The Magician's Daughter - Ch. 12

Cover art by Erin Halfelven
©2026, SammyC

The door to Joey Allen’s dressing room was wide open. Correction: our dressing room and soon to be restored to us in the next five minutes. Joey was hurriedly loosening his bow-tie when we entered. Turning around, his initial look of annoyance melted away and a broad smile creased his face. He rushed forward and embraced Talia Felder, whose arms fell to her side limply.

“Talia! It’s been ages. How have you been?” He held her at arm’s length. “Oh, I’m an idiot. These two years since Harry died…I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for you. I’ve been so busy with my career and everything, it’s a crime that the last time I saw you was at Harry’s funeral. I wanted to call, to come and see you but…”

“Joey. It’s alright. You’ve been in movies, on TV, performed before the Queen of England. I wouldn’t expect you to—”

“Remember you? Talia, you know I could never forget you.”

“We need to speak to you, Mr. Allen,” I interrupted. Everyone turned to look at me. Did I do something wrong? After all, Aaron had an important question to ask him.

“Who is she?” Joey searched our faces.

Finally, Aaron stepped forward. “I’ve already asked Joey. I talked to him the minute he walked into the lobby this afternoon.”

“And?” I asked.

“He told me he couldn’t help.” We let out a collective sigh of disappointment.

“It’s not as simple as you think,” Joey said as he went behind the screen. My screen. The screen I used to change into my stage costume.

We could hear him unbuttoning his pants and sliding them down his legs. Then the swish of silk as he took off his shirt.

“I’m quite familiar with Sal Maranzano. Do you know he’s a silent partner in a number of Vegas casinos? Casinos I perform at? In particular The Desert Palace where I have an annual residency? For which I get paid a boatload of dough?”

He emerged from behind the screen wearing a sport jacket, blue polo shirt, and gray slacks. As he neatly placed his tuxedo outfit into a garment bag and zipped it shut, he gently placed his hand on Talia’s arm.

“Really, if I could help you, I would. But junior here picked the wrong guy to pile up gambling debts to. The wrong guy indeed. Talia, take care of yourself. If there’s anything I can do for you…personally…you can call my agent Barry. You remember Barry. I have to go, people. I have a car waiting to take me to Albany International. Ten o’clock flight to Vegas. I’m starting three weeks at the Palace tomorrow night.” He kissed Talia on the cheek and exited the dressing room quickly, his garment bag slung over his shoulder. He was whistling.

My eyes turned immediately to Aaron, who was whispering something in his mother’s ear. She was nodding.

“Some godfather he turns out to be,” I said, aiming my barb directly at Aaron.

“You don’t understand. Sal Maranzano is a real godfather,” Talia pointed out. “He’s in the pockets of half of Hollywood. Especially those who can’t curb their gambling habits.” Talia shot a stern shaming look at her son. Aaron hung his head briefly but recovered quickly, a devilish smile breaking out.

“Luckily, I’ve got another iron in the fire. A red hot one, in fact. I’ll tell you about it over an aperitif, mother. Let’s leave the dressing room to Lindsey and her father. Bucky’s set ends in fifteen minutes.” Aaron trailed Talia as they stepped out into the hallway.

“What iron is he talking about?” Jeremy asked.

“She’s red hot, alright. But I’ve got the feeling she won’t be able to help either. This Maranzano guy has Aaron in a vise over his stupid vice,” I cracked.

After the late show, Elena and I sat around the outdoor bistro table on the balcony of Talia’s hotel room. It was a warm mid-summer night with a trickling breeze coming down from the hills in the distance. Talia was pouring out three glasses of iced tea from a pitcher.

“Talia, you don’t seem that upset about the whole shmear,” observed Elena as she took her first sip of the cold liquid.

Sitting down, Talia handed me two packs of sugar to put in my tea. I offered one to Elena, who shook her head.

“To be honest, girls, the fate of the Lodge really doesn’t impact me very much…at all. Harry left all our savings, investments, and the house in Boca Raton to me in his will but bequeathed title to the Lodge to Aaron. Aaron never showed any inclination to pursue a career other than running the Lodge so…”

“I get the sense you and Aaron aren’t the closest mother and child I’ve ever encountered,” Elena declared.

“Don’t you love your son, Talia…er…Mrs. Felder?” I was naive enough to assume that a mother could never not love her child. Especially an only child. My parents and I had been and are very close.

“Yes, of course, I do, Lindsey. And call me Talia. Please. Aaron has always been guarded emotionally. Sometimes it really seems like we’re strangers rather than family.”

“When I look into his thoughts, I see a lot of darkness. Did he have a happy childhood?” Elena asked.

“Look into his thoughts? You’re telling me you can read minds?” Talia laughed.

“Perhaps not literally but, yes, he’s easy to read. Like an open book.”

“Well, I can assure you he grew up in a happy home with loving parents and everything a child could want. Harry and I doted on him. As an only child, we treated him like a prince. Perhaps he was treated too well. They say people who are handed everything from birth are often the victim of their own sense of entitlement.”

“What will he do if he loses the Lodge?” I asked. More out of concern for my Dad and me than for Aaron.

“I suppose he could continue to manage the Lodge. But as an employee, not the owner. Maranzano hardly knows the first thing about operating a resort hotel in the Catskills.”

“Then Dad and I could still keep our annual summer gig here, right?”

Elena turned to me and hesitated before speaking. “I don’t think Maranzano is interested in taking over The Lodge. The land would be extremely valuable to a real estate developer.”

I laughed. “Developing what? A horse farm?”

“If one were to buy up a couple of the other nearby hotels, the entire plot of land would make a perfect site for the biggest shopping mall in Central New York State.” Elena took a long sip of tea.

“Where do you get that idea?” Talia asked.

“Maybe I read someone’s mind?” She saw our stunned expressions. “Just a guess on my part. I think I saw something about the boom in shopping malls in The New York Times. Jeremy’s father has a subscription.”

Mondays were our one day off each week. I had planned to go riding with Aaron that morning as I had discovered a heretofore unknown pleasure in sitting atop a gentle gelding as he lazily trod the scenic trails around the Lodge. But Aaron was in the City, meeting with the Kellermans, father and daughter, in their high-rise Manhattan offices. He was confident that David Kellerman would crumble beneath the weight of his daughter’s pressure and lend him the entirety of the sum he owed Maranzano – a cool $900,000. He even came through the patio where Jeremy and I were having brunch on his way to the parking lot, dressed to the nines in a pinstripe suit and carrying an attaché case. He winked at me and gave us the thumbs up sign.

“You like that creep don’t you?” asked Jeremy in an annoyed tone.

“I feel sorry for him. Elena thinks he had a traumatic childhood. There was a lot of family drama we don’t know about. Like…” I leaned closer to Jeremy and, in a whisper, I said, “I think his mother and Joey Allen had a thing going on. It probably almost tore apart his parents’ marriage. Children of divorce can be emotionally damaged by all that drama.”

Jeremy just nodded and returned to reading the voluminous Sunday edition of The New York Times he had received in the morning mail.

“I wanted to have a quiet brunch but this is total silence,” I scolded Jeremy.

“Uh huh.” He turned the page and kept his head down.

“Can you at least give me a section to read?”

“Here. I finished glossing over the national news section. You might find it more interesting than I did.”

I scanned the headlines on the first page, found nothing of interest, and turned it over. More boring news about desultory people and places confronted my gaze. I licked my thumb like I’d seen my grandmother do when she read the Star-Ledger and riffed through several pages before something caught my attention. It was an article about an investigation into money-laundering at The Desert Palace Casino in Las Vegas. There were Nevada state warrants out on the principal owners of the Casino. Two of the owners had been arrested as they were boarding a plane to Mexico. A couple of others were still to be apprehended. Since these others were out-of-state residents, extradition protocol had to be arranged with the jurisdictions where they were residing or hiding out. Nevertheless, these guys were wanted men.

“Jeremy! Didn’t Joey Allen say that Maranzano was part-owner of The Desert Palace in Vegas?”

“Yeah.”

“Well it says here the owners of the casino have been charged with money-laundering. They’ve already arrested two of the owners and are looking to apprehend the other two who are out-of-state, like, on the lam.”

“My cousin Michael works in the Southern District D.A.’s office in Manhattan and he told me out-of-state warrants aren’t always honored. It’s not like a Federal warrant that can be served anywhere. Both jurisdictions have to come to an agreement for extradition. There are lawyers who make a living arguing fine legal points like this for mob clients.”

“So Maranzano isn’t going back to Nevada anytime soon,” I surmised.

“Not if his lawyers can help it,” Jeremy said. He put the newspaper down. “I can see the wheels turning in that cute head of yours, Lindsey. But there’s really nothing we can do about it.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. If Aaron doesn’t get David Kellerman to loan him $900,000, I guess we’ll be working for Big Sal next summer.”

“Not according to grandmother,” Jeremy noted. “She thinks Maranzano will just turn around and sell the land to a developer to build a shopping mall, the biggest one in the state. He’s probably got a cut of the whole deal.”

Elena, Talia and I waited for word from Aaron about the success or failure of his negotiations with David Kellerman but we hadn’t heard from him since the late afternoon. At around 4PM he had called his mother to tell her that he’d be back at The Lodge late in the evening. He just said he’d be having dinner with the Kellermans at Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn. The drive back from the city takes three and a half hours so we calculated his arrival at around midnight.

The hotel bar didn’t close until 2AM, so we sat drinking cups of coffee to keep from getting drowsy. Finally, at a quarter of 1AM, Aaron walked in. The look on his face was not encouraging. We waved him over to our table in the far corner of the bar and he absolutely melted into a chair.

“Well?” we asked in unison.

“How did I miss it. Connect all the dots…”

“Miss what. Connect what dots?” Talia asked, her voice raised.

“David Kellerman is trying to buy out all the hotels or at least most of them in the Catskills and build a shopping mall. The biggest, damned shopping mall in the state.” He paused as a waitress came over to ask him for his order. “Give me a double Maker’s Mark, Cassie. Chop-chop.” He waved her away.

“And Big Sal Maranzano’s got a fifty-fifty stake in the development. Whether Kellerman likes it or not.”

Cassie placed a napkin and the double shot of bourbon on the table. Aaron picked up the glass.

“Here’s mud in my eye.”