by John Gaspard
Baxter shook his head. “No, and I’m pretty certain the dental records will prove it is, in fact, Archie Banks in the box. Of course, we won’t know for sure for several days,” he added. “But I agree with McHugh, every avenue should be explored.”
He looked toward the cemetery’s main gate, and I recognized one of his cars idling, with a driver standing by patiently.
“Can I give you both a lift back to the Heath?” he asked, gesturing expansively toward his car.
“I’m sure Megan would appreciate it,” I said. “I’m going to take the tube down to Leicester.”
“Another West End visit?” Baxter said as we neared the car. The driver had moved to the passenger door and swung it open.
“I have to settle some business with Jake North,” I said. “I made an appointment, via his publicist, to chat with him in his dressing room before the play tonight.”
“Well,” Baxter said, giving me a warm pat on the back, “as we say in the theater, ‘Break a leg.’”
I chuckled dryly. “I think Jake can consider himself lucky if that’s all I break.”
Chapter 17
“Fifteen minutes, Mr. North.”
“Yeah, okay.” Jake’s response to the assistant stage manager’s short statement was mumbled and morose. She looked over at me, and I nodded, as if to say, “I’ll make sure he gets on stage on time.” Or perhaps the nod meant, “Yes, he is sort of a jerk, isn’t he?” The annoyed headshake she gave in response told me all I needed to know about her relationship with the play’s current star.
I had quickly discovered that while the onstage antics at A Pretty Taste for Paradox were all high-energy fun and fancy, life backstage was anything but. From the moment I had arrived at the stage door for my scheduled pre-show meeting with Jake, everyone I’d encountered seemed edgy and annoyed—either with the production as a whole or with my old high-school chum. Or both.
Upon my arrival at his dressing room door, Jake’s enthusiastic greeting was cut short when I held up the lecture notes Liam, the kid at Davenport’s magic shop, had given me. He stared at the photocopied booklet for a long moment before taking it from me and stepping back into his dressing room. I followed, letting the door swing shut behind me.
Jake sat heavily in his chair in front of the makeup mirror, letting out a long sigh as he absently paged through the pamphlet. I debated whether I should stay standing and present a position of power or sit down as a symbol of appeasement. The arrival of the assistant stage manager for her short announcement about the impending start of the show pushed me away from the closed door. So I split the difference and sat on the arm of the worn couch on the other side of the small room.
“Do you know what the expression ‘dead to rights’ means?” Jake finally asked, looking up at me for the first time.
“I think it means being caught red-handed,” I said with some authority, although in reality I didn’t think I had ever used the expression and was a bit fuzzy on its actual meaning.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” Jake said, setting the brochure on his makeup table. “It’s in one of my lines in the play, but I hardly ever say it, because I’m not entirely sure what it means.”
I considered asking why there were no dictionaries on his planet but decided this might start us down a path of hostility I was really trying to avoid. I was also curious about his casual relationship with the text of the play but felt it was a discussion best left for another time. He picked up the lecture notes again.
“Sorry about this,” he said quietly. “You’ve got me dead to rights.”
“Thanks, but the more times you apologize, the less meaning it has,” I said, thinking back to our tense, mediated conversation in Gareth MacKenzie’s office at The Magic Circle.
He nodded in agreement. “It’s my fault. I never should have tried to do the whole magician thing. My experience on that vomit wheel certainly proved that. It’s like that Houdini quote.”
I raised an eyebrow at this, as Jake’s grasp of magic history had never been what one might call robust. “Houdini quote?” I repeated.
“You know, about actors being magicians being actors. Or something.”
“You mean, ‘A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician?’” I said.
“That’s the one.”
“That was Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin. Not Houdini.”
“Whatever,” he shrugged. “Being the famous actor who does magic all the time is hard. They always want something new. It never ends. Everywhere I go, it’s gotta be something new. And once you do a trick on TV, forget about it. You can’t use that one again. It’s back to the freakin’ drawing board.”
I smiled in spite of myself, recognizing Jake’s complaint as being a common one among genuine magicians.
“So I’m always paying a fortune to hire some guy to teach me something new or busting the bank to buy some fresh illusion or being forced to use whatever is at hand,” he said, once again gesturing at the lecture notes as if they were Exhibit A in a courtroom trial.
“So you’re an actor playing the part of a magician playing an actor playing a magician?” I suggested.
Jake nodded. “That’s about it. And I gotta tell you, I’m exhausted.”
“Well, I’m here to offer you a lifeline,” I said, reaching into my coat pocket. “Not that you deserve one.” I pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to him. Jake took it and opened it, sighing as he did.
“What’s this, a summons?” he asked, his voice tinged with resignation. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him, then remembered who he was and that feeling immediately vanished.
“It’s a letter you’re going to post on your website and Facebook page,” I explained as I watched his lips move slowly as his eyes scanned the single sheet. “It’s telling your fans that you’re retiring from magic.”
His lips formed the words ‘retiring from magic,’ and I wasn’t sure if he was repeating what I’d just said or if he’d just hit that portion of the short letter.
“What does that mean?” he finally said. “Retiring from magic?”
“It means that you are no longer the famous actor who does magic. Now you’re just the famous actor.”
He nodded at the concept and looked up from the note. “And if I don’t post this?”
I pulled another sheet of paper from my pocket. “Then I post this on my website, on the magic chat boards, and as a full-page ad in Genii magazine telling the world that you not only stole my effect but that you went so far as to market it and charge for it. With photos and links to the evidence, which is—as we’re both aware—abundant.”
I dramatically held up the folded sheet, which in reality was the hotel bill from the Fawlty Towers Megan and I had checked out of a few days before. But Jake didn’t need to know that.
Jake sat quietly for a moment, then he sat back and once again sighed. For someone who was about to go on stage in a high-energy farce, he looked very tired.
“Okay,” he finally said. “That seems fair.”
Another long pause. I fought the impulse to fill the conversational void, but I soon lost that battle.
“Well, at least you have this play to do,” I offered, gesturing to the stage on the other side of his dressing room door.
“They hate me here,” he said, shaking his head. “Everybody in the cast hates me. I hate this play. I hate London.”
This was a surprising admission, so I felt the need to push further. “Why does the cast hate you?”
Jake waved the question away as he got up and began to put on his missing costume pieces—a striped tie, a suit coat, a pair of cufflinks.
“They’re all a bunch of sticklers for saying every line in the damned script. Like it’s written in stone or something,” he said as he started to put on the cufflinks. “I’ve always been great at ad libbing, you kn
ow that, and they aren’t, and so it bugs them. I mean, where’s the famous ‘Yes, and...’ attitude I keep hearing about in the theater? ‘Yes, and my ass’ is more like it.”
I was going to point out while “Yes, and...” was a staple of improvisational theater, it wasn’t a frequent factor on the legitimate stage. But I was too intrigued to quibble.
“You ad lib. During this play? This mystery play?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Toss in a new clue here and there. Spice it up. Keep people guessing.”
The cufflinks weren’t behaving as planned, so he shoved his wrists in my direction. I gave him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look, but it didn’t register, so I dutifully began to insert the cufflinks into the cuffs of his starched white dress shirt. While I did that, he looked over at a hand-written list crookedly taped to the inside of the dressing room door. He leaned back to read it while I worked on the links.
“Well, at least it looks like I’m the murderer tonight. So I’ve got that to look forward to.”
I glanced toward the list and then back at him. “What do you mean? You already know who the murderer is before the audience has even voted?”
He smiled his trademark wicked grin. “It’s rigged,” he said, adding an unnecessary wink. “I had them put it in my contract.”
“You had them put in your contract that you would be chosen as the murderer at every show?” I was beginning to get a more complete picture of why the cast hated him.
He shook his head like I was talking nonsense. “I’m not an egomaniac,” he said reassuringly. “I’m hardly ever picked as the murderer. Only like, nine out of sixteen times.”
“How did you land on that figure?” I had abandoned my work on the cufflinks. “Being the murderer nine out of sixteen times?”
“I’ve got good lawyers,” he said with a shrug, gesturing that I needed to finish up my work with the cufflinks, as he had a tie to attend to. “I said I wanted to be the murderer in just a little more than half of the shows. You know, give the other guys an occasional crack at it.”
I returned to the work, finishing up the left cufflink and starting on the right. “Nine out of sixteen,” I repeated softly. “Well, that is just a little over half.”
“Like I said. Good lawyers.”
Cufflinks, tie, and suit coat were all finally in place when the assistant stage manager returned, swinging open the door to bark, “Places,” and then moved quickly away to spread the word to the rest of the cast. I started to say my farewells, but Jake seemed to take no notice. He headed toward his backstage entrance. I gamely followed.
“You know,” he said, making no attempt to speak at a level more appropriate to the backstage area like everyone else was doing, “I’m thinking—instead of being the famous actor who is also a magician—I might have better luck being the famous actor who is also a singer. You know, the guy who suddenly surprises everyone by putting out an album of his emotionally revealing but catchy hit songs. Nobody ever gets mad at a singer for doing the same song twice on television.”
“Are you a songwriter?”
He shrugged. “I have some poems,” he said, but then a new thought hit him. “Or I could up the ante and be the famous actor who also has his own band. You know, doing surprise gigs all over the place. ‘Can you believe it, Jake North just showed up at The Cabooze with his band?’ that sort of thing. I should look into booking a tour...”
“Well, there might be more to it than that,” I began, but he was off on another thought.
“Or, you know what, I could be the famous actor who plays poker. You know, go on one of those TV poker shows and people will be like, ‘Hey, I didn’t know he’s also an amazing poker player.’”
“Well, sure,” I began “Or, here’s a thought. You could be the famous actor who’s also a philanthropist, using his new-found wealth to spread good works all over the world.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment and then snapped his fingers in excitement. “I’ll be the actor who is also a stand-up comic. You know, on the side. Edgy but accessible.”
“Doesn’t it usually work the other way—they start as a comic and then get into acting?”
“That’s why this is brilliant.”
I was about to tell him I needed to leave, that I had to get up at an unnamed hour for an unspecified thing, but the assistant stage manager saved me. She yanked Jake away and set him in front of the door that would swing open in a few moments and place him on stage.
“Remember,” she whispered, but loud enough even I could hear it. “Your first line is ‘Did anyone happen to see a man in a black coat ride by the house on a white horse?’ Black coat. White horse.”
Jake nodded disingenuously while the assistant stage manager held a hand to her headset, awaiting instructions. “Okay,” she finally whispered. “Stand by.”
I assumed “stand by” was going to be followed by its directional partner, “go,” but Jake made no such assumptions. Without waiting for the final cue, he pushed open the door and stepped on stage. His sudden arrival cut into an actress’ speech, but I couldn’t hear if she even attempted to complete her lines, as the audience burst into wild applause at the arrival of the American star.
Jake waited for the applause to die away, pausing a few seconds longer than necessary, perhaps thinking it might spontaneously regenerate. Once he was certain his arrival had been properly acknowledged, he stepped forward with his first line.
“Am I nuts, or did a horse just go past?”
This was greeted by nervous laughter from the audience.
The assistant stage manager turned to me with a look so piteous, it nearly broke my heart.
“Good thing none of the guns in this show are loaded, huh?” I whispered, in a lame attempt to cheer her up.
“Don’t be so sure,” she shot back, and then turned and headed toward her next backstage cue.
As I sat on the subway, headed back to Hampstead Heath, I tried to remember how many days it had been since I took this same trip from Leicester Square and A Pretty Taste for Paradox to Laurence Baxter’s estate. Four days? Five?
Last time, Harry had been fresh from his weekend in jail, under suspicion in the stabbing death of the one-armed magician Oskar Korhonen. The eerie mentalist, Borys, had still been alive but was only a couple hours away from his fateful cup of tea. And the freakishly skillful Spanish card man, Hector Hechizo, was still several days away from his untimely and bloody end in a London hotel, which had led to Laurence Baxter himself being brought in for questioning.
This got me thinking about Harry’s reaction to the play and his comments about the need for a mystery to be satisfying in order to succeed. This current mystery, I thought, was far from satisfying, with each new development—like the discovery of the suicide note and the disinterring of Archie Banks’ body—adding little that was actually helpful. The correlations Harry and McHugh discovered between the murders and Banks’ suicide note were fascinating but did little to crack open the case. In fact, in my mind, they simply added another level of confusion.
Not getting anywhere with this train of thought, I turned my attention to the lecture notes I still held in my hands. I wasn’t sure why I had grabbed them as I left Jake’s dressing room.
Paging through the photocopied brochure, I recognized immediately that—just like the training and the magic props he had paid handsomely for—Jake must have employed the services of a ghostwriter to create his lecture notes. And a pretty good ghostwriter, at that, I thought, as I read through the explanation of the first effect.
Intrigued, I turned to the write-up on my Ambitious Dog routine to see if the writer had captured the flavor and the nuances of the trick, such as they were. The unknown writer had done that and more. He presented the trick in clear, concise language, walking the reader through each phase and providing sharp direction at every turn. But the wri
ter also added some thoughts on magic theory which made the trick—and, by extension, me—sound brighter than I had any right to expect.
The writer ascribed far more in-depth consideration to the routine than I had ever actually given it. He pointed out that the use of a surprising and stunning effect early in the trick—in this case, the realization the entire deck had mysteriously changed color—was designed to throw the audience off-track as to where the illusion was actually headed. This, he suggested, was a psychological ploy in the style of masters like Ascanio and Ortiz. High praise for a little routine I had stumbled into when I accidentally lost track of where I was while performing a traditional Ambitious Card routine for some drunken insurance underwriters.
I reread the notes on my trick, and one sentence suddenly stood out, although I wasn’t entirely certain why. In referencing the phase in the illusion where—from the audience’s point of view—the entire deck changes from red to blue, the ghostwriter had written: “It is important to remember: one wrong piece of information can color the entire trick in the minds of the viewers.”
I think the writer might have been just playing with the word ‘color’ there. But the overall concept jumped out at me, and I immediately tried to put it into the context of the current situation with Archie Banks and the murders. Was there a wrong piece of information coloring our perceptions of the entire case?
I thought about all the pieces of information we’d gathered since Oskar’s surprising death the previous Saturday night. The mysterious, murderous chair. The poisoned teabags, which may—or may not—have been switched with Borys’ teabags at the Baxter estate. The slow bloody death of Hector and the implication the murderer had an association with the medical industry. Archie Banks’ bizarre suicide note and its gory prediction of each of the murders. And finally, the body of Archie Banks (or was it him?), exhumed, skeletal and still wearing the Magi’s signature ring.
Were any of these a wrong piece of information leading us seriously astray? And, on what felt like a related note, why did I keep thinking about that horrible English breakfast I had on my first day in London? I wasn’t even hungry, but for some reason it kept popping into my head.