by John Gaspard
A quick and likely inaccurate head count on my part totaled at least twenty-five people, and the jingle of the bell over the door signaled the arrival of even more patrons.
“You’re going to need to put out more chairs,” Nathan said without recognizing the understatement he was making.
“Hell, we’re going to have to buy more chairs,” I said. “I’ll go over to the bar and see what I can borrow. I think we’re going to have to move this whole thing into the shop in back. Can you head back there and make some room?”
Nathan nodded. He turned left while I turned right and twenty minutes later the back room was set with a charmingly mismatched array of chairs. Every blessed one of them was occupied, along with a line of people in SRO positions against the back wall.
“This guy must be pretty good,” Nathan murmured quietly. “You’ve seen him, right, this guy we’re seeing?”
“Who?” I asked, having lost track of his question as I did a quick head count, giving up after I passed thirty heads.
“This magician. Quinton Moon. He’s supposed to be great, right?”
I turned sharply to Nathan, expecting to see a wicked leer, but there was no sense of taunting in his expression.
“Yeah,” I said. “We saw him the other night. He’s not bad.”
Nathan nodded slowly and looked around the room. “This is quite a crowd for being not bad,” he said with typical understatement.
As if on cue, at that moment the back door swung open and Quinton strode in, looking like Dr. Zhivago as the wind swirled a circling cascade of snow around him. He wore a long, gray duster and his dark hair was swept back in a styled-but-not-too-styled casual look.
Harry, all bundled and blustery, stepped in behind him, his eyes growing wide at the sight of the mob which occupied our normally empty back room.
“You’re late,” I whispered to Harry as the adoring fans slowly approached Quinton, seeming to bask in his glow.
“We stopped for breakfast and then we gave him a quick spin around the lakes.”
“We?”
As if in answer, the door opened again, revealing Franny Higgins and, right on her heels, Megan.
Franny is a tiny bird-like woman, so small that Megan nearly towers over her.
Both are psychics, with Megan still floundering in her amateur status while Franny makes a good living as a phone psychic, putting in banker’s hours and rarely offering psychic observations outside of her nine-to-five schedule.
In the past several months, she and Harry have been spending more and more time together, which has been as charming to watch as it was puzzling.
A staunch debunker of psychics throughout his career, I was surprised to see Harry seemed to be able to set all that aside in his growing relationship with Franny. For his part, Harry saw no real conflict.
“Your late aunt Alice was a dyed in the wool Republican,” he told me. “Besides cancelling out each other’s votes at every election, I made that work for over fifty years. This is hardly any different.”
Megan caught my eye at that moment and I set aside my musings on Harry’s relationships.
“Hi there,” I said, looking from her to Franny and Harry, who were both helping Quinton with his coat. “The three of you picked up Quinton this morning?”
“Harry asked Franny to drive and she was afraid it was too slippery,” Megan explained. “I volunteered. Of course, then we ended up being early because it wasn’t slippery at all, so all four of us went to breakfast and then took a quick detour around a couple of the lakes. Q wanted to see them.”
“Q?”
She laughed. “He said I could call him Q. People call him that. I thought it was cute.”
I struggled to quickly craft a James Bond joke out of all this, but sadly came up short.
“Q, huh,” I said, working hard to keep anything resembling a tone out of my voice. “How was your breakfast?” I continued as casually as possible.
“Not bad,” she said, all innocent. Or perhaps I was imagining it. Or not. “How was yours?”
I shrugged. “Half a stale Pop Tart and a piece of leftover pizza. And orange juice,” I said, turning and pretending to be interested in something across the room.
“Breakfast of champions,” she said.
We stood silently side by side for several more seconds.
“Are you staying for the lecture?” I finally said. “Or have you had enough of Q for one day?”
“Hardly,” she laughed. “He’s a real charmer. But no, Franny needs to get to work, I need to open the store, and I really don’t want to know how he does any of those amazing illusions.”
This gave me pause as I immediately registered that, in her mind, Quinton did amazing illusions, while I assumed I merely made my living doing little tricks.
“Okay, then,” I said, glancing at my watch without noting the time. “We should probably get this party started.”
“All right, I’ll see you later.”
I turned, planning to plant an oh-so-casual kiss on her cheek, but she was already halfway across the room. She joined Franny and after exchanging some pleasant words with Harry, they headed toward the door.
“Ladies. Ladies.” A voice stopped them in their tracks. They turned to see Quinton.
He momentarily abandoned his flock and pushed across the room to give, I assumed, his goodbyes to the two women. I couldn’t hear what he said, but given how Megan giggled and how Franny swatted him playfully on the arm, I gather it was nauseatingly charming. I stood there glowering and would have continued doing that for several more minutes if Nathan hadn’t broken my concentration.
“Wow. Everybody loves him and he hasn’t done a thing yet.”
“That might be his best trick,” I said through gritted teeth.
“If it is, I hope he teaches it this morning.”
I am ashamed to admit it, but on some level I was really hoping the lecture would be a bust. I’m not proud of it, but there you have it. However, once again I was foiled, and once again he was brilliant.
Quinton performed for about forty-five minutes, offering one stunning illusion after another, without repeating anything he had done at the show earlier in the week. The audience of geeky magicians sat spellbound for the entire act, oohing and ahhing as if on cue at all the right moments.
Like he had done with his chamber show, this performance was an equal mix of old chestnuts polished into new life…and brand new effects which stunned me into a stupefied, grumpy silence. The final piece he introduced with, “This one is still rather new. I’ve only been working on it for fifteen years.” This produced a laugh and then stunned silence as he performed a Three Card Monte routine with oversized playing cards that was absolutely mystifying.
The applause at the end of his act was long and passionate, and as they had done at the hotel show earlier in the week, the audience jumped to their feet. I imagined he must be getting tired of standing ovations. I’m sure I would be if that happened with any regularity at the end of my act. Or, for that matter, ever.
With the performance behind us, next came the lecture at which I assumed he—like many lecturing magicians—would offer some tidbits without providing any real information or insight into how he achieved his effects. And once again I was wrong. With an openness and candor which surprised me, he walked us through each illusion, freely giving up the details on every move, every sleight and his thinking behind what really works in a performance setting. His ideas were original, his approach was cutting-edge, and after the third explanation I was ready to trash my entire act and get a job at Trader Joe’s washing the produce.
As I stewed, I also silently wished he had done his version of The Miser’s Dream today, so I could learn how he made all but one of the coins vanish from the bucket in the final phase of the trick. As a fellow magician, I knew it was something I cou
ld take him aside later and ask. Given his open nature, he would very likely give me all the details and more. And yet, I didn’t see myself ever stepping forward and asking that question.
For that matter, I could have put the same question to one of the Mystics, Sam Esbjornson, who did his own variation on The Miser’s Dream. He didn’t conclude his version with the disappearing coins, but odds were he would have a clue as to its solution. Yet for some reason my pride wouldn’t let me ask, while my ignorance continued to drive me nuts.
As Quinton began the explanation of his Three Card Monte routine, I was surprised to see Harry, who had been sitting on a stool we’d grabbed from the store, get up and quietly step out of the back room. I followed him into the store, pulling back the curtain after stepping through it. Quinton’s voice, now muffled, could be heard vaguely from the back room. He was talking about the value of time misdirection and his theory on the importance, in magic, of separating the cause from the effect.
“You had enough as well?” I asked Harry as we stepped into the shop.
Harry turned. He looked surprised to see I had followed him out.
“What’s that?”
“You had enough of the lecture?” I repeated. “Me too. I mean, enough’s enough, right?”
Harry shook his head. “On the contrary, I think it’s the best lecture I’ve ever witnessed. Ever.”
I furrowed my brow. “Then why did you leave?”
“He’s about to explain his Three Card Monte routine,” he began.
I nodded as I cut him off. “Right, and you already know how it’s done. Pretty simple trick, really.” In truth I had absolutely no idea how he had accomplished the illusion.
“On the contrary,” Harry said. “It’s such an amazing trick, I truly don’t want to know how it’s done.” He registered the puzzled look on my face.
“Eli,” he continued, “it’s not often I can be fooled these days, and so when those opportunities arise, I pounce on them.” He slid open the curtain which led to the upstairs apartments. “It’s been an eventful morning,” he said as he turned to me. “Be a dear and give Quinton a ride back to his hotel when this is all done, will you?”
He didn’t wait for a response, and was out of sight before I had mustered even a plausible excuse to avoid the dreaded chore.
Having nothing else to do, I was reluctantly going to head back into the lecture when my phone began to buzz in my pocket. I had turned off the ringtone for the duration of the lecture, so I was forced to actually look at the phone to see who was calling.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said, summoning an unnaturally cheery disposition, which was in sharp contrast to my actual mood. “What can I do for the District Attorney’s office on this chilly, snowy Saturday?”
“How did it go with Clifford Thomas?” Deirdre said sharply, sidestepping any traditional greetings.
“How did it go?” I repeated. “Fine, I think. I didn’t gather much insight, if that’s what you mean. I had a nice sandwich and got to watch him get drunk.”
“I’m taking it he didn’t confess?”
“If he did, he did it so obliquely it sailed right over my head.”
“Figures.” I could hear rustling paper through the phone. “We have two more people you can talk to,” she continued. “The conversations we had with them were no more enlightening than the one you had with Mr. Thomas. Can you write this down?”
I moved behind the counter and after some digging through drawers seemingly crammed with everything but paper and pen, I finally put together the proper set of tools.
“Shoot,” I said and quickly scribbled down the names and phone numbers as she rattled them off. I read back the phone numbers to ensure accuracy.
“Anything else to report?” I asked as I stuffed the slip of paper into my pocket.
“Not much,” she said with a sigh. “Information is coming in dribs and drabs. Turns out the projectionist was using a false name.”
“Really,” I said. “So he wasn’t really Tyler James?”
“No, he took an imaginative leap from his actual name.”
“Which was?”
“James Tyler.”
“He gets points for simplicity. Anything else of note?”
I could hear her flipping through some more sheets of paper. “Fred brought the theater manager in for more questioning,” she finally said. “Nothing to report there. Noteworthy background, though. Turns out she was a champion NCAA athlete.”
This gave me pause. “But,” I finally said, “Tracy’s not black.”
This produced a very familiar sigh from the other end of the line. “Not NAACP, you moron. NCAA. National Collegiate Athletic Association.”
“Oh,” I said. “My mistake,” I added, fully cognizant of the fact that Deirdre had a personal understanding of my lack of sports knowledge. “Did she have any connection with Tyler? I mean James. Whatever.”
“We checked, but her story holds up. They met when she took the job at the theater last spring. Before that she was playing ball for an international team in Japan.”
“And Tyler. James. The projectionist,” I finally settled on. “He’d been at the theater for years?”
“Fifteen years. No family to speak of. We searched his apartment and came up with some items that, if they aren’t hot, are certainly warm. His bank accounts suggest he was doing a good business.”
“Until the other night.”
“Yes, his business took a sharp downturn the other night.”
A pause while I searched my mind for any other pertinent or impertinent questions. “You still have one person to talk to off Mr. Lime’s list?”
“That’s right. And now you have two people to talk to.”
“Looks like we both have work to do,” I suggested.
“Whatever,” was all she said, and then she hung up.
As he had done at his performance earlier in the week, Quinton took time to talk to each member of the audience at the conclusion of the lecture. This process started in the back room and gradually transitioned into the store proper, primarily because Quinton kept answering questions by referring people to products we sold in the shop. Before long, he was behind the counter, demonstrating products with consummate skill and, in the process, ringing up considerable sales for us.
“You should hire him full-time,” Nathan suggested as we marveled at Quinton’s skill with the customers. “Not only is he making money for you, but he didn’t even bring any products of his own to sell.”
Once he pointed this out I realized Nathan was correct. Magicians who toured the country giving lectures always, repeat, always had products to sell. They could range from simple photocopied lecture notes to books, DVDs, and even custom tricks and gaffs.
Quinton had none of these wares to proffer, but was instead doing a great job selling the items we had in the store—some of which had sat on the shelves for months or even years. If nothing else, he was certainly going to make the task of inventorying, when we finally got around to it, a lot easier.
As the crowd began to finally dwindle, I noticed one kid of about ten or eleven who was shyly standing off to one side of the store, surveying the action. It looked like he was gathering up the courage to approach Quinton, but he kept not making the move. I sidled up alongside him.
“Waiting to talk to Mr. Moon?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Maybe.” He kicked at the carpet with his tennis shoe and looked everywhere but at me.
“You know, when I was your age, I had a chance to meet Dai Vernon. Do you know who that is?” I figured he might know Criss Angel or David Blaine, but would be unlikely to know Vernon.
“The Professor, sure. And it’s Dai,” the kid said, pronouncing the name so it sounded like “day.”
“Excuse me?”
“You said
Dai,” he continued, pronouncing it so it sounded like “dye.” “People who knew him on the West Coast only pronounced it that way. But his true friends from the East Coast pronounced it ‘Day.’”
I considered this for a moment. “I met him on the West Coast.”
“Sure thing,” he said, still looking nervous and avoiding my gaze.
“Look, I’m trying to give you a motivational pep talk. Do you want it or not?”
“I suppose,” he nodded and I continued.
“I was about your age and my uncle had taken me to The Magic Castle in Los Angeles. The night we were there, Dai Vernon was sitting in his regular chair in the lounge. I knew who he was, I wanted to talk to him, but I was terrified. I mean, it was Dai Vernon,” I said, consciously conforming to the kid’s preferred pronunciation of the first name.
“What’d you do?” he said, finally looking up at me.
“I gathered all my courage and walked up to him and said, ‘Professor, can you tell me what I’m doing wrong on my top change?’”
The kid’s eyes went wide. “What did he say?”
“He said I was doing everything wrong,” I said, letting the phrase settle in. I then repeated it, doing my fairly accurate impression of The Professor’s nasally twang. “‘You’re doing everything wrong.’” Scratch any magician who spent any time with Vernon and he’ll give you his own impression.
The kid smiled, either at the story or at the impression. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yep. Then he spent an hour showing me how to do it right. I’m really glad now I was brave enough to do it back then.”
“And how’s your top change?”
“Still sort of sucky.” This made him laugh and then he saw a break in the action with Quinton. I gave him the slightest of shoves and he moved forward, gaining confidence as he crossed the shop. For his part, Quinton saw him coming and bent down to receive his question. He then spent the next fifteen minutes answering it for him.
It was a full two hours later when Quinton and I stepped out of the front door of the shop and I turned to lock the door. Harry hadn’t come back downstairs so I made the executive decision to close up the store for the rest of the day.
