Now You See It (19 page)

“You made me nervous before, looking at it a second time,” he said to Plum. “I thought for sure you’d find out how the reversal gimmick works.”

He pressed the side of the burial case, his voice suddenly becoming that of
The Great Delacorte
addressing an audience.

“I sense a gathering of forces, my friends,” he said. “Can you feel it?”

Thunder crashed in the distance.
(By God, he really
does
work the weather into his act!
I thought.) The Magic Room was gloomy with shadows by now.

The Sheriff and Cassandra watched him, mute and motionless. (I was M&M too, of course.)

“Very close now,” said
The Great Delacorte
. “Can you
feel
it? Feel the presence? The still, cold presence … of the
dead?”

He flung open the cover of the burial case.

Cassandra screamed. The Sheriff gasped. I almost filled my pants.

Harry looked exactly as he had in the globe, features gray in death, a dark, blood-clotted gash across his throat.

“Behold your lover!”
cried
The Great Delacorte
.

Max scowled.

“And the crummiest agent I ever had,” he added pettishly.

Oh, Max
, I thought.
Oh
, Son.

The scene was frozen; a tableau: Max immobile, the pistol in his hand; Cassandra and the Sheriff looking toward the burial case, their features and bodies as unmoving as stone; me immobile (same old thing), my heartbeat thudding, my heart breaking for my son’s atrocity.

Harry staring, throat cut, dead.

“Don’t you want to take a closer look, Cassandra?” asked her husband.

She averted her face with a choking sob.

“Take a closer look, Cassandra,” Max urged.

“Give me the pistol, Delacorte,” the Sheriff told him.

He twitched back as Max thrust out his arm, pointing the pistol at him.

“Take a closer look, Cassandra,”
Max ordered.

The Sheriff swallowed with some effort. With an attempt at professional demeanor, he suggested, “Better do as he says, Mrs. Delacorte.”

“Good advice, Grover,” my son complimented him. “You’re a pip of a lawman, has anyone ever told you that before?”

The Sheriff did not reply. (I didn’t blame him.) He edged slowly toward the burial case as Cassandra approached it, gaze averted.

Max backed off several paces, eyeing them with guarded care. And all I could think was:
Why did you want me here, Son? To see
this?

The Sheriff stopped, peering closely at Harry’s face, grimacing at the sight—the bluish lips; the glassy, staring eyes; the deep, blood-rimmed incision across his throat.

Then he cocked his head, a look of curiosity on his face.

“Can I—” He gestured toward the body.

“Be my guest,” said Max.

The Sheriff took a few steps closer to the burial case and laid the palm of his right hand against Harry’s gray cheek.
What’s he doing?
I wondered.

Noting the Sheriff’s movement, Cassandra raised her eyes, emitting a sound of sickened pain at the sight of Harry’s face.

She tensed as the Sheriff reached up to the top of Harry’s head and took hold of his hair.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a faint voice.
What
are
you doing?
I thought.

He did not respond, but started to tug upward at Harry’s hair.

Cassandra looked aghast. “What are you doing?” she demanded again, this time in a breaking voice.

“We are about to surprise you, my friends,” said Max, once more
The Great Delacorte
addressing his audience. “Are you ready? Prepare yourselves.
Here it comes!”

Plum pulled up hard at Harry’s hair.

With a sound of revolted anger, Cassandra moved to stop him.

Suddenly, a skintight rubber mask—fastened loosely at the back—tore free from Harry’s head, revealing him gagged but quite alive, making tiny sounds of protest—which the Sheriff had heard, I assumed.

Cassandra cried out with intense relief.

“Restoration, my friends!” cried
The Great Delacorte
.

He held out the pistol.

“Here’s your weapon, Grover,” he said.

Plum turned, regarding Max with a blank expression.

Max made a rapid, blurring movement with his hands and held out the handcuffs to Plum.

“And your little manacles, too,” he said, sounding like the Witch of the North.

He looked at me.

“Sorry again,
Padre,”
he said. “Hope it wasn’t too much of a shock.”

Just how much do you think this battered old heart of mine can
take,
Son?
I thought. I was relieved that he wasn’t a murderer. Resentful that he’d forced me over the jump like that.
Cassandra, crying, was removing Harry’s gag by then.

“You’re alive,” she said, incredulous.
“Alive.”

“Yes, isn’t that a nice surprise?” said Max. “A lot more
bedding
to be savored now.”

She didn’t even look at him.

The Sheriff took the pistol and the handcuffs from him.

“Never, in the fifty-four years of my life,” he said, “have I ever met anyone as sick as you.”

“Probably not,” my son agreed; and so, unhappily, did I. Max was not amused, though. It was simply a statement of fact as he (and I) saw it.

“I’d like to shoot you dead where you stand,” said Plum in a most unSheriffly way.

“Oh, now you’re talking,” said Max, nodding with somber approval. “That would be a lovely, charitable thing to do. Relieve me of my rapidly dwindling
raison d’être
. Please do. I encourage it.”

He pressed the tip of his right index finger to the heart area of his chest.

“Right here,”
he said.

“Don’t tempt me,” said the Sheriff, surprising me again.

Harry’s gag was off now. Raging, he exploded. “If you won’t do it, I will! Just give me the fucking gun!

“Ah,” said Max, “our sweet-tongued Harry is among us once again.”

“You son of a bitch!” shrilled Harry. “You lousy, stinking, heartless son of—”

“Enough!”
Max roared, shutting Harry up, causing him to twitch in startlement. “Be grateful that I didn’t fire a
real
pistol ball into your heart! That the Scotch was merely drugged! It would have been a simple matter to dispose of you, and I have every reason in the world to wish you dead! So,
shut up
. Just don’t push your luck! I’m not—”

He broke off with a groan of angry despair.

“Oh, what’s the use?” he said. “Why bother?
What’s the point in going on?”

He looked around in restless torment, as though searching for some quick and simple exit from this life.

Abruptly then, with a sudden, crazed look on his face, he lurched toward the guillotine and, kneeling quickly, thrust his head through the lunette, under the glinting blade.
No
, I thought.

“All right, Harry.
Pal,”
he said, his tone both hating and anguished at once. “Here’s your opportunity. Your big chance. To get revenge, get even. Get Cassandra. Get
everything.”

Harry’s bindings had been untied by Cassandra now. He started toward Max, trembling with fury.

“You think I couldn’t do it, you bastard?” he snarled ferociously. “You think, if the damn thing was real, I wouldn’t do it in a second?”

“But it
is
real, Harry,” said my son. A chill around my heart again.

“Sure it is, you prick,” snapped Harry.

“Harry, get away from there,” Cassandra said. My
God, it
isn’t
real, is it?
I thought in sudden dread.

“Do
it, Harry,” Max urged him. “Go
ahead
—to coin a phrase.”

“You miserable son of a bitch,” said Harry.

He reached for the lever.

“Harry, no!” Cassandra cried.
No!
my mind cried with her.

Too late. Harry was jerking down the wooden lever, the wide blade was hurtling downward, and Cassandra was screaming.

As Max’s head dropped heavily into the basket.

O
h, my good God,”
muttered Plum.

Harry resembled a man who had just been kicked in the testes by a mule.

He turned to Cassandra, barely able to speak.

“It’s not a trick?”
he murmured shakily.

“I told you to get away from there!” she cried.

Harry was staggered; petrified.

“I thought
everything
in this room was a trick,” he whimpered.

“Well, you were wrong!” she responded.

Jabber away
, I thought in agony.
Meantime, my son has been decapitated
.

Harry turned and stumbled toward the bar, avoiding the sight—as they all did but me—of Max’s motionless body lying on the trestle of the guillotine.

Reaching the bar, he picked up
the bottle of Scotch and unscrewed its cap.

He started to pour himself a glassful, then abruptly became conscious of what he was doing and lost his grip onthe bottle, which clattered into the sink but didn’t break; the noise made all of us twitch.

“Jesus, I was pouring Scotch,” he said. He stared at them, a broken man. “Jesus Christ Almighty.
Scotch.”

Clouds were thickening now. The room was filled with long, dark shadows. Rumbling thunder continued. Periodic lightning flashes bleached the sky, making me blink. (I think … but then, I don’t really know if I twitched either.)

Harry had picked up a new bottle of brandy and was opening it.

As he did, the Sheriff began to edge toward the guillotine, features set, bracing himself for the sight of Max’s severed head (perhaps twitching, the awful image presented itself) in the basket.
Oh, God, please let it be an effect
, I begged.
Not a real guillotine
.

Harry poured himself a glass of brandy and lifted it toward his lips with a palsied hand.

As Cassandra cried out hoarsely, the glass jerked in his grip and he flung the brandy across his shirtfront.

The Sheriff had lurched back with a hiss of astonishment.

I felt rage and relief (and bowel stress) simultaneously.

Max had just stood up.

His head, need I add, intact.

“You were quite correct ‘old friend,’” he said to Harry, smiling thinly. “Everything in this room
is
a trick.”

His soft laugh was a chilling one. It faded as he looked at me.

“Mea culpa
once again,
Padre,”
he said. “I simply couldn’t resist one more go at him. After all, remember what he did … not only to me, but to you.”

I didn’t know if that was adequate motivation for what he’d done to Harry, but I said nothing. (As per usual.)

Harry seemed beyond rage now, so traumatized by
everything he’d experienced that he was unable to even address my son.

Instead, he turned to Cassandra.

“Get your things,” he said in a strained voice.

Cassandra started. “What?”

Harry grimaced, his teeth on edge.

“I presume you aren’t planning to stay here with this maniac,” he said.

Cassandra looked caught off guard (I wondered why.) “I’ll be all right,” she said.

“All
right?”
Harry gaped at her, incredulous. “The man is insane!”

Yes, I think he may have been.

Cassandra tried to answer Harry, but he cut her off, his voice agitated.

“You can’t possibly intend to stay here with him after what he’s done!”
he cried.

“I agree with him,” the Sheriff broke in.

“I—” Cassandra looked confused. I didn’t understand it;
then
.

“Come on, get your things,” Harry interrupted. “You can’t stay here. That would be
ridiculous.”

All of us were looking at Cassandra now. Was Max as perplexed by her reluctance? Was Plum?

“Come
on
, babe,” Harry insisted. “You know you have to leave.”

“I really think you’d better, Mrs. Delacorte,” the Sheriff told her. Sheriffly again.

“All right.” She turned toward the entry hall.

“Wait,”
said Max.