Now You See It (7 page)

“Wrong!” Max shouted back.

“Well, set me straight, O Great and Glorious Delacorte,” Harry derided.

Max had to smile at Harry’s words. “That, I fear, would take an act of God,” he said.

Harry made a contemptuous sound and started for the desk. Max moved to block his way—with an energy unexpected by me as well as by Harry. “Listen to me!” he said.

Harry looked at him suspiciously but wouldn’t stop to listen; he started to move by Max, who clamped a hand on his arm with a grip so strong it made Harry wince.
“Listen to me, I said,”
Max told him.

“I thought you were sick,”
Harry said.

“That is the effect I have created, yes,” Max responded. (My attention, now, was
really
caught.)

Harry’s eyes had narrowed.
“What?”
he said.

“Here is the reality,” Max went on, pointing at Harry. “I have no intention of degenerating with the marketplace. I will not ‘do’ downtown Vegas, playing a buffoon in a breakaway tuxedo while surrounding chorus girls display their silicone-enhanced protuberances.

“Neither will I ‘do’ moronic kiddie shows on television. I will not create and market magic kits for second-graders. I will not perform at fairs or conventions or the openings of supermarkets. I will not ‘do’ witless commercials.

“In brief, I will not despoil an act which I have nurtured carefully for fourteen years—which my
father
nurtured for
fifty
years. Failing eyesight, hearing on the wane, dexterity declining, I am still The Great Delacorte
and I will not dishonor that most honorable of names!”

I felt a double-edged reaction in my vitals.

On the one hand, I felt utter agony that Max had been confronted by such humiliating offers.

On the other hand, I felt utter pride in his response to them, more pride than I had ever felt for him before.

Harry, needless to say, felt neither emotion—if he felt emotion at all, which I doubt. He gazed at Max with a baleful
expression.
“Sorry,”
he said. “I thought you needed money. My mistake.”

He started by Max, who grabbed his arm again, restraining him.

“If I wanted money,” Max informed him, “I’d sell my blood. My
soul
is not for sale.”

Bravo, Sonny! If only I could have shouted it aloud.

Harry regarded Max with cold amusement. “Big words, my friend,” he said.

Pulling loose, he walked around Max and headed for the desk again.

“True
words,” Max told him. “And you are certainly not my friend. Not anymore.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” said Harry.

Reaching the desk, he picked up the telephone and punched out a number, placing the receiver to his ear.

Max followed him. Among the items on his desk was a long Arabian dagger in an ivory sheath. Max picked it up.

“Do you have any notion whatsoever how demanding it can be to function as a stage illusionist?” he asked.

Harry ignored him but I paid close attention, feeling a warmth of nostalgic pleasure. These were words I’d spoken to Max many times in the past.

Harry spoke into the mouthpiece. “This is Kendal,” he said. “Put Linda on.”

“A skilled illusionist must also be a skilled actor,” Max continued.

“Linda? Harry,” he told his secretary. “Call Resnick and tell him that I’m on my way back to Boston; I’ll probably be late.”

“The actor makes us look at something, the magician makes us
not
look,” Max told him at the same time.

“Yeah, right; okay,” Harry said into the telephone. “Call him now.”

He put down the receiver and gazed apathetically at Max, who was saying, “Two sides of the same coin. The illusion of reality versus the reality of illusion. The magic of drama versus the drama of magic.” (He remembered every word, bless him.)

Harry’s cheeks puffed out as he exhaled, a look of boredom on his face. He started back toward the chair on which his attaché case was lying.

“Do you know how I became The Great Delacorte?” Max asked, following again. Harry didn’t even look at him. “I wasn’t
born
The Great Delacorte, you know,” Max continued. “I had to work to perfect the character. Just as my father had to—”

“Well, it’s the
wrong character
, old boy!” Harry cut him off, pointing an accusing finger at him. “That highfalutin’ bullshit may have been hot stuff when Roosevelt was in the White House, but it doesn’t sell a nickel’s worth today! You need something
different
now! Something—”

He broke off in disgust and moved to the chair. “You don’t want to listen to advice. You know it all,” he said.

Picking up his attaché case, he opened it and searched inside.

“Sit down, Harry,” Max told him.

“I don’t have
time
to sit down,
pal,”
said Harry, his face distorted by animosity, then by fury. “Where in the fucking hell is the fucking number of that fucking cab company?” he raged.

“Sit down
, Harry,” Max repeated.

“I don’t have time—”

His voice stopped as he heard the (chilling) sound of the dagger blade being snatched from its sheath.

Heavy silence. Harry stared at Max incredulously. (So did I.)

“Are you
threatening
me?” Harry finally asked.

Max did not reply. The dagger, pointed upward in his right hand, lowered.

Thinking he had won the point, Harry checked his gold-banded Rolex. “All right,” he said. “You have five minutes, and get rid of that fucking knife.”

“Dagger,” Max corrected.

And he jerked his right arm up as though to hurl it straight at Harry’s chest.

Hey!” cried Harry, alarmed and angry at the same time.

Several moments more of threat, Max’s gray-blue eyes unblinking as he looked at Harry.

“Hey!” said Harry again, thoroughly intimidated.

Max stared at him.

Then, turning, he hurled the dagger at the lobby display. Harry (and I, it felt like) jolted as the blade pierced the figure of The Great Delacorte.

“How appropriate,” Max observed. “Right through the heart.”

A rumble of distant thunder made Harry shudder—as though the gods had just declared their displeasure.

Max and Harry stared at one another. Finally, Harry found his (labored) voice. “You’re crazy, Max,” he said. “You know that?”

“There
is
that possibility,” Max answered calmly. “Madness is afoot in this house. Don’t you feel it?” I saw that his smile was unnerving to Harry. “The very air tingles with it.”

He was right; it did.

Max turned abruptly for the fireplace. “And now,” he said, “sit down.”

“Max, I have to
go,”
said Harry. His tone was not aggressive anymore, but mollifying.

Moving swiftly, Max took down the pair of dueling pistols, put one on the desk and, carrying the other, returned to Harry, who watched him in uneasy silence. “What are you doing?” Harry murmured.

Max cupped his right hand behind his ear. “Pardon?”

“What are you doing?”
Harry repeated.

“I loaded them this morning,” Max replied, his answer an apparent non sequitur.

“What?” asked Harry.

“I said—”

“I heard what you said,” Harry interrupted. “What do you mean, you
loaded
them?”

Max extended the pistol with his right hand, pointing it at Harry’s heart. “I loaded them for use,” he said. “Now will you kindly sit down?”

“You can’t be serious about this,” Harry protested. But neither he nor I had any doubt regarding Max’s seriousness.

Which was proven as Max extended his arm all the way, the dark eye of the barrel quite close to Harry’s chest now.

With a swallow dry enough for me to hear across the room, Harry sat down in the chair, placing his hat and attaché case back on the table.

“Do you really want your father here?” he asked, his tone weak.

“Oh, yes, definitely,” Max replied. “I want him to hear it all. I only hope to God that, somewhere in his brain, he’s capable of understanding and appreciating what I’m doing.”

Oh, Sonny, Sonny, yes I am
. My brain the only part of me that really functioned then.

“Look, I don’t know what the hell you
are
doing here,” said Harry nervously, “but let’s not be impulsive. Let’s talk about this. I think you need help, pal.”

“The kind of help I got in Chicago?” Max asked softly.

Harry’s face went blank.

“The kind of help I got in Des Moines?” asked Max. “In New Orleans? In Tampa?”

“What are you—”

“It took a little research on the last three,” Max cut him off. “But Chicago dropped right on me in the middle of an afternoon this May. A phone call from a Mr. Charlie Haines—”

“Wait a second,” Harry said.

“—inquiring why you’d turned down his generous offer; was I
sick
or something?” Max was glaring at Harry now, the pistol aimed at his head.
This is
true? I thought.

“Max, put that down,” said Harry, trying in vain to sound authoritative.

“Is that the kind of help I need?”
asked Max.

“Max, I only did it to
help,”
Harry said. My
God, it
is
true
, I thought.

“Curious help—
pal,”
responded Max. “Rejecting four well-paying engagements without consulting me.”

“All right, I was wrong—”

His voice broke into a gasp of horror as Max abruptly jammed the barrel against his forehead. “Yes, indeed you were,” said Max. “The question is, old friend …
why?”

Harry tried to take in breath. He wasn’t too successful at it, and his voice wheezed as he replied, “Is the answer worth killing me for?”

Max said, “Absolutely.”

With his left hand, he drew back the pistol hammer.

Harry hissed, completely terrified, and closed his eyes, his face a mask entitled
Total Dread
.

When nothing happened, he opened his eyes and peered
up at my son, who towered over him, looking down with godlike disdain.

Words tumbled from Harry’s mouth as he said, “I thought it would make you realize sooner that you needed help, real help. I wasn’t trying to hurt you!”

He positively whined as Max pressed the barrel end tighter against his forehead.
Good
, I thought.

“Is that why you let that man look through my devices while I was on stage that night in Philadelphia?” Max asked.

“What?”
asked Harry.
What?
asked my mind.

Harry groaned as Max pushed the pistol even harder against his skull.

“All right, all right,” said Harry, his voice thin and shaking. “I was trying to get you some
money.”

“By letting that man steal my magic?”
said Max.
Oh, blow his goddam brains out, Sonny!
I thought.

Harry’s lips were trembling. Swallowing again, he managed, “Nothing happened, Max.”

“Nothing happened because it’s not that easy to steal Delacorte magic.” (I’d seen to that.) His voice grew hard. “But you were going to take a crack at it, weren’t you?”

His finger tightened on the trigger. Harry whimpered, his eyes shutting once again.
“Dear God,”
he whispered.

Well, maybe this is not too good an idea after all
, I thought.

Nothing happened.

Harry opened his eyes a crack to peer up at Max.

He reacted. I reacted.

Max was smiling.

“How tempting,” he said, “to pull the trigger and observe your brains go flying. Every black, dismal shred of them.”

Another sound of dread from Harry, followed by a sound of scoffing from my son.

“Everyone talks about how tough you are,” he said. “Toughest agent in the business, Harry Kendal. Made of tempered steel.”

He snickered. “Made of
cottage cheese,”
he said. “Tough at selling clients down the river, yes. At life, however—?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “—a total wimp.”

He turned and walked away, headed toward the desk. I must admit I felt a great relief. Whatever Harry had done—and it must have been a lot—I didn’t want to see my son a murderer.

Obviously, he didn’t want it either.

“What a blithering idiot you are,” he said, tossing the pistol onto the desk. “To even think that a man of my degree would be capable of such barbaric murder. And in front of my
father!”
His words shamed my original urge that he do just that.

Harry watched him blankly, wondering what Max was planning next. I confess that I wondered, too.

The answer was immediate in coming as my son pulled out the top middle drawer of the desk and removed a vial.

Holding it up for Harry to see, he set it down and lifted the silver thermos decanter, pulled off its top and poured water into a glass. Putting down the decanter, he unscrewed the cover from the vial and shook four red capsules into his palms.
Oh, now what, Sonny?
I thought uneasily.

Max tossed the capsules into his mouth and, with the water, swallowed them.

“There,” he said, “that should do it. Give me five minutes. Maybe ten.”