by Jason Ridler
And who took the virginity of one James Brimstone.
17
TRAVELING THROUGH MAR VISTA WAS LIKE CHANGing channels on the TV and only finding commercials. Dress shops. Mechanics. Designer Jewelry. Hardware. All the parking spaces were filled with the cars of the rich, who walked streets without a hint of weed in the air.
“You a magician?” said the driver, who, according his license, was Francisco Machado.
“Just for birthdays and weddings. These days I’m wrestling.”
Francisco smiled. “You mean like the guys at the Olympic?”
I nodded. “Yup. I’ll be there tonight. You like wrestling?”
“Of course. My family used to wrestle in Mexico City. My uncle was famous, like Santo.” Most of the waking world in the USA had no idea who Santo was, but the masked luchador was a folk hero in Mexico, and his B-movies—in which Santo and the Blue Demon fought werewolves, aliens, and communists—were so popular that there was talk of the Pope making the king of the luchadores a saint.
“What was your uncle’s name?”
“El Grand Diablo! He had a waxed mustache and hair like horns. Everyone hated him because he was the villain, but they’d pay through the skull to see some luchador crush him.”
“Being hated is a good way to make money.”
Hector looked back. “Only in wrestling. So, you going to do some magic in the ring?”
“I need to update my costume.”
“Well, if they don’t have what you need, I could wait. Take you someplace else.”
“Much obliged, but I think she’ll have what I need. But I’ll need a ride afterword, if you don’t have a fare.”
“No, compadre. I’ll wait for one of the men of the ring to return. First three minutes for free.”
I shook my head. “That’s too generous. You’re a working man. I can cover it. Just hang outside and I’ll be out as soon as I can.” I flipped him a twenty. “Here’s insurance against anything weird happening inside.”
He smiled. “Okay, lucha.” He plucked the twenty. “Working men must band together.”
“Unite, brother,” I said, then opened the door. “I hope to be back before long.” I tried to make every meeting with Shirley Martel nice and short. Just like the first time.
On the sidewalk, two kids with unkempt hair and freckles were hanging around a teen in an orange T-shirt who was doing the rolling knuckle and making his novelty coin disappear.
“Wow!’
“Who taught you that?”
“Wendell, man. He’s the greatest. Dude could make a roll of quarters vanish if he wanted.”
“I heard he’s the best sleight of hand guy outside of Vegas.”
“Then what’s he doing working at a joke shop?”
I pressed open the door, wondering who on earth would consider themselves the best palm artist in the world of coin magic, and how a guy named Wendell impressed a kid whose nose was ninety-nine percent blackheads. Then again, my hero was Edgar Vance until I realized he was a villain.
A tiny gaggle of bells rang above me and faded as Tommy Dorsey’s band filled the hi-fi speakers with sweet horns and static, while a young Frank Sinatra crooned “In the Blue Evening.” The interior of Shirley’s joint consisted of a single pathway flanked by two glass cases. They and all available wall space were filled with a cavalcade of wonders: pink whoopie cushions, fistfuls of fake vomit, decks of cards in blue and red boxes that claimed a single trick apiece: “Levitate the Ace!” “Shuffle Magic!” “Vanishing Queens!” Higher up were dusty costumes: headless ghosts touched the ceiling, vampire capes, powdered wigs, Sherlock Holmes tweeds and deerstalker, bandoliers for a gaucho.
Sinatra’s smooth tones were cruelly bizarre in a store filled with what I could only think of as the castoffs of cults and caravans of the love generation. Too young for Woodstock, the promise of peace, sex, and revolution had mostly flickered out for these kids before it could become their guiding light. The smell of these guys—and it was all guys—was like a locker room, even though the gaunt faces glaring into the two glass cases lining the narrow store looked like they hadn’t run a mile, lifted a weight, or done a hard day’s labor in their sixteen or so years upon this spinning rock. Amid the stink of puberty and loneliness, of abandoned hope and vast disinterest, I was hit with a note of reassurance. For all I could smell was the stink of young manhood, plastic vomit, and . . . perfume. Some type of Chanel that I suspect Shirley Martel bought in bulk on the black market.
As bad as the smell was, the flavor was worse—but not one drop tasted of real magic. Whatever chicanery, gags, and illusions were on display, they were for the civilians of the magic world, not the players, like Edgar, who used their power for spite and joy.
I took a deep breath and enjoyed it.
A young rake sat behind the cash register at the far end of the store, guardian of the door to the space in back. His hair was salt-and-pepper and his beard was steel wool mashed onto a sharp chin. The gray hair and old-fashioned beard made him look far older than the age attested by a lack of lines on his sprightly face. A certain clarity of eye could be taken for either the wisdom of years or a lively lack of them. He was working three red balls in his hand with an ease that spoke of mad devotion. Perhaps this was the Amazing Wendell before my very eyes.
“See, it’s not just about what I’m doing, but what I’m having you look at.” He snapped his fingers: a flash of light and bang of sulfur exploded in the room and everyone took notice. Except me. I’d long ago trained myself to not eye the distraction and watched how expertly he squeezed the balls into the sleeve of his double-breasted blue blazer, then plucked the coin he’d been palming the whole time. To the untrained eye, he’d snapped his fingers and transmuted three balls into a single coin, solving a problem alchemists abandoned long ago.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said, like an annoying carnival barker. “But my private jet doesn’t run on applause, so either buy something or get out!” The blend of confidence and disdain was rather charming and the kids were giggling as they approached the register to chat with their hero.
The back door opened.
“Wendell! You pull that cap gag again and the beauty parlor will have the cops or fire department on our hides like ticks on a swamp hound. Now you boys stay in line and let Shirley make sure you are well taken care off. Wendell, get that blazer back where it belongs and work on the tux and tails or so help me God.”
“Right away, Shirley,” Wendell said, confident as all get out, as if this had been his plan all along. “Just showing off the merchandise.” He cackled like a career witch and then slipped through the back door.
And there stood Shirley.
The shade of her peroxide-blond hair likely cost a cool hundred in chemicals; its upswept waves defied gravity. Her skin was bone-white and shining like a marble tombstone under a harvest moon. Then the magic began. Eyelashes as long as a mermaid’s tail seemed to sway with her blinks as if she was under the sea. Her lids were a shimmering turquoise, and her eyeliner was thicker than ink in a Jim Steranko panel showing Nick Fury’s stubble. A glossy pink enhanced the sagging beauty of Shirley’s lips. She wore a gold chain around her puffy neck, and its pendant of a cat fell between pushed-up 34Ds. The package was wrapped in a leopard-print mini-dress that clung to her hourglass figure like a desperate child.
Among the ogle of boys, the throwaways of magic and pretend on the walls, Shirley appeared to be a princess of Mars as imagined by Russ Myer rather than Edgar Rice Burroughs. She looked at me as if I was John Carter and she was Dejah Thoris.
“By the grace of the Holy Ghost, James Brimstone! Sorry, boys, the store is closing now, but we’ll be back open real, real soon. Just leave your wares and they’ll be here when we open. Now shoo!” She wiggled her long fingers as if she had charmed them all with a spell. The boys booked out in a hustle while I rode against their tide, hearing the mutters as they looked at me.
“Who the hell is this lounge act?
”
“He’s old enough to be her father.”
“Is that Wendell’s dad?”
The little bells stopped ringing, and yet I was only halfway to the counter.
Shirley crossed her arms under her ample breasts and tilted her head to one side, voice a cloying falsetto. “Aw, is Baby James Brimstone still so shy?”
“Didn’t realize I was important enough to clear a room of devoted fanatics.”
Her head tilted back. “My harem is legion, and they always come back.” She winked and I swear to Odin that I felt a breeze.
“Don’t they?”
“Lovely to see you too, Shirley.”
“Same here. And looking at that outfit, I’d guess you’ve traded in magic for crooning. God, you have a nice voice in bed, but I’d never pay to hear you sing beyond my bedroom walls.”
I smiled. “And you’re doing gangbusters.”
“Oh, magic never goes out of style, James.” She sighed. “How long has it been since your first look at me?”
I grinned. “I’m old enough to forget the date, but the memory is unforgettable.”
She shivered. “You’re too handsome to be so charming. It’s just not fair to us girls.”
“Wish this was a social call, Shirley, but I need something.”
“Everyone does,” she said. “And unless you’ve got leprosy or are voting Nixon, you can come closer than that to me, James. I won’t hurt you.” Her purple-nailed finger crossed her heart. “Come to Shirley.”
Believe it or not, I had to will myself forward to this black-hole beauty who had done what only one woman ever could.
Back then she was a showgirl for one of Edgar’s rivals, a civilian magician named Stark Firestorm. And by rivals, I mean Edgar despised this “civilian” who was very good with illusions. He sent me to his show, incognito, to ruin his act with a mirror gag, reflecting light into the poor guy’s eyes as he was pulling a dove from his hat. Because Edgar is a monster, he didn’t tell me that Stark was prone to seizures when hit with blasts of bright light. In the dark of the Egyptian Hall in London, the grand-daddy of them all for illusionists, I screamed as the crowd gasped and Stark hit the ground like a loaded gun, every trick in his suit blasting off in all directions, his secrets revealed, his career ruined, his reputation a joke . . . all because of me.
I’d wanted to run home, but I knew I’d have to endure Edgar’s gloating laughter at the cruelty he’d involved me in, so I ran the other direction, cold and terrified, to the backstage of the Egyptian Hall. Sneaking past security that looked like Pinkerton strikebreakers, I found the dressing room door with Stark’s name on it. I ran in to confess to the old man . . . and found Shirley. On stage, she was beautiful, but up close, her glamor was overwhelming. She sat clad in fishnets and a pink tutu, legs crossed, and no top—breasts magnetic to my eyes—a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a phone receiver in the other, screaming to her agent to get her “out of this goddamn country where they still ration milk like Hitler’s waiting outside the shithouses they call homes. Get it, Marv? Get me out of here!”
She slammed the phone down, saw me, and smiled.
“Ain’t god great? On a shit day when things are ugly, he sends me a present. What’s your name?
I muttered James and said I wanted to see the magician.
“Oh, precious, he’s gone. And he ain’t coming back. But you’re crying. Are you sad?”
I wasn’t allowed to be sad with Edgar. Ever. Angry? Cynical? Disdainful? Of course. Sad was “for the weak and the dead.”
I didn’t say a word. Tears just fell. She said three words that woke me to the wider world.
“Come to Shirley.”
I blinked. Shirley was beckoning me toward her not in the hazy days of my youth, but the heat of 1970. I sauntered forward, over-exaggerated, and she laughed.
“You look ridiculous and handsome in that outfit,” she said. “If you got rid of it, you’d be all handsome.”
“You read my mind, Shirley,” I said, amazed I was looking down at her instead of looking up. She had to be five-eight in heels. “I need a suit. Something classy that could pass for a high roller in this decade.”
“And here I thought you wanted to touch base with your old girl.” She mocked disdainfully.
“There are many bases I’d like to touch with you, Shirley,” I said, and that revved her motor. “But I have an engagement that requires finery and you are the only woman whose style I trust.”
“Making you the smartest man in Mira Vista.” She did a calculation under her eyelashes. “I don’t know what you need, James, but I know what you want. Wendell!”
A second later the salt-and-pepper hand-palmer supreme—with dressmaker’s pins between his lips—pulled open the door. “Shirley, my dear, I’m in the middle of a masterpiece.”
“Stick a pin in it, handsome. We got a red alert for an old friend.”
That’s when Wendell took a look at me and realized he saw his future, just as I was looking through a cracked mirror into the past. At least he was far closer to being my age now than then, which gave me hope that she’d changed her tune on the elixir of life being the love of very young men—but who was I to judge. “Well now, friends of Shirley are friends of mine.” He grinned, pins sticking up and out as if in a defiant sneer.
Shirley lifted the arm of the cash desk and ushered me into the back room, flipped a switch, and I heard the front door lock.
18
“STRIP.”
I dropped Jack Lumber’s gym bag and did as I was told.
“Well,” Wendell said with a roll of his eyes as he focused a standing lamp to bathe me in jaundiced yellow wattage. “Someone fell off the fitness tree and hit every branch on the way down. Who’s your father, Jack LaLanne?”
I unbuttoned my shirt. “No. A dock worker from Oakland.”
Wendell’s attitude was playful, but not happy. He had to respect Shirley’s old friend until there was no need to keep up pretenses. Once I was gone, he could shit-talk me to the cadre of teens who called him ‘God.’ “What do you need? Formal? Elegant? Timeless?”
“I need to look like I fit in at the Hilton in Venice.”
Shirley took a half-empty pack of Kools from a worktable with a Frankenstein’s monster head tilted to one side. “Hilton? You finally become the gentleman escort I always thought you were born to be?”
I hung my shirt over the head of a faceless mannequin. “I’m a private eye now.”
Shirley clapped her hands, smoke perched on the edge of lips that sparkled in the weak glow of the lamp. “Oh, my! Bravo! In what movie?”
Wendell drew his tape across my shoulders. “No. Not an actor. A real private investigator.”
Her mirth sank into gloom and she cut the applause. “What? That’s the dumbest thing you could ever goddamn do.”
Wendell’s breath was heavy on my neck. A clear sign of approval of the drop in the temperature of the room.
I grinned. “We can’t all be entrepreneurs of gags and magic.”
She pointed the tip of the ciggy at me. It shook with her stream of words. “Don’t try and make this about me, handsome; I’m good at what I do. I live my life the way I want to live it, and I don’t give a damn about other people’s dirty laundry. But you? You’re sniffing around people’s garbage, poking your nose in their bedrooms, collecting the dirt we forget we leave behind.” She tapped her ash with enough force to make the flecks fly like windborne glitter. “Wendell, stop.”
Flummoxed, my arms dropped and Wendell whistled the William Tell Overture.
This was bad. I’d tried the truth and it had sunk me like a freshly dug grave after a monsoon. Fiction would have to do.
“Shirley.”
“Get out, panty sniffer.” “You got it all wrong.”
“What part of you being a bloodhound of misery makes me off beam?”
“Look.” I dropped to my knees, opened Jack’s bag, and ripped out the mask.
That shut
up further discussion of my heinous character flaws.
Wendell gazed at Shirley, but her dance hall lashes were flapping only for me. “What the hell is this?”
“The truth. I’m a wrestler. A pro wrestler.”
Wendell gripped his tape around his neck like a country lawyer’s suspenders. “You mean a fake, phony, a conman.”
Shirley turned, then tapped more ash. “A wrestler? Like at the Olympic?”
“That’s where I’m headed tonight, but I have to meet the promoter. He wants to meet at the Hilton and they have a dress code and my dress code has been S-L-O-B since I was a kid.”
“Good thing you’ve always been handsome,” she said, and her firm pink lip started to curl. “Why the fuck would you say you were a panty sniffer?”
“Believe it or not, Shirley, not everyone thinks wrestling is a bonafide career choice and, well, wrestlers are kinda secretive about the code.”
She shook her head. “Days like this I’m glad I’m no longer traveling the circuit. Code? As if there were honor among those thieves and shirks. Bunch of dirty old men selling lies for fun and profit.” Her lips softened. “But I can see why you’re attracted to it. The spotlight. Mystery. Travel.” She snatched the mask from my grip. I let her hold it. “But hiding that pretty face under this foul material? That, James, is a crime.”
I held out my hand and she gave it back. “Keeps it pretty and out of harm’s way.”
“Well, thank heaven for small miracles.” Wendell laughed, and it seemed genuine. Shirley took a long drag. “Okay. Let’s get my boy ready to look like a million bucks of hammered gold.”
I never much cared for tailored clothes. Seemed like a waste of everyone’s time. But Wendell’s fingers weren’t just geared for coins, dice, or cards; he was a legit tailor working at breakneck pace while I made gentle suggestions. Shirley watched me standing in my briefs as if the peep show window got broken and she was getting a sneak peek.
“I’ve always done my best when wearing browns and blues,” I said.
