Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

cubbyhole with a door and window in Shelly’s office till Phil and I had become partners. The cubbyhole was big enough for a desk and two chairs, one behind the small desk, one in front of it.
    “You’ll love him,” Shelly had assured me, thick hand on my shoulder. “I’m telling you. Have I ever led you wrong?”
    “Always, Shel,” I said.
    “Well,” he said, waving it away, “That was in the past. Pancho’s worked with the best. He’s Dutch.”
    “I see the connection,” I said.
    “Good,” Shelly had said, adjusting his glasses.
    I knew he had a patient in his dental chair, waiting. Even with the door to his office closed and the inner door shut, I could hear some poor victim gently moaning.
    “You should get back to whoever’s in there,” I had said.
    Shelly looked at his office door as if he had never seen it and then smiled sadly.
    “Mrs. Shmpiks,” he said, shaking his head. “Molars like rotten little rocks. A challenge. But I’m up to it.”
    “You always are,” I said. “Pancho can stay in his office when we meet.”
    “Toby, please,” Shelly said, putting his hands together. “I’m pleading with you. This is important to me. He’ll be quiet.”
    “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