The Magician

by Sol Stein

  It was a long walk, and Urek was out of breath by the time he got to the hospital and entered the side door marked “Physicians Only.”

  Once in the stairwell, he felt safe. He knew the room number from his phone call. Visiting hours were over, and with luck no duty nurse would see him going into the room.

  Ed’s eyes widened when he saw Urek enter the room. He wanted to yell, but the great sudden breath in his lungs, with the tube going down into his stomach, came out a useless gurgle. Ed reached for the nurse’s call button, but Urek caught the wrist first in a fierce left-hand lock as his right hand fished for the knife in his pocket. He pulled the knife out, pressed the button that released the blade. Shit, thought Urek, he had to let go the wrist to grab the rubber tube so he could cut it.

  The knife was just honed.

  It cut through cleanly.

  Urek dashed out of the room, thinking he had severed Ed Japhet’s lifeline.

  In the hallway just outside the room Urek ran into a nurse’s aide carrying a tray of wrapped sterilized instruments which spilled, the clatter reverberating down the hall. Two or three other nurses on the floor turned in time to see Urek’s figure dashing into the back stairway. Only the nurse’s aide saw enough to be able to identify him later. Ed pushed the nurse’s call button. There was no need to. While the nurse’s aide was picking up the instruments, two nurses rushed into his room. One saw what had happened and left to summon the duty doctor.

  There was no urgent need to. The tube Urek had cut was there so the doctor could check for blood in the stomach that might have come from spleen damage or some other not easily detectable internal injury. It was a safety precaution, that was all.

  But Ed knew that this time Urek had intended to murder him, and he couldn’t for the life of him understand why.

  Chapter 11

  The nurse at the desk wished the telephone in her hands was the upright phone she remembered from her childhood, the kind whose cradle you tapped up and down to get the operator’s attention. She had dialed 9 to get an outside line, and then O for Operator; it rang and rang and rang at the other end, ignoring her. Miss Murphy, as she was called by the younger nurses, saw the collapse of the modern world in such things as the increasing debility of the telephone service, as if it were an aged patient suffering from hardening of the arteries, loss of energy, the settling of cobwebs in the brain, the beginning of hopelessness.

  Finally, an answer. The voice that said “Operator” was Spanish-sounding. Puerto Rican?

  “Connect me with the police.”

  “May I have your number, please?”

  “This is Phelps Memorial. Connect me with the goddamn police!”

  “I have to have your number in case you hang up.”

  “ME-1-5100, hurry, it’s an emergency.”

  For Miss Murphy, who was in her late fifties and nearing retirement, the world had changed too much. Everyone—meaning the people she had come into contact with forty and thirty and twenty years earlier, other nurses, telephone operators—everyone had been of Scotch or Irish or English or German descent, could be relied on to be white, not slow. She spent so much of her life just listening to patients who wanted to talk, she thought of herself as being more understanding than most people. She knew that while Latin rhythms had a lot of bounce, the rhythm of Latin life did not, and that people coming up from Spanish America walked slowly, worked slowly, but did they also think slowly even in emergencies? They were quick-tempered, the adrenaline flowed, why couldn’t they work efficiently, like the nurses she had gone to school with, the operators who used to work the telephones before the blacks and the Puerto Ricans took over in New York and its suburbs? All life was darker now, she thought, and somehow whiteness, the color of her uniform and stiff-starched cap, the normal color of things, was graying wearily.

  “Tarrytown police, Sergeant Delaney speaking.”

  She tried to tell him quickly of the incident, the nose tube cut, the spilled tray of instruments, the short man rushing down the back stairs. Sergeant Delaney interrupted her, making her feel as if she were rambling. All she was giving him were the facts.

  “Edward Japhet,” she said quickly. “The patient’s name is Edward Japhet.”

  “Christ!” said the sergeant. “I’ll bet it’s the Urek kid again.”

  She asked him what he meant by that, but the blasphemous sergeant wasn’t even listening now. “My name is Murphy,” she said.

  “Got that,” said the sergeant, as if it didn’t matter, as if their common origin no longer counted.

  He had hung up, leaving her holding the telephone receiver, with only her patients to attend to.

  The police in Tarrytown and Ossining kept in close touch with their respective cases not only through the newspapers but through formal and informal procedures and friendships. The way that thermometer-shaker had gone on, Sergeant Delaney thought, the assailant would be too far from the hospital to be chased and caught.

  When Delaney said it sounded like the Urek boy was on the loose again, the duty sergeant at Ossining called Chief Rogers at home. The chief ordered a squad car to the Urek house, then quietly thumbed through his telephone directory, found Thomassy bus and res, dialed the second number.

  “This is a friendly call,” said the chief.

  “Not at this hour. What’s up?”

  The chief had a lot of respect for Thomassy. He would want him to defend his son if his son ever got into trouble. He told the lawyer what had happened at the hospital.

  “Couldn’t have been Urek,” said Thomassy. “I left him at home with instructions not to leave.”

  “Listen,” said the chief, “I’ve got a car on the way down there now. For your sake, I hope that kid hasn’t fucked up again. If he’s not there, I hope you find him before we do.”

  “I appreciate the call,” said Thomassy.

  “Clifford’ll double the bail if it turns out—”

  “I’ll handle Clifford. I appreciate the call,” he repeated, and hung up.

  Thomassy dialed the Urek house and glanced over at the bed, where Jane Purdy had the sheet pulled up to her chin. Jane and her husband, who was a long-distance truck driver, had both been caught with pot, and Thomassy had gotten them off with a warning. Since then, Jane had regularly showed up on Tuesday evenings because her husband called home collect on Mondays and Wednesdays. The end of the week could be dangerous, and more particularly because Thomassy had another girl he saw on Fridays, he tried to get it off twice on Tuesdays, once right after she’d whip up a dinner at his place and then again after a short nap. He was just stirring a second time when the chief called.

  Sex for Thomassy was the perfect form of exercise. Perhaps swimming limbered up more of the muscles, but you couldn’t swim during eight months of the year except at the crowded Y. Besides, it was the fantastic mind-releasing exercise that made sex work. You felt better afterward. All you had to do was organize it right. Use steadies to minimize the courtship crap. Alternate partners to prevent boredom. Do what she likes so she’ll do what you like—and remember, every woman likes something different better. Minimize the risks. Do it in safe places. Leave no grounds for revenge. Leave no evidence for revenge, in case it breaks up.

  Paul Urek answered the phone. He immediately went up to check the boy’s room.

  He came back to the telephone breathless.

  “He’s gone.”

  “I’ll be right there,” said Thomassy.

  Jane looked petulant. Thomassy shrugged. Even a quick one wouldn’t work now. His mind was racing in other directions.

  “Make up for it next Tuesday,” he said, buttoning his shirt.

  He pulled down the sheet and gave her a darting kiss on her belly. He didn’t know why she liked that, but she did.

  “Please get dressed fast, honey,” he said. “I’ve got to make time.” He never left a woman alone in the apartment.

  He watched her drive off and waved before he got into his own car and headed for Urek
’s.

  Urek, on his way home, stopped off in the kraut girl’s place. She was surprised to see him. “What do you want?”

  He couldn’t tell her what had just happened. Or how excited he was.

  “Well?”

  He tried to make his shoulder shrug casual.

  “You look all…something. Where you been?”

  He was thinking of what he might say.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “Look,” Urek said, “I gotta talk.”

  “What about?” she said, not really curious.

  “I just did somethin’.”

  “You rob someone?”

  “No.”

  “What are you so worked up about?”

  “Jesus, I gotta talk to somebody.”

  “How about your mother?” she said, a skin of derision over her voice.

  “Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

  “Well, okay, talk to me.” She locked the door of her room, then sat down in front of the vanity mirror. He watched her run a comb slowly through her blonde hair. He liked it when they were alone. When the gang took her on, Urek usually went first, so he didn’t get the kick they did before they took her on.

  “I really gotta talk to somebody,” he said.

  “It’s your dime.”

  “Cantcha even turn around?”

  “How can I comb my hair if I turn around? I can hear you.”

  He touched her hair.

  “Well, you’re getting real romantic,” she said.

  “I just thought your hair looked, you know, nice.”

  She turned to face him. “You ever talk to a priest?”

  “You mean in the box. Sure. It’s no good. Whatever I tell him, he always makes me say the same fucking thing. I could tell him I killed my mother and father and half the town and he’d say, say ten Hail Marys. I can talk to myself for all the good it does.”

  “Come here.”

  Urek took one step toward her. Sitting, she was able to put her hands around his waist, then laid her cheek against him. She could hear his heart, the rhythmic thump-thump, thump-thump.

  “Hey, you’re alive,” she said, letting her hand drop and just brush the front of his pants.

  “Whadya do that for?”

  She laughed.

  “Say,” he said, “are you really a nympho? Some of the guys say…”

  He thought she was going to make him get out. Instead she said, “Your mother and father, they don’t like it when they do it, do they?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “You had to. Everybody does. You think any of the old people like to do it?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You ever watch them?”

  “What do you think I am?”

  “I do. I got a way. It’s what gave me the idea before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I ever did anything with anybody. Everybody’s mother and father does it. I enjoy it, I like it, don’t you like it?”

  He wished she would stop talking now.

  “You and your guys think you know something when you know that I do it. That’s like thinking the President doesn’t do it. It’s stupid.”

  He was so touchy. She hadn’t meant to get him angry. She unbuttoned her blouse. He watched her.

  “You know something?” she said, as she unhooked her bra. “You never once kissed me.”

  “You mean on them?”

  “On the mouth, stupid.”

  He had never kissed any girl on the mouth.

  When he didn’t move, she moved to him, and put her arms around his neck and brought his face down to her and held her lips against his tightly closed lips.

  “Do that again,” she said, “only relax.”

  His head was in a roar. He could feel the needling in his groin, the signal, but couldn’t connect the idea of kissing lips and a feeling half his body away.

  “Do it to me,” she said.

  He looked blank.

  “What I’m doing to you.”

  Their mouths met, and despite the slaver and terrified thoughts in his head, he felt himself stiffening with an urgency, the need to rush.

  She slipped off her shoes, unwrapped her skirt, let it drop, and stepped out of it. She took her half-slip off.

  “You don’t have to take everything off,” said Urek.

  She took her socks off, and then stepped out of her white panties; the hair where her legs met was dark, not blonde like her long hair.

  “Arencha going to turn the light off?” he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned the switch. It merely dimmed the light, one of those three-way bulbs now at its lowest setting. Then, completely naked, she sat down in front of her dressing table again, and again combed her hair. He could have killed her.

  “You afraid of catching cold?” she said, turning. “Take your clothes off.”

  He got down to his shorts and socks, then stood adamant.

  “Take your socks off.”

  He took off first one, then the other.

  “The rest, too,” she said. “Want some help?”

  He wasn’t going to have any girl undressing him. He let his shorts drop to the floor, the hairiness of his body now wholly exposed to her view.

  “Well,” she said at his preparedness.

  He gestured toward the bed.

  “What’s your hurry?”

  She came closer to him, and he gestured toward the bed again.

  Her hands were on him, stroking, and he tried now with force at her shoulders, to push her to the bed, but it was suddenly too late, and like an idiot he stood there, coming in spasms.

  The kraut was frightened at his anger. He didn’t say anything. She put her arms around him, it seemed to him tenderly, and sat him down on the edge of the bed. She kissed the side of his neck, then his cheek, and then his closed mouth.

  He motioned for her to turn the light completely off, which she did, so that she would not see him, but when he lay down, his face in the pillow, she could hear him smothering the shame of his sobs.

  Chapter 12

  On the open road in daylight, when Thomassy was relaxed, he drove with his left elbow on the window or on the armrest, his right hand lightly on the wheel, feeling the responsiveness of the car as he had once the controls of a light plane when he took a few flying lessons. But when tense, he clutched the wheel with both hands, apprehensive about oncoming traffic, each car a new threat, worrying about the brakes’ sudden failure or a tie rod going, the auto out of control and veering him, trapped in his seat belt, toward a yard-wide tree. Tonight Thomassy drove through the night with both perspiring palms on the wheel, all the way to the Urek house.

  His most frequent fantasy while driving was of himself cross-examining a witness. Other lawyers he knew dreamed of being admitted to practice before the Supreme Court—perhaps just once. That was not Thomassy’s aim, though he didn’t doubt for a moment that he could get there if he wanted to. In front of the high court he couldn’t cross-examine in the way that intoxicated him, setting up the witness for a laugh from the jury and spectators, even at his own expense, so that the momentarily relaxed witness, enjoying the sudden release of tension, perhaps even joining in the laughter, would be suddenly faced by the most crucial question Thomassy had to ask of him. The witness, chilled in mid-laugh, would have to compose himself, think to answer the shocker, and it was the pause that Thomassy went for most. Because when a man took too much time in framing an answer, the jury thought he was lying. Or making it up. Or partly. And Thomassy would turn from the hesitation, and stroll to the jury and say, “Please take all the time you need to think of your answer,” which the jury always understood to mean Take all the time you need to make up your lie. How Thomassy loved that, the director of a play played just once, the other lawyer rehearsing the actor only to have Thomassy produce a stage wait, a silence that damned.

  Sometimes Thomassy would find himself imagining a crime not yet commi
tted, the criminal being chased and caught and brought to trial, to be defended by him, as if that were the purpose of the crime in the first place. If, he was thinking, a sudden hazard caused him to carom into a yard-wide tree, would anyone be guilty or innocent of his death, which would seem so pointless otherwise? He laughed at—and relished—the absurdity of his fantasies. He saw the police car in front of the Urek house. Paul Urek was in front of the doorway arguing with the two cops.

  “The boy isn’t home,” he was saying. “There’s Mr. Thomassy.”

  Both cops turned.

  “What’s up?” Thomassy asked them.

  “Just want to see for ourselves. He won’t let us in the door.”

  “You got a warrant?”

  The cop squirmed. “It’ll take an hour to get one this time of night.”

  “Get one,” said Thomassy.

  “We’ll have to wake the judge up.”

  “Wake him up.”

  “All we want to know is if the kid’s in there.”

  “Mr. Urek told you he wasn’t.”

  “Well, that proves he was over at the hospital.”

  “Proves nothing. If you want to play lawyer, go to law school. Meanwhile, go get a warrant. That’s the law.”

  Thomassy knew he had gotten the cop sore, but he liked getting people with authority sore. The cop went off to get the warrant, leaving the other one in front of the house.

  “I see you have a doorman now,” said Thomassy to Paul Urek as they closed the door behind them.

  Urek walked home not on sidewalks but down the middle of each successive street, too late for traffic now, but hoping a car would swing around a corner suddenly, giving him a chance to sidestep out of death’s way like a bullfighter, then laugh at the frightened driver.

  No car came.

  From a block away he could see his own house ablaze with light on the darkened street. He began to trot, hoping that his absence hadn’t been discovered, that he could get up the drainpipe as he had so many times in the past. He saw the cop in front of the house just in time.

  He stopped, caught his breath.

  The cop in front of the door, a car—Thomassy’s car—in front of the house.