A. B. ROBBINS
Howie Tabor had the fastest hands in town. None of the pros on the Vegas Strip, nor any of the street magicians on either coast, could do up-close magic like Howie. The only thing that kept Howie from the pro ranks and a career on stage was his speech: Howie made Gomer Pyle sound like Laurence Olivier.
One Sunday afternoon, Howie stuck a single silver dollar into Big Beulah and hit the two-million-dollar jackpot. He now had
enough money to buy the upscale tricks and illusions that set the big acts apart, and decided to make a run at a stage career. His idea was to develop a show that would not require him to speak. One murder and a few bizarre events later, I was in Las Vegas at Howie’s hire to find out “Whut in the hayell wuz goin’ awn.”
My shingle reads Peter Pansy∼ Private Eye, and, please, no wisecracks about the name. I used to be one of those by the book, gold-badge guys out of L.A. Robbery/Homicide. Now my beat is what I ever-lovingly refer to as Beverly the Hill.
As is my habit, I was sitting in my office at Numero Uno Rodeo Drive, wearing Gucci loafers, an Armani suit, Lagerfeld shirt, and a gold lamé shoulder holster, in which I keep “Golda,” my gold-plated .357 with mother-of-pearl grips. I was laid back, listening to the honeyed tones of Johnny Mathis, sipping on a Perrier, just waiting for who knows who, to come in and ask me to do who knows what, who knows where, when I got a phone call from my friend, Kam. I met Kamal Masik during my stint with Robbery/Homicide when he joined an investigation. He is an ex-Navy seal and real-life tough guy. Kamal, with his history of covert legal violence, is now the leading female impersonator in Las Vegas, yet he still does work he can’t talk about for one of those government alphabet agencies. Kam is my closest friend and a sometime work associate. It was he who recommended me to Howie.
I took advantage of the opportunity and drove my XKE, top down, to Vegas. When I pulled off of I-15 at Tropicana Avenue, I called Kam. He said to meet him and Howie at his place. Place my ass. Palace was more like it. They were waiting out front as I drove up. Kam, his olive complexion and Mediterranean look enhanced by Las Vegas solar power, looked as if he stepped from the cover of GQ. However, when he spoke, you didn’t know if you were going to get a young Anthony Quinn or Jane Russell.
“Peter, Howie. Howie, Peter,” Kam said.
“Ah’m pleasured to makin’ yer ’quaintance, Mister Pansy,” Howie said. “Thissa here’s a awful mess we got.” He was a good looker, a bit under six feet, muscular, and smart. He just sounded funny.
If you want big tricks built, Vegas was the place to be. If you had an idea, there were geniuses who could make it happen; or, better said, make it appear to happen. Choreography, original music, costuming, staging, everything you needed, just around the corner. Think of the stunts you’ve seen on TV, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, elephants, lions, tigers, and bears, oh my … all of them made to vanish before your very eyes. The competition is fierce, and industrial espionage, better known to us commoners as stealing, runs rampant. It appeared someone out there didn’t want another player on the field and was willing to stop at nothing to accomplish that end. The police literally didn’t have a clue. Now it was my turn.
“Mister Pansy, I …”
“Call me Pete or Peter, please, Howie.”
“Pete, whoever done murdered Gerald Tannon was good. I mean, real good at magic, the way it happened and all. The po-leece is looking wrong at it. Mis-die-rec-ted, jes like with sleight-a-hand in a card trick.”
“Tell me how it looks to the police.”
“Gerald designed a trick for my act that he wuz demonstratin’ that night on his compound. There was five of us a-watchin’. As I was told t’ do, I cuffed o’ Gerald’s hands behind his back, and bound his ankles with duct tape. He was standing on a oversized black silk body bag that me and Gabe zipped up over his head. I tied it with a large gold twistie. Gerald’s voice came through the bag kind’a muffled like, o’ course, but he told us to take the hangman’s noose, set it around his neck, then place the looped other end over a hook hangin’ from this sixty-foot crane. When finished I was t’ step back behind the rail. Then, Leon, his assistant, started the crane’s engine, engaged the winch, and hoisted the loaded bodybag to about fifty feet. We all stood there just a’watchin’, wonderin’ what the gag was goin’ to be. Pretty soon the bag starts jerkin’ around a little, and we laughed.”
“What made you laugh?” I asked. “I would think it was pretty serious.”
“Not when you know good and well he was going to escape. Hay-ell, that’s what we wuz there for. His escape.”
“What happened then?”
“Well sir, the jerking gets real violent then stops, so I turn to Leon: ‘Okay, what’s goin’ on?’ Leon shrugs and says, ‘I don’t know,’ says it weren’t the way it was supposed to go. I says, ‘Well, get his ass down!’ ’Bout that time my cell phone rings. It was Gerald, laughin’! ‘Howie,’ he says, ‘I’ll see you on the Strip later. Quit starin’ up at that empty bodybag. I switched places with the dummy up there.’ So then Gerald’s car starts up in the parking lot, the lights come on, the horn honks twice, and he drives off. Hot damn!, the guy’s good. As we wuz leavin’, we made some comments about how stupid you feel when you been had. My buddy Karl said it best: Bein’ slickered by the master don’t change the fact none that you done been slickered.”
“Who discovered the body?”
“Leon, Gerald’s assistant.” Leon had come to work the next morning, started the crane, swung the boom around, lowered the dummy into the prop area behind a small shed, and went about his work in the shop. At about noon he went out back and saw two coyotes “tearin’ at the body bag. It must’a been a fright. They wuz gnawin’ on Gerald’s arm and neck and lowgrowlin’, shakin’ their heads from side-to-side trying to tear off flesh. When they heard Leon, they run off, and poor old Leon, he could see Gerald’s face gnawed on and his unblinkin’ ol’ dead eyes.” Howie went silent after this telling of events, as if trying to wipe Leon’s description from his memory bank.
“What’s your take on it, Howie?” I asked.
“The cops said it musta been a recording of Gerald’s voice the sonofabitch killer played over my cell phone to draw us away. Shee-it, is what I say. It was Gerald who drove off in his car, I know it. He is, was, that good. Somebody killed his ass and planted him back on the crane. Damn po-leece won’t listen.”
“The trick was built for you. Do you know how it works?”
“Nope, I never performed it. The secret went out with Gerald. We got to get us a technician to figger it out now.”
I sent Howie off to make a few phone calls and try and locate a trick master, as he had called it. In the kitchen, Kam and I sat down to a cup of coffee. I asked about the other bizarre events he had mentioned on the phone.
“The first crazy thing,” he said, “was one night driving on East Flamingo. Howie stopped for a red light, which then proceeded
to cycle through red, yellow, and green. But each light stayed on for only a few seconds. After about twenty cycles, the light went solid green. The minute Howie made it across the intersection, his airbags deployed. He lost control and jumped the curb.”
I said, “That’s strange all right, but a bit benign.”
“Agreed. But a few days later at the Louvre Hotel and Casino, downtown, he gets on an elevator and presses the fourth floor button. The elevator goes all the way to eighteen, the top floor, stopping on all the even-numbered floors. However, the elevator door never opens. On the way down, same scenario, only with the odd-numbered floors, all the way back to one. Then the elevator went to the fourth floor and the door opened.”
“Again, rather harmless. Could happen to anybody.”
“Now get this, Weird Happening Number Three. Saturday, Howie drives his Ford Explorer to the gym, and when he comes out there are five identical Explorers parked side-by-side in the lot. None of them his. His turns up in the Police Compound, after being towed from a No-Parking zone. How about that?” I was beginning to wonder myself. “The police brushed the incidents off as pranks against Howie. They didn’t feel they were tied to the murder.”
We didn’t hear Howie enter the kitchen. He started talking while pouring himself a cup of Joe. “It ain’t that mysterious, Pete,” he said, “when you hear this. I found a remote-controlled detonator that activated my airbags.”
Kam added, “Howie drives East Flamingo almost every night, same time. It was simple to rig the light sequence and set it off when he pulled up to the intersection. So whoever it was, had to be close by.”
“Yup, and my office is in the Louvre Hotel,” Howie said. “Easy to program the elevator’s computer, then ambush me to pull the stunt.”
“And I suppose you go to the gym at the same time every Saturday?” I asked.
“Sure do.”
“Well, no more regularly scheduled events for a while. Deal?”
“Deal!”
He seemed so grateful for a partner in this mystery. Mischief
was mischief, but murder was cold and calculating. “You two seem to feel the murderer is a trick master, what with the pranks going on. But the killer would need no knowledge of the trick to kill and then place the body back on the crane. Couldn’t he have been spying on Gerald, and follow him as he drove away from the demonstration?”
“Could,” Kam said. “Unless you’re wrong, Howie, and the voice you heard on the phone was a recording, or an impersonation. Then someone who knew the trick could have sabotaged it, and it was Gerald up on the crane all along, no dummy in place.”
“Damn, it could’a happened either way, sure enough.”
“Are you sure it was Gerald’s voice, Howie?”
“It sure sounded like him, Pete. But, I dunno, couldn’t swear to it. How in the hell do we find out?”
“I start nosing around and earn my keep, that’s how. By the way, what happened to the dummy that was supposed to be in the bag?”
Howie and Kam looked at each other sheepishly, as if to say why didn’t we think of that. Kam sighed, “That’s my Peter,” and grinned.
I figured the best place to start was at the scene, so I jumped in the Jag and beat it over to Gerald’s compound. Leon didn’t know who I was. I became a reporter from L.A. “Freelance,” I told Leon, handing him my card. “Name’s Anthony Nucase. You’ve probably seen my byline in some of the rag mags.”
“What can I do for you, Mister Nucase?”
“I don’t think the local press has given this story its due. They’re missing the boat not putting the emphasis on your perspective. I’d like to make you an offer for an exclusive.”
“I’ve told all I know. How could an exclusive be made of that?”
“You leave that part to me, son. Did you read the story about then-President Clinton having a lovechild with a blonde Martian? That was my scoop.”
Leon agreed to five hundred up front and two thousand upon publication.
“Show me around first, after which we can sit awhile and refresh your memory about what you saw that night.”
I was taken for an intimate tour of the lot, and Leon let me in on some of the secret illusions still in the works. “I’m not in Gerald’s league, yet,” he said, “but I’m gonna get there, you wait and see.”
“Do you know how the stunt worked that killed Gerald?”
“I already told the police I didn’t.”
“That was the police, and there’s no sense making a good stunt public, right? But you must have some inkling as to how it was pulled off. Good apprentice like you.”
“No sir, I sure don’t. Some things Gerald held real close to his vest and didn’t let on about at all. He worked all kinds of crazy hours, just so no one would be around while he was testing stuff. That included me too.”
I got the feeling he was lying.
It’s amazing what you can do with a few innocent words taken out of context. By the time my conversation with Leon was over I had enough info to do a great piece for next week’s supermarket edition of The Inquiring National Globe. You see, I really did write that piece about Clinton and a blonde Martian, based on fact, and a very innovative interpretation (my own) of the actual statements made (the interviewee’s own). Please note that the statements used were all attributable, but not necessarily made on the same day, at the same place, or about the same subject matter, or to the same interviewer. Anthony Nucase was real, sort of, and possessed enough clout to publish any time he wanted. Truth be known his … my … sister Angelica owns the paper. She also made up my pseudonym. Sis used to call me a nutcase, then Mr. A. Nutcase. Mr. A. Nutcase became Anthony Nucase, my byline.
That evening back at Kam’s, I said, “What time are you through with your last show?”
“My last stunning appearance is at 2 a.m. Why?”
“Let’s take a hard, close look at Gerald’s compound, unannounced and unexpected. I believe we can figure out how that stunt worked ourselves, and Howie needs to be there too.”
“Meet me in the hotel lounge at 2:15,” Kam said. “I’ll need a few minutes to freshen up my lipstick.”
“Cute,” I replied.
“Dazzling, actually,” he said, and walked off. He turned dramatically in the doorway. In his best Mae West, he said, “Oh, by the way, some old friends of yours will be there tonight. You might want to come early and have a few dances.”
I did! It was a great crowd.
At 2:45 Howie, Kam, and I parked about a mile from our destination and walked in. The three of us were damn near ready for anything. Kam had provided night-vision head gear and ultraviolet search equipment. He had his Glock; I had Golda, my gold-plated .357, and Howie was armed with a brace of throwing knives in a quick-draw rig, the likes of which I had never seen.
After a quick look-around, I asked Howie, “Exactly where was Gerald standing when you zipped him into the body bag?” He looked around to get his bearings. “Someone done moved the crane, but I believe it was right there. So he musta been standin’ … about there.” He walked over to a spot and pointed down. “Yup, there’s the crane tracks, and with the boom a’leanin’ forward, it had to of been within a few feet of right here.”
“How in the hell could you cause something to disappear from this spot?”
“On stage you’d have a trap door,” Kam answered. “Out here, well, I guess you could have a trap door.”
The three of us were a sight, down on all fours, scratching the dirt and examining the ground with ultraviolet, crawling around in an ever-widening radius. Kam hit pay dirt, no pun intended. “Look at this,” he said.
It was the outline of a square something, the outline highlighted by two different color sands under the UV, not visible to the naked eye.
“What do we do now, dig?” asked Howie.
Kam, still down on his knees, looked up. “If this is a way in, there’s got to be a way out.”
“This here place covers ’bout twenty acres, so where do we look fer t’other end?” Howie answered his own question: “Starting where no one could see you when you come out,” he offered. “Behind, or inside, one of these structures, in order for Gerald to reach his car unseen while we watched the stunt.”
Twenty minutes more of intense searching turned up the entrance, which led down to a tunnel. Another twenty minutes underground, and we discovered twelve more entrances, a labyrinth of tunnels connecting them, and a large (twenty-foot by thirty-foot) workshop, with a twelve-foot ceiling. Lying under the main trapdoor was the dummy, two more intact body bags, and a thirteen-channel remote control, each channel controlling one of the trap doors.
“Damnation!” came from Howie when we sat down at the desk in the underground workshop. “I been comin’ here for years, and never had nary a clue this stuff was here.”
Viewed together, the dummy, the body bag, and the trapdoor yielded the trick’s mechanics, and although we were now aware of the how, they shed no light on whether the murder had taken place on or off the crane. One thing for certain, the murderer knew of this underground labyrinth, and I believed Leon knew more than he was letting on. How much more was anyone’s guess.
After a little shut-eye, we went to the Peppermill for breakfast and discussion. I said, “Put the compound under surveillance. That murdering joker is bound to be egotist enough to return.”
“Better idea,” Kam rebutted. “I take leave from my show for a few days and plant myself in the tunnel system. Besides being present if the creep shows, I can examine what’s down there. Whoever it was more than likely left traces of the visit.”
“How in the hayell do we figger out if Gerald was up there all the time, or planted after he was dead?”
“That will fall into place when we have all of the pieces,” I answered.
“I kin get a bootleg copy of that there po-leece report,” Howie said.
“Go for it. And while you’re at it, get all the info you can on the deceased: His family, heirs, business dealings, friends, enemies, and the like. And Kam, do as you suggested and visit the labyrinth. If you find something, call. If not, we’ll meet at your place in forty-eight hours. Meantime, I’ve got an article to write.”
Murdered Magician Communicates With Apprentice by Anthony Nucase
“It was as if his voice came to me from inside a tunnel,” Leon Hastings told this reporter. “It happened after hoisting him up with the crane. The noose was tied around his neck, I shut off the engine, and started climbing down from the cab when I heard it. ‘It’s as plain as the dirt beneath your feet,’ it said. I also saw something in the dark over by the office, but I didn’t pay attention to any of it, thought my mind was just playing tricks. But …”
There was enough innuendo in the article to let anyone who had knowledge of the labyrinth know that I had knowledge of it too.
I telephoned my sister as soon as the article was finished and asked for its inclusion in this week’s edition, which was due out on the stands in three days. Knowing full well the magazine was ready to go to press, but that it could be done, I expected a playful hard time from Sis and was not disappointed: “Why certainly, Mister Nutcase, for you, anything. Stop the presses and all that jazz, just like Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in whatever movie that was. Well, this is no movie. What makes you think you can call out of the clear blue and get anything you want? Just because you’re my favorite only brother, is that it? Well … okay! Now, you owe me one. No, make that another one. Ta-ta for now, Peter darling.”
At this point it became a waiting game for me: for Kam to call, for Howie to get back, and for the article to come out. Speaking of which, when Howie came back that afternoon, he invited me out for dinner and dancing. Quite an incredible night. Vegas is one hell of a place to wait.
At 10:45 the next morning I was awakened by a call from Kam. Damn, I never sleep in like that, and I didn’t even hear Howie leave.
“Sounds like I woke you, bro. Whatever did you … ?”
“Never mind. What’s up?”
“Been reading through a bunch of notes Gerald left behind, a
lot of technical magic stuff, a locked box I’ve been wondering whether to open, and several tricks in varying stages of completion. What do you think?”
“Bring the box and papers, and come on back to the house, we’ll figure it from here.”
“Right. Oh by the way, Howie called me and told me how precious you looked when he left this morning.”
“Prick!”
“Thank you, dear, I’ll be home soon.”
Kam and Howie showed up at the same time. There wasn’t a flicker of the goings-on from last night. It was straight to business, as Howie pitched an envelope onto the coffee table.
“That, mah dear frayends, is the po-leece report. And, Jacob Finegold, Gerald’s and my lawyer, done tolt me he’s gonna read Gerald’s will tommorra. If’n we want ta hear it private-like, be at his office at nine in the mornin’. Plus I got a whole lotta other info, too.”
“First let’s dust this box I found for prints,” Kam said. “I’ve handled it gingerly, so any prints left should be undisturbed. He placed the metal safe on top of the police report and in short order lifted two sets of prints. He drove them over to another of Howie’s friends, who made a special run on them. Neither set was Kam’s.
The box was a medium security office type, the kind used mainly for protection from fire. We forced it open with the help of a drill, chisel, and pry bar. In it we found Gerald Tannon’s life story. It was in note format, handwritten, and in chronological order: the makings of his autobiography, and possibly the unmaking of his murderer.
The police report, when Howie got it, held nothing special. It stated that the autopsy showed Gerald Tannon had died of asphyxiation from the noose placed around his neck during the execution of a special effects stunt. Approximate time of death matched the timeframe within which the stunt had been performed. The only reason to suspect foul play was the phone call received by Howie Tabor, the caller claiming to be the deceased, and also the deceased’s car being driven off while he was hanging from the crane. It also stated that currently there are no suspects.
The additional information Howie gleaned was another matter.
Our victim had a first cousin living in Vegas, with whom he had a very vocal and hostile relationship.
“Shee-it, I found out Gerald done everything for that boy when he arrived from back East, ‘bout six years ago. Seems the kid, twenty-one-years old at the time—Randy Nimoy’s his name—had the showbiz bug real bad. He tried his hand at stand-up, got to where none o’ the freebie lounges or funny rooms wouldn’t even let him in no more. So he went to Gerald for some magic tricks and illusions, which he got. Hay-ell, Gerald even sent him to a school for magicians. The kid promptly failed the course. Dandy Randy Nimoy was not destined for stardom. He blamed bein’ at the bottom of the bucket on his well-heeled, well-connected cousin, who refused to go the ex-tree mile. Dandy Randy is still in showbiz, though. He handles the karaoke nights in a coupla tough dives on Boulder Highway.”
“Why don’t we each take a handful of Gerald’s notes to read as tonight’s homework assignment,” I suggested. “In the a.m. we’ll catch the reading of the will at attorney Finegold’s office, then tomorrow evening we can drop in and catch Dandy Randy’s Karaoke Show, wherever it happens to be.”
“Rita’s,” Howie added. “T’morra night he’s at Rita’s. Bad place, that is.”
“Bad is best,” Kam chimed in. “I think I’ll take the night off, wouldn’t want to miss anything bad.”
Two-thirty that morning Howie knocked on my bedroom door. “Pete, take a lookee here, at this,” he said, handing me the notes he had been reading. Several of the paragraphs were flagged with neon stickums. They described Gerald’s first foray into showbiz with a partner named Zachary Richter. Zachary, according to the notes, was talented but a slacker, and a bit of a lush. After about two years of trying to pull the act together for a push at the big time Gerald had enough and ended the relationship. Zachary disappeared without a trace, abandoning his wife and two-year-old son. After he vanished, Polly Richter and Gerald had an affair for about a year, then parted ways. Polly
remarried, and after some legal wrangling, her new husband adopted her son Leon. The same Leon who had been apprentice and assistant to Gerald. Polly never told her son anything about his real dad. She instilled in Leon a love of all things magic, and on Leon’s eighteenth birthday she contacted Gerald and asked if he would employ him. “If he can cut it,” was the reply. Leon came to Vegas, tried out for Gerald, and made the cut in spades. The relationship between Polly, Zachary, and Gerald, by agreement, was to be kept secret.
I looked over at Howie, who had sat down next to me on the bed.
“Do you know where Polly Hastings lives now?”
“I believe its somewhere’s in Indiana. It shouldn’t be too big a problemo to find out.”
“Find out, call her, and fly her here, if she’ll come. I’m still not too sure about Leon not knowing anything. Too convenient.”
“Kin it wait until mornin’?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Kin I stay?”
I scratched my head, wrinkled my brow, and said, “Wellll … ,” as I leaned over and turned off the light.
There were two items in Gerald’s Last Will and Testament.
(1) To my cousin Randy Nimoy, I hereby bequeath One Dozen Rubber Chickens and One Dozen Rubber Turds, as an award befitting the biggest Chicken-Shit I know, and I request Attorney Finegold send this press release to the entertainment editor of the Review-Journal:
The late Gerald Tannon, of Magic Sanctum fame, has bequeathed to his cousin Randy Nimoy, “One Dozen Rubber Chickens and One Dozen Rubber Turds, as an award befitting the biggest Chicken-Shit I know.” Gerald’s estate is being handled by attorney Jacob Finegold, who has been charged with delivery of the aforementioned prize.
(2) There will be a contest held to determine the recipient of my estate. The contestants, who are listed
below, are to design a trick, illusion, or stunt, which costs less than five thousand dollars to produce. They must deliver it to Mister Finegold no later than five o’clock on the thirtieth day after the reading of this will. Mister Finegold, whom I have chosen as executor of my estate, will in turn choose three judges, who must agree unanimously on the winner.
The contestants are:
Abe and The Babe
Dandy Randy Nimoy
(I’m still giving him a chance at the family jewels.)
Leon Hastings
The Cunning Carsons
The Magnificent Millicent Blaire
My estate’s value as inventoried in this will, and certified by Noble, Knoble & Nobull, CPA’s, is six-million-seven-hundred-fifty-one-thousand dollars and eighteen cents. Go figure!
Finegold looked up over his spectacles and said, “The contestants have been notified and will be here for the official reading at four this afternoon.”
I placed a manila envelope containing Gerald’s autobiographical notes in front of Finegold. “Sir, what can you tell us about this?”
He took the contents from the envelope. “How did you come by these notes? The last I saw of them, Gerald picked them up here at the office after I had finished reviewing them for possible libel, and was going to place them in his fire safe. Where in the world were they?”
Howie detailed to his attorney the events that led us to the discovery of the labyrinth. Amazing: Howie’s speech was actually beginning to sound lyrical to me.
“You know something strange, Mr. Pansy?” Feingold said. “Someone broke into this office two nights before the murder, but nothing is missing, and nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Do you think it could be related?”
“At this juncture I’m inclined to say yes. But how is a crapshoot.”
We left the office and headed back to Kam’s. Howie’s mission was to locate Leon’s mom. My Southern California tan was fading, so I intended to catch a few morning rays of Vegas sunshine, and Kam had some business at the Federal Building. Tonight we would confront cousin Randy, and tomorrow my article would be on the stands.
Three o‘clock, Howie came by with a shit-eatin’ grin on his face to say Polly Hastings would arrive in Vegas tomorrow morning. She had asked him not to say anything to Leon because she would very much like to tell the story herself, in person. Good work Howie!
Fifteen-after-five my cell phone rang, it was attorney Finegold. “Mister Pansy, I believe I now know who broke into my office, and what was done.”
“What happened?”
“Well … before I could read the part about Randy receiving the Chicken-Shit Award, he described to all present the gist of it. Said that he and Gerald had conjured it up as a great publicity stunt, if something were to happen to Gerald.”
“Is that not possible?”
“No, it’s not. Gerald originally had left everything to Randy, but changed his will over a year ago. Gerald told me he had no contact with his cousin since he made the change. He asked me to handle the document with the utmost secrecy. He even quipped, ‘I would love to give my bequeath to Randy before I die. He still thinks he’s the beneficiary.’ Does that sound like someone who would let on to his prank? I don’t think so. No. Randy is trying to save face. Do you think he’s the murderer?”
“I couldn’t say so with any degree of certainty. Let’s just say he’s high up on our list of one.”
Rita’s is not the sort of club that comes to mind when you think of Las Vegas. Kam described the décor as early gauche. The three of us caused a stir just by showing up well groomed and in clean clothes.
There’s an adage that states, “Never carry a gun if you don’t intend to use it.” We were there to light a fire under Dandy Randy, not to shoot anyone, so we weren’t packing. Except for
Howie, who was wearing that quick-draw knife-throwing outfit under his doe-suede bomber jacket.
Randy came from backstage and started the show within a few minutes of our arrival. Not bad, actually. He was a song stylist rather than a singer, and did a bit that had Johnny Carson interviewing Marilyn Monroe and J.F.K. He had lifted the routine word-for-word from one of the Headline acts on the Strip. He spotted Kam and announced over the mike, “Wow folks, guess who’s visiting Rita’s tonight? It’s the screamingest Queen this side of the Strip, Faggot Kam the Female Impersonator, and it looks like she’s brought two of her sisters with her. Arnold, why don’t you go greet our guests?” Arnold came walking over from the bar. Six-two, maybe 325 pounds, and wearing the most grotesque Hawaiian shirt I had ever seen. All the measurements for this guy were big numbers, except that Arnold’s hat size and IQ were the same.
“You the pansy?” Arnold asked Kam, while putting his index finger on Kam’s forehead.
“No, I’m the Queen, he’s the pansy,” Kam answered, while pointing at me and grinning.
“What do you think of my gay, colorful shirt, faggot?”
“That’s why all elephants wear gray, Arnold. It makes them look so slender.”
Arnold made a move on Kam, and a few of the bigger guys in the crowd started to move toward us. Before the hulk at the next table could get to his feet, Kam had broken Arnold’s pointing finger, thrown him to the floor, stomped on his groin, and rendered him immobile. I backhanded the hulk from the next table after he stood up, and broke his nose. Howie jumped up onto our table screaming at the top of his lungs, getting the crowd’s attention. While they watched him, and in a blazingly fast move, Howie retrieved a knife from the holster behind his neck, threw it, and scored a bull’s-eye on the dartboard hanging some 30-odd feet away. His next throw stuck in the wooden plank floor between the feet of a dude every bit as big as Arnold. The place had become so quiet you could hear the knife vibrating like a tuning fork. Howie looked over the crowd and asked, “Next?”
I leapt up onto the stage and threw Randy down onto the dance floor.
“Don’t move, you chickenshit bastard, just listen. I know you know about the labyrinth under the Magic Sanctum, that you’ve been there and probably committed the murder. I also know you broke into Attorney Finegold’s office to sneak a peek at Gerald’s will. I can’t prove it yet, but as Little Bo Peep is my witness, I will.”
Out in the parking lot Kam said, “That was quite a show, Howie. I think they got the point. And Little Bo Peep as your witness? Peter, that was a stroke of brilliance.”
“Thanks, just seemed like the thing to say.”
Howie looked at Kam and shook his head, “Damnation, I ain’t never see’d yer tough-guy side.”
“I’m just a powder puff,” Kam replied.
“Yeah, fer sure, man. But you gotta be talkin’ ’bout gunpowder.”
Leon’s mother arrived from Terre Haute at 10 the next morning. I picked her up at McCarran International and figured a stop at IHOP would break the ice before going to the house. No dice. Polly Hastings wanted to get right down to it. Polly Hastings is a beautiful, well-tailored, intelligent woman, whose profession as a news anchor on a major TV affiliate in Indiana led her to a straightforward, no-nonsense approach in her personal life as well.
She, Kam, and I sat down in the living room over a snifter of Gran Marnier, and it was she who started the conversation.
“Just how does my son figure into all of this intrigue, gentlemen?”
I answered, “What I find hard to believe, Mrs. Hastings, is that anyone as bright as your son could work as closely as he did with Gerald, for as long as he did, without learning of the existence of the labyrinth beneath the Magic Sanctum.” Then I filled her in on everything that had transpired to this point.
“Gentlemen, Leon’s dad Zak, Gerry, and I were called ‘Two Lads and a Lady’ when we first started on the showbiz trail. Gerry was the brains behind the outfit, I was window dressing, and Zak supplied comic relief and chatter while the stunts were
happening. He was quite jealous of Gerry’s acclaim and top-banana status, and became vocal about his displeasure.”
“Describe vocal,” Kam said.
“Name-calling in public, yelling for no reason, drunken behavior on stage during the act. Gerry attempted to work around and overcome Zak’s imagined misgivings to no avail, and after about two years the act split up. I had left a year earlier to embrace motherhood. I have not seen nor heard from my disgruntled ex-husband since he disappeared over two decades ago. But something Mister Pansy related has given me pause. Zak did a perfect impersonation of Gerry as part of our act. In fact, even off-stage you’d never know if it was Gerry or Zak on the phone or at the door.”
“Unt zoe … .” Kam spoke in a caricature German accent. “Vot vee now haff iss a phantom zuspect who hass not been zeen in tventy yearz. Veddy interesting.”
“Please let me call and meet with my son and fill him in on the past. Then I’ll bring him here for you to question. I do not think my boy would lie to me, or to you. And I definitely do not think he is capable of murder.”
“No disrespect intended, ma’am, but that’s what Al Capone’s mother said,” quipped Kam.
“I think that would be a terrific next step,” I said. “And please call me Pete, and call Mister Laugh-A-Minute over there Kam.”
“Call me Polly. May I borrow a telephone and a car?”
Kam answered his phone. It was attorney Finegold asking that he come to the office, no explanation given. Kam said sure, and left. I went out and picked up a copy of the paper that contained my article. Howie was there when I got back; he had also picked up the paper. “How in thunderation kin you git away with makin’ up shee-it like that?”
“Easy. English is such an incredible language for making nothing sound like the obvious.”
Twenty after two, Polly and Leon came driving up.
After two hours of questions and answers, and becoming
comfortable with Leon and Polly, I felt assured Leon was innocent. Leon seemed sincere in his grief and guilt. He thought if he had been more attentive he could have prevented the murder. Gerald had taken great pains to keep his secret from the whole world, and as good as Gerald was, why could I not believe he could keep it a secret from his assistant? An assistant who played by the rules, and always did as he was told. A bright guy, Leon: He just had no street smarts. Howie concurred.
My sister Angelica reached me on Kam’s house phone.
“Peter darling, someone has called and asked for a way to get in touch with Mister Nucase. He left a cryptic message that he said you would understand … ‘Tell Mister Nucase someone wants to talk with him about the underworld, and that the word underworld should be written in capital letters.’ Whatever does that mean?”
“Bingo. Jackpot. Blackjack. We’ve got a shark on the line. Give him my Nucase cell phone number, and tell him to call at anytime. Oh, and Sis, I owe you big time.”
“Haven’t I heard this before? Well, good, I’ll collect big time. Be careful, you nutcase. Underworld in capital letters doesn’t sound like a fun game.”
Kam arrived in a new Hummer 2 with a footlocker-sized crate in the back. “This, my fellow Americans,” he said, presenting the crate like a prize on The Price Is Right, “and what’s in here,” pointing to his head, “will lead directly to our culprit.”
“Hey Pete, I’d be willin’ ta bet ya any amount you kin count, and give twenty-to-one odds, that both them there containers he jest pointed to are empty.”
“Funny, sonny. You guys help me in with this thing.”
It was heavy. When we set it down in the music room, and opened it, Kam started performing again.
“Lady and Gentlepersons, we have before us Dandy Randy Nimoy’s entry into the Estate Contest. Does it seem strange to you that it was completed only two days after the reading of the will? Okay, it did to me too. This dandy little stunt was stolen from the labyrinth, and we can prove it. How, you ask?” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a set of plans. “These plans, for this trick, were taken by me from the labyrinth. The tricks for all of the other plans I found were still down there. Only this trick was missing.”
Leon chimed in, “I recognize some of the parts! I ordered them for Mr. Tannon.”
“And, Lady and Gentlepersons, as far as the contents of this other empty container … .” Kam went on to say that after he realized what he had, he’d gone over to Randy’s house. No one was home, so-o-o he did what the police can’t, or shouldn’t do: He made himself a guest. Inside, he found the notes and drawings that were used to pull the stunts on Howie.
“Where is Randy appearing tonight?” I asked Howie.
“Back at Rita’s. This should oughta be fun.”
Kam was swaggering, “Let’s celebrate first. Dinner on me at Lombardi’s.”
We agreed to meet at Lombardi’s at nine.
The call came through halfway through dessert.
“Meet me at Mount Charleston Lodge in forty-five minutes,” the unfamiliar voice said. “Drive out 95, take a left on 156, then drive the loop to 158 and 157. Be alone, no cops, and no ridealongs. I’ll be watching and signal you. I have info on what’s going down, Mr. Nucase. If you want it, don’t betray me.”
“How do we handle this one, Pete? You’re not going up there by yourself,” Kam said.
“I can handle this creep. Whoever he is, he believes he’s dealing with a reporter. So I’m going to finish dessert, take a little mountain drive, and catch me a two-legged varmint. You and Howie go on out to Rita’s to check if our caller is Randy.”
“Could be a accomplice,” Howie added. “It don’t have to be Randy hisself. Possible six million dollars, a feller might go lookin’ fer some help.”
Mount Charleston and the Lodge are right around the corner from Vegas. Mostly locals go there. It’s rustic and wooded, and at almost 12,000 feet the peak is above the snow line. In the old days, it was the only source of timbers for the mines in the area. Now it’s the Toiyabe National Forest. Beautiful place to catch a murderer.
We were all so busy plotting and planning no one saw Leon leave the table. Damn boy, he had hot-wired my Jag and took off for the rendezvous alone.
“He’s got a good fifteen-minute jump on us. Get in,” Kam ordered, as he started the engine of his new tricked-out Hummer 2. It was the first time I saw Polly lose her composure.
Fifteen minutes was too big a jump to make up, especially against my XKE, but we were pushing it. Coming around a sharp bend on 158, the only thing that saved us was Kam’s extraordinary driving skill. He saw car headlights heading straight for us on our side of the road, and the white stripes veering sharply to the right. He yelled “Damn,” and cut the wheel sharply to the left, head-on into the oncoming car. We braced for the crash and nothing happened, other than we heard the tinkle of broken glass. We got out of the car and realized someone had rigged a clever stunt. A large mirror had been propped up across the narrow highway to make it look as if a car was heading straight at us as we rounded the curve. Black roofing paper covered the center stripes and shoulder markers. Additional paper had been painted to show the lane heading straight over the embankment. “How the hell did you figure that?” I asked Kam. He answered, “I saw my own license plate number reversed in the mirror, and went for it.”
About fifty feet down we spotted the headlights of my car. Leon had not been so skillful.
“Oh my God, no!” Polly moaned and started over the side.
Howie stopped her, and held her. Kam and I made the climb down.
I cupped my hands and shouted to Polly and Howie, “He’s alive, but hurt real bad.” The seatbelt and roll bar saved his ass.
Kam told Howie to lower the winch. We rigged a stretcher of sorts using the canvas and struts from the convertible top. Secured it and the unconscious Leon to it with duct tape from the boot of my wrecked car. We made sure his neck and spine were immobilized. Kam on one side, me on the other, we let the winch pull us up as we kept the stretcher and Leon from hitting the rocks.
After getting Leon to the emergency room at Mountain View Hospital, I sent Kam and Howie to roust out Dandy Randy and see what he’d been up to. No more pussyfooting around—hurt
the sonofabitch if you have to. Polly and I would do the pacing and keep them apprised of Leon’s condition.
Two hours later, Leon was brought out of surgery, with a positive report. Several broken bones, all reset, and in casts. Concussion, severe enough to cause a major headache that would last for days, but no permanent damage. Internal hemorrhaging, in check. He was in critical but stable condition. Sedated though he was, Polly relaxed a little after being let in to see him.
Kam called me first, and I gave him the good news. He gave me news as well. He and Howie had snatched Randy from Rita’s parking lot, restrained him, and brought him to Kam’s. He was not the one on the mountain. There were plenty of witnesses to attest he had performed that night. His story was, Yes, he had pulled those pranks on Howie. But someone, a stranger, told him about the tunnel complex and Gerald’s changing of his will. He broke into Finegold’s office to check the will for himself, and also visited the labyrinth. He did not kill Gerald. However, after the murder, he took the opportunity of stealing the trick. Randy felt he was set up to be a fall guy. I said he’s full of crap, has an accomplice, and did it all. I told Kam to keep him there for me, I would be home as soon as Leon wakes up from his anesthesia.
Polly and I were sitting in Leon’s room in the Intensive Care wing, when a man wearing scrubs came in. He pointed a .45 automatic first at Polly, then at me. “Zak,” Polly said, “my Lord, what are you doing?”
“Shut the fuck up, slut. You two almost made me kill my son.”
“Zak, I …”
“I told you to shut the fuck up. You just listen. For years I’ve been watching you and my son. You never even told him about me. If you had, I would have come back. He didn’t know that the shit-for-brains TV producer you married was not his real father. How could you do that?”
“I nev …”
“Don’t you say one more word or I’ll blow your brains out right now. The last straw was you getting Gerald to give him a job. I watched his admiration for Gerald grow. Your fucking ex-lover, my fucking cheating ex-partner earning the fortune that should have come to me, and getting the love and respect from
my son that was rightfully mine. So I killed the bastard slowly on his own stinking trick. I …”
It was my turn to get in on the act. “You sick bastard, you’re going to kill us anyway, so do it now. I don’t want to hear any more of your Goddamned pitiful story. You’re making me cry.”
“You think I won’t? You think I won’t?” he repeated, his hand trembling.
“I know you will, but you’re going to make us listen to more of your shit first. Well, I for one … ,” I started to say while turning to Polly. As I did, I whipped my .357 magnum from the gold lamé holster under my jacket and put a slug into his forehead, dropping him on the spot.
“Jesus, Pete, how did you know you could do that?”
“The hammer on his .45 wasn’t cocked, and with him waving his hands around while spewing his venom, I knew he couldn’t cock it and get a shot off before I got him.”
Leon didn’t win the estate: Abe and the Babe did. But they kept Leon on and gave him a piece of the action. Dandy Randy is still wowing them at Rita’s. Kam went back to being the plain old Number One Drag Queen in Vegas. Abe and the Babe, and Leon, designed an act for Howie that, at my insistence, included him talking. I also named his act, Howie the Hayseed Houdini. Beside my fee, Howie also replaced my XKE.
And me …
As is my habit, I was sitting in my office at Numero Uno Rodeo Drive, wearing Gucci loafers, an Armani suit, Lagerfeld shirt, and a gold lamè shoulder holster, in which I keep “Golda,” my gold-plated .357 with mother-of-pearl grips. I was laid-back, listening to the honeyed tones of Johnny Mathis, sipping on a Perrier, just waiting for who knows who to come in and ask me to do who knows what, who knows where, when I got a phone call from my friend, Kam.
Now, that’s an End