The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery) (24 page)

He stared at me for a long moment. “I have no idea of what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, it’s a little fuzzy for me as well, but I’m working on it. Thanks for your help.”

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I was humming
Have You Never Been Mellow
as I walked out of the store.

Chapter 18

As intriguing as my conversation with Michael had been, I soon discovered that I had more daunting issues at hand. I had a kid’s magic show to get ready for, and although it was my intention to simply glance through the material that afternoon—in advance of the show the following day—as soon as I looked at what Nathan had left me, everything changed. And not for the better.

Nathan had brought over all of his props in a grocery sack, which had been stashed, unopened, in a corner of my apartment since his most recent visit to the shop.

It was only upon opening the prop bag and seeing the mysterious paraphernalia within and then reading his instructions for the first time that it dawned on me that I was in trouble.

Serious trouble.

To say that his notes were less than copious would be an understatement. On a small slip of paper, in his neat, legible scrawl, he had written the following:

Intro—set character, parrot bit—four minutes

Dinosaur story—confetti or rubber bands as needed—three minutes

SpongeBob take-off—three minutes (remote controls, etc. Add extra streamers.)

Balloon animals/song parody—three minutes (adapt verses for birthday kid)

Monkey camp story, with bananas—three minutes (11 plastic, one real)

Balloon finale—four minutes

Encore—rest of balloons

The only thing on the list that I completely understood was that it added up to twenty minutes plus an encore. Somehow, in my naiveté, I had assumed that he was giving me, you know, his act, including a script and specific instructions for each effect. Instead I got a random list of words, some of which I recognized, but most of which made no sense as a structured magic act for kids.

Granted, he was my friend and I had certainly seen him perform, but not recently and certainly not with the idea of duplicating what I was seeing.

I made several semi-frantic, unanswered calls to his cell phone and then settled into some serious fretting. Then I realized that panicking would get me nowhere, so I sat in the middle of my living room floor and went through all the items in the bag.

There were two bags of balloons. One was the bag I gave him for the special helium balloon gag, so the others, I assumed, were suitable for balloon animals. I hadn’t made balloon animals since I was a teenage magician, and as I quickly discovered, it is nothing like riding a bike.

Despite my best efforts, every one that I attempted resembled a sickly boa constrictor in the midst of devouring an anvil.

The bag also included several electronic devices that I didn’t recognize, a bag of confetti, some plastic bananas—one which opened to reveal three smaller bananas within, a stuffed monkey that had some sort of remote-control mouth that I couldn’t quite figure out, an inflatable version of the cartoon character SpongeBob, and several unopened packages of batteries. Stuffed at the bottom were a pirate coat, a pirate hat, and an eye patch.

I looked at the truly random collection of materials in front of me and swore, at first quietly and then at a greater volume. I was screwed. I realized that I would have to look elsewhere for inspiration, as I wasn’t finding it in Nathan’s accursed shopping bag.

I then spent a fruitless hour digging through my own act, pulling out those pieces that might be suitable for an audience of youngsters.

My act is not particularly
adult
, but it does ask the audience to be hip to certain cultural references. It also requires the people who volunteer to be able to do grown-up things, like follow instructions and care about the outcome.

From my hour-long act I was able to find about three minutes of material that I felt would be suitable for a young audience.

The next hour was spent downstairs in the shop, examining each and every item for its likely kid’s show potential. After rummaging through all the stock in the store, as well as numerous discontinued items that had long-since been relegated to the far corner of the basement, I found several possible candidates and carried them up the stairs to my apartment.

Harry, who must have heard me banging around, swung open his door in time to see me passing by, my arms overflowing with a bizarre and sundry collection of objects. He was naturally curious and asked why I had taken to shoplifting at such a late age. I explained my predicament and he nodded sympathetically throughout my recitation of what Nathan had done to me and what I planned to do to him upon his return.

“Not to worry,” Harry said, opening his apartment door wider and gesturing that I should come in. “Help has arrived.”

“Of course, Buster, you wouldn’t know this,” Harry said to me once he had persuaded me to put down the armload of junk I had lifted from the store, and take a seat on his worn and lumpy couch, “but I spent the first six or seven years of my career as a children’s magician. Loved it, absolutely loved it. But a fellow couldn’t make a living at it, at least not back then. So I switched gears and went into stage work, with your aunt. Not that there was all that much more money in stage work, but it was better than the small change I had been making before.”

I nodded patiently, waiting for the point of his story, which in typical Harry fashion could be just around the corner or several torturous miles down the road. My face must have betrayed my thoughts, because he winked at me and headed toward the closet.

“Anyway,” he said as he opened the door and began to dig through the heavy winter clothes hanging there, all wool and corduroy, “I was a pretty darned good kid’s magician, if I do say so myself. And, being the pack rat that Alice always accused me of being, I hung onto all the pieces for that act. At least, I think I did.”

He banged around in the closet for a few more moments before I heard a muffled “Aha!” and then he emerged, dragging a worn black suitcase behind him. He set the case on its side and then went to his record collection, flipping through the albums for several seconds before finding the desired selection. He placed the vinyl disc on his beloved stereo, set the stylus on the disc and returned once more to the black suitcase on the floor.

What followed then was nothing short of astonishing.

To the strains of Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue
, Harry opened and unfolded the suitcase, which magically transformed into a waist-high table on a stand.

He then proceeded to perform a magic routine of such minimalism and beauty that I was literally awed, sitting on the edge of the sofa, my mouth slack.

Using the simplest of materials—a spool of thread, two coins, three thimbles, a ball of yarn, a balloon, a hatpin, three jumbo playing cards, some flash paper, a single white plastic rose, and a fez—he created a story that could only be called epic.

He performed the routine—which flowed in sync with the music as if Gershwin had written it specifically for Harry—in complete silence, and yet you’d swear that there were sound effects sprinkled throughout the act.

It was thrilling and captivating and when he reached the finale, during which he turned the white rose into a shower of white snowflakes that floated around him like the real thing, I actually found myself fighting back tears. It was, quite simply, magical.

The music ended and Harry took a dramatic bow. “Well,” he said, brushing off his hands and smoothing down his hair, even though not one was out of place, “that’s the gist of it. Pretty rusty on some of the bits…I’ve done the thimble routine better back in the day, I can tell you…but that gives you the general idea of the piece. All the props appear to be in working order, with the exception of the flash paper, which has seen better days. You’ll want to grab a fresh packet and you’ll need more snow, that’s for sure. But on the whole, you’re all set to go.”

I stared up at him in amazement. “I can’t do that routine,” I finally said. “I mean, maybe if I had a couple months to practice, and even then I’d suck at it. There’s no way on earth I can learn that by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Nonsense,” he said, giving my head a playful swat. “There’s nothing to learn. There’s not one effect in there you don’t already know how to do. And the story flows in a logical order. I could have you up and running on this in forty minutes.”

“You’re out of your mind,” I said, and he gave me another swat on the head. “Hey, careful there, you’re whacking someone who was just in the hospital with a serious head injury.”

“I’ll give you a serious head injury,” he mumbled. “Buster, stop complaining and get on your feet,” he continued as he turned back to the suitcase and began to reset the props.

I knew that arguing would be a waste of time, and so I moved to where he was standing. And then, just as he’s been doing since I was ten years old, Harry began to teach me his magic.

His forty-minute estimate was off by about two hours, but he was right.

By the end of the night, under his often scolding direction (“No, no, what are you, all thumbs? That’s the clumsiest execution I’ve seen in my entire life. Do it this way.”) I had learned the flow of the routine and was able to stumble through a performance that was just this side of adequate.

I spent all of the next morning working on it in my apartment, adding some refinements of my own, and by noon I was reasonably certain that I could, if only for twenty minutes, create the illusion of being a kid’s magician.

“Are you off to amaze and delight?” Harry asked as he looked up from his regular table at the bar next door. He was surrounded by a couple of the Minneapolis Mystics—Max Monarch and Abe Ackerman—and the three of them were eating Juicy-Lucy burgers, swapping stories, and topping each other with complaints about their various aches and pains.

“I’m all set,” I said. “I practiced all morning, got the stuff in the car, and I locked up the shop.” I looked at my watch. “With plenty of time to spare.”

“Then sit down and eat the rest of this burger,” Harry said as he pulled out the chair next to him. “There’s enough here to feed an army and you can’t do a show on an empty stomach.”

I sat next to him and he pushed the plate in my direction. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and suddenly lunch seemed like a good idea.

“I make it a rule never to eat before a show,” Max said as he wiped a glob of hamburger grease off his chin. “Makes me logy.”

“How can you tell?” Abe said, taking a bite of potato chip and shooting a playful glance at Harry, who smiled in return.

“Well, during your show
you
may be wide awake, but believe me, the audience is sound asleep,” Max shot back.

“At least I have an audience. What was the size of that last crowd you played for? Two homeless guys and a stray cat?”

“It was a small crowd,” Max admitted. “But I had them in the palm of my hand.”

“They’d just about fit.”

“Ah, you with the jokes all the time. I don’t care how big the crowd is. I’ve had audiences of just one person that I have amazed,” he said, starting to build up steam.

“Here it comes,” Abe said quietly to Harry.

“For example, you may not be aware of this fact, but I performed one-on-one for the late, great Dai Vernon.”

Harry and Abe both mouthed
Dai Vernon
in sync with Max. This was Max’s big story.

“I fooled him, The Professor himself. Flummoxed him and baffled him,” he continued.

“Blinded him with artistry,” Abe said.

“Pulled the rug out from under him,” Harry added.

“Make jokes all you want,” Max said, turning to the two cronies. “Dai Vernon was the only magician to ever fool Harry Houdini, and I fooled Dai Vernon. So do the math. That’s all I’m saying.” He turned back to me, studiously ignoring the other two men.

“That’s cool, Max,” I said, feigning ignorance on the topic. “How’d you fool him?”

“Here’s how I did it,” Max said, leaning in closer. “Dai Vernon knew all the tricks, believe me. He was a sharp one. So, to fool him, all I did was, I added a flourish to an old standard. And Dai, God rest his soul, got caught up in the flourish. The flourish made him think I was doing one trick, but I was actually doing another trick altogether.”

Max continued with the story, relating the post-trick conversation he’d had with Dai Vernon and the lavish praise he had received from the master, but I wasn’t listening anymore.

I was thinking about what had fooled Dai Vernon.

He thought it was one trick, but it was actually another. He got fooled by the flourish.

“What’s a flourish?” Deirdre said once I got her on the phone. “What are you talking about?”

“The Ambitious Card,” I said as I held my iPhone in one hand and steered with the other. “The killer wants us to think he’s doing The Ambitious Card, but that’s not the trick he’s doing. He’s trying to fool us with the flourish.”