The Bullet Catch

by John Gaspard

  “Sounds intriguing,” Mr. Lime said with a sick smile. “Why was this Dr. Daley’s last trick?”

  I rarely name this trick while performing it, so I was caught off guard by the question. “He died after creating it,” I explained.

  “May you have better luck.”

  A chill ran down my spine but I pressed on. “Pick a card in your mind—just the value, not the suit,” I said as I flipped the deck over and began to sort through it quickly.

  Mr. Lime touched a finger to his chin and looked up at the dome light, then smiled at me. “A queen,” he said. “I would pick a queen.”

  “Excellent choice,” I said as I scanned the deck and was mercifully able to find all four queens. I culled them from the deck and spread them in front of him. “Red or black?”

  He gave it much more consideration than I felt was really required, squinting as he considered his options. His eyelids were so thin I was convinced I could see his steel green eyes right through the skin. “Black,” he said. “I would pick black.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said, setting the two red queens aside. I held up the Queen of Spades. “In the world of magic, the Queen of Spades indicates intelligence. An intellectual.”

  Mr. Lime smiled as if I had complimented him directly. I held up the other card.

  “The Queen of Clubs, on the other hand…” I said this with a smile, because it was in fact in the other hand. Mr. Lime offered a grim smirk at my attempt at humor. “On the other hand, the Queen of Clubs indicates intuition. This minor demonstration will pit your intelligence against your intuition. Hold out your right hand, palm down, and pinch your thumb and index finger together.”

  He did as instructed. I turned the two cards face down and switched them slowly, back and forth, between my two hands. This was no three card monte move. He would have no trouble following the cards. I placed one of them, still face down, between his thumb and index finger.

  “Now, using your intelligence…and your intuition…which card am I holding and which card are you holding?”

  He considered for a moment, more for dramatic effect than actually needing to think about it. “I’m holding the Queen of Spades. You are holding the Queen of Clubs.”

  I turned my card over. The Queen of Clubs. He turned his over and smiled. He was holding the Queen of Spades.

  “Excellent,” I said, taking the card from him and shuffling the two cards back and forth, much faster than before. “That was your intelligence at work. Now we will test your intuition.” I took one of the cards and placed it back between his fingers. I held the other card, its face to my chest. “Using your intuition, tell me: Which card are you holding? And which card am I holding?”

  He thought about this for a long moment. He had a look of real concentration on his face. I glanced toward the front seat and could see even Harpo was studying us closely in the rearview mirror.

  “I believe,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “that I hold the Queen of Clubs.”

  “And that would mean I hold the Queen of Spades?”

  He nodded emphatically. I took my card and placed it on top of his, pulling the card out from his finger grasp as I did. “I believe, in this one instance, your intuition has failed you,” I said. “For not only do you not hold the Queen of Clubs…but neither do I.”

  With that I turned the two cards over and set them on the seat next to him. He gasped, gaping at the two cards: The Queen of Hearts and the Queen of Diamonds. He looked up at me, his eyes wide.

  “Intelligence. Intuition. Neither one is entirely fallible,” I said as I reached across the seat and picked up the two cards I had set aside. I looked at him for a long moment, then turned the cards around, revealing the Queen of Spades and the Queen of Clubs.

  Mr. Lime clasped his hands together, looking as thrilled and delighted as an aging psychopath can look. “Wonderful,” he whispered. “Just wonderful.”

  I handed him the cards. “Then I think we’re done,” I said, reaching for the door handle.

  “Yes,” he said. “Mr. Marks, I think we are done.”

  I opened the car door and tried to mask my eagerness at getting out.

  “Except,” he said, and I froze, one foot in the car and one foot out. I turned back to him.

  “Yes?” I asked weakly.

  “All I need is the name of that hand cream. And then I think we can call it a day.”

  My mind was blank and the more I pushed to remember the name the further it receded into my unconscious.

  “I’ll give you some time to think about it,” he said, “And then I’ll be back in touch. In the meantime, I will trust you to employ your own intelligence and your intuition to the greatest degree possible. Yes?”

  My head made a movement that resembled a nod as I crawled out of the car. I stood up completely and turned to close the door. My last image of Mr. Lime was of him caressing the four queens. He was making a sound that, from where I stood, sounded like purring. Then the door was shut and the car roared across the parking lot.

  At that instant it hit me.

  “Papercreme,” I yelled. “It’s called Papercreme Fingertip Moistener!”

  But the car had already turned the corner and was gone.

  Chapter 14

  I sat in my car for a while after the sedan had driven off. It had been an eventful day and I felt a need to process all that had happened. I noticed my phone sitting on the passenger seat and turned it on, discovering it had been quite active while I was sharing my feelings with Dr. Bakke and being vaguely terrorized by Mr. Lime.

  The first message was from Deirdre, asking if I’d made it home okay after our adventure in the parking ramp. Her voice was free of any sarcasm and she actually sounded concerned and almost warm. I listened to the message twice, just to make sure it was really her.

  This was followed by a message from Harry, asking me to call him. The phone registered three calls from him, all coming from the store, but he had only left one message. I tried the store and then his cell and got no answer from either.

  The third message was from Jake. It was short and to the point: “Eli, call me when you can. Things have gone from bad to weird out here.”

  Finally, the phone had logged a call from Trish, but she had left no message. I looked at her number for a long time, wondering not only what she might want, but why I was so drawn to helping her. Before I allowed myself to dig too deeply into my motivations, I hit the Return Call button and after three rings she picked up. Once again, she sounded like I had interrupted a crying jag.

  “Oh, Eli, hello.”

  “Hi. I saw that you had called,” I said.

  “Yes, I was upset, I’m sorry.”

  “No reason to be sorry. What’s going on?”

  “The police just talked to me about the death of someone Dylan knew. They said you knew him too. They asked me some more questions about the night Dylan died and I’m really starting to think they suspect me of killing him or something.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s not the case,” I said, not even coming close to convincing myself. “Would it help if we got together and talked?” I suggested, again resisting the urge to plumb my motivations too deeply. Sure, she was in pain, and sure, she could use a friend. But she was also my high school crush and she was still attractive and now a widow. Before I could compare myself too closely to Jake, she answered.

  “Oh, Eli, that would be very nice. If you don’t mind and I’m not interrupting something...” Her voice trailed off and I could hear her sniffling quietly on the phone.

  “Not a problem. I’m not doing anything right now, if you want to grab a coffee or something?” I suggested.

  “Coffee at this time of day will keep me up all night,” she said with a sigh. “And I’m already having enough trouble sleeping. But there’s a coffee shop down the street from here that
has a nice selection of teas.”

  “And where is here?”

  “Oh, of course,” she said with a short and unconvincing laugh. “I’m volunteering at St. Paul House, down on Washington Avenue on the north side of downtown,” she said. I had never been there, but had seen their building for years as I’d driven by on the freeway, chuckling to myself that St. Paul House had chosen for some odd reason to locate in Minneapolis. At meal times, there was often a line around the block, even in what would be considered prosperous times.

  “I know where it is,” I said.

  “My shift ends in about forty minutes. There’s a Caribou Coffee down the block.”

  Rush hour was just starting, so it was thirty minutes later when I finally made it to the area, and I then spent five more minutes looking for a parking spot. I finally located one across the street from St. Paul House, which wasn’t really a house, but instead a large brick warehouse space that had been converted over the years into a combination soup kitchen, food shelf and homeless shelter.

  My timing couldn’t have been better, as I spotted Trish coming out the front door. I locked my car and waited for traffic to clear in order to cross the street. She saw me and waved, and then turned to say hello to a group of three men who were just entering the facility. As a kid I would have called them bums or hobos, but times have changed and I recognized them for what they were: guys who had slipped between the cracks of society and were doing what they had to in order to get by. It was warm today, but I was guessing in the dead of winter, a place like St. Paul House was the only thing standing between them and freezing to death down by the river.

  “I didn’t know you worked here,” I said as I finally negotiated the traffic and made it across the street.

  “Well, I’m not on staff or anything,” she said. “I volunteer here two or three days a week. Keeps me from going stir crazy in the apartment. Dylan doesn’t—” She caught herself and re-started the sentence. “Dylan didn’t like the idea of me working, because it got in the way if we wanted to take off for some place exotic on a moment’s notice. Not that we ever did.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s going to take me a while to start getting the tense right. Come on,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’ll buy you that cup of coffee.”

  My coffee ended up being an iced coffee, as drinking hot liquids on hot days just seems odd to me. Trish was true to her word and went with a simple Earl Gray tea along with a slice of marble pound cake. In order to be sociable, I ordered a piece as well. At least that was what I told myself.

  Once we settled into a table in the corner, there were some awkward moments, as neither of us was sure where to start. So I picked up where we had left off.

  “Volunteering at St. Paul House,” I said. “Good for you.”

  “It’s oddly comforting to have this predictable schedule right now,” she said. “I mean, to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

  I nodded in understanding. “How did you get started here?”

  “Well, my background is in non-profits, so when in doubt I always return to this world.”

  “Is that what you did after college?” Our discussion at the reunion had been so focused on tripping down memory lane I hadn’t thought to ask about her career path.

  “Oh, I did a million things after college,” she said. “Trying to find myself. Pretty typical, right?”

  I shrugged. “You’re talking to a guy who’s still using jokes in his act he wrote when he was fifteen.”

  “Well, obviously you found yourself at an earlier age.”

  “I’m not so sure. We sent out a search party once, but they came back empty-handed.”

  She gave this a laugh that we in the business call “polite.”

  “Anyway, for my first real post-college job, I ended up working at a non-profit. I didn’t care for the cause, but I liked the work and felt I was pretty good at it.”

  “What was the cause?”

  She lowered her head in mock shame. “I was Assistant Communications Director for the Dried Fruit Council.”

  “And their mission…?”

  She sat up straight in her chair and recited it from memory. “To promote the nutritional value and health benefits of dried fruit to the American people.”

  “That’s a pretty compelling mission,” I said.

  “It should be. It took a year and half and about two hundred thousand dollars in consulting fees to come up with it.” She shook her head. “But that wasn’t why I left. Ask me why I left.”

  “Why did you leave?” It was fun to see her lightening up, if only a little.

  “Because I was asked to write the copy for a save-the-date card for a big fundraising event. And you know the name of that event?”

  I shook my head, sensing a punch line.

  “It was called ‘Save the Date.’” She took a sip of tea and added, “You can not make these things up.”

  I smiled as I used the stir stick to move the ice cubes in my coffee. “Not to bring us down, but you had a visit from the police?”

  Her smile disappeared and she nodded. “They said someone from the reunion killed himself. And he knew Dylan. Howard Washburn. Did you know him?”

  I shook my head. “No, although he certainly seemed to think I knew him. He’s in the yearbook, but I have no memory of him.”

  “That’s what I told them. Dylan knew a lot of people I didn’t know.” She broke off a piece of pound cake and chewed it slowly. “All kinds of people I didn’t know. And that I’m glad I didn’t know.”

  “So they came and talked to you about Howard Washburn?”

  She nodded. “This afternoon. They wanted to know my relationship with him, Dylan’s relationship with him. They asked me where I was around the time he shot himself. And, of course, it was when I was on my lunch break, so in their minds I don’t have an alibi. Just like when Dylan was killed. I was sound asleep in our apartment, but in their eyes I have no alibi.” She brushed some crumbs off the tabletop. “It’s like they really think I’m involved in this in some way. And the insurance money certainly doesn’t help.”

  “Insurance money?”

  She seemed surprised. “The police didn’t mention that to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “A couple months ago, Dylan took out a life insurance policy for a million dollars. Didn’t tell me a thing about it, which was typical of him and his approach to our finances. And then he dies and all of a sudden it’s suspicious he bought the policy and named me as the beneficiary.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to not look too surprised at this revelation. “A million dollars is a lot of money, even today.”

  She shook her heard. “It’s not a million. It’s two million, because of the double indemnity clause. Apparently, a mugging is considered an accidental death.”

  The words ‘double indemnity’ triggered a thought and I suddenly remembered the two names Mr. Lime had mentioned in the car. He had referred to Trish as Phyllis Dietrichson and warned me not to become Walter Neff. And I remembered that they were the two characters played by Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in the movie Double Indemnity—a movie about a woman who murders her husband for the insurance, with the help of a sleazy insurance salesman. My memory of the film was sketchy, but I was pretty sure Walter Neff wound up dead at the end, a fate I very much wanted to avoid.

  “What’s wrong?” Clearly my face was registering a look that warranted the question.

  “Do you remember that old movie called Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray?”

  “Mr. Douglas from My Three Sons?”

  “Yeah, that’s the actor, but he was not a very nice—or very smart—guy in Double Indemnity. It was a similar situation, a woman, an insurance policy...” My voice trailed off and I decided to shift the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Do you know who Dylan bought th
e policy from?”

  “I would guess it was from the same guy we got all our insurance from—Roger Edison. You know Roger, he went to high school with us?”

  “I remember him well. He was at the reunion.”

  “He was? I don’t remember seeing him there. But I would guess he sold the policy. That’s what I told the police.”

  “Okay,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “So how did the police leave it with you? Are you a Person of Interest?”

  “I don’t know what I am,” she sighed. “It’s been a rough week. I’m crying a little less but feeling guilty about it more.” She finished her tea, crumpled her paper napkin and placed it in the empty paper cup. “But enough about all that, I’m so tired about all that. How are you doing? You know, with your thing?”

  It took me a moment to realize what she meant by ‘my thing,’ my mind sifting through several alluring options before realizing she was referring to my panic attacks.

  “Oh, the same,” I said. “I just came from therapy. Had a serious attack this morning at the top of a parking ramp with—of all people—my ex-wife. And let me tell you, there’s nothing better for your ego than looking like a scared, simpering idiot in front of your ex-wife.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t think that.”

  I thought back to Deirdre’s behavior and smiled in spite of myself. “Actually, she was remarkably warm-hearted and caring about the whole incident. She must be mellowing with age.”

  “Was your divorce painful?”

  “More for me than her, I think. She wisely had a spare husband in the wings, so she made the transition from married to not-married to married-again fairly quickly. She was always good at planning things.”

  Trish starred down at her empty cup, pushing it around the tabletop in a small circle. “I was going to ask Dylan for a divorce soon. At least, that was the plan. I think.” She looked up at me, her eyes starting to water.