This is the story of a science that went missing almost as soon as it was discovered. If you are interested in reading further I will explain where the research was heading when it just disappeared like smoke and mirrors.
If you are looking for a central figure you don’t need to look too hard. He is sitting at the table across the room from me.
Jack Heart is his name and he is the owner of “Tricks” the small cabaret we are sitting in. Heart is a retired magician whose work as a magician and ties with a British agency have kept him traveling to some of the worlds must exotic and hottest locations. Currently he is living here on the “Isla de Edona”. Edona is a volcanic rock in the Caribbean seas, the kind of fading Island Paradise that has a statue of Graham Greene on Market Street.
No one mentions Jack’s non-magical career but he is usually respectfully addressed as the Colonel. As he sits at the bar drinking a can of Coca Cola
Jack pretends to be happily retired from his past life and just running his club and perfecting his card tricks. Jacks tricks aren’t the only ones being performed in the club. Unacknowledged and seemingly invisible to all, the young dancers and actresses filling the club each night have long lost their desire for dance classes. These dancers know all the moves plus some that Ginger Rogers never knew about. The girls move around the club from table to table passing time with the regulars and the Hawaiian shirted tourist. Regulars in the cabaret all have different stories and different backgrounds but plenty in common. Anyone sitting in this bar without a ‘past’ is as likely as a Mexican taxicab without a cracked windshield.
No two nights are the same at “Tricks” as the locals mix and mingle. Some nights it’s “The Sopranos” meets “Our Man In Havana”. Other nights the bar is tourist logged and filled with Jimmy Buffet dress-alikes who wander into the bar and are intoxicated by the movie set they have walked into. Some even half expect to see Sam playing it ‘one more time’ from behind a white piano.
Never one to disappoint a crowd Jack has a glossy movie still of Dooley Wilson in a pewter frame on the wall behind the bar. There are stills from Jack’s movies and television appearances scattered around the walls and posters from Jack’s favorite movies. In the far corner was a small semicircular card table it covered with an expensive green cloth. This is where Nick performs his magic. Two or three times a night Nick strolls over to the table and a crowd quickly forms to watch his amazing sleight of hand. The bar is really designed as a miniature theatre to perfectly frame and stage Jacks cabaret show
Pedro is the manager of the club is short and nervous. He is wearing a worried look and a cheap gray suit. In fact, when you hear the expression “He was all over him like a cheap suit” this is the suit they are talking about. He has an open collared white shirt, snakeskin shoes. The worried look on his face is just like the one on every other manager in hostess joints around the world. Pedro would be even more nervous if he knew Lilly was 5 months pregnant with his brother’s baby.
The bar managers ex-wife Lilly is the bar manager
and runs the complicated finances of the bar. If she didn’t do her job immaculately Pedro would like her to be his ex- bar manager too. Nobody knows what went wrong in his or her marriage but it is generally assumed to have been his fault. The waitress is named Blanca but she long ago changed her name to Rose. Jack Heart has a special involvement with Rose, at least in her opinion she does. Jack just believes in the Corleone truth of keeping your enemies close at hand and you’re bar staff even closer! What thread is it that bind this group together? Not an easy question and one with no easy answer. Their mutual involvement is neither simple nor clear; it involves the abduction of a science that was silently removed from the minds of not only the public but also politicians and scientists alike.
Who is pulling the strings?
Why was everybody arriving on the Island at the same time, some very fascinating people who might meet each other once or twice in a lifetime were sitting around in groups of fours. That is what I’m here to discover.
I don’t do much; mostly waiting and watching, like the guy in that Robertson Davies novel who just counted sets of train wheels. He saved a lot of lives. I know I read the actual report.
