The Self-Working Trick (and other stories), page 7
Two tables and a million miles away sat a handful of law enforcement folks who Harry had dubbed The Four Horseman of Criminal Apprehension. I’m not sure why they had picked my bar as their meeting spot, beyond the fact that one of them—Homicide Detective Fred Hutton—was now married to my ex-wife. It wasn’t because he and I were pals; history had demonstrated just the opposite. At best, you could say he tolerated my existence, and the feeling was mutual.
And yet he and his cronies had chosen this spot for their weekly get-togethers. And who was I to discourage them? They spoke quietly, drank moderately and tipped to excess, so in my mind they were welcome additions.
I grabbed the full pitcher and a fresh bowl of filberts and headed over to their table, arriving just as one of them, Glenn Randolph, was wrapping up his story.
“So, apparently this idiot had cut just one corner each off four twenty-dollar bills. He then glued each of the pieces to the front of a one-dollar bill, and to be honest it didn’t look bad. He hands it to the clerk to pay for his pack of gum, and she gives him back change for a one. Our guy looks at it and says, ‘Hey, I’m short here. I gave you a twenty!’ And she points to the bill in her hand and says, ‘It’s a one.’ And this genius says, ‘No, no, you have to turn it over.’”
The table responded with knowing laughter, each of them probably thinking back to one or more incompetent criminals they’d nabbed over the years.
“Of course, nowadays, with credit cards and smart phones, that sort of scam has gone the way of the Pony Express,” Randolph continued, finishing the remains of his beer as he reached for the new pitcher.
Like my ex-wife’s new husband, Randolph was a Detective with the Minneapolis Police Department, working primarily in the Robbery and Financial Crimes Division. If he resembled an aging wrestler, it was probably because he was. He had ranked nationally while in college. Gravity and aging may have had their way with him, but he still occasionally displayed the grace of an athlete in his movements.
He finished filling his glass and looked up at me. “I suppose smart phones have done a number on magic as well,” he said with a grin. “I mean, when you’ve got a miracle machine in your hand, who needs card tricks, am I right?”
He turned to the others and received knowing laughs in return, with the exception of Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, who only offered up a dim smile.
“Magicians have proven to be pretty adept at quickly adapting to new technology,” I said as I pulled my phone from my pocket. “But you’re right: who needs a deck of cards when you have a smart phone.” I held mine up, revealing the image on the screen was of a deck of blue-backed playing cards. I looked over at Randolph. “Think of a card.”
He glanced around the table, not sure how he should be reacting to this impromptu performance. He stuttered, but before he could answer, he was beaten to the punch.
“Three of diamonds.” This came from Carol Hollinger, who ran the Minneapolis Police Department’s forensics lab. She was probably the smartest one of the quartet and certainly the nicest. Although she dressed like a middle-aged librarian, she had a quick wit and an impressive lexicon of profanity when the situation warranted it.
“Three of diamonds? Funny, I was thinking of that very same card,” I said as I held the phone out for them. I passed my hand briefly over the device. They looked down to see the image on the screen was now the three of diamonds, face up on the deck.
This produced a delighted giggle from Carol and a grunt of disbelief from Randolph.
“It’s voice-activated,” he said with a sneer. “Siri heard Carol or you say the name of the card.”
“Or maybe it’s using the gyroscopic technology in the phone,” offered Mark Kelly, the fourth member of the group. He wasn’t strictly in law enforcement but considered himself law enforcement-adjacent. He was a former cop who was now an investigator for a top insurance company. “You know, you tilt the phone this way or that, to make a certain card appear.”
“I don’t know, why don’t you check out the card for yourself,” I suggested. In a quick motion, I pulled a real card off the phone and handed it to him, flipping it over so they all could see both sides before he took it for a closer examination.
“In fact, if you want,” I continued, “feel free to examine the entire deck.”
With that, I pushed my thumb against the object in my hands, revealing that it was now a complete deck of cards. I did a quick spread of the cards—showing that not only were they real cards, but also all different—before letting them fall in a cascade to the tabletop.
This produced a yelp of laughter from Carol Hollinger, while a mystified Mark Kelly continued to examine the three of diamonds I’d handed him. He held it like it was some sort of alien object, slowly turning it over, scrutinizing both sides.
Seeing they already had two full bowls of filberts, I picked up their empty pitcher and stopped at Harry’s table to leave the extra bowl on my way back to the bar.
“I would imagine,” Harry said as he turned to the neighboring group, “that new technology has forced even your stupidest criminals to get a little bit smarter. You know, with DNA and cell phone towers and triangulating locations and latent fingerprints and forensic carbon-14 dating, criminals must have to work a lot harder nowadays.”
“Harry, are you just listing words you’ve heard on CSI Miami?” Carol Hollinger said with a laugh.
“Perhaps,” Harry admitted. “But as your technology improves, don’t your criminals have to get smarter as well?”
“You’ll be relieved to know that today’s criminals are just as stupid as they’ve always been,” she continued as she glanced around her table for confirmation. “And, from my experience, the smarter they think they are, the easier they are to catch.”
“The same is true in the magic world,” offered Abe Ackerman as he daintily picked out the largest filberts in the new bowl. “The smartest audience members are usually the easiest to fool, because they always think they’re two steps ahead of you.”
“When they’re often four steps behind,” Harry agreed.
“That’s not to say we still don’t run into an occasional situation which simply baffles us,” Carol said. “Like the Drescher Diamond case.”
Randolph and Kelly nodded and grunted in agreement, shaking their heads at the memory.
“Sounds intriguing,” Harry said as he leaned forward in his chair. “The Drescher Diamond case you say? Details, please.”
The small group exchanged looks, not immediately warming to this idea.
“It was in all the papers,” Carol finally said with a shrug.
“I suppose it was,” Glenn Randolph agreed. He turned to Harry and Abe. “Cal Drescher’s hotel room was broken into and his wife’s diamond necklace—”
“Valued at $250,000,” Carol added.
“Yes,” Randolph continued. “Her valuable necklace was stolen.”
Harry looked at him expectantly. “Surely there was more to it than that?”
“The necklace vanished from their hotel room. There was no way in, no way out. But while the couple was at dinner, someone—somehow—got in and took it.”
“Assuming it was stolen at all,” Mark Kelly added quickly.
“The insurance company questioned the validity of the claim?” Harry asked.
“In the strongest possible terms,” Kelly said. “There was no proof the necklace was stolen.”
“The room was ransacked,” Carol offered.
“The couple could have easily done that before they left,” Kelly shot back. “Personally, I wouldn’t put it past them. A shady pair, both of them.”
“Upstanding citizens,” Carol countered.
“Yes, the worst kind,” Kelly said as he reached for a refill.
“Here’s what went down,” Randolph said, settling back in his chair as he began to recount the story. “Cal and Denise Drescher were staying overnight at a ritzy hotel in downtown Minneapolis. You know, that high-end one down by Loring Park? They were in town for the night to attend a charity event in the hotel’s ballroom.
“They checked in about three o’clock and, according to everyone at the front desk, they were bickering from the moment they arrived. She was ticked off about his driving, he was mad she had brought three suitcases for a one-night stay. They went on and on.
“There were two clerks on duty at the time, a long-time employee named Josh White, and a new trainee named Nicole Swanson. The manager, Steve Harrington and the concierge, Maria Lopez, were also within earshot and heard the entire conversation.”
“Their individual testimony is remarkably consistent,” Kelly agreed.
“It must have been pretty memorable for all four to distinctly remember it,” Harry commented.
“Well, when she took out the honking big diamond necklace, they really sat up and took notice,” Randolph said. “Denise pulled this huge hunk of jewelry out of her purse, saying she thought they should put it in the hotel safe for the night. Cal Drescher countered he thought she had brought it along to wear it; if not, why bring it? She said she still hadn’t decided what she was wearing. Back and forth they went. She ends up putting it back into her purse and off they go to the elevators.”
“So, at that point, the witnesses have established the necklace was on her person,” Mark Kelly added. He was still twirling the three of diamonds between his fingers.
“Not only the witnesses but the CCTV footage from the lobby as well,” Randolph continued. “CCTV also shows them getting off the elevator on the sixteenth floor and heading down the hall to their room. Two hours later, we’ve got footage of them exiting their room, dressed for the fancy charity event downstairs. Dressed to the nines. Except she’s not wearing the necklace.”
“So, she decided against wearing it?” Abe Ackerman asked. He appeared to have succeeded in picking the largest filberts from the bowl.
“According to the Dreschers, there was an argument about her wardrobe,” Randolph explained. “In his statement, Cal Drescher said he gave the incorrect response when his wife asked if her first choice of outfit made her look fat.”
“There’s only one right answer to that question,” Harry said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, well Cal picked the wrong one, which resulted in Denise abandoning that outfit for another one. And this one, she said, wasn’t a good match for the diamond necklace. So, she left it in the room, hiding it inside a toiletry bag buried in one of her three suitcases.”
“But certainly there was an in-room safe of some kind?” Harry said.
“Indeed there was,” Randolph agreed. “However, according to the couple, there had been an ‘incident’ in the past when Cal Drescher employed an in-room safe and then forgot the combination he’d made up. From that point on, Denise had put a ban on their use.”
“Once bitten, as it were,” Abe mumbled to no one in particular. “So, they head down to the party and the video footage in the hallway shows her not wearing the diamond necklace?”
Abe gave me a wave and pointed to his drink and the half-full filbert bowl. I had been sitting on a stool at the bar, but jumped down to handle his request while Randolph continued the story.
“Exactly,” he said. “And the video footage also shows that no one went in or out of that room until the Dreschers got back about four hours later.”
“And I should point out, we’ve checked the meta data on the footage and there was no monkey business,” Carol Hollinger added. “The movements of guests and staff up and down that hall corresponded perfectly with footage from the elevators and stairwells. In short, no one tampered with the CCTV footage.”
“And no one went into their room,” Randolph continued. “That’s documented by the footage and confirmed by the electronic lock on the door. According to the log, the lock was unlocked with their key card when they arrived at 3:23 p.m. and then unlocked again, with the same card, at 11:41 p.m.”
“When did they report the diamond necklace had gone missing?” I asked. I had returned with Abe’s drink and a fresh bowl of filberts.
“Five minutes later,” Randolph said. “They took one look at their ransacked room, determined the necklace was gone and called 911.”
“And there’s no adjoining room or balcony?” I asked as I pulled up a chair at Harry’s table.
Randolph shook his head. “No adjoining room, no connecting doors, no balcony. They were sixteen stories up and the windows don’t open. The only way in was through that one door.”
“And yet someone got in, ransacked the room and took the diamond necklace,” I said.
“Or they staged it,” Mark Kelly offered. “Classic insurance scam. I’ve seen it a million times.”
Randolph shook his head slowly. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ve interviewed my share of liars, and I wasn’t getting that vibe from this couple. And, I don’t know. The room really felt like someone had gone through it, searching for something.”
“Intuition?” Harry offered.
Randolph shrugged. “After a while, you get a sense for these things.”
Harry turned to Carol Hollinger. “And forensics agreed?”
“For the most part,” she said. “Whoever it was, they did a real number on the room. All the drawers had been gone through. Even the medicine cabinet was in a shambles, although there was nothing in it large enough to hold the necklace. And, for some reason, they’d squeezed all the toothpaste out of the tube.”
“Excuse me?” Harry said as he leaned forward.
“Yes, the contents of a tube of toothpaste had been squirted on the sink and the adjacent counter. I can’t imagine they were looking for the necklace inside of it, though.”
Harry considered this for a long moment and then turned to Mark Kelly. “And, from an insurance perspective, you think the whole thing was staged?”
“What am I supposed to think,” Kelly said. “The proof is in the CCTV footage and the log for the electronic lock: No one went in or out of that room while the Dreschers were gone. A clear case of fraud, if you ask me.”
Harry looked over at Abe. “Doesn’t this remind you of The Vanishing Man?”
Abe nodded. “That’s the first thing I thought of,” he said. “Virtually the same set-up.”
“What’s The Vanishing Man?” This came from Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, who had silently been listening all this time.
“It’s a story from way back,” Harry said. “In 1950, the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians held a joint conference at a big hotel. I think it was in Boston.”
Abe shook his head. “Cleveland, I’m sure of it,” he said. “Or maybe Philadelphia.”
“Wherever it was,” Harry continued, “one of the attendees performed a trick for a bunch of other magicians in his hotel room. It’s an illusion which has come to be known as The Vanishing Man.”
“What’s the trick?” Randolph said.
“Simplicity itself,” Harry said. “The audience assembled in the hallway outside his hotel room. And, I should add, the room was similarly configured to the one in your case: Only one way in, no adjoining doors, no open windows. A classic locked room.”
“Classic,” Abe agreed.
“Our magician went into the room, with instructions to the assembled that they had 30 minutes to find where he was hiding. And at the end of that 30 minutes, they would vacate the room and he would re-appear.”
“And did he?” Randolph asked.
“He did, just as promised,” Harry said with a grin. “They searched the room for thirty minutes and he was nowhere to be found. No secret panels under the vanity, no trapdoors in the closet, no tunnels discovered under the bed. At the end of thirty minutes, they left the room. And five minutes later, the door opened. And out he stepped.”
“If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is,” Abe said. “Of course, not to be outdone, Harry did his own variation on the effect years later.”
“A minor effort,” he said modestly. “It was really my pal David Williamson’s idea. I just put my own spin on it.”
I was genuinely intrigued. “I’ve never heard about this,” I said. I thought I had heard every one of my uncle Harry’s stories, many of them multiple times. But this was a new one to me.
“Oh, it was silly, really,” Harry said with a chuckle. “It was back at Magic Live, a long time ago. I announced to a group that I was going to recreate The Vanishing Man effect at such-and-such a time. Very portentous, you know.”
“So, we all show up in the hall outside his hotel room at the appointed hour,” Abe added. “There were a bunch of us.”
“I addressed the group and said I was going to attempt it, but that I felt I could probably only pull off the effect for twenty minutes or so,” Harry explained. “I said they could come in, one at a time, and they would each have four minutes to search the room in their attempt to find me. Then I went into the room.”
“We waited five minutes and then we started the clock,” Abe said, picking up the story. “The first magician goes in. Four minutes later he comes out, shaking his head. ‘He’s gone,’ the guy says. ‘Disappeared.’
“Then the next one and the next one,” Abe continued. “Same reaction every time. Complete mystification. By this point, my curiosity is piqued. Finally, it’s my turn. I go into the room. The curtains are drawn and there is a lamp on by the bed. There is light coming from the bathroom. But the room appears empty.”
Abe’s voice had gotten quieter as he recounted his tale, so the folks at the adjacent table leaned in to hear him.
“He’s not behind the curtains, he’s not in the closet, he’s not in—or under—the bed,” Abe said, ticking off the locations on his fingers as he listed them. “It’s not a big room. Which left only the bathroom. So, I push the door open and the first thing I see is my reflection in the mirror. And then I pull back the shower curtain and what do you think I see?”
