The Man Who Cheated Death (Vincent Hardare)

by James Swain

  “Hell no,” Hardare had told him.

  The news got a little better when they drove to Burbank that afternoon, and met with the fast-talking carnival owner who had agreed to let Hardare perform his straitjacket escape while hanging from his monster roller-coaster ride.

  “With the TV people here, you’ll be a smash,” the owner assured them, punctuating his words with a stinky cigar. “You mark my words: appearing at Bob Olley’s carnival will be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for the straitjacket escape. While Jan and Crystal set up the portable spotlights, Hardare timed the roller coaster with a stopwatch. A life-time of performing escapes had taught him that most mechanical things were not dependable. The roller coaster was a perfect example: each ride was shorter by a few seconds than the one before it. After the tenth ride, the times evened out at two minutes, two seconds. He had honed the escape down to a minute forty-nine, which left a comfortable thirteen second margin for error.

  He then assembled the small trampoline that was essential to the escape’s finale. Once the straitjacket was off his body, he would release his ankles from the block-and-tackle that was holding him in the air, and jump to the ground. The distance was over thirty feet, and the new trampoline had him worried. He had worked with them for years, and springs often popped, usually when someone was bouncing too hard on them.

  When the trampoline was assembled, the three of them took turns testing it, then all got on together. It felt sound, and Hardare quickly put it out of his mind.

  Bob Olley’s Carnival opened its gates at 5 p.m. that night. When Jayne Hunter and her crew arrived to film the escape an hour later, the place was a mob scene, and two carnival employees had to escort the Action Ten van through the crowd.

  The van parked behind a concession tent. Hunter and her crew got out and began unloading their equipment, the escape artist and family no where in sight.

  As Hunter got ready, she considered how much she had gotten out of this story. Two exclusives, her name mentioned repeatedly in the newspapers, and now this. She’d done well by Hardare, and she regretted only giving him three minutes of air time for his escape. The problem was, it was a publicity stunt, something which had no real news value, except if he fell. She knew how ghoulish that sounded, but also knew the public’s taste.

  “Hello Jayne,” Hardare said, his face partially hidden by a pink swirl of cotton candy.

  “Hello yourself,” Hunter replied.

  The magician was dressed in skintight black clothes, his sleek body rippled with muscles. “A small token of my appreciation,” he said, handing her the candy.

  “What did I do?” Hunter asked.

  “Hundreds of kids started pouring into the carnival an hour ago, and they came to see me. One of them told my daughter you plugged my escape on your channel all afternoon. I couldn’t ask for much more than that.”

  “I talked the station manager into it,” Hunter admitted, pleased to see him so happy. “My way of saying thanks.”

  While Hardare talked to her crew about lighting and camera angles for the escape, Jan appeared and took Hunter aside.

  “You’ve done a lot for us,” Jan said, squeezing her arm appreciatively, “and I think we’ve maybe helped you a bit, too.”

  Hunter smiled. “You’ve helped me a lot.”

  “I need to ask another favor,” Jan said.

  “Really? What’s that?”

  A train filled with screaming kids riding the roller coaster roared above their heads, making conversation useless. Jan’s entire body started to tremble, and Hunter recognized the fear lurking behind Jan’s mask of happiness.

  “What do you want me to,” Hunter said.

  At six o’clock Wondero was still in his office, on the phone with a sheriff in Pennsylvania who was singing his praises. At first, Wondero had been flattered, then embarrassed, and finally got annoyed. The sheriff simply wouldn’t stop lavishing praise on him. He was beginning to dislike being famous, and it had only started a few hours ago.

  The thought of the century had occurred to him as he had stepped foot in his office that morning. It was something that should have dawned on him much earlier, and he supposed that it hadn’t because it was so obvious.

  D.B. had other roommates.

  Dr. Cavanaugh had faxed him their names. There were six, and one by one, Wondero had started tracking them down.

  His luck had been phenomenal; two were dead, and he had located the other four, and turned up two more killers, the first a plumber in Reno, the other a security guard in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Both had basements and refrigerator freezers filled with human trophies, and both were now behind bars.

  “I had the F.B.I. up here ten times,” the sheriff in PA was telling him, “and they turned up squat. I’m going to call them first thing tomorrow, tell them what you did.”

  The sheriff in Reno had promised the same, the F.B.I. agents in his territory having rubbed him the wrong way.

  “Glad to have helped you out,” Wondero said.

  “Not as glad as me,” the sheriff said.

  As Wondero said goodbye, his phone lit up. The Reno killer’s capture had been picked up by U.P.I. and he had been deluged by calls. The newspapers were calling him the serial killer catcher, and if he didn’t leave his office soon, his head would grow too large to fit through the door.

  His secretary stuck her head into his office. “Got a collect call for you, Harry. Somebody named Ernesto Rodriguez.”

  “Never heard of him,” Wondero said.

  “He says a man gave him your business card,” his secretary said.

  Puzzled, Wondero punched in the line. “Hello? Yes operator, I’ll accept the call.”

  “Hello,” said a man with a thick Mexican accent. “This is Ernesto. I work at the mental hospital in Atascadero.”

  “Oh, right,” Wondero said, now remembering.

  “Got a note in my box that says you wanted to know if I remembered who visited D.B. on Monday.”

  “We already found him,” Wondero said. “Thanks for calling.”

  “You found them both?” Rodriguez said.

  Wondero blinked. “What did you say?”

  “There were two of them. Eugene and his buddy. I heard D.B. was causing trouble, so I figured you’d better know.”

  “Can you describe Eugene’s buddy,” Wondero said.

  “Sure. He was in a wheelchair, real sickly-looking. Eugene wheeled him up to the fence, and D.B. talked to him for a while.”

  Wondero felt his face burning up. “Do you remember anything else? Think hard.”

  “Come to mention it, yeah. When they left, Eugene told D.B. how much the guy in the chair had wanted to meet him. I thought that was a little strange, you know?”

  Wondero banged his fist on the front door of Mr. Kozlowski’s house, listened for life inside, then kicked in the door.

  He entered with his gun drawn. The shades were drawn on every window, the interior pitch dark. Bumping into the living room furniture, he found a light switch, and flicked it on.

  He found Myrtle Jones lying unconscious on the living room floor. The old gal had been through hell the past two days, and he grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch, and wrapped her in it. As he punched in 911 on his cell phone, her eyes snapped open, and she stared up at him.

  “Eugene’s alive,” she whispered.

  “Lie still, I’m calling for help.”

  “He and Mr. Kozlowski are buddies. I never knew…”

  The call went through and Wondero gave the operator the address. Then he walked to the back of the house, and found Mr. Kozlowski watching a portable TV sitting on the kitchen table. It was turned onto channel 10, home of Action 10 news.

  “Why did you do it?” Wondero asked him.

  Mr. Kozlowski blinked at him. His fingers danced across the keyboard of the computer on the arm of his wheelchair. His reply appeared on the computer screen.
>
  I LIKE EUGENE WE’RE KINDRED SPIRITS

  “Are you a murderer, too?”

  YES

  “Where are your victims?”

  BASEMENT OF MY OLD HOUSE IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO

  “Is that why you helped Eugene escape?”

  YES

  “How did he do it?” Wondero asked.

  BOOBY TRAPPED THE VAN

  Wondero recalled the tremendous explosion the van had made. “Who was the guy inside?”

  DRUG DEALER LIVED DOWN THE BLOCK

  “And you helped him.”

  YES

  “Where is Eugene now?”

  Mr. Kozlowski’s bony fingers froze on the keypad. He was staring at the TV. Jayne Hunter of Action 10 news was on, plugging Hardare’s straitjacket escape, which was going to air in twenty minutes. “Stay tuned,” Hunter said cheerfully.

  Wondero slammed his fist on the kitchen table. “He’s going to kill Hardare, isn’t he?”

  Mr. Kozlowski’s eyes danced in his sunken head.

  YOU TELL ME

  Chapter 39

  Monster of the Midway

  By 6:30, the carnival crowd had become so large and unmanageable that Hardare had stolen away to Bob Olley’s personal trailer in order to prepare himself.

  He lay on the floor, and tried not to think of the two solid weeks of shows they had coming up, if they managed to sell some more tickets. Instead, he projected himself into the future, and step-by-step “saw” the straitjacket escape from start to finish. That done, he began to control his breathing and drop his heartbeat, a necessary preparation for what was soon to follow.

  He heard a tap on the door. “Yes?”

  “I need to speak to you,” Jan said.

  “Come in.”

  Jan entered the trailer and dropped an empty cardboard box on the floor. She had hired some kids to pass out leaflets announcing their show. She sat beside him, and kissed him on the lips.

  “You doing okay?” she asked.

  “Never better.”

  “You’re on in twenty minutes. Are you ready?”

  He recalled a favorite line of Houdini’s. With a thin smile he said, “We’ll soon find out.”

  At 6:50, Hardare emerged from the trailer to the wild delight of the overflow crowd. A group of high school kids had brought a banner, and chanted his name. With six carnival employees acting as bodyguards, he made his way through the dense crowd.

  A circle had been roped off beneath the roller coaster, and it was here that Hunter’s crew had set up shop. Bob Olley was also there with Jan and Crystal, plus a pair of uniformed policemen. Hardare allowed the policemen to fit him into the straitjacket and lace up the leather straps on the back.

  “We’re on in five minutes,” Hunter told him.

  “Fine,” Hardare grunted. He’d agreed to be bound before they went on air, which he now realized was a mistake. The two cops were knocking themselves out putting him in the straitjacket, something they probably wouldn’t have done in front of a camera.

  “You okay?” Jan asked when they finished.

  “I’ll get out in plenty of time,” he said to reassure her. “But I’m going to feel it tomorrow morning.”

  “Two minutes,” Hunter announced.

  While Hunter’s crew did a final sound check, Jan encased his ankles to the block and tackle from which he would hang in the air. Crystal positioned herself next to a large plexiglass clock, the trademark of any Hardare escape.

  “Thirty seconds,” Hunter said.

  So this was it, Hardare thought. He felt remarkably relaxed for what was supposed to be a tense moment, and thought how ridiculous that was going to look on live television. He made his face grow taut, his eyes narrow and focused.

  “Ten… nine… eight… “

  Suddenly the crowd began to chant along with the cameraman.

  “ … SEVEN… SIX… FIVE… ”

  Jan kissed him on the cheek.

  “… FOUR… THREE… TWO… ”

  A hundred yards beyond the crowd, Hardare saw a long line of wailing police cars enter the carnival parking lot, their spinning wheels sending up clouds of dust. He felt a deadening weight in his stomach, but when Hunter declared, “We’re on the air!” quickly put them out of his mind, having more pressing matters to contend with.

  “This is Jayne Hunter, coming to you live from Bob Olley’s Carnival of Thrills carnival in Burbank,” Hunter said to the camera. “Next to me stands Vincent Hardare, magician extraordinary, nephew of the legendary Harry Houdini.”

  A huge ovation arose from the crowd.

  “Tonight,” Hunter continued, “in the spirit of his uncle, Hardare will attempt to escape from a police regulation straitjacket while hanging upside down from a burning rope tied to the track of a roller coaster. If Hardare does not escape in two minutes, the roller coaster will cut the rope, and he will plunge to his death. Hardare, anything you wish to say?”

  “Wish me luck!” he yelled to the crowd.

  With Jan’s help, he lay on the ground and stuck his feet into the air. His wife secured a rope to the block and tackle that was attached to his feet. A switch was thrown, and a motor drew the rope up through a pulley that was tied to the track overhead.

  Going into the air feet first, Hardare stared into the faces in the crowd. When he was thirty feet up, the motor was stopped, and the rope tied down.

  “Are you ready?” Hunter said.

  He let his eyes drift over the upside down crowd; there had to be several thousand people here. If half bought tickets to his show, he would be off the proverbial hook.

  In a booming voice he said, “Let’s do it!”

  With that, the ponytailed man operating the roller-coaster threw a switch, and set the empty train in motion. It lumbered down the tracks, then picked up speed as it climbed the first hill of the ride and disappeared from view.

  Hardare shut his eyes to avoid vertigo. Blowing out his lungs, he shrunk his chest, and worked his fingers through the stiff canvas. His fingers ached from the exertion it took to release the first strap.

  “Thirty seconds,” Hunter announced.

  As he struggled to free himself, the crowd got into it, their disjointed voices becoming one. A chant went up, his name repeated like a mantra.

  “Har-dare! Har-dare!”

  It was a thrilling experience, and allowed him to forget the severe cramps spreading through his hands and pretend he was ten years younger, and still able to rip a straitjacket off his body without injuring himself.

  There was a rumor going around L.A. which hinted at a magical time in the early morning hours when the highways were completely empty for approximately thirty minutes. This phenomenon was being called a Pause, and was explained as a short time each day when absolutely no one was in their cars.

  Wondero didn’t have a Pause to get him to Burbank before Hardare went on, so he created one. Doing ninety down the Golden State with the siren on the dashboard blaring, he punched the horn while flashing his headlights. When that didn’t get cars out of his lane fast enough, he stuck his gun out the window and emptied the clip. As the lanes of stubborn traffic parted like the Red Sea, he knew he’d be suspended, and wondered if it would be with or without pay.

  He didn’t care.

  He took the Burbank exit and drove to the carnival. The entrance was blocked, with cars parked on the sidewalks on both sides of the road. He’d already called a dispatcher, and gotten every available cruiser to convene to the area. There were uniformed cops everywhere he looked.

  But what were they looking for?

  Wondero entered the grounds. Over the heads of the crowd, he could see Hardare wrestling with a straitjacket while hanging upside down from a rope attached to the track of the rollercoaster. The magician was surrounded by thousands of people, and Wondero couldn’t imagine how Osbourne was going to get close enough to Hardare to kill him.

  The crowd started to chant.

  “One minute!” Hunter announced.
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br />   She lowered her microphone and watched Hardare wrestle with the straitjacket. It was a tremendous stunt, and she was happy to be a part of Hardare’s publicity machine until the bullet from a high-powered rifle blew apart the windshield of the Action 10 van, spraying the crowd with a shower of flying glass.