Skillful Death (2 page)

“I tell you what; I can make a fire and you can watch very closely. If it’s something you want to learn to do, then you can make the fire next time and I’ll help you out. This fire is completely dead. I didn’t bother to bank it before I left this morning because it was such a warm day. I didn’t want the house to be insufferable when I got home. I’ll start with a little bit of dried grass and some moss. I don’t need too much because I do have some really good ashes here. Do you see how I brush out a little hole before I pile the stuff in? You have to get enough wind in there. Air is as important as fuel. You must remember that. Some of these bone-dry twigs will catch nicely and then I can layer on some heavier wood for when that gets going. Do you understand?”

Constantine threw away his latest cracked acorn and sniffed the tips of his fingers. He didn’t watch or even look at the Midwife.
 

“Now that everything’s laid, I just need a spark,” she said. “Here’s the easiest way to do it. You just scrape a knife against the side of this rock. Don’t use a good knife. Use a dull one. Do you see how easy that is?”

The Midwife hunched over her work and spoke to her hands. “You can’t smother it, but you want to give that spark plenty of fuel.”

She looked up when she had a decent little flame licking at the sticks. Constantine had wandered off.

“W
HO
’
S
NEXT
? W
HO
’
S
NEXT
?” the guy asks. He has a slight accent around the edges of his vowels, as if his tongue needs to wrestle them for a moment before it will let them go. I peg him as originally eastern European, but he’s well assimilated. In fact, his English is so good that he might have grown up in New York in a Russian household.

His eyes dance all around the crowd, but never touch mine. That’s how I know he wants me to be the next customer. He’s exerting his will on the group—forcing them not to step up, just by stabbing them with a quick glance. They take turns flashing smiles back at him, but then their eyes turn away. They’re unwilling to challenge him. But he doesn’t press me back with his glance.
 

I glide forward to the front of the circle which has formed around him on the sidewalk.

“Yes, sir. What can I get for you?” he asks me. His eyes rest on my chest, only flirting with meeting my gaze. My hand is half covering a twenty that I’ve placed on his green felted table. That’s his hustle. You bring him money and you get to pick the trick.

I’m studying his hands. They flow like water, shuffling the deck of red-backed Bicycle cards over and over. It must be a fresh deck, I figure. If he worked the same deck that hard day after day, the cards would be in tatters by the end of a week.

“Let’s go! These folks want to see a trick, dontcha folks?” he asks the crowd. He gets a few nods and grunts. “Come on, folks! Do you want to see a trick or not?” This time, the people get into it and give him back some love.

A good percentage of his bits are routine. You could get almost any street magician to do them. He doesn’t have any flashy floats, or vanishes, or any dexterity-based stuff, but his hands—the way they move—tell more about his expertise than perhaps he’d like them to. But, he has one bit I’ve never seen before and I’ve been standing here in front of the guy for twenty minutes trying to figure it out.

“Let me see ‘One of Each,’” I say.

“Sir, sir,” he begins, “these nice people have just seen ‘One of Each’. It’s a fine trick, but come on, it’s not exactly the flashiest piece. How about a nice classy force?”

He’s suggesting that I pick a card, any card, but somehow he’s going to force me to pick the card he’s already chosen. Bold of him to tell me he’s going to do it, and it could be a challenge for me to try to disrupt his timing, but it’s not the trick I’m here to see. Anyone with a strong enough will and good practice can pull off a force nine out of ten times.

“One of each,” I repeat, and I add another twenty to the bill already on the table. This is forty bucks for two minutes of work. I’ve just outed myself as someone who is not a casual customer. Maybe I could be another hustler, or perhaps a scout, but he’s seen me lurking for twenty minutes. He knows I’m no ordinary passerby.
 

“One of Each.” He repeats this with authority and begins his singsong patter. “Believe it or not, folks, I’ve been trained to keep track of each of these cards. Every time I shuffle, I know exactly the position of all fifty-two. Each of these cards is like one of my children and I consider it my duty to keep in touch.”

He flips the top card and flashes it at the group. Before the trick, he had about a dozen watchers. The group slowly collects more walkers as his voice speeds up and he gets into the meat of the bit. The card he flashes is the eight of diamonds.

“Lucky girl. How are you, darling?” he flips the card back over and shuffles the deck.

The next card he flips is the two of clubs. He says, “My youngest boy. Bottom of the pile, son.” He tucks the card on the bottom of the deck.

I stop looking directly at his hands. His hands are trained to fool me. It would be like looking in the eyes of a running back. You’ll never guess which way he’s going to juke if you’re looking at a running back’s eyes, you have to look at his hips. With close-up magicians, looking at the hands will only get you fooled faster. I like to pick a spot right between the elbows, usually about the middle of his chest. That’s where I look. If you keep your eyes fixed on that point, you can let all his movements flow into your peripheral vision and then you can spot his trick before it happens. I’ve been looking at his chest since I walked up and his hands have never stopped shuffling and cutting the cards.
 

I’ve been looking for a deck swap, a pinky break, a floated card… anything. But all that’s happening is honest shuffling and cutting.
 

“As you can see, all my black cards are my boys. My red cards are my little girls. The numbers are their ages. How many more shuffles, sir?” he asks.

“Give me three.”

The cards dance in his hands through three quick shuffles.
 

“I know my children so well that I don’t even have to look at their faces to tell you who they are.”

He doesn’t have a mark on the cards. I’m close enough to see that. That was my first guess, of course. Even in his patter, he’s practically daring you to think that.

“I’m going to set my family down on this table, sir, and I’d like you to fan them out.”

He squares the deck and sets them on the left edge of the green felt. He withdraws his hands and folds his arms across his chest. I consider taking this opportunity to monkey with his cards a bit, but I want to see the trick work as planned and see it up close. I fan them out to the right and await his instruction.

“Thank you, sir. Now, if you would, please choose one of my beloved. Leave him or her face down for now and I’ll prove to you how well I know my kin.”

Since I’m the one who fanned them, I know there’s no force going on here. He hasn’t somehow influenced me on which one to pick. I coax the corner of a card from about two-thirds through the deck and pull it towards me, leaving the face pressed against the felt.

“Thank you, sir. Now I will shuffle once more. Please note I’m never going to touch that card.”

The group is dead silent while he executes his shuffle. We’ve only seen two cards from the deck at this point. He could have anything in there.

After he has shuffled once, he cuts the deck three times and then assembles it back to whole. This is his first bit of trickery. His second cut is very thin, which could give him the opportunity to stack a couple cards near the top of the deck. Of course, I could just be grasping at anything since I have no earthly idea how he’s going to pull off the next part. He squares the deck and places it back on the felt.
 

“Rather than show off for you folks, I’m going to do what any proud parent would. I’m going to have my kids show off for you.” He smiles and the group laughs politely.

“Darlings,” he says to the deck, “could one of you with the same age as your separated sibling please come to the top?”

With his index finger and thumb extended. He carefully pulls the top card and flips it on the felt. It’s the five of diamonds.

“My children tell me that the age of your card, sir, is five.”

He repeats the process and the next card he flips is the king of spades.
 

“And my eldest tells me that your card is a boy. A spade, to be precise,” he says. “So, sir, whenever you’re ready, please flip your card to reveal the five of spades.”

Now, it’s one thing to know what card I’ve chosen. He didn’t, but he could have offered me a deck that had only that one card in there, repeated fifty-two times. He didn’t, but he could have somehow switched out my chosen card. He didn’t, but he could have somehow forced me to choose that card. But, I’ve been watching. I know that none of that happened, and I’m almost one-hundred percent certain that there’s no mark on these cards.

I flip my card.

Five of spades.

The crowd claps a bit and a couple of people drop small tips on the table before they walk away. He’s right. This isn’t the flashiest trick in the world, but I’ll be damned if I can guess how he did it. Even if the cards were marked, how did he pull a five as the top card and a spade as the second?

“Well done,” I say. He allows me to reach forward and flip his deck. I fan it out. It has forty-nine different cards. It’s a standard deck minus the three we pulled out for the trick. That’s the only mistake I’ve seen him make today. He shouldn’t have let me verify the deck after the trick. I turn to walk away.

He has chosen a pretty nice area to do business. Many well-dressed people are moving around on this sunny Friday afternoon. He set up near a giant bronze sculpture of a horse. His spot is away from the street, so he won’t be hassled by cruisers. He has a million escape routes if he needs to run. His little table will basically fold itself up if you grab the handle on the bottom. He’s dressed nicely, too. His suit and tie will blend right in if we accidentally spook him when we try to grab him.

If he were a psychic, or had some kind of telekinesis, why the hell would he bother with card tricks? I have half a mind to write it off. I can come up with a reasonable explanation and pass it up to the big man. Then, this little card trickster can keep hustling these executives. But, it’s my job. If I can’t figure it out, the guy gets picked up. My orders are very clear. I have a soft spot for street magicians—I spent a few years perfecting my hustle and I made a decent living at it—but I’d rather keep my job than have this kid keep his innocence.

I give my signal and my crew bursts from the back of a van that’s double-parked near the intersection. Two more guys stand up from the bench near the fountain and drop their newspapers. The two groups converge to within ten feet of the magician before he sees them coming. He never had a chance, but he surprises me when I glance back. He doesn’t even try to run. When he spots my guys with their stun guns and plastic handcuffs ready, the kid just drops to his knees. Red-backed Bicycle cards flutter to the brick sidewalk all around him. I’ll see the kid later, in the interrogation room I set up out in the suburbs.

Malcolm: What’s a “Midwifes’s baby?”

Constantine: It’s a secret twin, born when the mother is unconscious after the first birth. If the Midwife can sneak it away, she raises it as her own.

Malcolm: Is that really a thing? It sounds preposterous.

Constantine: It used to be.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

T
HE
M
IDWIFE
WIPED
HER
brow and regarded her hands. They were covered in blood and other fluids. She looked around the small room, trying to find a rag. Normally, she would turn to a sister, or mother, or aunt, to help with all the cleanup. On this job, she was alone. The Midwife dug into her own bag and pulled out one of her rags—as coarse as sackcloth—and wiped her hands, spitting on her palm to loosen a stain. Sitting on the edge of a thick oak trunk, she took deep breaths while regarding the supine woman before her.