by Fraser Nixon
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” he said.
Jack took the shopgirl’s hand, twisted it ’round and bowed to kiss her wrist.
“Valentino taught me that.”
He winked at her and she peered over to roll her eyes at me. That was a fine sight and I was secretly delighted. Jack’s charm could curdle. It appeared that he’d taken more cocaine as he violently chewed spearmint gum while at the same time smoking a cigaret.
“We’re set,” he said.
“For what?”
“A little light entertainment.”
We went back upstairs and outside and crossed the street to the Princess Theatre. It was closed.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A matinee,” Jack said, and smiled.
He turned to the grille of the box office wicket and rapped on the smoked glass. It was impossible to see anyone behind it. A dry voice asked: “Who’s calling?”
“Jack London, San Francisco Chronicle. I’m here for the interview.”
Jack slid a five into the gap. I heard a thumping and a click as a door unlocked. Jack carefully took the gum from his mouth and did a disgusting thing with it. We went into the lobby and found it empty. It was eerie. I fingered my gun and felt anxiety.
“Nice couvert charge,” I said.
The dry voice came from a speakerphone above: “Door to the left, dressing rooms backstage.”
We followed the directions. The theatre house was silent, empty seats before a half-closed curtain across the stage, a dusty smell of stale tobacco smoke and damp velvet. Reigning backstage we found a confusion of ropes and wires. Enormous padlocked boxes stencilled with Houdini’s name sat in the wings. These presumably held the secrets of the Chinese Water Torture Cell and the Milk Can Escape. Until the other night I’d only seen Houdini in a serial at the picture house: The Man From Beyond. He’d escaped from a light bulb once, another time from a paper bag.
“He got free from a Russian prison cell stark bollocky naked,” Jack said.
Echoing my thoughts again. I turned back on the empty house of crimson chairs. It was haunted. We were spectres. A phantom audience watched me, Ulysses by the pool of blood at World’s End as the sightless dead of Hades streamed past. Shakespeare played the ghost in Hamlet, fasting in fires. A thin, high, sharp note like the whine of a mosquito rose in my ears and abruptly quit. I turned away and Jack was gone. I noticed a line on the stage floor and bumped face-first like a fool into a large mirror reflecting a room behind me. I went into that and found Jack sitting on a barrel, smiling.
“Pepper’s Ghost,” he said. “You see how it works.”
“I don’t and what’re we doing here?”
Jack held up a finger and cocked his ear, then very quietly whistled the first bars of “Annie Laurie.”
“Bad luck in a theatre,” I said.
“Not for me.”
We moved ’round the stage machinery and found a corridor leading to the dressing rooms. From behind a closed door came murmuring voices. I made out: “...as the miracle at Cana or walking on the water. Think, lads, what I might have accomplished in those times.”
Jack opened the door to a room opposite and motioned me into it. It was a place for showgirls by the scent of powder. In the darkness Jack peered through a crack to see who came and went and consulted his wristwatch, a fine thin Longines. Nothing but the best for himself, my envy thought. I sat down on a wicker chair and was brushed by feathers. As I made to smoke Jack stopped me. He’d taken out his Webley.
“We’re going to have a private chat,” he said.
“With that?” I motioned towards the revolver.
“We’ll see.”
He held up his hand at a soft tumult and cry, then the sound of furniture shifting about. I joined Jack at the crack. A tall gaunt man with a long Mackintosh left the room across the way. A light lit his hollow face and left the afterimage of a skull on the back of my eyelids when I blinked. Jack chuckled. Beside me I could feel him set to spring, Jack-from-a-box. Opposite us the door opened again. Two more men exited and I recognized them with some small anger: Smiler and Jacques Price from the night of Houdini’s speech. Jack put on his gloves. I saw yellow pinpoints glow in the corner of the dressing room. A cat, I hoped with a sudden chill. We stepped into the corridor.
Inconsequential music ran through my head, bloody “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” A neurologist might be able to excise from my cortex the portion responsible for housing such tripe. A selective lobotomy a keen boon for the heartbroken. I took a deep breath to counteract a queasy swelling of excitement. Something unfortunate was about to happen and I felt an elation akin to morphine, ganglia pulsing with an increased cardiac cycle. Jack pushed open the door.
It was surprisingly cold. Houdini was on a chaise longue in the far corner, his eyes closed, for all the world dead. I touched the radiator by the wall and felt its chill. Jack was the first to speak.
“Time is, time was, time’s past.”
“Who dares?” asked Houdini, opening his eyes.
“Where lies the key?” countered Jack.
Houdini sat mum a moment, then shifted to his elbows and glared fiercely. His eyes were the same cold blue as Jack’s.
“You mere man,” he said.
“I’m not alone,” warned Jack.
“Yes you are.”
“There you are in error, monsieur.”
“What, this?” asked Houdini, looking at me.
“No. You see more clearly, I am sure,” said Jack.
There was a pause. Houdini sank back onto his bolster.
“Your masters,” he breathed.
“You’ve pledged to reveal all. This cannot be.”
Jack was getting mighty high-flown, in my opinion. Whether this was more than mere catechism I couldn’t say. The look on my friend’s face was past raillery. This was very serious to him.
“Truth will out,” said Houdini.
“Not this one.”
“The public must know. It’s dangerous for them.”
“Moreso for you,” said Jack.
Houdini started at this but then winced and pressed a hand to his wide forehead and closed his eyes once more.
“Are you well?” asked Jack.
“Some damn fool struck me. And my ankle was injured in Buffalo.”
Jack indicated me.
“My friend here has medical training.”
“No doctors,” said Houdini from his corner.
“Oh, he’s no doctor.”
I moved to examine the magician. He waved me off.
“I know why he bends to superstition,” Houdini said to Jack.
“Why?”
“I know because the same tragedy has befallen myself. But he cannot listen to that brood. They are jackals, vultures. To fall into their clutches means abandoning reason. I know this.”
Houdini looked at his dressing table where rested a gold-framed portrait of an aged lady.
“It is as much for his own sake as that of your people,” Houdini continued.
“No good will come of it,” Jack said. “Let the foundation rest; the walls are unstable. The key is in the bone box. Leave it there.”
“Is that a command?”
“To a greater or lesser degree,” said Jack.
“Well. It does not matter. The fire has died in me.”
He opened his eyes and looked into mine magnetically. Jack bent over a carafe in the corner. Houdini asked me: “And what is your learnèd opinion?”
The moment extended and I saw the world-famous man weak and alone like the rest of us. He didn’t look well. If it was magic he dealt in, magic I’d give him.
“Sacrifice a cock to Asclepius,” I said.
Houdini snorted with contempt. Jack handed him a glass. Houdini sipped from it and pulled a sour face. He handed it back to Jack, who ran the faucet in the sink. Houdini sighed and said: “Tell them the secret is safe with me.”
“I will.”
“Houdini is a m
an of his word.”
We made to leave. I looked back and Houdini’s eyes were closed again. The room was a tomb. We threaded our way through the back of the theatre to a door leading out to an alley.
“What’s the word?” I asked Jack.
He put a finger to his lips and smiled.
PAST SCRAPS OF dirty snow we made our way over cobbles to the street proper. The sun had come out, warming the steaming pavement; ’twas relief to trade Houdini’s mausoleum for the life and colour of the city. The contrast was striking. A pretty girl looked at me through long eyelashes. I was alive, an electric animal singing with power. At the corner a traffic accident had a policeman untangling arguments as vapour hissed from under a green Chrysler’s bonnet and people crowded ’round for the free show. We passed an Indian squaw carrying a papoose slung on her back. The baby smiled at me through a horrible cleft palate covered in streaming mucus. My stomach twisted at this, the true face of mankind. Jack walked along blithely and suggested a late luncheon.
He led us west to the Royale for either Oriental or Occidental cuisine. Jack ordered the former, a mess of tapeworm noodles and cat’s flesh. My plate sampled the latter cookery, leathery horsemeat with fried crow’s eggs. Instead of eating I smoked while Jack forked nourishment into his mouth.
“Not hungry?”
He finished his plate and with my nodding assent started on mine. Replete, he wiped his mouth with a serviette and asked: “Ready for tonight?”
“Yes. How’s it look?”
“Swell. Eggs in the coffee. There’s something I need to tell you, though. We have a third.”
“A third? Who?”
Jack lit a cigaret and raised his eyebrows. No. Not that sharper. Not now.
“We have to,” Jack said, reading me.
“Like fun,” I said.
“’Fraid so.”
“Then you lose me.”
“Mick, please.”
He reached across our ruined meal and put his hand on my shoulder.
“You can settle your score with him when we’re done.”
“It’s your hand in all this,” I said.
Jack leaned back.
“No. Bob met her through the theatre crowd. Laura cottoned on to the circle. Bored, I suppose. When I was at Victoria Hall for that dance she was with him. I didn’t know where you were or what’d happened, I swear. None of my business. This is. We need the third arm. Hold your nose and afterwards all bets are off. The trade is at the pier. We’re going to hit them before they board ship. The third’ll hang back as getaway while we go in for the goods. I’ve got it all worked out.”
“You’d better.”
“It will work or it won’t. Stakes are high but so’s the payoff. To the victor and all that.”
“Spare me.” I rose and went to the filthy toilet. Over the lavatory I read: “Get ready, the LORD is coming SOON. ‘Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be.’” Below it was written: “If I had a girl and she was mine I’d paint her ass with iodine and on her belly I’d put a sign ‘Keep off the grass, the hole is mine.’”
At the basin I washed my hands and looked at the mirror. There was no one in it.
“Oke,” I said, back at the table.
“Christ but you’re a downy bird, Mick.”
He’d paid for our food and was sitting at his ease at the Formica.
“Tell me what was what with your man in the theatre there,” I said.
“I will, but later.”
“You afraid I’ll sing if I’m caught?”
“You can’t tell what you don’t know. And it’s not the cops I’m worried about but the other fellows. They’ll clip your ears for fun and games,” Jack said.
“That’s reassuring.”
“I know you’re up for it.”
“This’s all been some sort of challenge, hasn’t it? Why’re you doing it?”
Jack put his hands together and leaned in.
“What’re your plans for the future?”
“Unknown,” I said.
“Will you head back?”
“To the Pater’s? Not likely. Even with money I don’t want him sniffing at me. Without my medical degree I’m a dog.”
“Is that so?”
“Whereas you could show up at the door in chains and he’d open his arms.”
“Unlikely.”
“That’s what you think. The Sunday after you ran away and joined the colours he preached the Prodigal Son. He had a scrap-book hidden in his study. The pages were filled with clippings from the ’papers of every action your regiment was in.”
“Jesus, Mick, I didn’t know.”
There was a catch in Jack’s voice and I swore I caught a tear quickening in his eye.
“He’d forgive you everything,” I said.
“Not everything,” Jack muttered.
Now Jack was far away. Brightening, I said, “Well, you could be worse off. In me he sees my mother and hates me for it. Always has. You’re different. He chose you. He’d have left me on Skid Road if he’d been able to square it with the book and the kirk and the bloody Battle of the Boyne.”
“The Glorious Twelfth,” said Jack.
The Pater’d preached the Word to the hard men of the camps past Lillooet, men like the Wolf and Jack’s father, who’d disappeared prospecting up the wash one autumn, never to return. When my father’d found Jack he was near feral, shivering and begging for scraps from the Chinese camp cooks and cruel Indians, a cur kicked away from the fire. Indebted for his escape, Jack had played Christian soldier for the Pater, and my upright father prized his wildness and charm, whereas I’d only been a reminder of what my father had lost. I’d killed her by being born.
So I waited and watched as we grew up together down in Vancouver, watched Jack with the prettiest girls and fastest friends, real five-cent sports. My Scripture first was as naught to Jack’s second or third. I turned away from John Knox and my father and delved into different patterns of belief. Jack was the golden lad, ace cricketer and scapegrace, romantic and dashing where I was quiet and dark. He led our gang and stole bottles of wine from Italian greengrocers and horses from Siwashes in Chinatown, cursing in Cantonese as I’d learn to, in emulation of my captain. When alone and away from under Jack’s flag I’d be waylaid by jealous enemies from rival gangs and be given a good thumping, too small to fight back and too damn proud to run. That was the Irish in me, taking a beating and liking it. From my father there was little save silence when I’d return home bruised and cut. Only the amah cared, swabbing my cuts in iodine while jabbering in Chinook.
My father was born an Ulster Scot but my mother’d been a real dark colleen from down in the south and Catholic to boot. How they’d met and married the Lord only knew. For an amah I had a Carrier Indian, my mother’s servant and somehow kinswoman, the Holy Ghost and Old Ones meeting and mingling with Manitou and Raven. When my mother died the amah nursed me. From her I learned the twinned secret mythologies of two broken people. All his life my father’s creed had been reason, education, and light. The faith of my mother was tricky and dark. Somehow I’d been made in neither image and was reflected in the quicksilver of Jack: friend, tormentor, blood brother, the man who was going to get me killed one day. I crushed a cigaret out on a greasy plate.
“Better,” said Jack, patting his belly.
After the Royale we went to Jack’s hotel. He’d moved to the Queen’s on Peel and was registered as Jack Greenmantle. Up in his room he excused himself to defecate and I found a bottle of cognac on the sideboard. The alcohol stung and cleaned my teeth as I thought of Laura and Bob, that Yankee bastard. You’ll settle his hash tonight. He hadn’t seen me as I watched them in that upstairs bedroom. Only Laura, her eye meeting mine in the darkness. There’d been a telling in her gaze, a kind of triumph laced with something I couldn’t define. I took another swallow and it came: she’d been expecting someone else. Who? Jack yanked the chain in the jakes an
d came out buttoning his trousers.
“Yesterday’s news,” he said.
He sat down and laid out the night’s plans. Including Bob, the three of us were going to hit the competition before they ever set foot on the Hatteras Abyssal. The ship was tied up at Queen Alexandra Pier. Jack and I had one motor and Bob would bring another. It was Trafalgar Night and the lion’s share of the police force would be marching in the parade or directing traffic. The plan’s virtue, Jack claimed, was in its simplicity.
“That’s what you said about the bootlegging and the picture house. And now look at us,” I said.
“It’s better this way,” said Jack. “I’m not Raffles the Gentleman Cracksman. Make a meticulous plan and it’ll go haywire. I want to be spontaneous, to improvise.”
“Christ, you’re like a stick-up poet.”
“There you’ve put it with a nicety,” Jack said.
“We were lucky before. This is pushing it.”
“Count your money and tell me about pushing it. How’d you get it, now? Did it come in the mail? You wouldn’t have the spondulicks if not for Yours Truly, Esquire.”
“I never asked for them. You volunteered me,” I said.
“Knowing you as I do. This is bootless, Mick.”
“Let’s go over the ground at least. Is that too much to be asking after?”
“Lead on.”
OUR STEPS TOOK US in the direction of the docks, the streets still radiating the day’s heat. I looked up at a spider’s web of tramway wires. Underfoot nubs on manhole covers had been worn flat by countless treads and the metal slipped. My coat hung heavy on me, steaming with the city. A motorcar nearby backfired and I flinched, my hand bouncing into my pocket. Jack laughed. Drunken late-season wasps crawled in the gutter outside a warehouse from whence the sickly reek of rotting fruit seeped forth. It might’ve been an alky-cooker distilling cheap fruit brandy. Minute quantities of wasp venom can trigger anaphylaxis in the allergic. Put a drop on a needle for the perfect crime. As far as I knew Jack had no natural nemesis. Mine was the lychee, a lesson learned in Chinatown.