The Bullet Catch

by John Gaspard

  Terry, looking drawn and pale, handed a bullet to one volunteer and a handgun to the other. Each examined their respective item and then Terry gestured for them to switch and examine each other’s article. When this was completed to their satisfaction, Terry handed a marking pen to the first volunteer, who slowly and carefully drew what appeared to be his initials on the bullet. All the while, Terry kept up a continuous and almost droning narration, in what sounded like muffled Spanish, apparently explaining each step in the process to the small crowd.

  The first volunteer handed the signed bullet to the second volunteer, who loaded it into the gun. Terry directed him to a spot toward one side of the dirt patch that was acting as the stage, and then he gestured to a glass window that had been jury-rigged in the center of the impromptu stage. Terry moved past the window, tapping on the glass as he passed it to establish its authenticity, before taking his place on the other side of the stage. During all this set-up, he continued his oration, in a flat monotone, doubtless explaining to the gathered crowd the intended effect.

  The gun would be aimed at him and fired.

  The bullet would pass through the window, shattering the glass.

  In that same instant Terry would catch the bullet.

  In his mouth.

  The camera work was shaky and unfocused, but we could see Terry as he centered himself on his mark and began a countdown, in Spanish, from ten. Soon the audience picked up the countdown as a chant and took over, getting louder and louder as they got closer to the end point.

  “…cuatro, tres, dos…uno!”

  As they hit uno, the crowd cheered and we could hear the distant “pop” of the gun, followed by the dim tinkle of breaking glass. The camera whip-panned across the stage just in time to see Terry Alexander fly back from an impact and then lay motionless on the ground.

  The crowd was silent for a split second, and then the silence was shattered by a series of screams and people began to move. Some moved toward Terry’s prone shape on the ground, while others pushed and shoved their way to the exit. I heard cries of “Está muerto! Está muerto!” which were followed by more jiggling camera work, chaotic commotion and screaming. And then the video ended as the screen went black and silent.

  Abe was the first to speak. “The Bullet Catch,” he said, shaking his head, “was always bad news.”

  “Only a crazy person puts that cursed trick in his act,” agreed Max.

  “Crazy. Stupid. Take your pick,” said Sam. He had been so engrossed in the video he had actually stopped rolling the two coins across the back of his hand. “It’s the only truly deadly magic trick.”

  “I don’t know,” Abe said, leaning back in his chair and gesturing toward Max, “Have you ever seen his Twisted Aces?”

  “I’ll twist your aces,” Max grumbled.

  “Of course, the answer to the key question with Terry Alexander and the Bullet Catch,” Sam continued, completely ignoring the exchange, “is the one we’ll never know: Was it an accident? Or murder?”

  Abe clucked his tongue. “The man had made no shortage of enemies in his day. Many a magician would have loved to see him dead.”

  “That’s what they call a true fact,” Sam said. “For a while he was the world’s most hated magician.”

  “Took the heat off you for a bit, didn’t it?” Abe said, producing chuckles around the table.

  “But did anyone hate him enough to kill him?” I asked. The question received shrugs from around the table. All except Harry, who was leaning back in his chair and quietly stroking his beard. “Or could it just have been an accident? You know, a trick gone wrong?” I added.

  “I saw at least three spots where the bullet could have been switched out,” Abe offered.

  “And I saw two more where it could have been switched back in,” Sam countered.

  “There are plenty of opportunities within that trick for things to go wrong,” Harry said quietly. “At least a dozen magicians have discovered that over the years, to their peril. But what I saw there,” he said, gesturing at the iPad dismissively, “was simple ineptitude. A magician who screwed up, plain and simple. Let’s look at it again.”

  I ran the video again and the four men watched it, even more intently than the first time. When Terry handed the spectator the bullet, there was a murmur from the group. When he had the two spectators swap their items for inspection, heads began to nod around the table. When one of the spectators loaded the bullet into the gun’s chamber, one of the guys made a low whistling sound while another muttered, “Right there. It went wrong right there.”

  They immediately started exchanging comments, their attention turned away from the screen, not even bothering to watch as Terry was shot and fell.

  “Simple mistake,” Max said, sipping his ginger ale. “Human error, plain and simple.”

  “Ironic justice, if you ask me,” Abe added. “A man who exposed so many secrets, felled by his own ineptitude. And, even I have to admit, in his day he was a solid magician. But not with that trick.”

  “Even more ironic,” Max added, “is the fact that to reveal the secret behind this mystery you would have to do exactly what we all hated Terry Alexander for doing: You’d have to tell people how the trick was done. Which magicians will never do. Sort of fitting, when you think about it.”

  “Well, if you ask me, in death he at least did some good.” Sam said definitively. The others turned for clarification, but Sam let them wait while he took a sip of his coffee laced with Baileys. “Any magician who even thinks of doing that trick today will at least think twice now, because of the sad fate of Terry Alexander.”

  I turned to Harry to see if he had anything to add, but he simply nodded in agreement with the others.

  Chapter 4

  “Let’s talk about your curfew.”

  “Very funny,” I said.

  Uncle Harry continued. “I think you’re old enough now we can move it up to eleven o’clock. But not one minute after.”

  “Do you see how I’m holding my sides here, laughing?” I had stopped by Harry’s apartment, which is directly above the magic store and directly below my apartment, to say goodnight as I headed out to the reunion.

  “Now who are you going with, Buster? Is it someone I know?” He was parroting the questions Aunt Alice had asked me all through high school and using the nickname he’d given me as a kid, and I wasn’t enjoying it anymore now than I had then. But I played along.

  “I already told you. Jake North. My old classmate. He’s the one in town doing the film about Terry Alexander.”

  “Is he?” Harry said absently. “Do I know his parents? I think I should call his mother, just so I’m sure we’re all on the same page.”

  “You know, you really should have billed yourself as a comedian. I think you missed your calling.”

  “Calling, yes, good point,” he said, jumping up to grab a pad and pen by the phone. “I want you to call me when you get there and then call me when you’re leaving. Do you have a number where I can reach you?”

  “Yes, it’s called my cell phone. You already use it to call me ten times a day and I have the phone company records to prove it. So, fear not. There is no point in the evening when you won’t be able to call me. Of course, whether or not I’ll answer is up for debate,” I added as I started to close his apartment door.

  “Well, have fun. Don’t talk to strangers. And remember—just say ‘No!’ to drugs.” The last word was cut off as I swung the door shut and headed down the stairs.

  As Jake and I pulled up to the hotel in downtown Minneapolis where the reunion was being held, I had a sudden and intense memory. This hotel had been the site of a particularly memorable past performance. The show, which was in one of the main ballrooms, was for a charity function, although I couldn’t remember the specific worthy cause. All I could remember about the evening was that the Chairwoma
n of the event had insisted on singing before my act.

  To the accompaniment of karaoke track, she had stumbled her way through I Will Survive, but her voice made a mockery of the title and she abandoned the song in the middle of the second verse, explaining to the crowd that she had “aspirated a filbert” earlier in the evening. Ever since then, that explanation had become my go-to excuse anytime a show went less well than I might have liked.

  “How was the show?”

  “Oh, it could have gone better, but I aspirated a filbert earlier in the evening.”

  So while I correctly remembered doing a show at the hotel, I was completely surprised by the hotel’s interior atrium. It rose nearly forty stories, creating a seemingly endless expanse above the main floor lobby. From my dizzying vantage point in the lobby, I could see people scurrying along the open corridors as they moved in and out of their rooms or headed toward the elevator bank.

  Ah, yes, the elevator bank. I had also forgotten about the elevators, or more likely never experienced them because the main ballroom was at ground level. The elevator cars were completely transparent, and I’m not just talking about the walls. The floor and ceiling of each car was also made of some sturdy, glass-like substance, allowing a perfect view of everyone in every elevator as they made their vertiginous journey up and down.

  Looking up into the endless atrium, and also seeing the elevators, had put a sizeable lump in my throat and made my pulse rate increase to the point where I could actually hear my heart pounding in my ears. The plan I had constructed with Dr. Bakke had been that I would go up a few floors—like to the second or third floor—in the next tall building I go into and look down over the edge at the lobby below. While doing that, I would practice the breathing tricks he had taught me. I took one more look at the sickening view above me and decided this could wait until later in the evening. “Hey, dude,” Jake called to me. “Where are you headed?”

  I gestured toward the ballroom entrance. “Main ballroom.”

  “We’re not in the main ballroom,” he said. “According to this, we’re in something called The Sky Room.” He pointed at a video monitor scrolling a continuous stream of hotel events. It took a while for it to cycle through that day’s agenda, but finally the logo for our high school popped up on-screen, along with the location of our reunion: “The Sky Room.” Under that it said, “Fortieth floor.”

  “Up, up and away,” Jake said as he headed toward the elevators. I didn’t move. I felt frozen to the spot, but after taking some healing breaths, I was able to persuade my feet to budge and I followed him reluctantly to the bank of elevators.

  The doors to one elevator slid open just as we arrived and Jake stepped in, whistling softly as he turned to press the destination button on the control panel. I willed myself to follow him in and once inside I immediately turned away, pretending to look out at the lobby. In fact, my eyes were tightly shut and I held onto the handrail with something resembling a death grip. I heard the doors close and felt the elevator begin to rise, moving up much faster than my stomach would have preferred. I could sense lights moving across my shuttered eyes as we headed up, while the sweat from my clenched hands convinced me I might have gripped the railing hard enough to draw blood.

  “Whoa, mama, are we flying!” Jake laughed heartily, the voice of a man who clearly lived on the other end of the acrophobia spectrum from me.

  “Yes, yes we are,” I said, working hard to keep any tremor from my voice. “It’s quite the view, isn’t it?”

  We came to a stop and as I heard the door open, I turned toward the sound, opening my eyes for the first time. Ahead of me, I saw the welcome embrace of a real floor surrounded by real walls. I started to step forward and it all would have been fine if I’d had the good sense not to look down. But I didn’t.

  I forgot the floor was transparent as well. My gaze fell to my feet and then to the forty floors of elevator shaft beneath me and the lobby far below.

  I froze, my stomach racing up to my mouth, my vision clouding and my head beginning to spin. I couldn’t move. Literally, couldn’t move.

  The door began to slide shut, but Jake—already out of the elevator car—stuck his hand through the rapidly closing space, grabbed my arm and pulled me to safety.

  “Ground control to Major Tom,” he laughed. “We have arrived. Our destiny lies before us.”

  Perhaps his destiny lay before him, but it was all I could do to stumble forward and place a hand on the comforting solidity of the wall in front of me. I regained my balance, making sure I didn’t turn toward the railing. Jake gestured to a directional sign with our school logo on it and moved jauntily down the corridor, following the route indicated.

  “We’re down here,” he called over his shoulder, as he moved confidently along the hallway. My movements were considerably slower and lacked any of his confidence. With one hand lightly touching the wall to steady myself, I followed him at half his pace, making sure I didn’t look to my left. The railing that overlooked the atrium was about four feet away and I felt its pull like a magnet. A voice, a feeling, a sense deep in my head was whispering: Go to the rail. Look down. Jump.

  I again tried to engage in one of the breathing exercises Dr. Bakke had taught me, but even as I went through the motions, I sensed I wasn’t actually breathing, just pulling air in and out and never really letting any of it settle into my lungs. At this rate, I would hyperventilate myself into unconsciousness in a matter of minutes, which at that moment struck me as a pretty solid plan B.

  Ahead of me I could see Jake stop at the open double doors that looked to be my salvation. If I could make it to that portal, I’d be able to put much-needed distance between myself and the frightening, yet tempting, rail. Once through that blessed door, it would be out of sight and therefore out of mind. I shuffled along the corridor, touching the wall as I went, more for psychological than physical support.

  Jake cocked his head at my progress, and so I put on a burst of speed and was able to finally get to—and through—the door. Jake slapped me on the back and propelled me further into the room, and then took a stance next to me.

  A table to my right contained row after row of nametags in plastic holders. The table was being supervised by an excessively perky woman I vaguely recognized.

  “Hi, guys,” she said brightly as she pulled back her wildly floral scarf to reveal her nametag. “I’m Joann. I was Joann Murray, then was Joann Murray-Hill for a hellacious four years, and now I’m back to good-old Joann Murray. Single and loving it. You’re with the reunion, right?”

  We agreed we were and she looked at us and then at the badges and then did a double-take, looking back at Jake. “You’re not going to need this,” she said with a flirtatious smile as she pulled his badge from the table. “Everybody knows you. But you can keep it as a souvenir.” She then turned to me. “And you are?”

  I paused, momentarily forgetting my name. “Eli,” I finally stuttered. “Eli Marks.”

  “Eli Marks, oh yes, you’re here somewhere.” She scanned the rows of badges until she came to mine. “There you go,” she said handing it to me. “And then we just need to do this.” She deftly took my right hand, while at the same time picking up a rubber stamp off the table. She daubed it on an inkpad and, with a practiced move, applied it to the back of my hand, leaving me with an oddly shaped black smudge.

  “That’s so we can tell you from the freeloaders in the hotel who try to sneak in and graze from our buffet,” she said, gesturing for Jake to submit to the same procedure. He put his hand in hers and she took her own sweet time applying the mark, even finding a moment at the conclusion of the process to stare into his eyes.

  “You’re all set,” she finally said breathlessly.

  “Thanks Joann,” Jake said with his million-dollar smile and she blushed and turned away.

  Left to my own devices, I began the slow process of pinning my nametag
to my coat, while Jake softly whistled as he assessed the room. I started to step forward, but he gently stopped me with a hand to my chest.

  “Wait,” he said quietly. “They will come to us.”

  He was right and they did. Although, it quickly became apparent they were actually coming to the singular him and not to the plural us. While I was the grateful recipient of a handful of halfhearted nods, the majority of the people made a beeline toward Jake. As the crowd became larger, I felt myself disappearing, like the guy in the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man who eventually got so small he vanished entirely. To forestall that eventually, I wandered away from the crowd.

  A food buffet took up the center of the room, while cash bars were positioned in two of the room’s four corners. One of the bars was right next to an open set of double doors which led to the exterior observation deck, visible through a large picture window to the left of the door. Given the steady flow of people headed that way, the deck and its amazing view turned out to be a big draw for everyone. Except me.

  Having no desire to observe anything on or from the Observation Deck, I made my way to the other bar, where a skilled but bored college girl was happy to sell me a beer and even happier all the change she gave me went right into her tip jar. Having spent years working for tips in restaurants, I over-tip from habit and it took me a second to realize the voice saying, “Hey, thanks,” was hers.

  “No problem,” I said, taking a quick swig of beer. My mouth had been desert-dry since the elevator ride from hell. “How’s the crowd tonight?”

  “About typical for a fifteen-year reunion, I guess. The guys are all losing their hair and denying it and the women have finally figured out how to apply makeup, but still can’t handle walking in heels,” she said with a deadpan I liked immediately.

  “You do a lot of these?” I asked.

  “More than I’d like.”