Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  “Excuse me?” Her face contorted. “Excuse me very much?”

  “What I mean is, the world is an awful place, isn’t it? Magic makes it less awful for a moment or two.” He felt like he’d torn away a bandage, and confirmed that an old wound was indeed still there. “If I can shake the world off a man’s shoulders, I feel better.”

  All over Bernie Simon’s features, lights were dimming and doors politely closing.

  “I mean,” he rallied, “there’s joy and wonderment to be had. I love to perform. It fights back the loneliness. It’s all I really know how to do anymore.”

  “I see,” she said. There was no reason she should understand him. He had in his way cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted across a canyon, hoping she’d heard.

  When she left, Carter waved good-bye.

  “Well,” Carter said to Ledocq, smiling, “how was that?”

  “Quelle catastrophe.”

  “What?”

  Ledocq pointed both palms out to Carter, and, at a loss, slapped them to his forehead. “I don’t even know where to begin. No, not true. You have mustard on your collar. It’s been there the whole time.”

  “That’s hardly a disaster.”

  “It’s highly symbolic,” Ledocq said.

  “Just because I was too rusty to flirt with her—”

  “Ah, Carter. You’re a lost young man.”

  “I thought I was very honest.”

  “Exactly.” Ledocq wrestled internally for a moment, and then turned off the fight, which was in the tenth round. “Tell me honestly, then, what do you need from this life?”

  “What do I—”

  “Need. Need,” he repeated, and blinked. Without the hissing excitement of the Leonard fight, the room seemed airless.

  “I don’t know. Nothing? I’m content,” Carter said. “I’m fine, you know.”

  “Ehhhh.” Ledocq shrugged, producing a silver dollar. “You’re content like the Kaiser. Watch this.” He held the coin by its edge, and then placed it in his palm. He squeezed his palm shut, made a pass over it, and opened his hand again. Carter stared. In Ledocq’s palm was a silver dollar.

  “Have I missed something?”

  “Yes.” Ledocq did it again. And a third time. Finally, Carter noticed: the date on the coin changed from 1921 to 1923.

  “That’s a tedious sort of trick,” Carter sighed.

  “That is true. But why?”

  “If you do a trick that the audience doesn’t notice—”

  “Ah! Yes! I’ve got you! An audience. You need an audience.”

  “Oh, that sounds awful.”

  “No, not much. We all need love. When you’re ready, you’ll find it somewhere else, like in a pretty girl.”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “Yes you do, I saw you a minute ago.”

  “I need Bernie? Please!”

  “No, you don’t need her, she’s a nishtikeit, a pitsvinik, who cares? But the truth is there’s a man under all that magic somewhere, Charlie, we’ll dig him out for sure.” Nodding like he’d come to the end of a geometric proof, Ledocq turned the radio back on. There was haze and static, a turbinelike whining, and then the sounds of a crowd, and announcers.

  Carter listened long enough to learn that Leonard was still ahead. In fact, he became absorbed in the narrative of the fight, the rights and the lefts, the devastating uppercut that, Oh, Leonard dodged with intelligent footwork. And then a brutal assault by Leonard, who wasn’t known for his hard hitting, but he was peppering Tendler, just peppering him with blows, and then with a gasp, “Leonard has laid Tendler among the sweet peas!” and there was the sound of bells, and Ledocq cried, “Yesss!” for Leonard, at the end of fifteen rounds, was the only man standing.

  “You know,” Carter said, as the cheering faded, hoping this would solve everything, “I do love magic. By itself, for its own sake.”

  Ledocq nodded. “So. If you do a trick and no one notices, does that satisfy? Or is it like a tree falling in the forest without anyone to hear it?”

  Carter sighed. His curse in life was to be attracted to people who understood him. With a sip of beer, he said, “I feel sorry for that tree.”

  . . . Though the President is said to be fatigued, there will be no worries at the Curran Theatre on the night he pays his respects to favorite son Charles Carter. For Carter the Great promises effects to confound the imagination. Quothe he, “There’s joy and wonderment to be had.” The President himself may have spent weeks on his Voyage of Understanding, but Carter has been traveling for years. Even after all his world tours, Carter says, “I love to perform.” And if delights await our beloved Commander-in-Chief, the responsibility for such massive entertainment never for a moment affects the suave and bubbling mahatma. With a wink and a nod, he says, “If I can shake the world off a man’s shoulders, I feel better.”

  —Bernie Simon, staff

  By the time Griffin finished the holdings on Charles Carter, it was dinnertime. The workmen had come back, and their hammering and sawing sent out clouds of plaster dust. In the shafts of light that moved across the library, it almost looked like it was snowing. Miss White had brought Griffin many glasses of water, and even though he had sucked on mints almost continuously, his new tooth still hurt.

  When he was done, he closed the journals, and his own notes, and sat quietly for a moment. He thanked Miss White, returned the hard hat at the door of the library, and walked outside. The rising certainty of a hunch made younger agents excited. They ran too quickly to tell their superiors about half-baked theories. But the more Griffin had to go on, the calmer he got. Carter had stolen another magician’s show in vaudeville. He claimed to have consorted with the Japanese military. His wife had died in a mysterious accident. There was some kind of insurance scam in Indonesia, which he’d tried to cover up with a story about pirates. Griffin couldn’t quite figure out the island for retired animals, though using it for smuggling was a possibility. They didn’t have much liquor in that part of the world, but they did have opium. Maybe Carter ran dope.

  Carter had performed for President Harding, who had died of causes that were being covered up. Shaking the world off a great man’s shoulders. What did Carter mean by that?

  Griffin sat at dinner with his findings, unmoving except to flick his tongue against his tooth, which still tasted pungent, like metal. Carter couldn’t have acted alone. Someone had to have prompted him—the players behind the Veterans Bureau, maybe. Or Fall’s Springs. Or the Post Office. Or even the Duchess, simply tired of her husband’s affairs. And the Service had helped him, and wanted dirt on their new ally.

  Or Carter was completely innocent, and they were looking for a patsy.

  After he’d eaten everything on his plate, Griffin flipped through his notes. Harding had asked several people, “If you knew a secret, would you for the good of the country expose or bury it?” No matter how he looked at it, Griffin had trouble imagining a man like Carter wanting any kind of secret exposed.

  When he returned to his hotel room, there was a message from Starling. Would he, Agent Griffin, accompany him on an interview tomorrow morning? He believed he had found Charles Carter in Oakland, and would like Griffin’s help in questioning him.

  On Monday, August 6, 1923, Carter stood on the stairs of his Oakland property, his fingers playing of the tips of his Thai basil plants, and his agile mind trying to keep up with Colonel Starling, whom he was beginning to find troublesome.

  The Colonel asked, “The photograph in your drawing room, is that your wife?”

  “She was my wife. I’m a widower.” He said this in his stage voice, calmly.

  “I’m sorry,” Starling responded.

  While Starling massaged a mint leaf and brought his fingertips to his nose, Carter weighed another question, and found it innocuous enough. “Was the President in trouble?”

  “That depends,” Starling said. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  Carter shrugged. “I
had but five minutes with the President. Being a magician is an odd thing. I’ve met presidents, kings, prime ministers, and a few despots. Most of them want to know how I do my tricks, or to show me a card trick they learned as a child, and I have to smile and say, ‘Oh, how nice.’ Still, it’s not a bad profession if you can get away from all the bickering among your peers about who created what illusion.” Carter ended here, satisfied that he’d in no way answered the question.

  But Starling’s eyes changed. Carter realized he’d somehow stepped in a bear trap, and Starling was walking around him, looking for the best place to amputate his leg. “I see. You put on a thrilling show yourself, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now, I’m just an admirer here, and I hope this question isn’t rude, but have I seen some of those tricks before?”

  “Those effects? Not the way I do them, no.”

  “So you yourself are the creator of all of those tricks. Because Thurston—I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Thurston—does that trick with the ropes as well. Doesn’t he? And I saw Goldin several years ago, and he had two Hindu yoga men. Is there any part of your act—”

  “No, there isn’t,” Carter replied briskly. “The fact of the matter is, Colonel Starling, there are few illusions that are truly original. It’s a matter of presentation.” He hoped that might stop this conversation; when Starling only stared in response, Carter continued, “In other words, I didn’t invent sugar or flour, but I bake a mean apple pie.”

  “So then you’re just as respected in the business for the quality of your presentation as the magicians who actually create illusions,” Starling said.

  Carter suddenly felt like Starling had knowingly drilled into a live nerve. He wanted to shout at him, “Yes, it’s true, I’m not that well respected the way I once was, I’m a fraud,” but in the heartbeat it took him to recover, he folded his arms, and smiled. He said, “At some point this stopped being about President Harding.”

  “My fault. I’m intrigued by all forms of misdirection.” Starling reached into his vest pocket, then withdrew his business card, which he looked at for a moment before handing it to Carter. “If you think of anything else—”

  “I’ll call you.”

  Starling joined Griffin. They walked several steps before Starling turned around. “Oh, Mr. Carter?”

  “Yes?” Carter felt a wave of exhaustion, as if the finishing line of a long race had just been yanked into the distance.

  “Did the President say anything about a secret?”

  “A secret? What sort of secret?”

  “A few people told us that in his last weeks, the late President asked them . . .” Starling opened a notepad, and read, “‘What would you do if you knew an awful secret?’”

  “How dramatic. What on earth could that be?” He said this as great fatigue welled up on him, and Starling faced him with one of those icy stares. This time, Carter almost folded. He was that tired.

  But his facade was apparently composed enough, for Starling simply said, “We’ll find out. Thank you.” Then he and his silent compatriot Griffin left Carter alone.

  CHAPTER 6

  For several seconds after agents Griffin and Starling left him, Charles Carter stood in his dressing gown, his forehead tilting against the door, one hand on the doorknob, the other hand thrown lazily over his head so that his elbow pointed toward the high beams of the ceiling.

  Once he had assured himself there was no possible reason for anyone to approach his door again, he let his knees give way until he was more or less sitting on the floor with his legs bent at the knee. “Thank God that’s finally over,” he said to no one in particular. He had gotten ten hours of sleep in the last three days, so he was prepared to stay on the floor as long as was necessary.

  And yet he was now face to face with—himself. Stacked against a coatrack, peeking out of half-torn-away brown paper was a bundle of fifty window cards. It was a design that lacked originality: the standard bust portrait, three-quarter profile, a turbaned-and-tuxedoed Charles Carter with imps whispering in his ears. Ever since Kellar, all magicians had adopted this poster—it told audiences, “Come see a man to whom the Devil himself whispers advice.” Every foreign land knew the imps meant the performer was a magician, the way three balls aloft meant a pawnshop.

  To Carter, the imps meant something different. They were whispering, “You can sit here, Charles Carter, and never move again until your heart stops beating.”

  To an exhausted man resting on the walnut-stained floor of his Oakland pied-à-terre, this suggestion, the voice of the devil himself, was very attractive. However, Carter straightened himself and walked forcefully to the kitchen and did dishes. As the sink filled up, he said, “Ha!” as though the effort were the same as conquering the Alps. He was hopeless at all domestic chores, from beating the rugs to dusting his shelves, and when Bishop was gone, Carter couldn’t leave a drinking glass spotless for one million dollars in gold.

  Nonetheless, he now worked assiduously, making plans for many activities he would perform today and tomorrow and the next.

  He washed out his orange-juice glass, telling himself, “Mr. Carter, your presentation of Goldin’s trick was quite remarkable.” He imagined he was scrubbing clean a human skull and hiding it beneath the dishwater. Should anyone ask again, he would say, “I have performed many illusions, gentlemen, which are unique and compelling. And original.”

  But when, Carter the Great, did you last perform such an illusion?

  Recently.

  And what was it?

  His eyes flared. In frustration, he actually said, “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” Regardless of Ledocq’s advice about trees falling in the forest, Carter had performed a trick for which there had been no audience. This made Starling’s needling that much worse. Not only were his recent stage illusions stale, the sole and singular good one had occurred after the show, offstage, as if it had never happened, and no one could ever know it had happened at all.

  His internal interrogator, which knew how to ask questions more effectively than any Secret Service agent ever would, continued: Now then—when was the last time you performed a completely original illusion, an illusion for which there was an audience, not just a tree falling in the forest, but an advancement of your vocation?

  Under the water, two hands that were extremely skillful at magic—not dishes—slowed. He said, quietly, “1914.” He did not say the rest aloud: The Phantom War Gun.

  He dried his hands, realizing the rack beside him was now filled with wet dishes.

  He pulled a leather-bound ledger from the shelf. Here was red ink; there was black ink. He had performed in seventy-two theatres on this last tour, in eighteen countries, and had seen beautiful and exotic lands.

  And his net profits were off. Again.

  His two weeks at the Curran had been marvelous, but then again he was San Francisco’s native son. Ending his tour here was a present he’d given himself to help forget that, increasingly, universally, he was playing to houses in which more and more seats were empty.

  Thurston was probably doing well, still, and Houdini was of course beyond any sort of decline. Nicola and Goldin debuted so many new illusions with each tour that they, too, were probably turning profits. But except for that short list, the magic business was getting harder every year. For instance, Grover George, George el diablo, clearly knew when he was beaten. These days, he toured overseas, in Andean terrains and remote villages that had never seen the enemy: motion pictures.

  So, Mr. Charles Carter, he continued silently, have you even tried to come up with new illusions?

  But of course. And based on real life, too, which is always the best kind, he answered glibly, as if he could fool himself.

  Shortly after Black Christmas, a phrase had begun to appear, usually—but not always—in a feminine hand, all over Borax’s estate. It had been written on trees, on the walls of cottages, in the dust beside the pigs’ feeding pens. It was something m
any of the unfortunate women wrote, She Never Died. It was a quiet cry, a reference to the nameless unfortunate woman murdered on Christmas Day, 1917. She Never Died was a way to say her life had not been in vain. Women tended to walk to the edges of the property and write it when they felt depressed.

  But just before the election of 1920, the saying began to show up all over Oakland buildings and train yards, even once or twice in San Francisco, sometimes with a second phrase below it, Don’t waste our suffrage. The phrase had grown into a feminist declaration that as long as one woman was still alive, then that unknown woman was indeed still alive. The Tribune had commented on it in the same breath as their condemnation of the Reds, the Drys, and other forces eroding the American way of life. “Now that women have the vote, can they be trusted to use it?”

  The phrase resonated, too, with Carter. He opened a second leather-lined volume, this one thick with pen-and-ink drawings, ideas for new effects. Here, in 1919, he’d begun to design an effect called She Never Died. He looked at it closely, as he hardly remembered it. He would make an assistant vanish, and when he tried to bring her back, everything else on the stage would, with each pass that he made, vanish, too. Finally, he himself would vanish. The end.

  He stared at this illusion dumbly, confirming that he’d thought enough of it to record it. How exactly was that an exemplar of She Never Died? He looked at another illusion of the same title: a woman tears scarves in halves, then in quarters, and then Carter passes a cloth over her. She disappears and the scarves are shredded into tatters. The end. Another one: he calls up the spirits of the dead and they confirm that everything is just fine on the other side of the spectral veil. Then they come back to life. The end.