Now You See It

“I don’t think Phil will go for it,” I said.

“He’s your brother.”

“Yeah.”

“Toby, after all we’ve been through together,” said Shelly.

There were actually tears in his eyes. The door to his office had opened and his receptionist, Violet Gonsenelli, who also took messages for me and Phil, stuck her head out and said flatly, “I think your patient is dying.”

“She’s not dying. She’s not dying,” Shelly said. “She’s hurting. It’s natural. She’s fine.”

“I think she’s dying,” Violet said.

Violet was young, brunette, pretty, and the wife of a promising middleweight whose climb in the ratings had been postponed by the war. Rocky was somewhere in the Pacific.

“Okay, Shel. I’ll talk to Phil. Don’t be late.”

And now Pancho Vanderhoff sat at our conference table.

On the wall behind my desk in the corner were two things: a painting of a woman holding two babies, and a photograph of a young Phil, me, and our father with Phil’s German shepherd, Kaiser Wilhelm, in front of us. Our father was wearing his grocer’s apron. He had an arm around each of us. Young Phil didn’t look any happier in the photograph than he did standing next to the blackboard. The painting was a genuine Salvador Dali, given to me by Dali in appreciation for a job I did for him. Only a few people knew knew it was a real Dali. Three of them-me, Gunther and Jeremy-were seated at the table.

There was coffee in large reinforced Dixie cups and three bags of tacos from Manny’s down the street. All of this would go on Blackstone’s bill.

Everyone but Gunther was working on a taco. Phil and Gunther also worked on their coffee. Pancho Vanderhoff had consumed three tacos by the time Phil said, “Okay, let’s get started.”

It was a few minutes after noon.

“Toby and I went to the hotel this morning to check out the space at the Roosevelt. The dining room, lobby, kitchen, toilets, exits,” Phil said.

He turned to the blackboard and drew a rough but accurate sketch of the spaces. Then, in the box labeled “dining room,” he drew a rectangle and then made eight circles in front of the rectangle, numbering them from one to eight. He said, “These are the tables. There’ll be eight people at each table. Here….”

He pointed at the rectangle.

“Here, on a three-inch high platform, Calvin Ott, also known as Marcus Keller, will be seated with Blackstone.”

“Ott is the one we’ll be watching,” said Shelly with a knowing nod.

“No,” said Phil. “Ott is the one Toby and I will be watching. Jeremy, you’ll be at table four, near the kitchen. You watch the kitchen door, the people at your table and tables five and six and the exit door near the kitchen.”

Jeremy nodded.

“Gunther, you’ll be at table one, watching the entrance to the dining room, and tables one, two, and three.”

“I understand,” said Gunther.

“Minck, you’ll be at seven, watching that table and eight plus the exit behind you.”

“Why do I only get two tables?” Shelly asked. “The others get three.”

I knew what Phil was thinking. He paused, held it in. He didn’t want Shelly watching any tables, but we were running thin on free help.

“Those two tables are the most likely ones to have people who might want to hurt Blackstone,” Phil lied.

He had been a cop for nearly thirty years. He was a better liar than I was, and I’m pretty damned good.

Shelly nudged Pancho Vanderhoff, who was working on his fourth taco. Pancho nodded.

“Toby?”

“Wear tuxes,” I said. “If you don’t own one, rent one. Blackstone will pay.”

I knew Gunther had a tux. I knew Phil and I didn’t. I didn’t know about the others.

“Pancho will be there,” said Shelly.

“This dinner is for magicians,” Phil said.

“Something might happen,” said Shelly. “It could be a big scene in Dentist in Disguise. I’ll pay for his ticket and his tux.”

“It is a dinner, isn’t it?” asked Pancho, cheeks full.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you happen to know what will be on the menu?” asked Pancho.

“No,” Phil said.

I knew he was close to throwing them all out. There was the voice of a demon ominously lurking behind his words. I got up.

“Other questions?” I asked.

“What do we do if we see something happen?” asked Gunther.

“Stop it,” said Phil.

“Where will you and Toby be?” asked Jeremy.

“Here and here,” said Phil, pointing to a spot next to the kitchen and another one at table six. This last was directly in front of the rectangle that marked the platform on which Ott and Blackstone would be sitting.

“We’ll be watching Ott and Blackstone,” he said.

“You’ll have guns?” asked Pancho, sensing the meeting was almost over and pocketing a wrapped taco.

“You don’t need to know that,” said Phil.

We would be armed, though there was almost no chance that I would shoot with a room full of people. I’m not a bad shot, I’m a terrible one. I’ve accidentally shot myself twice on cases. Phil was a good shot, but he far preferred to use his hands and fists. Phil took crime very personally.

“We meet in the Roosevelt lobby at seven-thirty,” Phil said. “Come earlier, if you like, but no later. That’s it.”

I took a final bite of the taco I had been working on and bit into something hard. I fished what looked like a small gray pebble from my mouth and dropped it in the wastebasket near the table.

Everyone rose. Shelly whispered to Pancho as they left. Gunther and Jeremy, as unlikely a pair as a man could imagine, left together.

When the door closed, I started to gather taco wrappers, bags, napkins, and coffee cups.

“If Cawelti gets wind of this, of me working with them …” Phil said, looking at the closed door and shaking his head.

“He’ll make some stupid jokes,” I said.

“If he does, I’ll punch a hole in his stomach,” said Phil, moving to his desk and sitting.

There were three small framed photographs on his desk facing his chair. One was of him, his dead wife Ruth, his two sons, and his baby daughter. The baby, Lucy, was in Ruth’s arms. They were all smiling. There was a wedding photograph of Phil and Ruth and one more photograph he never explained to me. That last photograph which had turned a brownish color, showed three men in muddy uniforms looking down at a square box in a muddy field. All three men held helmets in their hands. Phil had been in the First World War. He had come back making it clear that he was not going to talk about what he had seen and done.

“You check the waiters, the kitchen staff for weapons,” Phil said.

“Right.”

“I’ll be at the door to the dining room,” he said. “I’ll check the magicians for weapons.”

I knew Phil had no intention of actually patting down the magicians, not because he was afraid of coming up with a rabbit or white pigeons, but because he knew they wouldn’t stand for it. It didn’t matter because Phil could tell with about a two percent margin of error if someone was carrying a gun. I had seen him do it with people whom I could have sworn were clean. He could spot the smallest bulge, the slightest abnormal motion that would signal a concealed weapon. He could also detect the hint of guilty sweat or overconfident swagger. My brother was a master of suspicion. Everyone was definitely guilty until he decided they were innocent.