Psychic Blues

by Mark Edward

  I smelled a con. Of course I was still interested, but I’d be more interested and cooperative, Bob, if you could tell me exactly what I’d be getting out of the deal.

  Then, as with so many Hollywood agents, producers, and users in such situations, when money becomes an issue, the line that has been heard so many times from so many people over the years escaped from Bob’s impatient lips: “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re going to be getting a nice piece of videotape out of the deal, and the exposure will get your face all over America.”

  Bob chuckled, like a carny offering me a free ride through his funhouse. I looked down again at his boots for a moment of meditative reflection.

  Comments like this one are usually used as a bait-and-switch tactic by bookers trying to see if I will jump at the promise of riches to come. Drag a roast beef sandwich down the street on a string and see how many hungry dogs will snap at it. Most struggling psychics who don’t have publicity, an agent, or any humility will quickly make that salivating leap, foolishly assuming that stardom is only a “good piece of tape” away. I already had more hours of television footage than I needed. I was not impressed.

  Plus, appearing on a 900-psychic infomercial ranked right up there with appearing on a float in the Hollywood Christmas parade, as far as exposure goes. It usually signaled the end of a career, not the beginning of anything remotely rewarding. If I signed on with this deal, I would be joining such illustrious stars as Gary Coleman and Ted Lange in that netherworld that is infomercial land. The prospect of being the World’s Greatest Psychic was rapidly melting down to a very small ball of wax.

  What had I expected? I knew when I’d opened their letter that it was too good to be true.

  Still, it was better than sitting at home. And I wanted to see what went on with this strange new breed of media sideshow operators. To infiltrate, investigate, and learn firsthand the techniques that had brought millions of dollars into the Psychic Friends’ crooked empire was a lure that went beyond any pay scale. I rationalized to myself that any financial gain would only be icing on the cake.

  I gave Bob a huge stack of my best photos and publicity material and asked him to call me when he had some solid financial information. It would have been naïve to walk out of that meeting any other way.

  I then made a solemn vow to myself. It would be easy to apply all my mentalist skills to pulling the wool over the eyes of people like Valerie, Michael, and Bob. I could use all sorts of gimmicks to convince them that I could perform absolute miracles, short of walking on water. But then I would be doing nothing more than repeating their deceptions. I vowed I wouldn’t stoop that low. I would do this thing as close to “real” as I could manage. No props or trickery. I would walk in and leave clean, without anything other than my natural instincts, intuition, and ability to give a good cold reading.

  Jules Lenier, one of my friends and original teachers, who guided me from magic through years of mentalism and finally into giving tarot readings, once sagely opined: “If you can give a decent reading, you’ll never starve.” I just needed to be myself. I wouldn’t be cajoled into wearing turbans or gypsy outfits. I would attempt to inject a note of class and even a little humor into this bunch of sacrosanct ninnies.

  The risk of going up against the best the Friends could find, armed with nothing but my wits and what I perceived to be something a little offbeat (even for them) was an exciting challenge. My adrenaline was already pumping. If I bombed, I would be the biggest bomb on middle-of-the-night television, but I was willing to take that chance. All the work I had put into studying magic and deception would be borne out. I would reach a personal dream of a lifetime: cracking open the real psychic egg, scrambling it up, and seeing what this latest incarnation of one of the world’s oldest professions was all about. Even if it would entail getting my hands a little dirty, in the long run I was sure it would be worth the trouble.

  “How ya’ doin’, dude?” Bob had called back. “Hey, listen. We need you to be at the site at seven a.m. sharp next Monday. You’ll be meeting Tom, the line producer, and getting all your orders from him. They want you to bring along at least two outfits, you know, like in your pictures. Some kind of psychic getup or whatever.”

  “Right. I think I can put a few things together.”

  “And be sure to be on time, because the rest of the crew will be waiting, okay? Your makeup lady is gonna be a gal named Tiffany. She’ll also be getting together your costume stuff.” Bob was starting to sound more and more like Slim Pickens in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

  There was still no mention of money.

  I tried to remain calm. “Bob, before I go any further with all this, I really need to know what I’m getting paid for this job. You told me you would call back with that information two weeks ago. So what can you tell me? How about a contract that puts it all in writing? I’m not asking for much here. I can’t work without a contract. Know what I mean, Bob?”

  Silence.

  Bob’s voice trailed off with an almost lifeless “Ya’ know, I think you’re gonna have to call the people back east for all that. I’m just setting up the psychics and that’s all, bud.”

  So I called Valerie. She didn’t know anything about contract agreements or even who to talk to. She cut me off without so much as a civil hello.

  Could it be that word was getting around the Friends’ penthouse suite that I wasn’t just another of their ever-trusting screwball psychics? Even the most angelic advisor had to wonder what it would take to get the tiniest bit of cogent information about what was going on.

  I devised a systematic plan of calling them every damn day, if I had to. I made myself a pest. I treated these people just as I would any soccer mom trying to set up a magic show for their kid’s birthday party—no contract, no performance. I called at least twice daily, morning and afternoon, and it became a ritual adventure of being run around from one desk to another, with one voicemail message left after another.

  Finally, Bob called back.

  “Well, I got you a sort of contract here to sign, if you want.” He sounded pissed off and totally unaccustomed to dealing with professionals of any kind.

  “Can you fax it to me tomorrow?” I asked calmly. “I will look it over, then most likely sign it and get it back to you. How does that sound, Bob?”

  Bob suddenly sounded tough. “Yeah, well, you better make up your mind real soon ‘cause the shoot is set for Monday morning and I need to know ASAP.”

  This gave me one business day to read over their “sort of” contract and decide whether I wanted to set myself up for more grief or not. No wonder Bob was sounding a little surly.

  As it turned out, the contract’s terms were fairly generous in some ways, not in others, but not inconsistent with what I had expected. Now, at least, I had a paper trail to take to court, in case the Friends stiffed me. And I fully understood this to be a strong possibility.

  Alas, Bob was only the first in a long string of con artistes.

  At five-thirty Monday morning, I set out for the hills of Agoura, California. Quietly anticipating the worst and ruefully accepting my fate, I took some comfort in the down-payment check they had sent over the day before. An hour later I pulled off the freeway and up to Hollywood’s concept of what a dusty country revival should look like. The end of the road was blocked by a gigantic white tent, squatting like a mother hen sitting on her eggs in the center of a small treeless valley.

  The sound people were shrieking “testing, testing, testing!” on the PA system as I parked close to an Airstream trailer that looked to be where the money was hiding out. After the dust settled, I stepped out of the car and brushed myself off. I had arrived. Where was my fanfare? Was this where the World’s Greatest Psychic would get his big chance?

  The sun was already blazing at that hour. Sweaty tech people were scurrying around as trucks full of props pulled up alongside buses filled with happy studio extras. There were several band members tuning up while stagehands maneu
vered fake foliage, massive set pieces, and furniture onto the main stage.

  The set had a long runway like a fashion show. No doubt that was where I would soon be strutting my stuff as one of the Psychic Friends’ latest models. Seats were already set up for probably two to three hundred people. The atmosphere of a circus was almost palpable. I was a bit disappointed there wasn’t a clown selling balloons or an elephant ride in sight.

  I was quickly introduced to Tiffany, a straight-ahead person I immediately connected with. She had her psychic tongue firmly planted in her rouged cheek. Like they say in the carnival business, she was “with it”—she was someone who knew her way around a con and could see through it. She took me to a van that was serving as a mobile control room, where I met the line producer Tom, a relaxed gent who looked as if he’d been around total chaos for a long time and it didn’t seem to bother him.

  “Here’s the latest script we have been working on,” Tom said as he handed me my copy. “We made a few changes, but it’s mostly lines Nell and Erik are going to be saying and your part is memorized anyway, right?”

  “Eh, yeah. Sure. I guess I’ll be doing readings for the crowd?” I knew there were lines I had to say, but I wanted to cut to the psychic part of the deal as soon as possible.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, you’ll be doing plenty of that, but we have lines you have to make look totally unrehearsed for the parts with Nell and Erik.”

  We would start taping within the hour. I had some new lines to memorize in a hurry.

  Tom suggested I find the other two psychics I would be working with and see what they were planning. I walked outside into the bright daylight and nearly knocked down a woman in front of the door.

  “Hi. You must be Mark.”

  “That’s me. Hey, you must be psychic!”

  “I’m Chris, one of the psychics. But of course you already knew that because you’re psychic too, right?”

  “Touché. Isn’t everyone?” I quickly recognized a foil as quick and supple as my own.

  I recalled all the ridiculous psychic names I had heard over the years, down-to-earth names like Betty or Manny changed into incarnations of first names like Misty, Othello, and Apollo, and last names like Virtue, Love, Moon, and Luna, or double aliases like Reverend Grace. Chris, by contrast, was an utterly reasonable name.

  First impressions are often everything I need, and I was pleasantly surprised that Chris wasn’t horribly obese and covered in cheap Goth costume jewelry, like ninety percent of the psychics I had worked with in the past. She was small-boned and with the kind of piercing blue eyes that told you they had seen a lot of ups and downs. Her eye contact was quick and unwavering. At one glance, I could surmise she was charming, shrewd, and discerning. I guessed by her extra coat of makeup that she was probably an ex-stripper or something equally disreputable. She had trendy Christian angel hype written all over her prim little dress, but I wasn’t buying it.

  Okay, I thought, so far, so good. She smiled a dimpled Hollywood smile with all the sparkles in the right places and added, “So, have you met the third psychic, Brianna, yet?”

  “Nope. I’d like to. Do you know where I can find her?”

  “She’s in the green room with Nell and Erik. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  My mind had already gone to work, figuring out how I could access Chris’ modus operandi. Every psychic has one. Some are easy to discover, others play it really cool. Some show only a sly game of wait and see, others try to bond right away and see if you will buddy up to them and share your insights and perceptions. This is all done in a below-the-radar fashion that varies from ego to ego. I have seen this “who is fooling whom” battle of wits enacted at many a psychic fair and New Age convention.

  Chris’ body language was casual, but I could tell she had her sights set on getting as much out of what was going on around her as I did. Every question or inflection of her voice could have been interpreted as bright and chirpy, regardless of whom she was talking to, but underneath was a mental tape recorder listening for any tiny bit of information she could make use of later in the show.

  I know this technique well. Information gathering is an essential part of the psychic business. Every sort of information can be used when the moment presents itself. In psychic entertainment jargon, this is called “pre-show.” The psychic, or whoever is working with the psychic, takes mental or even physical notes on whatever they see and overhear, and may even ask blatant questions. This pumping often takes place in a private aside or before any cameras roll, and then is regurgitated to the assembled audiences, who have no idea the information has been gathered beforehand. Of course, to the rest of the spectators this appears to be a miraculous talent and the psychic is credited with uncanny accuracy.

  With this glimpse behind the wizard’s curtain in mind, Chris and I strolled to the celebrity tent. We passed by several people with clipboards, some of whom were writers and script supervisors actively discussing what dialogue would be going down during the show. Some looked like they were waiting to gather other types of information.

  Sitting astride a costume crate in the celebrity tent we found Erik Estrada. He’d been around the Hollywood scene for decades and had gained his fame from a ’70s television series about cops and motorcycles, CHiPS. His smile was infectious and dentally perfect.

  He greeted me with a hearty handshake. “So, are you the guy that’s going to give me some sort of reading out there?”

  Before I could answer, Chris briskly stepped in. “No, Erik, I’m actually going to be the psychic working with you.”

  “Oooooooo, I like that,” Erik, ever the ladies’ man, purred.

  Chris had obviously arrived some time ahead of me or had made previous plans with the Suits and Ties. A smart lass, was Chris.

  She got busy chatting up Erik for choice tidbits that could have been considered small talk, if you didn’t know what pre-show was or how it worked. “So, Erik, where did you have to drive from? . . . How are your kids? . . . Have you been traveling lately?” One didn’t need to be psychic to see where all this would end up. And any man, much less a macho guy like Erik Estrada, would have told her anything.

  I had vowed not to stoop that low. I was going to do this whole thing completely cold. If I didn’t score continuous big hits, I would let the highly paid editors banish me to the cutting-room floor.

  I heard a rustling sound behind me and turned to see a willowy African-American woman standing by herself just in the tent’s opening. She was dressed in beautiful bright colors and, as she entered, all conversation immediately stopped.

  “Hello, everybody. I’m Brianna.”

  So this was the third psychic. She looked very young and attractive, and my antennae went up: shut-eye!

  She possessed none of the guile of Chris. Her aura was smooth and poised. If Brianna was on the take, like most of the other psychics I knew, she masked it very well.

  It’s hard not to like a shut-eye. They don’t project any particular antagonism or ego. Good, I thought. This would give me one less headache to deal with down the road.

  “Hello, I’m Mark, one of the other two psychics.”

  Brianna offered a slim, artistic hand, modestly decorated with gold and precious stones.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mark. I have heard so much about you.”

  I wondered what she had heard. This could work either way for me. I needed a bit more information to feel more secure with that statement. “Hopefully bad things?” I joked sarcastically.

  “Oh, no,” Brittany effused. “My mom has talked to you several times on the 900 line. She thinks you’re the best psychic on the line.”

  Mom being the operative word in this conversation, I felt a stage mom couldn’t be far away. Sure enough, ten paces behind her, a large woman pushed her way inside the tent, huffing and puffing from the heat. She had a huge sunhat on, magazines rolled up in one hand, and a small ice cooler in the other.

  “Dang, it’s hot already,” s
he wheezed, introducing herself as Shirley.

  I offered a hand. “I’m Mark.”

  Shirley brightened. “Mark! Oh my God! Finally I get to meet you face to face. I’ve talked with you so many times. How great to meet you in person. Do you remember me? I’m the one with the haunted shrimp boat and the ten cats? You know, the voodoo bottles and all that?”

  I didn’t remember. This should tell you how often I took calls about haunted boats, cats, and voodoo. But I played along. What else could I do, given that lovely Brianna was listening to my every word? Her attention and focus were hypnotic. No wonder the Suits and Ties had chosen her.

  I took a chance by saying, “Of course. And things worked out with that cat situation after all, didn’t they?

  Shirley screwed up her face for a moment. Her eyes went up in their sockets and moved to the right, which told me from what little time I had spent studying Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) techniques that she was trying to access a memory that was not clear.

  “Oh, yeah, I guess it did work out, come to think of it. Yes. Hey, you are good!”

  “That’s my job,” I modestly answered. Brianna was watching my act a little too closely at this point, so I decided it was best to move along. She was definitely a gifted young woman—but precisely how, and in what areas, was yet to be seen.

  I needed a bottle of water.

  As I made for the craft-service table outside, a member of the shooting crew yelled from a doorway, “Where’s Nell?”

  A production assistant, busy blowing up balloons with a helium tank, yelled back, “She’s not here yet! Got struck in traffic!”

  I knew there had to be balloons involved eventually.

  A huge dark-blue limo then pulled up to the celebrity tent. People rushed to open the car’s rear door for a heavily draped and proportioned African-American woman, who emerged laughing hysterically, and then animatedly glanced around, asking everyone in sight, “Where’s my psyche? Where’s my psyche?”

  One of the assistants politely corrected her, “It’s actually pronounced psy-kick, Nell, not psy-kee.”