The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery)

by Gaspard, John

  “It’s, it’s stopped,” she finally said, a tremor of fear in her voice. “You don’t have a pulse.”

  “Excellent. Then I have crossed,” Grey said, exhaling deeply. “I now stand on the precipice, on the border between the living and the deceased. For the next few minutes I will be neither alive nor dead, but instead will act as a conduit between these two disparate worlds.”

  He stood, and as he did Sharon lost her grip on his wrist.

  “Thank you for helping me to cross.” He put a hand on her shoulder and guided the clearly shaken woman to the steps at the front of the stage, where his assistant helped navigate her way back to her seat.

  “How the hell did he do that?” Pete hissed in my ear. He’s a couple inches shorter than I am, so this move had required him to stand on his toes.

  “There’s lots of ways to accomplish it, but my guess is that he’s got a tennis ball strapped into his arm pit,” I whispered back. “A little pressure and you cut off blood flow to the wrist, which gives the effect of no pulse. My uncle calls the trick the Armpit Tourniquet.”

  Clive clucked his tongue, in apparent agreement with my assessment.

  Our brief conversation elicited another sharp look from one of the crewmembers, so I didn’t continue my explanation. Regardless of his method, Grey had grabbed the audience’s attention and they were listening raptly as he stepped back to his chair and withdrew a long strip of black fabric from his suit coat pocket.

  “As I said, I have crossed and stand on the precipice between the living and the dead. However, in order to truly hone in on that connection, I need to do some fine-tuning.” He looked up and smiled, his oily charm emanating from every pore. “For those of you who have taken long car trips, it’s not unlike tuning a car radio in the middle of a remote desert, trying to find the point of greatest connection. To that end, I will attempt a couple of experiments—warm-up exercises, as it were. Experience has taught me that these are best accomplished without the burden of visual stimulation.”

  With that he sat down in the chair and placed the black strip of fabric over his eyes. Nova had silently joined him on-stage and she stepped forward to tie the blindfold for him, making a final adjustment to ensure that his eyes were completely covered. She then picked up a handheld microphone from the table and silently left the stage.

  For the next twenty minutes, Grey skillfully performed some basic, almost rudimentary mentalism routines. With the help of the dark-haired Nova, he did a second sight bit, where she selected objects from audience members and he—still blindfolded—divined the nature, color, and size of the objects, much to the audience’s amazement. After several short exchanges with various audience members—in which he divined the amount of money in a wallet, the age of an older gentleman, and the color of a pair of socks—Nova selected a nervous woman on the aisle. After a short, whispered exchange with the woman, Nova spoke into the handheld microphone. Her voice was soft and almost childlike.

  “Grey.”

  “Yes, Nova,” he said in a deep whisper. It sounded as if an audio engineer had added some reverberation to his microphone.

  “See if you would tell me this woman’s name,” Nova said.

  The audience looked from Nova to Grey, who sat stiff-backed and motionless on the stage.

  “Her name is Joy,” he finally said. The woman tried to suppress her surprised reaction by putting her hand over her mouth as the audience applauded. Nova had another brief, whispered conversation with the woman and then, as the applause died down, she continued.

  “Now then, in what month was she born?”

  Again the audience turned, almost in unison, from Nova to Grey.

  “She was born in…in September,” he said in a flat monotone.

  “Would you tell me the date of her birth?”

  “The fifth of September.”

  The woman nodded vigorously to the crowd, to demonstrate that every answer so far had been spot on. The audience burst into applause again.

  “Someone’s read his Corinda,” Clive whispered to me out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Classic presentation,” I agreed. “Nothing new here.”

  Nova stepped back and looked the woman over head to toe. “Grey, can you tell me what color shoes Joy is wearing?”

  Grey tilted his head to one side. “Her shoes are brown.”

  The woman looked down at her feet and then shook her head, first toward Grey and then toward Nova.

  Nova seemed flustered for a moment. “I meant, will you tell me? Will you tell me what color they are?”

  Even with a blindfold covering much of his face, Grey looked annoyed. But he quickly masked that emotion and continued. “Her shoes are black.”

  The woman nodded to Nova and to the crowd, and again they applauded, but this time with what felt to me to be a little less enthusiasm. Nova held out her open palm to the woman, who at first wasn’t sure what was wanted of her. Then she pulled a ring off her finger. She handed it over to Nova, who clasped it tightly in her hand before continuing.

  “Joy has given me a personal object. I want you to tell me what this is, now.”

  Grey looked momentarily puzzled. “A stamp?” he said, posing more of a question than making a statement.

  “No,” Nova stammered. “I want you to tell me what this is, now then.”

  Grey did his best to cover a sigh. “It’s a ring.”

  Nova quickly rattled off her next request. “I’d like you to tell me what it is made of.”

  “Gold.”

  The woman smiled and nodded to the crowd, to let them know that Grey had been correct. The crowd applauded, some of their lost enthusiasm returning. Nova handed the ring to the woman and moved away, searching for another candidate.

  “Grey, next we have a man—”

  He cut her off brusquely. “For our next exercise, we will continue to strengthen my connection with the other side. For this demonstration, my assistant will pass out several recent magazines and books.”

  Nova looked surprised at the sudden shift in plan, but obeyed and headed back toward the stage. As she moved around the back row of seats, she passed an audio speaker resting on a stand. As soon as she moved in front of the speaker, there was a tremendous shriek of feedback. Nova held her free hand up to cover her ear. She clicked the off switch on the microphone, silencing the feedback and then she scampered toward the stage. There she picked up a silver tray that held a stack of magazines and books.

  As new age music played through the sound system, Nova moved smoothly through the crowd, distributing the periodicals and books. By the time she reached me, the tray was empty. She shrugged impishly and turned back toward the stage, putting the tray under her arm while she flipped her microphone back on.

  “Grey.”

  “Yes, Nova,” he answered, still seated stiffly on the stage, his eyes covered by the black fabric.

  “Distribution is complete,” she said.

  Grey then instructed those audience members who had received a book or magazine to page through it and find a single page, and then to concentrate with all their energy on that page. As I looked around the cavern I could see that people, God love ’em, were attacking the assignment with relish. Those who hadn’t been lucky enough to receive one of the books or periodicals appeared to be wasting no time in assisting their neighbor in finding just the right page.

  The first person selected from the audience was a heavy-set man in a blue denim work shirt and suspenders. He was holding a magazine. He held the cover up to Nova and then turned the magazine toward her to reveal his chosen page number.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Scott,” he said, leaning awkwardly toward her microphone.

  “Grey,” she said, turning back toward the stage, “your first reading is with Scott. Scott has this week’s Time magazine and he is looking at page thirty-one.”

  “Time magazine,” Grey repeated. “Page thirty-one. Look at that page and concentrate,
Scott. Think of nothing else.”

  He held a hand up to his forehead dramatically, and then lowered it. “Scott, I’m having trouble seeing page thirty-one, because I’m seeing an advertisement for a ladies’ razor, which consists primarily of a photo of a woman in a bathtub, shaving her legs. She appears to be completely naked, although I hasten to point out that the advertisement is in fine taste. However, there is no number on that page. Is that the page directly across from thirty-one?”

  Nova held the microphone up to Scott, who shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “Yes, it is. That’s an ad.”

  Grey chuckled. “That was your first choice, wasn’t it, Scott? But you didn’t want to admit that to us, did you?”

  “That’s right,” Scott mumbled into the microphone as the audience laughed.

  “Thank you, Scott. You may sit down.”

  He sat amidst the good-natured teasing of several pals around him. Nova moved across the aisle to an elderly woman who was holding a paperback book. “What is your name, ma’am?” Nova asked.

  “Bernice,” the white-haired woman said softly. Nova looked at the book the woman was holding and the page she had the book opened to.

  “Grey, Bernice is looking at page seventy-four of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”

  Grey again put his hand to his forehead for a moment, and then he spoke. “Bernice, through either choice or chance, you have picked one of my favorite passages from that great play. At the top of that page, Macduff speaks, does he not? Say the words with me, Bernice.”

  They began to read together, he onstage and she in the audience. “O, horror, horror, horror. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke open the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence the life o’ the building.”

  Bernice closed the book and looked up at Grey with open-mouthed awe, her eyes tearing up slightly as Grey continued to speak the verse. “Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight with a new Gorgon: do not bid me speak; See, and then speak yourselves. Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself!”

  His final words echoed through the chamber. Bernice slowly sat back in her chair as the audience applauded enthusiastically. Even Pete and Clive, on either side of me, broke into spontaneous applause. I didn’t join in, but I had to admit, even though Grey was as dishonest as the day is long, he was a hell of a performer.

  Chapter 3

  The act continued in this manner for several minutes. Nova picked audience members and Grey read their minds as they concentrated on the books and magazines in front of them. The routine went smoothly—more smoothly than the previous exercise, that’s for sure—with only one noticeable hiccup.

  Nova had approached an audience member who had received a copy of Business Week magazine. She spoke with him briefly.

  “Grey,” she said as she turned back toward the stage, “I’m standing here with Chad. He’s looking at page sixteen of Business Week magazine.”

  “Page sixteen of Business Week magazine,” Grey repeated. “Let me see.” He put a hand to his forehead and leaned forward in concentration. “I’m seeing an article about employee compensation, am I right?”

  Chad nodded to Grey and then, realizing that the man was blindfolded, he leaned over to the microphone Nova was holding.

  “Yes,” he said. “Employee compensation.”

  “And the headline, the headline reads, ‘More Employees Willing to Walk to Get Higher Wages,’ is that correct?”

  “Yes it is,” Chad confirmed, shaking his head in amazement.

  “I also see,” Grey started to say and then stopped. He put a hand up to his forehead and then shook his head.

  “I also see,” he repeated, this sentence getting no further than the earlier attempt. “In addition to the headline...”

  His voice trailed off as he pushed his hand harder into his forehead.

  I turned from the stage back to the TV monitor, which was on a tight close-up of Grey. It looked as if he was beginning to sweat.

  There was a long, awkward pause, as Grey shook his head from side to side. “No,” he said in a raspy whisper. “No, absolutely not. No. No. I said no!” With a ferocious almost violent move, Grey stood up suddenly and ripped his blindfold off, throwing it down onto the stage. He looked out at the audience, his eyes squinting in reaction to the sudden exposure to light after having been covered for so long.

  “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, quickly regaining his composure. “On rare occasions, while in the midst of the spiritual flow such as I was just immersed within, an unwelcome spirit will intrude upon the proceedings. A most unwelcome spirit. At times like that, it is best to simply break the connection with that particular entity. Permanently.”

  He ran a hand through his hair to ensure that each strand was still properly in place, and then stepped to the edge of the stage. “I think it’s time to begin the portion of the program that most of you have come here tonight to experience. I will connect to the other side, connect with your loved ones, and answer questions that are near and dear to your hearts. Nova, are the questions prepared?”

  By the sudden buzz of excitement that broke out in the room, it was clear that this was, in fact, the portion of the evening that the audience had come to experience. As effects go, it was simplicity itself. Nova presented Grey with a large punch bowl, filled with small tan envelopes. Before the show, each audience member had written a question on a slip of paper, folded it and sealed it in one of the small envelopes.

  For the performance, Grey would then remove an envelope from the bowl, hold it to his forehead for a moment, then announce the question, the name of the questioner, and then provide an answer from the beyond for the hopeful participant.

  “One important note before we begin,” Grey said, pulling a match from his pocket and striking it on the table. “I should warn you that when the stream to the Other Side is opened, it is not entirely uncommon for an impatient spirit to jump his or her place in line,” he said as he lit a candle on the table. He moved it to the center of the table, adjusting the position of a large silver ashtray next to it.

  “When that happens,” he continued, “I will have no clue that a new spirit has stepped in and taken the place of the spirit I was communicating with. Consequently, the information I’m receiving may no longer be relevant to the person I’m talking to. I will need your help…all of you,” he said, spreading his hands wide to encompass the whole room.

  “If the information I’m providing to you is correct, please acknowledge it by saying ‘yes,’ loudly and clearly. And if you’re seated across the room and suddenly you feel that what I’m saying is applying to you, please let me know right away. Is that clear?” Like obedient students, the audience nodded at Grey as one.

  “Good. Let us begin,” he said as he pulled out the chair next to the table and sat. Lighting in the room shifted to increase the already moody ambiance and eerie organ music again began to echo throughout the cavern. He closed his eyes and reached into the bowl, taking out a single envelope and holding it up near his temple for a long moment.

  “Rene T.,” Grey said finally. “Rene, are you here?” A blonde woman in her late twenties stood in the crowd and meekly held her hand up. Grey turned his head in her direction as Nova moved through the crowd to her with the handheld microphone.

  “You are curious about a relationship, are you not?”

  Rene nodded, wringing her hands together nervously. Remembering Grey’s earlier instruction, she quickly added, “Yes. Yes.”

  Grey closed his eyes. “This is a relationship of long duration, am I right?”

  “Yes. A year and a half,” she said.

  “Rene, a year and a half is merely a blink in the eye of the universe. I’m seeing that this relationship has existed in this life and many previous incarnations. And that the two of you are working out issues now that have existed between you for millennia. You are arguing more now than usual, am I right?”


  Rene nodded again. “Yes, it feels like it.”

  “One of the reasons you’ve been brought together in this life is to continue to work on these differences. But make no mistake…this person is your soul mate and you will indeed make progress that will help not only in this life, but in future lives as well.”

  “Thank you,” Rene said as she sighed in relief and began to sit down again.

  Grey raised his right hand and closed his eyes for a moment. “Rene, I’m also getting that you have a work relationship that is beginning to come to a boiling point, does that make sense?”

  Rene cocked her head to one side, considering this. “I believe so, yes,” she said, beginning to nod in agreement.

  “Watch that closely for the next three weeks. Some changes are in order,” he instructed as he picked up his letter opener and ripped open the envelope he had been holding the entire time. He pulled out the slip of paper and read it aloud: “Can you tell me if I should stay with my boyfriend, signed Rene T.” He smiled at her as the audience applauded. He held the slip of paper over the candle and it began to smoke and then burned down to an ash. He held on to it for a long time, the flames flickering at his fingertips, before dropping it onto a large ashtray on the table.

  He reached into the bowl and withdrew another envelope, as the audience appeared to lean forward as one in anticipation.

  And so it went for over thirty minutes. Grey took envelope after envelope out of the bowl, identifying the owner and their question—and offering a detailed answer as well as other facts about the person and their life—before opening the envelope and reading their actual question aloud. Then he’d burn the question and move onto the next envelope.

  “How the devil is he doing this?” Clive asked in a raspy whisper. “It’s extraordinary.”