“Cigarette lighters, flares, guns for making loud noise and lots of smoke. That’s what audiences like. The smell of smoke. The noise. The danger they know isn’t really danger and yet can think, ‘What if something goes wrong?’ Something could always go wrong. And sometimes it actually does.”
I drank and felt something on my chin. The glass was leaking. Ott beamed and grinned. I put the glass down in front of Bombay the Great.
“Dribble glass,” Ott said. “Can’t resist it. Sorry.”
He didn’t look sorry. I wiped my chin and neck with my sleeve, trying to show nothing.
“Get you another one?” he asked, starting to rise.
“No thanks,” I said.
He looked around the room with satisfaction.
“World’s largest collection of practical jokes,” he said with a sweep of his hand.
“Practical?”
“Yes, I’ve always wondered why they were called practical jokes too,” he said. “But I’ve learned to accept life’s small mysteries. You?”
“I try to solve them,” I said. “Unanswered questions give me stomach cramps. Why are you hosting a dinner in honor of Harry Blackstone?”
He nodded, reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case and a small matching lighter. He took a cigarette from the case, put it in his mouth, and flicked on the lighter. A tiny pink umbrella popped up from the lighter.
“Funny?” he said with a grin.
“Hilarious,” I said.
He put the lighter and case back in his pocket, played with the cigarette for a second and offered it to me.
“Don’t smoke,” I said.
“Just as well,” said Ott with a wide toothy grin. “It would have exploded.”
“Blackstone,” I reminded him.
“Bygones are bygones,” he said, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “He insulted me. I’ve learned to accept insults. Grudges are useless. Blackstone is a fine magician.”
“I didn’t see any Blackstone posters in the hall.”
“I respect him. I don’t admire him. My moods, my opinions change constantly. I can be laughing one minute, crying the next. Would you like some peanuts?”
“No. I’d like some answers.”
He let out an enormous sigh and stood up, taking a long drink from his glass and then placing the glass on the table.
“What do you see before you?” he asked.
I saw a slightly looney man with a lot of money and time.
“Calvin Ott,” I said.
“No,” he shouted, his face turning red. I think I jumped in my seat. “No,” he repeated calmly. “You see Maurice Keller, Illusionist Extraordinaire.”
“When’s the next show?” I said, forcing myself to grin and sit back.
“I don’t perform in public,” he said. “I may have something special in honor of Blackstone, however.”
“Mind if my brother and I show up?”
“No,” he said, happy again. “You’ll be welcome. In fact, I insist.”
I got up, looked at Bombay the Skull, who turned away from me. Ott was grinning.
“Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Your loss,” he said as I turned toward the hallway. “You can show yourself out?”
“I can.”
“There’s no door handle,” he called as I walked down the hallway of posters. “Just say the magic words.”
“Abracadabra,” I said standing in front of the door.
“No,” called Ott. “That’s for getting in. The other words.”
“Open Sesame,” I said.
The door swung open suddenly, missing me by a few inches.
Behind me Ott said, “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed before someone got hurt.”
I went outside. The door closed. The stone gargoyles watched me leave.
I drove home, Mrs. Irene Plaut’s boarding house on Heliotrope in Hollywood. I hadn’t let onto Ott, but the dribble glass had done more damage than I let show. My shirt was soaked with sticky Pepsi. I had to change.
I found a Bill Stern sports report on the radio. Bucky Walters of the Reds was on his way to winning 30 games. A bunch of pitchers looked like they were going to win 20 including George Munger of the Cards, Bill Voiselle of the Giants, Rip Sewell of the Pirates, Ted Hughson of the Red Sox, Hank Borowy of the Yankees, Hal Newhouser of the Tigers, and Bill Detrich of the White Sox. It was a pitcher’s season.
There was a parking space right in front of Mrs. Plaut’s. It was small, but so was the Crosley. I hadn’t picked up a parking ticket in almost two years, which is quite an accomplishment given the Los Angeles traffic regulations that seemed to be designed to guarantee an unlimited source of revenue from drivers who couldn’t keep it all straight.
The Los Angeles speed limit was twenty miles an hour in business districts, twenty-five miles an hour in residential districts. Right turns were permitted against the red from the right-hand lane after a full stop, but pedestrians and vehicles proceeding with a signal had the right of way. There was no parking along red or yellow curbs, three-minute parking along white curbs, fifteen-minute parking at green curbs. Along unmarked curbs, you could park for forty-five minutes in the Central Traffic District from seven in the morning till four-thirty in the afternoon, but there was no parking in the district from four-thirty to six p.m. Parking was unlimited from six p.m. till two a.m. From two to four a.m. there was a thirty-minute parking limit, but parking was unlimited from four till seven a.m.
Having parked legally, I plucked at my moist shirt as I walked up the sidewalk to the porch where Mrs. Plaut, tiny, thin, ancient and determined, sat on the porch swing, a pencil in one hand, and a pad of lined paper in the other. That meant one of two things, neither of which boded well for me. She was either working on her family history, which was now several thousand pages long or she was doing a grocery list.
If it were the history, I would soon be getting a pile of neatly written pages to read and approve. Mrs. Plaut, more than a little hard of hearing and often in audio contact with a world the rest of us couldn’t hear, believed that I was two things, a book editor and an exterminator. She did not think the combination odd and had once told me that the long-gone Mr. Plaut had once been a prospector, stagecoach driver, and tree surgeon at the same time.
If she were working on her grocery list, it would mean a trip to the nearest Ralph’s, which I didn’t mind. What I minded was the mind-numbing explanation of the rationing system, which Mrs. Plaut had mastered and I was expected to remember.
“Mr. Peelers,” she said, looking up at me.
I had long ago decided not to correct her.
“It is I,” I said.
“I was going to give you this list this evening, but as luck would have it, here you are.”
“Here I am, as luck would have it,” I said. “I need a shower and a change of clothes.”
She looked at me and said,
“You need a shower and a change of clothes.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Shopping list,” she said, handing me the sheet she had been working on. I didn’t look at it.
“We’re having beef heart stew tonight, if you can do the shopping this afternoon.”
“I’ll do the shopping this afternoon,” I said.
She reached into the crocheted purse next to the wooden chair and came up with three one-dollar bills, which she handed to me along with the dreaded ration coupon book.
