The Miser's Dream

by John Gaspard

  I wrapped up my report and he looked at me for a long time without expression. Then suddenly, like a dead flower resurrecting back to life, his lips twisted into a smile which quickly spread across his lean and sallow face.

  “Excellent,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Simply excellent,” he added, then picked up his tea and took a short sip.

  “Thank you,” I said from habit. I honestly wasn’t sure which part or parts of my story were deserving of this praise.

  “Let me ask you this,” he said, setting down his cup and reaching for a paper napkin from the dispenser. It proved to be recalcitrant and so I pulled one out from the other side of the dispenser, just as Harpo appeared at the table. In his stubby, muscular hands he held a small pile of napkins, which he had produced seemingly out of thin air. Presented with these choices, Mr. Lime looked from one offering to the other, and then took the napkin I was holding. Before he left, Harpo turned and gave me a blank look, which I naturally read as cold and homicidal.

  “Let me ask you this,” Mr. Lime repeated once he had dabbed away the small amount of moisture from his lips, “and I’d like you to be completely honest.”

  “Certainly,” I said.

  “What does your gut tell you about each of these people and their relationship to the murder of Tyler James and the theft of London After Midnight?”

  “I don’t know about the murder,” I began, “but each of them could, I think, have been the buyer of the stolen movie print.”

  “Expound,” he said, once again resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands.

  I sat back, considering the four suspects. “Okay, obviously each of them has enough money to make the purchase, which might have been as high as $750,000, if the $75,000 found in the projection booth was just a ten percent down payment.”

  “Agreed,” he said with a sharp nod. “However, let us not forget that—on occasion—people take deep, sometimes homicidal pleasure from getting what they’ve paid for without actually paying for it. To ‘spend’ the money but still have the money, as it were.”

  “The miser’s dream,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said, his smile getting even wider. “And speaking as a miser myself,” he continued, “that dream never dies.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this comment, so I turned my attention back to his original question.

  “Clifford Thomas,” I began, “likes kitschy, macabre things, if his Addams’ Family house on Summit Avenue is any indication. He writes murder mysteries, and the plot of London After Midnight is, to some degree, a famous murder mystery. He admitted to buying items from Tyler in the past. And spending money like that, in what some might consider a foolish manner, could be his way at getting back at his more successful ex-wife,” I added, “if you don’t mind a little dime-store psychoanalysis.”

  “Not only do I not mind it, I encourage it,” Mr. Lime said. “And what of our banker friend, the art collector Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  “He takes great pleasure, perverse pleasure really, in possessing things he’s not supposed to,” I said, remembering his white-walled apartment in downtown St. Paul and the treasures hidden behind them. “It makes him feel like a bad boy, and I think owning something stolen by the Nazis and hidden by the Swiss—a one-of-a-kind treasure which everyone thought was long lost—would be right up his alley.”

  “An odd bird, that one,” Mr. Lime said quietly, clearly not recognizing the irony of one odd bird calling out another. He looked back at me. “Think he is our secret buyer?”

  I had already given this considerable thought, going back and forth on my opinion of his alleged guilt. I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s what he said. Chip Cavanaugh likes to look at his stolen treasures, hang them on the walls and hide them from the world for his own private viewing. I really don’t think some old tin movie reels filled with disintegrating celluloid is the sort of thing he’d get excited about, let alone kill for.”

  “Good point. And what of the ice queen, Ms. Sherry Lisbon? Was she our mystery buyer?”

  I took a sip of my now-cold coffee as I thought back on our meeting in her office at BuyMax. “She’s a tough one to read,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as a passionate movie memorabilia buyer,” I continued. “In fact, I can’t decide what her category would be, if any. She doesn’t seem to care what she’s buying, as long as she’s able to take it away from someone else who wants to buy it.”

  “What does your dime-store psychoanalysis suggest to you about her?”

  “That’s she’s a nut job,” I said before I realized I was saying it out loud.

  Mr. Lime chuckled at my assessment. “Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head with our friend Ms. Lisbon.”

  “But they’re all nut jobs, really,” I said. “I don’t know if they were nut jobs before they got rich or if the money was the cause, but each of them struck me as strange in their own, unique, creepy and oddball way.”

  “I can say this about that: I started out dirt-poor and money hasn’t changed me in the least.” He stared at me, straight-faced, for a long moment, and then his face erupted into a huge smile. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”

  I had to admit he had. I could tell he was deeply pleased at his momentary ruse.

  “And what of Randall Glendower?” he asked, getting back on topic. “Where does he fall on this spectrum?”

  I couldn’t help but smile thinking of the cheery, rotund comic-book storeowner, with his pet monkey, million-dollar website and fanatic’s love of movies and movie memorabilia.

  “He’s the only one who admitted to bidding on buying London After Midnight. And he was outbid.”

  “Did he say by who?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not even sure he knew.”

  “Yet one of our quartet has admitted to taking pleasure in outbidding people on the objects they love, just for the sheer enjoyment of taking it away from them.”

  I considered this. “Sherry Lisbon certainly could be the one who outbid him,” I said. “But if she was the one who bought the movie from Tyler, she would hardly need to kill him to take possession of it.”

  “Yes, well, that brings us to the other side of our coin,” Mr. Lime said, sitting back in his chair. “As you say, whoever bought the movie from Tyler would have no need to kill him for it. So we can assume, at least for argument’s sake, our killer was not the final buyer. And yet, to date, no one admits to being the buyer. Or, for that matter, the seller. Which brings us back to square one.”

  He sighed deeply, to such a degree that his shrunken chest appeared to sink even farther into his tiny frame. Then his eyes once again brightened and he clapped his hands together with such force that several other patrons in the quiet coffee shop noticeably started at the sound.

  “Enough of this,” he said as his skeleton grin returned to his face. “Do me a trick and we’ll call it a day.”

  I was still reeling from the sound of his hands clapping and it took me a moment to register what he was requesting. As soon as I did, I realized he had once again caught me unarmed, magic-wise. I recognized we were a short walk from a store which was packed wall-to-wall with magic tricks and classic illusions, but I wanted to leave that as a last resort. I had the feeling once Mr. Lime was invited into your home—like a vampire—things would progress quickly from bad to worse.

  I scanned the room and then our table for inspiration, my gaze settling on the small container of various sweeteners that Harpo had selected from earlier.

  In an effort to meet Harry’s recent challenge—to give my current act some well-needed practice while adding to my admittedly limited repertoire—I had been reading up on possible tricks I could quickly slip into my close-up act. There was one with a sugar
pack, called Very Sweet, by an inventive magician named David Gabbay which I had recently read about but had never attempted. As foolish as it was to try out a new trick without any practice, I recognized if I didn’t do something I was likely to raise Mr. Lime’s ire. And I certainly didn’t want to experience what that might be like.

  I pulled the sweetener container over, praying Harpo hadn’t taken the last of the real sugar packets when he had sweetened Mr. Lime’s tea. As luck would have it, there was one more remaining, stuck in amid the pink and yellow packets of artificial options.

  “Like The Miser’s Dream,” I began, vamping like crazy while I ran the steps of the illusion through my mind, “everybody likes the idea of spending their money while still keeping it. It’s basic human nature.”

  Mr. Lime nodded in silent agreement as I held up the sugar packet.

  “Now let’s say you want this sugar packet and it costs a quarter and all you have is a quarter and you’d rather not give up your last quarter but what are you going to do because you really want the sugar?” I was nearly out of breath as my run-on sentence finally found some desperately needed punctuation.

  “Do you have a quarter?” I continued. Mr. Lime stared back at me as if I had suddenly begun speaking Mandarin. I repeated the question, in a shorter form. “A quarter?”

  “Oh, dear,” he said, looking—for the first time since I’d met him—perplexed and perhaps even a little lost. “I don’t carry money. Haven’t in years. A quarter, you say?”

  He began to pat his pockets but we both knew how that was going to end.

  To take him out of his misery, I quickly produced a coin from my pocket. “Not a problem,” I said with a hollow laugh. “You can use mine.”

  I slid the coin across the table toward him.

  He picked it up and examined it with great interest, like an archeologist who had discovered a relic from a lost civilization. While he scrutinized both sides of the rare treasure I’d given him, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my ever-present black Sharpie pen. I uncapped it and held it out for him.

  “To make sure I don’t switch the coin in the process of the trick, why don’t you go ahead and put your initials on the coin.”

  Once again he gave me a blank, pained look. “Sign the coin?” he said in a whisper.

  “Just your initials,” I said, again pushing the pen toward him.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Marks,” he said, regaining his voice. “But I don’t sign things. Anything. Ever.”

  While I’ve certainly had audience members who were too drunk to sign their initials, this was a first for me. I glanced over at Harpo, who was seated straight-backed in a chair by the window, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He was staring at us unblinkingly. I had the feeling he had been doing this the entire time.

  “And I’m guessing your pal Harpo doesn’t go around signing things, either,” I said, trying to put a jovial spin on my tone. Mr. Lime smiled ruefully as he gave his head a simple shake.

  “How about I put my initials on it,” I suggested, pulling back both the pen and the coin and trying to jumpstart the trick back to life. “I mean, if the magician puts his own initials on the coin, that does weaken the credibility of the trick somewhat, but we’re all friends here, right?”

  This last thought made Mr. Lime widen his smile, showing off his pointed and yellowed teeth. “Friends. That we are, Mr. Marks. That we are.”

  I fought the chill this statement sent throughout my body by refocusing my attention on the coin, the pen and my somewhat shaky initials. Then I capped the pen and picked up the coin.

  “In order to obtain the sugar,” I said, using the coin to gesture toward the packet on the table, “we are forced to give up the coin.”

  With that, I tossed the coin from one hand to the other, and then opened the hand to show the coin was gone.

  I opened the other hand as well, which appeared to be equally empty.

  This produced a delighted coo from Mr. Lime. I didn’t take any time to bask in it but charged forward.

  “We may have lost the coin, but now we possess the sugar,” I said, picking the packet up from its place on the table. “But wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we could have both the sugar and…” I tore the top off the packet and handed it to Mr. Lime.

  He took it gingerly with two fingers and, noting my gesture, turned the packet upside down. A flow of white crystals streamed onto the table top, along with the resounding clink of the quarter.

  “….and the coin,” Mr. Lime said, completing my sentence. His bony finger separated the grains of sugar on the table, revealing the signed coin within. He gently picked it up and looked closely at the initials, a look of wonder on his face.

  “If you’d like,” I said, brushing the pile of sugar into my hand, “you can keep the quarter as a souvenir.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful,” he said, not taking his eyes off the sticky, pen-stained coin. “Just wonderful.”

  I will say this about the odd Mr. Lime. He was undoubtedly a criminal. He was likely a murderer, perhaps on multiple occasions.

  But, when things went right, he was also the best audience I’d ever had for magic.

  I followed Mr. Lime and Harpo out to their car. It was parked boldly in a No Parking zone, yet bore no sign of a ticket. The old man clutched Harpo’s arm as they navigated to the car’s back door. I found myself extending an arm of my own to ensure the fragile marionette made it into the backseat unscathed. Once safely deposited, he looked up at me, squinting in the sunlight reflecting off the snow. As always, his pupils were deep black, even as his eyes narrowed in the bright light.

  “Thank you, Mr. Marks, for your insights,” he said. “And of course, for your magic. I’m afraid I’ve grown tired. We’ll save our visit to your shop for another day.”

  “Looking forward to it,” I lied.

  “And you take care of yourself,” he continued, as Harpo stood by patiently with one hand on the door handle, waiting to close the door and get on their way. “After your close call with the stolen car the other night, I would hate to lose you to a simple hit-and-run accident.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Yes,” he agreed with an enigmatic smile. “Any other accidents I should know about?”

  I was about to say no, but a thought occurred to me. “Actually, there was another accident.”

  He looked up at me with great interest, so I continued. “Tracy, the manager of the movie theater, fell off a ladder in front of the theater. Someone pushed it. No one saw who it was.”

  “And was this Tracy injured?”

  “She cracked her head pretty badly, but she’s okay,” I said, remembering the frozen pool of blood on the sidewalk in front of the theater.

  “That raises many questions for our consideration, but one in particular,” he said, leaning back and settling into the leather seat. “What do you and this Tracy have in common?”

  I thought the question sounded rhetorical and Harpo must have agreed, for he shut the door to the dark sedan and the car disappeared down 48th Street. But I didn’t really notice, because I was considering what Tracy and I had in common. I had considered it before and had no trouble bringing it back to the surface.

  It was this: We had both looked into the projection booth and witnessed the details, such as they were, of the Tyler James crime scene.

  Chapter 16

  “Surely your agent mentioned the costume.”

  “Not a word.”

  “We were very clear about the costume.”

  “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

  It might have been cold outside, but there was also a definite chill in the green room backstage at that night’s event. The client, a fashionably dressed woman with big hair and a tendency to whisper for emphasis, was not pleased with this turn of events. For t
he record, neither was I.

  “It’s in the contract. You signed the contract,” she whispered.

  “I have no doubt it’s in the contract I signed. I thought it was a standard contract,” I whispered right back.

  “Costumes are always part of our standard contract.”

  “They are never part of mine.”

  She gave me a big, phony smile. “Why don’t we just agree to disagree and you put on the costume.” It sounded like a question until she got to the end of the sentence, and then it didn’t.

  You know the old adage about the customer always being right? I think that was made up by a customer.

  My experience has taught me the customer is wrong about nine out of sixteen times.

  The costume in question sat slumped sadly in the corner of the room. It consisted of a large rabbit, about six feet tall, holding a big black top hat in front of it. I wasn’t being asked to be a big rabbit. I was being asked to be embraced by a big rabbit.

  The idea was that once the performer climbed into the costume, the effect would be that of a giant bunny holding a top hat, with the magician sticking out of the hat. While the rabbit’s legs would actually be my legs, the illusion that the rabbit was producing a magician out of his hat was a strong one. I knew this to be true, because ten minutes later I was fully encased in the costume and surveying my reflection in the mirror. There I was, a magician in a tux, protruding out of a large top hat held by an even larger rabbit.

  This may be, I thought, the lowest point in my entire life.

  A figure appeared in the mirror behind me and I was suddenly proven wrong. “Eli, excellent, I was afraid you wouldn’t be available!” It was Quinton Moon, of course, because that was the only way this could get any worse.

  “Oh, honey, you look adorable.”

  Wait. I was mistaken. Right behind Quinton was Megan, decked out in a spangled dress and wobbling toward me on new high heels.

  I turned slowly, not for dramatic effect but because the costume didn’t allow for quick movements in any direction. Quinton and Megan stood in the doorway, a stunning twosome ready for the red carpet.