Free The 5th Witch by Graham Masterton Page B

shirt with white chest hair curling out of it, red shorts, and yellow socks.
    “You don’t usually visit me on Tuesdays,” his father remarked, as Dan stepped out onto the balcony.

    “You don’t want me here? I’ll leave.”
    “Of course I want you here. I’m just saying that you don’t usually visit me on Tuesdays. Park your ass. You want a cup of coffee? The coffee here is unique. It tastes exactly like yacht varnish.”
    “What are you doing?” asked Dan, nodding toward the playing cards.
    “I’m working on a variation of Dusenfeld’s Arrangement.”
    “What the hell is Dusenfeld’s Arrangement?”
    “Didn’t I ever tell you about Victor Dusenfeld? One of the greatest card illusionists there ever was. He used to perform in Berlin in the 1930s. Hitler loved him.”
    “That’s not much of a recommendation.”
    “Oh yes, it is, because Hitler believed in magic, and he was convinced that Victor Dusenfeld was the real deal. I’ve seen some old movies of Dusenfeld’s act, and you can see why. The man was a genius. He used to ask some guy in the audience to pick a card. Then this girl would come down from the stage and drop her unmentionables, and she would have the exact same card tattooed on her tush.”
    “You’re not trying to do that, are you?”
    “I wish. No, this is Dusenfeld’s Arrangement. He took three decks of cards, asked three people to shuffle them. Then he took them back, cut them three times, and all three decks would be back in order, just like they came out of the box.”
    “So how did he do it?”
    “I could show you, but it would probably take the rest of the day, and I’m not sure that I’m doing it the same way Dusenfeld did it. But there was one trick that Dusenfeld did for Hermann Göring in 1932, and I still can’t work it out. He was performing at Horcher’s restaurant, which was one of Göring’s favorites, andhe asked him to pick a card without telling him what it was.
    “When he went home to bed that night, Göring found the card on his pillow. I mean—that’s what I call a card trick. Not only do you have to guess the right card, you have to break into the mark’s house before he gets home and plant it there. Either that, or you have to be in cahoots with one of his staff.”
    “There’s a third alternative.”
    “Oh yeah? Such as what?”
    “You could put it there by magic.”
    Dan’s father took off his spectacles and stared at him narrowly. “Something tells me you’re serious.”
    “Yes, I’m serious. Some pretty strange events happened yesterday—three detectives got burned to death, and then there was some kind of freak hurricane at Chief O’Malley’s house.”
    “I saw those on the news. What are you trying to say?”
    Dan told him about the money and the witch test; and then he told him about Gayle appearing at his apartment. His father sat and listened without interrupting.
    Dan said, “I guess I came here to ask you if this really could be magic. Or maybe I’m making a prize asshole out of myself. You—you’re the best magician I ever saw. You remember that trick you used to do when you cut off a girl’s legs and they walked around the stage on their own? Or when you stuffed about twenty chickens and a dozen cats into a hatbox?”
    “Of course I do. Those were pretty amazing tricks. They were funny, too.”
    “Three detectives getting burned to death—that was amazing, but that wasn’t funny. And puking up thirty bucks worth of quarters, that wasn’t funny either.”

    “I know, son, I know. But the difference is those weren’t tricks. And it doesn’t sound like this hurricane was a trick either.”
    “Then you think this could be genuine magic?”
    Dan’s father leaned forward in his basketwork chair. “Don’t sound so surprised. The very first thing you learn when you start out to become a stage magician is that you’re not really a magician. You’re an illusionist, an entertainer—a con artist, that’s all. Even