Psych: Mind Over Magic

by William Rabkin

  “I couldn’t have,” Rudge said. “I was in the bar all night until P’tol P’kah stomped in.”

  “Or you made it appear that you were in the bar.”

  Rudge reached into his jacket pockets and pulled out receipt after receipt. He threw them in the youth’s face. “Look at them,” he demanded. “Did I conjure up these bar bills?”

  “If you can make a rabbit appear out of thin air, it shouldn’t be hard to conjure up a receipt.”

  “You saw me confront him in the main parlor. How could I have been rigging his device if I was right there?”

  “Did we see you?” the faux acolyte said. “Or did you perform some particularly cunning illusion to make us think we saw you?”

  “Maybe he has a secret twin brother who stood in for him,” the sidekick said. “Or a machine that manufactures clones.”

  “I don’t know any cunning illusions!” The words forced their way out of Rudge’s throat before he could stop them. “I do tricks; that’s all. Tricks I buy out of some mail-order catalog! I haven’t come up with a new gag in two decades!”

  Rudge was aware that an entire birthday party’s worth of children was staring up at him. He didn’t care. Let them stare. It felt astonishingly good to tell the truth.

  But the sidekick didn’t seem to want to accept it. “You taught P’tol P’kah the Vanishing Man.”

  “I taught him nothing!” Rudge shouted. “I have no idea how he did that illusion.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” the youth said. “A man of your great talent.”

  “It’s true,” Rudge said. “I was desperate to know how he did it. I spent a fortune going to his show, studying it from every angle, searching for the tell. You can ask any of the other magicians.”

  “How would they know?”

  “Because they all did the same thing,” Rudge said. “I used to see them at the performances whenever they could scrape together the two-hundred-dollar ticket price. Except for Phlegm, of course.”

  “What, you wouldn’t see the show if you were congested?”

  “Phlegm is a person,” Rudge said.“At least she claims to be a person. You saw her—that tattooed freak show who sticks knives in her eyeballs.”

  “You know,” the sidekick said, “some people might think it odd for a guy in a gold suit stained with rabbit pee to call anyone else a freak show.”

  “It’s not an insult; it’s a fact,” Rudge said. “Back in the nineties, she was part of one of those New Vaudeville tours. Her act was Phlegm, the One-Woman Freak Show.”

  “So she didn’t go to see the show to figure out how he did it?”

  “Are you kidding?” Rudge said. “She was the only one who didn’t buy tickets. She got a job as a cocktail waitress so she could see it twice a night. Still didn’t do her any good.”

  The two bad boys exchanged a glance, as if they were trying to decide if he was telling the truth. Rudge decided to nudge them along.

  “P’tol P’kah was the best of us,” Rudge pleaded. “I think before he disappeared for good, some of his peers—so-called peers—were beginning to think he actually did have magical powers. Or was really from Mars. Or anything that would explain how he could actually dissolve in a tank of water. Because no one ever saw through the trick.”

  “I want to believe you,” the youth said. “I really do. But your talent is so great, I can’t imagine an act you couldn’t duplicate, or even improve on, with just a little effort.”

  “No, please, you have to believe me,” Rudge said. “The last time I actually earned my fee was during the Reagan administration.”

  The youth and his sidekick seemed to think it over; then they both shrugged. “Nah,” the sidekick said, “we can’t see that. Not after the brilliant show you put on this afternoon.”

  “It wasn’t brilliant,” Rudge pleaded. “It couldn’t even keep the attention of a bunch of second graders. My dove died of alcohol poisoning. My rabbit ruined the carpet.”

  “We all know misdirection is the secret of any great magician’s art.”

  “I’ve got proof!” Rudge said, suddenly remembering. “I videotaped every one of P’tol P’kah’s performances that I saw.”

  Now both the youth and the sidekick looked interested. Rudge pressed his point. “I can give them to you. I can take you to them right after the party.”

  For a moment, the youth looked like he was going to give in. Then his face hardened. “I think we should go now.”

  “Why?”

  The youth pointed back at the house, where Jimmy Eisenstein’s father was storming out through the glass door, carrying the still-dripping rabbit cage. Behind him, there was a path of bleached drops on the carpet.

  “You drive,” Rudge said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “VHS?” Gus looked down at the huge pile of vid eocassettes on the desk in front of them. “Who uses VHS tapes anymore?”

  “Probably someone who earned his last three-digit paycheck right after they stopped making the Beta max.” Shawn was on his back, reaching up behind the credenza on which the TV sat, searching with his hands for a free set of inputs to which he could attach the rented video player. With a grunt, he managed to force the jacks into their sockets, then stood up and pushed the credenza back against the wall.

  “Ready for the magic,” Shawn said. “And by ‘magic,’ I mean a crummy video of some cheap stage trick.”

  “Are you back to that?” Gus said, walking over to the machine and slipping in a tape. “Because I saw your face after the Dissolving Man. You were as amazed as anyone else.”

  Gus pressed PLAY, but all the TV showed was a screen full of snow. Shawn was about to dive back behind the credenza when there was a clunk as the tape reached its end and started to rewind.

  “First of all,” Shawn said, “I thought I was quite clear that any amazement I might have been registering was dedicated almost entirely to the sight of the chubby dead guy floating in the tank.”

  “Almost entirely?”

  “I’m being honest,” Shawn said. “I was also amazed that people pay two hundred bucks to sit through that act.”

  “So now you’re going to tell me you know how he disappeared?” Gus said.

  “I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will,” Shawn said. “And when I do, everyone who was impressed is going to feel pretty stupid.”

  “What is it with you and stage magic?” Gus said.

  “It’s a fake.”

  Gus stifled the desire to say “and so are you”—first, because Shawn was completely aware of that, and second, because he was interested in the answer to his question and didn’t want to see the conversation spin out in another direction.

  “Luke Skywalker’s a fake,” Gus said.“Batman’s a fake. Bugs Bunny’s a fake. He doesn’t even look like a real rabbit, but that doesn’t stop you from laughing every time he dresses up as a woman and kisses Elmer Fudd.”

  “Because there’s no one standing outside the theater saying, ‘Come in here and see a real rabbit dressed as a human seducing a bald guy,’ ” Shawn said. “Which is just as well, because if they did, everyone involved would end up in prison.”

  “So your entire problem with stage magic is that people pretend it’s real magic?”

  Before Shawn could answer, there was a thunk from the VCR as the tape finished rewinding. Shawn grabbed the rental remote and hit PLAY. The machine whirred into life, a sideways green triangle appeared in the upper-right corner of the frame, but the rest of the screen stayed black.

  “That’s great,” Gus said. “He’s probably been storing his tapes next to his magnet collection.”

  “Worse,” Shawn said. “Look.”

  Gus peered at the screen and saw a tiny pinhole of light in the center. The hole was moving, bobbing up and down in a jerky motion. “What is that?”

  “I’m guessing it’s the buttonhole in a raincoat,” Shawn said. “You can sort of see the stitching around the edges.”

  Gus went
to the TV and brought his eyes a couple of inches away from the screen. There were stitches around the sides of the image.

  “He recorded the entire act through his buttonhole?” Gus said.

  “That would explain why he taped it so many times,” Shawn said. “Maybe he got a different inch of the tank every time and he was planning on stitching them together later.”

  Gus was reaching for the EJECT button when the lighted hole stopped moving around on the screen, and then went out altogether. After a moment of blackness, the TV was filled with the image of P’tol P’kah’s stage set, the water-filled tank at the back.

  “That’s a little better,” Shawn said. “As long as he doesn’t need to hide the camera from security again.”

  The edges of the screen went dark as the houselights went down, and a roar of applause came through the TV speakers. After a moment, the green giant stomped out onto the stage. He was every bit as compelling on the small screen as he had been in person, Gus was surprised to discover, and his presence just as strong.

  P’tol P’kah lifted his mammoth green arms for silence, and then started rushing around the stage faster than any human could do. It wasn’t magical; it wasn’t scary. If anything, the Martian’s movements seemed comical. It seemed like a strange strategy for someone who understood stagecraft as well as he did. And then Gus realized that the speed wasn’t P’tol P’kah’s doing.

  “Stop fast-forwarding,” Gus said, reaching to snatch the remote out of Shawn’s hands. “I want to see this.”

  “What we need to see is the Dissolving Man,” Shawn said. “That’s the end of the act. And while I’m sure our client would be happy if P’erry P’mason could get people to fork over two hundred bucks for a three-minute show, I’m going to bet we’ve got a long way to go until we get there.”

  “Maybe I’d like to see his other tricks,” Gus said.

  “Maybe you’d like your name on the building,” Shawn said. “Then you could say how we run our investigations. But since it’s my name on the building, I get to decide.”

  “Your name is not on this building,” Gus said.

  “I didn’t say which building my name is on,” Shawn said.

  “Sorry, I must have forgotten about the Shawn Spencer Towers downtown,” Gus said.

  “It so happens that my name graces one of the finest examples of Spanish Revival architecture in Santa Barbara,” Shawn said.

  “Which one?”

  “The police station,” Shawn said.

  “The police station is now named for you?”

  “I didn’t say it was named for me. I said my name was on it,” Shawn said. “And it is. Prominently in blue marker.”

  “Because you put it there,” Gus said. “You wrote ‘Jules Hearts Shawn’ on the back wall by the Dump ster and then spent the next day trying to scrub it off before anyone could see it. And when you finally realized what indelible really meant, you took the ‘Re served for Head Detective’ sign off Lassiter’s parking space and covered it up.”

  “Only until such time as the statement can be determined to be completely accurate,” Shawn said. “I’m a stickler for facts when I deface public property. Anyway, that’s not why we’re not going to stop fast-forwarding before we get to the Dissolving Man.”

  “So what is?”

  “The fact that we’re already there.” Shawn pressed PLAY just as P’tol P’kah wheeled a more ornate version of the airplane steps up to his tank. “At two hundred bucks a head, you’d think he could afford an assistant to help with the manual labor.”

  Gus stared at the screen, transfixed, as P’tol P’kah performed his signature illusion. He tried to make himself study the act for flaws, for the momentary bit of distraction that would reveal the real secret of the trick, but he kept getting lost in the spectacle. It was almost as astonishing to see the Martian dissolve on video as it was live. As it had in the Fortress, the performance ended with a great explosion of light and sound. The video image flamed into white as the sudden brightness overwhelmed the camera’s sensors. But this time when the image came back, just as the houselights were rising, there was an audible gasp from the audience, and then a burst of applause.

  “What’s happening?” Gus asked. “I can’t see anything.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. He could still see the stage. But the tank was empty—no chubby corpses this time—and the stage itself was deserted. What was it the crowd was seeing?

  Even Shawn looked frustrated. “Come on, you moron,” he muttered to the cameraman. “Show us something.”

  As if responding to Shawn’s irritation, the camera jerked around the showroom, giving them a good view of the audience, all of whom were staring up at the ceiling. Some were pointing. Finally the camera lens followed their gaze and tilted straight up.

  P’tol P’kah hung by his palms from the ceiling, his hands apparently adhering to the slick surface. To the gasps of the crowd, he pulled one hand free and reached out to grab one of the free-hanging lights. It gently lowered him to the floor, where he stood perfectly still while the audience went wild around him.

  “Wow,” Gus said. “It’s even better when he finishes it.”

  “You really think so?” Shawn said. “I kind of like the dead guy. You don’t see that in a lot of acts.”

  “And you do see this?”

  Shawn stared at the screen. “What’s that?”

  “Umm, a giant green man dissolving in a tank of water and reappearing on the ceiling, thirty feet in the air?” Gus said.

  “No, that.” Shawn froze the image, then walked over to the TV. He pointed at the bottom-right corner, which was filled by an out-of-focus black blob.

  “Somebody’s head?” Gus guessed. The fact was, it could have been almost anything.

  “Give me another tape,” Shawn commanded, and when Gus was too slow to move, he grabbed the entire stack off the desk and brought them over to the TV. He ejected the tape they’d been watching and slapped in another one. This one, too, hadn’t been rewound. Shawn hit PLAY, and before it could begin to rewind automatically, he began searching manually.

  After a moment of static, the image resolved into a scene almost identical to what they’d just seen, only this time a reversed P’tol P’kah was riding the light fixture back up to the ceiling. Shawn studied the image closely, and then froze it.

  “There,” he said, rapping a spot near the bottom of the screen. “What does that look like to you?”

  Gus squinted at the TV. There was something black and rounded blocking part of the camera’s view. “It looks like the top part of an igloo,” Gus said after careful and serious study.

  “Yes, Gus, that’s exactly what it is,” Shawn said. “Someone came to see a magic show with an igloo on his head. You’ve really cracked this case wide open.”

  “On his head?” Gus peered at the TV again. From the angle of Rudge’s camera, of course this thing had to be on the head of another spectator, which meant that it couldn’t be an igloo. It had to be . . . “A hat?”

  “A bowler hat,” Shawn said, hitting the EJECT button and slapping in another tape. “I’d be willing to bet that it’s the bowler hat.”

  Shawn claimed to see the bowler in the crowd on the next two tapes as well, although Gus wasn’t completely sure. But on the third, as P’tol P’kah took his bows in the crowd, a cocktail waitress dressed as a spacegirl passed close enough to Rudge to jostle the camera, and in the fleeting instant that the lens was pointed away from the Martian, they got a clean shot.

  “That’s him,” Gus said, staring at the living image of the man they’d last seen being hauled out of the water tank. He was wearing the same three-piece suit along with the bowler and he was every bit as chubby in life as he was in death.

  “Yes, it is,” Shawn said. “Just like it was on the last five tapes.”

  “So whoever this guy was, he showed up at every performance,” Gus said. “Just like the other magicians. Do you think he was one of them, and he drowned
trying to figure out the secret of the trick?”

  “None of the others recognized him,” Shawn said.

  “None of the others admitted they recognized him,” Gus corrected. “Maybe they were covering up for him.”

  “Covering up for what?” Shawn said. “Whether or not they said anything, he was still going to be dead. No, I believe they never saw him before.”

  “But he was at this show all the time, just like the rest of them,” Gus said. “They would have seen him in the audience.”

  “Not if they were focusing all their attention on trying to figure out how P’laster of P’aris was doing his trick,” Shawn said. “Or at least whichever part of their attention they weren’t focusing on themselves.”

  “So who is he and what’s he doing there?” Gus said, studying the man.

  “Looking for Tucker Mellish.”

  Gus tried to remember where he had heard that name before, but for some reason when he tried, his mind was filled with the image of an exploding purple ink blot. “Who?”

  “Tucker Mellish, the guy I made up,” Shawn said. “Remember the acid in the face?”

  Gus did remember now, although he almost hated to admit it. He would have liked to be able to banish Shawn’s most ludicrous flights of fantasy from his head forever, instead of carting them around with all the other bits of trivia that had stuck there.