by Jeffrey Ford
I reached the scene in time to see the ghost of Ma Parks, now grown to something well over six feet tall, lumbering across the perfectly manicured lawn toward the circular driveway at the front of the house.
"Help me lift him," said Schell.
He took the arms and I the legs. There were a hundred questions I had concerning what had just happened, but I knew to keep my mouth shut, not sure as to how deeply Parks was under. We managed to get him inside and lay him on a divan in the drawing room. As Schell tried to gently revive him, I latched the glass doors and wound up the line we had used for the levitation. I left the bear at his spot on the table, a sort of party favor to make up for the sйance having ended with him getting slugged. When I was finished with these small tasks, Schell instructed me to turn the lights on and blow out the candle.
"He's coming around," Schell whispered, crouching next to the divan.
I stood at a short distance and watched as Parks surfaced, calling for his mother.
"Lie still," Schell said to him. "You're all right. You've had a physical encounter with the void. Breathe deeply."
Parks's eyes were wild, and he was agitated to the extreme. He flung his legs over the side of the divan and sat up, rubbing his jaw.
"I warned you not to make contact with the materialized forms of the dead," said Schell, "and now you see why."
"The veil must remain intact," I said.
Parks calmed down and winced as he touched his chin. "I'm okay," he said. "I apologize for getting carried away." He couldn't look directly at either of us.
"Window," he said, addressing me. "There's whiskey and a tumbler in that small bar in the corner. Please pour me a drink."
"Ondoo, your excellence," I said as I moved to the task.
Schell stood and backed away from our patron.
"My mother hasn't changed in death," said Parks. "She still packs a wallop."
"One of the most remarkable visitations I've ever witnessed," said Schell.
I brought Parks his drink, and he dashed it off in three gulps. He then handed me the glass and stood unsteadily. It took a few seconds for him to get his bearings, but then he saw the toy bear lying on the table. He rushed to it, almost losing his balance in the process. "Look here," he said, "she's left it behind for me." He took it up and held it cradled in his arms like an infant. "You know, Schell, I had absolutely no recollection of this bear until I saw it hovering in the air tonight. Then it all came back to me."
"Yes, Mr. Parks," said Schell, "this is often the way. Many doors are opened when the dead pay a visit."
DUBIOUS RIGMAROLE
A mile down the road from the entrance to the drive that led into the Parks estate, Antony pulled off the blanket that had concealed him and sat upright in the back seat of the Cord.
"Sorry I had to clip Georgie," he said, removing the powdered wig from his glowing head.
"It was probably for the best," said Schell, the first utterance he'd made since we'd gotten in the car. I could tell before we left the mansion that something was wrong with him. His not having reacted when Parks opened the terrace doors was unthinkable. I was reminded of my statement to him a few days earlier that he never made mistakes and now felt badly, as if I'd jinxed him-a concept Schell himself would scoff at.
"Parks wants us back as soon as possible," I told Antony to assuage his guilt.
"There's something not Jake about that guy."
"That's an understatement," I said.
Schell spoke no more for the entire ride home, and Antony and I both sensed it was better to leave the silence alone. When we arrived at the house, the boss said nothing but left us in the living room and went down the hall to the Bugatorium.
"Is he pissed off at me?" asked Antony.
"No," I said. "I think he's upset with himself."
"What happened in there?" he asked. "All I saw was Parks come through those doors like gangbusters."
"Once he saw you done up like the old lady, he knocked me over and was gone."
"Where was Schell?" he asked.
"Standing right there behind him, but it was like he couldn't move."
"That's not right." He shook his head. "I'm gonna get a bath and get this crap off me," he said, referring to the phosphorescent makeup we'd painted on his face, neck, and arms.
Normally, I'd have wisecracked about his dress, but everything was off-kilter. Antony retired to his room, and I went in search of Schell.
I found him in the Bugatorium, sitting at the table amid his plants and beloved butterflies, a bridge deck in his hand and a large Taygetis echo hovering above his head like some dark thought. He was repeatedly doing one-handed cuts with the deck. I sat across from him, knowing full well that he would not speak for a long time. I'd seen him like this before. He fanned the cards, closed the fan, and then subtly crimped one. That card, the jack of spades, kept reappearing in all the tricks he ran through. The graceful flourishing of his hands, and the popping, flipping, and sailing of the cards was hypnotic.
Just when I thought he might be winding down, another deck appeared as if out of thin air in his free hand, and he now worked two decks with the facility that any normal sharp might only one. He was completely lost to his thoughts, and I knew I might as well go to bed. Sleep didn't come easily that night, for it was a certainty that something was very wrong.
I was just dozing off when I heard a knock on my door. The door opened, letting in a sliver of light. From the size of the silhouette, I knew it was Antony. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, bringing the darkness back.
"I really botched it this time," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"When I was running for the car, the old lady's hat musta flown off my head. I can't find it anywhere. Can you imagine?"
"I wouldn't worry about it," I said. "Parks doesn't seem to be that with it. Even if he finds it, he'll think it's like the bear; a gift from his mother."
"I hope so," said Antony. "Hey, how's the boss?"
"He's in the bug room doing his card thing. He'll probably be at it all night."
The next morning, Antony and I had already eaten breakfast and washed the dishes by the time Schell appeared. He poured himself a cup of coffee and joined us at the table.
"Get much sleep?" asked Antony.
Schell shook his head.
"I guess we really mucked it up yesterday, huh?" asked the strongman.
"On the contrary," said Schell, "I think we improvised like true pros. Your downing Parks was actually a stroke of genius. Diego and I set it right with him, and all's well that ends well. Don't worry, you'll not get out of reprising your role as his mother."
"Christ," said Antony.
"Why were you so silent last night?" I asked.
Schell took a sip of his coffee and then reached across the table to steal one of Antony's cigarettes. It was a rare happenstance when the boss smoked and usually signaled something was awry. He lifted the lighter, used it, and returned it to the table. After taking a long drag, he seemed to compose himself before answering. "You two have to be honest with me," he said.
Antony and I both nodded.
"Were you playing a game with me last night?"
"What do you mean?" asked Antony.
"Don't get defensive," said Schell. "I simply need to discount that possibility. Yes or no: were you two up to some scam last night?"
"No," I said, and Antony said, "Never on a job, Boss."
"As I thought," said Schell.
"Why do you ask?" I said.
"Because I saw something last night I can't explain," said Schell. "I've gone over it and over it in my mind, but there's just no explanation, unless of course Parks was playing us, which I hardly would believe possible."
There was a silence during which Schell took another drag of the cigarette.
"Well," said Antony, "are you gonna tell us or do we have to guess?"
"After Diego and I ran the levitation with the bear, and Mrs. Parks stoppe
d by to gently tongue-lash her son a bit," said Schell, "we got up and moved toward the glass doors to watch your command performance amid the hedges. Diego was to the front and left of Parks as we approached, and I was behind and to the right. As we came up to the doors, I distinctly saw, on the right-hand panel of glass, the image of a child. It was as if she was inside the glass. About six or seven, somewhere around that age, curly, chestnut hair, large eyes, wearing a simple dress with a flower pattern." He stubbed out the cigarette and rubbed his forehead with his opposite hand.
"What was she doing?" asked Antony.
"Just standing there, looking at me," said Schell, a vacant look in his eyes.
"Eerie," I said.
"She remained there until Parks finally flung open the doors and took off after Antony. How do I explain that?" he asked.
"Now I know why you didn't react," I said.
"It's really no excuse," said Schell, shaking his head. "I should have stayed with the job at hand, no matter what."
"So what do you think it was?" asked Antony.
Schell shrugged.
"Maybe with all of our sйance business we actually called over a ghost," I said.
"It's almost too easy to believe that," said Schell, "but I don't buy it. There are no such things as ghosts. Houdini may have been someone who could have made life very difficult for us if he'd ever caught wind of our operation. But I have to say I had the utmost respect for him, because he was right: the spiritualist phenomenon is all sleight of hand, relying one hundred percent upon gullibility. I dare say it doesn't end there, but you can throw in religion, romantic love, and luck as well. No, this was something else."
I was timid about bringing it up, but I offered, "Maybe your mind played a trick on you."
Schell turned, and I thought at first he was going to rebuke my suggestion, but instead he said, "I've considered that. It seems the only thing possible."
"Look," said Antony, "we've done a dozen jobs in the last two months. That's an awful lot."
"True," said Schell.
"Hows about a vacation?" said Antony.
"Not a bad idea," said Schell, "but it seems rather criminal to take a vacation in the midst of a depression."
I threw caution to the wind and said, "By depression, you mean the economic crisis or your own?"
Antony winced and said, "Oo-faa."
"Crisis, me?" said Schell, wearing an expression of incredulity.
"Boss," said Antony, "I wouldn't have brought it up, but now that the kid's mentioned it…He's right, you've been dogging around here like some kind of ghost yourself lately."
Schell reached over to pat me on the shoulder. "I confess," he said, turning his gaze toward the table. "I know what you're saying. Things have been very…how shall I put it?…sodden for me lately. I can explain it less than my seeing the image of that girl."
"How about we go to the city, like in the old days, get a couple of rooms at the Waldorf, catch a show, meet some ladies, grab a rasher of cocktails? The kid can stay here and keep an eye on the butterflies."
"Hey," I said, "how come I have to stay home?"
"There could be some dubious rigmarole," said Antony.
"Let me think about it," said Schell.
INNOCENT
In the days that followed, I made it my mission to get to the bottom of Schell's predicament. This, of course, was easier said than done. Wandering around like a somnambulist, he skipped meals, slept late, and forsook his usual work of perfecting new seance techniques. The classical dirges never stopped flowing from his Victrola. More than once I found empty wine bottles in the kitchen garbage. Whatever time he did spend employed in some conscious task was spent in the Bugatorium, away from Antony and me.
I knew I couldn't get him to discuss his feelings (I'd have had more success with Wilma the snake were she still alive), and whenever through the years I'd tried to get him to talk about his past, he'd always slyly change the subject. Instead, I decided to pump Antony for information, thinking that the key to the trouble lay somewhere back in the caterpillar stage of Schell's life. It made sense to me that the grim aspect that had recently emerged and spread its dark wings had its origin sometime in those early years before I knew him. Otherwise, I was sure I'd have understood. I didn't agree with Antony's assessment that it had to do with the "unhonestness" of our present occupation. I'd read Freud just the previous year and rather believed the issue was something more fundamental.
On the third day following our engagement with Parks, I asked Antony to take a walk with me. Schell was holed up with his butterflies. We left the house through the back door and struck out on the path that led through thick woods to a cliff overlooking the sound. I carried a notebook and pencil with me. He was amused by my earnest nature, but I didn't care.
"Who are you, Walter Winchell?" he asked.
I cut him a look, and he knew from then on I meant business.
We came to the end of the trail-an awe-inspiring vista of the sound framed by two huge oak trees, their gnarled roots growing out of the cliff-side into thin air. He sat down on a fallen log and lit a cigarette. I took up a position on a flat rock some few feet across from him. It was a clear, windy day. Branches swayed and leaves fell around us.
It had struck me at the wake, when Schell had told me a snatch of how Morty had taken him in from time to time when he was a kid, that I had never heard the story of his early years.
"I'll tell you what I know," said Antony, "but I'm not saying it's the truth. Schell's a strange cat. The man has secrets."
I nodded.
"Okay," he said, "here goes. What I know is he was born in Brooklyn, I think. His mother died when he was a babe-two, three maybe. Only kid. His old man was a piece a work, a gambler. I'm not just talking like a poker game here and there, I mean a real gambler, a shark and a sharp. A legend with the cards. You see the stuff that Schell does with a deck? Child's play compared to what his old man could do. I never saw it, but it was said he knew how to throw a single card with such force and accuracy, it could paralyze a man.
"I'd heard his name before I even met Schell. Magus Jack was what they called him. He did some sleight-of-hand stuff too, worked a smooth con from time to time, would bet on just about anything, knew everyone from Legs Diamond to Jimmy Walker when they were all on the way up.
"So he had this kid. He took good care of the kid. Everything was slicker than snot on a doorknob until he got involved in one particular con. I don't know, I think him and a couple of other guys were trying to blackmail this businessman. They set him up with a young down-and-out actress that they hired. The usual-caught him up in a compromising situation and then threatened to have the tart spill to the guy's wife. It was low stuff, not the kind of thing that Magus Jack usually got involved with. Stupid. I don't remember the details, but it ended with this milquetoast businessman going on a rampage and shooting the young actress, the wife, and himself to finish it off. A fucking bloodbath. Now, almost nobody knew Magus Jack was behind it, but he did. He was offstage, so to speak.
"Anyway, after that disastrous con, Magus Jack started to slip into the bottle, if you know what I mean. The kid was older now, maybe around eight, and the old man would take off and leave him in the apartment for a couple a days at a time. Whenever Jack would return, he'd make amends by spending time with the kid, but instead of going to a ball game or something normal, what he did was teach the kid how to work the cards. Instead of taking the kid to church on Sunday, he'd take him out to the park and show him how to con people.
"By the time he was twelve, Tommy was basically on his own, running the streets, involved in all kinds a cons and games and shenanigans. That's around the time that he met Morty. I think he tried to scam him on the street one day with a three-card monte or something, and Morty just took him apart. But Mort saw potential in the kid and took him under his wing somewhat. The old man came home less and less and the kid was left more and more on his own until he was paying for the apartment him
self and living there like it was his own place when he was fifteen.
"I know he's not really your old man, but he might as well be. He's got a brain like you do, you know, for book study, and it was Morty turned him on to books. Mort was a kind of scholar, I guess you could say. Schell taught himself everything he knows. I think he only got up to about the first year in high school and then bagged it. But when he was seventeen, around there, he got himself hooked into some deep trouble. I don't know what it was, but the cops had the nippers on him, and he was drug before a judge. The judge gave him a choice: join the service or go to jail. So, the army not being good enough for him, he joined the marines and went to war.
"He wound up in France and saw the real shit. I know for a fact he was at this famous battle at a place called the Balleau Wood. I met a guy who knew him then, was there with him. The Germans were held up in this wood, and the good guys didn't know how much firepower they had. They could've just shelled the whole thing to splinters but they didn't. Tommy's regiment, division, whatever it was, was made to charge the wood across a wheat field. The Huns just tore them to ribbons with machine guns. I heard it was the worst beating we took in the war.
"Schell survived and came back home to find that his old man was killed, rubbed out by some shady characters he got involved in a card game with. Magus Jack was a has-been by then, squeezed through the end of a whiskey bottle. He got sloppy and took these mooks' dough too fast. They caught him crimping cards, put a bullet in his head, and threw him in the East River. I'll say no more about this but that Schell later caught up with them and settled the score.
"Afterward, he figured for a while he needed a bodyguard. Hal, you know, the dog man, sent him to me. I was looking to get out of the strongman trade. You can only have so many cars run over your head before it gets tiresome. I couldn't bring myself to bend another iron bar with my teeth, but I didn't mind busting heads if I had to. That's easy, almost a pleasure sometimes. So me and Schell hooked up, became partners sort of and worked together ever since. How's that?"