He awaited pain, but felt none. Instead, fear began to spread. When pain came, it would be horrible. The application of will against the physical body, his hand was hopeless, and his will washed away, too, and in its place, a tidal wave now of thunderous, pounding, vicious pain.
Carter still hadn’t made a sound, and Mysterioso put his hands on his hips. “Oh, come on, that’s got to hurt.”
And yes, as conscious thought returned to him, the pain was there and with it the visceral message from body to brain and back again, sickly fear of further harm, but also a challenge, one Carter automatically clung to, do not give this man satisfaction.
He breathed through his nose and out his mouth. Labored. Clenched teeth that he fought to unclench.
“My employers,” Mysterioso said, crossing his arms and leaning against a support pillar, “are going to allow me to keep all of your devices. Well, whatever I don’t destroy.” He looked at his nails.
Carter rasped, with words that sounded measured, “Are you going after Houdini, too?”
Mysterioso considered this. He looked all around, alighting on Griffin (who wasn’t moving). “I’m sorry, are you making conversation until someone rescues you, or are you just making conversation? Houdini did what he had to do and I respect that. You, you were just Houdini’s punk, a cheap kard and koin opportunist who lucked into a momentary crown. So by the skill and determination that you don’t possess, I’m taking it all back. Audacious, no?”
He winced. That word. Three syllables. Audacieux, as it came to him for no particular reason in French. It brought him somewhere primal. Jamais tromper pas la repout pour l’audace. As Mysterioso turned away, Carter shouted, his eyes sealed shut with concentration, “Never mistake obnoxiousness for audacity!”
Mysterioso kept walking. Over his shoulder, he muttered, “Yes, yes, familiar advice.” He had reached the brick wall, and begun following something. “Who was that, Professor Hoffman?”
Ottawa Keyes. Carter’s eyes snapped open.
He watched Mysterioso, who counted off steps from the fuse box and down the wall—then looked at how he was pinned, the easy hand first: left hand, handcuff around a U-bar. No special tools needed, which was good because Carter’s special tools were up his other sleeve. Striking the cuff against a hard surface could release him. Mysterioso had cuffed him with the U-bar a good distance from the floor. With enough slack, he could use the U-bar itself.
He remembered how every night he’d worried about Annabelle’s hands, how she could have broken bones so easily by fighting. His morning ritual of olive oil and milk. A piece of him had been killed. There was no way to feel how entirely that was going to ruin him. He moved his thumb. He could move his thumb.
Mysterioso held a fire ax. Carter took a deep breath. When Mysterioso came near enough to swing it, he would kick as hard as he could, but even that wouldn’t be enough.
Mysterioso walked past him with the fire ax. Then back to the fuse box, which he popped open. He brought down a lever. The left side of the stage was plunged into darkness. He brought it back up; then he did the same with the right, then the overheads, then levers that seemed to do nothing, perhaps connected to the outside power, and then he brought the house lights up and down. “Ah,” he said, “that’s it.”
Mysterioso walked along the wall about thirty feet, and then brought his ax over his head and down once, causing the blade to spark against the metal fasteners. He threw the ax aside and pried back on the now-severed power line. He pulled it from its braces, which popped away like buttons, walking back to the fuse box, where he brought the power lever back on again. He now held, like a garden hose, forty feet of live cable, two 120-volt lines at 180 degrees out of phase, wrapped around a neutral, making 240 volts.
Carter bit down. He was not to be axed, but electrocuted. But then Mysterioso yelled, “Hey, Carter, how do you make the lion roar?”
. . .
Griffin had never been shot before. In his youth, he’d dreamed about it. Now, with the shock wearing off, all he could think for long minutes was how stupid he felt. Shot for no reason. Jack Griffin, idiot. There was now something definitive for his gravestone. It didn’t even hurt that much—he just felt weak. Moving might have been possible, but certainly wasn’t worth it.
He heard the two magicians talking. He watched as a little dog with diseased-looking skin lapped up his blood.
Griffin’s entire world filled up with the dog. He formed a complex relationship with him. He was thinking maybe he had actually lived his whole life for this moment, not the glory he’d hoped to die for, and the dog had lived its whole life without any foresight whatever. And here they were, the man who was always wrong, splayed before an animal. Now I’m food for a vampire dog, which seemed a fitting destiny. As Handsome grew bolder, actually standing in the blood, Griffin looked at the gauzy patches of white hair over his pink and grey skin. He saw a grey spot on the dog’s flank that looked like Florida. The world was a wonder. God’s infinite plan included the duplication of the state of Florida on a dog’s rump.
Then Handsome was overcome by greed and stepped directly to the source of his meal, Griffin’s side wound. Griffin felt sharp teeth on him, and his reflexes kicked in. A convulsive jerk. It was enough. Handsome recoiled, made a full circle, and watched Griffin from afar. If a dog’s eyes could make judgments, these were sizing him up, determining whether he was too dangerous to eat.
The little dog’s nose went in the air, and his lip curled. Without further preamble he trotted off.
Griffin chuckled, deep in his throat. He wasn’t meat yet.
“Griffin! Griffin? Can you hear me?”
He saw Carter, who was pinned just a few feet to his left, stealing glances at him, while Mysterioso was far away in the shadows, playing with the fuse box again.
Carter whispered, “Can you stand? Do you have another gun? Can you help me pull this knife out of the board?”
The answer to all those questions was no. But Griffin did feel a little stronger.
“Griffin,” he hissed, “crawl to the lion cage. Pull the pin. It’s by the floor.”
Mysterioso, satisfied that the lines would do, faced the cage. But Baby had gotten as far away as possible and sat with his back to him. Shocking the lion without seeing his face would never do. “Come, Baby. Come here.”
“Griffin, let the lion loose,” Carter whispered, head turned away from Mysterioso, speaking so quietly Griffin could barely hear him.
A wounded man letting a lion loose. At the word of a presidential assassin. Griffin glared at him with all the contempt he could muster.
Carter looked to the cage, and to Griffin, beseechingly. “I’ll confess to killing the President. Let the lion loose.”
. . .
Mysterioso reached into the cage with one hand and poked at the baked potato, of which a few bites had been taken. “Food, Baby. Come for food.” He heard a quick yip, its source somewhere nearby. Then a steady little whine that was somewhat muffled.
“Little man, where are you?” he asked with concern. This was not Handsome’s sweet play bark. It sounded strange.
He looked all around, at the crates and the dozens of places Handsome could be lost, then at the cage again. He saw a trail of tiny footprints outlined in Griffin’s blood. They led directly to a box near the cage, then into the cage, to the baked potato. The potato, now unattended, had a single dog-sized bite taken out of it.
“Little man?” Mysterioso asked anxiously.
Baby turned around slowly. Lions cannot grin, but Baby looked like he was grinning, for his mouth was open just wide enough to show off how well his great incisors made a cage for Handsome, who was alive and panting in his mouth.
“No!” Mysterioso dropped the power line. “No! No!” He waved his arms in front of him as if surrendering. Baby sat down, all four legs down, looking like a sphinx, teeth—and dog—bared.
They froze like that, Mysterioso afraid to move, as if any motion would alarm Baby.
Finally, inspired, he brought his palms together. Clap.
Baby started chewing.
Mysterioso let out a wounded scream. His knees collapsing under him, he bent forward until his face was against the stage. His lungs filled with air and he screamed—agonized, horrified—again.
Carter, who had been fruitlessly banging his cuffed wrist against the backdrop, paused. He saw Baby chewing and heard Mysterioso, and knew what had happened. He loved his pets and could have felt sorry for Mysterioso, the way he had once years ago after Blackmail, but he didn’t. Good, he thought, and turned his attention to the hand overhead, which had entirely drained of blood. It no longer felt like his hand but like a wooden paddle someone had attached to his wrist.
. . .
Over the stage, Phoebe was trying to get her bearings. The chair had come to a full stop after just a second of violent upward motion, as if fired out of a cannon. She had sat, hands gripping the wooden arms, listening to the voices below.
She had heard Mysterioso asking about Baby, and then Carter clapping. She listened closer for clues to her own location. Even when she was a girl, and still had her sight, she had realized she could hear objects. She had risen from bed with her eyes closed and knew, somehow, where the walls were, where the bureau was.
When she went blind, she learned that nearly every blind person had that proximity sense as a child and hoped it would help them, but it didn’t. Still, there were the magical few who could find their way around Lake Merritt. They made her terribly jealous. For her, finding her way around unfamiliar surroundings was hit or miss, and so here, over the stage, she put her toes out first, gingerly.
The chair could be alone, hanging by a wire, in empty space. There was in fact empty space under her feet. A fluttery feeling radiated to her palms. She pointed with her toes, walking them through the air. They hit something solid.
She took her shoes off and put them in her lap. She removed her stockings and balled them into her shoes. Using her bare feet, she felt along the edges—it was a wooden platform and it seemed to extend as far as her feet could reach. If Carter could remain calm, so could she. They would work together. She had to believe that. She lifted herself out of her chair and put both feet on the wood. She got on her knees and felt with her hands. Glad she hadn’t taken a broad step, for it wasn’t a platform, just a plank eighteen inches wide.
She left her shoes behind and tucked the hem of her dress into her waistband so she could crawl forward. She crawled very slowly, listening to the sounds below her. When she heard Carter yell, “Never mistake obnoxiousness for audacity,” she grinned. He was a fighter.
The plank ended, and then Phoebe, confirming it led to a wider platform with a railing, stood. She smelled gasoline and exhaust, and when her hands touched rubber, and metal, she knew exactly where she was. She could hear, below, almost directly below, Mysterioso call out, “Little man, where are you?”
She ran her hands all over it, trying to turn everything she felt into a weapon. Headlamp, handlebars, the seats, the engine, the tires. What was in the panniers? They were empty. Why didn’t motorcycles come with machine guns and flamethrowers?
She heard Mysterioso scream. It sounded like keening. He was close by. How close?
If she started the motorcycle, and made it go over the platform, she could drop it on him.
It was a crazy idea. There was no way to accurately drop a motorcycle off the platform and onto a specific person who was standing nearby. Yet she had no further ideas. Locating the throttle was easy. Next she had to find the petcock and the kickstarter.
. . .
Mysterioso hovered by the cage. He was silent. Carter watched him carefully while thinking about his hand, which he continued to imagine being made of wood. An image of releasing himself came to mind; he banished it. He didn’t like the way that particular release worked.
Inside the cage, Baby was still chewing sporadically. Mysterioso picked up the power line. Carter shook his head, as if that would help. He called out, “Don’t do it,” which at least made the other magician look his way, eyes brimming.
Making a warrior’s cry, Mysterioso brought the 240-volt line against the bars of the cage. Baby switched from chewing to licking his paw and bringing it over his face to clean himself. Mysterioso yelled again, banging his cable against the cage. But it wasn’t grounded, and the current passed through harmlessly.
Mysterioso dropped the cable. He saw motion on the other side of the cage. He walked there, and saw, now collapsed on the floor, Agent Griffin. He was on his side, hands still cuffed, arms over his head, like a swimmer caught in mid-dive.
Mysterioso drew his gun and aimed it, then paused. Griffin was holding something in his hand. An eye hook.
He turned fast, but not fast enough, for Baby had already launched against the cage’s door, which swung open and knocked Mysterioso down.
Carter yelled encouragement as Baby jumped from the cage. Above the stage, Phoebe had found the petcock, and the throttle, and she stood astride the motorcycle, her bare foot finding the kickstarter. She pushed down tentatively. A purr, the sound of something spinning. But nothing else.
Miraculously, Mysterioso managed to hold on to his gun, and as he pushed himself upright, he looked for the lion but did not see him until Baby was on him. Baby roared, and a spiked paw the size of a frying pan knocked Mysterioso in the face. The gun skittered across the floor. Baby snarled and placed his jaws around Mysterioso’s chest, ready to dig in.
Phoebe kicked the motorcycle over. The engine came to life. It coughed. Then, carburetors flooding, it backfired.
Baby fell over.
Carter watched with sheer disbelief. One moment, savagery; the next, the lion groaned and collapsed and his enemy was saved. He unthinkingly tried to bring his hands together to clap—of course he couldn’t. Trembling with adrenaline, Mysterioso crab-walked backward, eyes on the lion, whose eyes were closed, stomach rising and falling peacefully.
Mysterioso sat upright. He looked himself over, finding cuts and tears, but all his limbs accounted for. He laughed. Bits of Handsome’s hair clung to his Vandyke.
He glanced at Carter slyly, and then looked toward the sound of the motorcycle engine. Carter strained against the knife again. He saw his enemy shading his eyes as he looked upward, taking slow paces.
Over the engine noise, Phoebe could hear very little. Someone nearby, speaking to her.
“You can come out now, Phoebe,” Mysterioso called. “I won’t hurt you.” She seethed: he spoke as if she were a child. This gave her an idea. It began with pretending they were both idiots.
“Stand where I can see you,” she said.
“See me?”
Carter yelled, “Hey!” for though he couldn’t hear the conversation—the engine drowned them out—the thought of Phoebe speaking to Mysterioso terrified him.
“See me?” Mysterioso shook his head. “Is there a place on God’s green earth where you can see me?”
“That’s not nice,” she said. She was thinking, Please underestimate me.
“I apologize.” She could hear from the sound of his voice that he was walking in circles below the platform, looking for ways up, or at least looking for her silhouette. And even from this height, she could smell his cheap cologne.
She said, “Just stand in front of the platform.”
“How did you start the motorcycle?”
“Please, I’m very frightened. I need to know I can trust you.”
Mysterioso took a step. He hesitated. Standing directly in front of a running motorcycle? He thought not. He stopped to the left-hand side of the platform and folded his arms. “I’m standing right here,” he said.
“Where?”
“Right here.” He tilted his head back.
Phoebe, gasoline line in hand, took careful aim at the voice and drained the full fourteen-liter tank directly onto Mysterioso. He caught the first dump in his face, the rest on his head and shoulders.
Phoebe killed
the engine. Sputtering, Mysterioso half-slid, half-staggered away from her. She listened to this, unsure how satisfied to feel.
With the engine off, she heard Carter yelling her name.
“I’ve dowsed him in fuel,” she yelled. “Can you get him?”
“Yes!” Carter said, “Good work!” but he wasn’t eager to tell her he was pinned to a board like a beetle. He saw a form moving haltingly up the ladder on the far wall. “Phoebe, get away from the platform. Go up the rope ladder.”
After he said that, he was silent. He was no good to anyone staying here. And he realized the only thing that kept him trapped was that he was holding on to magic. How would a magician get away? He would have a gimmick. Or an accomplice. Baby would stay in a heap until he clapped. Griffin was unconscious or worse. A magician would use cunning, natural forces, optics, physics, he would use his physical body, which he’d trained to perform what seemed impossible. But Carter was freed of being a magician.
Now, he had to do something horrible. He began to turn his mind off, bringing the cold, anatomical terms into focus. Mysterioso had planted the knife vertically, between his middle and index fingers, in the valley of the second palmar interosseous, probably turning the second and third shafts of the metacarpi into shrapnel. His hand—a cozy array of levers and pulleys whose delicate motion had helped Carter find some peace. He said a silent good-bye to them.
He lifted both heels up. Tucked his knees against his chest. He managed to bend his arm and hung there for a moment, the pressure causing a new fountain of blood as his weight dragged him down a quarter inch, a half inch, opening the gouge around the knife. Not enough. Full weight, tugging, still, unrelenting, a terrible limitless pain jolting down his arm. He dropped to the ground.
Carter Beats the Devil Page 57