“Hi, Carter!” she called. Then the applause came, lengthy and relieved.
“Thank you. I’ll see you back in Oakland,” he said as she climbed to the catwalk and left the stage.
“So,” Carter said, “magic water,” with a shrug. “Causes instantaneous transportation. Which doesn’t matter as I’m not a magician anymore. I’m a stunt rider.” He was enjoying himself. He felt relaxed and loose, as if he could do no wrong.
Quietly, the motorcycle was wheeled in from the wings.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, behold a triumph of European engineering,” he cried. “The BMW R32, an extravagant machine, reliable, steady, and true at speeds of eighty miles per hour. It is the preferred mount for those of us who are no longer magicians but stunt riders.”
As he spoke, he walked around the motorcycle, flicking on the petcock.
“I should tell you a bold fact: this is the only BMW in all of America. They are just now making their debut in Paris, and eventually some clever rich men here will find one. But for now, I have the only BMW in all of America.” He used the riding crop to trace an imaginary pathway. “I am going to ride this motorcycle in a spiral, increasing my speed steadily, until I have achieved full velocity, eighty miles per hour, at which point, I will go up the rampway you see before you, and fly through the air, landing on that six-foot-square platform that hangs from the rafters. And I shall come to a full stop immediately. At least,” he added, “that would be prudent.”
In the audience, in a row seven back from the stage, Max Friz squirmed between Philo and Mrs. Ledocq. Friz shook his head. “Eighty miles per hour? He cannot go that fast in this small space.” Mrs. Ledocq put her finger to her lips, and Max turned to the audience members behind him. “He cannot go eighty miles per hour in this small space,” he explained, but his protest was cut short as Carter, mounting, lowered his goggles and kicked the engine over and gunned it to a thunderous roar. Easing off on the throttle, Carter nodded at the conductor, who gestured to the trumpet section. They launched into the opening of the William Tell Overture and Carter began his slow and steady spiral outward.
The spotlights swirled around the stage in circles as if he were hard to find. With full attention on him, only the extremely canny noticed, and puzzled at, drapery arising around the platform hanging over the stage. If Carter were going to ride onto the platform, wouldn’t he crash into the curtains?
Carter spiralled from tight circles to wider arcs, suddenly swinging out to the very lip of the stage, and then back to the wings, and then with a mighty roar, he was on the rampway, motoring upward, accompanied by flashes from small red and green and blue fireworks, and the motorcycle was climbing through the air, describing a perfect parabola toward the platform, the audience holding its breath, some already moving their palms together to applaud, the orchestra blasting the Overture’s brassy crescendo, and then rider and machine came down, fatally short, missing the platform entirely and splashing into the water tank. The impact sent tidal waves cascading over the sides, washing across the stage. Those in the first three rows were treated to sprays of water as if they were standing on the prow of a boat.
For long seconds, the surface of the tank churned, and just as the depth of this accident became apparent—Max Friz was frozen solid, hands clutching his head—there was a puff of smoke, and high over the stage the drapery around the platform fell away to reveal Charles Carter and motorcycle, unharmed.
He waved, and he called out, “Magic water,” and bowed from the waist; the orchestra played out the finale of the Rossini piece while the audience, standing for the second time that night, gave up their applause and their cheers.
When some time had passed, and he was able to be heard over the clapping, Carter declared, “You let me know I’m a magician after all. Thank you.”
. . .
Outside the theatre, Griffin paced. He couldn’t even pace in silence, for the hobo on the sidewalk had decided Griffin seemed like a good mark, and had started mangling Marc Antony’s soliloquy. He managed only a few lines before losing steam, and he started complaining instead. “I played here. This was before the movies, back when a man’s voice was his ticket. I had excellent diction. The women, I tell you, they were all over me, Tessie Wall’s girls, and Jessie Hayman’s. Murdoch, hated him. He was a mean man. That honey pot. He was, he was, Iago.” He paused here, eyes batting back and forth as if trying to retrieve a suitable monologue from Othello. Finally, he looked at Griffin. “Spare a nickel?”
“I’ll give you a quarter if you be quiet for a minute.”
The hobo nodded. Griffin dug in his pocket and handed over a quarter. The hobo opened his mouth to say thank you, then thought better of breaking his vow of silence. Instead, he sat down on the curb and absently cupped his elbows in his palms.
Griffin looked down the alleyway. A fire escape. He turned his head back—it went all the way to the roof. The roof had to have a fire exit, then. Access. He made a pyramid of garbage cans—harder to balance than he’d expected—and stood on the top one, which was just high enough to pull himself onto the fire escape.
The whole way up, he found some small relief in how assiduously he’d been doing push-ups and sit-ups lately. When he reached the roof, he was hardly fatigued. There were taller buildings that hulked over the roof. The huge Orpheum Theatre sign, with its thousands of white lightbulbs, hummed. He saw the hump of the fire exit door and a pile of rags in front of it.
He jogged across the tar paper, shoes sticking, and then he slowed when he realized the pile of rags had arms and legs.
Griffin reached inside his jacket to unsnap the strap of leather that ran across the butt of his Colt. The theatre sign blinked on one letter at a time, then all the letters shimmered before the whole cycle started again, so the rooftop structures—air vents, mostly, and the fire exit—were thrown first into light, then darkness.
Griffin could see the man’s body, clothed only in an undershirt, shorts, socks, and garters. The head lay at an unnatural angle, neck broken, eyes open. No, not open. The sign lit up, O-R-P-H-E-U-M, and Griffin saw pennies against the dead man’s eyes.
Something was wrong with those pennies. He picked one up. It was a copper token the size of a quarter. On one side was a lion, rampant. “Will You Have Her As Your Bride?” was the inscription. On the other side was a profile portrait of a proud-looking man holding a small canine, surrounded by the legend, “The More I Know of People, the More I Love My Dog.”
Griffin’s heart sickened. What kind of a freak had done this? He tried the fire exit door. It was, as per his usual luck, locked from the inside.
He walked around the roof carefully, recalling he hadn’t seen windows as he’d come up the fire escape.
His eyes alit on a structure that he took at first for an airshaft. Then he thought it was something else, and then he explained it to himself as an airshaft again, for there was no reason for a theatre to have anything other than a ventilation device up here.
But this was too large for an airshaft. “What the hell,” he murmured as he approached it. He shook his head. By the time he was six feet away, he had confirmed exactly what it was.
Not again, he thought.
. . .
The backstage area, from the very rear wall to the closed fire curtain, and from wing to wing, was boiling over with people carrying things, no better sign that this was indeed opening night. Carter stood in his shirtsleeves (he’d torn his jacket at the shoulder and a seamstress busily repaired it), directing his cast and crew with a precision that was in no way cold. Despite what James had said, he could hardly accept that this was his last night, especially when he was enjoying himself so much.
“All right, we need military discipline, my friends. Esperanza, Albert, the audience will be patient for about nine minutes, so wait until then, then go to the apron with your props and put on your routine.”
“Sure,” Esperanza said. Albert, who was a cutup, curtseyed toward his boss and started to run
off hand-in-hand with Esperanza until Carter called to him:
“No, not yet, we need you for a moment. We’re reblocking the Devil’s entrance.”
“Hey, that’s me!” Albert raced back, and walked through his cues patiently, with Carter’s hands on his shoulders, directing him where to stand. They were surrounded by electricians, the script girl, and the stage manager, who was ready to write down new items for the prop schedule. Ledocq hovered, but did not participate. He drank a glass of water.
Carter said, “If we’re introducing the Devil by conventional means, we should at least use a splashy kind of lighting. We’ll base it on last season’s rigging. Do we still have the schematics? Excellent. Tell me, how are the electrics?” Carter asked his grips and, to a man, they said there was no danger of fuses blowing, as the Orpheum had been refitted with novel and highly sophisticated knob-and-tube wiring.
Carter blinked. “All right, I’ll take your word for it,” he said, looking over their shoulders at Ledocq, who nodded in confirmation. “Splendid. What’s next?”
The stage manager reminded him they had to drain the water tank that night, which made Ledocq clear his throat, and explain, blushing, it was a lot of water, and the plumbers had asked them to only attach it to the sewer drainpipe when the theatre audience had departed and the toilets were no longer flushing.
“Yes,” Carter said, “very uplifting. There’s something else to change. What is it? Ah, the bullet catching, of course. We’re cutting that.”
When he said this, he saw Ledocq frowning at him, but he also heard a single pair of hands clapping and a familiar voice crying “Hoo-ray.” Phoebe was sitting in a chair, half-hidden by curtains. “You kept your promise,” she said.
The prop man went to the table upon which were laid the loads of flowers, the silks, the bird cages, and such, and he segregated the pistols onto a shelf for the items to be cut.
“Anything else?”
“The ending,” Ledocq said.
“Ah, yes,” Carter replied. “Is my jacket ready yet?” The seamstress shook her head.
“Might I go now, boss?” Albert stretched his arms. “I feel like using up that flash paper.” He smiled at Ledocq.
“Albert, that is volatile flash paper,” Ledocq sighed. “I have told you this more than once. Are you juggling the torches?” Albert nodded enthusiastically. Ledocq said, “I hope I’m in your will.”
“Albert, you’re a madman, go now, enjoy, please.” Carter waved him away. He rubbed his palms together. “So . . . who do we need for this? Carlo and Scott and Willie . . . and . . . that’s all, right, Carlo and Scott and Willie?”
The script girl nodded. The three men approached for a huddle. Simultaneously, Tom and James approached, leading Phoebe between them. James had a final pat on the back in mind, and Tom wanted to complain to Carter that though he’d opened the tomb of Tutankhamun, there’d been nary a peep from King Tut himself. But all that was put on hold, because James saw that Scott was holding an odd metal sort of basket.
“I’m sorry,” James said, pointing, “but what is that?”
Scott waved it in the air, an effort that took both hands. “It’s called a brank.”
James squinted as if listening for faint music.
“Carter,” Tom started, “you didn’t give us our King Tut.”
“James?” Carter asked.
“Didn’t Dad have drawings of a brank or something on his wall?”
“Yes. Why, do you remember anything else about it?”
James said to Phoebe, “He’s always bringing up things I don’t remember.” Then, to his brother, “No, I don’t remember. What are you doing with it tonight?”
“I’m imprisoned in it just before Willie here cuts my head off.” Carter patted Willie on his ruddy cheek.
“Well, that’s nice,” James said. “Listen, the show has been marvelous so far—”
“Cutting off your head?” Phoebe looked toward Carter. “Cutting off your head,” she said again, this time drawing out the words like they described an exotic and awful delicacy.
“It’s a trifle,” explained Carter.
Carlo made a grand head-chopping motion on Carter’s throat, adding whoomph as a sound effect.
“Actually,” James said, flipping through the few remaining pages of the script, “I’m just not sure about that as a finale.”
“Why? Carlo, Scott, Willie, you can go, we’re all up to speed, I think.”
With the crew gone, James continued, “I’m worried about the very end of the show. People enjoy resolution.”
“My head comes off, and then I come back onstage.”
“Excuse me,” Phoebe said. “Can you please tell me why cutting off your head isn’t dangerous?”
“It’s far safer than the bullet-catching.” He considered telling her he wouldn’t be killed tonight, they’d turned away a Secret Service agent at the stage door, and it had only been Agent Griffin all along, but she looked so peeved he didn’t want to risk it. “James, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Thematically,” he said, and then acknowledged Carter’s look of surprise. “Yes, yes, for once I’m able to see a theme here. I’m quite involved in your show tonight, it’s been superior. And I just think that the way you have it blocked, it lacks some kind of magical punch at the end. People will be riled up when they see you die, and . . . you haven’t really thought out the coming-back part, have you? It’s blah.”
Carter took Phoebe’s hand, saying, “Let’s leave my brother to his bad feelings. I’ll explain the illusion to you.”
“Thank you.”
But James stopped them. “No. The illusion reminds me of the worse side of the things you dream up. Like Blackmail. It performs the function of an illusion, but it’s not satisfying.”
“Oh, an argument with God,” Phoebe interjected. “I’ve had those,” then “Ah! Yes!”—she gripped Carter’s arm.
“What?” He was feeling impatient.
“Say. Did you destroy television on purpose?”
James clapped his hands to his mouth. “You dear woman! Maybe he did!”
Carter’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding me.”
“Aha, yes.” James picked up the thread. “If movies hurt the magic business, maybe you worry that television would do the same, or worse.”
“As if I would behave that way. “Carter hissed, “That’s absurd.”
“Yes it is,” Phoebe answered. She said to James, “I don’t think it’s conscious on his part,” and James nodded quickly, replying to her, “Yes, I told him to make it a Viking funeral tonight, only I didn’t know how truly I spoke, you know,” which caused Phoebe to say, “He has self-destructive notions and he can be very sad, have you noticed how sad he can be?”
As Phoebe and James continued to discuss him, Carter said, “Why is it everyone I know sounds exactly like my mother? My every motive is utterly transparent and I do not stand a chance. Might I just kill myself now?”
James came up to Carter and poked him in the chest. “Don’t let this be a peculiar punishment-suicide trick. Peculiar isn’t good.”
“It’s not a trick, it’s an illusion.” Carter took Phoebe’s hand. “Phoebe, I’m going to show you the illusion, and I’m going to walk you though everything that happens, and I’m going to show you the safety mechanism, just so you know how safe I’m going to be.”
Phoebe hesitated. “All right,” she said.
Carter and Phoebe walked away from James and, on the catwalk, a figure stepped along on the balls of his feet, following from above, as Phoebe wasn’t the only person interested in seeing how the safety mechanisms worked.
CHAPTER 8
Meanwhile, on stage, Albert and Esperanza were finishing their routine. As he was too excited to pace himself, Albert had used most of the flash paper in the first thirty seconds. The finale, therefore, though fiery, was flash paper–free: an inspired bit in which they threw back and forth six knives and a burning tor
ch. Each time Esperanza received the torch, she used it to light a candle downstage, and each time Albert caught it, he attempted without success to light a cigar he gripped in his mouth. He kept bringing the flames up to his face, which elicited quick shrieks from the fainthearted, and when it ignited, there were cheers.
The couple shared a quick tango by the light of all the candles, and then bowed. When they straightened, Albert said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we bring you the end of Carter the Great’s show, his finale.”
Esperanza said, “To preserve the mystery for future audiences, management asks that you please not reveal any details of the act that follows.”
The lights fell and at the same time, the curtains were drawn fully open. The stage was bare. Carter ambled out from stage right, hands in pockets, lingering. He had a smile on his face, and the smile truly came from his soul, for he had the profound sense, inexplicably given how much financial trouble he was in, that he was in exactly the right place, doing, God knew why, exactly the right thing.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said softly, “it has been wonderful. But now it’s time to say good night.” He teared up, just slightly. There was silence out there, as the audience knew this couldn’t be it, not yet, Carter wouldn’t cheat them that way, and he realized what sort of pact he had with them: he would treat them fairly in ways that life itself would not. “We have had our fun, and I have proven myself the greatest magician of any age. I am prepared to send you all back home unless a greater wizard than I should appear.”
There was a brilliant flash, far more brilliant than last season, it made Carter wince in fact, and then a great roiling sulphurous cloud; the Devil himself joined him onstage.
So it began: the ending of the Carter the Great Paragon Show of Mystery, the all-new, all-different spectacular, the show with fifteen carloads of scenic effects and tons of ponderous impedimenta. In the wings and under the stage, prop men waited with newspapers and ducks and eggs, and Cleo tucked her long hair under a blonde flapper wig so she could be put into the Gone! chair, and Esperanza, too, put on a wig to be her double. And men rode the Fairbanks up and down silently and Scott and Willie suited up to be bearded Hindu yoga men, and the cannons were rolled into position, loads of flowers at the ready. From the flies to the crawl spaces, every square inch out of the audience line of sight was packed: here was the cage for the doves, there were the screen and projector and slides for Carter’s hand shadows, here was a cage lined with straw, goats and pigs and sheep within, ready to be released when the hand shadows came to life. And, listening carefully to every sound was Phoebe Kyle.
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