Nevermore (31 page)

After another twenty minutes, the musicians took a break. Houdini pushed back his chair and headed for the bandstand.

“Lord, Babe,” the clarinet player said to the drummer, “you gonna kill somebody in that big red Oldsmobile of yours, ‘specially the way you fill up on rotgut ‘fore you drive. I gotta keep my eye on my baby brother.”

“The Tiger’s safe as they come,” the trombone player said. “He fetches me to work every evening, and gets me there all in one piece.” The others joined with his laughter.

“Excuse me,” interjected the magician from the edge of the dance floor. “Mr. King … ?”

The whole band stopped talking, regarding the stocky white man quizzically. “Mr. King?” laughed the affable young second-cornetist. “That’s you, Papa Joe.”

“How you know that, Dippermouth?” the drummer demanded with a big grin. “Maybe I be Mr. King.”

“King of what? King of talkin’ trash?”

The imposing band leader stepped forward. “I’m Joe Oliver,” he said with quiet dignity. “They call me King.”

“Geronimo…?” Houdini said tentatively.

King Oliver chuckled to himself. “So, it’s you all right.” The musician pulled a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket and handed it to Houdini. “Man said I was to give this to you.”

“What man?” He held the envelope with both hands, as if afraid it might get away.

“Man that gave me fifty dollars. Said a gentleman’d be comin’ in bye-and-bye, don’t matter who. He’d let me know by sayin’ ‘Geronimo,’ and I was to give him the letter and not answer any questions.”

Houdini pulled out his billfold. “I’ve got a hundred here for any information you can give me.”

“Mister, save your money. I can’t tell you a blessed thing more’n I’ve already done. It was a white gentleman. ‘Bout your size, maybe a little shorter. I didn’t pay it no nevermind, as we say down home.”

“Bet you paid plenty mind to that there fifty,” the impudent drummer sassed. All the musicians laughed, King Oliver loudest of all.

The young cornet player stared at the magician, his generous mouth curving into a smile. “Say. I know you,” he said. “You’re the Great Houdini. I saw you escape from a strait jacket once in downtown Saint Louie. I was workin’ the riverboats with Fate Marable.”

“I saw him in that movie,” the drummer enthused. “He was froze-up in a great big ol’ iceberg.”

The magician smiled, nodding in uncomfortable silence. “I am Houdini,” he said at last, backing away. “Always a pleasure … to meet my fans.”

Houdini backed almost to the middle of the empty dance floor before he turned and made a beeline for the exit.

The comely pianist smiled at the boys in the band. “He mailed out the invitations,” she said softly, “but weren’t nobody home.”

The envelope contained a newspaper article torn from a late edition of the Chicago
Tribune.
Four inches on the closing of the historic Majestic Theater, the old vaude house to be converted into a motion picture palace. “I had no choice,” the story quoted owner Izzy Finkleman. “Better I should knock it down and open a parking lot?” The address was Sixty-fifth and Cottage Grove.

A lonely survivor from the era of Booth, Drew, and Minnie Maddern Fiske, the Majestic had seen better days, her soot-darkened Moorish details frosted with pigeon droppings like a widow in the snow. Houdini had the cab driver drop him half a block down from the abandoned theater in a dark, deserted neighborhood. No surprise that Mr. Finkleman’s box office reciepts had fallen off. The magician walked along the opposite side of the street, keeping in shadow close to the buildings.

Concealed in the darkened entrance of a boarded-up hardware store, Houdini surveyed the surroundings. A narrow, graveled alley ran along the back side of the old theater. No automobiles parked within a block of the building. Traffic on Cottage Grove remained sparse. After waiting fifteen uneventful minutes, the magician crossed the street and ducked into the alley.

He found the stage door sealed tight with a padlock completely familiar to him. Inserting a simple pick formed from a bent piece of wire, the magician bypassed the wards inside. He felt the bolt shoot free and the lock popped open.

Silently, Houdini eased the stage door ajar, confronting an ominous damp darkness foreboding as the interior of a mausoleum on a moonless night. His every instinct warned of inherent danger, but a lifetime of risk-taking inured him to apprehension and he stepped inside without further thought, pressing his back to the wall beside the open door.

Houdini groped for a light switch. Finding none, he stood motionless, listening to the even beat of his heart. A faint illumination from the alley glowed in the doorway beside him and as his eyes gradually became accustomed to the greater dark within, he made out a black line dividing the shadows above his head. He reached up to grasp a grimy cord and hanging glass bulb. Houdini pulled the short chain. Sudden glare made him squint.

It looked no different from a thousand other stage entrances framing his life over the years: bare brick walls, utilitarian iron-pipe railings on the stairs, a list of management rules (KEEP IT CLEAN) pinned to a call board near the door. Houdini stood very still, studying his surroundings. His footprints marked a scuffed trail through the dust gently powdering the forgotten premises like the ashes of memory. He saw at a glance no one else had entered this way in a very long time.

Houdini closed the door and drew the dead bolt, remembering a prankster who’d locked him in a hotel lobby telephone closet. He never went in one afterwards without wedging his’ foot in the doorway. The light from the single dangling bulb carried past the dressing room stairs, revealing a portion of bare stage under the flies. A control box hung above the rows of dimmer-switches along the far wall. The magician considered his next move.

Other than his penknife and a couple simple lock-picks, Houdini carried no tools. He didn’t consider the implications of being unarmed. Over the years, confronting difficult jail-house challenges, the magician had made a habit of concealing vital implements on his person; the lock-pick and other tiny devices in his mop of wiry hair, a thin strip of spring steel inserted into the callus on his heel. Once, he hid all his tools in a tiny blue serge sack, which he hooked to the back of the warden’s suit collar before being strip-searched, and then deftly plucked free as he was led naked to the waiting cell.

Houdini wrapped one of his lock-picks in a torn corner of a pocket handkerchief and swallowed it. Retroperistalsis gripped the little bundle halfway down his throat. Feeling it there provided a sense of security. He walked cautiously to the dimmers. The magician opened the control box and threw a master switch, turning on the worklights overhead. A second master lit up the house.

Houdini glanced above at the dust-festooned gridiron in the empty flies: ropes, sandbags, and pulley systems long gone. The stage yawned wide and open with the tormentors and teasers removed. Only a memory of the curtain remained in the stark, open proscenium. Some sort of scaffolding stood center stage. Houdini ignored it, looking out at row after row of dusty seats. A man stared back at him from the center of the house.

The magician froze, locking into the stranger’s unblinking gaze. There was something vaguely familiar about the old-fashioned clothing and nineteenth-century hair styling; the abrupt mustache. Houdini shuddered. The man’s makeup and costume made him resemble Edgar Allan Poe.

The man didn’t move. He never blinked. The magician left the stage, finding a set of stairs leading to an exit under the box seats. The man dressed like Poe hadn’t moved a muscle. He stared straight ahead like someone in a trance.

Houdini walked between the seats one row in front of the immobile stranger. “I got your poem,” he said as he approached. “What’s with the scavenger hunt?”

The magician received no reply and saw immediately why. It wasn’t a man at all, but a plaster department store dummy togged-out in antebellum clothing and folded stiffly into the theater seat. From up close, the figure looked nothing at all like Poe, but the effect had been very convincing at a distance. A small cardboard sign rested on the mannequin’s lap. A single word crayoned upon it. NEVERMORE.

The lights went out. Houdini spun around. Too dark on stage to see who had thrown the master switches. The magician strained to hear if anyone approached along the curving rows of seats. His body tensed, awaiting attack.

It came from behind, where he least expected trouble. An acrobatic assailant leaped onto his back, pulling a hood down over his head. Chloroform! Nauseating. Chemical. Overwhelming. Houdini grabbed hold of his attacker, who broke instantly free, jumping away from the magician.

Pulling at the confining hood, Houdini found it tightly buckled in back. The fastenings locked together in some unfamiliar mechanical manner. As the anesthesia rapidly overwhelmed his senses, he groped in his pocket for the penknife, pulling open the single, razor-sharp blade. Houdini willed himself to remain alert. Slicing through the restraining straps, he never stopped working until his knees buckled under him and he collapsed into unconsciousness.

Swimming up from dark, cold depths through the vortex of a powerful whirlpool, Houdini opened his eyes and the world continued to spin, a sickening multicolored blur making his stomach lurch. Attempting to sit, he found himself restrained. He lay flat on his back, arms outspread like a man on a cross, each wrist manacled to the floor, his tethered legs bound together at the ankles. He was stark naked, pinioned on the stage beneath the scaffolding he’d observed earlier.

A strange hooded figure stood on the apron, watching him. The long flowing garment and tall conical hood put the magician immediately in mind of the Ku Klux Klan. Was he the prisoner of racist bigots? On second thought, the sinister garb possessed a stiff formality not usually associated with the hasty bed-sheet habits of night riders. Houdini recognized the traditional robe of the Grand Inquisitor. Just such an anonymous official once condemned heretics to the
auto-da-fè.

“Awake at last,” the Inquisitor said. “I feared you might well sleep through the whole show. Certainly a pity, missing all the action.” Houdini found the clipped, lilting voice very familiar. The hooded figure swept toward him across the empty stage. “If I may allow myself a self-congratulatory pat on the back, it was a most excellent trap, and how eagerly you took the bait.”

Houdini stared up at the Inquisitor, desperate to control his rising gorge.

The nonstop boasting continued, acidic with scorn. “I’m most proud of the dust by the stage door. Didn’t you find it convincing? I used face powder, an ironic theatrical touch, of which I’m quite fond. Ditto, the misdirection of the lights. I convinced you the source was on stage. When I switched everything off, you incorrectly assumed the threat came from the front of the house and most obligingly turned your back to the real danger.”

The magician contained a volcanic rage. He didn’t like playing the fool. Having his nose rubbed in his own foolishness angered him all the more. Stifling the impulse to curse and shout, he grinned through gritted teeth. No percentage in revealing his emotional state to the enemy. Houdini composed his features, although he feared his blazing eyes gave him away.

“You’re strangely silent, Harry,” the Inquisitor said. “It’s not like you.”

Who was this bastard with his easy familiarity, Houdini wondered. Where had he heard that peculiar accent before? The voice sounded definitely masculine. Sir Arthur had guessed wrong. The killer was not a woman.

“I trust you’ve been keeping up on your Poe…?” The hooded assassin swirled beneath the framework of joined pipes. “I saved the very best especially for you.”

Houdini’s gaze followed the Inquisitor’s uplifted, pointing finger, noting a hairy, muscled forearm when the robe’s capacious sleeve fell back. Fifteen feet above his head, he observed a curious mechanism mounted to the top of the scaffolding: an eccentric collection of cogs and gears resembling the innards of a huge clock. In place of a pendulum, a curved, weighted blade hung motionless like the guillotine’s infernal knife. A keen razor edge caught the light in a sinister glitter.

“Clever device.” The Inquisitor chuckled smugly. “A rachet lowers the pendulum one-quarter inch at every swing. Tested it out on a stray dog yesterday. Most effective. The canine’s body did not impede the oscillation of the blade in the slightest. Just like slicing luncheon meat. Beast kept on howling until his backbone severed… . Will you howl for me, Harry?”

“Fuck you!” The magician spat the forbidden phrase, the first time in his life he had ever voiced so distasteful a profanity.

“Righty-o… . Glad the cat hasn’t got your tongue. I’m so looking forward to hearing you beg for mercy.”

“Lemme up and we’ll see who does the begging,” Houdini snarled.

“Still have some fight left? That’s good. Very good… . I trust you’ll put on an excellent show; one of your masterful escape attempts …”The Inquisitor produced Houdini’s penknife and the extra lock-pick from under the folds of his robe. “Of course, this time you’ll have to do so without the aid of these. While you slept like a baby, I took the liberty of conducting a thorough search.”

The magician glanced away, spotting his clothing in a discarded bundle several yards off. No help there.

“You should have a word with your tailor,” the Inquisitor said, leaning against the scaffold’s framework. “Such shoddy workmanship… .Afraid I took some liberties with the Poe narrative. As you must recall, his unfortunate hero remains tied for days under the knife. I simply don’t have that kind of time at my disposal.”

The Inquisitor pulled a cord hanging from the mechanism above. The whir and clank of an escapement and regulator set in motion started the pendulum swinging with a steady sweep. “About two seconds for each complete arc. At that rate, the blade should strike the floor in no more than twenty minutes. Perfect length for a headline act.”

“Enjoy the show.” Houdini made it sound like a threat.

“Oh, believe me, I plan on doing just that. Your last performance. I do hope the great escapologist won’t disappoint.”