Now You See It (8 page)

Son!
My mental voice was anguished.

Harry was still numbed by fright. He stared at Max uncomprehendingly.

“What are you doing?” he muttered.

The hand behind the ear. Max inquired, “Pardon?”

“What are you doing?” Harry asked again, more loudly now.

“Past tense, old friend,” Max answered. “What you should say is, what have I
done?”

Harry still didn’t understand. I understood only too well.

Max tossed the empty vial to Harry—who tried to catch it, but massed; it fell into his lap. He picked it up and studied it. There was no label. He looked back at Max in confusion. Then he smelled the opening of the vial, wincing at the odor.

“Bitter almonds,” Max informed him.

Arsenic
, I thought in horror.

“Arsenic,” said Max.

“Oh, my God.” Harry labored to his feet. “You’re
crazy.”

“I believe we’ve already established that,” said Max.

Harry rushed to the desk, his legs appearing somewhat rubbery. He snatched up the telephone receiver.

“A waste of time,” Max told him calmly. I felt ill. “I’ll be dead long before anyone can get here.”

Harry looked at him in agitation. “What the hell do you expect me to do, just stand by and watch you die?” he demanded.

Why not?
My thought was stricken.
It’s all
I
can do. Except that I’ll be sitting by instead
.

“Just stand by,” said Max, “and offer me the courtesy of listening with attention for the last few minutes of my life.”

“Oh, God,” said Harry—and my mind—and stared at Max.

Then he said, impulsively, “I’ll drive you to the hospital in your car!”

“There isn’t time,” Max told him quietly. The calmness of his tone was chilling to my blood. “I have five to seven minutes left at most. Sit down.”

“Jesus, Max!”

“Sit down,”
said Max. His smile was thin. “And, for once in your life,
listen
to me.”

“Jesus,”
Harry mumbled.

There’s nothing I can do to stop this
. There was utter, helpless horror in my mind.
Nothing!

Harry didn’t sit; he couldn’t. (I could do nothing but.) He watched Max with a pained expression as my son began to pace around the room.

“The more I get my circulation going, the less time it will take,” he said.

“Jesus, Max!”

Max raised a silencing hand.

“I never told you about Adelaide, did I?” he asked. “My true love. My only love. My wife. My friend. My treasure.”

Not that
, my mind pleaded. Adelaide had always been an angel to me.

“I was married to her before you came along,” continued Max. “Before Cassandra came along.”

Harry twitched (I may have done the same without sensation) as Max’s right leg seemed to buckle momentarily and he staggered slightly. Harry made a sudden move toward him, then stopped as Max walked on, a look of haunted recollection on his face.

“Those were the best years of my life,” he said. “We loved each other deeply. I was happier than I have ever been.”

I closed my eyes and prayed to weep. I always knew that Max adored her; I could see it in his every word and action, in his face. My son adored her as I’d adored my wife, and both of us had lost those magic, wonderful relationships.

Max started to go on and, for several seconds, his voice grew thick. I saw him struggle to prevent its happening again before he’d finished what he had to say.

“My joy was her beside me,” he continued, pacing once again. “Her love unquestioning. I idolized her, Harry. I’m
sure you think that such an emotion was never possible for me.
He
knew though,” he added, pointing at me. “He saw it all.”

I did, my son
, I thought, agonized, opening my eyes again.

“She was, to me, everything that was good. Everything that was pure and beautiful and innocent.”

His last word was emphasized involuntarily, accompanied by a wince of pain. Harry went stiff with apprehension.

For several moments, Max stood motionless, eyes hooded, breathing slowly.

“Max, let me call an ambulance, for God’s sake!” Harry cried.

Max waved him off and started pacing once again, his movements uneven now.

“She was carrying our child when the accident occurred,” he said, his voice tormented. I wished, in vain of course, that I could, by closing my eyes, shut away the entire scene.

“She was tired,” Max said. “I insisted that she stay at home. She wouldn’t hear of it. She had to be on stage with me. Helping me. Supporting me.

For God’s sake, stop the self-torture!
I thought.

Max stopped and leaned against the frame of the picture window, breath erratic as he looked out toward the gazebo. “Getting dark,” he said. “A storm is coming.”

He turned from the window, his expression rigid as though to hold away the pain.

“It was too much for her,” he said, beginning to pace again, weaving now. (I stared at him in anguish.) “She misjudged. She didn’t move quite fast enough. A piece of heavy equipment fell.”

He stopped, throwing a hand across his eyes as though to blot away the memory of that hideous night.

“My wife,” he murmured brokenly. “Our child.” He threw back his head. “All in one dread moment!”

He clenched his teeth, pushing his left hand to his stomach.

“Max,”
said Harry.

Max paid no attention to him. Hand pressed hard against his stomach, features set in a grimace of pain, he began to pace again.
I can’t bear this
, I thought.

“She’s been dead for twelve years now,” he said. “Yet still I love her—only her. My darling and my angel. There’s never been another like her. There never could be;
never.”

With a breathless cry of pain, he fell toward one of the chairs, hands shooting down to brake himself on the chair back.

He struggled to a standing position as Harry ran over, a look of hapless dread on his face. Max reached out a trembling hand to pat him weakly on the arm.

“This is the best way out … old friend,” he mumbled, sounding very weak.
It’s not the best way out for me
, my mind screamed, half in terror, half in rage.

“It’s not only Adelaide who’s gone,” Max continued. He drew in a straining breath. “Everything is gone—you know that as well as I.”

I’m not gone!
I thought.
I may be useless, but I’m still around!

Max groaned and clenched his teeth again, hand pressed to his stomach. “God,” he murmured.

He forced a smile; there was no amusement in it. “Yes, everything is gone,” he said. “My hands, my eyes, my ears, my marriage, my career.” He paused. “And now my life,” he finished.

I’m
not gone. Sonny
, my thought, admittedly, one of wretchedness.

With a brief, hollow cry, Max dropped to his knees beside the chair, twisting in a paroxysm of pain, eyes staring, face a mask of agony.

Harry managed to help him into the chair, and Max slumped back, his breathing labored. “God,” he said again. He began to gag, unable to breath. His mouth opened, and his tongue lolled out for several moments.

Then, with a wheezing moan, his body convulsed, jerked a few times, and went limp, his eyes falling shut.

I felt my heartbeat thudding heavily, an old drum in the cavity of my chest, beaten with a slow and weary stroke. I wondered why it hadn’t split in two.

Harry gaped in silence at my son. Finally, he spoke.

“Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus H. Christ.”

Bending over, he pressed his right ear to Max’s chest, listening intently, trying to hold his shaking breath long enough to hear the beat of Max’s heart—or, more likely, the absence of it.

Which is what he heard; nothing.

He jerked erect and looked at Max in shock.

Then—incredibly—in
fury
.

Spewing out words which, to my dying day, will typify the man for me.

“You lousy son of a bitch,” he said. “Now I’ll
never
get to Boston by tonight.”

The shriek of horror he emitted was that of a woman as Max leaped up, eyes wide and glaring, and grabbed him by the arms.

Harry tore loose from Max’s grip and, losing balance, flopped down on the carpeting.

Sprawling there, breath barely functioning, he gaped up at my son.

“Surprise!”
said Max.

Silence then as Max walked over to my wheelchair and laid his right hand on my shoulder.

“I apologize for frightening you,
Padre,”
he said. “But I wanted you, of all people, to see the effect. It
was
a grand one, wasn’t it?”

Leaning over, he kissed me on the cheek, then turned away and walked back to Harry.
Sonny, Sonny
, I was thinking,
what is happening in your mind?

Reaching Harry, he began explaining—in a positively cheerful voice.

“Let me anticipate your questions,” he said. “One, the capsules: B-complex. I added the smell of bitter almonds to fool you. Two, the lack of heartbeat as you listened: A skill I learned in India from one Pandit Khaj, a fakir of surpassing knowledge.”

Pandit Khaj! Of course!
I thought.
How could I have forgotten that?

“Three, my heartrending performance,” Max was saying. “Have I not told you that a magician is, first and foremost, a skilled actor?”

Skilled indeed
, I thought.
Enough to almost finish me off, Sonny boy
.

Harry found his voice then.

“You bastard,” he said.
“You dirty, miserable, shit-faced, mother-fucking, cocksucking son of a bitch!”

“Kudos,” Max responded. “You appear to have incorporated all the major profanities in one sentence. I shall forth with notify
The Guinness Book of Records.”

Ambivalence raged within me. I wanted to bop my son on the head for putting me through such an ordeal.

I also wanted to laugh aloud. (I’ve always yearned for the unreachable.)

Harry, on the other hand, was obviously not experiencing ambivalence at all. The emotion he felt was singular and pure.

Revulsion.

With a shake of his head, he pushed to his feet and moved unevenly to the chair. Picking up his attaché case and hat, he started for the entry hall.

Max strode quickly to the desk and reached beneath it.

As Harry approached the door, I heard a click in the latching mechanism. Harry turned the knob and tried to pull the door in. It would not move.

Harry didn’t turn. I saw his face gone hard. In a low-pitched voice, trembling with anger, he said, “Unlock the door, Max.”

Max did not reply. Harry waited, then spoke again, his tone more vehement.
“Unlock the door
, Max,” he ordered.

No response.

Harry whirled, cheeks flushed with rage. “Unlock the fucking door!” he shouted.

Max did not reply or move.

With a teeth-clenched grimace, Harry lunged toward the desk.

Max picked up the pair of dueling pistols and stepped aside as his frothing agent searched for the button which would unlock the door.

“All right, where
is
it?” he demanded. He kept groping underneath the desk in vain. “Damn it!” he cried. He glared at Max.

Then a vengeful smile pulled back his lips. “All right,” he said. “I’m calling the police.”

Max shifted one of the pistols to his left hand, extending the other in his right, pointed at Harry’s chest.

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

Harry’s snarl was soundless. “Another of your frigging little tricks?”

Max’s smile was barely visible.

“Care to test that supposition?” he inquired.

Harry wasn’t sure anymore; Max was behaving too erratically.

He did not pick up the telephone receiver.

Still, his fury bubbled over, uncontrollable.

“You went through all that
shit
before—the arsenic, the phony death—just to get back at me?”

“In part,” Max answered quietly.

“All that crap about your precious Adelaide?” Harry sneered.

Mistake.

He twitched with a grunt of shock as Max’s face went rigid and his arm abruptly levered out, pointing the pistol at Harry’s head.

Harry cried out in stunned dismay as Max pulled the trigger and the pistol fired with a deafening report.

On the mantelpiece, a vase exploded like a bomb, shooting terra-cotta shrapnel in all directions, making Harry gasp and fling his arms up automatically. In his agitated state, he’d failed to notice Max’s wrist cock to the left an instant before he fired. I’d noticed, but it hadn’t relieved my state of mind—I was still distressed (is it overly flippant to say:
to the max?)
by my son’s behavior.

Harry stared at Max in total apprehension now. Max stared back with deep malevolence.

“Everything I said about my Adelaide stands uncontradicted,” he said softly, vengefully. “Except for my mother and father, she was the only genuine person I ever had in my life.”

Harry shuddered as Max put the fired pistol on the desk and shifted the other one to his right hand. He smiled at Harry.

It was not a reassuring smile … to either of us.

“I take it back,” he said. “That pistol ball was also genuine. You demean me, Harry, by suggesting that I deal in nothing but ‘frigging little tricks.’”

“What do you want?” asked Harry in a faint voice.

My question exactly.

“Well, I had considered a duel,” said Max, “for a number of reasons. Honor. Revenge. Whatever.”

His expression of regret was a mocking one.

“That’s now impossible, however,” he continued, “since I had to fire
your
pistol to prove that both weapons were really loaded.”

His face went hard now, and he gestured toward a chair with the pistol.
“Sit,”
he said.

Harry tried to tough it out; his voice was not exactly convincing as he muttered, “No.”

“Very well,” said Max.

He extended the pistol toward Harry.

“This time I will not destroy a vase,” he said. “Farewell, old chum.”