Mrs. Houdini (17 page)

She had asked Charles Radley to meet her in the lobby at six. Wanting to make sure he was there before her, she arrived at a quarter past six and scanned the cream-colored sofas for a man sitting alone. She had no idea what he looked like or how old he was, but she estimated that he would be wearing a less expensive suit than most of the men there, and would probably wait about a half hour before he gave up on her.

It was a hot evening, but the lobby was cool. The wall was lined with tall, open glass windows bordered by sheer white curtains. Stiff-collared waiters were bringing around drinks of lemonade, and a piano player was playing a soft rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” Although the room was crowded, most of the men and women were already in evening dress, the women leaning against armchairs in their jewel-colored chiffon. But there was only one man alone, sweating in a gray wool suit, tapping his foot in an armchair next to the soft carpeted staircase. She was disappointed; she felt certain she would recognize him when she saw him, that it would be instantly clear why Harry had directed her to him. But she had never seen him before; he didn't seem like the bearer of any kind of message. She sat down quietly in a chair by the door and pulled a novel from her purse so she could study him a moment longer. She had given him a man's name for the meeting, and she didn't think he would recognize her at first.

He was much younger than she had imagined. He was clean-shaven and attractive, in his early thirties, his dark eyes hidden behind a thin pair of spectacles. Something about him made her uneasy, though she could not identify what. He seemed harmless enough. He crossed two thin hands over a leather briefcase, which Bess imagined contained a selection of his work. He did not have the body or the demeanor of a dangerous man, although Stella liked to talk about the debauchery of Atlantic City—where the Prohibition laws were essentially unenforced—being even worse than Manhattan's.

After a few minutes he glanced at his watch, looked around the room once more, and stood up. Bess stood up as well and went after him. She followed him across the lobby, toward the dining room, and through a tall mahogany door next to the kitchen. She found herself standing in what appeared to have once been a library. It was completely windowless, lit only by tall brass lamps and shaded sconces. Red leather couches were scattered around the room, and the walls held floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. It reminded her of Harry's library at home. The thick, woody odor of cigar smoke wafted through the doorway. In front of one of the bookshelves, a makeshift wooden bar had been set up and was manned by a bartender, who was retrieving drinks from a fully stocked liquor cabinet behind the bar.

Charles took a seat on one of the barstools and asked for a glass of soda water, pulling a folded newspaper from his briefcase and laying it out in front of him. To his right was a young woman, a Mary Hay look-alike, in a blue embroidered evening dress. He leaned over to speak to her and laid his hand on her arm. Bess sat down on the seat to his left and ordered herself a gin on ice.

It became clear to her immediately that Charles and the woman on his right had just become acquainted. But he had told her his name was Wallace, and she was asking him about his work in the bank. For a moment Bess was alarmed; she wondered if the real Charles Radley was still waiting for her in the lobby somewhere, until it occurred to her that he was very likely making up stories about himself to impress the girl.

After a few minutes the woman in the blue dress stood up. “My friends have arrived,” she said. “Perhaps we can chat more later.”

Charles's shoulders fell. “Oh. Of course.” Bess felt a wave of affection for him. He was not skilled with women.

“Your name isn't really Wallace, is it?” she asked Charles when the woman had left.

He turned to her, alarmed. “Pardon?” She saw a look of recognition cross his face. “Why—you're Bess Houdini, aren't you?”

“I am. But you're not a banker. I know when a man is lying to impress a woman.”

He blinked at her, startled. She looked at his glass. “Why bother coming to a place like this if you're only going to drink water?” She called over the bartender and ordered him a whiskey.

He stared at her. “Do you always order whiskey for men you've just met?” He pushed the glass away. “I don't drink whiskey.”

His candor surprised her. “I'm—I'm sorry.” She was mortified; she had tried too hard to charm him and had ended up coming off as domineering. She may just have ruined the one chance she had to gain his confidence.

Around them, the room was filling up with people. The conversations grew louder, and the smoke thicker.

“My name is actually Charles, not Wallace,” he said, pulling his water glass back toward himself.

She looked down. “I know.”

He sat up straighter. “How do you know?”

“I'm John Thomas Wilson.”

Charles stared at her, confused. “
You're
the one who wrote to me?”

“I'm sorry for the deception. I didn't want there to be any expectations, you see. But I needed to speak with you.” Bess took a long sip of her drink, trying to keep her nerves at bay. “My husband and I used to come here. Many years ago, before he died.”

“But—how do you know who I am? We've never met—have we?”

She shook her head. “I don't think so. But that's what I came here to find out.”

He laughed. “Are you really Bess Houdini? Is this some kind of a joke?”

“It's not, I promise you. I have something very important to discuss with you. I'm here because . . . I believe you may have some kind of information for me. About my husband.”

“About
Harry Houdini
?” Charles looked at her with disbelief. “I don't know what kind of information I could have. The closest I ever got to him was seeing his jump at Young's Pier, when I was a kid.”

Her heart sunk. “So—you don't have anything for me? You never knew him?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, no.” He looked at her pityingly. “I read about what happened to you,” he said gently. “For what it's worth, I believe you were duped.”

“Thank you.” The speed of the music was picking up. She felt she had to find out more about him; surely, there was something of importance there. “Is there somewhere else we could talk that's quieter?”

He shrugged. “We could go over to Doc's Oyster House. They have a good seafood menu.”

“What about your woman in blue?”

Charles looked around the room, locating her on one of the leather sofas between two men, flirtatiously fingering the tiny white buttons at her neckline. His face turned red. “Oh, that was nothing. And it's not every day I get to have dinner with Bess Houdini.”

“It's probably just as well.”

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows.

“She's too pretty to be respectable. That's advice coming from a woman who was never very pretty.”

Charles laughed. “Pretty? What do you need pretty for? You're Mrs. Harry Houdini!” He caught himself. “What I mean is, you've got glamour.”

Bess shook her head. “Everyone with money is glamorous to those who don't have it.”

He frowned. “I was the one who photographed Evelyn Nesbit in a nightclub the night before her husband murdered her lover. It brought me quite a bit of glamour of my own, for a few weeks.”

“You see, being a photographer is far more interesting than being a banker. You should use the truth to impress the ladies instead.”

Charles laughed. “This coming from a woman who met me under false pretenses?”

She turned to see Stella coming through the door. “Oh no.” She stood up. “I have to go. Could you meet me tomorrow? It's imperative that I speak with you about this.” She put on her gloves. “I'll pay for the drinks. I'm sorry I was presumptuous.”

Charles shook his head. He took a paper bill out of his wallet and placed it on the bar, then handed her his card. “You can meet me at the press offices tomorrow, if you'd like. I'm there all day on Saturdays.”

Stella saw her and waved, making her way over to the bar. Bess intercepted her before she could reach Charles. “Hello! I was just on my way out.”

“Is that the estate man? He's very handsome.”

“Yes, yes, he is.” Bess took her elbow. “Shall we go to dinner?”

Outside, the sun had gone down, but the boardwalk blazed with light. It reminded Bess so much of Coney Island, only livelier. She had to keep herself from searching for Harry in the crowd. The boardwalk had changed quite a bit since the first time she had been there with him. Back then, women rarely walked alone; now, there seemed to be more single women out than single men. And the names on the billboards had changed entirely; instead of Old Dutch Cleanser and Bixby's Shu-Wite, Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike advertised on every block.

Stella said, “I heard from a lady in the hotel that we shouldn't expect to see any celebrities while we're here. They never come when it's this hot. They mostly travel to Europe in the summer. All the well-dressed women are the gamblers' mistresses, apparently, and the prostitutes.”

Bess laughed. “I don't care very much for celebrities.”

“Funny, given you are one.”

“You know what?” She turned to Stella. “Let's take dinner in our room tonight.”

“
This,
from Bess Houdini? You've never been home on a Friday night before midnight!” Stella teased. “Is there something the matter? You haven't been yourself lately. Since the Arthur Ford episode.” She hesitated. “You weren't really in love with him, were you?”

“God, no.”

“Then what is it?”

Bess couldn't take her mind off Charles. There
had
to be something she was missing.

She wondered if his father had been someone they had known, or someone Harry had corresponded with—someone in the bookselling or magic field? “I've just had a bad reaction to what I was drinking earlier,” she said. “I think I'll go to bed early.”

Stella took Bess's arm. “Off to the room then, darling. I'm going to take a bath. Would you order me dinner?”

Their suite was on the second floor, on the ocean side; it had two bedrooms and a sitting room in between. The maid had left the windows open so the breeze would cool the room. Bess felt lost; her meeting with Charles had accomplished nothing. She had always been small, but over the years she felt herself growing smaller, shrinking with age, as if Harry's death had been eating away at her, physically, every day. Draping her wrap over the sofa, she listened to the people on the pier and wished she were in Russia again, the gardens blanketed with snow, and men and women roaming about in furs and capes. Harry was there, and in the warmth of the fire they were talking about his performance that evening, during which he had asked all of the guests assembled in the ballroom to write down something impossible they would like to see performed.

“It is my job,” he explained, “to make the impossible possible again.”

The duke selected one of the papers and unfolded it. “You are being asked to ring the bells of the Kremlin,” he said and shook his head sadly. “But those bells haven't rung in a hundred years. They are too old.”

The question, of course, was a plant; Harry went to the window that overlooked Palace Square. He removed his handkerchief from his pocket and waved it out the open window. As he did so, the bells began to ring. The duke could not speak for several minutes; one of the women fainted onto the couch. For his success, Harry had been handsomely rewarded with a purse full of money. They were certain he was some sort of mystic, or the devil himself. Bess, as his wife, received a white Pomeranian whom she named Carla.

The truth was that Harry's assistant, waiting outside, had fired a pistol at the bells. Even though the ropes holding them had rotted away, the sound was accomplished.

Many people had known some of his secrets. Franz, who fired the pistol, knew most of his tricks. Harry's secretary knew of his correspondence. Alfred knew the extent of his expenditures. But only Bess knew everything. Only Bess knew how his mouth twitched when he slept, and how he looked in the middle of the night when he was not Harry Houdini but Ehrich Weiss. Only she knew. There were no children, no children's children, to know his preference for strawberry jam in the mornings; it was always just her.

Now, she felt something pulling her back to the bar where she had left Charles. The only way she would find out whether the photographs were a coincidence or a message was to come clean with him, and tell him everything. If he had any knowledge that would help her, she needed to find it out. She didn't care if he called her a madwoman. She grabbed her purse and went into the sitting room. She could hear Stella running the bath, and she left quietly.

In the bar, everything was as it had been fifteen minutes earlier. The man pouring drinks was whistling; the piano music was going; the woman in blue was sitting on the lap of another man, smoking a cigarette. Bess looked around, but she didn't see Charles. He had gone.

She leaned over the wooden bar and waved to the bartender. “Excuse me,” she called, slightly out of breath. “The man who was sitting here—when did he leave?”

The bartender shrugged. “I don't know. Ten minutes ago, maybe?”

If Charles had been gone that long, it was too late to catch him. She wondered if she should try that restaurant he had mentioned, but she didn't want Stella to come out and find her missing. On top of the varnished wooden bar, the newspaper he had been reading was still there, folded in half. Bess sat down, spent. She had little interest in the news, but she wondered if the story about her séance was still lingering in the press.

Opening the paper, she breathed a sigh of relief. It appeared to be only local news, innocuous at that. The front page carried a dull story about the Atlantic City lighthouse being repaired in time for the regatta. Another photographer—not Charles—had taken the accompanying photograph. The caption beneath it read, “The Absecon Light has only been out once before in its seventy-two-year history, for eighty-five hours from April 1 to April 4, 1925.”