Stuart Kaminsky - Now You See It

“And she’ll tell me you didn’t shoot Cunningham, right?”

“The girl saw the shooter. She’ll give you a description.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Beard, turban, bullshit. We’ve got the beard and turban where you dropped them on the steps.”

“I was onstage about to be sawed in half by a buzz saw when Cunningham was shot,” I said.

“We don’t know exactly when he was shot.”

“Check with the doorman. Check with Gwen. They’ll tell you I couldn’t …”

“And I’ll tell you you could,” he said. “You’re working for the magician. Cunningham was trying to blackmail him. You shot him. Then you went after the witness.”

“I helped her, and who do you think shot me?”

“Shot yourself,” said Cawelti, face inches from mine.

“And threw the pellet gun away? Did you find it?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“You’ve got the other gun?” I asked.

“What other gun?”

“The one that was used to kill Cunningham,” I said. “That was no pellet hole.”

“You had plenty of time to dump it,” he said, finger hovering over my arm.

“Time for my lawyer, Merwin. Martin Raymond Leib,” I said.

Cawelti’s face was bright crimson. He reached out for my wounded shoulder, and I shuffled my chair backward. He took a step toward me.

The door behind him opened. I couldn’t see who it was. Cawelti was between me and the door. He stopped, turned his head, and came flying past me, hitting the wall.

Phil stood there, door open behind him.

A couple of detectives I recognized were in the doorway.

“You’re under arrest,” Cawelti shouted at my brother.

“For what?” Phil said.

“Assaulting a police officer,” Cawelti said, pushing himself away from the wall.

“You fell,” I said.

“Looked that way to me,” said one of the detectives in the door, a big bald sergeant named Pepperman, who had been mustered out of the army in 1919, the same year as my brother.

“Didn’t see it,” said the man next to him, Bill O’Keefe, who Phil had once pushed out of the way of the knife of a drugged-out Mexican kid named Orlejo Sanchez.

“Get the hell out of my office,” Cawelti said, taking a step toward Phil and then thinking better of it.

“You alright?” Phil said, ignoring Cawelti and looking at me.

“Lovely,” I said.

“Your brother killed a man tonight and shot a woman,” Cawelti said. “You don’t get out, you’re under arrest for interfering with a murder investigation.”

Phil turned his unblinking eyes on him.

“You’ve got nothing,” Phil said.

“At the least,” Cawelti said. “At the goddamn least, I’ve got him for leaving the scene of a crime, two crimes.”

“I was chasing the killer,” I said.

“Chasing yourself?” Cawelti asked.

“We’re going,” said Phil, motioning to me to follow him.

“Hold it,” said Cawelti. “You’re not a police officer anymore. I’m in charge here. I’m the law. You do what I goddamn tell you.”

“Ask nicely,” Phil said.

I knew the look. So did Cawelti. So did the two detectives standing in the doorway. Phil might be arrested. He might even be shot, but, if he lost his temper, John Merwin Cawelti would be in need of a very long period of recuperation.

Cawelti was breathing hard now as he said between his teeth,

“Please get the hell out of here.”

“Not without Tobias.”

“He’s now officially under arrest for murder,” said Cawelti. “You want to help him escape?”

Phil’s fists were clenched. He stepped toward Cawelti again. Cawelti retreated back, but this time he didn’t back down.

“He’s under arrest,” he said.

Phil stopped and said,

“He’ll be out of here in an hour.”

“Maybe,” said Cawelti.

“I’ll be outside,” Phil said. “Right outside.”

The two detectives in the doorway made way for him to leave. Cawelti strode across the room and closed the door. Then he turned to me.

“Tell me a story,” he said.

I told him about Calvin Ott, otherwise known as Maurice Keller. He wasn’t impressed. I told him about the missing buzz saw blade. He was even less impressed. I told him I wanted my lawyer. Twenty minutes later, Martin Raymond Leib, decked out in a perfectly pressed blue suit and a red-and-blue striped tie-all 300 lbs of him-entered the small office with a small smile of satisfaction. He was thinking of what he was going to bill Peters and Pevsner for his legal services.

I was thinking about my aching shoulder.

Marty told me to step out of the office. I did. Phil was there.

We waited while Marty-slowly, I was sure, and with a patient smile-earned his fee.

Marty Leib could afford to be slow and patient. He got paid by the hour. Pepperman brought us cups of coffee in nonmatching diner mugs and asked me about my shoulder, and asked Phil how things were going.

About fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Marty, hand still on the knob, said, “Come on.”

We followed him through the squad room past working cops and empty desks. Marty, the size of a small rhino, cleared the way.

On the landing outside the squad room, Marty turned to us and said, “Lord, I so enjoy sending dear old John C.’s blood pressure into the stratosphere. He is so easy to intimidate. I would almost do it for nothing.”

“It’s a deal,” I said. “Nothing, and I promise to get in as much trouble with Cawelti as I can to bring a little entertainment into your busy life.”

“I said ‘almost,’” Marty reminded me. “We are almost finished with the war. We are almost a neighbor of the planet Mars. It is almost midcentury. It all depends on the definition of ‘almost.’”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Poor J. C. has no evidence, no witness, and no weapon to connect you to the Cunningham shooting. I suggested that we all visit the young lady in the hospital and ask her if you were the one who shot her. I suggested strongly that if she did not so identify you as the person who shot her or the man who came out of the dressing room where Robert Cunningham was shot, I would immediately bring suit for false arrest. Detective Cawelti went from combative to surly to reluctantly and grudgingly cooperative.”

“Send us the bill,” said Phil, unfolding his arms.

Marty nodded, patted me on the shoulder, the one that just had the pellet removed from it. He didn’t know. I tried not to pass out and succeeded.

Marty moved down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, out of sight, he sang, “The things that you’re liable to read in the bible, they ain’t necessarily so.”

“Lousy voice,” I said.

“Don’t have fun,” Phil said, unfolding his arms.

“What?”

“You’re enjoying this,” he said. “You’ve been shot, almost cut in half by a buzz saw and arrested for murder. A man’s been murdered. A girl was shot, and we just ran up a lawyer’s bill.”

“You’re right,” I told my brother, but I thought he was dead wrong. “Except I wasn’t almost cut in half by the buzz saw. That was an illusion. And we can bill Blackstone for Marty’s services.”

“Let’s go,” Phil said with a sigh that suggests a lot of things to a brother. It meant “Why did I decide to go into partnership with my infantile brother?”

I didn’t have to ask where we were going. We both knew.

Twenty minutes later, we were standing between the two stone gargoyles under the light of the almost full moon. It was about one fifteen in the morning.

Phil held up his fist to knock. I put my hand on his arm and lowered it.

“Magic,” I explained and said, “Abracadabra.”

The door opened. In front of us stood a bearded man in a white suit, wearing a turban with an emerald green stone in the middle.