The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery) (6 page)

The audience showed their enthusiasm for the idea by bursting into applause again. “That sounds like fun,” the host said over the ovation, and then he turned to Grey. “Are you up for it?” he asked, pretending that Grey had a choice in the matter.

Grey could see there was no way out, so he pretended, badly as it turned out, to be a good sport. “Sure thing,” he said with all the sincerity of a used-car salesman.

I quickly shuffled the cards and then shuffled them again. “After seeing him perform tonight, I sense that Grey is an ambitious guy. So this will be the perfect card trick for him. It’s called The Ambitious Card. Why, you ask?” I stated rhetorically, without stopping for anyone to answer. “Because, just like our friend Grey here, one particular card always finds its way to the top.”

I fanned the cards and held them out to Grey. “Pick a card,” I said, adding a carnival barker inflection to my voice. “Pick a card, any card.” This produced more laughter from the crowd than it really warranted.

Practically dripping with contempt, Grey reached out his hand and pulled a card out of the cluster of the deck without even bothering to look at it. I gathered the cards together and pivoted in my chair, turning my back on him. “Now go ahead and sign your name on the face of the card, just to ensure that I don’t try to switch cards later on.”

I could hear him sigh deeply, then I heard the rustle of clothing as he pulled a pen out of his suit coat pocket. Moments later I heard the scratching of the pen on the card, then the click of the pen and the sound of rustling again. “All set?” I asked with a bit too much cheer.

“Yes, all set,” he replied with no inflection in his voice.

I turned back to the table and once again held the cards out to him, slowly riffling through them. “Say stop whenever you like,” I instructed.

“Stop,” he growled.

I stopped riffling and told him to place the card at that spot in the deck, which he did with little enthusiasm. I cut the cards and then gave the deck two quick shuffles.

“So I’ve mixed the cards twice and cut them once. Your card is buried somewhere in the deck. But, like I said, it’s an ambitious card, and so with a little coaxing from me,” I said as I gave the bottom of the deck a hard flick of my index finger, “your card magically moves to the top of the deck.” With that, I peeled back the top card, revealing a signed card—The King of Diamonds.

Grey stared at me with disdain, but the crowd applauded wildly. I looked at the card and then looked from the card to the diamond rings on Grey’s fingers. “King of Diamonds,” I said. “How fitting.”

With that I launched into the trick with fervor. I shuffled the deck—the King of Diamonds returned to the top. The host shuffled the deck. The King of Diamonds returned to the top. I shuffled the deck and let Nova cut it three times in a row. The card returned to the top of the deck.

“It’s a persistent little bugger, isn’t it?” I said to Grey, who seemed to have only one facial expression—utter revulsion. Perhaps he was one of those rare people who didn’t like card tricks.

“There may be only one solution,” I continued, putting the card back with the others and shuffling them vigorously. “We may have to take lethal steps.” I shuffled the cards one last time, and then spread all the cards face down across the table in front of me. “Grey, could I bother you to lend me your blindfold? And your letter opener—that wickedly sharp one you used earlier?”

I thought for a second that I had finally pushed him too far and that he was going to explode and come across the table at me. But, to his credit, he kept his cool.

Slowly, oh so slowly, he reached into his coat and withdrew the long strip of black fabric and the letter opener, setting both on the table just outside of my reach. Before I could lean forward to take the objects, Nova moved in and picked up both of them.

She moved into assistant mode, stepping behind me and placing the letter opener on the table, near my right hand. And then she took the blindfold and covered my eyes, skillfully tying a snug knot against the back of my head. I could feel her breath on my neck and her perfume wafted past my nose. Her hands danced lightly on my shoulders, straightening my shirt and adjusting my collar. And then I could feel her stepping back to her original position to watch the finale of the trick.

“The conclusion of this illusion,” I said poetically, “comes courtesy of the great magician, Max Malini, who invented and perfected this move over his long and illustrious career.” I felt across the top of the table, sliding the cards around with both hands to mix them up even more. I moved my right hand until I could feel the sharp point of the letter opener, carefully sliding my hand down the blade until I was able to grasp the handle.

“I would ask that if any of you have your hands, or any other body part, on the table, please remove them immediately, as I’m flying blind on this one.” I could sense the host and Nova take a step back, but felt no movement from Grey’s side of the table. I gave a few of the cards one final push with my left hand, as I raised the blade in my right.

“Let’s just see if we can trap that ambitious card,” I said, and then with a sudden movement, buried the tip of the blade into the tabletop. There was a surprised gasp from the crowd, which grew in volume and intensity as I pulled off the blindfold with my left hand, keeping my right firmly on the handle of the letter opener. I rocked the blade back and forth, carefully removing it from where it had jabbed the table. Several cards fell away as I lifted the letter opener, revealing that only one card had been actually stabbed. I tilted the letter opener forward, holding the face of the card up to the crowd—and, I’ll admit—to the television camera.

It was the King of Diamonds, with the point of the blade cutting cleanly through his one eye. I removed the card from the tip of the blade and, reaching across the table, I slid it into the front breast pocket on Grey’s suit, giving it a final pat as I did.

The host was wrapping up the show, the audience was applauding, somewhere the show’s theme music was playing as the credits rolled. All that was lost on me, though, as my attention was directed completely at Grey. He was staring at me from across the table, seething with fury, anger, and even more hatred than before.

I was sorry to be the cause of all that and part of me considered, just for a moment, that I may have pushed him too far. And for a split second I felt bad about it, but only for a second. To be fair, though, I don’t think it would have improved his mood any if he had known that, in less than four hours, he would no longer be angry. He would instead be dead.

Chapter 5

The beauty of living in Minnesota is that, upon awakening on the first day of November, you are just as likely to spend the rest of the day shoveling eight inches of snow as you are discovering that it’s too hot and sunny to rake leaves. In other words, November in Minnesota is like one of those brown-paper grab bags they sell at charity auctions, where you never know what you’re going to get, but odds are that it will at least be interesting.

Although the weatherman had been predicting snow for days, that particular November first dawned like a quintessential Indian Summer day, with a bright blue sky and a breeze that felt warmer than it had any right to feel.

I left my apartment on the third floor and made my way down the way-too-steep staircase to Harry’s apartment. My divorce had come at around the same time as Aunt Alice’s death and that had seemed like the perfect opportunity to come back to the apartment on Chicago Avenue and once again make it my home. Since returning, I’d made it a habit to share breakfast with Harry as often as I could. Although he never once commented on this new tradition, I suspected that he really appreciated it.

I really can’t fathom the level of loss he experienced at her death. In addition to being his wife for over fifty years, Alice had also been his on-stage assistant for nearly as long. As many of his contemporaries had confided in me, Harry and Alice’s act wasn’t just a magic show—it was an on-stage love affair. Whether he was sawing her in half or she was helping him produce a cascade of doves, audiences sensed the chemistry they had together, which made their performance all the more special.

“Morning, Buster,” Harry said without looking up from his in-depth perusal of the daily paper. I get all my news, and the comics to boot, online, but Harry is a diehard in many ways. One of those included the addictive need to feel newsprint between his fingertips at least once a day. I poured myself a cup of coffee and picked up the sports page to be convivial.

“How was the show last night?” he asked casually, although I knew he was deeply interested in any opportunity to expose mediums, psychics, and other frauds.

“About what you’d expect,” I said. “Some mind reading. Some One-Ahead stuff. The Armpit Tourniquet.”

“Ah, that old chestnut,” Harry said. “And who was the alleged spiritualist?”

“Grey,” I answered, as I added some cream to buffer the bitter coffee that Harry favored.

Harry shuddered. “That one gives me the creeps. Always has.” He turned the page and scanned the fresh columns of print. “Did you give him a run for his money?”

“Well,” I shrugged, “so much of his act is traditional magic that I really wasn’t in a position to expose his methods. Not without exposing the methods of just about every working magician.”

Harry grunted in understanding without looking up from his reading.

“So I just did some comparable stuff,” I continued, absently paging through the paper. “Which, at the very least, took some of the shimmer off of his act.”

“You pulled the rug out from under him?” he asked.

“I think I honored the family tradition,” I said.

“And the audience hated you for it?”

“For a while,” I said. “Although I think they warmed to me as things progressed. Then, just for fun, for my finale I did an ambitious card routine, which I ended with a nicely-executed Malini card stab, if I do say so myself.”

This got his attention. His eyes peered at me over the top of the newspaper. One eyebrow slowly rose, like it was being pulled upward on a wire.

“Did you now?” he said, giving a low whistle. He set the newspaper down. “The Malini card stab was always one of my favorites. Did I ever tell you about the time I did that as the wrap-up of my act on the Sullivan show?”

He had told me that story on a number of occasions, but I shook my head and he launched into a blow-by-blow account of how Ed Sullivan himself had watched the act during rehearsal and made the decision—right there, on the spot—to move Harry’s position in the show, in order to feature him more prominently. “It was a glorious evening,” he said, stroking his thick white beard and smiling warmly.

“We should break out the video of that some night and look at it again,” I suggested.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, we should do that. Some night.”

I knew that he had been avoiding watching any of the old videos, as Alice would appear alongside him in every one of them, and he wasn’t really ready for that. Not yet.

Of course, it wasn’t as if she had entirely disappeared from his surroundings. Her smiling face, like a silent screen star, peered out at us from all the photos, posters and playbills on the walls up here—they lined the walls down in the store as well. Her clothes still hung in their closet. Her toothbrush and comb lay on the counter in the bathroom. Her needlepoint sat unfinished on the small table next to her chair in the living room, as if she had just stepped out to the kitchen for some tea and would return in a few moments to pick up where she left off. She was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.

I could tell that he was sinking into a similar reverie, so I got up and brought my cup to the counter. “It’s November first,” I said with a little too much forced cheer. “If you want, I can walk the rent down to the landlord.”

“What?” he asked, as he snapped back to the present. I noticed that his eyes had begun to water, just a bit. “No, that’s fine,” he said finally, shaking his head. “I can walk it down. The stroll will do me good.” With this mission ahead of him, he stood up, folding the newspaper carefully as he did.

“I’ll go with you,” I said, taking his cup to the sink and adding it to my own.

He stopped folding the paper. “We both don’t need to go,” he said. “That would be overkill.”

“I want to go,” I said as casually as I could. “Besides, it’s a nice day out.”

He gave me a long, penetrating look. He had spent a few years in the early part of his career touring with a mind-reading act, but it didn’t take those unique skills to deduce my ulterior motive for this mission. “You just want to gape like a lovesick schoolboy at the new landlady.” He put a mischievous little spin on the word
lady
. “Don’t think I can’t see that. It’s so obvious, you could see it from space.”

“Guilty as charged,” I admitted. “I’m going with you.”

And that was that.

Presenting the monthly check to the landlord in person has been a Marks’ family tradition for as long as I can remember. As a child I had enjoyed the privileged assignment of taking the check, sealed tightly in a plain white envelope, over to Mrs. Reinhardt, who lived in one of the brick apartment buildings on the other side of the movie theater. She always made a big fuss about my arrival and would encourage me to perform, for her and her cranky husband, whatever magic trick I was currently attempting to master. He matched her level of enthusiasm with his own dour nature and in his own, grumpy way he taught me a lot about dealing with a tough audience.

Now the tradition had moved from grandmother to granddaughter.

It was a short walk from our door to hers. In addition to owning the strip of retail shops that took up half the block, and the old brick apartment buildings that took up the other half, Megan had laid a personal claim to the shop on the corner. For years it had served as our local drugstore, under the name Shenandoah Drug, an odd choice given how far away we are from the state of Virginia and the eponymous river. Over the years that corner shop had taken on other identities since the Targets and Walmarts of the world had driven nearly every corner drugstore out of business. Now it was owned and operated by Megan, with a new name that amused me every time I saw it—
Chi & Things.

The inside of the store was about what you would expect for a store with a name like that. It was packed from wall to wall with New Age books, incense, crystals, natural oils and a large selection of teas; in short, just the sort of mishmash of items that would appeal to a wide spectrum of credit card-wielding spiritually-minded seekers.

Harry and I entered the store to find that, despite the early hour, numerous customers were already meandering through the cramped space, looking for just the right new age tchotchke to set them straight on the path to enlightenment or help them further tune their chakras toward nirvana.

While two young clerks roamed the aisles offering oil samples and answering questions, Megan stood behind the counter, merrily ringing up sales and chatting warmly with each customer. She looked stunning and, as is often the case with naturally beautiful women, seemed to have no idea of the visual impact she was making.

I tried to keep from staring, but it was hard not to. I was completely smitten. As we waited in line to give her the rent check, I surreptitiously tugged on Harry’s coat sleeve. “Give me the check,” I said in my best
sotto voce
whisper. “I want to give it to her.”

Harry scowled at me. “What are you, five years old?” he said, not bothering to match my vocal volume.

“You gave it to her last time,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “That makes it my turn. It’s only fair.”

“Well, if you want to talk about fairness, since I wrote the bloody check and it’s coming out of my bloody account, I don’t think you have any legitimate claim on its ultimate distribution.” He waved the check in my face for emphasis and I snatched it out of the air just as Megan said, “And how can I help you today?”

I stepped forward, putting my body in front of Harry’s and holding the check out to her. “Just your two favorite tenants, Eli and Harry Marks, with this month’s rent,” I said cheerfully.

She smiled and laughed, taking the check from me. “Well, thank you. You know, you two don’t have to hand-deliver this every month. Pete’s setting up a direct deposit system with the bank to make it easier for all the tenants.”

“Oh, it’s no bother at all. The walk does the old guy good,” I said, gesturing toward Harry. “Plus, it’s important to get him out of the shop from time to time,” I added quietly. But not quietly enough it seemed, for a moment later I felt a sharp sting in the back of my right ankle where Harry had just kicked me.

Megan looked from Harry to me, and then slowly back to Harry again.

“Speaking of Pete,” I said oh so casually, trying to turn her gaze in my direction, “I just saw him last night over at The Caves. I’m surprised you didn’t come along…the show was right up your alley.”

Megan shook her head as she stopped looking at Harry and leaned over to make a notation in a receipt book. “I had to give some readings last night,” she said as she scribbled, then added quickly, “Although it would have been fun to re-visit the old caves and see how they’ve changed.”

Before I could register a comeback, she tore out the receipt and handed it to me. I handed it back to Harry, who snatched it quickly out of my hand with nary a thought of the paper cut he could have given me.

“I hope Pete isn’t becoming a pest at your store, Mr. Marks,” she added, once again turning her gaze on Harry. I was beginning to feel like the Invisible Man. “He’s really taken to the idea of learning magic.”

“No, we love having Pete come into the shop,” I answered quickly before Harry could respond. “He’s a very enthusiastic student. Of course, I’m guessing we won’t be seeing as much of him around here once the divorce becomes final.”

“No, probably not,” she said absently. She looked Harry directly in the eye.

“I hate to bother you with this, Mr. Marks,” she said. “But there’s a spirit over your right shoulder who is really trying to get my attention. The spirit says it has a message for you.”

We both looked at her, surprised at the sudden change in subject, and then, without realizing we were doing it, simultaneously looked over Harry’s right shoulder. I can’t speak for him, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, except the evidence that both of us needed to find a shampoo that does a better job on dandruff.

“If you have a couple minutes,” Megan added earnestly, “I’d love to sit down with you and do a reading. See what all the fuss is about.” She looked at him expectantly and, to my surprise, he smiled at her.

“That would be delightful, my dear,” he said sincerely. “I think a reading would be just delightful.”

Megan arranged for one of the clerks to watch the cash register, and while she handled that, she pointed us toward the back of the shop. “Have a seat back in the reading area,” she said excitedly. “I’ll be there in just a moment.”

“Why are you agreeing to this?” I whispered to Harry as we made our way through the cramped aisles toward a small table in a back corner.

“Nothing strange about this. I’ve historically liked to keep abreast of what’s new in the field of parapsychology,” he said indignantly. “Besides, you aren’t the only one who recognizes how attractive she is.”

Despite his advanced years, I was about to give him a solid smack across the back of the head, but was interrupted by Megan’s arrival.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said, gesturing Harry to a chair on one side of the small, linen-covered table, while she took a seat across from him. “I’m still learning how to effectively tap into my intuitive energy, so any time the spirits reach out to me I like to take the opportunity to practice.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Harry said in a sing-song voice and I once again had to restrain myself from striking the old man.

She opened a small black velvet bag and removed several crystals of various sizes, arranging them in two lines, one on either side of the table.

“I find that crystals sharpen the energy,” she said by way of explanation. “The more I learn about my gift, the more I find a connection with crystals. Isn’t that funny?”

Both of us nodded at once, almost perfectly in sync. We looked ridiculous.

“All right now. Sometimes the information from the spirit comes through very quickly,” Megan continued, picking up a small pad and pen that sat on the table. “Many clients prefer to take notes, so as not to miss anything.”

“Buster can take the notes,” he said with mock efficiency, smoothly passing the items back to me. “Besides, it will give him something to do. Idle hands and all that.”

There were only the two chairs, so I leaned against a nearby wall and prepared to take notes.

Megan had Harry place his hands flat on the tabletop, and then she placed the tips of her fingers so that they lightly touched his. She settled back and relaxed, shutting her eyes and sighing deeply. She sat in this posture silently for several long moments, so long that Harry and I exchanged a quick look that said, “Is she asleep?” Then she suddenly opened her eyes and looked straight through Harry, as if reading a teleprompter from the other side.