Carter Beats the Devil (78 page)

. . .

Astonishingly, there was a late arrival of sorts by none other than Houdini. It was actually a messenger bearing a gift that Houdini said in a note had to be opened straightaway. So bride and groom took a few moments from the reception line to cut along the packing tape to reveal—a photograph of Houdini! It was inscribed “To the lucky bride and groom, may this token watch over you for many years to come!”

“Well, that was extraordinary,” Carter sighed, tossing the photograph onto the gift table.

James picked it up. “He paid for it to be framed—that
is
extraordinary. And holy smokes!” His eyes popped open. “Tom, come here!”

Tom came, and when he saw the photo, he yelled “No!” for in Houdini’s photograph, he was wearing a red-as-rouge necktie.

This fact, long into the afternoon, was a recurrent topic of discussion. All a group of two or three guests had to do was fall silent, and James or Tom would accost them to ask if they’d seen Houdini’s red necktie. Few understood the ramifications, but those who did—the members of Sid LeProtti’s So Different Jazz Band, for instance—agreed that a man who chained himself into milk cans, and who liked to be locked nude in jail cells, was certainly one to watch.

Luckily for Carter, bored with that subject, Phoebe was quick to distribute the bouquet. She had a certain method in mind, and to effect it, she requested help from a pair of women, wives of members of the Society of American Magicians Golden Gate Assembly. They helped direct her arms as she turned her back to the crowd. She counted “One! Two! Three!” and threw her bouquet with all of her might and in midair, it became a hail of bouquets, and like the best of all blessings, each of the women caught at least one.

When they cut the cake, a young man threw a cloth over it, whipped it away, and the cake was whole again. Gales of laughter, followed by a second attempt to cut it, another treatment with the cloth, and, yes, it was restored again. Finally, solemnly, Phoebe cut into the
cake, removed a piece, and stood back as a flutter of wings passed her—a single white dove.

Carter witnessed this with mouth open, for he hadn’t expected it. He said, “I am in the hands of a master,” which caused one of her hundred-thousand-dollar smiles.

. . .

There was much to drink, champagne from France, a bottle of which Mayor Davie seized as “evidence,” placing it in the bushes for safekeeping. As the afternoon became evening, strings of colored lights were turned on in the trees, and the music drifted across the lake, to East Oakland, and Brooklyn beyond it, and it was like sending up smoke signals: friends of Sid LeProtti, men who’d brought their saxophone cases or their own drumsticks, seemed to come out of nowhere, saying “Sid, I knew it was you, I could hear you all the way from Fourth Avenue,” and sitting in themselves on the slow, dreamy waltzes, or the classical numbers like “Pique-Dame,” or the complex modern syncopations of Sid’s own “Canadian Capers.” Lottie Brown led the crowd through the dances San Francisco had invented: the Texas Tommy and the Turkey Trot, the Bunny Hug and the Two-Fist Stomp.

Not everyone danced. After he was thoroughly knackered, Carter turned his bride—she was uninterested in ceasing to dance for even a single moment on her wedding day—over to James. Carter noticed one man who hung to the side and, even though he had seconds of roast beef and cake, seemed to be not so much
participating
as fulfilling a loathsome duty.

Carter approached a table where he sat alone, toying with the remains of a slice of raspberry cake. “Mr. Griffin,” Carter said.

Griffin regarded him.

“How are you feeling today? You haven’t said much.”

“You don’t want to know what I’ve got to say.”

“But I do.”

Griffin squinted. “All right. Why aren’t you in jail?”

“Ahh.” He scratched his nose. “You have noticed it’s my wedding day? Did you congratulate the bride at least?”

“I’m not a chump,” he growled. “Plus, I—”

“Your lady friend made sure you did?”

A shrug, and then Griffin dug his fork into the cake frosting, leaving a trail of divots.

“Tell me, Mr. Griffin, weren’t you promoted recently? I don’t know how the Service works, but understand you were kicked upstairs.”

“Bureau chief,” he said. “Small office, Los Angeles, it isn’t much.”

“But, suddenly, you’re appreciated.”

The band was playing “Gin Bottle Blues,” a fairly upbeat version, which had the dance floor quite occupied. Carter listened to the music while Griffin stared at him.

“Making me bureau chief doesn’t change what I know.” He looked at his hands on the table, playing with his fork.

“May I?” Carter produced a silver dollar and placed it in his palm. He squeezed it shut, tapped it twice, and opened up his palm, showing off . . . a silver dollar.

Griffin met his eye and confirmed that, yes, a trick had been performed in its entirety. Before he could say anything, Carter said, “Now watch again. Watch closely.”

This time, Griffin saw it. The silver dollar in his palm was minted in San Francisco. But when he squeezed it, the mint mark had changed to Denver.

“There,” the magician concluded.

“You’re a goddamned lunatic,” Griffin muttered.

Carter laughed. “Now, now. I just wanted to point out that some tricks are very subtle. Too subtle. It’s not satisfying for me as a performer if I do something and no one even notices the effect. So I have to say, I’m beholden to you. When I brought the wine to the President’s room, I was sure the world would see the bottle in the newspaper and talk would ensue. Foul play that could never be proven no matter how hard they looked. But they cropped the photograph, and there was no call for any sort of inquest. I was very disappointed. You’re the only person who even knew a trick had been performed.”

Bang
, Griffin slapped the table so that the silverware jumped. “I might just shoot you myself, see what kind of trick you think that is.”

“Oh, but Mr. Griffin, I didn’t kill the President.”

“If not you, then you helped somehow.”

“What I mean is, nobody killed him.”

“What, suicide? Right,” Griffin said. He stared at the dance floor. Olive White was performing a noteworthy foxtrot with, of all people, Max Friz.

“You see that man with the droopy mustache?”

“A Kraut,” Griffin replied, in a tone that managed to pity Max Friz and condemn Carter for knowing him.

“He’s not what you’d call a dancing fool, but there he is. His motorcycle has done well.”

“So?”

“So he’s dancing with your lady friend. You should be dancing with her.” At the mention of Olive, Griffin thawed about five degrees, but no more. Carter put both silver dollars on the table. He turned an empty chair backward and put his legs up. “So let me tell you what happened,” he whispered. “President Harding was quite worried the night I met him. He kept asking what I’d do if I knew—”

“Of a terrible scandal, yeah, I know.”

Carter smiled, sincerely proud. “You
do
know. There were so many scandals brewing around him, and he wanted to tell me all of them and, well, he wanted to tell
everyone
about them. He was quite afraid he would be murdered by his men. He felt that if they didn’t get him, his wife would.” Carter hesitated. “I hope you knew that he had affairs.”

“Go on.”

“As a rule I tend not to get involved with world leaders. They have problems. But he would only give me the television blueprints if I helped him out of his jam. He kept saying, ‘Mr. Carter, surely you can make a President disappear.’” Carter rubbed at his ruined hand and whispered, “‘When I see Thurston next, I bet
he
could do it.’ A very wily man, that Harding, when he wanted to be.”

“I don’t believe this Shinola.”

“That’s perfectly fine. I thought about it during my act, how to make a man who was so universally loved, and also in such danger from so many places, vanish off the face of the earth. And I hit on a wonderful solution—pit the sides against each other. He’d been asking so many people ‘what would you do’ about his problems that he was annoying his cabinet. I realized that if he were dead, they wouldn’t ask any questions.”

“They had
me
asking questions,” Griffin said.

Carter’s blue eyes softened with empathy. “That’s exactly right, Mr. Griffin. You were absolutely the most qualified agent they wanted going anywhere near the evidence.”

“Oh.” Whatever else Griffin was going to say caught in his throat.

“After the show, I went to the hotel. My plan involved Harding confessing all to his wife. Of course, she knew all, the Duchess isn’t a fool. He had a diary I asked him to make an entry for—did you see his diary? Never mind. After midnight, she called that Starling and—do you like Colonel Starling?”

“None of your business.”

“He’s a dangerous man. I don’t understand him, but he’s dangerous. But that’s neither here nor there. She just told Starling rather coldly that Warren had stopped breathing, and she supposed he should send up a doctor
when he could. Just like that. ‘When he could.’ It was magnificent. He could tell, right over the phone wires, she’d poisoned him. You know what he did? He sent for a doctor twenty minutes later! And when the doctors came, she wouldn’t let them near the body. She announced that her Warren was dead, and that she was grieving, then she closed the door.”

“Carter, you expect me to believe that none of those physicians even examined the body? They signed oaths that—”

“When they asked—meekly—about collecting the body, she told them she’d already arranged for cremation. Then slammed the door right on them! They didn’t ask questions. What could they assume but she’d poisoned him. And that was a family matter—a
first
family matter. Best to keep a distance and ask no questions. I watched from the closet.”

“So you’re saying everyone—my boss included—wanted the President dead.”

“So he wouldn’t discuss the scandals, yes.”

“Why all the manpower chasing you down to Baja, then?”

“I fled, that’s why.”

“And if you didn’t kill the President, why did you flee?”

A brilliant smile, a payday smile. “Misdirection.”

Griffin said nothing else. He had nothing else to say about this insane story. The band finished their tune and received generous applause from those on the lawn. “So is this a confession or what?”

“The next morning, I took Mr. Harding to my flat and he waited there until the arrangements I made panned out. I knew a place he could go. You know, he truly loved his wife. Truly. It was incredible to see how much she loved him. She agreed to go to Washington and Marion and burn everything that could incriminate him. People will always think she poisoned him, but she risked all that just so she could join him again later.”

Griffin wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Later?”

“Soon enough, the Duchess will die. She’ll choose a hot news day when everyone’s forgotten her. Then, she’ll join him quietly, to live their lives out. It was the least I could do for a man who gave me such an interesting illusion. Well, two illusions if you count his death.” Carter produced an envelope. He patted it against his lips. “Do you know what a deadman’s switch is? Of course you do. From the moment I agreed to make the President disappear until I was assured I wouldn’t be hurt by anyone, I had a deadman’s switch kind of arrangement. I have a man who pretends to be my florist who does small favors for me, and he held on to this. If anything had happened to me, it would have gone right to
Hearst. And elsewhere, in case Hearst wasn’t interested. Would you like to see it?”

Griffin shook his head. No, he didn’t want to see it. Carter stood. He tapped the envelope against the table.

“Well, I’m going to give this to you. Starling once told me that you’d tried very hard to protect the President—Mr. McKinley—and that you’d failed. I can imagine how that hurt.”

“You can’t—”

“If we’d met under different circumstances, I’d have stories to tell. But it’s my wedding day. I’ll leave you this envelope. And perhaps you’d like to use it to protect the President. It’s up to you.”

Carter dropped it on the table, by the centerpiece, white roses with a candle at the center. Griffin watched him walk back onto the lawn, where he met up again with his wife.

The envelope was sealed shut. With the music playing and couples dancing under the lights, Griffin tore open the end and pulled out a strip of negatives and one eight-by-ten print. There, on the deck of a house he recognized, with Lake Merritt in the background, stood Warren Gamaliel Harding. He wore dungarees and a workman’s jacket. He held a newspaper, the
Examiner
, from Friday, August third, with the tremendous headline announcing his death. His expression was that of a man who had just been rescued and was not sure he deserved it.

Griffin looked up—Carter was dancing with Phoebe, the band was playing, people were in line for more drinks. He had no idea what to do.

He saw Olive. Not for the first time, she made a beckoning gesture, for she was sure he was a fine dancer, and she had made him promise to be good today. He looked at the photograph. He stood. He nodded at Olive. She yelled at him, through the crowd, “That’s the spirit!”

Before he left the table, he put the photograph and negatives back in the envelope, which he held in his hand just high enough over the candleflame so that it caught almost immediately. The emulsion on the film made excited green and violet sparks, and when it was fully consumed, Jack Griffin draped his jacket over his chair, for the night was young.

. . .

At stroke of eight, Howard Thurston whispered into Carter and Phoebe’s ears that it was time for them to leave. Carter protested the method. “I was hoping for a life of quiet dignity.”

Phoebe said, “This is what you’re getting instead, so love it.”

With a fanfare of trumpets and trombones, the newlyweds were led onto a platform at the edge of the lawn, where Thurston and junior
members of the Golden Gate Assembly shackled them together. “Matrimony!” Thurston yelled, “the one trap from which there
is
no escape.”