door. Then he turned to me.
“Tell me a story,” he said.
I told him about Calvin Ott, otherwise known as Maurice Keller. He wasn’t impressed. I told him about the missing buzz saw blade. He was even less impressed. I told him I wanted my lawyer. Twenty minutes later, Martin Raymond Leib, decked out in a perfectly pressed blue suit and a red-and-blue striped tie-all 300 lbs of him-entered the small office with a small smile of satisfaction. He was thinking of what he was going to bill Peters and Pevsner for his legal services.
I was thinking about my aching shoulder.
Marty told me to step out of the office. I did. Phil was there.
We waited while Marty-slowly, I was sure, and with a patient smile-earned his fee.
Marty Leib could afford to be slow and patient. He got paid by the hour. Pepperman brought us cups of coffee in nonmatching diner mugs and asked me about my shoulder, and asked Phil how things were going.
About fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Marty, hand still on the knob, said, “Come on.”
We followed him through the squad room past working cops and empty desks. Marty, the size of a small rhino, cleared the way.
On the landing outside the squad room, Marty turned to us and said, “Lord, I so enjoy sending dear old John C.’s blood pressure into the stratosphere. He is so easy to intimidate. I would almost do it for nothing.”
“It’s a deal,” I said. “Nothing, and I promise to get in as much trouble with Cawelti as I can to bring a little entertainment into your busy life.”
“I said ‘almost,’” Marty reminded me. “We are almost finished with the war. We are almost a neighbor of the planet Mars. It is almost midcentury. It all depends on the definition of ‘almost.’”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Poor J. C. has no evidence, no witness, and no weapon to connect you to the Cunningham shooting. I suggested that we all visit the young lady in the hospital and ask her if you were the one who shot her. I suggested strongly that if she did not so identify you as the person who shot her or the man who came out of the dressing room where Robert Cunningham was shot, I would immediately bring suit for false arrest. Detective Cawelti went from combative to surly to reluctantly and grudgingly cooperative.”
“Send us the bill,” said Phil, unfolding his arms.
Marty nodded, patted me on the shoulder, the one that just had the pellet removed from it. He didn’t know. I tried not to pass out and succeeded.
Marty moved down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, out of sight, he sang, “The things that you’re liable to read in the bible, they ain’t necessarily so.”
“Lousy voice,” I said.
“Don’t have fun,” Phil said, unfolding his arms.
“What?”
“You’re enjoying this,” he said. “You’ve been shot, almost cut in half by a buzz saw and arrested for murder. A man’s been murdered. A girl was shot, and we just ran up a lawyer’s bill.”
“You’re right,” I told my brother, but I thought he was dead wrong. “Except I wasn’t almost cut in half by the buzz saw. That was an illusion. And we can bill Blackstone for Marty’s services.”
“Let’s go,” Phil said with a sigh that suggests a lot of things to a brother. It meant “Why did I decide to go into partnership with my infantile brother?”
I didn’t have to ask where we were going. We both knew.
Twenty minutes later, we were standing between the two stone gargoyles under the light of the almost full moon. It was about one fifteen in the morning.
Phil held up his fist to knock. I put my hand on his arm and lowered it.
“Magic,” I explained and said, “Abracadabra.”
The door opened. In front of us stood a bearded man in a white suit, wearing a turban with an emerald green stone in the middle.
“You’re late,” the man said.
The turbaned man turned and started down the corridor. Phil reached out and grabbed his arm spinning him around.
“Look Ott,” Phil said softly. “I …”
“He’s not Ott,” I said.
He was too short and heavy to be Calvin Ott.
“I don’t give a damn who he is,” Phil said, nose to nose with the now wide-eyed man. “I want to know where he was all night, every goddamn minute.”
The man looked at me hopefully.
“Phil, whoever shot Gwen and me dropped the turban and whiskers. Cawelti’s got them.”
“There could be a second set,” said Phil.
“There are seven sets,” the man said, his voice rising. “And I don’t know any Gwen and …”
“Leo, who was at the …?”
A man stood at the end of the corridor, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
“That’s Ott,” I said.
“Keller,” Ott corrected. “The name is Marcus Keller.”
Keller or Ott wasn’t wearing a turban or a beard. We weren’t looking for a man dressed like the one who had shot Gwen. We were looking for someone who had lost the disguise.
“Would your friend please release my guest,” Ott said, pointing his drink at Phil whose right hand was now firmly around the turbaned man’s neck.
“He’s my brother,” I said. “And my partner. And he has a very bad temper.”
“And a voice of his own,” said Phil, letting the man go. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I understand you were a policeman,” said Ott, emphasizing the word “were.”
The man Ott had called “Leo” staggered back. It was not a magic moment for him.
“I could call a real policeman and have him take you away,” said Ott, sweeping his cigarette-bearing hand in a broad arc.
“Not before I convince you to tell us what the hell is going on here,” Phil said, taking a menacing step toward Ott who stood his ground.
“It’s the anniversary of the death of Dranabadur,” Ott said, looking at a poster on his left.
I remembered it now from the last time I had been here. The turbaned man, the emerald, the whiskers. I looked at it again. Dranabadur’s dark face filled the poster with the words: Dranabadur, the Orient’s Master of the Singing Blade of Death.
“Leo, are you alright?” Ott asked casually.
“Yes,” Leo gasped, moving past Ott.
“Come,” Ott said with a smile I didn’t like as he turned his back on us and began to walk. “Dranabadur was a little known genius. Died twenty-seven years ago at exactly one-fifty-three in the morning, if the hospital report is to be believed.”
We followed him as he talked.
“Dranabadur’s real name was Irving Frankel,” Ott said. “Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, of less than noble or Oriental origin. He was a genius and went to his death without revealing the secret of his most famous trick, the singing blade.”
“What killed him?” I asked.
“The blade, of course,” said Ott, stepping into the living room that looked the same as when I’d last seen it, except it was now full of people. There were seven of them, all men, or, at least, I thought they were all men. They were all wearing white suits, beards, and turbans with a green stone. They were also all standing and facing us. Some of them had drinks in their hand.
The little chubby one called Leo, who had greeted us at the door, moved to join the others.
“Where’s your costume?” Phil asked Ott.
“I never wear one for these events,” he said. “I lead the service. And I provide the reward of fifty thousand dollars to the one who solves Dranabadur’s illusion of the singing blade, solves it and gives me exclusive and binding rights to it.”
