Spiced to Death

by Peter King

  “You have nice friends,” I said bitterly.

  “Not friends, merely business acquaintances.” He seemed relieved that he had got his confession off his chest. I pushed for one more admission.

  “Other restaurant owners, you mean.”

  He shrugged. It was agreement enough and it cleared the air a lot. A few of the hotheads, probably inflamed by Lennie Rifkin, had decided to put a scare into me. They’d hired someone—or had they? Rifkin … The more I thought of that phony accent and the bizarre get-up with the black clothes and the beard, the more it sounded like his style. He didn’t like me anyway and probably enjoyed playing the part.

  Yaruba Da ordered mint tea.

  “No African meal can end without it,” he told me.

  “Why do you say there will be no more attempts?” I asked. “How do you know that?”

  “One or two others and I objected to such terrorist tactics. Not all Africans are barbarians.”

  The tea came and we sipped it amicably. The drumbeat melody faded away and after a moment of jungle silence, there was the hideous howling of jackals. I was reminded of Lennie Rifkin again …

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  GABRIELLA HAD PHONED ME while I was still at breakfast to say that she was picking me up. She was driving a dark blue Isuzu four-door sedan this time—a definite step up from the battered jalopy of our earlier adventure. She looked delightful in a crisp light brown suit with cream-colored buttons. I congratulated her on her new disguise and she gave me a shriveling look.

  “The girl of a thousand—well, not faces exactly …” I said.

  “It’s not hazardous duty today.”

  “That means you’re not packing?”

  “We say ‘carrying’ these days. Oh yes, I have my protection with me.”

  “It’s as well hidden as it was when we went to church.”

  “It’s here this time.” She tapped a raffia bag that lay on the seat between us.

  “You didn’t carry one at all the other day. A bag, I mean.”

  “In that area there’s a risk of bag-snatching. Didn’t want to chance that.”

  “So today’s a no-risk day? Good. Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to see an old friend of my father’s.”

  “A paesano?”

  “Yes.”

  “He knows something?”

  “He knows a lot—a lot of very surprising information.”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  She laughed that delightfully intimate laugh. “You’ll see. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Even though it was past the morning commuter hours, it was still rush hour as far as the traffic was concerned. It seemed like it was always rush hour in Manhattan. We went south down Columbus Avenue, which turned into Ninth, past all sorts of restaurants, bars and shops, then we turned west on Forty-third Street. There was a fire station, a used-car dealer, and Gabriella pulled into a metered parking place almost in front of a theater.

  “Too early for a matinee, isn’t it?” I asked but she gave me an enigmatic smile.

  Large free-standing letters proclaimed THE MAGIC MUSIC HALL and there were posters on both sides of the entrance. One showed a man, resplendent in a scarlet Chinese robe and a long black pigtail. A globe behind him was crowned with frothy clouds and silvery flashes of lightning darted past him. Another showed a girl in tights inside a glass cage which was suspended above an audience. They were all staring up in amazement as a man in an elegant tuxedo and top hat fired a pistol at the cage. THE WONDER SHOW OF THE UNIVERSE said the poster in an utter abandonment of modesty.

  “You’re sure we’re in the right place?”

  “I’m sure,” Gabriella said and led the way to a side door beyond the main entrance. She pressed a bell and a wizened old man opened the door.

  “Monty’s expecting us.”

  The old man nodded and opened the door. We went in.

  The narrow passage had been recently repainted, though the floor still had some ancient linoleum and boards that creaked as we walked. The old man was sprightly despite his years and led us at a brisk pace down to the end and through a lounge, also recently decorated. We went through double swinging doors and a heavy curtain and into the theater.

  It’s a shame that television and the cinema have dimmed the appeal of the live theater. There is no greater thrill in entertainment than seeing live actors on the stage. This building had obviously been popular as a theater fifty and more years ago and I wondered what great names had paraded across that now dark and curtained stage.

  “Vivien Leigh was in A Streetcar Named Desire here,” said a croaky voice. “Olsen and Johnson ran nearly a year with Hellzapoppin. Helen Hayes was in Mary of Scotland on that stage. Orson Welles, Katherine Cornell, Paul Robeson, Lunt and Fontanne—they all played here.”

  While he was speaking, we had turned to find a dumpy little man behind us. Gabriella gave him a big hug and he laughed with delight and lifted her off the ground. He had a round pudding face, crinkled and seamed, and his faded gray eyes had clearly seen a lot of tragedy. It was a happy face, though, and its owner obviously enjoyed life even while it buffeted him.

  “This is Monty” said Gabriella as she introduced us. “Christened Bernardo Montefalcone but no one except his mother has ever called him anything but Monty.”

  “You like the theater, eh? I can tell from the way you look at the stage.” He had a very definite Italian accent.

  “Love it,” I told him. “I live in London where I have plenty of opportunities to see good theater.”

  “London!” His face lit up. “Hey, I spent five years there. We had this show that …”

  He was an irrepressible raconteur and had known theater people all over the world. Loud noises from backstage interrupted him after Gabriella had made one unsuccessful attempt.

  “Listen!” he said to us. “I just gotta check through this one act, then we can talk. Come and siddown and watch.” He led us down the center aisle and installed us in the second row, then slipped out though a nearby exit. The footlights came on and then that most emotional of moments in the theater when the curtains parted.

  Music filled the auditorium. It had an insistent drumbeat that had a familiar ring. There was a clattering of hoofbeats and a horse and rider came prancing onto the front of the stage. The rider was an Indian chief in full regalia, a splendid war bonnet on his head, a quiver of arrows on his back and a bow in his hand. They made a spectacular tableau against the black velvet drapery. The familiarity of the music was now clear—it was the music heard in a hundred Western movies.

  The horse was a magnificent palomino with a mane of flowing silvery hair. The saddle was studded with silver and the horse had silver bands around its ankles. It stepped high, throwing up its head. We were so close that we could plainly see the whites of its glittering eyes.

  Center stage was an inclined ramp, climbing six feet to a large horizontal platform supported by two trestles. The rider urged his mount up the ramp and onto the platform where the horse stopped, quite composed. Stagehands ran on and carried away the ramp.

  Horse and rider stood there and the music switched tempo, more mysterious now but still with that throbbing beat.

  From above, a curtain pole descended, supported by a chain at either end. It stopped above and in front of the Indian chief and his horse. He reached up and pulled down a bright blue shade from the roller on the curtain pole. Both horse and rider were now hidden from view.

  Indian war whoops sounded. The music faded, then a slow drumroll started. The curtain pole rose taking the blue shade with it. Gabriella gave a gasp of astonishment. Horse and rider had disappeared. The platform was empty.

  The stage curtains closed. Gabriella and I clapped as enthusiastically as school kids.

  “That’s impossible!” Gabriella gasped.

  “They couldn’t have gone down,” I said. “Only those trestles support the platform. They couldn’t have
got off the platform in any direction—it’s too high. How on earth did he do it?”

  “Absolutely impossible,” came Monty’s voice from behind us. He chuckled.

  “Monty,” Gabriella demanded. “Tell us how you did it.”

  “Illusion.” He was still grinning with satisfaction. “It went real well. We’ve been practicing all week. I’d like to knock two more seconds off, though; then it’s okay.”

  “No, come on, Monty, we have to know,” Gabriella coaxed.

  He settled into a seat behind us. “No. Let’s talk about your problem. The way you outlined it over the phone—”

  “Monty, I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t tell us.” Gabriella was firm.

  “Suddenly, I realize why we’re here,” I said to her.

  “You didn’t know?” Monty laughed. “Hey, Gaby, you didn’t tell him why you brought him here but you want me to tell you the secret of the Vanishing Indian!” He laughed again.

  “And don’t call me Gaby! You know I hate it.” She turned to me. “It was that remark you made about Houdini. Well, it started me thinking. Monty knows as much about magic as Houdini did—”

  “Except he was a better showman,” Monty said.

  “Monty has devised tricks for all the greats,” Gabriella continued. “Maskelyne, Blackstone, Flip Hallema, David Copperfield—all of them.”

  “Blackstone,” Monty said. “We might start with him when we look at your problem. He did the Vanishing Automobile, the Vanishing Horse—that’s the one you just saw”—he broke into a reminiscent laugh—“and the Vanishing Camel—now that was a show and a half. That camel never did want to work as part of the team. It hated show business. It gave us the hardest time every performance. Then it died—on stage already!”

  “So I thought, Why don’t we get Monty to tell us how he would do it? Maybe the thief used the same technique—or something like it.”

  “Sure,” said Monty.

  “But first,” Gabriella said sternly. “The trick we just saw. How did you do it?”

  “Promise not to tell?” His pudgy face was jovial. He was a man who got a lot of enjoyment out of life and people.

  “Yes,” Gabriella said promptly.

  “Lighting. The stage seems brightly lit but all the illumination comes from the front and the footlights. All the overhead lights are turned off and you’ll notice that the entire stage is curtained with black velvet. Between the two chains that hold up the pole and the blue shade is another black velvet curtain. It’s invisible to the audience and they can’t distinguish it from the curtains behind. As soon as the shade comes down, hiding the horse and rider, a harness drops down and the two of them are hoisted up.”

  Gabriella gave a hiss of annoyance. “It’s so simple.”

  “All stage illusions are,” Monty said. “The simpler the better. You know Siegfried and Roy?” Gabriella did but I didn’t. “Well, they’re German but they’ve made their name over here—Las Vegas mainly, where they’ve made seven-hundred-pound Bengal tigers disappear right there in the MGM Grand Hotel.”

  “They’ve done tricks with lions and black panthers too, haven’t they?” Gabriella asked.

  “They sure have. They did it with a cheetah too once—it was a benefit performance before Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. They made it disappear. Then, when it reappeared, it got away and strolled through the audience.”

  “Well, we don’t have animals in the illusion we’re facing,” Gabriella said. “Just people.”

  “Let’s go talk about this,” Monty said, and led the way backstage where we went into an empty dressing room. He pulled up chairs.

  “Now,” he said, “tell me about it.”

  I ran through the story from our arrival at JFK. I included as much detail as I could recall. He asked an occasional question, then when I had finished, Gabriella gave him a brief rundown on the activities of the police.

  Monty leaned back in his chair. “A nice trick—if you can do it. And somebody did.”

  He asked more questions. Finally, he looked at Gabriella. “Need to look at the scene of the crime, kiddo.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  GABRIELLA’S EXPERT DRIVING GOT us to JFK airport in barely an hour. The journey was lightened by Monty’s reminiscences of his life creating magic and mystery. He told us some of the secrets of Kreskin, the mentalist—“not a hypnotist,” Monty said firmly; of Doug Henning and his Magic Boxes, which contain four different parts of his female assistant; of Johnny Thompson, “the Great Tomsoni” and his tricks with doves and bowling balls; and of the great Channing Pollock and Jimmy Grippo, “the magician’s magician.”

  It was Karl Eberhard’s day off but Gabriella said it didn’t matter, we only wanted to spend some time in the hangar where the Ko Feng was brought in. Eberhard’s deputy handed over keys and directed us. Gabriella drove the Isuzu through the maze of buildings until we came to hangar BLS 12.

  The smell of burning jet fuel, typical of modern airports, hung heavy in the air. Aircraft were taking off and landing but there was no activity in the area around our hangar. Gabriella unlocked the side door and we walked in.

  The hangar was empty and it looked bleak and cheerless. Monty studied the interior carefully, saying nothing. Finally, he turned to me.

  “Okay, from the beginning. From the time you came in here, tell me exactly what happened.”

  I went through it, step by step. At the end, Monty pointed to the bays.

  “Which one were you in?”

  “This one.” I led him into it. Monty was looking everywhere, his eyes never still. Gabriella followed, silent.

  “So you were in the second one from the left. And the others?”

  “Sushimoto Electronics were in the first one, on that side of us. The next one—the one on the other side—was empty except for a big black limo.”

  “What about the other shipment that came in?”

  Gabriella was flipping through her notebook. “That was the Chicago Museum of Oriental Art, right?”

  “That’s right. They took the fourth bay.”

  “So you parked your truck just outside the bay?” asked Monty.

  “Right.”

  “Where exactly?”

  I showed him.

  “Oh… a few feet.”

  “There was never anyone in that third bay?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” shrugged Monty. “Now, the tables in here all had this lab equipment on them right?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  “And where were you all standing?” I thought carefully then showed him.

  “The equipment—where did it come from?”

  “Rented for the day,” said Gabriella.

  “By—”

  “Renshaw listed what he needed, Cartwright ordered it.”

  “Now, what was the timing?” Monty asked, and as near as I could remember I ran through the sequence of the testing.

  “Where was the sack all this time?”

  “Sitting here.” I pointed.

  “And when you’d finished?”

  “Cartwright tied up the sack and took it out to the truck, put it in the chest, locked everything up.”

  Monty looked at Gabriella. “You checked the chest, of course.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But no, it was the same one. There was no switch.”

  “Okay,” said Monty, turning back to me. “All the time you were here, did anyone come over from the next bay?”

  “Their customs man came over to ask our man a question. He answered him right away and he went back.”

  “The Chicago Museum people … Have any contact with them?”

  “None at all.”

  Monty nodded again. He walked in circles, looking, musing and asking a few more questions. Gabriella and I answered them and finally Monty snapped his fingers.

  “Got it?” asked Gabriella in surprise.

  “Nearly got it,” said Monty. “I’ve gotta ge
t back and rehearse an escape from a tank full of water. I can give you what I’ve got right now. Purely an opinion, of course, you can take it or leave it—and I wanna make one thing plain. I’m telling you what I think from an illusionist’s point of view. Beyond that is up to you.”

  “Go ahead,” said Gabriella.

  “The most likely scenario is that one of these three guys did it,” he told Gabriella but he looked directly at me. “Either you—or this Renshaw—or that Cartwright guy.”

  “Now, wait a minute—” I began hotly.

  “Hold on,” said Gabriella. She could be very authoritative when she chose. “Let Monty finish.”

  “Finish nothing!” I said furiously. “He’s named three suspects and one of them is dead! I’m the third one—what does that suggest?”

  “Let. Him. Finish!” rapped Gabriella. “Go on, Monty.”

  “From what you’ve told me, it must be Cartwright,” Monty said, giving me a placatory grin, “and he had an accomplice.”

  “Cartwright!” I echoed, astonished. “Why would he steal his own merchandise?”

  “Hey, come on,” Monty said with a grin. “Didn’t I say anything beyond the illusion is the problem of Miss Gaby here?”

  She gave him a withering look but all she said was, “Keep going, Monty.”

  “Okay, here’s the way I see it. This guy Cartwright wraps up the sack after he’s done with all that testing stuff. He puts it on the barrow and takes it back out to the truck. He locks it up. Then—unseen by you other guys—he hides the keys outside in an agreed place. The accomplice is hiding in the vehicle which is only a few feet away from the truck. He gets the keys, removes the sack and puts the keys back. He gets back into the other vehicle.”

  He paused, watching us.

  “Wasn’t he taking a chance on being seen?” Gabriella asked.

  “Sure,” said Monty, “so he needed a diversion.”

  “The timer bell that went off…” I said.

  “Right—it was also a signal to the accomplice to go into action.”