Stuart Kaminsky - Now You See It

She went to the end of the bar and pointed at the rear booth, Cunningham’s office. I sat in it with my Pepsi and faced the front door. The dark wooden table was a jumble of rings left by countless glasses and the burn marks of enough cigarettes to kill the population of Moscow, Idaho.

In less than a minute, she came from behind the bar with a crate in her hands. She placed it on the table in front of me and then went back for a second crate. Then she moved behind the bar again, leaving me looking at a full-color picture on the end of the crate of a smiling blonde with frizzy short hair and impossibly white teeth. The blonde was holding a glass of orange juice and above her head were the words, “Sun Drenched Direct From Florida.”

I spent the next hour drinking warm Pepsi, watching the drunk, exchanging glances of less-than-love with the bartender, and discovering something interesting among the letters, notes, candy wrappers, and bills that were the legacy of Robert Cunningham.

I discovered that Cunningham had lots of bills that didn’t look as if they had been paid. I also learned that he couldn’t spell. Examples included: instatution, sirvalence, proseed, cab fair, and naturul.

If there was anything worth taking, Cawelti had probably taken it. But I kept looking. I almost missed it. A scrap of paper torn out of a notebook. It was unwrinkled and might have fallen to the bottom of the pile when Cawelti was going through the contents of the boxes. Cunningham’s handwriting was as bad as his spelling, but I could make it out:

A Thousand and One Nights, Wild, Thursday at eight. Culumbia.

Cunningham had said “Wild on Thursday” to Gwen before he died. Tomorrow was Thursday. I had a pretty good idea of what it meant, but I didn’t have time now to check. I folded the sheet, put it in my wallet, finished my third Pepsi, made a trip to the gents’ and waved good-bye to the barkeep and the drunk, who smiled.

I had a tuxedo to put on, a party to go to, and a magician to protect.

“You look elegant,” Anita said, stepping back.

We were in her apartment, and I was standing in front of her full-length mirror.

She was either blind or being kind.

The stiff in the mirror looked like the uncomfortable bodyguard for a mobster. The tux was black and pressed. The black bow tie had been tied perfectly by Anita. My shoes were shined. My hair was brushed back and glistening with Vitalis. It was my face that gave me away. It was the middle-aged face of an ex-boxer who had taken at least eight or ten too many blows to the face. I had never been a boxer, but I had lost more than my share of battles. My nose was flat. My cheeks were rough, and you didn’t have to look too closely to see a small white scar over my right eye and another one just left of my chin. It was a good face for someone in my business.

“First time,” I said, looking at myself.

“Not bad,” said Anita, moving to her couch and reaching for the glass of iced tea she had left on the nearby table.

“Hard to breathe,” I said.

“It’s supposed to be tight,” she said. “Sleek lines. Elegant. You planning to find a place for a gun under that jacket? It would show.”

“No gun,” I said.

Phil would have a gun. Phil could shoot. I owned a gun, a.38. I kept it in the glove compartment of the Crosley. I seldom carried it. The people I might try to protect were in as much danger from me as from some bad guy with a grudge.

“You’re a scrapper, not a shooter,” Shelly had once consoled me when I had been shot by my own gun. “Some of us are born with the knack,” Shelly had said.

That was before Shelly had shot and killed his wife with a crossbow in a public park.

“You want to throw something on fast,” I said, turning to her.

Anita sipped some iced tea and shook her head.

“I’m tired. I can’t throw something on fast, and it’s a little late to ask me,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“And I thought you said it was for men only?”

“It is,” I said, “but I have clout with all the wrong people.”

“I pass,” she said.

Anita was wearing a robe, green, maybe silk. I think it had belonged to her former husband. It was too big on her. I didn’t ask.

“I’m going to listen to Baby Snooks and The Aldrich Family and get to bed early,” she said. “Do me a favor Toby.’”

“What is it?”

She got up, walked over to me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. When we finished the kiss, she said, “Survive.”

“That’s my plan,” I said.

I got to the Roosevelt just before six-thirty and parked half a block away on the street. Not much of a space, but enough for the Crosley, which is a little bit longer than a refrigerator lying on its side.

The lobby was bustling with men in tuxedoes, men and women in military uniforms, a few elegant young women with elegant older gentlemen of a comfortable ilk. My tux-clad group was in a corner behind a wall of low potted palms. The wall didn’t protect us from glances and a few stares.

Phil looked uncomfortable, his thumb wrestling with his collar, his face pink and turning red. Shelly somehow managed to look rumpled, probably because his tux was a size or two too large. Pancho Vanderhoff, looking reasonably dapper, gave me a pleading look. Jeremy’s tux made him look even larger than he was, but he seemed reasonably comfortable, as did Gunther. We had all, except for Gunther who owned his own, borrowed our tuxedoes from Hy’s For Him. I had spent occasional nights alone in the dark aisles of Hy’s lying in wait to catch occasional employees who snuck back in after hours to cart off merchandise. This entitled me to a discount and the loan of a suit from time to time, on the condition that I returned it without a spot so Hy could clean, press it, and sell it for new.

Jeremy and Gunther were sitting. The rest were standing.

“You’re late,” Phil said.

“I’m on time,” I said.

“Let’s go over it one more time,” Phil said, tugging his collar.

We went through the plan, each of us saying where we’d be sitting and what was expected of us.

“Okay,” said Phil. “Let’s go in.”

Phil had arranged for the door to the small ballroom to be locked. We walked down a corridor, made a right turn, moved down the hall and turned right into the kitchen. The temperature went up about twenty degrees. Cooks were cooking. Waiters were waiting. They paused to look at us as we marched single file past ovens and steel-topped tables with Phil in the lead.

The ballroom was empty. Phil checked to be sure the tables were where they were supposed to be. When he was satisfied, he turned his collar and moved to the small platform against the wall. There was a table with a set-up for two on top of a white tablecloth that hung to the floor. A wide solid dark wooden podium stood to the right of the table on the platform set back almost to the wall. There was a rectangle of blue cloth pinned to the front of the podium; it had gold trim and the words “Greater Los Angeles Association of Magicians” stitched onto it in matching gold. Phil checked the podium, checked under the tablecloth.