The Bullet Catch

by John Gaspard

  “Well, at least it didn’t take long,” I said as I got to the bank of elevators. She had already pressed the down button. “If you have no other plans, maybe we could stop and have lunch on the way back to your place,” I suggested.

  “Sure,” Trish said as the elevator door slid open. “Or I could make you a chicken salad sandwich.” She stepped into the elevator.

  The thought of trying to hold any food down while seated in that kitchen made me stop for a moment, halfway in and halfway out of the elevator car. I pictured being surrounded on two sides by floor-to-ceiling windows and on one side by French doors that led out to a twenty-nine story drop. I knew that was well beyond my current therapy goals. I stepped into the elevator.

  “Let’s stop at a restaurant,” I suggested, deciding being forceful here would be better than lying in a fetal position on her kitchen floor.

  “Sure, whatever,” Trish said as the door began to slide shut.

  A hand reached in at the last second and stopped the door in its tracks. After a moment, it slid open again, revealing Homicide Detective Fred Hutton. Deirdre stood alongside him.

  “Mrs. Lasalle. Eli. Would you mind coming back into the office for a moment?” Deirdre said in a flat tone, the one I knew always meant trouble.

  “Is there a problem?” Trish asked.

  “You could say that.”

  Chapter 18

  “Sylvia Washburn is dead?” I repeated my question, even though Deirdre had already answered it once.

  “Yes. Last night. One of her maids found her this morning.”

  For a quick moment, I thought how Carmelita had wisely vacated that job at just the right time.

  “How? Where? When?” I stopped just short of asking why and who, thinking that was not the path to go down at this moment.

  We were seated in a small conference room, Trish and I on one side of the table, Deirdre on the other. Homicide Detective Fred Hutton leaned against the wall, in his standard glowering golem pose.

  “She drowned in her Jacuzzi tub,” Deirdre explained. “There are no signs of struggle in the bathroom, so we’re proceeding under the assumption the death was from natural causes.” She turned to Trish. “Mrs. Lasalle, were you acquainted with Mrs. Washburn?”

  “Only slightly,” Trish said quietly. “We’d been to their house once or twice. We weren’t close.”

  Deirdre made a note of this and then turned to me. “And you never met her, right?” she asked in passing as she returned to her note taking. When I didn’t answer immediately, she looked up at me.

  “Actually,” I said slowly, “I met her once. At her house. Last night.”

  This got the attention of Homicide Detective Fred Hutton. He crossed the room and pushed the door closed with his hand. He then sat next to Deirdre at the table and produced his own notepad from his suit coat pocket.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” he said as he flipped open the notebook and clicked his pen. “At the very beginning.”

  As interrogations go, I suppose it could have been worse.

  They quickly decided they needed to separate us, putting Trish in one room and me in another. While she cooled her heels, I related to Deirdre and Homicide Detective Fred Hutton everything that had happened so far: my encounters with Dylan Lasalle at the reunion, my mysterious meeting with Mr. Lime at a house on Lake of the Isles, my phone call with Howard Washburn and subsequent discovery of his body. Deirdre took down the address of Mr. Lime’s mansion and then continued with the questioning. I talked about my conversation with Roger Edison and recounted my misadventure with the Washburn’s garage, before getting to the heart of the matter.

  “And why did you go out to her home?” Deirdre asked.

  “Like I said before, I was just trying to figure out the relationship between Howard Washburn and Dylan Lasalle.”

  Homicide Detective Fred Hutton grunted on his side of the table, but a look from Deirdre quickly silenced him.

  “Why is that your concern?” Deirdre continued unabated.

  “I was curious,” I said, trying to keep any defensiveness out of my voice.

  “Did Mrs. Lasalle ask you to make these inquiries?”

  “No,” I said. “I was looking into this matter on my own.”

  “And can we make the assumption Mrs. Lasalle is saying the same thing to Detective Wright in the room across the hall?”

  “I can’t see any reason why she wouldn’t.”

  Deirdre gave me a long look. “But you’ve had no relationship with Mrs. Lasalle since high school, is that correct?”

  “It is. And we really didn’t have much of a relationship back then.”

  “You were acquaintances.”

  “That would be putting it strongly.”

  “And you reconnected at the reunion?”

  “We did.”

  She rolled her eyes, and then reached over and shut off the recording device that had been rolling since this ‘official’ interview had begun. “Oh, Eli. What are you doing?”

  I looked around the room. “Is that an official question?”

  “Did you have a crush on this woman in high school?”

  “I’m not sure I should answer that.”

  “Oh, I see, the questions about the murders and the muggings and the suicides and the drownings, you’ll answer those questions, but you want to take the fifth on whether or not you had a crush on her?”

  “I’m not sure it’s germane,” I finally said.

  “Why don’t you let us decide what is and is not germane,” she said, and then reached over and started the recorder again. “And where were you last evening between the hours of eight and eleven?”

  “I was at Adrian’s with Uncle Harry, listening to Mack the Knife.”

  This was too much for Homicide Detective Fred Hutton. “Nonsense, that song is only three minutes long.”

  “Not the way Harry plays it.” That was going to be my answer, but Deirdre had beaten me to it. This resulted in a long look between the couple, the cold silence speaking volumes. Deidre closed her notebook.

  “Finally, do you know of anyone who would have had any reason to harm Mrs. Washburn?”

  I considered mentioning the household staff, but decided if any of them had committed the crime, they deserved to get away with it.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Homicide Detective Fred Hutton reluctantly closed his notebook, but he was clearly not happy about it.

  * * *

  After we’d made it through our respective interrogations, neither one of us was in the mood for lunch, so Trish suggested she’d take a rain check and I began to drive her home. Once we made it out of downtown, I took a right on Franklin Avenue, figuring going around the lakes might conclude the events of the morning on a more pleasant note.

  “That Detective Wright really doesn’t like me,” Trish said as we crested the hill and Lake of the Isles came into view.

  “Yes, well, you two are BFFs compared to how Homicide Detective Fred Hutton feels about me,” I said. “He didn’t like my alibi at all.”

  “Why not? You were in a bar, with your uncle, the whole evening.”

  “I think he didn’t believe Mack the Knife can or should be played that often.”

  “Well, at least you have an alibi,” she said. “God, I can’t believe we’re sitting here talking about alibis. How did I get into this mess?”

  I had an answer on the tip of my tongue, but wisely kept it there.

  It ultimately didn’t matter, because a moment later she spit out the word I was thinking.

  “Dylan,” she said, as harshly as I’d ever heard her say anything. “That’s how I got into this mess. Now, because of him, everyone thinks I’m a murderer and they’re going to put me in jail and I’ll never be heard from again.”

  “I’ll come vis
it,” I said.

  For some reason, that made her laugh and then it made me laugh as well.

  “Actually, at this point, you are unlikely to be arrested, let alone do any time,” I said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because like Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, I lived with that Assistant DA and I know how she works. She’s not going to push to have you arrested.”

  “Well, that’s nice,” Trish said. “At least someone out there thinks I’m innocent.”

  I shook my head. “Disabuse yourself of that notion right now. It’s not that she thinks you’re innocent. It’s just that she knows she can’t prove you’re guilty. At least not in court. And I know that woman: she won’t push for an arrest unless she is sure she can get a conviction. She never starts an argument unless she knows ahead of time she is going to win it.”

  “That must make things fun at home,” Trish said with a trace of a smile.

  “That’s the central tension in their relationship,” I said, turning off of Lake of the Isles Parkway, heading the car toward Lake Calhoun. “He knows who the bad guys are, but she won’t prosecute unless she knows she can win. They really should consider getting into some therapy for that.”

  “But I will say this,” I continued. “If someone is trying to frame you in these killings, they are doing a real half-assed job of it. I think the police and the DA’s office are only interested in you because they have no one else to look at. Once they find another shiny object, they’ll be done with you and start going after someone else.”

  “Well, given some of the people Dylan hung around with, I would think they have no shortage of other shiny objects.”

  Her mention of the people Dylan hung around with got me to thinking about Mr. Lime and his stocky, well-muscled assistant. They’d already demonstrated a keen interest and ability in tailing me. Had they followed me out to Sylvia Washburn’s house, and then patiently waited until the party broke up to announce themselves?

  I suddenly had an image of Harpo standing stock-still as he held Sylvia’s head under the foaming water in the Jacuzzi, while Mr. Lime stood silently by, spreading hand cream on his bony fingertips.

  Our arrival at Trish’s high-rise condo knocked that image out of my head, at least for the time being.

  “Are you sure I can’t invite you up for lunch?” she asked as she swung open the passenger door. I turned my head and craned my neck, looking up at the building, imagining which floor in that too-tall building was the twenty-ninth.

  “I’ll take a rain check,” I said. “Besides, I have a busy afternoon.”

  “Oh, do you have a gig?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ve got to figure out how to shoot a guy without killing him.”

  I spent the rest of that afternoon and most of the evening squirreled away in my apartment, doing research on other methods for doing The Bullet Catch. Normally I would have simply asked Harry and he would have given me a handful of feasible options right off the top of his head. But knowing his dislike of The Bullet Catch, I felt I was better off flying under the radar on this one, which meant cracking open the books and doing actual research.

  I have a modest library of magic books and was able to sneak several out of the shop downstairs without Harry getting suspicious. But I knew the true mother lode of books would be found in my uncle’s bookcases in his apartment, and there was no chance I could garner access to any of those volumes without alerting him to my mission. So I used the resources at hand, and some quick forays onto the Internet, working to assemble a suitable method that would look good on camera and keep Jake from being injured. Or worse.

  I quickly discovered the downside to researching The Bullet Catch. With each method I found came stories of the many magicians who have died attempting the stunt. And these weren’t just stories of amateur magicians who had gotten in over their heads. The majority of fatalities were magicians who had performed the trick for years, seemingly using well-practiced methods they considered to be foolproof. After I’d read over a dozen such stories, I set aside all the research and—using all the examples of what hadn’t worked—I began to structure my own method I felt would work safely on camera in one long, continuous shot.

  I took occasional breaks to clear my head. I spent some time emptying out my email inbox, which had become stuffed with spam that had cleverly weaseled past my filter, as well as legitimate emails I simply hadn’t gotten around to reading.

  Several emails pertained to the high school reunion. One was from the organizing committee, asking me to fill out a poorly-worded questionnaire about the event and my thoughts on future reunions. There were also several emails from the photographer at the event, each offering a better deal on the pictures he’d taken than the last, suggesting he wasn’t getting many takers on the photos he had captured.

  When I finished with that, I spent a long while staring out the window in my bedroom, which overlooks the roof of the movie theater next door. From this vantage point I can peer down through the small window in the theater’s projection booth, where I can see a corner of the room and a portion of the back wall, which holds among other things, a small mirror. Over the years I’ve spent many happy and restful hours, trying to determine what movie they were showing by observing the way the lights and the shadows bounced around the small room. On this particular evening, I was unable to come to a conclusion about what movie it was, although I suspect it was in black and white.

  When that no longer held my attention, I picked up the yearbook I had pulled out in my effort to try to remember who Howard Washburn had been. Flipping through the pages, I came across my own senior photo, which looked just as geeky as I remembered. Beneath the photo it listed my meager list of activities, including the chess club and the talent show. Like many others, I had chosen a favorite quote to conclude my entry. Mine was a favorite saying Harry had taught me, a maxim he felt all magicians should take to heart: “Don’t run if no one is chasing you.”

  This foray down memory lane led me to search out the photos of Jake and then Trish and finally Dylan.

  Jake looked movie-star handsome even at that young age, his head turned toward the camera from over his shoulder, an insolent grin on his face. Under his photo it listed all his high school activities, with a healthy emphasis on the drama club. He followed this up with his favorite quote: “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.”

  Trish’s senior portrait was also stunning, her clear eyes challenging the camera, her hands folded neatly in front of her. Her list of activities was twice as long as Jake’s and included—in addition to her title as Homecoming Queen—a long list of all the charitable and service activities she had taken part in. Despite the lengthy list, the yearbook editors were still able to make room for a quote, in this instance attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

  Finally I turned to the page that should have held the photo of Dylan Lasalle. His name was listed, but there was an empty space where his photo should have been. In the photo area were the words “No Photo Supplied.” There were no activities listed under his name and certainly no insightful quote.

  I paged through the book for a while and then went back to work on my assignment for the evening: Find a way to keep Jake’s high school quote from coming true, at least on the film set tomorrow. It was well past midnight when I set my notes aside and crawled into bed. But sleep was elusive, and when it came it included repeated images of Harpo pushing Sylvia Washburn under the water, while Mr. Lime stood by, putting on gloves and smiling that toothy, cadaverous grin of his. It was not a restful night.

  Chapter 19

  “Now I know how the actors playing Amos and Andy must have felt.”

  “Any chance you could confine your references to those less than seventy-five years old?” Lauren said as she continued to apply the dark make
up to my face.

  “You recognized the reference enough to criticize it,” I countered, shutting my eyes while she worked on my eyelids.

  “I’m a makeup person. Of course I get an Amos and Andy reference. You are a white man. I am applying makeup to give you the appearance of an Ecuadorian native. I’m just suggesting you might want to refresh your mental trivia bins. Even a lame reference to George Hamilton’s tan would put you closer to the present day.”

  “This is a tough room,” I muttered. “What happened to nice Lauren?”

  “Suck it up,” she said, twisting my head with her hand and starting to apply makeup behind each of my ears. “I’m under-staffed, overworked and have been on this picture for far too long. Nice Lauren disappeared about two weeks back.”

  “I’m just going to sit here very quietly,” I said.

  “Good plan.”

  We had done a quick rehearsal that morning and I had demonstrated to Walter, the director, the key steps in the approach I had put together for The Bullet Catch. Like the original version, it required Jake, as Terry, to pull two natives from the crowd. Under his direction, they would inspect the bullet, sign the bullet, and load the gun. Then one of them would fire the shot, bringing the show to a tragic conclusion.

  The method I had developed took a sharp left turn from the method Terry Alexander had used and would, I thought, throw off track anyone who had read Clive’s article.

  Satisfied with my plan, Walter had sent me to makeup and sent the Assistant Director in search of an extra to play the other native. I hadn’t known what to expect in the makeup process, but the best I could tell, Lauren had sprayed my hair black and was just about finished giving my skin a darker complexion.

  “What can I do for you?” Lauren said to someone as they entered the tent. My eyelids were still clamped shut.