The Man Who Cheated Death (Vincent Hardare)

by James Swain

  “Not for a while,” her father replied. “You and Jan have so many clothes, I had to rent a truck.”

  “Very funny.”

  Reaching into his shirt pocket, Hardare retrieved the crumbled business card he had invisibly tossed there in front of Wondero’s disbelieving eyes, and opened his cell phone. Wondero had made him a promise, and he planned to hold him to it.

  An hour later two plainclothes detectives appeared at his door. One was tall and thin, the other short and fat. Hardare inspected their photo I.D.s before letting them in.

  “My daughter is asleep, my wife’s lying down,” he said, leading them into the living room. “I had the hotel stock the refrigerator with sodas and plenty of fresh fruit. There’s cable TV and also a DVD. They rent movies at the front desk.”

  “This is better than home,” the tall detective said. He draped his jacket over a chair, his automatic resting inches from his heart in a leather holster. When Hardare went to the door both men turned. “You going out?” the wider one asked.

  “Yes. I need to clear my head.”

  “I’d suggest going somewhere where there are lots of people. Like a bar or a restaurant. No long walks by yourself.”

  “And no movie theatres,” the other detective cautioned.

  He was starting to feel like a hostage. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Have the front desk ring the room when you return.”

  “I’ll do that. See you in a few hours.”

  Outside the hotel Hardare waved down a valet and began to describe his car when he remembered it was growing rust on the bottom of a murky reservoir. He had the boy hail him a cab.

  “I thought you were coming to bed,” he heard Jan say.

  She had appeared in jeans and a sweater, her hair still tousled from her nap. “I decided to go for a ride instead. If I hadn’t thought you were asleep, I’d have asked you along.”

  A yellow cab pulled up. They got in, and by the time the driver had hit the meter and driven twenty feet down the street, they became hopelessly entwined in late-afternoon traffic.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Hardare replied.

  “Don’t worry,” the driver said. “I can’t get you there anyway. Not in this mess.”

  “Where did the two detectives come from?” his wife asked.

  “You met Husky and Starch.”

  “They were hard to miss.”

  “I called Wondero, and he sent them over.”

  The traffic light at the end of the block turned green. The cab moved an entire car length, and braked as the light changed.

  “Let’s hike it,” Hardare suggested.

  He gave the driver three dollars for the hundred foot trip and they set out on foot in the direction of Rodeo Drive.

  “Will you call Wondero again?” Jan said, keeping a brisk pace beside him.

  “Not if I can avoid it,” At the next corner he said, “Do you think I should?”

  “If you want my opinion, yes.”

  “I always want your opinion.”

  “I think you should agree to help him. I know it means putting our lives at risk, but the police need you. Has it occurred to you that they may never capture this crazy bastard? Even if they do, it might take years to find him.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” he said, stopping at the corner. “But my responsibilities lie with my family. We can’t spend the rest of our lives needing bodyguards, can we?”

  “You’re pretty good at protecting yourself,” Jan said.

  “What about you and Crys?”

  “I can protect myself, and I can also protect Crys. For God’s sake Vince, it’s what I did for a living, remember? Protecting foreign dignitaries was something I did all the time. You think this killer is crazy? I had to deal with Libyan terrorists once. Nothing compares to them.”

  Her heart was behind her words. Given half a chance, she would have tried to track down Death herself. Jan was a soft, beautiful woman until she became threatened. Then she changed.

  At the next corner Hardare looked at the street sign. They had walked in a circle, and were heading back to L’ermitage. Finally he said, “Do you plan on getting a gun?”

  She hesitated, knowing how he detested firearms. “I thought it would be a good idea while we’re in L.A.”

  They walked the remaining block in silence. At the hotel’s entrance he said, “Let me think about it.”

  Jan kissed him. “Do what you think is best.” She went inside, and he had the valet hail him another cab. He hopped in, and the cab pulled away.

  “Anyplace special?” the Hispanic cabby asked.

  “Why? Do you normally just drift?”

  “Believe it or not, yeah. People get in my cab, they think it’s a cloud. We just float around, looking at the new billboards on Sunset Boulevard. One guy, he gets in, hands me a brand new C note, says `Let me out when I run out of money. I’ll walk from there.’ So I did. People around here are goofy.”

  They pulled into traffic. Hardare stared out his window at the darkening skies. He needed to go someplace private to think, and figure out what he wanted to do.

  “7001 Franklin Avenue,” Hardare said, realizing it was his only refuge.

  “You mean the Magic Castle?” the cabby said. “Sure thing.”

  Tires squealing, the driver viciously punched his horn and cut off a stretch Mercedes limousine, then swerved into the other, faster moving lane, making it feel like a real cab.

  Chapter 6

  The Castle

  As the cab drove down Franklin Avenue and climbed the formidable hill leading to the Gothic mansion known as the Magic Castle, the rain started to fall in sheets. Years before, on a night identical to this, he had flipped the car he was driving, sending his first wife to her grave. He had thought time healed all wounds, but he had discovered that was just a poet’s bullshit line. He still grieved for Barbara, and had accepted the painful fact that he probably always would.

  Like many magicians, the Magic Castle was his home when he visited L.A. Besides acting as a wonderful private club for magicians, the Castle also served as the clubhouse for the Academy of Magical Arts, a non-profit organization devoted exclusively to the advancement of magic.

  Opening the front door, he entered a dimly lit library. A remarkably pretty female receptionist greeted him from behind a desk. He took the pen to sign his name in the ledger, then looked into her face and said, “Didn’t you used to be a brunette?”

  “You have a good memory,” she said, beaming.

  Often, when he was in town taping a television special, he would hire one or two Castle employees to assist him, having found it less expensive than what it cost him to fly in and house the crew that he employed full-time in his traveling show. He struggled with the receptionist’s name.

  “Tracy. No. Stacy.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said.

  “Friedman.”

  “Wow! Want to get married?”

  He wasn’t ready for that one, and burst out laughing. She was no doubt aware that her job had netted two of her predecessors’ millionaire husbands, and he said, “I’m afraid I’m not that wealthy. Give me ten more years.”

  “God, you’re the fourth man I’ve asked today.”

  He entered his name in the guest ledger beside magic’s true luminaries. The Professor was here, the Japanese dove-worker Shimada who’d worked Vegas just the week before, the great Bill Malone, mind reader extraordinaire Max Maven, Jim Patton, the amazing John Carney, and the uncanny Scot Ron Wilson. He needed a sounding board, and he supposed this was as good a group as he’d be able to find at a moment’s notice. He went to a cluttered bookshelf where a small carved owl sat.

  “Let me know if you ever need another assistant,” Stacy said, trying not to sound too anxious.

  “I will. Open sesame.”

  With that, the owl’s eyes lit up and the bookshelf slid open, granting him access to the club’s main lounge and
bar. It was nearly empty, and he glanced at his watch, wondering where his friends were.

  Sitting at the bar was one of the Castle’s celebrity members, a well known movie actor who was blind drunk.

  “What’s your pleasure, Mr. Hardare?” asked the bartender.

  “Ginger ale. He looks ready for the stool, Bobby.”

  “Indeed he does.” The bartender poured his drink while his foot kicked the lever on a hydraulic pump beneath the bar. Very slowly the movie actor’s barstool evaporated into the floor. With his knees nearly level with the top of his head, the actor cheerfully toasted Hardare’s good health, and downed his martini. The gag had backfired, and Hardare paid for both their drinks.

  Music floated through the air. Irma, the house poltergeist, was at the piano, her fingers dancing invisibly across the keys, playing an airy Chick Corea composition that had been part of his act for years. He smiled at Bobby, who pretended he had nothing to do with it.

  He went upstairs to the dining room. The Castle was a large, rambling structure, with three separate small theatres, four bars, a restaurant, and a dozen hidden spots where magicians could sit and talk magic without being disturbed. At the Festalboard he fixed himself a heaping salad and took an empty table.

  “I thought you went back to Vegas,” said a familiar voice.

  “Change of plans,” Hardare replied, shaking hands with Les Griffey, an illusion-maker he often employed. “Where is everyone hiding? The bar was deserted.”

  “They’re meeting in the Houdini Séance room. The new officers of the Academy were voted in last week.”

  “I need to talk with them.”

  “They just got started,” Griffey said. “I was going to call you. I just finished a new illusion. Kio’s Lady to Tiger without the depth illusion. It can be done surrounded.”

  “Sounds terrific,” Hardare said.

  Encouraged, Griffey gave him a full description of his new creation, his use of superlatives a show in itself. By the time he was done, Hardare had agreed to drive to San Clemente the following week, and get a first hand look.

  It was because of men like Les that big stage illusions had left the dark ages and now employed lasers and other space age technology. Gone were the bulky boxes and tables with black art servantes; women were no longer suspended on brooms, they were suspended on the tips of swords, and made to rotate. Illusions now had multiple climaxes, with three or four different tricks evolving at the same time. Since Hardare could not enjoy the luxury of employing three illusion builders, as Houdini had done, he entered into contractual agreements with men like Les Griffey. Griffey would design a new illusion, and when he had honed its working to the necessary degree of perfection, he would offer it to Hardare on a short, exclusive basis. Hardare would have a few months to perform the illusion — even use it on TV — and in exchange, Griffey would later market the illusion to the fraternity using Hardare’s name as an endorsement.

  When Hardare had finished his salad, he and Griffey went upstairs to the third floor and walked down a short hallway, where the magician rapped softly on the secret door to the Houdini Séance Room. It cracked open and Ron Wilson stuck his head out. “Hey Vince — good to see you. We’re just wrapping up. Give us fifteen minutes.”

  “I need to talk to everyone.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes, and I need your help.”

  Wilson ushered him in without another word.

  The Houdini Séance room was the Castle’s most historic attraction, with many of his uncle’s old props and playbills in use as decorations. A round antique mahogany table big enough to seat eight people sat in the room’s center. The table was a masterpiece of deception, and allowed a “medium” to make all sorts of ghostly manifestations occur once the lights had been dimmed.

  Hardare took the single empty seat at the table and stared into the faces of the seven men seated at the table. They were all legends, and he tried not to flinch from the weight of their icy stares. The Professor broke the silence. “I thought you were back at Caesar’s, Vincent.”

  “We ran into a few problems,” Hardare said.

  The Professor put his cigar into an ashtray. Upon turning ninety, he had picked up his old vices, and now regularly smoked and drank whiskey. “I hope it was nothing serious.”

  “A man tried to kill us on the highway.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. Bill Malone, the world’s consummate sleight of hand artist, stopped riffle-shuffling the deck of cards in front of him.

  “Was Jan hurt?” Malone asked.

  “No, she’s fine,” Hardare said.

  “What about your daughter?”

  “She suffered a mild concussion.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Malone ribbon spread the cards face-up across the table, looking for mistakes. Despite his thorough mixing, the deck was still in perfect, new-deck order. Badly fooled, Hardare said, “Stop showing off.”

  Malone’s eyes twinkled. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, and tell us what happened?”

  Hardare told the seven men what had happened. He held his opinion in the highest regard, and explained in minute detail the events that had occurred in the desert that morning.

  “I didn’t know you kept a baseball bat in your car,” Malone said when he’d finished.

  “It’s been under the seat for years. I never considered using it on someone before.”

  “Be thankful,” Ron Wilson commented, giving the Professor a light. “People like that feed on evil. You’re lucky you all got out of there alive.”

  “I know.”

  “Vince,” the Professor said, using the glowing end of his cigar like a pointer. “You mentioned that the police want you to help them. Are you going to?”

  “I’m considering it,” Hardare said. “The police want me to perform psychic stunts and draw Death out again. It’s probably the best chance they have to catch him, but it also means I’ll have to play the psychic stuff for real. I can’t give the usual disclaimers about the tricks being performed by natural means.”

  There was a prolonged silence. Hardare gave each man at the table a thoughtful stare, convinced they were all thinking the same thought. Finally the Professor voiced everyone’s concern. “You could set magic back twenty years, Vince.”

  “I know,” Hardare said. “But look at the flip side. I have the opportunity to use my magic to truly do some good.”

  “You sound like you’ve made up your mind,” Wilson said.

  Hardare shook his head. “By helping the police, I’m going to risk hurting my reputation and my art, which means hurting my friends. I’m not sure that is a decision I’m entitled to make.”

  “Do you want us to make it for you?” asked the Professor.

  “Yes. If any group in the world represents magic, it’s the Academy. You’re the Academy’s officers. I’d like you to discuss it, then decide what you think is best. I’ll respect whatever decision you come to.”

  The seven officers of the Academy exchanged glances. “Fair enough,” Ron Wilson said for the group.

  “Thank you.”

  Rising at his place from the table, Hardare went into the hallway to wait to await the Academy’s decision.

  Ten minutes later Wilson appeared, and ushered him back inside. Hardare took the same seat at the table, and folded his hands in his lap. He waited, wondering who would speak for the group, and was not surprised when The Professor spoke up.

  “We think you should help the police, Vince.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. However, we also think the final decision must be yours. You’re risking your own well being, and your family’s. Listen to your heart, and you will know what’s best.”

  Hardare nodded while swallowing a lump in his throat.

  “Being Houdini’s nephew carries a tremendous amount of responsibility,” the Professor went on, his voice crackling with age. “So far, you’ve handled it well. Sometimes you act like your uncle, an
d Houdini had the worst temper of any man I ever knew. If you do help the police — and I have the feeling you will — than you can’t let your emotions run wild. Look at history: only the most resourceful people have been capable of stopping madmen.”

  Hardare leaned back in his chair. “I was thinking of performing Dunninger’s old mind reading stunt over the radio tomorrow night, to try and draw the killer out.”