Dan's Magic

Dan’s Magic

         “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I am your host, Robert Tanner.  Tonight my guest is Dan Montgomery, the renowned magician and psychic.  Welcome Dan, how are you tonight?”

         “Thank you Robert, I am fine.  Thanks for having me here tonight.”

         “Dan, if I may, I would like to talk about your past, and how you got where you are today.  How do you feel about discussing your life with the nation?”

         “A little embarrassed to be honest, I’ve never thought that anything I’ve done is very special.  I’m just an ordinary man like everyone if you ask me.”

         “I don’t think working with law enforcement on unsolvable cases, performing magic that no one else can ordinary, not one bit!  And the thing is, no one has been able to show where or how you are doing this.

         What Robert said was true.  Dan had a talent in performing magic.  At forty five years of age, he looked a lot younger than his years.  At the same time, he managed to portray an image of maturity that often caused people to think he was fifteen to twenty years older than he really was.  He had been performing magic for over ten years now and his skill left every expert on the art of magic baffled.  For his part, Dan didn’t attempt to defend himself when someone called him a crackpot or fake.  He simply invited them to be in his next performance, and let them decide for themselves.  Cameras were allowed to film his shows, and despite using multiple angles, it was impossible to identify where the sleight of hand was occurring, if it was occurring at all.

         Robert was a host for a national television series called, “Meet An Everyday American.”  The American public had finally tired of the constant barrage of reality TV shows and moved on to new entertainment.  The biggest draw was this show, allowing people to see a non-celebrity being interviewed.  The key to this show was that Robert always found people who seemed to exude a sense of greatness, while still working as an every day person.  Having Dan on as a guest pushed the threshold of ‘every day’, but Robert had a secondary reason for having Dan on as a guest.

         “If you will, tell us about your favorite ‘trick’ Dan.”

         “Well Robert, as I’ve said all along, what I do is not tricks.  They are just things I can do,,,”

         Dan stopped as Robert spoke, his loud voice overriding Dan’s soft spoken southern drawl.  “We all know that Dan, but to us commoners, they are tricks!  I’m sorry,” Robert’s voice lowered perceptibly, “I didn’t mean to butt in there, it was very rude of me.  But having you here is special to me.  I’m a fan of anything to do with magic, and you are the best!”

         Dan smiled at Robert; Robert’s love of magic was almost legendary to most Americans, but he never understood why people would love something so much when it was obviously fake.  He knew the best magicians personally, and knew that what he did, and what they did, was totally different.

         Dan was brought out of his reverie by Robert’s voice, once again asking him a question.  “So Dan, what is your favorite thing to do in magic?”

         Dan thought for a moment and replied, “I guess it would have to be the very first one I did, the reappearing card.”

         “That was your first trick?”

         “Robert, I can’t emphasize enough that what I do is not tricks.  But I can see that you can’t think of it as real, so for now we’ll call it a trick.  It was the first one I ever tried to do for others.  I had to be sure I could do this first, so I practiced some to make sure it wasn’t just a fluke, then I did this for a few friends at a party.”

         “And what was their reaction when you did this?”

         “Everyone was impressed of course, but then there were some who were sure it was a set up.  In fact, one person wasn’t convinced until a little later.”

         ”How did you manage to convince him?”

         “He was so skeptical that he went out and bought two new decks of cards.  When he got back, he gave them to me and asked me to do it again.  So I did.”

         “What exactly is this trick Dan?”

         “The first time I just used two decks of cards; I’ve since done it with four to five.  I had one of them pick out a card, look at it and put it back in the deck.  Then they put the deck back in the box, and pulled a second deck out of a different box. Then, I would pick out their card from that deck.”

         “You used two decks the first time?”

         “Yes, I had to; any good magician can pick a card from the deck.  I wanted it to be extra special, so I used two decks.”

         “Did you touch the first deck at all?”

         “Yes, but only after it was in the box.”

         “Then what happened?”

         “They took the cards out of the second box and laid them on the table.”

         “Face up, or face down?”

         “This was my first time, so I had them place them face up.  But I quickly realized I didn’t need them face up, but I wasn’t about to tell them that.”

         “Then what did you do?”

         “Robert, I think you know what happened, all of this is documented well on the internet, in the numerous articles that have been written, and other interviews I’ve given.”

         “I know Dan, but I just wanted to hear you say it.  I still can’t believe you picked their card from the second deck!  Will you do that bit of magic for me please?  I’ve got to see this personally!”

         Dan sighed, but not in resignation.  He knew this would be asked of him, and he never tired of showing people easy bits of magic.  Nodding yes, he sat back and relaxed as Robert had two decks of cards brought on stage.  He was not surprised to see that both were new, still sealed in their packaging.

         Robert looked at Dan, a broad smile creasing his face.  He knew that Dan would do the trick, but had to see it for himself.  He could not understand that Dan’s talent (as Dan preferred to call it), was really magic, not sleight of hand.  Before opening the decks, Robert donned a pair of heavy gloves.  He looked at Dan almost shyly, and said, “You don’t mind, do you?”

         Dan had seen people try to stymie him before, donning gloves wasn’t new to him, but apparently Robert thought he might be able to pull one over on him.  “No, I don’t mind a bit.  Whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

         Robert opened the first deck and proceeded to shuffle them.  After shuffling them three times, he spread them deck face down on the table, and removed one from the pile.  He looked at it carefully, making sure it wasn’t marked in any way, then put the eight of hearts back in the deck.  After putting the cards back in the box, he handed the box to Dan.  Dan took the box from Robert, and carefully felt it.  He held it in his palm, a look of concentration on his face.  What he hadn’t told Robert, or anyone else who had ever witnessed this, was that he didn’t need to concentrate.  The moment he touched the deck, he knew that Robert had pulled the eight of hearts.  But he had learned not to give it away so soon, so he ‘concentrated’ for a moment, as if trying to discern which card had been pulled.

         Robert now opened the other deck and shuffled it.  He left the deck face down on the table and looked at Dan expectantly.  Dan looked at Robert in silence, and then slowly shook his head.  He couldn’t believe that the eight of hearts was lying on top.

         “You might want to shuffle them some more, finding your card is too easy as they currently sit.”  Robert looked at Dan for a moment, then shuffled the deck twice more.  Laying them back down he looked at Dan and said, “Go ahead, I know you’ll get it.”

         Dan looked back at Robert and said, “You really are pretty good with cards, but you should put the eight of hearts back in the deck.  I know it’s right there in your lap where you dropped it.”

         The silence on the set was palpable.  For his part, Robert was speechless, and in awe.  Not because Dan knew he had dropped his card in his lap, but because he knew it was the eight of hearts.  And he had been right earlier when he said it would be too easy finding it.  It had been the top card of the deck at that time.

         Finally Robert broke the silence and said, “Dan, you are as good as I’ve read and seen in other interviews.  Would you tell me how you do this?”

         “Robert, you know I’ve told no one how I manage to do this.  I’ve tried, at least at first.  I’m convinced that everyone has this ‘talent’, they just don’t know how to use it.  So, I don’t try anymore, nor do I want to, because I think this ‘talent’ could be misused by the wrong people.”

         “That’s true Dan, so if I may, I’d like to ask you a few questions now.”

         “Of course Robert, that’s why I agreed to come here.”

         “Well, what I’d like to know is when did this start?  Have you always been able to do things like this?”

         “Let me see, I’ve always had what I call intuition.  What I mean is, I have always felt the feelings of people near me, and knew what they needed without being asked.”

         “You could read their minds?”

         “No, nothing like that at all.  But I could see by their actions, body language, and emotions that they needed ‘something’.  I didn’t know what, but more times than not, when I did a small favor for them, it was just what they needed, or were looking for.  Of course it was easy doing it for friends, but then I found I could do it for strangers.”

         “Can you give me an example of some of these things you did?”

         “Sure.  I saw a woman in the market one day.  She was looking around as if trying to find something.  I watched her for a minute or so, then went over to a shelf half the aisle down and grabbed a bottle of red-wine vinegar, held it out to her and asked her if she was looking for it. “

         “That must have startled her quite a bit.”

         “That’s true, it did.  But then she asked me how I knew what she needed, and I said that I didn’t.  I just knew I had to walk down the aisle, pick it up and hand it to her.”

         “Uh huh, and this lead to the two of you having coffee, and eventually a courtship started.”  At this point, Robert’s voice lowered almost to a whisper as he saw the emotions crossing his guest’s face.  “Do you want to tell us anything more about her Dan?”

         Dan looked around, his eyes welling with tears, then found a new resolve and cleared his throat.  “Yes, she became my wife.  We were so in love that we made people stare at the things we’d do.  Everywhere we went, people knew we were in love, just by our smiles, our actions towards each other. “

         “What happened, Dan?”

         “One day while I was at work, she was in the park as she frequently was.  I got a call,,,” Dan’s voice broke as he said this, tears flowing down his face.

         Seeing the obvious distress on Dan’s face, Robert broke in, speaking almost in a whisper.  “You were called by a good friend who had seen the police and ambulance’s in the park, and managed to see that it was Mary, your wife.  She’d been brutally attacked and stabbed many times.”

         “Yes, that’s correct.”

         “Did they ever find the person who did it?”

         “No, there were no tracks that they could find, no stray hairs, not one clue.  I know if I ever found the person, they’d wish they were the one dead instead of her.”

         “Shall we change the subject Dan?”

         “Yes, please.”

         “So, tell us how you started helping the FBI and local police in solving cold case crimes. “

         “After Mary was gone, I started to feel different it seemed.  Not right away of course, but gradually.  One day I found a ring on the sidewalk, and knew I could return it to the owner.”

         “How did you know this Dan?”

         “I can’t explain it.  I just knew where to go.  If you’d asked me, I’d have told you I had no idea where I was going.  But it was like a force pulled me here and there, guiding me where I had to go.  When I got there, I rang the doorbell.  A middle aged woman answered, and looked at me suspiciously. “

         “What did you do or say?”

         “The lady who answered the door wasn’t the owner of the ring, so I asked if there was another woman in the house.”

         “What did she do then?”

         “She looked at me even more suspiciously and said, ‘Yes, who wants to know?’, so I told her to tell the other woman that I had her ring.  Evidently the owner could hear us talking, because the door was suddenly pulled wide open, and a copy of the first lady was standing there.  They were twins, and the one who had lost the ring was looking at me as if she was afraid I was pulling a trick on them.  So I held out the ring and said, ‘This is yours, I found it over by Hamilton Park.’, and turned to walk away.  Of course she stopped me and asked how I knew it was hers.  I just turned to look at her, and said, ‘I just knew.’  Then I had to go, because I didn’t want a big scene made about it.”

         “What happened then Dan?”

         “I didn’t get to leave like I wanted, she insisted on giving me a reward.  But I told her to give it to her favorite charity or something.  She finally agreed, and I left about an hour later.  But the next day, there she was on the news, telling reporters how an unknown man had found her two thousand dollar ring in the street, and turned down a reward.  Of course, she learned my name while we talked the night before and next thing I knew, I had reporters at my door asking me how I’d found it and such.  The rest is pretty much known to everyone it seems.”

         Robert listened in silence throughout Dan’s story; there were small tidbits in it that he hadn’t heard before.  With his secondary motive on having Dan as his guest on his mind he had daydreamed about it, and lost the conversation.  It was a moment before he realized Dan had stopped talking.

         “I’m sorry Dan, I must have gotten distracted for a minute.  So you can do real magic, not sleight of hand, and now you can pick up something that has been lost by someone, and return it to them, even if you don’t know who they are or where they live.  Is that correct?”

         “Yes, that about sums it up.”

         “But that wasn’t all, was it Dan?  How did you get started working with the FBI?”

         “Well, that was really accidental.  I didn’t go around looking for lost items to return to people, I did have a normal life after all.”

         “Yes I suppose you did, so how did this all start?”

         “It was really an accident.  One day while sitting in the same park my wife was killed in, a young lady brought me a watch and said she wanted me to find the owner.  There was something about her look that caused me to ask her a few questions.  In less than five minutes, I found out that her best friend had disappeared, and now she wanted me to find her using the watch.”

         “So she kind of turned the tables so to speak?  Before, you had returned things to their rightful owners, and now she wanted you to do exactly that, but she knew the person, and knew she was missing.  Why didn’t she go to the police?”

         “Right, exactly what I asked her.  Her answer was that her friend sometimes went home with males she met out clubbing, and thought this may be the case this time.  Except this time, she’d been gone over a week, and was a little worried, but didn’t really suspect foul play.”

         “Did you find her?”

         “Of course, but she was already dead.”  At this point, Dan once again needed a break, his emotions overcoming him momentarily.

         “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s take a short break, we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

         During the break, Dan and Robert discussed what had transpired on the set.  Robert was relieved when Dan emphasized that he wanted to continue, and tell his story of how he became involved in helping the FBI in cold cases.  Without Dan, Robert’s plans would have to wait for another day.  Robert fancied himself more of an investigative reporter, and planned to have Dan meet Detective Murray, a leading detective on the city police force.  Robert was sure the detective was dirty, but couldn’t prove it.  He thought Dan would be able to do it for him and bring the man to the justice he deserved.  His ultimate goal was to have a media mogul see this show and realize his skills.  Then he might get the chance to interview for a position, and start working as a real reporter, not some on the air personality who only talked to ‘average Americans’.

         “Okay folks, we’re back.  Dan Montgomery is our guest tonight, and we’re just starting to discuss how he started to work with the FBI.  Dan, the first lady you were looking for had gone missing about a week earlier.  You were helping a friend of hers who thought she had gone home with a man after dancing at a club.  But sadly, she was already dead.  What can you tell us about this?”

         “Well, the one thing we did was leave everything alone near her.  Or almost everything.  Jane, the friend who came to me for help picked up her keys.  I saw them in her hand, and grabbed them.  When I did, I could see the face of a man.  He was close, as if right next to me, then I saw his hands move as if he was moving them towards me.  I backed off instinctively and dropped the keys.  When I did, everything returned to normal, and it was just Jane and I there.  But I knew his face.  When the police came, I told them what had happened with the keys when I touched them.  Of course no one would believe that, so I asked to hold them again.  But since this was a crime scene and the keys could be considered evidence, that wasn’t allowed.  It wasn’t until three weeks later that a detective came to see me.  He explained what had happened, and how they weren’t getting anywhere.  My name was listed in the report, along with a brief write up about what I experienced when I touched the keys.  So they came to me to see if I could help.  To make a long story short, I went to the station and looked at pictures of known felon’s, and picked the culprit out of the book.”

         “How did they arrest him?  Surely they couldn’t use just your testimony as a basis for that?”

         “Very true.  But they started watching him, looking for the slightest excuse to stop him.  Their chance came when he ran a red-light.  They found a bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor of the car, and quickly got permission to search the car.  In the trunk they found the lady’s wallet, credit cards still inside.  He tried telling them he met her at a club, but when he couldn’t name the place he’d been with her, nor remember anything else, everything fell apart, and he ended up confessing.”

         “That is fascinating!  What happened after that?”

         “Well, now I had a little bit of a reputation, and I was asked on other occasions to help with other cases. Each time, if I touched something from the crime scene, I could tell who the murderer was.”

         “If that’s the case, why didn’t you identify Mary’s murderer?”

         Once again Dan looked distressed, and Robert thought they’d have to go on another break.  Dan quickly got himself under control though and responded, “I have to touch something of the victim’s fairly soon after the incident has occurred.  If it’s been more than a week or so, I can’t help them.  It wasn’t until 2 years after Mary was killed that I found I had this talent.  I call it the ‘live’ factor.  It’s as if an essence is on every object we touch, and remains there as long as we’re alive.  But if we die, then that essence fades fairly soon.  If I’d touched the weapon used, I’d know who the killer is, if they are still alive.  But sadly, the knife has never been found.  But I never lose hope.”

         “Well Dan, I think we’ve asked enough questions of you tonight.  I do have another guest scheduled, and I’d like you to meet him.  He’s a detective on the local police force, and has worked on many cases, but has never had to call on your special talent.  Would you mind staying around and talking with us?”

         “I have a few minutes to spare, of course I’ll stay.”

         Robert then gestured to the stage manager to have the detective shown to the stage.  As he walked on stage, Robert said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Detective Luke Murray of the city’s police force.”  As Robert spoke the name, a man walked from the side curtain towards Dan and Robert.  As he approached the men, he shook hands with Robert, then turned to shake hands with Dan.  As their hands met, Dan’s face contorted in pain, then a glint of anger was seen in his eyes.  He visibly shook, his lips trembling as he struggled to say something.  Dan stuttered a bit as he tried to find words to say, but the only thing heard by Robert or anyone else nearby was a choked scream as he lunged at the detective.  Dan’s actions caught the detective by surprise, allowing Dan to land a couple of punches to the body before grabbing him.  Both men fell backwards over the chairs on stage, and sounds of cursing could be heard by the audience.  Stage hands and security personnel responded quickly, and separated the two men.  Dan’s shirt was torn and the detective had a bloody nose, both men were breathing hard.  Three men held Dan as he tried once again to lunge at the detective.  Frustrated, his blood boiling, he finally managed to scream coherent words.

         “You!  You killed my Mary!  You stabbed her and left her body in the bushes in the park!”

         Robert was stunned by Dan’s outbreak, and found himself at a loss for words.  The detective however grimaced, and spat at Dan and said, “I did no such thing!  I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

         Dan looked at the detective with hatred in his eyes as he spoke more calmly, “You were the man with the knife, you killed Mary then threw the knife in the lake on the south side of town.  You’re a lawman, you’re supposed to uphold the law, yet you killed my Mary!  I will see you get the justice you deserve.”

         Detective Murray looked at Dan and quietly said, “I don’t know where you got this idea, or how.  But I’m telling you, I didn’t kill anyone.”

         This back and forth talk between the two took less than a minute, but it was obvious that Dan felt that the detective had killed his wife.  Suddenly a feeling of calm came over Dan, and while looking Detective Murray in the eyes, he said, “You belong where she is, buried in the ground.  I wish you were dead and buried just like she is.”

         The detective disappeared.

Jim Dorrell
4/15/11