Touch of Magic (2 page)

He never saw the movement, only the fire flash of a gun in the instant before Sammy’s strangled cry.
 
Sammy crumpled beside him.

Ellery dove in another direction, firing as he went
 
–
 
two shots.
 
Something stung his shoulder.

A light came on, flooding the alley with pale visibility.
 
No sign of anyone; sounds of running.
 
He stumbled to his feet, pausing over Sammy.

“Sam!
 
Sammy…?”

The man who had been his partner and friend for four years had been shot through the jugular vein.
 
The bastard had killed him.
 
Ellery felt something warm seeping down under his own jacket.
 
No time to check it now.
 
He had a job to do.

A back door to the night club was opening.
 
No doubt drawn by the sound of gunfire, a couple of stagehands ran out.

“Call an ambulance!”
 
Ellery shouted.
 
“There’s a federal officer down back here!”

He knew it was too late for Sammy, but he could hope against hope.
 
He took off running, zigzagging, dodging into the shelter of garbage cans.

By the time he reached the sidewalk at the end of the alley, he knew it was no good.
 
His mouth tightened into a line of grimness beyond his thirty-nine years.
 
This job was the only thing that had ever made sense to him.
 
The only thing he’d ever been good at.
 
And now he’d blown one.
 
He’d lost Sammy; lost his quarry too.

Where had
Ballieu
gone?
 
Ellery stopped for breath.
 
His arm was bleeding.
 
More than he’d thought at first.
 
Now he became aware of scalding pain as well.
 
He peeled off his jacket, yanked his tie into a tourniquet to stop the worst of the flow, and tried to think.

Overhead, the marquee above the door of the club he and Sam had watched all afternoon blinked on and off: THE WORLD-FAMOUS MAGIC OF YUSSUF.

Inside.
 
Maybe
Ballieu
had slipped inside, melted into the crowd.
 
It was his style, covering himself with innocent people.
 
It took a certain amount of guts, Ellery supposed, but it sure as hell was effective.

Stuffing his .38 back into its holster and shrugging his jacket on to cover his blood soaked sleeve, he opened the door.
 
He felt a momentary surge of dizziness.
 
Ought to call for help, but this was going down too fast.

He hoped he wasn’t going to faint.

* * *

Channing sat at the front row table with the RESERVED sign on it and checked her cufflinks one final time.
 
On stage,
Yussuf
was opening his act with a dazzling display of the Chinese linking rings.

Her fingertips traced the cufflinks.
 
They were gold, like the case of her
kunjar
, the small J-shaped Arabic knife that hung at her waist.
 
Gifts from two different worlds, she thought.
 
The
kunjar
had been given her by a friend, a sultan’s daughter.
 
Channing wore it as an ornament, an exquisitely carved piece of jewelry
 
– though in a pinch she knew it could serve its intended purpose as well.
 
The cufflinks she wore because they’d been a gift from Gramps, before their differences.

She closed her eyes, determined not to reflect on the choice she’d made.

Never look back.
 
That was her motto.

Still, she felt the irony of sitting here helping
Yussuf
.
 
She felt the irony of being in shape to help because for ten years she’d practiced nightly with no audience other than camels or elephants or occasionally a few curious members of her crew too bored for a poker game.

She accomplished something in the work she did
 
–
 
reducing disease, adding years to the lives of women who would have grown old carrying water
 
–
 
and after
Tony’s
death, accomplishing something had seemed even more important.
 
Yet the need to do magic remained in her blood like a hunger, an addiction.

She focused on the stage.
 
Yussuf
was draping a square of red silk over an empty drinking glass.
 
It was almost time.
 
He whisked the scarf away and four doves flew out over the audience.

Oohs
and
ahhhs
erupted everywhere, then enthusiastic applause.
 
Channing turned to watch the birds make their way to a handler, and noticed a man standing at the back of the room, one shoulder drawn up. Odd, him standing when there were a few tables empty. He seemed to be looking for someone. She didn’t know why she had noticed him. The chin, maybe

She drew her attention back, aware of
Yussuf
in the audience now, beginning what would be his greatly abbreviated close-up routine.

"And now some little puzzlements with cards," he was saying.
 
"After all, what’s a bird in a glass compared with an ace up your sleeve?"

As he spoke, he reached toward a middle-aged woman whose basketball-size bosoms were cantilevered out beneath a pink spangled dress.
 
He pulled a large silk scarf emblazoned with the ace of clubs from one of her brief cap sleeves.
 
The audience roared.

He did another simple trick, finally making his way to Channing’s table.

"You’d like to help me, wouldn’t you, young lady?" he boomed. "Just pick a card ... don’t tell me which one..."

He gave a tiny wink, then held them out.

Like a bolt, Channing felt the sudden joy of performing, the thought that the mysteries accomplished by her fingers had been passed down through countless conjurers through countless ages, and that still in this age of science and microseconds the hand was quicker than the eye.

"I think I’ll take this one," she said, reaching toward
Yussuf’s
head and, with a turn of the wrist, producing a card from his left ear. "Or maybe one of these."
 
She pulled three cards from his right ear, one after the other.
 
Observers at nearby tables started to laugh.

"You seem to have cards in the strangest places," she said, teasing, as she let her skilled fingers seem to pluck them from his head, his collar, his pockets.

Yussuf
, pretended to be mortified, his hands chasing and slapping at hers.
 
This was how she had turned the tables on him in Cairo when he’d spotted her in the audience – though of course he hadn’t expected this then.
 
The audience was loving it.
 
Channing grinned.
 
She felt like such a ham when she performed, and like it should all be harder, somehow.

"You know, I really think it would be much more interesting if you did something useful – like filling my hand with silver,” she said to
Yussuf
.

"You want that?"
 
He gave a wonderful imitation of an indignant shout.
 
“All right.
 
Hold out your hand!"

Channing complied, suspending her hand in air just long enough to be sure of good attention before flexing muscles and spinning into the new trick she’d learned for
Yussuf
: Empty fingers.
 
Coins.
 
Hand closed and open again.
 
Coins gone.

The applause began before she was even halfway done.
 
They realized now that she was part of the act.
 
Yussuf
beamed, took her hand, and bowed to her.
 
Channing smiled up at him, and it was in that instant she saw his own smile fade.
 
His eyes fixed on something.
 
His arm moved.
 
She heard a soft pop.

In the first long seconds she didn’t understand.
 
Then
Yussuf’s
body came crashing down onto her table.
 
His hand was clutching his throat, and red seeped out of it.
 
People were screaming.
 
She sat paralyzed.
 
She heard herself call
Yussuf’s
name.
 
Memory flashed her back to a restaurant in Beirut.
 
Blood.
 
Pandemonium.
 
The knowledge in her stomach that Tony was dead.
 
The horrible knowledge that because she had stopped to look in a shop and was five minutes late, she was alive.

She pressed her palms against the reality of the table and looked up in shock.

People were moving.
 
The man she’d noticed standing in the back of the room was zigzagging through the tables, a gun in his hand.
 
He leapt to the stage.

"Everybody sit still!"

The way he’d run, the way he was looking around with gun at the ready, made her realize he wasn’t the one who’d shot
Yussuf
.
 
Her numbness was starting to leave, and she cast a confirming look at the old man slumped before her.
 
He was motionless.
 
His eyes were bulging.

And then she saw it, lying next to
Yussuf’s
splayed fingers.

A tiny handgun.

Why?
 
Why was
Yussuf
carrying it?
 
For innocent reasons, surely.
 
The man on the stage was swinging around, looking at
Yussuf
.
 
Would he spot the gun?

"Mr.
Yussuf
!
 
Mr.
Yussuf
!"

The boy’s voice broke through the heavy motions of her brain.
 
He was twelve or thereabouts, Hispanic, dressed in tatters.
 
She didn’t know where he’d come from but he hurtled forward, throwing himself on
Yussuf’s
body.
 
Sobs tore fiercely from his slender form.

"You were going to teach me to be a magician!
 
You promised!"

Channing heard in his words a loneliness, a sense of loss that matched her own.
 
Instinctively she reached out to circle him with her arm.
 
As she did, her right hand, almost with a mind of its own, moved independently.
 
The nimbleness of her fingers was slowed by the unfamiliar shape of the gun.
 
It was crazy trying to make vanish an object she’d never worked with.
 
But she’d known
Yussuf
all her life.

Her hand hadn’t paused, had continued its arc toward the boy’s other shoulder, but the gun was in her sleeve now.
 
Channing looked up nervously.
 
The man on the stage – whoever he was – was staring at her.
 
Had he seen?

Two

The detective was loud and arrogant and sucked
his sinuses dry to punctuate his sentences. He had
shoved the boy, who was still fighting sobs, onto the couch in
Yussuf's
dressing room and was yelling at him.

"Hey. He should have his parents here if you
want to question him," Channing said angrily.

With a great clearing of his nasal passages the
behemoth swung on her.

"You want a lawyer, you get one, lady. 'Cause I
got some questions for you."

Behind the detective, dwarfed by him, the boy looked frightened. His eyes were somber beyond
his years, and his collarbone stood out under a shirt
meant for someone larger. Channing couldn't stand
hunger, couldn't stand suffering; it was why she'd chosen the work she had -- to fight it. Her heart
reached out to the boy.

"A witness says the magician pulled a gun," the
detective said. "What happened to it?"

Channing looked at him levelly.

"People think they see a lot of things -- especially
in crowd situations." The words just tumbled out.
"It's a phenomenon well known by illusionists. I
never saw anything."