“Hey,” I called after him. When he turned around, I asked, “Want to see a really good coin trick?”
He studied me a moment. “Nah. Nobody wants to see that.” He spat on the ground again and walked away.
4
A few minutes past two that afternoon, I was sitting opposite Brock McKnight, a marble coffee table between us. His office looked like the movie set of Serious Lawyer, Esq.—large (and surprisingly tidy) desk of dark wood, leather chairs, abstract artwork in muted tones, bookshelves filled with legal volumes that I hoped were more than props. I had just signed Brock’s one-page engagement letter authorizing him to be my attorney, and he was showing me that he was on the case.
“Lou ended up at University Hospital last night, not a clinic,” Brock said. “That projectile of yours made an impressive gash in his cornea.”
I winced.
“That’s the good news,” he said, glancing down at the legal pad in front of him. “The bad news is the hyphema.” And before I could ask: “Bleeding between the iris and cornea.”
“I feel terrible,” I said.
“And remorse might come in handy at some point,” he said, “but first the facts. He’s sensitive to light and still in considerable pain. We won’t know about any long-term vision damage for a while. Often a hyphema will heal, but it’s too soon to tell. And Lou of all people knows not to file a lawsuit until he reaches MMI—that’s maximum medical improvement. So it could be weeks until he files. Could be months.”
My head was throbbing. I asked him what it all meant.
“Besides the medical bills, there’s the driver he’s hired, there’s going to be lost wages, and pain and suffering—definitely he’ll want pain and suffering, given all the witnesses who saw him in pain, suffering.”
“What do I do?”
“You? If you have a rich uncle, now would be a good time to reach out.”
I thought about my upcoming December gigs, my Reasonable Rates, and knew I was in big trouble. There was no house to mortgage, no savings account to deplete, nothing to cash in. No rich uncle.
“I’m broke,” I told my lawyer.
“Then get unbroke,” he said.
That’s when I asked him if he still had that card cheat’s name handy.
“For real?” His eyes widened. “Because that was just some late-night bullshitting. And anyway, you said last night—”
“I have something else in mind,” I told him. And without getting too much into the details (I’d only come up with the idea on the drive over), I mentioned the magazine article I thought I could get paid to write for some decent money—at least a couple of gigs’ worth—comparing card magicians to cardsharps.
“I’d read that article,” he said. “And the two of you would hit it off. You speak the same language.” He went over to his desk. “How’d you get into all that anyway? Magic.”
I skipped the part about my father’s old boss giving me my first magic kit when I was eight. It wasn’t a memory I liked to dwell on. “A man named Jack Clarion taught me,” I said. “And when I was eighteen I won an international sleight of hand competition. I was the youngest winner they ever had.”
“A prodigy.”
“David Copperfield gave me my medal.”
“No cash prize?”
“Five hundred dollars,” I told him, “and a booking agent.” I didn’t bother to clarify that my agent had dropped me years ago.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Brock said, pulling a deck of cards from the top drawer. He tossed the deck, still in its seal, onto the coffee table. “You have duplicate queens, obviously. But how do you get rid of the duplicates before the final reveal? That’s the part I don’t understand. But I’m right about the extra queens, aren’t I?”
I watched his face watching mine. He was used to getting what he wanted. “What?” he said. “My grandfather was a lawyer in Maryville, Tennessee. Sometimes he got paid in chickens, and I’m sure the farmers were attached to their birds, too.”
I sighed. “Write it down first, please. The name and contact information of your cheat.” I said this while picking up the pack and slitting the seal with my thumbnail. While he went to his computer and jotted down the information on a slip of paper, I opened the card case, removed the cards, and fanned them out to remove the four queens, which I set on the tabletop beside the rest of the deck.
“He’s a particular fellow,” Brock said, handing me the slip of paper. “A little curmudgeonly. Not charming like me. But damned if he isn’t in a league all his own.”
I glanced at the slip of paper. “You don’t trust me with his full name?”
“That’s what he goes by,” Brock said with a shrug. “Now come on, your turn.”
I pocketed the paper. “And you swear you’ll keep this a secret?”
“Scout’s honor,” he said.
Laypeople always assume that an elegant trick must have an equally elegant method. But one of the true secrets of magic is that this is rarely the case. And with sleight of hand the secret is never a mirror or harness or contraption but rather five- or ten- or twenty thousand hours of practice. The artistry is in the execution, not the secret. It’s in learning to hide what ought to be in plain sight.
I could have told him right then how to do the Four Queens, magician’s oath be damned. But then he would know. He’d think: Oh. A vague disappointment, and then he’d be on to the next thing he wanted.
Better, always, to leave them full of wonder. Then at least you know you’re still needed.
I picked up the stack of queens. “These ladies,” I said, counting off one card at a time, “are very close, practically sisters, on account of having to live in a world created by the kings and jacks.”
The lawyer’s eyes narrowed.
“You can’t imagine the pressure on them, with the demands of royalty, not to mention all that pomp
