The Maestro
I COULDN'T BELIEVE my luck. I had found the one man who had ruined my life. Now I was prepared to end his. Or so I thought.
He was in the back of of a well-lit Denny's practicing his card tricks while he nursed one of their bottomless cups of coffee. Probably over a dispute with his bladder.
I came up to his table and asked, "Maestro the Magnificent?"
He looked up and put on a practiced Snake Oil smile while he looked me over. "By the judge of your frown, I should say, 'Who's asking?'"
"I'm one of your audience who bought one too many tricks of yours. Tried to use your book to follow your footsteps to fame and fortune. But it only brought me grief and a hardscrabble life. And it brought me here, at last."
"So you figure to take out your pound of flesh on my hide? Stand in
