The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery) (2 page)

Pete and his soon-to-be ex-wife Megan own the row of shops on the corner of 48th and Chicago that includes Chicago Magic. I’m very used to seeing him around the neighborhood and I see far too much of him in the shop, but I was completely taken aback to encounter him and his ubiquitous deck of cards here in The Caves.

“I’ve got a client who owns this place. They’re trying to unload it. Interested?” He switched effortlessly into realtor mode. “I mean, think about it. This place would make a killer magic emporium.”

“Sure, but what would we do with the other ninety-five percent of the space?”

“You’re probably right, there’s way too much square footage here.” He pushed the fanned cards at me once again. “I think I’ve got this sucker nailed, finally. Go ahead, pick a card.”

I acquiesced reluctantly and pulled a card from the center of the fanned deck, showing it to Lauren.

“Now look at the card,” Pete said as he fumbled to square the deck. He glanced up at us. “Oh, you already did. Good for you. Well done. Okay, now, remember that card. I want you to put your randomly-chosen card back into the deck. Anywhere in the deck, this is a free choice that I’m not influencing in any manner whatsoever…”

He lost track of his sentence as he began to drop the cards in a slow shower from his right hand, which hovered about eight inches above his left. “Say stop wherever you like.”

“Stop,” I said, trying my best to put a modicum of interest into my voice.

He stopped dropping cards from one hand to the other and indicated that I should put the card on top of the messy stack in his left hand. I did and he then continued to drop the cards in a painfully slow and awkward manner until all of the cards were in his left hand. He struggled to square the cards again as he said, in an overly practiced manner, “Now to keep things fair, I’ll cut the cards.”

Pete executed a sloppy cut, followed by a second, even sloppier one. I looked up at Lauren, who was watching with a look of sick fascination on her face. I looked back at Pete, who was attempting to roll the top card off the deck with an awkward thumb and finger flip combination. It was obscene.

“And here’s your card, right?” he asked hopefully, offering the top card for our inspection.

Both Lauren and I shook our heads silently. “Really?” We nodded sadly as Lauren unsnapped the clasp on the make-up bib and pulled it off of me.

Pete began to sort through the cards, trying to trace his fatal misstep. “I think I screwed up the cut,” he said.

“I think you did,” I said as I stood up. I turned to Lauren. “Are you done with me?”

She smiled. “Have a good show.”

“Thanks.”

“And keep an open mind.” She gave me a quick smile and turned back to her makeup kit, repacking materials and getting ready for her next victim.

I clapped Pete on the shoulder and turned him toward the archway that led to the foyer. “Come on, Houdini. You can watch the show with me.”

“I must have screwed up the cut,” he repeated as we headed out of one cavern and into another.

“Excuse me. They said up front that Mr. Marks could be found back there? Did you happen to see him?” The question was tossed at us by a costumed character who looked a whole lot like the Mad Hatter without the hat. The eccentric character tossed his question over his shoulder as he marched purposefully past us.

Pete and I were headed back through the foyer toward the main room, where the last of the crowd was taking their seats.

The fellow with the question wore a rich purple tailcoat and colorful plaid pants cut in a style popular back in the late 1970s. This ensemble was accessorized with a paisley silk scarf tied snugly around his neck. He was tall, thin, and long-legged, with an angular face and wild hair that must have been tinted at some point in the past, as I could detect a trace of blue in it as he moved past us.

“If you’re looking for Mr. Marks, that’s me,” I said.

He stopped in his tracks about ten feet from us and turned, tilting his head to one side curiously. “Interesting,” he said in what was either a British accent or a deep-seated affectation. “I don’t know why, but for some reason, I expected you to be much older.”

“I was,” I said. “I mean, my uncle Harry was going to do this show when they booked it last summer. But I’m filling in for him.” I stepped forward and put out my hand. “I’m Eli Marks.”

He returned the handshake like a man new to the concept but certainly enthusiastic about it.

“Clive Albans,” he said, almost bowing. “I was hoping I would have a chance to speak with you, either this evening or at some later point, for an article I’m doing for the London
Times
.”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the article about?”

“I’m doing an exposé on charlatan psychics and mentalists. Frauds, fakers, freaks, that sort of thing. My understanding was that you, actually, your uncle, is a bit legendary in the field of debunking. I’d love to include the perspective of the professional debunker, if I could.”

I bit my tongue, deciding I would correct him on the use of that term during the actual interview. “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

“Brilliant,” he said, turning to follow us as we continued toward the main room. The three of us stood in the archway for a moment, marveling at all the costumed attendees; a truly exotic turnout. I heard Clive cluck his tongue loudly as he looked around the room.

“These people,” he said, shaking his head slowly from side to side as he jotted illegibly in a small notebook. “They look ridiculous.”

Pete and I exchanged a glance but kept our mouths shut.

“Okay, folks, we’re going live in five minutes,” the smiling television host told the assembled audience from his position near the front of the stage. The host wore his usual get-up—a tweed sport coat with a plaid scarf—but for once the scarf made sense in the crisp, cool constant fifty-five  degrees of The Caves.

The floor manager gestured at him and he looked down at small stack of index cards in his hand as if he’d forgotten he was holding them.

“Oh yes,” he said, “I’ve been asked to remind you of a couple of housekeeping notes. So, how many people here have ever been to The Vatican? You know, the one in Rome?”

This apparent
non sequitur
produced some puzzled looks in the crowd. A few audience members raised their hands tentatively.

“Okay, good, a few of you,” the host continued. “Well, for the rest of you, when you go to The Vatican and visit the Sistine Chapel—which my wife and I did about five years ago, just stunning, don’t miss it, get in line early, that sucker fills up quickly…they tell you the moment you enter the Chapel that you’re not allowed to touch the walls. Da Vinci or Michelangelo or whoever it was who did all the painting in there, he did the whole thing, walls and ceiling. Just stunning. And they don’t want you to touch the walls, because apparently they don’t want the oils from your skin to get on the painting.”

“Well,” he said , unaware that the audience didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, “the same is true here in The Caves, but for a slightly different reason. I’ve been asked to request that you don’t touch the walls in here because they’re made of sandstone and are very soft. They say that it doesn’t take much to damage them. So, hands off the walls.”

He added a laugh to emphasize this point and then flipped through his index cards for his next housekeeping note. “Also, be sure to get your questions into the crystal bowl…where is the bowl?”

The floor manager gestured toward the bowl, which was at the host’s feet.

He grinned broadly and pointed at the bowl. “Yes, there’s the bowl. You need to get your questions for Grey into this bowl before the start of the show. They tell me there’s paper, pens, and envelopes up here and also on a table in the back of the room. Is that right?”

He looked to the floor manager for confirmation, received a quick nod, and continued with his pre-show warm-up.

An audio engineer had found me and was in the process of clipping a wireless lavaliere microphone to my sport coat. I ran the cord under my shirt and slid the small transmitter he handed me into my back pocket.

“So what’s going on here tonight?” Pete whispered as the TV host cracked some more jokes and gave the audience a few more final instructions. Pete still held the deck of cards in his hands, which he fingered badly in what looked to be his sad attempt at a double lift.

“The local PBS station is doing a live remote, as part of their weekly local news magazine show. This week’s special is a Halloween show,” I explained. “They’ve got a psychic medium who is going to perform, and then, in the name of fairness or something, they want to bring me on.”

“The voice of the opposition?” Clive suggested.

“Something like that,” I agreed.

“So who’s the psychic?” Pete asked.

“A performer named Grey,” Clive answered before I could. He double-checked his notes. “Yes, that’s it. Grey.”

Pete looked at Clive quizzically. “Grey what?”

Clive shrugged. “Just Grey,” he said as he paged through his notes. “Apparently he goes by only the one name. You know, like Cher. Liberace. Bono. Do you know him?” he asked me.

“Vaguely,” I said, and then turned to Pete. “You may know him better by his former name…Walter Graboski.”

A dim look of recognition crossed over Pete’s face. “Now that you mention it, that does sound familiar. Wasn’t he a realtor?”

“For years.” Clive tapped me on the shoulder and I answered his question before he could ask it. “In Britain, you call them estate agents.”

He gave me a nod of thanks and continued making notes in his small notepad.

“And now he’s a psychic?” Pete asked.

“If you listen to his version of the truth, he’ll tell you that he’s always had
the gift
. But in reality, he was your garden-variety realtor for years. And then he started to get the reputation of being, shall we say, friendly to a fringe audience.”

“Friendly to fringe audiences? Interesting.” Clive asked, “Define please?”

“Well, if you were a witch or warlock who wanted to
mark
a property before you bought it…by urinating around the circumference of the house, for example…Grey was the type of realtor who would happily look the other way,” I explained quietly. “Or if you felt the need to perform a nude cleansing of a space before you put in an offer, Grey was your guy.

“In some instances,” I added, “I understand he was more than willing to strip down and join in. Then, after a while he discovered that he could make more money doing readings instead of doing real estate. So he made the switch to the psychic dodge full time.”

“You can make more money as a psychic than a realtor?” Pete asked, his voice cracking as he attempted to whisper.

A crewmember turned toward us and signaled that less talking would be preferred. I smiled at her, then turned and gave Pete a knowing smile as well.

I considered adding a few more words to the topic, but at that moment the lights began to dim in the cavern as other lights grew brighter on the stage. The host looked directly into one of the large video cameras positioned in front of the stage and announced, “Yes, folks, we’re coming to you live from The Wabasha Caves. It’s Halloween and we’ve got a spooky treat for our audience here and for all of you at home. Please put your hands together for the one, the only…Grey!”

And then without warning, the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness.