Touch of Magic

Copyright © 1987, 1988

by Mary Ruth Myers

Portions of this novel were first published in
Good Housekeeping
August 1987.

All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Contact
www.mruthmyers.com
.

Published by Tuesday House

This book is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover by Alan Raney

Published in the United States of America

In memory of

Ben Hudson

who taught me

magic and more

and for

magical friends

Oran Dent

Thurman Smith

&

Fred and Millie
Witwer

May you always have plenty

of
wiffle
dust.

One

Channing Stuart had been seven years old before she realized there were people in the world who didn’t earn their living by magic.
 
Now, a quarter of a century later, sliding noiselessly through a door in the backstage area of a Los Angeles nightclub, she smelled the familiar aroma of a magician’s dressing rooms, a combination of glycerin and zinc
stearate
, and hovered briefly on the edge of something like homesickness.

The old man standing with his back to her methodically checked the endless secret pockets of his black suit.
 
He was stout and white-haired.

“Hey,
Yussuf
,” she said.
 
“Bet you can’t do this one!”

Yussuf
whirled.
 
She must really have gotten him this time, she thought.
 
She’d never seen him jump like that.

“Channing!” he gasped.

Relishing the moment, she extended a long-fingered hand wearing a small, dark ruby and sprinkled with the freckles that ran all the way to her shoulders.
 
It poised a second, and then the fingers flicked imperceptibly.
 
Silver coins appeared between them – out of thin air, it seemed. She caught the coins, squeezed them, spread her palms to display emptiness. She squeezed again and displayed the coins strung in a bracelet.
 
Perfecting the trick had filled the long nights of the six months when she’d been drilling for water in the United Arab Emirates.
 
She grinned now, pleased with her own cleverness.

“Channing!”
Yussuf
repeated.
 
He came toward her like one in a trance, gripping the shoulders of the long, black, sequin-trimmed dress that helped her accomplish some of her magic, and brushed a kiss on her cheek.
 
“I can’t believe it!”

The last time he’d surprised her she’d been in Bolivia, grappling with the problems of digging wells in soil that was compacted. She returned his hug.

“Oh,
Yussuf
I’m sorry to get here when the show’s already started.
 
I’d forgotten about LA traffic.
 
I’ll go out front and watch –”

“No!
 
Wait.”
 
He released her, looking oddly tense.
 
“You’ve got to help me!
 
I go on in– ”
  
He glanced at a clock on the wall.
 
“Eight minutes.
 
And look.”
 
He held up his hands.
 
“Arthritis.
 
It hit this morning.
 
It’s always gone in a few days, but right now I can hardly fan cards.
 
I was standing here just now wondering how I’d ever do close-up.”

The delight she’d felt in surprising him started to lose its edge.
 
She hadn’t expected to see age catching up with
Yussuf
, though of course she should have known it would.
 
He’d been her
grandfathers’s
friend.
 
She’d known him all her thirty-two years.
 
Yet an old wound made her hesitate at what he was asking.

“Please!”
 
He sounded desperate, and she’d never heard that note in his voice before.
 
“All you have to do is… how about what you pulled on me that time and Cairo?
 
We’d get a few laughs.”

“Cairo, huh?”

She began to chuckle as she remembered.
 
Her work in groundwater geology took her all over the world, and whenever one of
Yussuf’s
bookings brought them within a few hundred miles of each other, they got together.
 
They were both without family.
 
The tie between them was the only one either had left.

With one hand she smoothed back hair the color of cinnamon.
 
Wasn’t she a Stuart, once destined to become the fourth in a line of professional magicians?
 
When other little girls had been taking dancing lessons, she’d been perfecting the oblique palm.

Then she’ d turned her back on that world.

No matter.
 
She could still help
Yussuf
.

“Just get into the audience,” he was saying as he took her elbow.
 
“There’s a house table, and it’s empty tonight.
 
Sit there.”
 
He checked the clock again.

Outside, beneath the dressing room window, something made a soft thump.
 
They both turned.

“Wind,” said Yussuf.
 
He seemed to hover indecisively for a moment, then moved abruptly back toward his street clothes on their brass hook.
 
“
Here.
”
 
He thrust his arm into a pocket and handed her a cassette tape.
 
“I was going to send you this.
 
Instructions for my upside down king trick you never could figure out.”

A sadness began to envelop Channing.
 
Yussuf
must feel his days of performing were numbered if he was giving her the secret of a trick he’d never shared with anyone.
 
It was how magic
 
passed from generation to generation.
 
Only, she felt unworthy
 
–
 
outside the fraternity.

As
Yussuf
opened the door she noticed slacks and a black turtleneck spread on a nearby couch.
 
Child’s clothes, they looked like, with sales tags still attached.

She’d ask about them later.
 
Right now
Yussuf
had her elbow.

“Now listen,” he was saying.
 
“You’ll come after the doves.”

*
  
*
  
*

Outside, the gun with a silencer eased back from the magician’s window.
 
Too late.
 
Too late by seconds.
 
The man who held it cursed.

And now there was another complication.
 
Yussuf
 
Bashim
had passed something to the woman.
 
A tape, it looked like.
 
Names.
 
Plans.
 
Enough to ruin everything, maybe.
 
The magician was trying to cut himself into the deal with blackmail, so it was a safe bet.

Very well, he would take care of the magician and then the woman.
 
His hand reached for the windowsill.

From the other end of the darkened alley, his experienced ears caught a sound.
 
He froze, swinging by habit into a crouching position, his gun at the ready.
 
Two eddies disturbed the smooth flow of darkness.
 
There.
 
Against the wall.
 
He waited.

*
  
*
  
*

The alley wall scraped Bill Ellery’s back as he and his partner edged along it.

“Sure, he turned in here?” whispered Sam Brown, the hand that held his snub-nosed Chief’s Special just brushing Ellery’s jacket.

“Yeah.
 
I’m sure.”

Henri
Ballieu
, terrorist wanted for murder in half a dozen countries, known for shooting his victims through the throat so they couldn’t talk before they died, was theirs for the taking.
 
Ellery wondered vaguely how, with the FBI, Interpol, and Immigration watching for the man, he’d still slipped by.
 
There’d be grumbling from the brass if he and Sam had to use their weapons; the US State Department liked its special agents to keep a low profile.
 
But he’d read and reread
Ballieu’s
dossier and doubted they could just walk up and hand the man an engraved invitation to a prison cell with color TV.

“Man, you were right,” breathed Sammy, his black skin lost in the darkness.
 
“Lord knows how fresh in the country
 
–
 
hours, maybe
 
–
 
and coming right to old friend
Yussuf
!
 
Makes cramping my knees in that bar across the street almost worth it.
 
How
d’you
figure these things?”

Now wasn’t the time to chat about logic.
 
The hunch that had kept them staking out this area since late afternoon had finally paid off.

“Let’s take him alive,” said Ellery.
 
“Need to find out who has that film.”

If they blew this,
Ballieu
might get what he was after, the stolen piece of film needed to make official U.S. passports.
 
Ballieu
and his group would churn out good copies, provide them to any malcontents that met their price.
 
Where they’d had to sneak into a country before, they’d walk in brazenly, through Immigration.
 
Terrorism would spread like venereal disease.

Ellery began to move again but cautiously, ears straining.
 
As a teenager he had despised the spare and only average size frame that kept him from the football and basketball teams where his older brother had cut the usual shining path.
 
In a situation like this, though, it seemed preferable to Sam’s solid quarterback shape.
 
Deliberately he relaxed the fingers curving around his .38.
 
A looser grip, a smoother shot.