Touch of Magic

by M. Ruth Myers

  A Touch

  of Magic

  M. Ruth Myers

  author of the

  Maggie Sullivan Mysteries

  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.

  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 i
n 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.