Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  The performers built to a crowd-pleasing finale, with an astonishing modification that San Francisco would talk about for weeks. As usual, one painting became another: from The Raft of the Medusa, complete with panicked sailors, billowing sails, and flats painted to look like waves, to Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. But tonight Liberty seemed ominously true to the painting, meaning bare-breasted, and when the stage shifted to a seashore scene, Liberty dropped her clothes entirely, stepping onto a seashell as angels with flowing robes floated toward her, the Monsignor announcing, “The Birth of Venus!”

  There were outraged cries from the audience, with an enraged Jessie Hayman yelling, “Cheap! Cheap!” because Venus, in what turned out to be a flesh-colored body stocking, was Tessie Wall.

  Then, from each wing of the stage, came her girls. Accompanied by a great, brassy fanfare from the orchestra, each woman posed by the footlights in her rustling Paris finery before moving offstage. Last was Tessie herself, thick-waisted and blond, now dressed in a gown, using the tip of her pink feather boa to wave at all her friends. She took her time finding her seat, and afterward, while the intermission music played, the only topic of conversation was the daring Tessie Wall, and how Jessie Hayman would have to get even next year with an even grander entrance.

  Chase had the misfortune of going on at 7:40. Though he’d worked hard on his program of Shakespearean monologues—he even added a wickedly insightful Henry Irving parody—he was but politely acknowledged. It was apparent he would be offered just a standard contract for next season.

  At three minutes till eight, Laszlo and His Yankee Hussars set up onstage. While the band played their Sousa medley, Carter thoroughly checked his kit, stuffing his pockets with scarves, examining the seals on decks of cards. He glanced toward his levitation device.

  “Good luck, Carter.” The voice was quiet. It was Mysterioso, looking deeply concerned.

  “Will I need it?” Carter asked.

  “That depends on how good a magician you are. Are you nervous?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you sweating?”

  Carter had had enough and declared, surprising himself with how good it felt to say, “Because I had to run to the train station and back.”

  Mysterioso’s eyes checked Carter’s. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Maybe something distracted you.” They continued to glare at each other, “Stars and Stripes Forever” playing at full fever pitch, until Carter whispered, “I don’t want to be late to work.” And he returned to hiding a garter snake in his inner coat.

  Mysterioso turned on his heel. When he was out of sight, Carter plucked at the wires feeding into the platform’s pulley system. Instead of going taut, they went slack; if he tried to levitate someone now, the subject would fall. It was time for Blackmail.

  CHAPTER 12

  At 8:15, the orchestra played Carter’s theme, “Pomp and Circumstance,” and Carter went onstage to prolonged applause. He focused on his breathing, in and out, fifteen times a minute, standing in front of his trusty flats decorated with demons and flying cards. The main curtain was behind him, and a set of Chinese screens surrounded the levitation device. He thanked the audience, saying, “It is a great joy to return to the old neighborhood,” which led, of course, to a second round of applause. He breathed deeply through his nose, smelling the curls of smoke coming off the fresh gels on the footlights. Though the overhead lights hurt his eyes, he could see unusually far into the house tonight, from the elegance of the men and women in the orchestra pit to the third balcony, where men who wore their hats indoors and women in 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalogue finery fanned themselves with programs. Carter did not look toward his parents’ box. He thought about the card Sarah had sent, and wondered if she might be in the house, watching him.

  “First,” he said, “as a native son, there are such high expectations of me tonight, I should get one item out of the way.” He flipped off his top hat, dug into it with a gloved hand, and gripped a pair of long white furry ears that, as he pulled on them, turned out to be—not a rabbit—but a white teddy bear, with absurdly long ears.

  When the audience laughed, Carter wryly apologized, and then brought out, in quick succession, a turtle and a garter snake, each with long white ears attached, before finally pulling out a real rabbit, to pleasant applause. Albee, second row center, flanked by Murdoch and an old man wearing a white carnation, and holding a cane, was clapping as heartily as anyone else. Good.

  Carter followed this with a series of card tricks, which he performed easily, pulling volunteers from the dignitaries in the first few rows. His tricks located cards in increasingly difficult-looking ways, culminating with the knife-throwing that he’d kept in the act since Denver.

  As in Denver, Mysterioso was watching from the wings (he had chosen to stand in the wing opposite from the direction Carter threw his stiletto). Now, with the finale upon him, Carter faced Mysterioso for one moment; Mysterioso turned his hand palm upward, as if begging him to continue his act.

  Carter turned to the house. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a modest finale tonight: levitation! I need a volunteer. Will the smartest man in the audience please come onstage? I see some hands here toward the front of the house.” Carter put his finger to his lips and held his elbow in his palm, watching his audience. Laughter, encouragement, suggestions of who was the smartest man in the house. The Mayor! Tessie Wall! He could just vaguely smell citronella incense burning in the air. “Come to think of it, there are so many smart men here. I’m going to break a cardinal rule, and choose a volunteer, a most unwilling participant. Will you all please show what San Francisco thinks of Mysterioso!”

  In the wings, Mysterioso lowered his eyebrows. Carter gestured toward him, applause building, beckoning him to come out onstage. In fact, Mysterioso took a step away from the flats, bumping directly into the muscular and persuasive Tom, who politely pointed him toward Carter.

  When Mysterioso finally came out, he bowed toward the audience, and shook Carter’s hand.

  “I know what’s on your minds, dear friends,” Carter said. “It seems to be a terrible idea to have one magician assist another.” Carter clapped his hands, James stealing onto stage to remove the Chinese screens. This showed off a simple-looking board suspended across the backs of two upright chairs. It was the levitation device as ordered from the Martinka catalogue, but with one addition below it: a bed of eighteen-inch railway spikes that had been sharpened until they gleamed.

  Carter turned to Mysterioso. “Now, then, Mysterioso, will you be a good fellow and lie on that board so that I may remove the chairs and demonstrate the art of levitation?”

  “I think not.” He examined his fingernails.

  “Because we’re co-conspirators?”

  “I’m certainly not your co-conspirator.”

  “And will you tell our audience why not?”

  “Because I’m unconvinced of your abilities.”

  “Meaning that—”

  “Your cheap piece of machinery might fail, causing injury.”

  “I see.” Carter frowned. “You see—Ladies and Gentlemen, he is the smartest man in the audience. However, I submit to you that even though he is a poor sport, Mysterioso has failed to prove there’s no conspiracy between us.”

  The rear curtain went up, and the levitation machinery was dwarfed and absorbed, all of its hidden apparatus exposed as part of a monstrous larger entity: the stage housed a network of fulcrums, pulleys, giant gears, spindles and cams, the child of a combustion engine mated with a giant clockworks. Little of it was functional, but Carter, who’d had two weeks to make sketches of what he wanted, knew the importance of appearance. No one had ever seen anything like this before; even the rubes in the third balcony were quiet. The mechanism was perfectly still.

  “What—is—that?” Mysterioso finally managed.

  With pride, Carter answered. “I call it Blackmail. Pick a card,” Carter said.

  “What?” For a
moment, Mysterioso seemed to have forgotten where he was.

  Carter fanned a deck of cards. “Pick a card.”

  “Oh, I’ll pick a card, all right.” Mysterioso reached for the deck, and before he touched it, a single card began to extend and wiggle attractively. The audience laughed. Mysterioso slapped the card out of his way. “I can’t be forced to pick the card you want me to.”

  “I’m desolated,” Carter said. “Do I have to ask a third time?”

  Mysterioso jerked the whole deck from Carter’s hands, cut it, flipped half the cards around, reshuffled, ran his fingers up and down the edges, fanned the deck himself, plucked out a card, and handed the remainder of the deck back to Carter.

  “You’ve made it exceedingly difficult for me,” Carter said, fingering the cards. “Perhaps beyond my capacity. In fact, I must confess, I have no idea what card you’ve chosen.” He took a step toward the footlights. “Mayor Rolph—do you know what card he’s chosen? No? Mister Albee? No?” Carter put one hand on his chin. “Well, my rival magician, you’ve stumped us all. Luckily, we live in an age of technical marvels. Blackmail will tell which card you chose.”

  Carter placed the deck—minus the card Mysterioso still held—in a brass tray, which he set into a toy coal car on a miniature set of railroad tracks. “Scoot!” he said, and the tray raced up the tracks to a ledge, where the coal car dumped it onto a set of scales with a loud clank.

  “Very clever,” Mysterioso muttered. Carter knew that no matter what card the machine produced, Mysterioso would simply show off a different one from the one he had chosen: Carter’s fingers told him the card was the three of diamonds.

  The scales tipped in the direction of the deck, causing the other side to rise and collide with a flint, which ignited with a great flash, sparks shooting up filaments toward two balloons that exploded, freeing two white pigeons. Simultaneously, a small wooden packing crate was released from a bracket, sliding gently down a set of rollers onto the empty side of the scales, and then setting them level again.

  Carter approached the scales carefully. The packing crate was locked with an oversized Yale padlock. He produced a key and started to open it. Then he stopped and turned to Mysterioso. “Is your card by any chance the three of diamonds?”

  Mysterioso barked at the audience, “Should he be asking me or telling me?”

  There were some catcalls from the upper balconies. Carter saw that with a flick of his wrist, Mysterioso now held between his index and ring fingers, behind his hand, just by its corner, an eight of clubs. The audience hadn’t seen it yet. It was from the wrong deck, but that hardly mattered—he would still spoil everything unless he was stopped.

  Carter said, sternly, “I’m giving you one last chance, Mysterioso. Is your card the three of diamonds?”

  “Carter, with a grave, grave heart, I must—”

  That was as far as Mysterioso got, for Carter had by then flipped open the packing crate. Inside was a metal birdcage. Inside the birdcage was Handsome.

  “Is this your dog?” Carter asked.

  Mysterioso drew an awkward breath. His hands fluttered in front of him like moths. He exploded, “Do not touch him! Do not touch him!” He lunged for the cage, panicked, stopping only when Carter drew a gun.

  The audience went wild with laughter. “Catch the bullet,” someone cried, causing more hilarity.

  Carter blinked a few times. He counted out heartbeats. He was feeling pleased. “Our distinguished guests have the right idea, my friend. Why don’t you try to catch a bullet?”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Of course I am. But you now have two questions to answer. First, is this your dog?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s Handsome. Don’t you dare harm him.”

  “Second, is Handsome a good liar?”

  “What?”

  Carter waved the barrel of the gun at the cage. Handsome, who was yipping and screeching like a tortured rooster, wore tucked into his collar a three of diamonds. Carter took care to cover the hole in the back of his glove, where he’d been bitten while securing the card on the evil little dog. Focusing on Mysterioso’s every move, he could nonetheless sense in the wings a huge gathering of his fellow performers.

  Carter addressed the house. “San Francisco, have you ever seen a poor magician work so hard on a simple card trick?” A smattering of applause, mostly from the orchestra. That was not so good. “Since you won’t answer me, Mysterioso, I must take one more drastic step.” With his free hand, Carter draped his cloak over the birdcage. Removing it, the birdcage—and Handsome—vanished. Applause again, fuller, but not as generous as Carter would have wished.

  “Of course, a de Kolta,” Mysterioso said. “Where is he?”

  A flash, a puff of smoke, and Handsome, howling, reappeared on the board suspended between the two chairs—on the faulty levitation device! Handsome and his prison were much lighter than a human being, but, nonetheless, ominously, the device began to creak.

  “No!” Mysterioso cried.

  “It gets better,” Carter said. “Look.” Directly over the cage, hanging on a chain from the rafters, was an anvil. “Now, is your card—”

  “The three of diamonds! Here, yes, the three of diamonds!” Mysterioso showed Carter, the audience, everyone, the three of diamonds.

  “Thank you.” Carter bowed, finally accepting an avalanche of applause. And he took a full accounting of it: the balconies had gone wild, as had the loges and the orchestra. Albee, Murdoch, and especially the carnation-wearing old man who sat with them, all were thrilled. Carter holstered his revolver, thanking the audience, adding, “That ends our demonstration for this evening.”

  It was not exactly the end. Mysterioso brushed past him, aiming to get his dog, and was in midstrut, turning toward the audience with a smirk, about to address some final, crushing comment to the house. When he was no more than ten feet from the cage, there was a cry of dismay from the catwalk over the stage, and the chain went slack—heavy iron links suspended in the air, taking for one second the shape of a question mark—and the anvil crashed right through the birdcage, then the board, splintering the chairs and hitting the spikes and sending up a shower of sparks.

  Mysterioso lurched like he’d been gutshot. He fell to his knees. His mouth opened, but there was only silence, the intake of breath, and then a horrible wail of anguish. Two of the optical mirrors had shattered, so he knelt in shards of glass and silver backing.

  Gasps from the audience—hands clutching armrests as thousands of backs went rigid, and then silence, except for cries from Mysterioso. Carter noted that the next time he performed his Blackmail illusion, he would reposition the mirrors to keep them from breaking. And perhaps he would shoot out the chain instead of making it look like an accident.

  He met James in the wings, just off of the stage.

  “That was extreme,” said James.

  “We’ll discuss it later. May I?” Carter took from James the cage, intact, with tiny Handsome, unharmed and just as hostile as ever. Whistling as he returned to the stage, he caused Mysterioso to look up.

  “Is this your dog?”

  Mysterioso made an inarticulate reply, standing so that pieces of mirror dropped from his shins to the stage, crossing at a trot and wrestling the cage from Carter’s hands.

  “You know,” Carter said, so that only his rival could hear, “I love animals. As did Karl and Evelyn Kowaleski. Handsome was never in danger.” He paused, as he’d rehearsed. “As you said of Houdini.”

  Mysterioso said nothing. The curtain fell, cutting them off from the audience. At once, performers closed around Carter, tousling his hair and telling him “good show.” Carter left the stage as his scenery was broken down and the schoolroom props wheeled into place for the next act. Leonard, Adolph, and the rest clapped him on the back. But each time he was pounded, he felt hollow and dull, and slightly ashamed of his trick.

  . . .

  Murdoch’s office was on the fourth floor of the Orpheum, w
ith windows that opened onto Market Street so he could see how far the ticket holders’ line extended. To be called to Murdoch’s during a performance was referred to as “a visit to St. Peter,” for only very very good or very very bad things happened there.

  Murdoch was 99 percent ruthless, but also 1 percent conscious of opinion, and so he had workmen build him a wide chimney whose throat was studded with hand grips. During the Yuletide season, he had a man dressed as St. Nick distribute bonuses this way, and, regardless of the month, and regardless of the terrible news he might be receiving, a performer sitting in the hard-backed chair always looked toward the chimney for a ray of hope.

  When Carter was told to come up, he tried to put bounce in his step, but he pictured Mysterioso’s anguish, and no matter how much he thought about having avenged the Kowaleskis, he felt a sense of foreboding.

  Murdoch seemed even more sour than usual. All the honey in the world couldn’t sweeten his brittle monotone. “Got no choice here, kid. Yer shut.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  Murdoch pulled out a legal-sized sheet of boilerplate and put on his reading glasses. “Says here in Mysterioso’s contract, no member of his company will be molested. Seems that includes his damn dog.”

  “But that’s ridiculous.” He gripped the arms of his chair and crossed his legs quickly, trying to look above it all.

  “Agreed.” Murdoch shook his head. “But he’s the headliner. Holds us hostage.”

  “Mr. Murdoch, the dog was never in danger. It was just smoke and mirrors, literally. The dog only seemed to be under the anvil because of—”

  “Yeah, yeah. How’d you get the dog, anyway? Wasn’t he in a train car or something?”

  Carter pursed his lips. His stomach sank. “Well.”

  “Breaking and entering. Of course, it’s your town, so . . .”

  Carter cleared his throat. He wouldn’t go so easily. “It was a prank that got—”

  “The audience didn’t like it much.”

  “They applauded,” Carter said.