Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb (23 page)

We turned into a street that looked like the butt-end of Tobacco Road. Lawns of brown weeds and sand, withered palmettoes decorated by the dogs, houses sagging behind rusted iron fences.

It was a hot night. On paint-peeled porches, unlovely women rocked and fanned futilely. Towheaded brats peered from behind phlegm-green window shades. Street lights lent a wavering distortion to the flight of myriad flies, but did nothing to cut the stench of shrivelled vegetation, rotting wood, sweat, garbage, and the frying odor of food.

“Here we are.” Lorna Lewis indicated a house. She might have been psychic at that; I couldn’t have distinguished this particular shack from any of the others. It was a wide two-story house which might once have been painted yellow. The shades were drawn, the door was shut, and the only sign of occupancy was a smear of cat droppings across the broken boards of the porch.

We parked, then swerved across the sidewalk in single file. I stumbled over a battered blue coaster wagon which lay on its side near the fence. Right then and there I almost forgot my vow of silence.

I fancied I saw the shades move slightly in a window to the left of the porch, but I was more interested in the movement of Lorna Lewis’s peach-colored slacks. We followed her up the porch steps.

She pressed the buzzer and a sour whine echoed from within the house. A sallow-faced Mexican girl opened the door. She brushed the perspiration from her mustache, wiped her hand on her stringy hair and said, “Yes, please?”

“We’ve come to see Mrs. Hubbard. We have an appointment.”

“I tell her. Wait here.”

She ushered us into the hallway and left us there.

The hall was dark and narrow, like a closet. And like a closet, it smelled of mothballs and mustiness. There were doors on either side of the hallway, and the girl departed through one at our right. Nothing supernatural about that—she opened the door before entering.

We settled down in wicker chairs and waited. My chair was next to a wicker end table piled high with tattered magazines. I picked one up. It was a copy of
Film Fun
for January, 1933.

Lorna Lewis found another cigarette. The Professor polished his monocle. I looked at “gag” still-shots of such forgotten cinema zanies as Harry Langdon, Jimmy Finlayson, Andy Clyde and Edgar Kennedy.

The silence was emphatic. The air was hotter, mustier. The hall became an oversized coffin. Time passed, but what’s time when you’re inside a coffin? Lorna Lewis stepped on her cigarette. The Professor adjusted his monocle. I sat there listening to the worms bore through the woodwork.

Then the door opened, and we jumped, and the Mexican girl said, “In here, please.”

Beyond the door was an ordinary parlor—“sitting room” in the day when this house was built—filled with the usual scrolled oak furniture, upholstered by a contemporary of Queen Anne. The wallpaper was Paris green, obscured in many places by large chromos of the Saviour in meditation, exaltation and agony.

The center of the room was occupied by a “dining room suite” consisting of six chairs and a round table. Mrs. Hubbard sat in one of the chairs, her elbows on the table top. She wasn’t exactly Mrs. Hubbard—“Mother Hubbard” would be a more accurate tag. A fat, blowsy, red-faced woman in her mid-menopause, with pork-bristles on her arms and chin. Coarse brown hair nestled in a bun against the back of her high-necked black dress. There was something tragic about her deep-set eyes; here, if ever I saw one, was a woman who had been suffering. From a hangover.

“Greetings.”

Her voice was as big as her body. It bounced off the walls and exploded against our ears.

“You are prompt, Miss Lewis. And I see you have brought some guests.”

“I thought you wouldn’t mind. This is—”

“I know.” Mrs. Hubbard smiled slightly. “Please be seated, and I will endeavor to convince the skeptical Professor Otto Hermann, Ph.D., that I am indeed a psychic sensitive.”

We selected chairs and sat around the table. The Mexican girl opened the door again and ushered four more people into the room. We turned and stared at the fat little red-faced man with the mustache, the portly matron in the flower-print dress, the pale, bespectacled blonde girl, and the gaunt, gray-haired woman who fiddled with her coral beads.

Mrs. Hubbard, unsmiling, waved them to places at the table. The Mexican girl brought in some extra chairs and then produced a card table which she set up in the corner of the room. Mrs. Hubbard rose and retreated to a seat behind the card table and we sat around the larger one, facing her, in a semi-circle.

Nobody said a word. Lorna Lewis watched Mrs. Hubbard. I watched Lorna Lewis. The Professor was watching me. Mrs. Hubbard didn’t appear to be watching anybody. The whole affair began to take on the charm and jollity of an inquest. I was waiting for something to happen. I was waiting for the closing of the blinds, the whisperings in the darkened room, the rappings and the wailings, the screech of chalk moving across a slate, the phosphorescent phantom issuing from the mouth of a moaning woman.

The Mexican girl appeared again. She carried a tablet of cheap blue-ruled paper, a package of envelopes, and a handful of sharpened yellow pencils. This assortment made a nice little mess on Mrs. Hubbard’s card table.

We watched and waited as the Mexican girl rotated chunky thighs towards the door. The red-faced man fingered his mustache, the matron played with her purse, the girl with the glasses coughed, the gray-haired woman used her coral beads for a private rosary. The Professor had his monocle to divert him and I had Lorna Lewis. Her black hair held a living lustre. I wondered how it would feel to dig my fingers into those curls, press that head back, and—

“Will everybody take a pencil, a sheet of paper and an envelope, please?”

Mrs. Hubbard was ready to go into her routine. We rose, filed past the table and returned to our places.

“Because our group tonight is a little larger than usual, and because there is a natural reticence in the presence of strangers, I feel it best to have you put your questions in writing.” Mrs. Hubbard smiled.

“I suggest that each of you write down one question, to begin with. If we have time, I shall be glad to work with your further inquiries personally—and privately, if you wish.

“At the moment the important thing, frankly, is to gain your complete confidence. Without it you will have no faith in my power, nor in my ability to help you. Since some of you are here for the first time tonight, I’m going to make use of a rather spectacular method to convince you of my extra-liminal perception.”

The deep voice rolled smoothly, easily, persuasively.

“I’m not very much of a showman—I cannot offer you a dark room, table-tipping, ghostly presences. But if each one of you will write a question on a piece of paper, fold it as much as you like, and personally seal it in an envelope— then perhaps I can demonstrate an interesting psychic phenomenon.”

There was a pause, a shared feeling of hesitation. Mrs. Hubbard didn’t have to be a mystic to sense the indecision.

“Please. It’s very simple. I am going to read your questions back to you as you have written them, without opening the envelopes. There’s no trickery. You can examine the paper, the pencils, the envelopes. You won’t find any carbon or wax or acid-treatments. There will be no waiting and no switches. I’ll read your questions back to you immediately and give you the answers as they come to me. So if you’ll write—and make your questions sincere—whatever is closest to your mind and heart—”

The red-faced man scrawled something on his ruled sheet and folded it carefully four times. The matron licked the tip of her pencil and frowned. Lorna Lewis pouted. I watched her lips pucker as if seeking kisses—or bites. The spectacle suggested several questions to my mind, but not the kind I cared to have read back to me in public.

I shielded my own paper and wrote, “Will my new venture be successful?”

There was much business of folding and sealing. Lorna Lewis ran her tongue across the flap. She was like a kitten lapping cream. I wondered how it would feel to—

Then I stopped wondering. Mrs. Hubbard lumbered around the table and took up the sealed envelopes. I watched her for obvious reasons; we all watched. But I could detect no switch or sleight-of-hand. She collected seven envelopes, shuffled them carefully, and placed them on the table. She spread them out fanwise before her and frowned. Our chairs scraped back as we faced her. She switched on a lamp behind her and produced a wire filing basket.

“I shall read your questions and answer them one at a time,” she told us. “In order to confirm this, I am going to ask the writer of each question to raise his or her hand and let me know if I’ve sensed it correctly. Then I’ll open the envelope containing it. Is that agreeable?”

We nodded. I looked at Professor Hermann. His face was utterly expressionless. I wondered what he was thinking, what he would do if Lorna Lewis seemed convinced by Mrs. Hubbard. So far he hadn’t opened his mouth.

Mrs. Hubbard stared down at the envelopes. Her forehead creased. A fat hand reached out at random and lifted an envelope from the center of the fan-shaped assortment. She placed the sealed envelope high against her wrinkled brow. Her eyes closed.

Then she was speaking, and her voice came from far away—as if from inside herself, as if from inside the envelope.

“Should I sell my property to the syndicate or hold out for the original figure?” she whispered.

A red-faced, mustached Jack-in-the-box popped up. “That’s it!” he shouted. “By golly, that’s my question, all right.”

Professor Hermann never blinked. Everyone else was leaning forward, tense with excitement.

Mrs. Hubbard smiled. “Please, control yourselves. It makes it more difficult for me to concentrate.” She opened the envelope now, unfolded the sheet, glanced at it carelessly, and I placed it in the wicker basket. And all the while, she continued to talk.

“As it comes to me, Mr. Rogers, this property you refer to consists of a block of eight lots just south of San Juan Capistrano, on the coast highway. This syndicate of which you speak, the—”

Rogers opened his mouth and she paused. “Of course I will not mention their names, if you prefer. But it is true, isn’t it, that they plan to build a hotel on this site? And that yesterday they offered you $18,000 cash for an outright sale, while you are holding out for $25,000? I thought so. It appears that if you refuse, they will offer you $20,000 on Thursday. If you still refuse, on Monday they will meet your price.”

Without pausing, the plump hand sought another envelope, pressed it to the red forehead. Her eyes closed and her mouth opened.

“Will Mike leave me?”

Lorna Lewis leaned forward. “Yes,” she murmured. “That’s my question.”

Mrs. Hubbard nodded, slitting the envelope. She tossed the unfolded paper into the basket, glancing at it and nodding at the same time.

“Mike will leave you soon—forever. He is preparing to depart right now. He hasn’t told you yet, because he doesn’t know about it himself, fully. But I see him going away from you, going far, far away—”

The girl’s mouth opened. Mrs. Hubbard apparently was used to this reaction, for she hurried on. “I could tell you much more, but it would not be discreet. Alone, perhaps, and later, if you desire.”

Again I tried to pierce Professor Hermann’s bland stare. I tried to figure it out. There must be an angle, an answer to all this, but where?

“Will my new venture be successful?”

She was reading my question!

My own mouth opened now. It sucked in air as I watched Mrs. Hubbard carelessly unseal the envelope and withdraw the folded paper. She unravelled it and then—
her mouth opened
.

Something red fluttered to the table; something bold and brazen, with the picture of a half-naked girl emblazoned on its crimson background.

It was the cover of the
Film Fun
magazine I’d been reading in the hall!

Professor Hermann was on his feet, snatching at the cover. “You made a mistake in the envelopes,” he said. “My question, I believe.”

Mrs. Hubbard’s open mouth gulped for words. When they came, they sounded in a sweetly audible cadence.

“You lousy rat!”

But she couldn’t escape. We were crowded around the table now and the Professor, inarticulate no longer, was holding forth.

“You see, it’s very simple. The whole trick is old as the hills. While the audience is looking for mirrors, electronic detectors, all kinds of elaborate devices, the fake mystic is merely using the old ‘one-ahead’ system. All she needs for that is a stooge. In this case, it was Rogers, here.”

The red-faced mustached man who had popped up like a Jack-in-the-box now looked as though he would collapse like one. But the Professor held his arm firmly.

“Here’s how it works. The stooge writes his question and seals it up like all the others, but he marks his envelope by nicking the flap with his fingernail. The medium spots it at a glance. Here.”

He held up an envelope—unopened.

“This she saves until the last. But she calls out the stooge’s question, first. She knows it in advance, of course. Then the stooge jumps up and makes a big production about hearing the correct question. She opens the envelope she’s held to her forehead. Naturally, it’s one of the others containing a legitimate question which she reads after opening the envelope. So while answering the stooge’s question, in convincing detail, she was actually reading Miss Lewis’ question from the envelope she opened. Then, with the next envelope, she answered Miss Lewis. Then she opened the flap and found Mr. Roberts’ question.

“But when she called Mr. Roberts’ question, she opened my envelope—and that was her mistake.”

“All right, fink,” muttered Mrs. Hubbard. “What do you want?”

The Professor shrugged. “Nothing at all, really, from you—except your promise to quit working a racket on people who are in need of genuine assistance from reputable consultants. I don’t think you’ll be trying these tricks around here very much longer.”

“Why you goddamn—”

“Careful, now! Watch your language. You aren’t very ladylike, Mrs. Hubbard. Of course, appearances are deceptive; you ladies and gentlemen must always remember that. For example, Mrs. Hubbard here does not use ladylike language because she really isn’t a lady. In fact—”