by David Khalaf
CHAPTER TWELVE
GRAUMAN’S EGYPTIAN THEATRE was built like a pharaoh’s temple, with sand-colored blocks of thick concrete jutting upward from the sidewalk. It was as if a sandstorm had swept up a Middle Eastern citadel and plopped it onto the heart of Hollywood Boulevard. Two towering obelisks flanked the grand entrance, each capped with the head of an Egyptian deity.
Houdini had been around enough mystics and spiritualists to recognize the sandstone busts. The one with the head of a dog was Anubis, the god of the afterlife. The other, with the head of a crocodile, was Sobek, the god of fertility and power. Death and birth. Birth and death.
The grand entrance led to a small courtyard, reminiscent of an ancient public square. The theater itself, as if an afterthought, was at the back of the courtyard.
From the rooftop across the street, Houdini closed his hand into a loose fist and looked through the tiny hole it made. Without the passing automobiles, the crowd of spectators, or the giant neon sign blinking “GRAUMAN’S,” it was easy to believe he was staring at a scene from the days of Tutankhamen.
“Fairbanks is on his way,” said Ned Auerbach, Mayer’s assistant. “You should start getting ready.”
In about ten minutes, just before sunset, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford would arrive at the theater. Auerbach had a man watching the couple, and telephoned as soon as they left Pickfair, their mansion home. Spectators had been lining up for hours, and the press was already in place, stationed by the two obelisks at the entrance. A street car rolled down the tracks in the middle of the street; Houdini hoped the trollies wouldn’t block the view of photographers. He needed them to get a good shot if he hoped to make it on the front page of the newspapers.
For The Thief of Baghdad, Oriental carpets had been set out along the walkway leading up to the theater, flanked with potted desert palms. Massive purple curtains with gold Arabesque embroidery draped from the tops of the obelisks all the way to the sidewalk.
That’s enough cloth to dress a pharaoh’s harem.
Men and women dressed as Arabian servants took their posts along the carpets with palm fronds to fan the arriving celebrities. Two belly dancers in flowing turquoise garments warmed up in the courtyard.
Houdini began to wonder if maybe his stunt wasn’t flashy enough. His escapes were always dramatic, but with a kind of quiet, nail-biting suspense. He didn’t want people’s attention drawn away by a couple of glittery belly dancers.
“Get the lion,” Houdini said.
Auerbach stared at the magician.
“Are you sure?”
Houdini nodded.
“Set up a second set of gates around the spikes.”
Auerbach nodded and climbed down the ladder. The lion was in a cage in the alley. Mayer had his animal handlers deliver it that morning despite Houdini’s protests.
Holding onto the crane, Houdini leaned out over the rooftop and looked down at the spikes his men had set up on the sidewalk below. They were long skewers with pointed ends that had been disassembled from the castle gate of an old movie set on the MGM lot. Although they were only silver-painted wood, not metal, they would still skewer him easily enough from the height at which Houdini was performing.
The spikes were cordoned off with a wall of sawhorses. The police had stopped by to question them, but ten dollars each and an autograph from Harry Houdini had been answer enough. He even got one of the cops, a lazy-faced officer named Barry Stoker, to help out with the act.
Auerbach re-appeared behind Houdini.
“Fairbanks is almost here. I can see their car down near the corner of Orange.”
Houdini looked west and could see Fairbanks’s bright red Mercer Raceabout down the street. It was shaped like a bullet and appeared to be just as fast. Like Fairbanks himself, there was nothing subtle about it.
He triple-checked the items spread out on a cloth: the megaphone, the straightjacket, the handcuffs, the razor blade, matches.
“Get the cop,” Houdini said.
Auerbach nodded behind them, toward the grunts of an overweight man cresting the roof from the ladder. Officer Stoker pulled himself onto the rooftop and then flopped down prostrate, like a sunbathing seal.
“We’re nearly ready, officer,” Houdini called over to him.
The policeman got onto his hands and knees, then finally to full standing. He walked over to the edge of the roof facing Hollywood.
“Thirty clams, right?”
Auerbach pulled out the dollar bills and waved them in front of his face.
“Thirty aces. But only after.”
Houdini pulled the noose over his head, which he had tied himself. From his neck, the rope wound upward to the top of the small crane, then back down its arm, where it was coiled around a winch at the base.
“Let’s go.”
Houdini looked down and saw the lion being lead into a narrow corridor made of sawhorses that circled the spikes. He hoped the animal trainers knew what they were doing. One jump and the lion could easily be out and about on the streets of Hollywood.
Officer Stoker spit on the lion below. It looked up and growled at him.
“I hate cats,” he said.
Houdini closed his eyes and searched for his fears. Fear of being constrained. Fear of impaling himself. Fear of becoming a wild animal’s dinner. He pictured a wooden storage chest inside his head and put all of his fears inside of it. Then he locked the chest, and buried the key deep inside the recesses of his mind.
He slipped into the straightjacket and crossed his arms across his chest. He turned his back to Officer Stoker.
“As tight as you can make it.”
The officer grinned in anticipation and began fastening the sleeves behind Houdini. The magician took a deep breath and flared his shoulders as Stoker tightened the buckles. This would give him the slack he would later need to escape.
Auerbach picked up the megaphone when he saw the red Mercer pull up. A valet ran over to open the car door. Auerbach looked at Houdini. The magician nodded.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Auerbach shouted through the megaphone. “We present for your pleasure, the most dangerous, the most daring, the most death-defying magician on Earth! Harry Handcuff Houdini!”
The man’s voice boomed, carrying over the traffic of the Boulevard. Fairbanks, donning a sharp white tuxedo, stepped out of his car just in time to see thousands of spectators turning their eyes away from him and up to the rooftop across the street. Houdini gave him a wink.
“Watch Houdini as he escapes a straightjacket secured by an actual officer of the Los Angeles Police Department,” Auerbach shouted. “Is it properly secured, officer?”
Auerbach turned to Stoker who gave the audience a big thumbs up.
“Our magician will escape while hanging from a noose above razor-sharp spikes!” Auerbach continued. “And if the spikes don’t get him, the hungry lion might!”
As if on cue, Slats roared in his narrow pen surrounding the spikes.
“Better still, Mister Houdini has fewer than three minutes before a flaming torch burns his rope in two!”
Auerbach nodded at Officer Stoker, who took the matches and lit an open kerosene torch at the base of the rope, next to where it was wound around the crane’s winch. This was the only true misdirection in Houdini’s act. From down below, the open flame appeared to be directly under the rope, licking at it. But on the roof they could see that the torch was actually six inches in front of the rope and would pose no danger of burning it.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Auerbach boomed. “Let’s hear it for Harry Houdini and the Hangman’s Death!”
The crowd erupted into wild applause. Houdini bowed deeply.
Fairbanks stood dumbstruck, still trying to understand what was happening at the premiere of his movie. Houdini looked to the other side of the car and saw Pickford standing with her arms folded, unamused but somehow unsurprised. She looked stunning in a sapphire blue gown and matching cloche hat.
“Action!” Houdini s
houted.
Officer Stoker knelt down and turned the winch slowly. Houdini took one last deep breath as the rope pulled taught around his neck and then gently lifted him off the roof. His body swung forward over the edge of the building, dangling a good thirty feet above the spikes.
“Start the timer!” Auerbach shouted, although he was the one with the pocket watch.
There was a time limit, but it wasn’t the burning rope; it was Houdini’s breath. The magician had positioned the noose in such a way that his jugular veins and carotid arteries weren’t compressed, but his airway was completely cut off. He would have about three minutes until he passed out.
With his neck rigid, Houdini could just barely see the thousands of faces across the street, all of them staring up at him in wide-eyed wonder. All except one.
“Welcome, everybody!” Fairbanks shouted from across the street. “You’re all here for the movie, am I right?”
No one responded. Cameras flashed in Houdini’s direction.
“You’re all here for me—Douglas Fairbanks!”
Houdini adjusted his shoulder to create the slack he needed to loosen the straightjacket. He let out thirty seconds worth of breath to compress his chest slightly.
Two minutes and thirty seconds of breath.
Houdini yanked hard on the sleeves, loosening buckles behind him. Once he got enough slack he was able to lift his elbows over his head. But the rope around his neck prevented him from unwinding his sleeves. He removed the razor blade he had carefully clutched in his closed fist. First he sawed at the sleeve until there was a small hole. Then he reached back as far as he could to saw at the strap that was constraining his arms. It was made of leather and would take a good minute to get through.
“Ladies and gentlemen, who wants to see me in a movie?” Fairbanks shouted from across the street. He held out his arms and smiled. No one paid him any attention.
“Look at me!” he said.
Houdini saw the people immediately surrounding Fairbanks turn and look at him. If they smiled or otherwise reacted at seeing America’s Hero mere feet from them, Houdini didn’t notice.
Finally having the attention of a few dozen people, Fairbanks smiled and clapped his hands together.
“I’m so very happy to have all of you—”
The lion roared below Houdini. Everyone staring at Fairbanks turned back to the stunt. The magician couldn’t see the giant cat, but he would have bet money that Auerbach had one of the handlers prod it.
The poor thing never signed up to be an entertainer.
Houdini saw Fairbanks ball up his fists and storm toward the entrance. It seemed he would admit defeat and go into the theater, barely noticed by the fans who had come to see him.
But that’s not what he did. From the corner of his eye, Houdini saw Fairbanks throw off his tuxedo jacket and leap onto the giant purple drapes that hung from one of the obelisks at the entrance.
“You think you’ve got a show, Houdini?” he shouted. “I’m the king of the show business!”
When he saw Fairbanks begin scaling the purple curtain, Houdini dropped his razor blade. It clattered among the spikes below. The actor, famous for his athleticism, deftly climbed upward.
People turned and finally began to take notice of him.
“There’s Douglas Fairbanks!” an elderly woman exclaimed. “Oh, he’s wonderful!”
Fairbanks climbed the drapes until he was almost at Houdini’s height, then let go with one hand to wave at the crowd.
“Good evening, my friends! Yes, look this way my dear fans! Welcome to The Thief of Baghdad!”
Fairbanks’s antics were drawing eyes away from Houdini, and his one means of cutting though the straightjacket was now somewhere on the ground. From the lack of oxygen, Houdini was beginning to see blackness close in from the sides of his vision.
Ninety seconds of breath.
The leather strap gave a little bit when Houdini pulled his elbows apart. It may have been severed enough that he could break it. He yanked his elbows apart hard and fast, like a chicken with a broken wing. Once, twice, three times. Nothing.
Houdini needed more slack. He closed his eyes and saw one possibility. It was a risk, but he had to take it. With a short, hard exhale, the magician let out all of his breath.
Zero seconds.
It compressed his chest enough to give him more room. He opened his eyes and saw only blackness and stars. With one hard jerk the buckle snapped and his arms came free from his chest. The sleeves of the straightjacket hung long, like a child in his father’s dress shirt.
Immediately Houdini grabbed the rope behind his neck and gripped it. He pulled up hard, and it gave him just enough slack in the noose to take a long, deep breath. Vision flooded back to him.
Across the street, Fairbanks seemed determined to keep the audience’s attention. He had climbed to the top of the drapes, which were almost at the height from which Houdini was hanging.
“You want daring?” Fairbanks shouted. “You want danger? You’ll get all that and more in my new movie! I am, after all, America’s Hero!”
The crowd cheered for him.
“That’s enough, Douglas. Come down.”
The voice was hardly a shout, but Houdini recognized it as Pickford’s. He looked down and saw her standing by the car, arms folded tightly around her.
But Fairbanks, seemingly unsatisfied with being below Houdini, climbed up onto the vertical neon sign that read, “GRAUMAN’S.”
The man thinks he’s invincible.
Houdini, on the other hand, was all too aware of his mortality. He worked on getting the straightjacket off. His hands would need to be free to pull his neck out of the noose. He began squirming and yanking to free himself.
By now, the crowd’s attention was equally split. Fairbanks was near the top of the sign, grabbing the metal frame between the “G” and the “R.” Again, he let go with one hand and began pumping a fist into the air, riling up the crowd.
There was a sudden groan of metal, and the top of the neon sign snapped away from the wall. Fairbanks grasped the sign tightly, every ounce of bravado drained from him in an instant.
“Douglas!” Pickford screamed.
Houdini saw the actor clinging for dear life as the sign, bent now at an awkward angle, hung three stories above the sidewalk. Fairbanks clung with both arms and legs; he reminded Houdini of a koala he had once seen at the New York Zoo.
The man has charisma, but no courage.
Houdini freed himself from the straightjacket and dropped it to the spikes below. All he had to do now was free himself from the noose, climb up the rope, and then crawl down the arm of the crane to the safety of the rooftop.
Fairbanks’s situation was more dire. The metal groaned again, and Houdini heard the pop of bolts ripping out of concrete. The sign tipped even more, and Fairbanks’s legs slipped off. The actor was now hanging by only his hands over the traffic on the boulevard. He yelped once, and looked like a child who had climbed a tree and couldn’t get down.
“Someone help!” Pickford shouted.
A fat security guard tried to climb the curtain but couldn’t get more than a few feet off the ground before falling back down. Everyone else stared in paralyzed horror.
Pickford looked across the street at the magician.
“Houdini!”
The magician didn’t know whether it was a plea for help or an accusation. He pulled his head out of the noose, then hung from it with his hands. As he swung his legs up to climb the rope, one of his shoes flew off him. Slats must have thought it was a snack, because the beast let out a mighty roar and jumped up to catch it in its mouth.
Officer Stoker, who had been crouched by the edge of the roof, was startled by the lion’s sudden leap and stumbled backward, knocking the torch over. Burning kerosene splashed everywhere—the roof, the crane, the rope.
“The rope!” Houdini shouted. But Stoker had his own problems. The kerosene had also lit the officer’s slee
ve on fire. He was dancing around the roof, trying to extinguish himself.
Houdini had no idea how long it would take the flame to burn through the rope; he hadn’t planned for that eventuality. His best bet was to crawl up the rope and get himself onto the roof as quickly as possible. Houdini followed the threads of possibility; if he crawled down, there wouldn’t be time to get over to Fairbanks. The man would fall.
There was another option, but it might kill them both.
A life of adventure doesn’t start until we take risks.
Houdini climbed up the rope and hoisted himself onto the crane. He then pulled the rope up behind him and slid the noose around his body, just below his chest. He shimmied a few yards down the crane, and tugged on the rope to see if it held. It did—for now.
A gray Studebaker Standard Six pulled up behind Fairbanks’s red Mercer. Charlie Chaplin got out and looked up.
“Douglas doesn’t usually start climbing the walls until after cocktail hour.”
“Clear a path!” Houdini yelled, parting the air with his hands.
Chaplin seemed to understand, and stepped out into the street to stop the oncoming traffic.
Houdini stood on the crane and dove out into the air as far as he could. There was a moment of weightlessness and Houdini muttered a prayer to anyone who would listen. The rope yanked taught. It held, and Houdini swung over the street toward Fairbanks and the tilting sign.
“Grab me!” Houdini yelled as he barreled toward Fairbanks. The actor reached out one hand and Houdini tried to grasp it, but they fell a good three feet short. Houdini swung back toward the crane, over the lion, over the spikes.
He turned his body and saw the flame climbing up the rope. Burnt, frayed strands of rope snapped loose where the fire had the most time to burn.
I’ve got once chance left.
As Houdini approached the crane, he tucked his legs into a horizontal crouch. When his feet made contact with the metal, he kicked off it as hard as he could. He got a good push, but he was now swinging upside down toward Fairbanks. As he saw the neon sign approaching, he realized he would get closer this time—but not close enough.
“Jump!” Houdini yelled.
Fairbanks hesitated only a split second, then hurled himself at Houdini. The magician caught him around the waist and hugged him tightly. They barreled back toward the crane, crashing into it, then swung back toward the street.
And then, a snap.
Houdini’s heart dropped as he felt the rope become slack. He closed his eyes tightly, preparing to be impaled on the spikes.
Dark must die.
The magician hit ground hard, knocking the breath out of him. He and Fairbanks rolled together until they hit a curb.
They had landed in the street in front of the theater, and Houdini lay there a moment, allowing the adrenaline in his body to stop pumping. He took three deep inhales before sitting up.
Cameras began flashing all about them, and Houdini was momentarily blinded. He shook Fairbanks’s shoulder to rouse him.
“Fairbanks, are you alive?”
The man jolted up and took in his surroundings with wild eyes, as if he had blacked out and was unaware of where he was.
“Are you hurt?”
“This is your fault,” he croaked.
“My fault?” Houdini said. “I saved your life.”
“You’re trying to ruin my career!”
Pickford ran up to Fairbanks and threw her arms around him.
“You’re all right, darling!”
“I’m fine.”
Fairbanks stood and smoothed the locks of hair that had fallen out of place.
Pickford crouched by the magician.
“Are you hurt, Mr. Houdini?”
She held out her hand to help him stand.
“Don’t you dare help him!” Fairbanks said. “He ruined our movie premiere!”
Pickford ignored him and helped Houdini up.
“It’s what he had to do,” Pickford said. “He wouldn’t have done the stunt if you had just agreed to go to New York.”
“You’re taking his side?” Fairbanks said.
“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” she said, placing her hand on Fairbanks’s arm. He shook it off.
“I think you are. If you won’t take your own husband’s side, then what’s your purpose? To just stand there and look pretty? Is that all you’re good for?”
Houdini stepped in-between them.
“Now, now. This isn’t her fault in the slightest. I take all responsibility.”
Fairbanks turned on Houdini.
“You,” he said poking the magician with his finger, “have outworn your welcome. Now please get out of here!”
Houdini’s ears tingled and he felt the compulsion to obey Fairbanks’s command. But he knew now where that place of resistance was in his mind. He quickly found it and held onto it.
Fairbanks looked at him curiously. The actor composed himself and smiled with as much charm as he could muster.
“I said go away, Mr. Houdini. Get out of this town, and don’t ever come back.”
It took effort to resist, but Houdini focused internally and held his ground.
Fairbanks turned bright red, and his eye began to twitch.
“Damn you!” he yelled, and stormed off down the street.
Chaplin put his hand on Pickford’s arm.
“I’ll go talk to him,” he said. “His ego’s been wounded. He just needs some time to cool down.”
Pickford nodded and squeezed Chaplin’s arm. He then ran off after Fairbanks. The actress turned away from the crowd. She tried hard to keep a strong face, but tears escaped her eyes. Houdini wanted to place a comforting hand on her but thought better of it.
“Do you want me to send these people away?”
Pickford shook her head. She exhaled all the hurt and frustration in one big breath, and when she inhaled a smile appeared in their place. It was, Houdini thought, a trick as good as any he could pull.
She turned back to the crowd that had witnessed the whole ugly scene.
“My apologies for the unrehearsed spectacle,” Pickford said. “We’re actors; we’re not used to going off-script. Please stay, and enjoy the movie.”
Pickford turned away. Houdini saw her hands were shaking.
“Would you like to get a drink somewhere?”
She nodded. Houdini grabbed her by the elbow and ushered her into the nearest taxi. They drove down the boulevard in silence.
Houdini didn’t know whether his stunt was a miserable failure or a resounding success. He supposed by tomorrow he’d find out one way or another.
