An early Key Route car was on his property. Choking ivy had crawled up its sides and into its broken cabin where, for a brief time after his collapse, Borax had kept his troupe of spider monkeys. Carter walked past—he’d parked his BMW by an impassable section of road, where a palm tree six feet thick had long ago fallen down.
Two events, almost simultaneous, turned Borax from a visionary into a folk hero: first, a restless class of San Franciscans discovered the charms of Oakland and trickled into the neighborhoods he’d set aside for them—and the money started to come in. Second: in Mexicali, in 1918, Branson Chemical Exploration found a richer, purer, cheaper vein of borax. In a snap of the fingers, Borax, whose ownership of all that wonderful land was heavily leveraged, went from owning to
owing
several hundred million dollars.
This should have been fatal, and perhaps in time it would be. Now he was flush at one moment with real estate sales and, an hour later, at the mercy of promissory note payments. His position was a mystery, and deliberately so, for there were men whose families could retire for the next three generations if they knew when best to hold him hostage.
So when Carter rang the door at the big house, he didn’t know whether it would be a day that caviar would be served or gravy and hard tack. He was escorted from the door to the arboretum, where Borax was taking lunch. Patches of warm sun illuminated the dwarf palms growing in planters. Carter noted a shadow moving on the floor and, glancing up, saw the outline of a woman on the roof, dressed in trousers and the huge white bonnet, wiping down the skylights with soap and water. He waved and she waved back at him enthusiastically.
Borax himself reclined in a wicker chair, surrounded by the day’s newspaper, open to the public notices page of the financial section. He was rarely out of his chair these days unless carried. His body, once swollen up with a prosperous belly, had become as shapeless as an old balloon, and his face had shrunken into crags and wrinkles visible through a
white beard so thin it looked like it could be washed off. “Charlie Carter,” he said. “How’s tricks?” It was a question he never tired of asking.
“Tricks are looking up, you coot,” Carter replied. He pulled up a chair and found it too rickety for sitting. Searching for a second chair, his eyes fell on something tall, wood and metal, perhaps the last object in the world he could imagine in Borax’s conservatory. “What
is
that?”
Borax followed his gaze. “It’s a guillotine.”
“Where did you get it?” Carter asked with a pang of jealousy.
“I dunno, France? Are you staying for lunch? The girls can make you a sandwich.”
Carter approached the guillotine and found the veneer smooth and lustrous. The blade, locked in the down position, was engraved with roses and thorns and cloister text that in some places was worn smooth. “This must be eighteenth century.”
“That’s what the man from Sotheby’s said yesterday.”
“You don’t mean you’re selling it?”
“He was here for hours, poking around. I had a first edition of
Gulliver’s Travels
, too, seemed to interest him. He wrote down a whole pile of stuff I can’t remember buying in the first place.”
“Does this work?”
“Ain’t tried it out. But that don’t matter—seems this is an original, Monsieur Guillotin himself built it.”
“If the man from Sotheby’s told me that, I’d have thrown him out of the house.”
“Why are you here, Charlie?”
“Well, now I’m here to protect you from Sotheby’s. They’ll tell you anything to get a piece in their auction.” He crouched by the frame of the guillotine, unlatched the blade, and felt for resistance. “The first fifty-three guillotines were built in April 1792 by a harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt. The public executioner had been complaining about how hard it was to chop off people’s heads with a sword. Guillotin did make a pretty speech, though, and so they named it after him. Ah.” He pulled the blade up a few inches. “See? The chop mark? Swiss.”
“Um-hmm.” Borax blinked at him.
“It’s a valuable piece, but . . .” And here Carter paused. He wanted it. It was completely unfair that he, who knew what it was, didn’t own it yet. He didn’t know how to pretend otherwise. “It’s rusty,” he said, fooling exactly no one. “You’d have to give it a good cleaning—”
“Sotheby’s says it’s worth about a thousand.”
“I’ll give you seven-fifty.”
“Sold! Make sure you give me cash. And wipe that grin off your face.”
Carter stood with one arm around the frame, imagining all the wonderful things he could do with a guillotine. Then he remembered he’d promised James he would stop spending money. And how he’d felt quite good about swearing off purchases. Perhaps he would omit this expense from his new journal.
Patting the device once more, he squatted by Borax’s chair. “Well, then. I need your help to sort something out.”
“Information? Teach me a magic trick, I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“No, those secrets are my livelihood.” Considering how to explain it better, he added, “They’re how I make money.”
“Sounds right. If I could get out of this chair, first thing I’d do is hit you over the head, steal all your tricks, and make me the
real
moolah.” Borax dissolved into laughter.
Carter looked again among the indoor plants and shrubs, sculptures and gardening tools for a proper chair. He found one, and sat backward in it.
Recovering, Borax said, “Secrets are my livelihood too.”
“Well, then. I need to find something out from you, and you can find out something equal from me.”
Borax considered the tray of sandwiches. “That’s square.”
“Tell me who’s involved in this television business.”
A breeze had come from somewhere around the rafters, something warm that made the date palms shake and, seen against them, Borax seemed to stop chewing. “Okay,” he finally said, swallowing, “how do you make the elephant disappear?”
“Is it that big a deal?”
“Have a sandwich.” Borax looked at Carter. It was a sizing-up kind of look. In the twenty years they’d known each other, Borax had looked at him many ways, but this was the first time Carter was aware of what a troublesome adversary he would make. While Carter looked among the rounds, selecting with some hesitation a low-grade meat spread, Borax asked, “Did you get the guy’s name?”
“I heard he would be here around now.”
“He ain’t coming. Whoever he is.” With annoyance, Borax explained: he’d received a call two days ago from the inventor himself in which he politely canceled their appointment. Borax had tried to make him reconsider, but the man was adamant. “I told him there was a load of people out there, ready to steal it, and he said he knew, he could handle it. You ready for this; he says, ‘I ain’t seen the whole world, but I have been to Boise,’ he says.”
“Some people would tell that story even if they’d arranged to meet with Mr. Inventor a day earlier.”
“You gonna lie to me about how Tug disappears?”
Carter shook his head.
“Well, all righty, then. I figure it’s mirrors, right?”
Carter blinked. “No, not mirrors. Who’s after television?”
“What’s in the bag by your feet? The white cloth bag. Yeah, pick that up.” Borax struggled to swing a gumwood desk tray in front of him, and patted it to indicate Carter should upend the sack there. He did so, and with a dirty clunking sound, several dozen lead soldiers painted with colors of the Revolutionary and British armies fell out. “I had some like these at the orphanage,” Borax said, seeming half-lost. “They were mine, fair and square, but they were hard to keep, and when I was about fifty, I was in London, and I saw this toy shop . . .” He began to set the soldiers up into ranks, silently, and when Carter began to wonder how much age had crept up on him, Borax added, “One day, there’ll be a bunch of rich men who want the toys what got taken away when they were little, and they’ll pay real money for ’em. So what did Harding say the guy’s name was?”
Carter chuckled. “If I had his name, would I be here?”
Borax said, “That’s two times you haven’t answered the question. So, these guys, over here, the dirty, sloppy ones,” he indicated the Continental Army, “this is RCA, Westinghouse, some other guys. Basically the corporations who control radio.”
“Oh!” Carter said, in spite of himself.
“Yeah. Makes sense, huh? Lordy, one day I hope Oakland gets more than KJWR playing psalms. King Jesus Will Return my left eye.”
“I heard the Leonard fight last week.”
“Yeah? With the new frequencies coming, I have applications for eight stations, and I put a transmitter on Capwell’s about a month ago, figure I’ll have a boy in there, put an ad in the
Tribune
saying you can hear jazz records every day, and see if anyone buys themselves a radio to hear it.”
“That’s a great idea.”
“It’s an experiment. Won’t make me a dime, directly. No, the money is with making radios, and there’s probably more money than that, maybe, selling advertising space on it, maybe. And since television is radio with pictures, RCA figures they better own it and keep it secret until they’ve made their dollar back on selling everyone a radio or two. So that’s who told those goons to break into your house.”
“You knew about that?”
Borax looked up at Carter like a boy caught soaping windows.
“Heard about it. Figured they’d try it once. Anyway, look here.” He touched the steeply ridged lead hats of the Redcoats. “These guys are soldiers. The army.”
“Yes,” Carter said, “and who do they represent?”
Borax looked at him. “The army. Really. The War Department. General Pershing, he sees it like this: you put cameras under the bellies of all the planes, or on the tanks, and that way the officers back at camp can see what the enemy’s up to. So they’re pulling the more official strings, like the Secret Service, the coppers, anything with a uniform, it ain’t your friend right now.” He held the sack to the edge of the table and began sweeping soldiers into it. “RCA. War Department. Neither of ’em wants the other to have television, and they probably figure God wouldn’t mind if they stepped on a neck or two.” He paused. “That’s why the Secret Service guys got those orders to investigate you. They figured you know something, and that’s why you headed out.”
“Ah.”
“That and you maybe killing the President.”
Carter reached for the sack. “I seem to have gotten away with the murder part far too easily,” he sighed, dropping the soldiers into the bag one by one.
“Charlie, you ain’t up to murder, so don’t pretend. Hey, forget the guy’s name—why do they want to kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
“It don’t make sense. Why not just buy it for a couple mil and sit on it? They got billions at stake. Maybe U.S. Steel–type money. That’s on one side. And changing the way we fight wars on the other. It’s huge.”
The house around them felt lonely now. No women were in the room, or making noises from adjoining rooms. Even the skylight was empty.
“What’s your angle?” Borax took a sip of tea.
“Well,” Carter cleared his throat. “I thought it would be nice to use in my card tricks.”
Borax laughed so hard he choked. “All the capitalists and all the armed forces on one side, and Charlie Carter on the other. Now I know where to put my money.”
“You don’t have faith in me?”
“I didn’t say that. I just think you’re too sweet to go up against murderers. They’re out of your league.”
Carter met his friend’s eye for a long moment. Then he dropped the last soldier in, cinched the bag shut, and said to him, “When you have faith, there’s always a payoff,” making small circles over the bag, then upending it
so that a bushel of ten-dollar gold pieces came pouring out. He carefully turned the bag inside out; there wasn’t a single soldier inside of it.
Borax casually ran his callused hands through the ten-dollar gold pieces as if debts were always paid to him this way. “Feels like seventy-five of ’em. What’s the guy’s name?”
Carter sighed—Borax was certainly not charmed by magic when in the presence of a business deal. “Harding explained television and told me the name. I’ve been trying to locate him, to no success. I don’t think anyone else has found him.”
“Think that since Harding died, he packed up and went home?”
“Anyone sensible enough to invent something so interesting, and then not give his name away, would take his benefactor’s unexplained death as a kick in the pants. He’s regrouping somewhere. I know I would. Frankly, I’d like to save him.”
Borax shook his head. “You can’t really save people.”
Borax, of all people, saying this? Carter felt like a curtain had, unfortunately, been drawn back for him. “You have to try,” he responded, but without much force. He looked around the room for concrete evidence, a photograph of an unfortunate woman, or a
real
one, but all he could see were the palms and their planters and, of course, the guillotine. He took the white sack, turned it inside out again, and said, “Look, I saved some people just now.” Out tumbled Borax’s lead soldiers.
With that bit of magic, something in Borax melted. His shoulders drooped. “Even if you can find him,” he spoke haltingly, as if the mechanism by which he gave up financial advice were rusty, “you wanting to license it for your magic show . . . well, I bet he’d have some other mighty attractive offers you’d have to ace out.”
Carter shrugged. “I have the knack.” He stood.
“I mean, including my own.”
“Which side do you favor?”
“Whatever way turns out most profitable.”
“You’re free to back my magic show.” Carter knew by Borax’s blank stare that he looked like a child who’d wandered into a boxing ring.
“What about that elephant?” Borax asked.
“Oh, yes. Here.” He sat back down. “Now, promise me—”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“No, no. Promise that you won’t be disappointed.”
“How can I be disappointed? I’m gonna see how you make a ten-ton elephant disappear!” He clapped.
Carter made a series of sketches that explained the way Tug walked onto the platform, then was surrounded on all four sides by a screen for exactly two seconds. Then it opened, empty. The gimmick was one the audience never noticed—the platform was the depth of two elephants. “So, Tug walks up, and we close the four sides of the screen so it makes a box around her, only it has an extra wall between her and the audience. When we open the doors, the false wall looks exactly like the actual rear wall of the box, very ornate, spells out some impressive Hindi words, actually the text of an advertisement for cough drops.” Carter looked up from his sketches to see Borax ruminating.