by John Gaspard
I handed him my invention, a cross between a large belt and a small corset, to put around his waist. It was a bulky fit because the back of the belt held a metal canister, like a miniature scuba tank. A tube with a small, custom nozzle on the end ran out of the canister.
I helped Nathan put his coat back on, taking care to snake the tube down the inside of his right sleeve. I gave the coat one final tug and then stepped back to check my work.
“That looks good,” I said, gesturing for him to spin around so I could see him from all sides. “You really can’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
I crossed over to my workbench and opened a fresh bag of balloons, grabbing one and heading back to Nathan, who was looking at the nozzle on the tube in his sleeve. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.
I shrugged, handing him the limp balloon. “I cobbled it together from a couple different pieces. Here’s how the gag works. You bring the balloon up to your face, just like you would if you were going to blow it up with your mouth.”
Nathan followed my instructions as I talked him through the steps. “At the same time, you’ve palmed the nozzle at the end of the tube. You bring the end of the balloon to your mouth, but it’s the nozzle that actually goes into the balloon. Your hands are covering it, so it just looks like you’re blowing up a balloon normally. Once the nozzle is in place, just press the button on its side and the balloon will inflate.”
I watched as he went through the steps and I was happy to see that it really looked like he was blowing up the balloon manually. When it reached the right size, he pulled it away from his mouth and quickly tied off the end. He then mimed handing the completed balloon to an invisible child in front of him. He let go of the balloon and it floated in mid-air right where he had left it. After a few seconds it began to drift upwards, but it didn’t get any higher than six feet. The balloon floated around the room languidly. We both watched it, transfixed.
“That’s cool,” he said finally. For a second, he almost sounded happy.
Once I got Nathan’s stuff all packed away and he headed off to his gig, I began to putter around the store, taking care of all the little chores that I never seem to get around to, but which always need to be done.
First I tackled restocking the gag gifts. It’s a sad fact, but the few walk-in sales we do get all seem to come from that one rack in a back corner. Over the years, we’ve moved it around the store, to maybe six different spots. It doesn’t matter where we put it, people always find it. It also doesn’t seem to matter that the store is packed to the gills with some of the greatest magic illusions ever made. People are always drawn to the damned gag gift rack.
On that rack are all the staples for a classic gag gift: chattering teeth, fake dog poop, fake vomit, the coughing ashtray, exploding golf balls, joy buzzers, rubber chickens, and the ever-popular fart spray. We had actually sold out our supply of fart spray and I was just in the process of unpacking the new shipment we had recently received when I heard the tinkle of the bell over the front door, signaling that a customer had entered the store.
I set the fart spray aside and turned my attention toward the door, assuming it was Nathan returning with another question. One glance told me it wasn’t Nathan. The guy was backlit by the late morning sun and he almost completely filled up the doorframe with his bulk. But I immediately recognized that big, dumb square head. It could only be one person—my ex-wife’s new husband, Fred Hutton. Or, as I always referred to him, Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, because it annoyed him. Or, at least I hoped it did.
“Marks,” he said in that raspy voice of his. That was the extent of his hello. I had discovered that Fred worked best with words of one syllable, or fewer if possible.
“Good morning, Homicide Detective Fred Hutton,” I said. “What brings you by on this fine day?”
“This is not a social visit,” he said, stepping into the shop. Another man—another detective I assumed—followed him in.
“Well, that’s too bad,” I said. “Because personally I don’t think we socialize nearly enough.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, recognizing my subtle sarcasm and returning it in kind. For a moment, it was as if we had been transported back to the Algonquin Round Table, circa 1925. And then, just as quickly as we had gone, we slammed back to present day.
“I need you to come downtown,” he said. He shifted his ubiquitous toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, although to be fair it was unlikely he would have used the word ubiquitous.
“Is it about Deirdre?” I asked. The hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to stand on end. “Is she okay?”
“This isn’t about her,” he said. “It’s about this guy named Grey.”
“What about this guy named Grey?”
He scowled down at me. “There’s this guy named Grey. And he’s dead.”
I certainly hadn’t seen that coming. “How did he die?” I asked the question like I had a right to know.
“Stabbed. Through the eyes, among other places.”
I tried to remain cool.
Fred stared at me for what seemed like a long time.
“So, you’re ruling out suicide?” I finally asked dryly.
Chapter 6
The drive downtown was, mercifully, a quiet one.
Before leaving the shop I yelled up to Harry that I was going out for a few minutes. We were gone from the store before he had made his way down the steep stairs from his apartment on the second floor. I try to limit the number of times he has to go up and down those stairs in a day, but this additional trip couldn’t be helped.
I was informed that I was, officially, a person of interest and was being brought in and held for questioning. If you read between the lines on that, which I was doing, it was pretty clear that Homicide Detective Fred Hutton was convinced that I had killed Grey. He was just waiting for me to break down and admit it.
I wasn’t being charged, I was being held, which sounded like semantics to me, since either way I couldn’t go home. However, he had the gun and the badge and all I had was charm and that was waning. So I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told.
Even though I wasn’t being officially charged, I still had to be fingerprinted and had to surrender all my personal effects at the property desk before they put me in a room and began to beat me with a rubber hose. Or whatever they’re using nowadays.
“Should we lock him up in some special way?” The uniformed officer in charge of processing me had addressed the question to Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, but he included a sidelong glance in my direction.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. He’s a magician, right?”
Homicide Detective Fred Hutton responded with a disgusted grunt. “So they say.”
“Well, I see these guys break out of jail cells all the time on TV. I’d hate to have something like that happen on my watch.” The young cop stole another glance in my direction. “These guys are tricky.”
He held out a large manila envelope and gestured that I should turn my pockets out and drop my belongings into the packet.
“I don’t think we’re dealing with Houdini here,” Homicide Detective Fred Hutton said as I deposited my wallet, iPhone, keys, forty cents in change, and the deck of cards I always carry into the envelope.
“I think the worst he might do is fill the holding room with balloon animals.” He chuckled at his own joke, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of a smile. Then I checked one last pocket and found three sad, flaccid balloons. I wordlessly added them to the envelope.
They put me in a small, airless room that held a table, two chairs, and a wooden bench that sat along one wall. For some reason, the room smelled of cheese, and old cheese at that. A digital audio recorder was permanently attached to one corner of the table. Homicide Detective Fred Hutton’s partner, a vertically-challenged troll of a man who introduced himself as Homicide Detective Miles Wright, was handling the questioning while Hom
icide Detective Fred Hutton sat in the corner, glaring at me. Instead of Good Cop/Bad Cop, I was apparently stuck with Tall Stupid Cop/Short Angry Cop. Just my luck.
“So, Mr. Magician, how well did you know the victim?” Miles asked after flipping on the recorder and stating the time, date, place and participants involved in the interrogation.
“Not well enough to stab him through the eyes,” I said, figuring what did I have to lose.
“So you know how he was killed? Interesting,” he said, almost deciding to sit in the chair opposite me. He changed his mind at the last second and started a slow, circular trek around the table.
“Yeah, your partner told me all about it. I believe you were standing behind him at the time, but I wasn’t sure if it was you or one of the neighborhood kids. He’s a big guy.”
Miles ignored this jab and continued. “You haven’t answered my question. How well did you know him?”
I shrugged. “I’ve seen him around. I know him by reputation more than I know the man himself.”
“And what was his reputation?”
“Depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
I leaned back in my chair and glanced over at Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, who was staring at me with an intensity that made me think he looked more confused than focused. “He was a fake psychic, a fraud, and not a nice guy. He made a lot of money being that way. I didn’t know him well, but if I had I’m sure I would have thought even less of him.”
“You have any reason to kill him?”
I shook my head. “Actually, it’s just the other way around. After what I did to him last night, he had plenty of reason to want to kill me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I did a fairly good job of taking his act apart, piece by piece, and exposing him for the fraud that he is.”
Miles didn’t reply. He sat down and took a large, official-looking envelope out of the file folder he’d brought in with him. From that envelope he took a small, sealed clear plastic evidence bag. The label on the front of the bag, which was filled in with an illegible scrawl, blocked the contents of the carrier from view. Generating as much drama as he could muster, he slowly swung the bag around, revealing the contents.
“Can you identify this?”
Once the bag had made its 180-degree orbit, I could finally see inside. It was a playing card. The King of Diamonds, by the looks of it, but two things made it initially tough to identify. The first was that the face on the card had a large gash cut through it, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. The real impediment was that the face of the card was smeared with what looked to be blood; so much blood that what had once been a stiff playing card was now nearly a mushy mash of pulp.
“It appears to be a playing card. A King of Diamonds.”
Miles let the plastic bag continue to twirl as he held it up. “This card was found on the victim’s body. To be more specific, when he was stabbed through the eyes, this card was over one of those eyes. The right eye.” He set the clear plastic bag on the table and the card appeared to ooze a bit as it settled on the flat surface.
“What’s interesting,” he said, “is that the deck of cards you left outside at the property desk matches this design. And it’s missing a King of Diamonds.”
I thought this over before speaking.
“I’ll ignore, for the moment, that you’ve gone through my personal effects, sort of nullifying the concept of personal,” I said, looking from Miles to Homicide Detective Fred Hutton and back to Miles again. “I gave Grey that card at the end of my act last night. I put it in his breast pocket. Everybody saw me do it.”
Miles was about to respond to that when the door to the room opened and the same, young uniformed cop from earlier entered. He made a point of not looking at me; instead, he handed a couple sheets of paper to Miles, turned on his heels and walked out. He looked like a man who was delivering bad news and didn’t want to stick around to see it presented.
Miles paged thoughtfully through the report, taking his time. When he was done, he handed the papers over to Homicide Detective Fred Hutton and turned his attention back to me.
“Fingerprint report,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Seems your fingerprints are on the murder weapon. A letter opener.”
“I remember it,” I said, not liking this turn of events, but doing my best not to let that show. “I used it at the program last night. Two hundred people in the audience saw me handle it.”
“Don’t forget it was on television as well,” Miles added. “The local PBS station.”
“Well then, that’s at least another hundred witnesses.”
“And then someone used it to kill Mr. Grey.” He looked at me for what felt like a long time and I did my best to hold his gaze. This stare down was interrupted when the door to the room opened again, but this time no one came in. From my position I couldn’t see who had opened it. Homicide Detective Fred Hutton looked up, instantly jumped to his feet, and walked out of the room.
I heard some feverish whispering outside the door and a moment later Homicide Detective Fred Hutton returned. He moved to Miles’ side and bent down to whisper in the small man’s ear. Miles nodded and followed him out of the room, returning a second later to shut the door.
The room was quiet and I couldn’t hear any sounds from outside. Perhaps it was soundproofed. I tapped my fingers on the table for a few seconds, enjoying the room’s natural reverberation, and then noticed that the digital audio recorder was still in record mode, with its LCD time counter rolling forward. I glanced at the door and then started to hum a persistent song that had come into my head about an hour before.
After a few seconds I switched from humming to singing softly, and by the time I finished the second verse and was moving through the third I was almost to full voice. I drove, full-voiced, into the fourth and final verse and then listened to the reverb die down after I had finished singing. My timing was perfect, for at that moment the door swung open and Miles came back into the room.
“That’s all we’ll need from you today, Mr. Marks,” he said in a practiced tone. “Thanks for coming down.”
Ten minutes later I was walking down the steps into the echoing North rotunda of City Hall, toward the large and impressive Father of Waters statue, a marble monstrosity that completely overwhelms the lobby and makes you feel that you’ve just stepped into a Jason and the Argonauts movie. On any other day that might have been an appealing prospect, but at the moment I wasn’t in the mood.
All of my personal effects were safely back in my pockets, with the exception of the deck of cards. Apparently the police wanted to hang onto it, perhaps for a card game later in the day, which was fine with me. Like any working magician, I have a case of cards in the basement and wouldn’t miss that particular deck.
I was heading toward the glass revolving doors when I heard the distinctive sharp tip-tap of high heels approaching from behind. I got a whiff of the familiar perfume a nanosecond before she breezed past me, a short blonde whirlwind in a tight blue skirt and matching blazer.
“Meet me over at The Little Wagon,” she said in a practiced whisper. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She made a sudden sharp right turn and headed down a corridor toward the east end of the building. I watched her go for a second and then pushed my way through the revolving door and out into the autumnal sunlight.
She had certainly picked a convenient, if not a particularly inconspicuous, destination. Just a block from City Hall, The Little Wagon is a downtown institution, perhaps not for its cuisine or atmosphere, but certainly for its longevity. It’s gone through several owners in the past few years, but its location—walking distance from the government center, City Hall and the one remaining daily newspaper—makes it literally the hub of government and journalism in the city. Plus they make a Reuben sandwich that’s almost worth going to jail for.
It was still a little early for the lunch crowd, but the place was not completely unpopu
lated. There were some well-worn regulars in the back corner. As far as I could tell, they were sitting exactly where they had been the last time I’d been here. That was probably two years ago.
At the bar, three guys were vigorously arguing the same side of a political argument, and a David Allan Coe song played through the sound system. I took a table near the wall and spared the ancient waitress, “Cora,” the obligation of running through the specials, telling her I’d only need a cup of coffee—cream, no sugar.
As promised, Deirdre entered ten minutes later, taking off her sunglasses the moment she walked in. She stood in the doorway for a few moments, as her eyes adjusted to the perpetual dim light in the room. I gave an unnecessary wave, as there were only five customers in the place, and she headed toward my table.
While we were married, I had always referred to Deirdre as “my beautiful wife,” and I kept up the practice even after the divorce, just altering it slightly to “my beautiful ex-wife.” She certainly was that. A standout blonde in a land of blondes, she had an icy coolness that can be both attractive and off-putting, often simultaneously. I’m sure when we were married, people wondered how a no-nonsense gal like Deirdre had ended up with an all-nonsense guy such as me.
I’ve often pondered that myself.
“Sorry about that,” she said as she sat down, a little breathless. She waved to Cora and gestured to her empty coffee cup. Cora, looking up from her crossword puzzle, made a quick erasure on the newspaper, then headed toward the coffee urn.
“Sorry about what?” I asked.
“Fred sort of jumped the gun back there,” she said, pulling her hair back out of her eyes and depositing her sunglasses into her purse. “I mean, bringing you in and all that.”
“Perhaps he was trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism,” I suggested. “How would it look if the Assistant DA’s ex-husband was given preferential treatment? I’m sure there was nothing personal in it,” I added without a trace of conviction in my voice.