COUNTDOWN TO THE KEYS

Springline, Mass.-“Experience is the final judge of time,” Homer Cassapien began. Then he paused to lean across the wobbly pine table. After a moment, I noticed that he was watching an ant mired in the sticky remains of a long-forgotten breakfast. Quickly, Cassapien scribbled something on the note pad that he always carries. Why not? he Wrote.

His remark was interesting, but I was more concerned with real, ticking time. The clock above the stove showed that it was almost 8 a.m. I had less than two hours before my flight back to Dallas.

That morning was unusually muggy for Springline, a bustling coastal resort some 30 miles north of Boston. Outside Cassapien’s door, the stairs squeaked as boarders made their way downstairs to breakfast. The distant wailing of police sirens and the thundering clatter of garbage trucks signaled the birth of another day in Springline, a city unaware that genius dwells in its midst.

Until this morning, I’d been unaware of it, too. Nothing in Cassapien’s manner or conversation the night before would have led a visitor to believe that he could have constructed the now-famous Cadillac puzzles, the delight (and torment) of thousands of Dallasites. I had come expecting a retiring, scholarly type. But as we sat in Beelzebub’s, a favorite Cassapien hangout, Homer talked of simple things: the summer heat in Dallas, food prices, the accordion shortage. Sipping a Cape Codsman on the rocks, his angular face half hidden behind large wraparound sunglasses, Homer Cassapien seemed anything but the tortured genius whose crazily clever schemes have made him a cult figure in his native city.

It was Cassapien’s final puzzle, the grand finale of D Magazine’s Great Cadillac Treasure Hunt, that had brought me to Springline. Granted, Homer’s first two puzzles were hard. But the third one! We feared a run on tranquilizers. A rash of suicides. An angry mob storming our offices. Someone, we reasoned, had to go to Springline (where Cassapien has been undergoing treatment from psychiatrist Lemuel Krantz) and bring back another puzzle leading to the keys of the Eldorado. We drew lots to see who would go. I lost.

But when I left Cassapien at his boardinghouse last night, I had to admit that my three hours of pleading had come to nothing. Homer had been firm: There would be no further clues, no clarifications and certainly no new puzzle. “You lack confidence in your readers,” Homer told me as we parted. “It was foolish of you to reveal those answers in the May issue, and now you want to simplify the puzzles even more. I refuse to allow any more dilution of my efforts. Frankly, I don’t care whether anyone finds your Cadillac keys; the quest, the challenge -they alone matter.”

However, we do want someone to find the keys. So, the next morning I knocked on Homer’s door before sunup, determined to give it one more try. We sat at a breakfast table piled high with stacks of note cards, part of the research for Homer’s upcoming book, Coolidge and the Kama Sutra. Again, I made my plea.

“Homer, please,” I said. “Nobody will understand this puzzle. You’ve gone too far. How can anyone understand your scrapbook?”

For that was what Homer Cassapien had sent us as the third puzzle -the one that will lead some ingenious Dallasite to the Eldorado keys. A scrapbook. Page after page of odd photos, quotations, dried flowers, tickets torn in half, memories in bits and pieces. A silhouette of H.L. Mencken. A dried salamander. A napkin from the Peppermint Club in Lawton, Oklahoma. An autographed picture of Mortimer Adler. And, interspersed with these mementos, Homer’s own notes and drawings-private hieroglyphics only he could decipher.

My remaining hour became a half hour, but Cassapien would not budge. Like a drowning man, 1 was ready to grab at anything. I walked toward the door, then wheeled around to face him. “You’re scared, Homer,” I hissed. “That’s why you made this last puzzle so damned hard, isn’t it? You don’t want a winner. You’d like this contest to drag on for months, just so people will keep talking about you and how clever you are. You’re loving it, Homer.” And then I pulled out my ace in the hole.

“You can put on this act as the aloof magus, soaring above your intellectual creation like a majestic eagle or like the god of the deists, a distant center of order in a chaotic world -but you’re a phony.”

For the first time, Cassapien took off his sunglasses and looked at me. It was working. “That was a nice sentence,” he said, but the frost lay thick on his voice.

“Don’t try to change the subject, Cassa-pien,” I snarled. “At heart, you’re just another celebrity. You and Zsa Zsa and Liz and John Schneider and Mr. T. Yeah, that’s right. Mr. C, that’s you. Has People called yet? How ’bout National Enquirer? You know, I’ll bet you’ll be co-hosting The Merv Griffin Show in no time. Think Tom Selleck will play you in the movie?”

That did it. Cassapien brought his fist down on the hapless ant, sending note cards flying in all directions. I had him. “No! No!” he screamed. “I didn’t return their calls! Not a single one, not even Barbara Walters! And I’m not doing a diet book. That’s just a rumor, I swear it!” His voice cracked as tears came to his eyes. “I don’t need these people. I don’t even need Dick Cavett. I just want to go back to the way it was, back to my books and my ideas!”

“Then prove it, Homer,” I said, trying to keep a rising note of triumph out of my voice. “End this contest. Give us something people can figure out. We’ll have our winner, and you can go back to your old life. People will forget you. Sales of your books will drop. You’ll be respectable again.”

He hesitated a moment, then broke. “All right,” he sighed, slumping into a chair. He opened the scrapbook and tore out two pages. “These are the clues that really matter,” he sighed. “The rest was window dressing, just to make it harder.”

I looked at the pages. “Clues? You call these clues? What about directions? What do people do with them?”

Cassapien picked up a black pen and drew numbers beside several of the pictures and objects on the two pages. Then he wrote out the directions on his note pad. I glanced at them and shoved them into my briefcase. I stuck out my hand, feeling vaguely ashamed, but Homer wouldn’t look up at me. It was time to go.

-Chris Tucker



So ends the story of Homer Cassapien. We at D feel fortunate to have had this strange alliance with Homer, though we can’t say we’re in a hurry to do it again. But it looks like we won’t have the chance, anyway. A few days after our man returned from Springline, we received a letter from Dr. Krantz telling us that Homer had disappeared without saying goodbye. He left no forwarding address. Somehow, we weren’t surprised.



THE HUNT



The directions for this, the last of the Cassapien Chronicles, are simple. (It is the puzzle itself that is so weird.) Homer assures us that those who know the “crux” of last month’s exercise will know where to begin. Simply follow the clues, in numerical order, to the keys. Each clue is within a few hundred feet of the next, so be sure to follow the trail.



THE RULES



1. IF YOU FIND THE KEYS, call ouroffices during working hours (Mondaythrough Friday 8:30 to 5:00) at 827-5000and ask to speak to someone in the editorial department. Be prepared to show usthat you have both the keys and the box.

2. The sterling silver box from Tiffany’s with the Cadillac keys inside is hidden somewhere within the Dallas city limits. The puzzle in this month’s issue willlead you to the exact site of the silver box.However, to those who have not solved Part One, Part Two will be meaningless and Part Three cannot be understood without the other puzzles. Only licensed drivers are eligible. Taxes, title and license must be paid by the winner.

3. The exact location of the silver box isknown by only two D staff members.

4. A letter disclosing the hiding place ofthe silver box and explaining the clues usedto find the box has been filed with the lawfirm of Haynes and Boone.

5. The letter mentioned above will beprinted in the earliest possible issue of Dafter the discovery of the silver box.

6. Southwest Media Corporation employees, suppliers and their families, as well as free-lancers who have contributed to any Southwest Media publication since January 1, 1982, are ineligible to participate in this contest.

7. D wishes to thank Sewell VillageCadillac for helping to make this contestpossible and Tiffany’s for providing thesilver box in which the silver Cadillac keysare hidden.

8. D Magazine does not countenancetrespassing on private property or defacing public property in the course of thiscontest. (It isn’t necessary to do either tofind the silver box.) D assumes no liability for any damages resulting from participation in this contest.

9. If the puzzle in this issue doesn’t leadsomeone to the silver box, we’ll publishmore clues in later issues until we have awinner. Good luck!