John Case - The Murder Artist

I press Aguilar for the names.

“Sorry, man, I just don’t remember.”

“What about that interview – you have a tape?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, we lost the case, right? Those tapes get purged.”

“One more thing. What nationality is Mertz? French?”

Aguilar shakes his head. “Belgian.”

I get an idea, stuck in traffic on Sepulveda. Maybe I can make Mertz come to me.

I catch John DeLand as he’s leaving the Castle for lunch. “Just a quick question.”

“Sure.”

“This guy Mertz – he collects stuff about the rope trick. Is there a particular book he’d want?”

“Something he’d really covet as a collector? Let me think.” He thinks for a minute, but then shakes his head. “You know, I really should ask Kelly. Let me see if I can get him.”

DeLand puts the question to Kelly Mason, shouting into the phone. Then he’s writing something down. “Can you spell that? Okay. Thanks, Kelly. Okay. Okay.”

DeLand turns to me. “There is something, but Kelly says to warn you – he’s never seen a copy.”

“What’s the book?”

DeLand looks at his note. “The Autobiographical Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangueir.”

“Could you spell that?”

Instead, he hands me his note.

“In case you can’t decipher my hen scratch, the book was written in the seventeenth century,” DeLand says, “but the edition Mertz is after is a translation by an Englishman, name of David Price. Published in 1829. According to Kelly, it contains one of the most complete descriptions of the rope trick that has ever been reported.”

“How much would something like that go for?”

He thinks for a moment. “Rough guess? Hmmmmm. It’s rare, but there’s not that much market. Copperfield might bid for his museum, so that would drive it up a bit. Something of that vintage, that difficult to find? I should think Mertz might pay five thousand for it and be happy with that.”

“I owe you a drink.”

“I see where you’re going, Alex,” he says. “Be careful.”

It takes me a few minutes to establish an e-mail account at Yahoo! under a name I pick out of the phone book, Daniel Helwig. I execute a quick Google search to come up with the shortlist of dealers who specialize in rare books about magic, then fire off an e-mail to the group.

Using the pseudonym, I offer a first edition of the Jahangueir for five thousand dollars, but note that the book will only be available for two days. After that, “Daniel” writes, he’ll be leaving for an extended stay abroad – which is why he’s selling the book. To make that stay even more extended.

With the e-mail on its way, there is nothing for me to do but bide my time – and in a burst of optimism, buy a gun.

Liz hates guns, hates the very idea of them – she never let the kids have toy guns, although her distaste obviously doesn’t extend to swords. She grounded Sean one day when he playfully shot at her using a banana. Because the idea that I owned a gun was driving her crazy, I got rid of the old British Bulldog revolver my grandfather gave me. Gave it to one of my cousins. His wife belongs to the NRA.

Grandpa taught me to shoot and how to care for a gun. He didn’t hunt, but he lived in the country, way up in northern Wisconsin, and despite opposition from my grandmother, he was of the opinion that everybody ought to know how to handle “a firearm,” as he put it.

I stop by an ATM and then head for Plummer Park. I went right by it on my way to the cemetery, so I find it without any trouble – a leafy green spot in the midst of the concrete city. It was a little more hard-edged two years ago, when we were here filming on the Russian mob, but I still think I can do business. Walking around, I see that the place remains a hangout for Russian émigrés, playing chess and schmoozing and arguing under the park’s trees. From the whispered consultations and the occasional coat pulled open to display something, I can see that’s it’s also still a marketplace of sorts, the right place to go if you want to buy a used Rolex, a hot Mercedes… or a gun.

I walk by the tennis courts where two Latino kids belt the ball back and forth with unbelievable power.

I sit down on a bench where half of the graffiti scratched into the green paint is in Cyrillic letters. Ten minutes later, a kid with big baggy pants slings himself down on the bench next to me. He wears a leather jacket, despite the heat, and he lights up a cigarette, then leans toward me: “You want something, man?”

“Maybe.”

“Smack or crack?”

“I want a gun.”

He shrugs. “Give me a minute.” His hands are covered with tattoos, and I can see the tendrils of several extending above his collar as well. The tattoos are crude, the do-it-yourself kind you get in prison. He holds up a finger. “Cash money. Three hundred bucks.”

I give him a noncommittal nod. “If it’s right. I want a forty-five.”

He comes back five minutes later carrying a Burger King bag. He looks a little nervous.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him, “I’m not a cop.”

He laughs. “I don’t give a shit about that,” he says. “I’m flying back to Moscow end of the week anyway. I get busted? – all that happens, they deport me.” He smirks. “Maybe I get a window seat.”

I look inside the bag. It’s a.38, not a.45, a fact I point out to the kid. I pull out the clip. “And it’s only got three bullets.”

He shrugs again. “You’re welcome to shop around. This is what I got, one hundred percent. Take it or leave it.”

I take it.

And now there’s really nothing for me to do but check and recheck my e-mail and messages, waiting for a response. It’s a long night. I finally get a bite at 9:22 in the morning.

A dealer in San Francisco has a client who is interested. Depending on the book’s condition, cost is not an issue.

I reply with an e-mail of my own, seeking the client’s name and address. I can send the book for his examination. He could have it by tomorrow morning .

But, no. The dealer is unwilling to give up the information, undoubtedly fearing that he’ll lose his commission on the book. If you’ll send the book to me, the dealer writes, I can show it to my client in the afternoon. Naturally, I’ll reimburse you for the cost of shipping and insurance.

But it’s impossible. There is no book. Nor, for that matter, is there any guarantee that the prospective buyer is Luc Mertz. Even so, it’s the only lead – and the only plan – that I have.

I think about flying to San Francisco to meet with the dealer, but… it’s not going to work. Without a book to look at, the dealer’s not going to listen to anything I’ve got to say.

Which leaves the information broker. Because one thing is certain. The dealer – qjwynn@coastal.com – must have contacted his client after learning of the book’s supposed availability. So they must have spoken to one another.

I call the broker, who confirms that he can find out who the dealer called the day before – but not until the end of the phone company’s billing cycle. “Until they collate the data, I can’t get at it,” he explains.

Frustrated, I telephone a friend who knows a lot about databases. A friend from my college days, Chaz designs computer simulations – war games – for the Pentagon. But as it turns out, he doesn’t have a clue as to how I can get a list of the bookdealer’s phone calls. “And, anyway,” he says, “how do you know he phoned him? Maybe he sent him an e-mail.”

Good point. “So how do I get into his e-mail?”

Chaz thinks about it. “You know his user ID?”

“Yeah.”

“Then all you need is his password.”