CHAPTER FIVE
HOUDINI EXITED THE theater on Sixth Street and headed uptown toward Central Park. A heat wave had rolled onto the city like a wool carpet, and the sidewalk was a seething mass of overheated bodies escaping their hot, stuffy apartments.
The magician eyed the crowds. Any one of them could be searching for him. For Newton’s Eye. He didn’t know who he was looking for, or how far they had followed the Pope last night.
He pulled the ring from his pocket and slipped it on. There was nothing different he noticed about himself. In fact, Houdini wondered if perhaps the Pope had given him the replica instead of the actual ring.
A woman passed and collided hard into Houdini’s shoulder.
“My goodness!” she said.
She turned back toward Houdini.
“My apologies,” Houdini said.
The woman looked around as if she had heard someone speak, but couldn’t quite focus on where he was. Houdini stepped directly in front of her, and she turned her head away as if trying to avoid eye contact.
“Pardon me,” she said to the air, and hurried off.
It continued like that for the rest of the walk home, and Houdini’s shoulders were thoroughly bruised by the time he reached the Harlem brownstone. He gladly pulled the ring off his finger and pocketed it.
Houdini entered his home through the kitchen window, off the fire escape in back. Bess appeared in the hall, watching him climb over the sink and crash to the kitchen floor.
“You don’t always have to make a grand entrance,” she said.
He relaxed when he saw her unharmed.
“Pope Benedict is dead.”
Bess nodded, understanding it was a preamble to something more.
“I read as much.”
He led her into the parlor, where Bess had a glass of chilled tea and an open copy of A Tale of Two Cities. They sat.
“He came to me last night,” Houdini said. “He was here. In this very room. He had talent, Mrs. Houdini. Like me, but different.”
Houdini told her about the meeting. He then removed the Eye from its hiding place—in the Bible where he hid his cognac.
“He gave me this.”
“What is it?”
“A kind of tool he wanted me to hide. It’s dangerous. I can sense that much about it. I think I should just get rid of it.”
Bess shook her head.
“If it was important to him,” she said. “Then it is important to us.”
“But where to put it?”
Houdini closed his eyes and focused on all of the threads of possibility. There were countless nooks and crannies throughout the brownstone—in the parlor, the kitchen, the basement, the attic. As quickly as he could, he followed each glowing thread of possibility into the dark future.
The problem was, he could only see minutes, perhaps an hour or so, down each thread. In every one, the Eye stayed hidden, but it gave no assurance someone wouldn’t show up later that night. Or tomorrow, or the next day.
What bothered Houdini most was that when he pushed his mind as far out as it could go, he experienced a suffocating feeling, like being buried alive. It was darkness. It was danger. It was death.
“We shouldn’t keep it here,” he said. “It won’t be safe.”
You won’t be safe.
Houdini needed to give it distance, and he knew the perfect spot.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Let me go hide this, and I’ll meet you at the theater in an hour.”
“Very well,” she said. “Don’t dally, though. Promise?”
“Of course not,” Houdini said, leaning into her. “I’ll give you two kisses, my dear. One for now—”
Houdini kissed her on the head.
“—and one when I return.”
Houdini pulled the ring out of his pocket, about to slip it on, but he paused.
“Wear this,” he said to his wife, “until I get back.”
He handed her the ring.
“It’s big,” she said.
She slipped it on, and immediately Houdini couldn’t seem to find her in the room, even though she always seemed to be just out of view.
“Keep it on,” he said.
He then dashed out and hopped on the next train. It was half past five o’clock. There was just enough time to make it to Greenwich Village and back to the Hippodrome before his seven o’clock call time.
The door to Il Cuore was nearly impossible to spot on the small street. It was black and barely five feet tall. Sunken a step below the sidewalk and half-hidden by a stoop going up into the textile factory above, the door looked like the entrance to a storage closet. There was no door knocker, but someone had carved a small heart into the wood where one should be.
Houdini rapped twice, paused, then rapped twice again. A doorman answered, a hefty man with a broken nose whom the magician knew by sight.
“I need to speak with Tommy.”
The doorman grunted and let Houdini in. The windowless speakeasy was dark, and the air too warm and stale for comfort. Houdini saw Tommy Cipriano tending bar. It was early yet and only a dozen of his regulars dotted the shadowy booths. A piano player in the corner was tapping out a light ragtime tune that sounded happier than the mood.
Although the room was overpowered by the fragrance of cheap perfume worn by the hired flappers, it had the faint odor of sewage. It was a small price to pay for the elaborate system Tommy Cipriano had set up to evade police. One word of a raid and the bootlegger need only turn a crank that would tip the bar’s shelves backward and funnel all of the bottles into a trough that would dump them straight into the New York sewer system.
Houdini couldn’t help but beam every time he saw the crank. It was the magician, with his experience of trap doors and secret passages, who gave Cipriano the idea.
“Harry!”
The gangster slapped Houdini on the shoulder from across the bar.
“What’re you drinking? Whiskey? Gin? The Canadians haven’t really mastered vodka, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Just seltzer, please,” Houdini said.
Alcohol dulled Houdini’s senses; he avoided it in general but especially before a performance. This became a strict policy after the time he had nearly died escaping from a cask of Tru-Age beer. The alcohol had soaked through Houdini’s pores and he had trouble sensing the angle and position of the handcuffs behind him. By the time he had escaped he was drunk, nauseated and gasping for air.
“Alright,” Cipriano said. “But no one’s ever had a good time on seltzer.”
He poured Houdini a glass of seltzer and gave it a fancy twist of lemon.
“What brings you to Il Cuore, if not booze and women?”
“Il Cuore itself,” Houdini said. “The best secrets are stored in the heart, are they not?”
Cipriano winked.
“The heart itself is the treasure chest of all secrets. So what’s yours?”
Houdini pulled on the chain around his neck and flashed Cipriano the Eye.
“I need a hiding place for this. I can’t explain why, or tell you what it is.”
“Anything for you, Harry. It’s the least I can do. Your contraption here has helped me avoid the slammer more times than I can count.”
Houdini leaned over the bar.
“If you do this, I have to warn you that it could be dangerous. There may be someone after me.”
Or something.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Cipriano said. “You don’t get into bootlegging to make pals. I can take anyone who—”
An earsplitting boom came from the front door. Houdini turned just in time to see the door fly off its hinges and come crashing down on the doorman.
“It’s the buttons!” Cipriano hissed. He ran to the end of the bar and turned the big brass crank. The shelves of the bar flipped backward into the narrow corridor behind the false wall. The sound of breaking glass filled the room as dozens of bottles went crashing onto the trough, sliding down into the sewer below. Ho
udini stared in wonder; it was the first time he had actually seen the contraption in action.
Patrons clustered into the speakeasy’s farthest, darkest booth, like mice trapped by a cat. There was no other exit. Houdini found himself alone with Cipriano at the bar.
Only one man stood at the door’s entrance, and he was unlike any Houdini had ever seen. He was seven or eight feet tall and wider than the door’s frame. To get inside he got down on his hands and knees, then punched a hole on one side of the door to widen it before crawling inside. Bricks scattered everywhere, and the doorman’s bones cracked audibly as the giant man crawled over the door on top of him.
Finally he stood, partially crouched, and brushed off his suit.
“You’re not the fuzz,” Cipriano said. “Who the hell are you?”
“It’s not your concern,” the man’s voice was deep. Houdini’s first thought was that he’d probably make a wonderful baritone.
“Like hell it’s not. You can’t just barge in here, big as Atlas himself, and tear up my place. You just wasted booze worth a good five hundred clams. Gimme your name, pally.”
“Call me what you want. Call me Atlas for all I care. I’m not here for you.”
The man had an accent with sharp, clipped pronunciation. It matched the austerity of his black pinstriped suit, which was obviously custom made for his size. He seemed young, maybe in his mid-twenties, but he was so massive and powerfully built that it was difficult to tell.
He turned and looked straight at the magician.
“Mr. Houdini,” the man said. “Pope Benedict visited you last night.”
“I’m a Jew,” Houdini said. “Why would the Pope visit me?”
“We followed the Pope to a brownstone in Harlem last night,” the man said. “Which we later found out is where you live.”
The man stared blankly at Houdini. He was impossible to read. Houdini felt his heart begin to beat faster, his blood pressure rising. An impassive man was dangerous.
“He gave you the Eye,” the man asked. “Where is it?”
Houdini said nothing, but the lump underneath his shirt felt like it was burning a hole in his chest.
“Sometimes a little motivation can spark someone’s memory,” the man said. “Shall I pluck the limbs from one of these lovely flappers?”
He reached down and pulled up a woman who had been crouching against the side of the bar. She cried out.
“Tell me why you want the Eye so badly,” Houdini said, “that you’d gladly hurt innocent people.”
“An unavoidable consequence,” Atlas said. He eyed his captive as if she were little more than a weed. “It’s impossible to plant a crop without disturbing the soil.”
Despite his words, the giant man loosened his grip on the woman.
He’s bold, but he’s young and uncertain.
“I want to hear more about your intentions,” Houdini said. “How about you and I leave this place, and we’ll talk about whatever you want?”
The man let go of the flapper. She ran to the back corner with the other patrons. Houdini was relieved that at least no one else in Cipriano’s bar would get hurt.
There was a click of a gun’s hammer. Houdini’s heart sank.
The giant man turned to see the pianist pointing a six-shooter at him from behind the piano. With the palm of his hand, the giant man shoved the piano at the pianist. It slammed into the man and then hit the wall. There was a sickening crunch as the keyboard bisected the piano player at his stomach.
Women screamed from the darkness of the far booth.
“Nobody, and I mean nobody, kills my piano player!”
Houdini looked to see Cipriano reveal a tommy gun, its distinctive circular drum in front of the trigger. He had the chopper pointed at the giant man.
“Your weapons are gnats,” the giant man said. “Annoying but useless.”
“Gnats my ass!”
Cipriano sprayed bullets across the giant man’s chest. Houdini covered his ears but could still hear the screams of both men and women and they sought cover underneath tables. The giant man staggered and grabbed onto the bar for support.
“Harry, take a hike!” Cipriano shouted.
He nodded to the exit.
“What about you?” Houdini asked.
“No one enters my bar uninvited and busts it up,” he said. “We’ll have this goon at the bottom of the Hudson before the cops can say ‘homicide.’ Better you’re not here.”
Houdini nodded and made for the door. But as he got within reach, the giant man reared up from the bar and took a swipe at him. Houdini jumped backward and narrowly missed his log-sized arm.
“As long as you have the Eye,” the giant man said, blocking the exit, “you will have me close behind.”
He lunged at Houdini and Cipriano let loose another spray of bullets.
“Get outta here, Harry!” Cipriano shouted. “Whatever he wants, he ain’t gonna get it today!”
Houdini had a thought. He scuttled behind the bar to the crank, and turned it so that the shelves flipped back again. Most men wouldn’t fit through the slot, but the opening wasn’t any narrower than some of the gaps the magician had to slip through for his illusions.
Houdini lifted his leg into the opening, exhaled all of his breath and cocked his head sideways. He then allowed his ribcage to give under the pressure of the ledge. He pushed himself through the tight space, feeling his ribs bending, nearly cracking. Suddenly he popped through, like a cork coming off a champagne bottle.
He found himself in a cramped space between two walls. He lay facedown in a slimy metal trough that declined sharply into darkness.
Before letting go, Houdini looked up. The giant man had ripped his shirt open and revealed a polka dot of bullet holes. Blood dripped down his chest. He picked a bullet out of his skin as if it were an oversized pimple. There was so much muscle on his chest, the bullets didn’t go through. It was as if he were wearing a steel bib.
The giant man grabbed the bar and ripped off a section of the tabletop, wielding it like a massive bat.
“Tommy!” Houdini shouted.
Houdini’s hands slipped and he began to slide headfirst down the trough. The last thing he saw before falling into total darkness was the Atlas-sized man swinging the bar top down onto Cipriano’s head.