Nevermore

by William Hjortsberg

  “Mr. Houdini has a genius for hyperbole.”

  “He knows how to blow his own horn, that’s for sure. Not very often he plays a fanfare for anyone else.”

  “I take it then I should be complimented by his enthusiasm?”

  “Taking it at face value would be your best bet. That way you won’t notice when he bad-mouths you.”

  “Sorry. I don’t follow.” Sir Arthur’s puzzled expression appeared almost comical.

  “All the noise in the papers last week?” Damon Runyon stubbed out his cigarette. “Guess you didn’t see Houdini’s comments on spiritualism.”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “Not surprising, since your manager keeps such a tight rein on what you get to read.”

  Sir Arthur sat ramrod straight, fixing the newspaperman with a look of stern outrage. “I trust you won’t spare me the bad news, as you seem so keen on rubbing my nose in it.”

  Damon Runyon laughed, his mirthless chuckle like the lonely bark of a stray dog. “Only thing wrong with your nose,” he said, “is how far out of joint you let it go. Me…? I‘ve got a nose for news. Now, when Houdini says the creator of Sherlock Holmes is going to play detective and track down a killer who imitates Poe, that’s news. And when a bunch of citizens take to committing suicide after they hear Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lecture on spiritualism … well, that’s news, too. And sometimes, the news is bad news.”

  The knight relaxed his stiff attitude somewhat, the grim frown easing into a neutral expression. “You’ll have to forgive me. Although I’m often impatient with the inventions of the press, I’d very much appreciate hearing what Houdini had to say about me in print.”

  “Well, the story ran in the Sun sometime last week. As I recall, it concerned a séance you arranged for him in Atlantic City. Something about automatic writing and a letter your wife supposedly received from his dead mother …”

  “Yes? Go on, please.”

  Damon Runyon lit another Sweet Cap. “Houdini claims the letter is a phony. Said your wife puts a cross up at the top, something his ma would never do. Said the letter is in English, a language the old lady didn’t write and barely spoke. Said, to put it bluntly, that you and your wife are well-meaning dupes.”

  “Did he, indeed?” Sir Arthur bristled with ill-concealed indignation.

  The reporter leaned forward in a confidential manner. “Always interested in hearing your side of the story.”

  “It hardly qualifies as news, but I will say this: the séance was held at Houdini’s express request. I know the purity of my wife’s mediumship and saw what the effect was upon him at the time. As for the cross at the top, my wife puts it above the first page of all she writes, as a protection against lower influences.”

  “What about the difference in language?”

  “There really is nothing in that. Only a trance medium gets unknown tongues. Any trance or half-trance medium might get the Hebrew through. I don’t think a normal automatic writer ever would. It would always come as a rush of thought, as was the case in this instance.”

  “Do you think Houdini is cashing in on your celebrity?” The reporter exhaled twin plumes of smoke through his nose. “As a way of hyping his self-declared war on spiritualism, I mean?”

  “I cannot speak for his motives, but such behavior must of necessity put a strain upon our friendship.”

  “Are you quits with Houdini then?”

  Sir Arthur folded his massive hands on the tabletop in an attitude of prayer. He sighed and shook his head. “Friends must be permitted their differences,” he said. “Besides, we are immutably linked by certain unfinished business.”

  “What business is that?”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss the details at this time.”

  “Must be some kind of big deal.”

  “The very biggest, I assure you.”

  16

  AND IF I DIE

  JIM VICKERY WOKE UP in the pitch dark, his nostrils alive with the sour smell of vomit. A lingering chemical stench revived his nausea and he gagged back the rising bile. The caustic medicinal odor reminded him of the time a veterinarian put down his son’s collie after a neighbor boy playing Geronimo in the backyard shot an arrow through its lungs. He inhaled the last sickening traces of chloroform. The smell was not something Jim Vickery could associate with a name.

  He felt warm and comfortable. Soft satin-smooth cushions enfolded him in a secure, womblike embrace. None of this made him feel any less sick. His temples throbbed with migraine intensity. He wondered where he was and who had put him to bed.

  Starting to sit up, Jim Vickery bumped his head into a padded barrier above. What the hell? He pressed his hands out to his sides in the darkness, feeling the abrupt dimensions of the quilted enclosure surrounding him. With a dizzying rash of horror, he realized he was shut inside the expensive bronze casket the Boss had bought for his underwater stunt.

  Vickery lay very still, trying to piece together the fragmented puzzle of the recent past. He had been working in the shop with Collins and a couple of the other guys, repairing equipment in preparation for the upcoming summer tour. When everybody knocked off for the day around six o’clock, he was still having trouble with a cranky safety valve on the Chinese Water Torture Cell, the trick Houdini’s crew always called the “Upside Down.” He told Collins he’d work out the problem and lock up later. After a bit of teasing about him being a slave drudge, the boys left him alone in the shop.

  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, he had the valve operating smoothly and figured he’d truly earned the quart of cool home-brewed beer waiting in the cellar of his semidetached house in Riverdale. Turning off the lights, he heard a strange noise coming from the storeroom. It sounded like a stray cat might’ve gotten inside and knocked something off a shelf. He went back to investigate.

  The storeroom was actually bigger than the shop floor. All the props and magical apparatus used in the show were housed there, along with equipment Houdini had purchased from other magicians. The collection included such treasures as “Psycho,” Harry Kellar’s famed automaton; Robert-Houdini’s invention, “The Crystal Casket”; the original cabinet used by the Davenport Brothers; Bautier de Kolta’s final creation, “The Expanding Cube”; and many other classic illusions. Most of the equipment was crated and ready for transport. The baroque bronze coffin from the Biltmore Hotel swimming pool rested on a pair of sawhorses near the back wall.

  Nothing seemed amiss. All the inventory stood in place, neatly stacked. Vickery took a second look around, just to double-check. On his way out, someone jumped him from behind. Someone small and very strong clung to his back like a demon, forcing a kind of mask over his face. A wad of cotton wool inside was saturated with chloroform. The nauseating medicinal fumes overwhelmed him. Vickery collapsed without a struggle, plummeting into vertiginous darkness.

  And he returned to consciousness sealed inside a coffin. It must be a prank, some kind of joke the fellows were playing on him. Not terribly funny. He wondered which of the blokes was in on it. The new guys probably, led by Enrico whatsizname, the disgruntled Cuban who always chaffed under authority. He’d show them who was boss. “All right, you bastards!” he hollered. “Fun’s over! Lemme out of here!”

  Jim Vickery strained to make out some slight sound in the soul-numbing silence. “Goddamnit!” he yelled. “I’ll kill you bastards! Open it up!”

  The ensuing quiet presaged the tomb. This thought didn’t trouble Jim Vickery. He didn’t think about death yet. He thought about getting even. Kicking the ass of the sonofabitch who pulled this stupid prank. “Fuck you, shitheads! It’s not funny anymore!”

  The plush padding muffled his screams, blunting the sound even on the inside. He wondered why they bothered putting cushions in coffins. Surely not for the comfort of the dead. He screamed again, a wild animal cry he punctuated by furiously kicking his feet.

  This last outburst had a calming effect on Jim Vickery. An ironic notion made him smile. Perh
aps caskets came with cushions to silence any protest from a corpse who might change his mind. He lay very still, chilled by his bitter mirth. It took no great leap of the imagination to picture himself a corpse laid out within the sumptuous satin. What if the pranksters left him sealed for too long in the casket? What if they’d gone out to drink at some local blind pig and got so ossified they forgot all about him?

  Jim Vickery struggled to remember the tests they’d made over a month ago. He recalled the coffin contained a volume of air sufficient to sustain life for more than four hours. And the Boss remained underwater at the Biltmore at least two. He felt some reassurance in this knowledge. But, he would have to remain very still. Immobility was the trick. In order to conserve every precious lungful, he must concentrate on not moving a muscle.

  Lying rigid in the dark, Jim Vickery wondered how much time he had left. He had no idea how long he’d been enclosed unconscious in the casket and thus had no way to determine how much of his limited oxygen supply he might already have breathed. And his violent struggling a few moments ago, what percentage of the available air did that futile exercise consume? An icy panic gripped his abdomen. He might have less than an hour. If those bastards were out drinking, an hour could go by in no time at all.

  What a stupid way to die, he thought. Not that it mattered once you were dead whether you’d fallen leading a bayonet charge across no man’s land or merely choked on a gluttonous unchewed mouthful of rare prime rib. Dead was dead, a condition equal for heroes, martyrs, cowards, and fools. What mattered was dying and how you went about it.

  Jim Vickery tinged his self-pity with bitterness. He didn’t want to die like this, suffocating in a prop shop coffin because a prank backfired. Where was the dignity, the nobility? He imagined being condemned and making a brave speech to the crowd gathered at the foot of the scaffold. Or, a different sort of death sentence, the kind delivered by a doctor, allowing courage in the face of pain and gradual deterioration. Sealed inside this damned bronze box without a soul to witness his final heroic behavior or acknowledge his ultimate suffering seemed to Jim Vickery the supreme insult, an end rendering his entire life devoid of meaning.

  “Vickery …” A high fluting voice whispered outside the casket. “Can you hear me…?”

  “Enrico? Is that you, you bastard?”

  The mysterious voice hissed inches from his ear. “Tell me how the Milk Can works?”

  No way it could be the Cuban. The voice was all wrong. Way too high, like a woman’s. “Are you crazy?” Vickery shouted. “Let me out of here!”

  “First, the Milk Can. What’s the gag?”

  It had to be the guys having fun with him. The milk can was advertised in the Mysto Magic catalog. Pricey at $35 a pop but no big secret.

  “Tell me!”

  “Okay. Save yourself a week’s pay.” Someone was teasing him. “The whole top half lifts off from inside… . Satisfied…? The rivets on top are dummies.”

  “What about the Chinese Water Torture?”

  Vickery concentrated on the strange voice. He just couldn’t place it. Where had he heard that feminine accent before?

  “You want to get out?” The voice had a lethal edge. “Tell me about the Water Torture.”

  Jim Vickery tempered his anger, confident the casket was not airtight. He had himself drilled the hole for the alarm bell and telephone line. The high, piping voice came through so clearly he knew it wasn’t plugged. He felt an enormous relief. No chance of asphyxiation. Vickery laughed out loud. “The stocks holding the feet are rigged,” he chuckled. “When the bolt is thrown to lock them, the mechanism actually opens.”

  “What else…?”

  “There’s a safety valve down at the bottom. If something goes wrong, the Boss opens it and lets the water out. Now, how about you letting me out…?”

  “After you tell me what I need to know.”

  For the best part of the next hour, the funny-sounding voice questioned Vickery about Houdini’s secrets, asking for details of the disappearing elephant illusion and the glass box escape. The Englishman answered every query patiently, bargaining for his freedom with conciliation. The give-and-take reassured him. He felt an odd rapport with his tormentor.

  “Hey,” Vickery called, after several moments passed without a question. “Learned all you need…?”

  His only answer was continued quiet. “I told you what you wanted to know,” he shouted, “so get me the hell out of here!”

  Silence enclosed him like a preview of eternity. His anger returned in full volcanic intensity. He raged inside the casket, roaring at the top of his lungs in a single sustained wordless protest like some wild jungle beast giving voice to an ancient wrath. Insane with fury, he beat his fists against the coffin lid and kicked his feet in stiff-legged frenzy.

  The violence of his renewed outburst set the ornate coffin swaying upon the paired sawhorses, a precarious perch at best. The sudden motion upset a delicate equilibrium. Wobbly wooden legs proved insufficient for the task of supporting such weight. The sawhorses shifted and slid, causing the casket to topple. It fell to the floor on its side with a loud crash.

  Jarred from the force of the impact, Vickery pushed against the stubborn lid. Well beyond reason now, shouting and kicking, cursing furiously, he tore at the padded satin lining like a savage animal, ripping through the cloth with his nails until his fingers raked against solid metal.

  If anger and blind hatred had been enough to sustain him, he might well have clawed his way to freedom, for he kept at it until his fingertips were torn and bloody, stopping only when the flesh rubbed away to the bone.

  17

  THE MILLION THINGS SHE GAVE ME

  HARRY HOUDINI LAY SOBBING on his mother’s bed. Curled like a fetus, he clutched her framed photograph to his breast, the wrinkled brocade bedspread beneath him darkly splotched with tear stains. If they cared to listen, the servants in the kitchen downstairs could hear the pathetic strangled groans lamenting through the spacious house on 113th Street. The staff had been instructed earlier not to receive any callers.

  The magician’s wife had gone out for the day with three girlhood friends from Brooklyn. These middle-aged matrons had known her since way back when she was a soubrette appearing as one of the Floral Sisters, a Coney Island song-and-dance act. Whenever they wanted to tease, her friends called her not Bessie, nor Beatrice, but Wilhelmina, the actual given name she had abandoned so long ago. They determined this to be a Wilhelmina day, a carefree time of laughter and teasing. First, a morning spent shopping, then lunch at Child’s, followed by a matinee. Harry’s recent grim mood, him brooding around the house for weeks with a scowl on his face, made it a pleasure for her to be out from under the prevailing gloom.

  Bess remained in the dark as to the true nature of her husband’s despair. Unlike all of life’s other problems that he discussed so freely with her, he told her nothing about his current troubles. Only in the shadows of his mother’s candlelit third-floor bedroom could Houdini find any solace. Spending time alone there was not unusual and at first he made no excuse for sneaking off to rest his head on the pillow beside Cecilia Weiss’s photograph. His secret shame felt so enormous, rotting within him like a cancer. The sessions in his mother’s room became more and more frequent, until he found himself pretending to work on research in his crowded study, only to close the door and tiptoe back down the hall to Mama’s bedchamber.

  “I’ve sinned… . I’ve sinned… . I’ve sinned … ,” the magician sobbed, clasping the photo-studio portrait to his heart. “I’m a bad boy, Mama.’ … A bad, bad boy …” Houdini lay blubbering on the narrow bed in his private confessional, desperate to cleanse his troubled soul of guilt.

  “Mr. Houdini…? Excuse me, sir.” Lee, the houseboy, stood shyly in the open doorway.

  The magician peered up from the shadow-cloaked bed.

  “What is it?” he barked hoarsely. “Whaddya want now?”

  “So sorry to disturb. A gentleman downstairs w
ishes to see you.”

  “Darn it all, Lee. I told you no visitors.”

  “Yes, sir, I know, but—”

  “I don’t care who it is. No means no! Not even President Harding is welcome here today.”

  “No president, Mr. Houdini. It is a policeman.”

  “What?” Houdini sat on the edge of his mother’s bed. “What in Sam Hill does he want?”

  “He says very important to talk to you. He is a lieutenant, sir.” The young man in the white housecoat looked shyly down at the floor.

  Houdini forced a grim smile onto his face. “A lieutenant, you say, Lee?” He walked unsteadily out of the darkened room. “I guess that means he’s not here about some parking violation.”

  Lt. Frederick Bremmer stood in the downstairs front parlor engrossed in a large eighteenth-century engraving of a mountebank performing the cups and balls. “Lieutenant…?” Ever the showman, Houdini put aside his melancholy and bounded energetically into the room.

  The two men shook hands. The detective, who prided himself on his strength, marveled at the power of the magician’s grip. “Fred Bremmer, homicide,” he announced, rasping like a cupful of gravel in a coffee grinder. “Been a fan of .yours for years, Mr. Houdini, since I was a rookie. Remember the time you escaped from the Tombs back in ‘ought-six. There’re plenty of jailbirds wish they knew how you pulled off that trick.”

  “Too bad you weren’t around six years later. Could’ve used a fan on the force then.”

  “Yeah? What was the problem?”

  “Oh, I had an underwater packing case escape planned to publicize my opening at Hammerstein’s Roof Garden. I’d done bridge jumps and jailbreaks before, but this was to be a first. The stunt was set for a pier on the East River. We were just setting up when a bunch of New York’s finest roared in like the Keystone Kops and shut me down. Had to hire a tug to haul me out into the harbor where the long arm of the law don’t reach.”

  Bremmer chuckled. “I remember that all right. You carried a pack of reporters along for the ride, so I guess you got plenty of press out of it.”