating paper and surface mold, pervades the air. The man who buzzed me in sits at a desk in the back, talking on the phone. He raises his hand to acknowledge my presence.

A central table holds bins of artwork and pamphlets, each poster or booklet protected by a plastic sleeve. I leaf through the pamphlets, most of them vintage booklets describing how to perform different illusions, while I wait for the man to finish his call.