The Bullet Trick Read Free

the struggle to control her bosoms. She was the kind of girl old gentlemen like to pinch: ripe and big, with skin that fitted like skin should. Once you got past the hardness of her stare she’d be a fine pillow against the world. Her hair was a mass of white-gold curls, piled high and tumbling on the top of her head. A soft blush of down brushed her cheek. The overall effect was voluptuous, blowsy and somehow Victorian. My grandmother would have called her a strumpet, but I thought she looked too good for this place.
     
    The girl lifted a flap on the counter and put it between her and me.
     
    I smiled and asked, 'All on your own?'
     
    I was aiming for avuncular, but it sounded like a line that Crippen might have used. The girl ignored me and switched on the Tiffany lamp on the counter, then started to dim the overheads.
     
    'What’s in the case?'
     
    'My props.'
     
    'Have you got a rabbit?'
     
    'Aye, but he’s invisible.'
     
    She gave me a disgusted look that suddenly revealed the teenager beneath the makeup.
     
    'Bill’s upstairs chatting up the tarts.'
     
    I guessed she was used to creeps and thought of saying something to show her I wasn’t one of them, but couldn’t come up with anything other than, 'Maybe I should go and introduce myself.'
     
    She shrugged with a look that said she expected nothing less and pointed towards a set of swing doors.
     
    'Changing rooms are through the bar and up the stairs.'
     
    The bar was a larger, more dimly lit version of the foyer. A disco light bounced a coloured spectrum half-heartedly against the walls and from somewhere an eighties chart hit, that I dimly remembered from a stint I’d done at a holiday camp in Kos, was blasting across a tiny dance floor. A few men who looked too serious to consider dancing sat drinking at dimpled copper tables. I might be late, but the party wasn’t swinging. They dropped their voices and followed me with their eyes as I passed. They would be hard men to entertain, hard men full stop. I gave them a nod and they kept their gaze level, each man’s stare a mirror of his companion’s even look. I thought of a school of fish, each in tune with the other, slipping as one through a dark ocean. I wondered if Rich had meant two-fifty before or after his cut. I always forgot to ask.
     
    At first glance Bill looked vintage doorman. Broad-shouldered, squat-nosed and tuxedoed. He was leaning against a dressing-table, arms folded, long legs crossed. The door to the room was half-closed but I could see two slim girls reflected in the mirror behind him, one Asian, the other a Jean Harlow blonde. The blonde girl was the shorter of the two, but they looked strikingly alike, monochrome sisters, hair styled into the same short curly bob, jeans and T-shirts not identical but similar enough to be interchangeable. I was no connoisseur of ballet, but I thought I might be able to tolerate watching them dance.
     
    Bill leaned back slowly, giving me a good glimpse of his long profile, and said in a public school mockney that made me suspect he’d got his broken nose at a hunt meeting, '… everyone has a good time’.
     
    I banged my case against the banister to avoid hearing the rest of his instructions and he pushed open the door gently with the toe of his smart black shoe, revealing a quick flash of metal segs. The toe was slim, but I suspected it would be steel capped.
     
    Bill’s move was smooth and unhurried but his expression flashed from smile to wary then to smile again as he spotted first me, then my equipment case with its motif of gold stars, and guessed who I was.
     
    'Mr Magic, we were just wondering when you’d appear.'
     
    'We thought you might come in a puff of smoke,' cut in the blonde girl.
     
    I said, 'There’s time yet.'
     
    And we all laughed.
     
    Bill straightened up with the elegance of a sneak thief.
     
    'Meet Shaz,' he put his arm around the Asian girl’s waist, 'and Jacque.' His free arm snaked around the small