The Ambitious Card

by John Gaspard

  He performed the routine—which flowed in sync with the music as if Gershwin had written it specifically for Harry—in complete silence, and yet you’d swear that there were sound effects sprinkled throughout the act.

  It was thrilling and captivating and when he reached the finale, during which he turned the white rose into a shower of white snowflakes that floated around him like the real thing, I actually found myself fighting back tears. It was, quite simply, magical.

  The music ended and Harry took a dramatic bow. “Well,” he said, brushing off his hands and smoothing down his hair, even though not one was out of place, “that’s the gist of it. Pretty rusty on some of the bits…I’ve done the thimble routine better back in the day, I can tell you…but that gives you the general idea of the piece. All the props appear to be in working order, with the exception of the flash paper, which has seen better days. You’ll want to grab a fresh packet and you’ll need more snow, that’s for sure. But on the whole, you’re all set to go.”

  I stared up at him in amazement. “I can’t do that routine,” I finally said. “I mean, maybe if I had a couple months to practice, and even then I’d suck at it. There’s no way on earth I can learn that by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, giving my head a playful swat. “There’s nothing to learn. There’s not one effect in there you don’t already know how to do. And the story flows in a logical order. I could have you up and running on this in forty minutes.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” I said, and he gave me another swat on the head. “Hey, careful there, you’re whacking someone who was just in the hospital with a serious head injury.”

  “I’ll give you a serious head injury,” he mumbled. “Buster, stop complaining and get on your feet,” he continued as he turned back to the suitcase and began to reset the props.

  I knew that arguing would be a waste of time, and so I moved to where he was standing. And then, just as he’s been doing since I was ten years old, Harry began to teach me his magic.

  His forty-minute estimate was off by about two hours, but he was right.

  By the end of the night, under his often scolding direction (“No, no, what are you, all thumbs? That’s the clumsiest execution I’ve seen in my entire life. Do it this way.”) I had learned the flow of the routine and was able to stumble through a performance that was just this side of adequate.

  I spent all of the next morning working on it in my apartment, adding some refinements of my own, and by noon I was reasonably certain that I could, if only for twenty minutes, create the illusion of being a kid’s magician.

  “Are you off to amaze and delight?” Harry asked as he looked up from his regular table at the bar next door. He was surrounded by a couple of the Minneapolis Mystics—Max Monarch and Abe Ackerman—and the three of them were eating Juicy-Lucy burgers, swapping stories, and topping each other with complaints about their various aches and pains.

  “I’m all set,” I said. “I practiced all morning, got the stuff in the car, and I locked up the shop.” I looked at my watch. “With plenty of time to spare.”

  “Then sit down and eat the rest of this burger,” Harry said as he pulled out the chair next to him. “There’s enough here to feed an army and you can’t do a show on an empty stomach.”

  I sat next to him and he pushed the plate in my direction. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and suddenly lunch seemed like a good idea.

  “I make it a rule never to eat before a show,” Max said as he wiped a glob of hamburger grease off his chin. “Makes me logy.”

  “How can you tell?” Abe said, taking a bite of potato chip and shooting a playful glance at Harry, who smiled in return.

  “Well, during your show you may be wide awake, but believe me, the audience is sound asleep,” Max shot back.

  “At least I have an audience. What was the size of that last crowd you played for? Two homeless guys and a stray cat?”

  “It was a small crowd,” Max admitted. “But I had them in the palm of my hand.”

  “They’d just about fit.”

  “Ah, you with the jokes all the time. I don’t care how big the crowd is. I’ve had audiences of just one person that I have amazed,” he said, starting to build up steam.

  “Here it comes,” Abe said quietly to Harry.

  “For example, you may not be aware of this fact, but I performed one-on-one for the late, great Dai Vernon.”

  Harry and Abe both mouthed Dai Vernon in sync with Max. This was Max’s big story.

  “I fooled him, The Professor himself. Flummoxed him and baffled him,” he continued.

  “Blinded him with artistry,” Abe said.

  “Pulled the rug out from under him,” Harry added.

  “Make jokes all you want,” Max said, turning to the two cronies. “Dai Vernon was the only magician to ever fool Harry Houdini, and I fooled Dai Vernon. So do the math. That’s all I’m saying.” He turned back to me, studiously ignoring the other two men.

  “That’s cool, Max,” I said, feigning ignorance on the topic. “How’d you fool him?”

  “Here’s how I did it,” Max said, leaning in closer. “Dai Vernon knew all the tricks, believe me. He was a sharp one. So, to fool him, all I did was, I added a flourish to an old standard. And Dai, God rest his soul, got caught up in the flourish. The flourish made him think I was doing one trick, but I was actually doing another trick altogether.”

  Max continued with the story, relating the post-trick conversation he’d had with Dai Vernon and the lavish praise he had received from the master, but I wasn’t listening anymore.

  I was thinking about what had fooled Dai Vernon.

  He thought it was one trick, but it was actually another. He got fooled by the flourish.

  “What’s a flourish?” Deirdre said once I got her on the phone. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Ambitious Card,” I said as I held my iPhone in one hand and steered with the other. “The killer wants us to think he’s doing The Ambitious Card, but that’s not the trick he’s doing. He’s trying to fool us with the flourish.”

  “Eli, he’s not doing a trick. He’s killing people.”

  “Yes, I understand that, but he wants us to think he’s doing The Ambitious Card. That’s a trick where the same card keeps turning up, again and again and again. But that’s not the trick he’s really doing…that’s just the flourish. I think he’s doing a version of One Ahead.”

  Deirdre sighed into the phone. “And what is One Ahead?”

  I checked my rearview mirror as I merged onto the freeway, headed toward St. Paul. “It’s a technique more than a trick, but the idea is that the magician has information that his audience doesn’t know he has…he’s one ahead. He knows this piece of information and he spends the whole trick covering that up.”

  “And how does this apply here?”

  “The killer knew all along who his primary victim was going to be…Arianna Dupree. The other psychics were murdered to make it look like she was just part of a series, just one of a bunch of psychics who were being killed. She was the main trick, the others were just a flourish. Just like the playing card. We think he’s doing one trick, when he’s actually doing another.”

  “And who is this he you’re talking about?” Her tone told me she was graduating from placating me to being just a little bit interested in what I was saying.

  “Michael, Arianna’s assistant. Her boyfriend, boy toy, whatever he was. I don’t know his last name, but he runs her store, he ran her life, and according to him he’s set to inherit everything she’s got. Which I think is probably a lot.”

  “Is that all you have?”

  “He had access to cyanide, because they use it at the store for cleaning jewelry. He certainly had access to Arianna’s apartment, and he’s strong enough to have thrown her over the balcony.”

  There was a long silence on the phone. I could tell she was considering all the angles. “So if his goal was to kill Arianna, why make
the attempt on Franny?”

  “To make it look like Arianna’s death was just one in a series. To make it less special,” I said, emphasizing that last word.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “That’s all interesting, but if this Michael guy killed Arianna, what was Boone doing in her apartment, and how did Michael get in and out of her building without showing up on the security tapes?”

  Now it was my turn for the long, thoughtful pause. “I’m not sure,” I said finally. “Boone and Nova were on the rocks. Arianna was Nova’s former lover. Michael was Arianna’s current lover. There’s something there, I just can’t connect the dots yet.”

  “I don’t know, Eli. This all sounds a little far-fetched.”

  “Do you have anything that’s any nearer-fetched? What’s the harm of sending Homicide Detective Fred Hutton to talk to him?” I could hear her sigh on the other end of the line. “I tell you, Deirdre, there’s something in this. Trust me. I’m not far off.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That means it’s as good as done.” But she didn’t hear this last bit. She had already hung up.

  Spiderman was crying.

  At least, it looked like he was crying. With a mask pulled over his head, it was tough to know for sure. But he had his head down and his shoulders were quaking a bit. He was sitting on the curb in front of a large, expansive house in North Oaks and to be honest, he looked sort of pitiful.

  North Oaks is just northeast of St. Paul, a private community filled with large homes, wooded areas and lakes.

  Expensive cars were parked haphazardly up and down the street near the house. I found a space further away than I would have liked and lugged the boom box and Harry’s old black suitcase toward the house. It must have been a magical case, because the nearer I got to the house, the heavier it seemed to get.

  I stopped to catch my breath a few feet away from Spiderman. He didn’t look up.

  “Are you okay?” I asked tentatively.

  I could hear a sniffle from within the mask and he turned to look at me. His eyes were the only part of his face that was visible. There was a redness around the eyeholes that was, I think, unrelated to the mask. He looked me over, top to bottom, and then noticed the suitcase and the boom box.

  “You here for the birthday party?” he asked, his voice sounding hoarse.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, all I can say is, good luck.”

  “A rough crowd?”

  “The worst. Seven-year-olds with money. They’re like a disease.” He lowered his head again and I heard another sniffle muffled by the mask. “I’m done with this. This is just brutal. I’m going back into phone sales.”

  I could sense that he wanted to be left alone, so I picked up the suitcase and boom box and headed up the driveway toward the house.

  I was met at the front door by one of the official party planners, a blonde woman in her late twenties. She wore a freshly starched red polo shirt with an emblem on it that read “P2: Perfect Parties.” Her nametag read “Candy.”

  Candy radioed my arrival to some sort of party planning war room, where an authoritative voice noted with pleasure that I was early and okayed my admission into the house.

  I was led through the immense house by the too-perky Candy, who chatted nonstop about how well the party was going, interrupted by two brief and tense radio conversations with the crew on the back lawn who, apparently, were running into some difficulties while setting up the fireworks.

  She ended both dialogs by harshly hissing, “I don’t care, just do it,” into the radio.

  “A problem with the fireworks?” I asked.

  “No,” she said confidently. “They’re just worried that it’s going to rain, which apparently is a problem in their world, but not in mine. The forecast said snow, not rain, and I’m more inclined to believe the National Weather Service than this pack of idiots. Believe me, one way or another, there will be fireworks.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  Candy steered me down a wide staircase that emptied into a mammoth lower level room. One wall was filled with windows and sliding glass doors that overlooked the lawn and a lake beyond. The other walls were covered in what looked to be real wood. The carpet was wall-to-wall, and that’s saying something, because there was a lot of distance between the four walls.

  The room was brimming with children running, playing, screaming, and in some cases, all three. Food was at the far end of the room, where linen-covered tables had been set up and the red-shirted staff was serving custom cake and homemade ice cream to kids who had clearly already had too much cake and ice cream.

  A few of the parents stood around in small clusters, doing a terrific job of ignoring their children and the bedlam they were creating. Most of the children were gathered around a new Wii game, which played on the largest plasma screen I had ever seen outside of a major league ballpark.

  “This is your performance space,” Candy said, pointing to one corner of the room. “You can set up here.”

  “Great,” I said, realizing that she had placed me in the only dark space in an otherwise well-lit room. I called her toothy smile and raised her a grin. “It should just be a couple of minutes.”

  As I began to set up the props and plug in the boom box, one of the parents—a balding guy in his forties with a drink in one hand—stopped by to watch. “You’re the next entertainer?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m a magician.”

  “You’re a braver man than I,” he said. “This group has chewed up and spit out a lot of performers in the two hours I’ve been here.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be fine,” I said. “Where’s the birthday boy?”

  “Take a guess,” he said, using his drink to point toward the kids gathered around the Wii. One kid pushed another kid over and grabbed the game’s remote.

  “That’s mine,” whined the kid, who was literally snot-nosed. “I’m going to play until I win.” He pushed another kid out of the way and hit the reset button on the game box.

  “Wow, someone’s a little wired. What’s his name?”

  The guy shrugged. “I forgot his given name. Around here, we just call him Satan.” He looked into the suitcase as I pulled my few props out of it. “You got any tricks in there that will make him disappear?” he asked hopefully.

  “Oh, probably,” I said, “but currently I’m a person of interest in three homicides and one attempted homicide, so I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

  He chuckled awkwardly at this and then pretended that someone across the room wanted to see him.

  “Anyway, have a great show,” he said as he scurried away.

  As it turned out, I did have a great show. One of the best of my career, I think.

  Over the years, I’ve had a lot of experience performing for bad audiences. I’ve performed for drunk audiences and angry audiences and bored audiences and exhausted audiences.

  For one Fortune 500 company, I performed right after they finished a memorial ceremony for a well-loved and recently-deceased employee. That was a cheery show. For another company, I was the entertainment for the employees who didn’t reach their sales goals that year. People who did reach their sales goals got a private performance by Bruce Springsteen. Even I didn’t want to be at my show that night.

  So I know bad audiences. And, believe me, this started out as a bad audience.

  Once I was all set up, Candy announced that the magician was starting. The announcement fell on deaf ears—all the kids who weren’t stuffing their faces with cake and ice cream were gathered around the TV and didn’t look like they were leaving any time soon.

  Nevertheless, Candy gestured that I should begin, and so I did.

  I pressed play on the boom box, cranked the volume and George Gershwin did his best to compete with the music and sound effects emanating from the television’s theater-style sound system.

  I had made only minor alterations to Harry’s act, not so much to personalize it but t
o make it possible for me to perform with any authority after seeing it for the first time less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  The biggest change I made was the addition of two inanimate audience members, which turned out to have been prophetic, because when I began the show I had exactly zero actual audience members.

  I created this fake audience by taking a couple of balloons and blowing them up with the tube that snaked down my sleeve from the helium-oxygen tank I had strapped to my back. Once inflated, I quickly sketched a face on each one with a black marker. Then I began the show proper, while these two balloon heads floated at eye-level nearby, seemingly watching me perform.

  With the balloon audience in place, I began to execute the simple moves that Harry had so artfully strung together. It really was a beautiful and elegant routine and I was having a great time with the material. I got so involved in going through the act and playing to the balloon heads, that I was surprised to look up at one point and see that two kids had wandered over from the video game to check me out. Moments later they were joined by another kid and then another.

  I made no effort to acknowledge them and kept playing to the balloon heads, which somehow must have made the act all the more magnetic, for every time I glanced up a few more kids had joined my crowd.

  I persisted in steadfastly ignoring them, instead directing the act toward the floating balloons, occasionally reaching out and turning the balloon heads so that they were facing me and not the wall. This got a huge laugh every time I did it, and so I found several more opportunities to work it into the act.

  By the time I reached the climax of my show, I had all the kids seated in rapt attention in front of me, with the exception of the birthday boy. Satan sat glumly alone in front of the large television screen, doing his best to pretend that he was exactly where he wanted to be.

  For a few seconds I considered trying to do something to draw him in, and then thought to hell with him and continued to perform for my audience.