by John Gaspard
I had other plans. I grabbed Megan’s hand.
“Eli, we’re going the wrong direction,” Megan said as I maneuvered us toward the stage.
“I have to get to Harry,” I said loudly over the hubbub of the retreating crowd. Megan must have agreed with me, for she tightened her grip on my hand as we made slow but steady progress.
We pushed upstream, against the moving crowd, until we reached a door to the left of the stage. I gave it a firm push and was relieved to feel it open. A moment later we were backstage, which was just as chaotic but not nearly as crowded as the auditorium.
The first person I encountered was Liam, the young magician who had so admired my Card-Presto product. He was pale and shaken, wiping at his nose with his sleeve. He saw me and shook his head.
“I moved the chair where they said to,” he said, his voice choking. “That’s all I did was move the chair.”
“Yes, boy, and you keep moving,” Miss Hess said, coming up from behind him. “This is no place for you now, move along. Geh weg! Schnell, schnell.”
“Oh, give it a rest,” another voice cut in. I turned to see Angelika, the female magician I’d seen earlier. She was moving through the backstage area, headed toward the door we had just come through. “Give the poor lad a moment to breathe, for bloody’s sake. You heartless old crone.”
She draped an arm over the teenager’s shoulder while the old German woman mumbled something unintelligible before turning and heading away, making her way slowly through a small crowd of police.
“Come on, they need us out of here, love,” Angelika said to the teen. “Let’s head downstairs and see what’s what.”
We stepped aside, she guided the boy through the door, and the two of them disappeared back into the auditorium.
We finally spotted Harry, deep in conversation with a man and a woman I guessed were the British version of plainclothes detectives. They were just outside of an area which had been quickly cordoned off by the crime scene team. Their version of a CSI tech was snapping photos of Oskar, who was still slumped over in his large wooden throne. Harry glanced my way and nodded, which I took to mean that, under the circumstances, he was doing okay. It made me feel a little better, but not by much. I wanted to walk over and confirm this with him. However, given the demeanor of the police who were questioning him, I suspected Harry was out of bounds, at least for the next few minutes.
“Eli!”
I turned toward the sound of my name and saw Laurence Baxter waving me over to a small group huddled on the far side of the stage. Steering clear of the crime scene, Megan and I snaked our way across the backstage area and joined the small assembly. I recognized the hefty British comic magician Angus Bishop and a renowned mentalist who went by the single name Borys. Like Baxter, both were in their seventies, and although they were not as decrepit as Miss Hess, neither had the same youthful energy Baxter projected.
Joining the group as we arrived was another older gentleman with the whitest hair I had ever seen. While his deep tan appeared genuine, there was something about his hair that didn’t. Although probably just as old as his contemporaries in this small group, his frosty hair gave him an ageless and timeless look. He leaned into the group and whispered conspiratorially but not quietly.
“Harry didn’t do it, I’m sure of it,” he said in a clipped American accent. “I couldn’t get very close, but from what I could see, it appeared the knife actually came out of the base of the chair, attached to an armature of some kind. It traveled up on an arc, sweeping up behind the chair directly into the occupant’s back. Then, via some mechanism I couldn’t discern, the arm swung back underneath the chair.”
“But the knife did not,” Laurence Baxter added dryly.
“Sadly, no,” the white-haired man agreed. He glanced over at me and Megan, then back to Laurence Baxter, who immediately picked up the social cue.
“Ah, yes, this is Harry Marks’s nephew, Eli,” he said, reaching out and patting my shoulder. “And...” he continued, tossing the next introduction to me.
“And this is Megan,” I said, unnecessarily putting my arm around her shoulder. I wasn’t sure what other words were needed to describe our relationship. Calling her my girlfriend made me feel like we were still in junior high, while referring to her as my partner sounded like we worked together in a law firm. It was my strategy to lock down a more permanent relationship status while on this trip, but for the time being, I just let her name hang in the air.
Baxter continued the introductions. “Brilliant. Of course, this is Angus Bishop,” he continued, gesturing toward the broadly built gentleman to his left. “And Borys,” he added, indicating the thin, wiry man who was dwarfed next to Angus. “And, of course, Davis De Vries,” he added, referring to the man with the amazingly white hair.
“I certainly know you all by reputation,” I said, quickly shaking hands with each of the older gentlemen. Angus, not surprisingly, had a strong grip in proportion to his bulk. I’ve never actually met a longshoreman, but I suspect some of them would be intimidated by Angus’s size and girth, despite his advancing years.
Borys was slighter of build, short and rail thin with wide eyes, which had both a feral and fearful quality. His grip was nonexistent, like shaking hands with a wisp of air, while Davis De Vries shook my hand enthusiastically for several seconds longer than necessary.
They all then turned to Megan, clearly far more interested in shaking hands with her. Having spent more than her fair share of time in the company of old magicians who fawned over younger women, she complied graciously.
“I’m not a magician,” she explained to the group, “but Eli prepped me on all the performers who were going to be part of the celebration. Except,” she added, turning to Davis De Vries, “for you.”
“Just so,” he said, breaking into a wide smile. “I’m the performer behind the performers. The man behind the curtain, as it were.”
“De Vries builds many of the best illusions we all use,” Baxter said, then noticed Borys was shrugging at this description. “That is to say, all of us who do big-box illusions.”
“Mr. De Vries created the The Baker’s Dozen,” I explained to Megan. “We saw it last year at the Magic Live! convention in Las Vegas. You know, the illusion where it appears the magician cuts the assistant into thirteen even slices?”
Megan reflexively shuddered at the memory, producing a slight chuckle from De Vries.
“Not to worry, I’m currently working on a gluten-free version,” he said, offering a practiced one-liner. Polite chuckles were had all around.
“He’ll also be unveiling his latest creation this week, although he’s too modest to tout it,” Laurence Baxter added. “The Catherine Wheel. Should be a corker.”
There were excited rumbles of agreement on this point, and then, collectively, the group suddenly seemed to realize that a somber attitude would be more appropriate given the situation. For example, the fact Oskar Korhonen was still slumped over in his chair on the other side of the stage.
“Well, yes, anyway,” Baxter continued, “we must do whatever the police require of us to sort this mess out as quickly as possible. A terrible thing.”
There were nods of assent all around, but no actual plan was suggested. I was about to point out this missing element when I noticed Harry and the two plainclothes police officers moving toward us. I thought they were coming to talk to us, but their pace didn’t slacken as they veered around the group, heading for the stage door in the back.
Harry’s wrists were handcuffed, but he was able to turn toward me and speak before they pulled him through the door and into the stairwell.
“These are not the linking rings I was planning on employing this evening,” he said with a weak smile, gesturing to the cuffs while clearly working hard to keep any fear out of his voice. “Don’t worry, Eli. We’ll get this sorted out.”
The small group watched as the stage door closed ominously behind him. The group of old men then turned to me.
I’m sure their expressions mirrored mine and we were all thinking a similar thought: getting this all sorted out might not be quite as easy as Harry was suggesting.
One of the uniformed constables told us which police station Harry had been taken to, so I excused Megan and myself from the group, with the promise to keep them all apprised of what we learned. Laurence Baxter pressed a business card in my hand, and then Megan and I headed downstairs to call a cab.
Megan reminded me we needed to retrieve our coats, which meant standing in a short but slow-moving line in front of the coat check window.
As we inched forward, I could see the attendant, Miss Hess, inspect each claim stub closely, as if there had been a recent rash of counterfeit claims and subsequent missing coats. After each examination, she would disappear into the bowels of the cloak room for what seemed like a long time for such a simple and direct mission. Then she would return and hand over the coat, still bristling with suspicion as she shooed the person away and indicated the next in line should get a move on. Very few actual words were exchanged throughout; instead, this was all communicated with a harsh series of grimaces, scowls, and Teutonic-sounding grunts.
Since we had arrived separately, we each presented her with our own claim tickets. She looked closely at both tickets and then just as intently at the two of us.
“You arrive unaccompanied and yet depart jointly,” she said, more statement than question, lacing the comment with what sounded like a heaping dollop of judgment for good measure. “That is curious.”
“Life is curious,” I countered, deciding this scary old lady had not cornered the market on enigmatic phraseology.
“In more ways than you’ll ever know,” she replied quietly as she turned to retrieve our items. Each of our coats, neither of which struck me as being particularly heavy, were of sufficient bulk that the old woman felt the need to bring them to us separately.
She struggled with each coat as if its pockets were loaded down with heavy stones. Finally, she finished with us, handing Megan her coat without a word, then signaled to the patron behind us that their time had in fact come.
“A flight risk? That’s absurd,” I huffed indignantly. Sadly, my voice cracked on the last word, thereby sucking any authority out of my intended outrage.
The police detective, a tired woman in her early forties who identified herself as Detective Inspector Matthews, sighed and continued her explanation of their reasons for holding Harry in a jail cell overnight and why my request to see him had been denied. Her accent was a delightful mix of British and Indian, but currently that was the only thing about her that might be considered delightful. To be fair, I imagined she wasn’t finding me to be particularly enchanting, either.
“As I explained, Mr. Marks, this is a capital crime. Your uncle’s behavior is, at the very least, questionable.”
“Really? How do you figure?”
DI Matthews sighed deeply and looked down at her notes. “He arrived at two thirty this afternoon from the US for—he claims—the sole purpose of being on stage with the victim this evening. He booked a hotel for one night only. He came to the scene of the crime directly from the airport, and although he claimed to be staying in town for just one night, he had checked two large bags for the flight. He and the victim were alone backstage for several minutes. He was standing next to Mr....” She glanced down at her notes. “Next to Mr. Korhonen when he was killed. And he is holding a return airline ticket that will take him out of the country tomorrow at noon, a mere twelve hours from now.”
She set her notes down and looked across the table at me. “All in all, singly and in its totality, this is behavior we on the force would judge to be, at the very least, questionable.”
“He didn’t kill him—” I began, but she held up a hand.
“This is not for you or me to determine, sir,” Matthews said firmly. “If the decision is made to charge your uncle, which I believe to be highly likely, our legal system will do an excellent job of determining his guilt or innocence. But for the time being, specifically this evening, he is considered a flight risk and will remain under our supervision until tomorrow at the earliest, at which time our prosecutors will determine and present their next steps.”
Although the accent and some of the terminology was different, this all had a very familiar ring to me.
My ex-wife was an Assistant District Attorney back in Minneapolis, and her new husband was a hulking Golem who made his living as a Homicide Detective. I had been on the receiving end of his sleep-inducing officiousness on more than one occasion. If experience has taught me anything, it was that it was fruitless to argue with City Hall. Particularly if City Hall had taken the human form of an underpaid and overworked Homicide Detective.
“Now it is my recommendation that you return to your hotel and come back in the morning, and at that time we will have more information to share on your uncle and his situation, vis-à-vis this ongoing murder investigation.”
I’m sure there are some fundamental differences between the US and British criminal justice systems, but the way all their people straighten up papers and close folders to signal the end of a conversation is eerily identical.
It was a return trip to the hotel for Megan but the first for me. The streets were dark, and my sense of direction was in shambles. So, instead of being adventurous and exploring the subway system, we hopped into a nearby cab. Megan had the hotel’s name and address at her fingertips, and a few minutes later we pulled up to what was going to be our home away from home for the next week on our first vacation as a couple.
The exterior looked a little worn and rundown, but I chalked it up to poor street lighting and a moonless night. The interior, however, had no such excuses to fall back on.
“Isn’t it adorable?” Megan whispered as we made our way down the front hallway toward the small lobby. “It’s like stepping back in time.”
“You mean before the invention of the vacuum cleaner?” I suggested. I looked down, convinced small puffs of dust were emanating from each step we made on the worn carpet.
The fuzzy first impression the foyer made was reinforced tenfold the moment we entered the small lobby. Mismatched Christmas lights had been strung haphazardly over the front desk, although most of the bulbs weren’t lit. A worn lopsided couch sat by the window, next to a rack filled with faded tourist brochures.
Beside the rack was a wobbly-looking card table with what could only be called a vintage PC atop it. The computer’s screen glowed a sickly green.
Someone with either no sense of irony or the finest wit since Oscar Wilde had printed up a small dot-matrix placard touting the table as the “Busness Center.” Yes, “business” was in fact misspelled.
“What was the Yelp rating on this place?” I asked Megan quietly as we waited for the harried desk clerk to finish what sounded like an angry phone call. His tone was indignant, which was evident regardless of the language. It sounded like Russian, but my knowledge of that language was confined to villains trying in vain to kill James Bond.
“Oh, the reviews were terrible, but I read through them and the criticisms were just dumb Americans complaining about moronic things,” she explained happily. “I love it here.”
Before I could inquire as to which things the dumb Americans had railed against, the desk clerk finished his call by slamming the receiver down hard on the cradle and saying something that sounded like a curse, regardless of the language. He then looked up and gave us—well, Megan at least—a toothy smile.
“You are back,” he said as he turned to the crooked set of wooden cubbies hanging precariously on the wall behind him. “Your night, it was good?”
“It was interesting,” Megan said as he handed her the key. It was attached by what appeared to be baling wire to a
plastic tag bearing our room number.
“Interesting is good?” he asked, still smiling his toothy grin. His short-cropped hair stood straight up on top of his head, while his bright blue eyes bulged just the tiniest bit.
“Interesting is good, yes,” Megan agreed. “Good night.”
“Good night to you and to you too, sir,” he said, waving at us happily as we moved out of the lobby and back to the hallway. I followed Megan, who took a confident left, leading us to the elevator door. She pushed the up button.
“Russian?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I have no idea. But he’s clearly not from around here.”
“Well, neither are we,” I said, and then looked over at the elevator doors as they wobbled open. A dim light illuminated the elevator car, but that term was giving it way too much credit. It was like a phone booth, but smaller.
“This may be the smallest elevator I’ve ever seen,” I said. “I’ve seen dumbwaiters more spacious.”
“I know, isn’t it great?” she beamed as she stepped in. I turned sideways and wedged myself into the small box. Megan pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors quavered shut and, with a small lurch, the elevator began to climb.
“You know, I once made a refrigerator box fort that was bigger than this elevator,” I observed, marveling at the tiny space. “How did you ever get upstairs with all of our luggage?”
“Oh, that was easy,” she said, turning so my elbow wasn’t digging into her shoulder. “I just piled all the bags in here, hit the button for our floor, then ran up the stairs.”
“Let me guess: you beat the elevator by a considerable margin,” I suggested as the car whined and stuttered its way up.
“They call it a lift. And, yes, I had plenty of time to catch my breath, if that’s what you mean.”
