Carter Beats the Devil (20 page)

Mysterioso said nothing. The curtain fell, cutting them off from the audience. At once, performers closed around Carter, tousling his hair and telling him “good show.” Carter left the stage as his scenery was broken down and the schoolroom props wheeled into place for the next act. Leonard, Adolph, and the rest clapped him on the back. But each time he was pounded, he felt hollow and dull, and slightly ashamed of his trick.

. . .

Murdoch’s office was on the fourth floor of the Orpheum, with windows that opened onto Market Street so he could see how far the ticket holders’ line extended. To be called to Murdoch’s during a performance was referred to as “a visit to St. Peter,” for only very very good or very very bad things happened there.

Murdoch was 99 percent ruthless, but also 1 percent conscious of opinion, and so he had workmen build him a wide chimney whose throat was studded with hand grips. During the Yuletide season, he had a man dressed as St. Nick distribute bonuses this way, and, regardless of the month, and regardless of the terrible news he might be receiving, a performer sitting in the hard-backed chair always looked toward the chimney for a ray of hope.

When Carter was told to come up, he tried to put bounce in his step, but he pictured Mysterioso’s anguish, and no matter how much he thought about having avenged the Kowaleskis, he felt a sense of foreboding.

Murdoch seemed even more sour than usual. All the honey in the world couldn’t sweeten his brittle monotone. “Got no choice here, kid. Yer shut.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Murdoch pulled out a legal-sized sheet of boilerplate and put on his reading glasses. “Says here in Mysterioso’s contract, no member of his company will be molested. Seems that includes his damn dog.”

“But that’s ridiculous.” He gripped the arms of his chair and crossed his legs quickly, trying to look above it all.

“Agreed.” Murdoch shook his head. “But he’s the headliner. Holds us hostage.”

“Mr. Murdoch, the dog was never in danger. It was just smoke and mirrors, literally. The dog only seemed to be under the anvil because of—”

“Yeah, yeah. How’d you get the dog, anyway? Wasn’t he in a train car or something?”

Carter pursed his lips. His stomach sank. “Well.”

“Breaking and entering. Of course, it’s your town, so . . .”

Carter cleared his throat. He wouldn’t go so easily. “It was a prank that got—”

“The audience didn’t like it much.”

“They applauded,” Carter said.

“Eh.” Murdoch held his hand out and turned it like a rudder. “Too confusing at the end.”

“They liked it! I saw them applaud.”

“Not the end.”

“I know, I should have shot out the chain.”

“Naw, that’s not it. Just seemed cruel.”

“Well, the name of the trick was Blackmail, it’s not supposed to be uplifting.” He reddened with anger but also dawning embarrassment.

“Bad idea for a magic act. And how could you do it again?”

“Well, as I said, I’d shoot out the chain, and also, move the mirrors so—”

“Naw, naw. So you got a guy you don’t like onstage. And you got his dog. Could happen once. Maybe twice. But every night? Not likely.”

Carter had no response. He suddenly remembered a day at Thacher when he’d saddled his horse and forgotten to cinch her up; when he mounted her, the saddle spun 180 degrees and Carter, who’d expected to see the world from the top of his horse, was seeing it from underneath. A rival, a dog . . . every night . . . he hadn’t actually worked that angle out.

“Wish there was something I could do. Could put in a word for you with Shubert.”

The kiss of death. Carter had just been shot through the forehead.
Blackballed from the thirty-week circuit meant the only place to go was down, and the Shuberts were the five-a-day grind, where the audience spat tobacco on you. Once you agreed to play the Shuberts, no one else would ever touch you again.

“Mr. Murdoch, for six months,” Carter said, with a touch of desperation, “that man has run rampant over everyone else. He had another act shut for no reason—”

“His prerogative, Carter.”

“He tried to sabotage my act!”

Murdoch nodded his head quickly, almost like he was palsied, for several seconds. “Serious. Very serious. Got any proof?”

Proof? Carter, desperation growing, mind going blank, did what a thousand men before him had done: he stared at the chimney now, wishing that a jolly, red-faced man would drop down and hand him a fat check.

“If we believed every accusation against a headliner, we’d be in bad shape.”

“But Mysterioso—he deserves to—Mr. Murdoch, Mysterioso does
not
respect magic!”

The words—foolish words!—hung in the air until Murdoch hunched forward. He reached for his honey pot. He spooned a dollop onto a soda cracker, and chewed thoughtfully. Carter wished he hadn’t said anything about magic. “You aren’t gonna starve,” Murdoch rasped.

So there it was. “Well, Mr. Murdoch.” Carter stood, and extended his hand like a gentleman. “The Shuberts. If that’s where I have to go to perform, I’ll go.” They shook hands.

The interview was over. Carter descended the four flights of stairs—it seemed like thirty—knowing all the way that with this disaster his fall was greater than Murdoch knew: he had wasted one thousand dollars on an illusion he would never perform again—even if they’d rehired him. He would never be able to save money on the Shubert circuit. And when he defaulted on the loan—and his father
would
let him sink—he would lose the remainder of his trust fund.

He passed Annabelle in the wings; she gave him a nod, but he was in no mood to talk. He reached the backstage area, staring blankly at the current performance. The opium den number was on, the poor addict girl slithering across the stage in search of a fix while her evil coolie master tormented her, pulling the pipe just out of her reach.

Watching the dance, Carter leaned his head against a wall, wondering how hard he would need to hit his head against it to knock himself
unconscious. When your profession depends on the power of perception, there is a difficult line between illusion and reality, and Carter realized he had gotten confused. There was some nobility in being poor, but absolutely none in being poor because you were an idiot.

James, Tom, his parents, were all in the private box, waiting to hear good news, but Carter could not move. He imagined the conversation, the end of the road, the confirmation of everything his father suspected about him. Carter the Magician. Carter the Broke. Carter the Banker. He found an old, empty pickle barrel tucked away in a secluded corner, hiked himself up on it, and sat, chin in hand, wondering what on earth he would do with himself.

. . .

A few minutes later, as Whipple and Huston did their soft-shoe on stage, Julius, of Fun in Hi Skule, found him. Of the brothers, Adolph played the idiot Patsy Brannigan, Leonard the wop, Milton the juvenile, and Julius the fast-talking Hebrew, or rigid German, depending on the town. Julius read books, and was clever, but he and Carter had never gotten along for Julius was a griper. Every comment led to a punch line, which was tiresome. “So,” Julius said now, “I hear you got canned.”

“News travels.”

“That character Einstein had it wrong: gossip travels faster than the speed of light,” he growled in his East Ninety-Third Street accent. “Here.” He handed Carter a pint of whiskey.

Carter, taking a swig, murmured, “I heard you got a fifteen percent increase for next year. Congratulations.”

“If they raise it much further, we’ll finally be able to starve to death.”

“I see.” Carter offered him the bottle.

“Keep it. This is a lousy racket. If I had half an ounce of integrity, I’d be a writer. And if I had an ounce, I’d be a doctor.” When he warmed up, jokes poured out of Julius with unfortunate effortlessness. “And if I had two ounces, I’d sell one to Leonard, only he’d lose it in a crap game. Speaking of lacking a shred of integrity, I hear that rat Mysterioso is gonna demand a fifty percent increase. Looks like Albee can’t turn him down, or he’ll just go to the legit theatres. There’s a dozen producers who’d back an evening-long show for him.” Hearing Carter sigh, Julius continued, “It’s a dirty shame what that Mysterioso cretin did to you. I knew he was a fink ever since he fired that first girl, that—what was her name—”

Carter was about to supply it, but noted Julius digging in his coat pocket, pulling out a small rectangular photograph that, heart sinking, Carter recognized.

“Right, Sarah O’Leary,” Julius read.

“She sent you a photograph, did she?”

Julius nodded. “Nice girl. She sent them to everyone on the program. Part of her good works for the penguins she’s living with.”

“Oh,” Carter sighed, so nakedly that Julius immediately understood.

“I see . . . You had a passion for that girl.”

“Thank you for your sympathy.”

Hearing “sympathy,” Julius’s eyebrows shot up. It had been the wrong word to use. The fusillade began. “Well, you’re twice the man Mysterioso is, and that ain’t saying much. How a couple of grown men make a living pulling dumb animals out of evening wear is beyond me. But listen, now that you’re the only thing worse than a magician—and by that I mean an unemployed magician—my brothers and I are going to visit a couple of friendly girls after the show, and thought you might want to talk to some fellow creatures who know a thing or two about tricks, so to speak, and maybe if you can pick yourself up off this pickle barrel, you could walk abreast with us, if you know what I mean, and if you’re half the swine I think you are, you probably do.” The eyebrows flexed, causing Carter to laugh. In the barrage of insults, he’d momentarily forgotten he’d been fired. He promised Julius he would join them, but he didn’t mean it. He preferred to sit on his pickle barrel all night. Now at least he had a bottle of whiskey.

CHAPTER 13

At ten o’clock, the kettle drums began their thrilling, tribal beat, and the stage filled with Mysterioso’s stilt-walkers and fire-eaters. A half dozen Indians swooped down on them, whooping and hollering, out for blood. Carter dropped, one by one, his coins, cards, scarves, bouquets, and hard rubber balls into the barrel. He brought his thumb before his face, and whispered, “My flexor longus pollicis and its so-very-important terminal phalange.” He cleaned his nails with his lock picks.

There was the sound of pitched combat onstage, and martial music coming from the pit to accompany what was surely Annabelle beating the men within an inch of their lives. Carter touched his head to the wall, his eyes closed. He only opened them when he heard, with extra volume tonight, the bellow, “This is for Custer! This is for the Alamo!” and saw Mysterioso mangling the other performers.

Carter mouthed “the Alamo,” shaking his head, and tossing back a shot from the bottle.

A few moments later, Mysterioso was shackled, weighed down with a dozen handcuffs and sturdy chains. Because it was a special evening, they called not just one person but a committee onstage to check the restraints. Carter was thoroughly bored to see Albee and, fresh from firing a certain earlier act, Murdoch. Between them walked the carnation-wearing old man, who had wild grey hair, thick round glasses, and who used a cane to support himself. No doubt Albee’s father.

The examination took longer than usual. Carter noted how slowly the old man bent over, how nimbly his hands flew up and down Mysterioso’s back.

Carter first registered that something could be wrong when he heard a brief grunt from the stage. He saw Mysterioso bucking and bowing, trying to put distance between himself and the fingers feeling his locks. Then the old man stood slowly, retrieved his cane, and flipped its tip toward the audience. In a creaky voice that nonetheless carried to the back of the house, the old man said, “Yes, I’m satisfied these locks are good and tight!”

As Albee and Murdoch led the old man offstage, Carter saw Mysterioso thrashing around onstage like a netted bear, howling, “No! No!” At first, Carter suspected he was in real trouble, but then remembered, with another slug of whiskey, that the world didn’t work so easily.

On a normal night, his chains were usually in a heap, and Mysterioso boasting about it, en route to the saddle. Tonight, as usual, an assistant led his horse onto the stage. But there was Mysterioso, still lying on his stomach, trussed up like a turkey, a hundred pounds of chains weighing him down. He twisted, face red with effort, but could not even turn over. Carter sat forward, folding his arms around his knees. He felt a ray of hope so faint he hardly wanted to jinx it.

The assistant, reins in hand, announced, “Master, I’m sure you’re just about to swear revenge on those redskin devils!”

“Yes! Yes!” Mysterioso cried from the stage. “Revenge!”

If this was part of the act, it was a terrible idea, Carter mused. When the curtains swung closed for the scenery change, a dozen men rushed to Mysterioso’s aid. One held his lock picks, another a bolt cutter. Carter was sitting at a wonderful vantage point, able to see the fire-eaters at the apron entertaining the audience, and, just behind the curtain, the drama of Mysterioso’s rescue in progress.

For Mysterioso, the bad news came in waves. First, it turned out the
locks were not the ones he normally used, but were substitutions. Further, they appeared to be unpickable. The holes were crammed with tiny, greased iron balls, and forged of some kind of tempered alloy that made them impermeable to bolt cutters. No one in his company had ever seen their design.

“Who was that man with Albee?” someone asked.

“He was no one! Just get me out of here!”

There was still worse news: Mysterioso was not just a prisoner of the cuffs, but somehow he’d been bolted to the stage itself through tiny but murderously effective eyelets set into the floorboards. There was no way to move him. Mysterioso declared that he wouldn’t be forced to stop the show now—one of the dancers could wear the lion skin in which Mysterioso usually burst forth from underneath the cage—anything to finish out the performance.

When the curtain went up, a single flute played, a peaceful-sounding solo evoking the dignity of the noble savage. The audience saw an Indian camp, with mountain scenery in the background. Annabelle was tied to a stake, struggling, and all the men of the village were fixed in their positions, ready to impress her with their athletic skills. Center stage, a stack of colorful saddle blankets undulated on its own accord, emitting occasional muffled clanks and groans. Carter chuckled.