The Man Who Cheated Death (Vincent Hardare)

by James Swain

  Kitchen gave him a baffled look.

  Do it, Hardare wrote on the pad.

  “Believe,” Kitchen said into the mike.

  “That’s it,” encouraged Hardare. “Believe. Now I want everyone to close their eyes and concentrate. Concentrate on some appliance in your home which is broken. It can be a clock, or a wristwatch, or a timer on the stove that doesn’t work. It can be a radio, or a television set on the blink, or a clogged garbage disposal. Think of a broken appliance and think hard.”

  Hardare pulled up his chair, his mouth inches from the mike. “With your eyes closed, think of that appliance, and superimpose a single word over it in your mind. That word is work. Work. In gigantic letters stamp that word over that appliance. Work. You want it to work. I want it to work. Let’s say it together.”

  “Work,” echoed Kitchen.

  “I’m going to count to five. With each number say work out loud, concentrating on that appliance. Ready?”

  He paused and looked through the glass; Wondero and Rittenbaugh were staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “One. Two. Three. Four… five. Now shout, Work! Work! Work! Forget about the neighbors. Wake up the kids. Shout it as loud as you can. Work. Work.”

  Hardare leaned back in his swivel chair to watch the clock above them. After ten seconds swept by he said, “We did it. You and I. Those broken appliances are now working. Go ahead; go into the next room. Take a look. See for yourselves.”

  Really? Kitchen scribbled.

  Really. Hardare wrote.

  How?

  It works itself, Hardare wrote. Open up the lines.

  “Folks, our phone lines are open. Call in, and tell us how this phenomena has affected you.”

  The phone on the desk was quiet. No callers. Kitchen glanced at Hardare and saw an odd look on his face. Was this a joke?

  “The number is 888-KOLL,” he said, feeling ridiculous. “Call in. We want to hear from you.”

  A line lit up on the phone. Then a second, and a third, then all six lines lit up. Kitchen grabbed the receiver.

  “Now the fun starts,” Hardare whispered.

  “Go ahead,” Kitchen said, “you’re on the air.”

  Marjorie Hooks was in the kitchen of her apartment in Lawndale clipping coupons when all the commotion erupted on the radio. At eighty-six she’d outgrown anything resembling a good night’s sleep, and Kenny Kitchen was nice company at this lonely hour. She especially liked the call-ins, the different voices filling her kitchen in a friendly way, like the smell of a casserole on the stove, except tonight’s show had affected her oddly … Kenny’s guest practically shouting at her, as if he knew she was half deaf. It was unsettling, but Hooks was listening hard. There was a quality in his voice that in a small way reminded her of a preacher. Mrs. Hooks put down her peeler, and when the man said so, shut her eyes.

  “Work, work, work,” she said aloud, thinking of all the confound things in her apartment that needed repair.

  She opened her eyes. Her body was tingling with electricity like the night before, when she had guessed all the sayings correctly on Wheel of Fortune. Spinning her wheelchair around the table, she squealed across the linoleum toward the living room, passed the ancient stove, and stopped on a dime.

  “Oh my, isn’t that something.”

  She wheeled closer, her eyes barely retaining their focus on the broken stove clock as the second hand swept around the grease riddled face. The man on the radio had fixed it!

  Picking up her telephone, she dialed the station’s call letters.

  “Chip. Chip. Do you hear me, young man? I want you to turn off that flashlight and go to bed.” Light flooded into the bedroom as his mother opened the door. “I see you under the covers. Now turn off that light. It’s past midnight.”

  “Okay.” He clicked off the flashlight. “Goodnight.”

  “You get some sleep, young man. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” His mother shut the door. Chip held his breath, listening to her slippered feet pad down the upstairs hall.

  That was close. He turned up the volume of his portable radio, hoping he hadn’t missed any of the excitement. Kenny Kitchen always had the greatest guests — astrologers, ghost chasers, mountain men on the trail of Bigfoot — and now he had found someone who could read minds. One of the callers had shouted at Kitchen, and Hardare had shouted at the caller, and now Hardare was shouting at everybody — it was great stuff! Then Kitchen came on and gave a number, and Chip couldn’t stand it anymore. Climbing out of bed, he slipped into his bathrobe and slippers, and crept silently downstairs to the kitchen.

  He stole into the bathroom with the kitchen phone under his arm and dialed the number. Busy. He dialed again. Still busy.

  “Come on.” He dialed again.

  “KOLL,” an operator answered.

  He tried to make his voice sound husky. “Am I on the air?”

  “No sir, this is the switchboard. Do you have something to report?”

  “Uhh… yes, I do,” he stammered, desperately trying to come up with a good one. “My car started.”

  “Your car?”

  “That’s right. The battery was dead. I was listening to your show, and I went outside and tried it. Started up just like that.” Chip clicked his fingers the way his father always did.

  “That’s amazing sir. Where do you live?”

  “Uh… Hollywood.”

  “Thank you for calling in.”

  “No problem.” Chip heard the line disconnect. He put his hand against his chest and felt his heart pounding against his rib cage. He returned the phone to the kitchen, petted their sleeping sheltie on the head, and tip-toed upstairs. His bed was still warm, and turning up the radio, he returned to the darkly mysterious world beneath the sheets.

  “Folks, my station manager has just told me we’ve gotten over two hundred calls in the past minute.” Kitchen skimmed through a stack of messages the manager had handed him and randomly started to read. “A woman in Westwood called to say her dishwasher now works. A man in Century City had his clock start. We’ve gotten a flood of calls from Burbank: electric utensils, TVs, a sinkerator, radios. And folks, a man in Hollywood called to say the dead battery on his car started. Unbelievable.”

  A tech wearing a Grateful Dead tee shirt came into the sound booth and whispered into Kitchen’s ear.

  “Folks, I’ve just been told that our switchboards are jammed. I know you want to share your experiences with us, but for the time being please, no more calls. If too many of you call at once, we’ll blow our circuits.”

  To his guest he said, “Hardare, I don’t know how you did it, but hundreds of people have reported repairs of all sorts of appliances. This is a mind-blower.”

  “And I know there are thousands more,” Hardare said, raising his voice. “And I want every single one of them to let us know!”

  “But they can’t call in,” Kitchen objected, growing exasperated. “I think you just heard…”

  “Forget the phones,” Hardare said. “We could be here all night. I want all of you out there listening to go to a light by a window in your home, and flick it on and off. Do it now. If we have shared something special over the airwaves this evening, then I think it’s important that we share it with each other. Get up, and turn on that light!”

  Through the glass Wondero and Rittenbaugh glared at him. The glint of hopeful anticipation he’d kindled in their faces moments ago had been transformed into looks of dreadful aggrandizement. You’re crazy, their looks said, and we’re responsible.

  While Kitchen did a promo for a new sponsor, Hardare scribbled on a notepad, and held it up to the glass.

  GO OUTSIDE TAKE A LOOK

  The detectives left without a word.

  “What in God’s name is your father doing?” Jan asked, standing awestruck by the living room window of their hotel suite. Across the expansive cityscape of LA hundreds of lights had started to flicker until the night sky was ablaze with pinpoints of flashing yel
low dots.

  “It looks like lightning bugs in the summertime,” Crystal murmured, her nose pressed to the glass. “Look at that apartment building; there must be twenty lights going on and off.”

  “I didn’t think something like this was possible,” Jan said. She was her husband’s best critic, and when he fooled her with a trick, it made her feel that she did not fully know him, and that a part of his personality was still a dark and hidden mystery.

  “Come on, Jan,” Crystal said. “Did you really think you know all of Dad’s secrets?”

  “I guess not,” Jan said.

  The number of flicking lights continued to grow. On a distant freeway, passing motorists were flicking their headlights as if in a road rally. It was like a big game, and Crystal began flicking the overhead light in rhythm with the lights outside.

  “What are you doing?” Jan asked.

  “Playing along,” she exclaimed. “Why should everyone else have all the fun?”

  Hardare found Wondero and Rittenbaugh standing by the gigantic antenna on the roof of KOLL, watching the blinking lights gradually fade across the city. A wind whipped across the roof and the detectives moved away from the building’s edge.

  “Harry and I have seen a lot of strange things, but nothing compared to this,” Rittenbaugh said.

  “We were trying to figure out how to explain this to our superiors,” Wondero added, cupping his hands around a match to light a cigarette. “Telekinesis? Mass hypnosis, mass illusions. What exactly would you call it?”

  “It combines a lot of principles,” Hardare said.

  “Including mass gullibility?” Wondero asked.

  “You’re warm,” Hardare said.

  Wondero smiled. “You owe me lunch,” he told his partner. To Hardare he said, “We had a little wager. Casey thought you had stooges calling in; I figured you were pulling a stunt similar to Orson Wells’ War of The Worlds. It was all in the presentation. You really didn’t repair any broken appliances. You just made people think that you did.”

  “You’re right,” Hardare said. “There are always a small group of people who will believe just about anything. Those people initially called the station. Their calls created a snowball effect. Others call in because they want to be noticed, and bask in the spotlight.”

  “Pretty soon everyone wants to get in on the act,” Wondero concluded.

  “Right. They look out their windows, see a neighbor turning on a light, and decide to turn on a light, too. In this illusion, it’s the audience’s collective imagination that makes the trick work.” Hardare paused before asking the inevitable. “What next?”

  “We wait,” said Rittenbaugh. “It’s his move.”

  “That doesn’t sound terribly promising.”

  “You scared him into calling the station,” Wondero said. “This is the first time we’ve actually heard him. He’s starting to get sloppy, and in police work that’s an encouraging sign.”

  The door to the roof banged open, and the detectives spun around on their heels. Kenny Kitchen ran out, breathless.

  “He called… minute after show ended,” Kitchen said. His eyes had a wild, disoriented look. His voice faltering, he said, “He played another tape for me. He called it his greatest hits. It had dozens of different voices on it… women dying, crying pathetically. I couldn’t stand it, had to hang up on him.”

  Hardare put his arm around Kitchen’s trembling shoulders. “It’s okay Kenny. I’m sorry you had to go through this.”

  “Oh God, Vince,” Kitchen said. “It sounded like something right out of hell.”

  Chapter 9

  Eugene

  “Help.”

  Straining beneath the agonizing weight of a barbell, Eugene Osbourne heard the women’s voice and felt his pumped and gleaming muscles involuntarily stiffen. The voice was too close.

  “Help.”

  Resting the barbell behind his head, he rose from the weight bench that sat in the middle of the otherwise empty dining room, and silently slipped into the downstairs hallway. Early morning sunlight filtered through the dirty windows.

  “Help.” A fist banged against the front door. “Please come out and help me.”

  Osbourne checked his wig and false eyebrows in a mirror before throwing the dead bolt on the door. A fiftyish, pear-shaped woman stood breathlessly before him. Her wrinkled face looked familiar, yet he did not bother to consider from where.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mr. Kozlowski… fell out of bed… I can’t lift him — “

  “Go away. Leave me alone.”

  “— I live next door,” she said, pointing at the bungalow that sat twenty feet away. “Oh please. You’re a big, strong man. I’ve seen you lift heavy boxes into your truck.”

  “No.”

  She looked at him beseechingly, her fingers clawing the screen door. “Please. I don’t want to have to call the police.”

  “The police,” Osbourne said, stiffening.

  “Mr. Kozlowski fell out of bed and I hurt my back and can’t lift him,” she said, the words shaming her into a sudden fit of anger. “Oh, to hell with you! Go back to your steroids,” she exclaimed and stormed off the porch.

  Osbourne hesitated, envisioning the police parked out front. What if they saw the illegal burn pail he kept in the back yard, or the broken light on his van, and decided to issue him a ticket. They might even ask to come inside the house.

  “Wait.”

  The woman halted in the narrow driveway that separated the two pieces of property. He came out of his house and joined her.

  “Name’s Myrtle Jones,” she said curtly.

  “I’m Eugene.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Through a back door they entered a kitchen with peeling linoleum floors and ancient appliances. A delicious aroma stopped him in his tracks and he blinked, the smell triggering a plethora of buried thoughts and pleasures.

  “Come on,” she said impatiently, already bossing him. “He’s down here.”

  The darkened hallway led to a small bedroom. What looked like a mummy lay half-draped in sheets on the floor beside a hospital bed. Kneeling, he gathered Mr. Kozlowski in his arms.

  The old man was as light as a feather, his frail, withered body more dead than alive. Osbourne looked into his face and saw a flicker of recognition. The old man’s lips moved silently.

  “He’s thanking you,” she explained, tucking him in with care. “Mr. Kozlowski was quite an athlete, used to climb mountains all over the world. Sometimes I think he dreams he’s back at Kilimanjaro — he scaled that one, you know — and manages to take the arms down and climb out of his bed.”

  “Your welcome,” Osbourne told him.

  Back in the kitchen the aroma again caught him. She brushed past him, grabbing a potholder and banging open the oven. “Damn timer!” she swore, dropping a sheet of chocolate cookies on the range. “It never works. Did you hear about that man on the radio last night? He made broken stuff repair itself all over the city. I sure wish I’d been listening; there’s enough stuff around this place that needs fixing.”

  While she fussed with the knobs on the oven, Osbourne leaned over the freshly baked cookies and inhaled deeply.

  “What are they?”

  “Huh?” Myrtle Jones said.

  “What kind are they. They smell… different.”

  “Heavenly chocolate is what my Grandma used to call them. They’re a secret family recipe.”

  “Can I have some?”

  “I don’t see why not. Seeing how you helped me.”

  He piled cookies into his hand until they were slipping through his fingers, then headed toward the door.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me how they taste?” she said, filled with indignation.

  He stopped at the door. “Oh. Sure.” He popped one in his mouth and bit down, feeling the syrupy sweet chocolate overwhelm his senses. With a full mouth he said, “They’re tasty.”

  “If you’re going to e
at a cookie, do it right.”

  Opening the refrigerator, she removed a carton of milk and poured a glass of milk. “Dip one in that. Go ahead. Tell me if that isn’t the best darn thing you’ve ever tasted.”

  Eugene dipped a cookie into the milk, and popped it into his mouth. He made a happy sound, and dipped a second cookie, then a third, until the cookies in his hand were gone.