Houdini's Last Trick (The Burdens Trilogy) by David Khalaf Read Free Book Online

Skip the cards and stick with the escapes. And next time, do a stunt that people in the cheap seats can see too.”
    Houdini broke into a relieved smile.
    “That’s good advice,” he said. “I should go find my wife. This is a belated honeymoon of sorts. Nice to meet you.”
    They shook hands.
    “We’ll meet again someday,” Jane said.
    Just a hunch.
    The magician dashed off.
    Jane rummaged through her pockets and found an old deerskin she always kept on her. There were three names on it, including her own at the top. The second one, Crazy Horse, she had scratched out years ago after his death. The third one, that sharp wit she had once met from Missouri, was still alive as far as she knew. The magician was the first new talent she had met in nearly a decade.
    Jane removed a fountain pen she had won at a game of poker. It was far too nice for her chicken scratch. She propped the deerskin up against the nearest wall and wrote a fourth name.
    Harry Handcuff Houdini.

 
     
     
     
    C HAPTER S EVEN
     
    “Y OU LOOK LIKE you could use some coffee.”
    Houdini shot awake. The receptionist stood over him in her crisp white blouse and red pencil skirt. She shoved a teacup in his hand the moment he opened his eyes.
    “Thank you.”
    She offered a tight-lipped smile, then scuttled to the far side of the room before taking a deep breath. Houdini sipped the coffee.
    He was sitting in an overstuffed chair in the waiting room of MGM Studios Head Louis B. Mayer. Everything in the room was creamy white—the walls, the drapes, the furniture, the plush carpet. It was as if he were sitting inside a giant cream puff. The decor only helped to magnify the filthiness of the magician’s suit.
    Houdini barely noticed the smell by now. The worst part of his exit out of New York had been the train to Chicago, which he had paid for by selling his watch at a pawn shop. He boarded the train still soaked in sewage, causing passengers to repress gags. Well-dressed women huffed loudly and made little “ tsk tsk ” sounds. The conductor was going to kick him off at Columbus until he recognized who Houdini was. The magician had convinced him it was part of an elaborate escape—which was entirely true.
    He had showered in Chicago at a YMCA facility near the train station, and had fully rinsed out his suit in a sink, but the smell clung to him like a second skin. He rinsed off again in a public toilet in Salt Lake City, and again in San Francisco at a church shelter for men heading south to pick fruit. By now his skin was raw from scrubbing, but there was still a residual something that he couldn’t wash clean. Maybe it wasn’t the sewage he was trying to escape. Maybe it was the image of Tommy Cipriano’s head getting bashed in.
    The white double doors opened and Louis B. Mayer stepped out. Houdini stood.
    “Harry!” Mayer said, holding his arms out as if he expected the magician to go running into them. He was a stout man with round glasses, neat gray hair, and a hawkish nose. Houdini smiled, nodded, and shook the studio head’s hand.
    “Most people dress up for an interview with me,” Mayer said, taking in Houdini’s ragged attire. “You’re the only one I know who dresses down.”
    “It was a last-minute trip,” Houdini said.
    Mayer led them inside. His office continued the cream-on-cream-on-cream color scheme, with a massive oval desk that looked nothing short of presidential.
    “I thought you ran a movie studio,” Houdini said. “It looks like you run the country.”
    Mayer shooed away what he perceived as a compliment.
    “Coolidge does a good enough job with that. Sit, sit.”
    Houdini sat in another overstuffed cream chair facing Mayer’s desk.
    “You want a scotch? Cigar?”
    Mayer walked over to a glass-and-chrome bar next to a door that led into a private bathroom.
    “Thank you, no. I rarely drink or smoke.”
    “Good man,” Mayer said. “Neither do I. I only drink at weddings. And funerals, if I hated the