Confessor (50 page)

They waited in the foyer, letting everyone else get into the theater, so that they ducked in at the last moment, just as the performance was starting.

Herb waved an usher away, whispering that he did not want to disturb anybody. They would go to their seats in the interval. The usher did not seem to be concerned. “Over there,” Herb whispered to Bex, nodding towards a familiar figure sitting at the end of the back row. “If he moves, follow him. I’ll be right behind you.”

“That’s …?”

“I think so. Shush.”

The first four acts produced both hilarity and mystery, but Herbie was obviously waiting, tense and twitchy. Bex could feel the anxiety building inside the big man. Then he suddenly stiffened as Nick Ruggiero announced that they had a special treat in store. The first half of the performance would end with a guest who had only just arrived.

“You don’t get a chance to see this legend perform every day,” he said with pleasure. “Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous Claudius Damautus.”

The curtains parted to show a table set downstage, on which sat a crystal decanter half full of red wine, and three glittering silver cups stacked one on the other. To the right was a small stand on which stood a polished, carved box. And a newspaper was lying on a chair. Manuel de Falla’s “Ritual Fire Dance” from
Love, the Magician
came thumping out of the sound system, and on walked Gus Keene. His dress and makeup were the same as he had worn for the first tape they had seen—the performance at the Magic Circle: Levi’s, soft moccasins, white silk shirt, his hair gray-streaked and falling to his shoulders, his height an inch or so taller than in real life.

Applause gushed from the audience. This was obviously a great moment for many of them. Bex glanced up at Big Herbie and saw, to her surprise, that tears were forming in his eyes. He put his hand up and wiped them away, then glanced towards the seat he had pointed out earlier. She noticed that as he returned his gaze to the stage, it was as though he were experiencing great relief.

“Risen from the dead?” Bex whispered.

Herb nodded. “It was always on the cards. The trick will be keeping him alive.”

Gus walked slowly to the table, acknowledging the applause, then he moved from the table to center stage and moved his hands, gesturing silence.

“Reports of my death—which I know has been rumored—are greatly exaggerated.” Laughter and more applause. Then: “Most of you are magicians, so I must tell you that I shall be working at speed. I want your attention and concentration, for I am about to give you the history of magic in about twenty minutes—well, maybe thirty, but who’s counting? You should all know that this history will not be performed in chronological order.

“First, remember the great illusionists—Philippe producing his giant bowl of water; Robert-Houdin, father of modern magic, with his fishbowl; Ching Ling Fop and Chung Ling Soo and Long Tack Sam; Fu-Manchú; and the Great Lafayette and his huge bowl of water, containing enough to be poured into several buckets. Countless magicians down the ages have sought to produce water.”

He flicked a large white silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and draped it over the palm of his right hand, smoothing it across the flat of the hand. Then he lifted it with the finger and thumb of his left hand and dropped it again. A shape had formed under the silk. Gus smiled and whipped the silk away to show a tumbler full of water.

“I should have done that while executing a somersault.” He took a long sip from the glass.

“There is a famous old trick,” he continued, “in which a glass and bottle change places when covered by cylindrical tubes. It’s old. You all know it backwards. I shall do something more miraculous.” He gestured to the decanter half full of red wine, dropped the silk over the glass again, then once more gestured towards the decanter. In the time it took to make the hand movement, the wine had turned to clear water; and lifting the silk from the glass, he revealed that the wine was now there where the water had been.

He lifted the glass as though to toast the audience, then threw the silk handkerchief over it, lifted them both into the air, threw them up and clapped his hands over what had been the handkerchief-covered glass. Nothing. Both had vanished.

Once more he gestured towards the decanter. Now the white silk had appeared within the bowl, and the water had disappeared.

Again, the charm and the smile as he reached for the decanter, grasping it at the neck and mouth. The crystal melted away in his hands, with only the bowl of the decanter left on the table, as he appeared to make the glass neck into a malleable substance, rolling it between his hands to finally form a large crystal ball. From this he seemed to tweak off rough pieces of glass; then closing his hands around it, he broke the large ball in two, rolling and producing another ball, then another, ending with three clear crystal balls.

He placed two of the balls onto the table, still rolling the third between his hands until the color changed and he displayed a ruby glass ball. The same actions again with the second clear sphere, changing it into an emerald ball.

With his right hand, he lifted the three stacked and polished cups, saying, “The oldest trick in our vast lexicon of magic. The cups and balls.”

The house was silent as Gus vanished the colored crystal balls from under the cups, only to find them again under one of the cups. Once more he separated them to one under each cup; but when the cups were lifted, they had gone, finally to reappear together under one cup. Then, again, ruby, emerald and clear balls were placed under each cup, rattled to prove they were there. The cups were lifted and shown empty. A second later, the cups were picked up and out of each rolled a large glass ball three times the size of the original—ruby, emerald and clear—each ball so large that it seemed impossible for the cup to have contained it. The applause rose as he stacked the cups and placed them to one side.

The charismatic, mysterious smile as Gus picked up the clear ball, lifted it over the bowl of the decanter and seemed to melt the crystal back to restore the neck and mouth.

He took up the emerald ball, raised it above the decanter, making it obvious that the mouth of the vessel was impossibly small for the ball to pass through; then, with a clunk, the ball flashed green and fell into the bottom of the decanter, leaving him with the ruby ball, which he rubbed against the decanter’s bowl so that the ball melted away in his hand and a rich red clear circle appeared on the side of the decanter.

As before, the audience reaction was massive applause. A few people even started a standing ovation, but Gus motioned them to sit down. “You can get more than a drink out of a little glass.” He reached across to the stacked cups, lifted them to reveal another glass ball, which he began to roll between his hands. Everyone appeared to be focused on what he was doing, but from the corner of his eye Herb saw the recognizable figure move slowly from the back row and slip out of the door.

“Go,” he whispered to Bex, who nodded, gave it a couple of seconds and then exited through the door.

Onstage, Gus was rubbing the new glass ball between his palms until it changed, visibly, into an egg. Herbie watched, though part of the poetry of what Gus was doing up on the stage was now lost to him. His concern lay in what was happening outside the auditorium.

Bex stood for a moment, inside the foyer of the theater, watching one of the big glass outer doors still swinging after the man she was following had made his exit. She had just caught sight of him moving to the left. Reaching inside the short jacket she was wearing, she withdrew the Beretta given to her for the
Conductor
operation. Slowly she went out into the street, moving left but sweeping the scene in front of the theater.

The buses waited for the audience, the drivers gathered together, talking and smoking. She saw a small black car across the street but could not make out if there was anyone in it. Quickly she turned, finding herself at the corner of the building. A narrow passage ran alongside, leading, she presumed to the stage door.

She stayed close to the wall, and caught sight of the man she was following as he walked into the light from a lamp held in a bracket in front of the stage door. She did not hear the second figure behind her, but her intuition made her turn just as Sean O’Donnel leaped towards her.

Back inside, Gus had a member of the audience up onstage. No coaxing had been necessary, and he was going through a series of quite impossible vanishes and reproductions with the egg and a small black bag—allowing the lady assisting him to put the egg into the bag, from whence it disappeared, returned, vanished again, became two eggs, then three, each of which was placed singly into the bag and disappeared. Finally, when the bag was shown to be utterly empty, Gus produced yet another egg, which multiplied to two, between the fingers of his right hand, then three and four. He held up the right hand with the four eggs between the fingers, reached up behind the hand with his left hand, producing yet another egg, which, in turn, changed to two, then three, then four, between the fingers of his left hand.

Finally, he asked the spectator to hold the little black silk bag for him as he slowly deposited all eight eggs into it. Almost immediately he reached in, pulled out one of the eggs, then crushed the bag in his right hand and used his fingers to turn it inside out, proving it was empty. Where there had been eight eggs, there was now only one, which he rubbed between his hands; then he opened them, to show that the egg had gone. In its place was a small yellow parakeet, which, as he tossed it into the air, vanished, its place taken by a yellow silk.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be back.” Gus gave them the old charm and asked the lady helping him if he could borrow a ring. There was some byplay as she worked at getting the ring from her finger, and Gus went into the audience to borrow two more rings. Finally, he dropped all three rings into one hand, lifting it slowly to show that the borrowed rings had linked together. He unlinked them, handing one back to its owner in the audience, but inviting the other owner onstage with the first assistant from the audience.

Gus then produced a sheet of newspaper from which he tore a rough quarter of the page, crumpling the remainder and giving this ball of newspaper to the second assistant. He placed the rings onto the quarter sheet, crumpled it into a ball into which he thrust a stick of sealing wax.

On drawing the stick out, he showed that the end had melted; and on opening the paper, looked amazed, for the crumpled paper had been changed into a nest of three envelopes, each one sealed. In the inner envelope, he found, not a ring, but a key.

Gus pulled out his own key case and there was one of the rings inside. This was handed back.

“The key goes into this box,” Gus explained, pointing to a beautifully crafted mahogany box on the table. When this was unlocked, another box was pulled out, then a third. Gus opened the final box and the parakeet bobbed out onto his hand. Around its neck was a thin ribbon, attached to which was the other ring. As this last happened, Herbie quietly moved, fading through the door into the foyer.

In the alley Bex had feinted to her right as Sean came hurtling towards her, his right arm swinging a leather briefcase. Then she side-stepped so that his body cannoned against the wall. She vaguely heard the man up near the stage door shout. She thought he was shouting, “Come on, man. Time’s running out.” So, as Sean fell against the wall, all arms and legs, she reached beneath her jacket again and slid out the regulation Metropolitan Police handcuffs she always carried.

Sean looked as though he was recovering, so she brought up her knee, hard, between his legs. He gave a yelp of pain and doubled over. She moved in, slipped one cuff around Sean’s wrist and the other through the handle of the briefcase. It was all complete intuition and she only knew she had done the right thing when she saw Sean’s terrified eyes. “For God’s sake,” he breathed out, winded. “Sweet Jesus, in the name of God, undo the bloody cuffs. This thing’s going to explode any minute. Please.” He was thrashing about, trying to hit her, but the pain and the new fear led him into complete panic. He ran back and forth, then towards the other man, standing near the stage door.

“Get in there, Sean. Don’t waste everything. Go.” The shadowy figure was near to screaming, but Sean, now in terror, just kept running, as though looking for somewhere to hide. Like a child, he put one hand up over his eyes, as though by not seeing anything he would blot out the truth. Through it all he shook his arm violently, as if he could, with some mighty effort, rid himself of the briefcase.

As he came outside, Big Herbie saw Declan Norton pounding across the street from the black car, his face twisted in anger. He reached the alley, with Herbie just behind him.

Declan seemed not to have even noticed Bex, and showed no sign that he knew Herbie was behind him. He simply stood there and yelled, “Get him inside. Die like a man, Sean, but make sure the bastard Keene goes with you!”

The figure by the stage door tried to block Sean and, like a sheep dog, guide him inside. He was shouting, “The bomb’s for Keene, Sean! Get in there! In—”

Sean swerved to the right, avoided the man at the stage door and ran hard towards the end of the alley.

Herbie stood still, right behind Declan, as the case exploded. For a second, as though in a freeze frame, he saw Sean engulfed in flame, then, in what seemed like another still picture, he watched as the man disintegrated in the blast that swept down the alleyway.

The figure by the stage door flattened himself against the wall, then turned as Declan yelled, “Tony! Get in there! Do it yourself! Just finish him off! Get in, man, get in!”

The shadow by the stage door turned and disappeared inside, just as Herb chopped the Beretta behind Declan’s right ear. Norton made a little grunt and went down, like a beast in an abattoir.

“Watch him, Bex,” Herbie shouted, and began to run towards the stage door.

Inside, it was dark, then he caught sight of the stage. In the wings people seemed to have shrunk back in fear. The familiar figure stood alone in the wings, feet planted apart, hands coming up, with a pistol in the double grip.