Boxing the Octopus, page 11
“Aren’t some of these creatures poisonous?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“That’s not always true,” said Joy. “Take cancer, for example. Or tendon damage. Even tooth decay—”
“Is Joy really your given name?”
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” The Doctor studied Joy as if she were floating inside a glass tube. “Just curious.”
Joy shifted her gaze to the twin readouts emerging from the machines, the peaks and valleys of creation scrolling along uninterrupted. “This is a very ambitious project.”
“You’ve no idea.”
“I’m glad to be a part of it.” Joy looked back at him. “And after we close the gaps, Doctor, will you work with regulators to put out a call for volunteers?”
“Volunteers?” The Doctor blinked, as if the word were new to him.
“For the testing,” said Joy. “To begin clinical trials on human subjects?”
“Just find the gaps,” said the Doctor. “I’ve got all the volunteers I need.”
31
“I need a volunteer.”
Cape didn’t realize the man behind the counter was addressing him until the blinding sun from the pier shrank to a square of light on the floor. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim interior of the store, Cape saw he was the only one inside Houdini’s Magic Shop besides the magician, who smiled and took a step back from the counter. Then he rubbed his hands together and drew them apart, slowly.
The magician held a ball of lightning in his hands.
Cape felt the hairs on his arms rise as the air crackled with the sweet tang of ozone. Bolts of energy jumped with primal urgency between the magician’s fingers, sparks twisting and spitting but somehow staying within the confines of an invisible sphere.
Cape’s eyebrows and hair shimmied with static, but the magician’s hair didn’t budge. A black widow’s peak pointed downward to an aquiline nose and gray eyes that regarded Cape with a spark of amusement.
The electric storm grew to the size of a beach ball before a wave of the hands made the lightning vanish as suddenly as it appeared. Cape noticed the almost skeletal quality of the hands, silver bands on the ring fingers of both right and left.
“That’s quite a trick,” said Cape.
“A trick,” repeated the magician with just a hint of a smile. “I see you noticed the rings.”
Cape met his gaze but didn’t say anything.
“You must be curious,” said the magician.
“I am,” said Cape, “but—”
“There is a thin line between curiosity and impertinence.”
“Hadn’t thought of it that way,” said Cape. “But doesn’t it ruin a trick if you know how it’s done?”
“Indeed it does.” With deliberate slowness the magician pulled the ring off his left hand, then his right, and laid them both delicately on the counter. He flexed his bare fingers, then extended them toward the rings in a welcoming gesture. “Please, examine the rings and see for yourself.”
As Cape reached the counter he felt a thickness in the air, a prickly sensation against his skin, and even before he touched the first ring realized they were just dead bands of metal. Misdirection from the real magic.
With the natural grace of a dancer, the magician stepped around the counter and brought his hands together, this time interlocking his fingers. As he pulled them apart, another tropical storm appeared, too bright to scrutinize for very long. As it dissipated, Cape saw spots and blinked for a minute before looking into the magician’s pale gray eyes.
“How much does a trick like that cost?” asked Cape.
The magician gave an apologetic smile. “Some things should remain a mystery.” He extended his right hand, which was remarkably cold considering it held a bolt of lightning only moments ago. “My name is Davik. Like David, with a K.”
“Cape. Like cake with a P.”
“Welcome to my store.”
“Thanks, I’m—”
“—not here to discuss pyrotechnic prestidigitation.”
“You’re also a mind reader?”
“Not at all.” Davik returned to the far side of the counter and put the rings on. “But you’re not dressed like a tourist, and you’re too patient to be a policeman—”
“Patient?”
“A policeman never would have let me finish both parts of that demonstration,” said Davik. “And he would have introduced himself right away. You have a writing callous on your middle right finger, which might suggest you’re a reporter, but the skin isn’t red or particularly swollen, which means it’s a residual indentation from years past. That could mean you work on a laptop, but reporters typically dress better. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Your jeans and running shoes indicate you want to be comfortable enough to move easily, but the sport coat is well made, perhaps so you can appear respectable as you ask prying questions. And you are here to ask questions, aren’t you?”
“You don’t happen to live at 221B Baker Street, do you?”
Davik smiled. “I always wanted to live in Victorian London.”
“I hear the rents were atrocious,” said Cape.
Davik’s grin was as sharp as a letter V. “My earlier observations, along with your age, suggest you are some kind of investigator.”
“My age?”
“Most of my customers are under the age of fourteen,” said Davik. “Unless they come with children in tow.”
“I used to be a reporter.” Cape wistfully regarded the gentle slope of the callous on the last knuckle of his middle finger. “And used to think I was pretty observant until I met you.”
“A magician who lacks attention to detail will never notice what others might see while he’s performing.”
“Then there’s no more mystery.”
“Precisely,” said Davik. “Though you must believe mysteries are meant to be solved.”
“I was hoping to figure out how a few million dollars could disappear.”
“That was quite a trick,” replied Davik.
“I thought you might have some ideas.”
“May I ask whom you’re working for?”
“You can ask.”
“Of course.” Davik smiled. “May I ask why you’re no longer working for a respectable newspaper?”
“Are there any respectable newspapers?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Cape looked around the store. “I thought I was making a difference—”
“—and?”
“It was just an illusion.” Cape met the magician’s gaze and smiled.
Davik nodded and moved to the front door, removing a set of keys from his pocket with his right hand. With his left he flipped a hanging sign from Open to Closed. “Shall we take a walk?”
“You don’t mind leaving the store?”
“It’s slow until school lets out.” A second sign hung on the door, its face that of a clock. With one of his delicate fingers Davik spun the hands to Be Right Back In 20 Minutes.
Cape was blinded all over again as the sun struck him square in the eyes. Once his pupils contracted, he looked at his new acquaintance more carefully. The man was even paler in sunlight, obsidian hair immobile in the slight breeze coming off the water. He wore a dark suit over a white shirt, the sharp lapels of his collar reminding Cape of sepia photographs he’d seen from a century ago.
The magic shop was mentioned by Vera, and it had caught Sally’s attention as well, and there was something mesmerizing about this man. His speech and manner came from some other place, another era.
Without any particular destination in mind, they drifted through the crowd toward a row of benches overlooking the west marina where the sea lions lounged.
“The trick I performed in the store wasn’t magic,” said Davik. “And in the strict sense of the word, it wasn’t really a trick. Magic is merely a combination of science and art.”
The sea lions came into view, their barking intermittent. Several were asleep on the floating dock, most in the water.
Davik continued, “Science we don’t understand seems like magic, and all magic tricks are merely illusions. The science of optics plus the art of misdirection.”
“So, in the case of the armored car, where was the misdirection?”
“I’d say it depends on whom they were playing the trick,” said Davik. “Have you heard of the vanishing elephant?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“New York in 1918, the Hippodrome Theater,” Davik replied. “Harry Houdini.”
“You named your store after him.”
“The greatest magician in the world, “said Davik. “Almost a century ago, he does something unthinkable. He promises to make an elephant disappear.”
Cape indicated an empty bench, and they both sat as Davik waved his arms theatrically.
“The theater is packed.” Davik spoke as if he had been there. “People sitting in the audience can watch from every vantage point as Houdini—with the help of twelve men—wheels an enormous cabinet onto the stage. The cabinet is on wheels, so it can be turned to show the audience its interior from every angle. It is empty, the front and back of the cabinet open, merely covered by curtains. When the curtains are pulled back, people sitting in the front seats can look straight through the cabinet to the rigging at the back of the stage.”
“Where’s the elephant?”
“After Houdini explains the premise of the trick, a five-ton elephant is walked on stage and led into the cabinet by its trainer,” said Davik. “The curtains are drawn and the twelve men, with considerable effort, slowly spin the cabinet around in plain view of the audience. Once the pachyderm pirouette is complete, Houdini pulls both front and back curtains aside. And when he does, what do you think the audience sees?”
“The back of the stage?”
Davik nodded. “The elephant has vanished.”
“Magic.”
“Art and science,” said Davik. “Where do you think the elephant has gone?”
“That would have to be one big-ass trap door,” said Cape. “And elephants aren’t known for their ability to fall gracefully.”
“So,” asked Davik, “where is the elephant?”
“It never left the cabinet.”
“Very good!” Davik brought his hands together in a single clap and held them in a position of prayer. “That is the only logical conclusion.”
“Is that what really happened?”
“After Houdini’s death the cabinet was examined, and the elephant trainer revealed the secret. The interior was wider than it appeared, because the opening at the front and back were framed to give the impression you were looking at a perfect rectangle. Houdini knew that even though the cabinet was on stage the entire time, any given seat in the theater only offered a partial view. Inside the cabinet was another curtain, which in the controlled lighting of the theater was invisible.”
“Like a false wall.”
“During the turn, the trainer simply had to walk the elephant sideways a few feet, behind the secret curtain that ran the length of the cabinet, and keep the elephant calm. Then wait for Houdini to draw the front and back curtains after the turn.”
“So the audience could see the back of the theater—”
“—which completed the illusion they expected to see, a missing elephant. But if they had come on stage and peered laterally into the cabinet, they might have noticed the aberrant width and wondered if the interior surface was another curtain and not the wall of the cabinet. But of course nobody asked to come on stage, the entire audience was on its feet applauding wildly.”
Cape looked at the sea lions and let the magician’s story fill his mind’s eye. For several minutes neither of them said anything, until the cry of a gull broke their reverie.
“Why are you helping me?”
“I like puzzles,” replied Davik simply. “And whoever they are, they stole from me, too.”
“When they pulled the armored car from the bay, the money wasn’t there,” said Cape. “Unlike your elephant, it truly has vanished.”
“So it would appear.”
After a long moment, Cape said, “There are only two possibilities.”
“Go on.”
“The money was stolen before the car went into the water.”
Davik nodded. “That occurred to me as well.”
“Or it was taken after the car sank,” said Cape.
“Does it matter?” asked Davik.
Cape turned to the magician. “How do you mean?”
“Houdini’s grand illusion,” said Davik. “You didn’t figure it out by looking into the cabinet. And you didn’t have the benefit of finding the elephant trainer, or Houdini himself, and asking them questions.”
“True.”
“You solved it because you knew something about the elephant,” said Davik. “Its size, its weight, its nature. Once you considered the elephant, there was only one explanation.”
Cape admired anyone who could make him feel so incredibly stupid. “The money is the elephant.”
“Classic misdirection,” said Davik. “You and the police have been looking at people—”
“—when we should be looking at the money.”
32
Vera looked at the money in the cash register and sighed.
It had been a day with plenty of shoppers but very few buyers. Nonstop from the moment she arrived that morning until closing. She had sent Natalie home and locked the door almost an hour ago, but there was always more to do. Clothes to put on display, inventory to check, paperwork to complete, and receipts to count.
She was used to the random rhythms of the store, frenetic days when everyone browsed but nobody bought, followed by days when customers needed to buy something, anything, for a birthday or baby or friend or colleague, and they needed it now. Those were the good days.
The seesaw existence of retail once gave her a thrill, but lately all the highs and lows made her queasy. Sick and tired in a way she couldn’t understand until she looked in the mirror and saw a face she barely recognized.
The woman gazing back at her wasn’t necessarily older, and she didn’t look ill, but parts of her face were missing. The crow’s feet that used to appear at the corners of her eyes whenever she smiled were nowhere to be seen. The lines around her mouth had drawn much tighter, scars of regret dragging her lips downward in a losing battle between gravity and hope. Gone was the playful upturn of her lips, a missing detail in a familiar painting that made you realize you were looking at a cheap forgery.
Vera felt the loss of her daughter like a phantom limb, gone but forever part of her. That constant, dull ache was an unforeseen source of strength, a reminder to get up in the morning and face the world. Because there was someone waiting in the next world for whom Vera wanted to be brave.
Not having Hank around was another feeling altogether, a farrago of regret, sadness, and an unexpected splash of relief. This last ingredient floated to the surface on a wave of guilt that only a girl raised in Catholic school could appreciate. Things with Hank had gone from straightforward to complicated, but before they had a chance to work things out, the choice was made for both of them.
Choice is an illusion, and self-pity is a choice. So where does that leave you?
Vera looked around the store and forced a smile, got halfway there and settled for something less than a grimace. She had built this place, and when people came to visit, every single one of them smiled as soon as they crossed the threshold, their troubles left waiting outside. Life sometimes takes more than it gives, but no one could take that away from her.
There are places you live and places where you feel alive.
Vera made a decision and walked to the back of the store. She was going to sleep here tonight.
She kicked her shoes under the desk and sat down on the cot, bunching up the pillows so she could look out the window at the marina. She would get undressed and wash her face later, but for now she just wanted to get off her feet.
From this angle her view of the water was partially obscured by the aquarium. Her gaze moved past the blue awning at its entrance to the mural of a blue whale on the wall directly across from her. The undersea scene was softly illuminated by a combination of moonlight and lights from the pier. As clouds drifted and shadows danced across the wall, the whale looked like it was about to breach.
The leviathan was swimming upwards with a primal sense of urgency, the surface so close, air its only desire. The poor whale had been trapped on that wall for too long.
Vera reluctantly looked toward the east marina. The guardrail was still wrapped in yellow tape where the armored car had broken through, and orange cones were positioned to keep tourists at a safe distance. Vera tracked the rise and fall of the waves, shards of moonlight on the water sending her sympathetic messages in Morse code.
Her vision blurred as the tears came.
Vera let them run without raising a hand to stem their course, feeling a sense of release rather than despair. She sat with arms wrapped around her knees until her blouse was soaked through and the river of regret had run dry. If the human body is ninety percent water, Vera was surprised there was anything left of her.
She took a deep breath and then another, until the reflected moonlight finally signaled it was time to move on. A fragile smile bent the corners of her mouth, a private joke at her own expense. Hank once told her that he’d never seen her cry, and now he was missing the big show.
