Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  He stripped off his makeup. He needed to go outside, and quickly. He saw James and Philo standing with a small group of men in the shade of a willow tree, so he went to join them. They were all smoking cigarettes and having a friendly chat, and when he approached, James introduced him all around: several were managers for various aspects of Radio Corporation of America. The rest worked in military laboratories. Carter gave them polite nods. He accepted a cigarette from one of them, who said his performance just now had been spectacular. Soon after, the man admitted he hadn’t seen it himself, but still, the audience must have loved it.

  Since Philo had retained patent attorneys, his relationship with the corporations had improved. They wanted to fund his research into broadcasting sound and color images. Furthermore, the army seemed to have worked out their differences with their industrial competitors, and they now were quite friendly with each other. They’d rather struck up an alliance in fact. As part of their deal with Philo, they paid Carter not to perform the television illusion. This, coupled with his vaudeville appearances (he had debuted four new illusions in as many months), lent him a vague stability that James explained to him as “adequate.” So Carter listened to the impeccably dressed young men share their views with Philo. He found himself massaging his right hand, which ached.

  He excused himself. There was a vista nearby, a view of the park, and his shoes crunched over gravel as he made for it.

  A moment later, he heard James whistle behind him.

  “You aren’t happy,” James said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You have your way.”

  They had reached a vista: a gentle slope of pasture, and then hills dotted with small houses. Carter stood here for a moment, and then asked James what would happen next with Philo.

  “Well, he’s filed for a number of patents. He’s talking to the right people, people who can develop them.”

  “They’ll eat him alive.”

  “You’ve done everything you can. He owns all the rights to the devices for seventeen years. Perhaps he’ll become extremely wealthy.” James looked at his brother then the ground. “Maybe.”

  “Have you been watching the television performances?”

  “Somewhat. But it hurts my eyes.” James rubbed at his tear ducts to prove this, and, because he sensed the next question, he added, “I saw some of your act.”

  “Some?”

  “I did mention my eyes hurt, didn’t I?”

  “I think the audience hated my routine.”

  “They didn’t. But they didn’t love it, either, I can’t claim that. They were . . . apathetic, I suppose.”

  Just then, a new group left the auditorium. Several boys in knee pants ran back to the end of the line, and their parents called out to warn them that this was the last time.

  “James?”

  “Yes?”

  “Nineteen forty-one,” Carter said. “That’s when the patents move into the public domain, correct?” When James nodded, Carter said, “RCA will keep it from mass production until then.”

  “I’m sorry to say you’re beginning to understand business.”

  “Nineteen forty-one,” Carter declared. “That’s how long I have.”

  “Well, you see, Philo—” he paused. “How long you have?”

  Carter blinked. His hands were deep into his pockets. He began to walk, James coming with him along the pathway, Carter looking at the Durants and Packards and Model Ts parked on the shoulder of the road, but hardly seeing them. James put his arm around his brother’s shoulder. They walked together.

  . . .

  But seventeen years, properly considered, was a very long time for adventure. To begin: September 1924, Lakeside Park, Oakland, was the site of a wedding.

  Carter had envisioned a small, dignified ceremony. Phoebe listened to him carefully, eliciting every detail—perhaps a string quartet, a guest list of ten, quiet moderation—and she told him in no uncertain terms that this would never do.

  Lakeside Park, the site of their meeting, was transformed in a way Oakland had dreamed of: it was beautiful. The boathouse walls were covered with trellises of jasmine and stargazers, a pathway between the oak trees had been strewn with rose petals, and there was in the air both the music of laughter and actual music in the form of Sid LeProtti’s So Different Jazz Band, which Phoebe had engaged.

  A few days before the wedding, Carter was sitting in his workshop in a kind of quiet panic. He had invited only friends who were in no way associated with the magic fraternity, for he knew how that group behaved around ceremony. Then, with a single knock at the door, his preparations went straight to hell, for standing there in the morning sunshine was Howard Thurston. Thurston was grinning—he grinned much of the time, for he had recently had his face lifted—and held in his hand an invitation to the wedding. Phoebe had sent it, with a request that he bring as many magicians as possible.

  This meant Carter was treated to a wedding rehearsal that was far more complicated than most. Thurston fought like a tiger to be Carter’s best man, not because they were close, but because he was wicked. He loved being married so much, he said, he’d done it three times himself. Of course, a more likely explanation was his behavior on the road—he kept a trunk on each tour that he gradually filled with ladies’ underpants on which he had written the owners’ names and corresponding letter grades.

  “Howard, I’m so sorry,” Carter said to him, truly sounding sorry, “James is going to be my best man.”

  So Thurston planned Carter’s bachelor party instead. It was held in San Francisco and was exceptional only in that the groom, who had changed not one whit since the days of Jessie Hayman’s parlor house, did not attend.

  . . .

  Carter had photographs of his first wedding in an album his parents kept for him. He’d never looked at them. First, he’d been touring, and then they were too painful to look at. He and Sarah had married in a Lawrenceville, Kansas, church, with their families in attendance, and there was a picnic afterward. He looked through the photographs now, and saw on his face and his bride’s anticipation of a bright future.

  Once he’d been afraid that seeing these photos might ignite a kind of sadness that could never be extinguished. Instead, two days before he married Phoebe, he looked through the album and wished he could shout back to the young couple he saw, “It will be brief, but you’ll have a remarkable time together.” He had changed; his heart was overflowing with benedictions. Since meeting Phoebe, he was anticipating the future again, and yet he wasn’t a fool.

  Then, on a lovely fall morning, he felt like he’d simply gone into a coma, and recovered at the altar in front of 155 people, dressed in his morning coat and listening to an unexpectedly poignant version of Pachelbel’s Canon performed on trumpet, trombone, banjo, clarinet, alto sax, and washboard.

  Phoebe wore white roses threaded through her hair and clutched a spray of exotic flowers. She wore white, a simple silk dress with beaded fringe, but no buttons or lace. She did not wear a veil—she’d had enough of them—so her face showed fantastically white, like marble, during her walk down the aisle.

  No one gave her away. She had been quite insistent on this point. She was led to the altar by her new companion, a German shepherd named Lili Marlene.

  When she stood next to him, Carter whistled, fully unconscious of having done so, which caused quite a ripple of laughter. James later described him as a man who raced through the vows for he could not wait for the kiss.

  . . .

  The reception was an odd collision among past, present, and future: introducing Thurston to Lee Duncan, who had trained Lili Marlene, or his father to Philo and Pem, who had come up from Hollywood, where they had established another laboratory. There were blind men and women with their faces pointing toward the sun, enjoying the jazz music, which included intermittent dancing and vocal stylings by Lottie Brown.

  At some point, Phoebe disappeared. Carter couldn’t find her anywhere. Ledocq wa
s the last one who’d seen her—she’d asked him to look after Lili Marlene, and he was amusing himself by teaching her commands in Yiddish. Mrs. Ledocq wasn’t so sure this was a good idea, but even she was impressed that it took but two pieces of cheese for the dog to learn schmooze, offering her paw to shake.

  Carter saw Phoebe’s purse on a table, and his father sitting near it, like a lookout. So he approached him.

  “Have you seen my wife?” Carter asked.

  His father looked up with a smile that anticipated the delivery of agonizing news. “She’s currently taking a walk with my wife.”

  Carter sighed, drawing up a chair. “God only knows—”

  “Where Lillian is concerned, I’m not so sure he does,” Mr. Carter interrupted. They laughed together. But after a moment, they had nothing more to say, and each man found himself reaching for a second smile while the music played in the distance. Carter withdrew his pocket watch and pulled the repeater lever. It was 5:37.

  Mr. Carter squinted. “When did you get that watch?”

  “This? I’ve shown you this.”

  “No, you never have.”

  Carter thought about it. And he realized that, no, it was a story they’d never shared. “Nineteen eleven. Albee gave it to me.”

  “Is that an Edward Koehn?”

  In surprise, he asked, “How did you know?”

  Mr. Carter reached for the watch. “That’s simple. It sounded like angels. Hand it over.”

  “Do you own one?”

  “I have three of them,” Mr. Carter declared, looking satisfied as he inspected the dramatic masks. “But none as fine as this,” he hastened to add. He opened it and tilted it back and forth to better read the name the dial detailed. “This isn’t a jeweler’s name, it’s—oh!” He looked at his son, pursing his lips. “Now I’m certain you haven’t told me this story.” Before Carter could say anything, his father continued, “Perhaps I should ask on a day when you aren’t getting married.”

  Carter accepted the watch back. He said, “I’ve missed having you and Mom at my shows, you know. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Yes, well, we’re proud of you,” he replied, tightly. A moment later, he added, with somewhat more intent, “I’ve heard you were just paid a nice lump sum—have you considered how you might invest it?”

  Carter shook his head. “I need some advice.”

  “We’ll discuss it then.”

  A few moments later, Carter spied Phoebe, arm in arm with his mother, returning from the boathouse. They were approaching the table, but first they stopped by Ledocq, who was teaching Lili Marlene to plotz, at which command she was supposed to roll on her back.

  “What are you doing to my dog?” Phoebe asked suspiciously.

  “You have a very smart dog here,” Ledocq said, sounding a little guilty. “It’s good for her to learn another language.” He handed the dog on her stiff leather strap over to Phoebe, who, in a mock huff, walked with Mrs. Carter to join their husbands.

  Carter eyed his mother, as she could still without effort make him feel roughly seven years old. She smiled. “Phoebe is wonderful.” She listed Phoebe’s graces and predicted wonderful things for their future. Carter awaited the moment she would become theatrical or turn to psychological analysis, but his mother surprised him and did nothing but beam.

  . . .

  Astonishingly, there was a late arrival of sorts by none other than Houdini. It was actually a messenger bearing a gift that Houdini said in a note had to be opened straightaway. So bride and groom took a few moments from the reception line to cut along the packing tape to reveal—a photograph of Houdini! It was inscribed “To the lucky bride and groom, may this token watch over you for many years to come!”

  “Well, that was extraordinary,” Carter sighed, tossing the photograph onto the gift table.

  James picked it up. “He paid for it to be framed—that is extraordinary. And holy smokes!” His eyes popped open. “Tom, come here!”

  Tom came, and when he saw the photo, he yelled “No!” for in Houdini’s photograph, he was wearing a red-as-rouge necktie.

  This fact, long into the afternoon, was a recurrent topic of discussion. All a group of two or three guests had to do was fall silent, and James or Tom would accost them to ask if they’d seen Houdini’s red necktie. Few understood the ramifications, but those who did—the members of Sid LeProtti’s So Different Jazz Band, for instance—agreed that a man who chained himself into milk cans, and who liked to be locked nude in jail cells, was certainly one to watch.

  Luckily for Carter, bored with that subject, Phoebe was quick to distribute the bouquet. She had a certain method in mind, and to effect it, she requested help from a pair of women, wives of members of the Society of American Magicians Golden Gate Assembly. They helped direct her arms as she turned her back to the crowd. She counted “One! Two! Three!” and threw her bouquet with all of her might and in midair, it became a hail of bouquets, and like the best of all blessings, each of the women caught at least one.

  When they cut the cake, a young man threw a cloth over it, whipped it away, and the cake was whole again. Gales of laughter, followed by a second attempt to cut it, another treatment with the cloth, and, yes, it was restored again. Finally, solemnly, Phoebe cut into the cake, removed a piece, and stood back as a flutter of wings passed her—a single white dove.

  Carter witnessed this with mouth open, for he hadn’t expected it. He said, “I am in the hands of a master,” which caused one of her hundred-thousand-dollar smiles.

  . . .

  There was much to drink, champagne from France, a bottle of which Mayor Davie seized as “evidence,” placing it in the bushes for safekeeping. As the afternoon became evening, strings of colored lights were turned on in the trees, and the music drifted across the lake, to East Oakland, and Brooklyn beyond it, and it was like sending up smoke signals: friends of Sid LeProtti, men who’d brought their saxophone cases or their own drumsticks, seemed to come out of nowhere, saying “Sid, I knew it was you, I could hear you all the way from Fourth Avenue,” and sitting in themselves on the slow, dreamy waltzes, or the classical numbers like “Pique-Dame,” or the complex modern syncopations of Sid’s own “Canadian Capers.” Lottie Brown led the crowd through the dances San Francisco had invented: the Texas Tommy and the Turkey Trot, the Bunny Hug and the Two-Fist Stomp.

  Not everyone danced. After he was thoroughly knackered, Carter turned his bride—she was uninterested in ceasing to dance for even a single moment on her wedding day—over to James. Carter noticed one man who hung to the side and, even though he had seconds of roast beef and cake, seemed to be not so much participating as fulfilling a loathsome duty.

  Carter approached a table where he sat alone, toying with the remains of a slice of raspberry cake. “Mr. Griffin,” Carter said.

  Griffin regarded him.

  “How are you feeling today? You haven’t said much.”

  “You don’t want to know what I’ve got to say.”

  “But I do.”

  Griffin squinted. “All right. Why aren’t you in jail?”

  “Ahh.” He scratched his nose. “You have noticed it’s my wedding day? Did you congratulate the bride at least?”

  “I’m not a chump,” he growled. “Plus, I—”

  “Your lady friend made sure you did?”

  A shrug, and then Griffin dug his fork into the cake frosting, leaving a trail of divots.

  “Tell me, Mr. Griffin, weren’t you promoted recently? I don’t know how the Service works, but understand you were kicked upstairs.”

  “Bureau chief,” he said. “Small office, Los Angeles, it isn’t much.”

  “But, suddenly, you’re appreciated.”

  The band was playing “Gin Bottle Blues,” a fairly upbeat version, which had the dance floor quite occupied. Carter listened to the music while Griffin stared at him.

  “Making me bureau chief doesn’t change what I know.” He looked at his hands on the table, pla
ying with his fork.

  “May I?” Carter produced a silver dollar and placed it in his palm. He squeezed it shut, tapped it twice, and opened up his palm, showing off . . . a silver dollar.

  Griffin met his eye and confirmed that, yes, a trick had been performed in its entirety. Before he could say anything, Carter said, “Now watch again. Watch closely.”

  This time, Griffin saw it. The silver dollar in his palm was minted in San Francisco. But when he squeezed it, the mint mark had changed to Denver.

  “There,” the magician concluded.

  “You’re a goddamned lunatic,” Griffin muttered.

  Carter laughed. “Now, now. I just wanted to point out that some tricks are very subtle. Too subtle. It’s not satisfying for me as a performer if I do something and no one even notices the effect. So I have to say, I’m beholden to you. When I brought the wine to the President’s room, I was sure the world would see the bottle in the newspaper and talk would ensue. Foul play that could never be proven no matter how hard they looked. But they cropped the photograph, and there was no call for any sort of inquest. I was very disappointed. You’re the only person who even knew a trick had been performed.”

  Bang, Griffin slapped the table so that the silverware jumped. “I might just shoot you myself, see what kind of trick you think that is.”

  “Oh, but Mr. Griffin, I didn’t kill the President.”

  “If not you, then you helped somehow.”

  “What I mean is, nobody killed him.”

  “What, suicide? Right,” Griffin said. He stared at the dance floor. Olive White was performing a noteworthy foxtrot with, of all people, Max Friz.

  “You see that man with the droopy mustache?”

  “A Kraut,” Griffin replied, in a tone that managed to pity Max Friz and condemn Carter for knowing him.

  “He’s not what you’d call a dancing fool, but there he is. His motorcycle has done well.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s dancing with your lady friend. You should be dancing with her.” At the mention of Olive, Griffin thawed about five degrees, but no more. Carter put both silver dollars on the table. He turned an empty chair backward and put his legs up. “So let me tell you what happened,” he whispered. “President Harding was quite worried the night I met him. He kept asking what I’d do if I knew—”