He stopped at the end of the table to consult his drawings. The thought of such a frightening presentation with such a dark history made tingles of delight surge through his body. He would astound the magic world. Anyone who thought he was a has-been would think again.
He moved back to the apparatus and began to make a tiny adjustment. “Damn.” He had scraped his thumb against a piece of metal, and as he stared a bead of blood appeared. His focus was shit. As long as he couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand, he’d get nowhere. He hated to quit when he was so close to success, with the entire quiet of the night before him, yet his mind wouldn’t let go of the roller coaster escape and Maxwell’s death.
He sat down on a stool, sucking his thumb. The roller coaster escape, so perfectly planned, down to the last minute detail. He could still feel the night air on the platform below the track where he sat until the police dragged him down. He felt the numbness of his body crouched there, heard the accelerating roar of the approaching car overhead and the sickening shunk and shrieking metal of the impact.
So fast that Maxwell sat up in time to see it coming and didn’t scream.
How had it come to this? A dull pressure behind his eyes told him tears wanted to come. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Had he become old, beyond his years? Had he outlived his profession? Surely not—he knew magicians who’d worked well into their eighties. In Europe and other parts of the world, of course. Not in Las Vegas. While he aged, Las Vegas went younger, had gone nouveau Playboy.
He kept a bottle of cognac locked in a cupboard under the counter at the front of the shop. He didn’t know why he kept it because he rarely drank in the shop, but he liked the idea of it being there. He was thinking he might get it out and pour himself a little shot when the telephone on the worktable rang. With no curious thought to the late hour, he picked up the receiver and in a habitual voice said, “The Rabbit & The Hat. How can I help you?”
When he heard the caller’s voice, his blood chilled. Cognac forgotten, every nerve sprang to alert. When he could speak, he rasped, “What have you done?” Any feelings he’d had of old-and-tired disappeared like an outdated magic routine in the blue smoke of a long-established instinct for professional survival.
His rasp morphed into a low snarl. “I’ll find that DVD. And when I do, you’ll pay.” His thumb throbbed from the tightness of his grip on the telephone. “I won’t go down alone. It wasn’t my fault…magic powers be damned. I never believed in that stuff, anyway. When I have that video, I’ll show you powers you never dreamed of.”
A tremble coursed through his body as he listened to the caller’s response. “I don’t want to know. Do not dare to call me again.”
He jammed the receiver into its cradle, his hand shaking. Bullet Catch and cognac forgotten, he got up and stumbled to the wall, flipped out the lights. He let himself out the front door of the shop. His hand shook as he inserted the key into the deadbolt. He climbed into his car, praying that his half hour drive through the night streets to his home in Summerlin would calm him.
So there really was a record of last summer’s solstice ritual. Digbee had to see this DVD. His mind probed every dark corner of the hidden temple on Sunrise Mountain, searching for the hidden camera. How much did it reveal? The blood-letting? The drinking from the pewter vessel that transformed the energy flow into the partaking magician? Would the casual viewer understand what they were seeing? The questions scurried through his mind like too many rats in a maze.
He had to know. Whatever was revealed must be concealed. He had to find out who possessed the DVD so that he could destroy it. He didn’t even want to think about copies floating around like stage ghosts.
In his driveway, he clicked the garage door opener and waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, for the panel to rise. By the time he was finally in the house, he had worked out a plan. First step was to call Maxwell’s personal coordinator. Robert Digbee didn’t dislike Edmund Meiner all that much, he just had no respect for the little wimp. If Meiner knew anything about this menacing DVD, it wouldn’t take much to get the information out of him.
In his living room, he removed the cordless telephone and dialed. He paced the oriental carpeting until he heard the voice on the other end answer.
“Edmund? This is Robert.”
Meiner’s voice betrayed annoyance, as if at this hour he had been interrupted while doing something he thought important. “Robert the Great. What a pleasure. What do you want?”
Digbee saw no reason for pleasantries and got right to the point. “Do you know there’s a DVD of Maxwell’s last solstice ritual?”
From the other end of the phone he heard a deep intake of breath. “How did you find out about it?” Meiner snapped.
“Never mind.” Not yet sure how much Meiner knew, he wasn’t ready to share the shock from his midnight caller. “Do you have it?”
Meiner’s voice cracked. “I’ve heard about it but I haven’t seen it.
“It’s got to be found. We’ve got to know how incriminating it is. Do you think it’s somewhere in the house?” Digbee pressed two fingers to the center of his forehead, where the pressure behind his eyes had now centered.
“I’ve searched this place high and low. It’s not here.”
“Are you sure?” He wanted to go over there right now and search for himself and he knew Maxwell’s bulldog manager—his personal coordinator—would never let that happen.
Meiner’s voice rose in irritation. “Trust me, Robert, I’ve turned this place upside down. When I tell you it’s not here, it’s not here. If I had it and I’d seen it, why wouldn’t I tell you?”
“I don’t know. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Look, I’m doing my best here. There’s been so much stress. The press, the arrangements—”
“Yes, yes, I know all that.” Digbee found the whine in Meiner’s voice disgusting. He forced himself to be patient, to try to get Meiner on his side. “I’m sure you’re doing your best, Edmund. But you’ll agree we must find that DVD. We can’t have it falling into the wrong hands. It wouldn’t be very nice for either of us. Do you have any idea where it might be, or who has it?”
“Maybe Dayan?” Meiner suggested.
“Why Dayan?”
“He was the one Maxwell had make it.” Anger entered Meiner’s voice. “Maxwell wanted to have something on you and me. He wanted us to be even more dependent on him than we already were.”
“Dependent on him? I was never dependent on him!” The insinuation infuriated Digbee. “I didn’t need him; he needed me. I made him everything he was. He should have been grateful for it.”
“Well, he wasn’t,” Meiner retorted.
“How could you let him do this?”
“I didn’t let him. I didn’t even know about it until after the fact. Dayan let it slip one day. I was mortified. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d known he planned to photograph the damn ritual. I don’t know how I could have stopped him.”
“Where’s Dayan?” Digbee asked, seething inside at Meiner’s helpless tone.
“How would I know? I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. He was excited about something, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Then he got a phone call, I think from his mother. His parents are elderly, you know. I think something happened to his father and he had to go to the hospital, which is why we didn’t see him Monday night.”
Digbee forced composure to enter his mind. He asked Meiner a few more questions that resulted in nothing he wanted to hear and ended the conversation. He continued to pace the oriental carpet in an effort to quell rising frustration as he considered what to do next.
CHAPTER 22
Wednesday, August 10, 6:30 a.m.
Cheri awoke abruptly. She’d had that nightmare again. A circle of magicians in a room, pointing at the little boy who sat in a chair in their center. Tom’s little face, trusting, open, turned up to them. She stood outside a window, separated from her son
by a heavy glass pane, not unlike the window to an interrogation room. She clawed the glass, cried out to him, but he couldn’t hear. The magicians paid no attention to her.
She crawled out of the rumpled bed and went into the bathroom. No use trying to go back to sleep. She’d long ago given up lying awake in bed while her mind reran the nightmare in an attempt to explain its significance with logic and meaning.
She had to figure out a way to keep her son away from Robert Digbee. Though Tom hadn’t mentioned it, she feared he’d eventually go back to The Rabbit & The Hat to cultivate a friendship with Robert the Great. Living in the same city with a magician’s magician, the temptation would be too much for a wanna-be to resist.
She turned on the faucet and splashed warm water over her face. Bon’s words from the previous evening echoed. Magicians have ways of finding things out. You better be sure you’re ready. She wiped her face with the towel and thought, I’ll never be ready.
In the kitchen she snapped on the coffee maker and then went outside to bring in the morning paper. She was searching the pages for any new stories on Maxwell or his murder when Tom came down.
“Mornin’ Mom.” He yawned and opened a cupboard. “Did you buy bread?”
She sighed. One more thing she’d forgotten to do yesterday. “Sorry. No Bread.”
“That’s okay. I’ll eat crackers.”
“I’ll make oatmeal—”
He poured himself orange juice. “Naw. Crackers are fine.” He unfolded the magic magazine he’d taken to bed.
She’d make oatmeal anyway. Good mothers made oatmeal. She rose from the counter stool and opened a cupboard to look for raisins. She inhaled a strong breath. “You haven’t mentioned college for awhile. Have you given any more thought to what we discussed?”
Absorbed in his magazine, Tom didn’t look up. “Mmmm.”
“Mmmm yes, mmmm no, mmmm what?”
She started when Tom said, “What were you and aunt Bon talking about last night? I heard raised voices.”
“Nothing.”
“I heard the word ‘father.’” Tom didn’t look at her when he spoke. He appeared to be fascinated by the article on the page in front of him. “As in my father?”
“We’ve talked about that…” She heard her voice trail to a mumble and breathed deeply again. “We don’t talk a lot about your father because there’s nothing new to say.”
“So, traveling musician gets you knocked up and sixteen years later aunt Bon still mentions it?”
Cheri ripped open the container of raisins. “Tom! That’s not fair. I told you what I did because I didn’t want you to make a similar mistake.”
He slapped the magazine closed and raised his head. “I’m a mistake?”
“No—no, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” By giving him reason to transfer his anger to her, she’d effectively re-routed the father direction, but it didn’t make her feel good.
“Mistake?” he repeated.
“What happened, happened.” She feared her smile was weak. “I’m thrilled with the result. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you.”
Tom swiped his face with his hand as if to be sure he was awake. “Sure. Gotta get ready for school.”
The pot she’d just picked up felt heavy in her hand. “Won’t you have some oatmeal with me? You can’t live on crackers.”
“Sure I can. See ya.”
She watched her son leave the kitchen and rocked when a sweet nostalgia made her eyes tear. When had he grown so tall? When had he become his own man? When would he press for the details she didn’t want to share? She had to be sure he was mature enough to handle it. She had to be sure he would understand how people got themselves into these things. Magicians have ways of finding things out, Bon had said.
CHAPTER 23
Wednesday, August 10, 7:20 a.m.
Edmund Meiner had a hot tip from his bookie, a woman named Honey Gold he liked because she was six feet tall and sported a consistent uniform of black leather.
The nag Honey favored was called “Pendleton’s Silver Flash”, and she had given him the impression something had been “arranged” so that the horse would win the sixth race. He’d planned to spend the morning at the sports book in the Dunes Park.
The phone call the night before from Robert the Great had changed all that. That and a restless night convinced Meiner he had to go see Dayan before Digbee did. It would be to his advantage to be the first to get his hands on that DVD. Then he, instead of Maxwell, would be protected and–have power over Robert the Great. A bit of blackmail might not be out of the question.
The truth Meiner had to admit, if only to himself, was that he owed way too much money from gambling debts to a lot of unsavory people. People who—though technically this was not the old Las Vegas—wouldn’t hesitate to break a wrist or a kneecap. And it might be a long time before he saw a return from his other investment.
These thoughts crowded his mind as he drove down Maryland Parkway to the middle-class, multi-family neighborhood where Dayan Franklyn lived.
Been a long time since I’ve been down here, he thought as he passed the university and the Boulevard Mall. He noted real estate improvements; a beautiful little park graced what used to be a cracked cement parking lot facing Dayan’s building, the Mayfair Arms Apartments.
He found a parking space on the street two houses away and walked back to the Mayfair Arms. Built in the late sixties, the building broadcasted its age. He squinted at the cracked entry walk, peeling paint, dead bushes, and neglected grass. As Maxwell’s bookkeeper, he knew to the penny how much the magician had invested in his protégée. It wasn’t what you’d call a princely sum, yet it was enough that Dayan could certainly afford to live in a better neighborhood. A neighborhood with a building that at least had a security entry.
Next to the door for apartment 118 was a weather-worn bell. As he pushed the button—no sound from inside to indicate it worked—he wondered, what does Dayan do with all the extra money? He envisioned the man: young, attractive, single, sexy profession. Probably he blew it all on girls.
“Looking for somebody?”
Meiner turned to find himself confronted by a man standing by the corner with a rake in his hand. Maintenance guy? He forced his voice into a friendly tone that he hoped would hide his anxiety. “I came to see Dayan Franklyn.”
“Not home. I’m the manager. You a friend of his or a bill collector?”
“Friend—and business associate. We work for the same man.”
“Haven’t seen him. Why don’t you telephone?”
“Just happened to be in the neighborhood,” Meiner said, turning toward the walkway. “I’ll catch him later.”
At his car, he paused and turned around. The maintenance man had disappeared around the corner toward the rear of the building. He counted to five, looked around to confirm that this early in the morning the street was empty, and retraced his steps.
At the door, he pulled a shim from his pocket. He remembered a few magic tricks, himself. How is it that the most simple tricks are the most useful? The lock proved easy and in six seconds he was inside the apartment with the door closed behind him.
Meiner had never visited Dayan’s apartment. The living room contained functional furniture. Blackout shades, favored by casino workers and entertainers who worked odd hours, covered all the windows. A dusty smell he couldn’t identify gave him the impression that it’d been some time since the apartment had been exposed to fresh air.
The appearance of the place reflected bad housekeeping habits on the part of Maxwell’s protégé. A layer of dust blanketed the carpet, broken up with narrow, defined walking paths. The kitchen sink supported a mountain of dirty dishes, and when he lifted the lid from a pot of molded stew on the stove he smelled a sour odor. In the single bedroom clothes lay strewn across dusty carpet and disheveled sheets covered the double bed. A ball of black socks, clumped together as they’d come out of the dryer, rested atop a batter
ed and scratched oak chest of drawers.
Best to get started, he thought. Can’t linger. He returned to the living room and began going through all the videos, CDs and DVDs stacked around the television set. He didn’t really expect to find the Maxwell DVD in the stack, but he had to be thorough. More likely, if Dayan had it, he’d hidden it someplace in the apartment that he thought was clever.
Meiner pulled a waist-high bookcase a little forward to see if the DVD might be taped to the back, forgetting the potted, water-starved dieffenbachia on top. The plant toppled to the carpet, spewing dried potting soil everywhere.
“Damn,” he swore. What a stupid place for a plant that large, anyway. And no DVD behind the bookcase.
Twenty-five minutes later, he had searched everywhere he could think of, turning the apartment into a shambles. He’d even removed the top of the toilet tank and pulled out all the drawers to check their sides and bottoms for a taped DVD.
Not a good idea to spend so much time here without knowing Dayan’s exact whereabouts. He’d given no thought to what he’d do, what story he’d fabricate, if Dayan came home suddenly and caught him rifling through his things.
The fact that his illicit search had not produced a DVD of Maxwell, him, and Robert the Great in the solstice ceremony dispirited him. He was executing a three-sixty in the middle of the living room hoping to see something he’d missed when a new thought panicked him.
What if he had the DVD and had taken off with the idea of blackmailing Maxwell? Dayan could have saved all that money and right now be holed up in some exotic hotel, except that by now he’d know Maxwell was dead. If he was still intent on blackmail, that meant he, Meiner, and Digbee shared number two target positions.
As horrid an idea as it was, it relieved a little of his anxiety about being discovered at any moment in Dayan’s apartment. But Dayan could just as easily be in the hospital visiting his sick father.
Meiner returned to the bedroom for one more three-sixty. A framed picture of an older woman, probably Dayan’s mother, sat on top of the dresser next to the sock ball. He remembered that the drawers were messy, and there was no evidence of a significant absence of clothing.
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