by Keith Miles
‘“Beautiful Dreamer”,’ came the first offer.
‘Thank you, Mr. Smith.’
The piano played the first few bars of the song and drew gasps of amazement. Other challenges were called out and they were all met. Unseen fingers played their way through nursery rhymes, folk songs and modern ballads. Inevitably, a comedian in the audience had to try to call the pianist’s bluff.
‘Okay, Benny, boy,’ he yelled. ‘Lemme hear what you can do with Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Number 2 in D Major.’
‘He doesn’t play that,’ said the magician.
‘See?’ boasted the man. ‘I caught old Benny out.’
‘You caught yourself out, Mr. Smith,’ rejoined our host with a smirk of triumph. ‘Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Number 2 happens to be in C Minor.’ He pointed to the grand piano again. ‘It’s all yours, great-grandfather. Take it away.’
The familiar opening chords boomed out and the audience clapped in approval. Mocked by his friends, the comedian had the grace to join in the applause.
‘There’s always some clever dick like that,’ noted Mardie.
‘How does it work?’ I wondered.
‘I don’t know.’
‘The piano must be wired up in some way.’
‘Stop trying to figure it out,’ she counselled. ‘Just go with it, Alan. It’s much more fun to believe it really is a ghost.’
I took her advice and surrendered to the occasion. The Magic Show was simple, old-fashioned, harmless enjoyment. Our host kept up a light, comical patter as he went through a range of conjuring tricks. There was an endearing amaturism to the whole thing that I loved. Charles Fenton Cornelius certainly put his own stamp on the hotel. The most I had elicited from the manager of my Santa Monica motel was a surly ‘Good morning’. The Magic Show was much more user-friendly.
What added to the general amusement was the fact that the magician made no attempt to disguise the mechanics of his tricks. When he demonstrated his vanishing act, for instance, he put a member of the audience into one of the cabinets, wheeled it up against the velvet curtains and gave it a hard smack. We all heard a panel fall open at the back of the cabinet and saw the curtains part as his assistant slipped out through them.
Mardie was completely carried away. Though she had seen the show many times before, it had never staled for her because it was an integral part of her love affair. Its familiarity was its joy to her. As she giggled and clapped her way through the performance, she was reliving the happy times she had spent there with Zuke Everett.
Once again I was doing duty as his double.
She now got her chance to take part in the Magic Show.
‘For my final trick, ladies and gentlemen,’ announced the magician, stepping to the front of the stage, ‘I require the assistance of a young woman of nervous disposition. And I believe I see the very person sitting right there.’
He indicated Mardie, who shrank back with a laugh.
‘No, not me. I couldn’t!’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged.
‘Come on, Mrs. Smith,’ insisted our host, descending from the stage to take her hand. ‘Everybody thinks you’re the ideal person.’
Taking the hint, the audience joined in with shouts of approval. Still making token protests, Mardie allowed herself to be led up on to the stage and put into the other cabinet. It was painted rather like a Chinese screen and had a series of narrow slits in it. Mardie was locked inside but her face showed through a hole and her hands poked out through two smaller holes.
The magician crossed to the table and held up one of a number of wide-bladed swords. He sliced an apple in two as proof of the razor sharpness of the cutting edge, then dropped the sword on to its point. It embedded itself into the wood and quivered to and fro.
‘Help!’ cried Mardie. ‘Lemme outa here.’
‘Relax,’ soothed the magician. ‘If anything goes wrong, I’ll offer you a job playing duets with my great-grandfather.’
He gave the cabinet a twist and it made one revolution. With Mardie’s tense face staring out at us, he inserted the first sword into a slit in one side and pushed. The point came out through a slit on the other side of the cabinet.
‘Hey,’ said Mardie in delight. ‘I didn’t feel a thing.’
‘There you are, Mr. Smith,’ argued the magician, leering pleasantly at me. ‘We’ll soon have your wife back in one piece.’ He inserted the next sword into a second slit on one side of the cabinet. Once again its point appeared through the opposite wall. He cupped Mardie’s chin in his hand. ‘This is your better half, Mr. Smith.’ He changed his mind and pointed at the area below the two swords. ‘Or maybe that is.’
More swords and more jokes followed and the trick reached its climax. Taking the broadest blade yet, the magician placed it against a chest-high slit in the front of the cabinet. Mardie looked down and grinned. When the sword was rammed home, however, her grin disappeared. There was a twitch in the velvet curtains at precisely the moment that the magician plunged in his blade.
Mardie’s face tightened in anguish and her scream echoed around the room. Some of the audience thought it was all part of the act and they clapped, but I saw the terror in her eyes before they snapped shut. Leaping up onto the stage, I pushed the magician aside and swung the cabinet around. The point of the sword had come out through the slit at the back, but another weapon had been thrust into it.
I shuddered when I saw the handle of a stiletto.
By the time I’d grabbed for the lock and wrenched open the cabinet, the back of her white dress was one huge, ugly, red stain. Shock and revulsion spread through the room. Other screams were heard.
Mardie Cutler’s words were curiously prophetic.
She’d watched the Magic Show just one more time.
***
Police headquarters were located in a vast, modern building of ferro-concrete and double-glazing. Its exterior had a stark purpose about it that kicked hard at the tripwires of my phobias. After one look at the place, I decided not to risk a second. The atmosphere inside had the same brutal impersonality that I find on all police premises. American versions of my father glared up at me as I walked past. They obviously worked on the same principle that he did.
I was presumed guilty until proven so.
After only a minute of it, I mentally tore up the post card of Alcatraz. The joke no longer seemed very funny. Taken in for some routine questioning, I still felt that I was in custody.
The interview room was small, frugal, unimaginative. A desk, three chairs, a telephone, a wastepaper bin, a metal ashtray. The walls were bare and the view of Los Angeles through the window seemed distant.
Lieutenant Victor Salgado and Sergeant Patch Nelms had no talent for hiding their displeasure. They grilled me remorselessly as they took my statement and they let me know exactly what they felt about my visit to California.
Salgado was particularly trenchant.
‘Next time you get an invite to come here—stay away!’
‘Thanks for putting out the welcome mat, Lieutenant.’
‘You’re as fucking welcome as a boil on the dick,’ he said with warm disgust. ‘I mean, look at your record in one fucking week, will you? A guy starts kidding around in his garden with you and he gets bumped off. You take a broad to some crummy hotel and she ends up on a slab as well. Keep this up, we’re gonna need a new sub-division here. Saxon-related homicides.’
‘None of it was deliberate,’ I argued.
‘Exactly. You did it all without fucking trying.’
‘Lieutenant—’
‘Put your mind to it, you could cover the whole city with stiffs.’
‘There’s no need to exaggerate.’
‘Don’t you tell me what to do, scumbag!’ he snarled. ‘You’re on my fucking terri
tory now. I call the shots.’
Before he could call any more, the telephone rang and he snatched it up viciously, keeping his eyes fixed on me all the time.
‘Salgado!’ he barked, then his tone mellowed. ‘Oh, hi, Captain…Yeah, sure…Okay, I’ll come up right away.’ He put the receiver down. ‘The Captain wants to keep tabs. Won’t be long, Patch.’
‘Right.’
‘See if you can drill some sense into this guy.’
Salgado stalked out of the room and shut the door behind him. Patch Nelms appraised me with dark brown eyes and drummed out a tune on the desk with the flat of his hand. He got up from his chair and paced around the narrow confines of the room as if trying to think of something to say.
When his question came, it caught me unawares.
‘Ever met a girl name of Lori Whyte?’
‘Lori Whyte?’
‘Car rental. San Francisco airport.’
‘I do believe I did.’
‘Why didn’t you mention it to us?’
‘Sergeant,’ I reasoned, ‘I can’t be expected to tell you about every pretty girl I meet. It would cramp my style unnecessarily and take you away from more important work.’
He sat on the edge of the desk and gazed down at me. His neutral expression was almost as unsettling as Salgado’s open dislike. He let his fingers tap out another melody on the wood.
‘You think all cops are dumb?’
‘Quite frankly, I try not to think about them at all.’
‘What happens if someone steals your golf clubs?’
‘I buy a new set.’
‘You don’t call a cop?’
‘My father has spent the past twenty years trying to steal my golf clubs,’ I told him. ‘Except that he doesn’t make a grab at them and run. His technique is much more subtle than that. Psychological theft. All in the mind.’ I crossed my legs and folded my arms. ‘That’s why I’d never call a policeman.’
‘Lori Whyte said you were a nice guy.’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’
‘She sent her best wishes.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So did Valmai Everett.’
Nelms had been doing his homework. He was thorough. I’d underestimated him and came to have a grudging respect as he talked on.
‘You flew up there to see Mrs. Everett and pump her for what you could get out of her about the deceased.’ He corrected himself. ‘About one of the deceased. Though Mardie Cutler was alive when you left San Francisco. Still be alive today if it wasn’t for you.’
‘Me?’
‘You’re the one they’re after,’ he explained. ‘Not some girl who takes aerobics sessions. She wasn’t trying to do our job for us. That’s your pitch. If you’d gone over that cliff with the car, they wouldn’t have needed to waste another stiletto.’
His argument was sound and it didn’t make me feel any better about myself. At the same time, I was going to admit as little as I could. Mardie’s death had given me further cause to press on. I was not going to hand over to the police everything that I had struggled to find out. They had their way. I was sticking to mine.
‘I was involved in an unfortunate accident, that’s all.’
‘Unfortunate for Mardie Cutler.’
‘It was not deliberate, sergeant.’
‘I pulled the report. Don’t believe a word of it.’
‘I was there.’
‘So was the blue Grand Am.’
He saw my discomfiture and grinned. Picking up the ashtray, he played with it until he bent it out of shape, then set it down on the desk again. Having kept me waiting, he offered some elucidation.
‘They got some smart cops up there,’ he noted with pleasure. ‘One of them plays golf. He was in the squad room when the report of your “accident” came in. Recognised your name, put two and two together, gave us a call. We took it from there.’
‘And what did you decide, Sergeant?’
‘You were followed, Mr. Saxon. Probably by the same guy who killed Zuke Everett. Looks like he can handle an automobile just as well as a stiletto. Cops up there went over that Grand Am with a microscope. Nothing. He don’t leave traces.’
‘It was an accident,’ I maintained. ‘With no witnesses.’
‘Just you and him.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You stick by that?’
‘To the letter.’
Anger showed. ‘Didn’t your father teach you anything?’
‘Yes, Sergeant. He told me not to speak to strange men.’
Nelms stood up in surprise, then let out a rich chuckle, allowing big white teeth to come briefly into view. He sat down beside me to continue his questioning.
‘What about Stinson Beach?’
‘Can’t recommend it. Too blowy.’
‘Why were you there?’
‘Valmai is a very dear friend of mine,’ I insisted. ‘I didn’t go to pump her for information, as you just claimed. It was purely a social visit.’
His scepticism was intact. ‘I get it. You go the best part of five hundred miles so you could take the dog for a walk.’
‘Louis was an optional extra.’
‘I called her earlier today, Mr. Saxon. She says that you wanted to talk about her marriage.’
‘I talked about my own as well. We compared ruins.’
‘Then you drove back to San Francisco and had this…slight accident on the way.’ I nodded and he rubbed his hand across his chin. ‘That kid at National Car Rental. Bright cookie. Spoke to him, too.’
‘You seem to have rung everyone but the dog.’
‘He gave us a description of Mr. Gomez that tallies with the one we got from that clerk at the hotel. The clerk remembers seeing a man—Hispanic, medium height, solid build, twenties—wandering into the lobby this afternoon.’
My interest quickened. ‘This afternoon?’
‘When he missed you in the Grand Am, he decided to take out Mardie Cutler with a stiletto.’
‘But why?’ I demanded. ‘Why did he pick on her?’
‘I aim to ask him that myself,’ he promised. ‘Right now, all I know is this. We’re looking for a mean Mex who carries a blade.’
‘What’s happened to Mexicans?’ I complained. ‘In my day, they were easy-going characters who sat around in the sun all day wearing those funny hats.’
‘You been watching too many old movies,’ Salgado cut in.
I hadn’t heard the door open. He was standing there with a buff folder in his hand. My last remark had not endeared me to him.
‘My old man was born in Mexico City,’ he said. ‘Only time I ever saw the bastard wear a sombrero was on holiday in Texas. You got any other racial hang-ups we oughta sort out before we go any further?’
I remained silent. He threw the folder on to the desk as he went to sit behind it. Nelms seemed to know what was going on.
‘Narcotics?’
‘Report came through,’ said the other, sourly.
‘Big zero?’
‘They got off their asses for once and managed to track down Zuke Everett’s source. Slime-ball named Vincent. No problems with money. Everett liked the best stuff and he always paid for it in cash.’
‘So much for drug-related crime,’ I said cheerfully.
Salgado glared at me with improved distaste.
‘Open your mouth again when nobody asks,’ he warned, ‘I crap in it.’ He swung his eyes to Nelms. ‘How far you got?’
‘San Francisco.’
‘Told him about her apartment?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Show him.’
The sergeant thrust a hand into his coat pocket and brought out a tiny, rounded, silver object. When h
e dropped it into the ashtray, it bonded to the metal. He frowned his question at me.
‘Some kind of magnet, obviously,’ I answered.
‘It’s a bug,’ he explained. ‘We found it during our search of Mardie Cutler’s flat. Stuck to a steel lamp near the phone. We figure it was planted during the break-in.
Salgado reclaimed the bugging device to play with it.
‘Much easier and quicker than a phone-tap,’ he said. ‘All you gotta do is stay within range and you hear everything the girl says and does. They knew she called you and fixed up that meeting this evening. So they were able to check out the hotel first.’
I was baffled. Mardie Cutler may have been involved with Zuke but she still seemed an unlikely target for a killer. What could be achieved by her death? And why go to such trouble to monitor her movements? She was quite harmless.
Salgado saw my consternation and shook his head.
‘We don’t know for sure either,’ he admitted, ‘but here’s the way it coulda been. You start pretending you’re a private dick and stumble on to something. They try to waste you. Mardie has some information that’s vital to you and they gotta stop her passing it on.’
‘But she didn’t give me that information, Lieutenant.’
‘So you say.’
‘She didn’t, honestly,’ I returned with passion. ‘All she wanted to talk about was what happened to Zuke.’
‘Okay,’ he conceded. ‘There’s another angle.’
‘I can’t see it.’
‘Maybe the poor kid didn’t know she was sitting on something big. They were afraid it might just slip out when she was with you. Too big a risk. So they bring in the stiletto boy. Same one who got Zuke Everett, we reckon. He checks the hotel this afternoon, follows her there this evening and—zap!’
‘But he couldn’t know that Mardie would be involved in the Magic Show,’ I responded. ‘It happened on the spur of the moment.’
‘So? He took his chance. Just like he did in the Everett garden.’ Salgado dropped the bugging device back into the ashtray and rested his hand on the desk as he leaned forward. ‘He knows how to wait and watch. That room was pretty dark. He coulda been tucked away at the back and nobody woulda known. All they were interested in was watching that old guy do his parlour tricks. The girl goes in the cabinet. He knows he can get round the back of that curtain. So he joins in the act.’