The Dime Museum Murders (27 page)

Incongruously,
Harry whistled a happy tune and marched to the bar, where the
bartender was mopping the counter with a rag. "I say, good
fellow," Harry said brightly, "would you happen to know
where we might call upon Mr. Jake Stein?"

The
barman stopped polishing the counter. Conversations died. Heads
turned toward my brother. If there had been swinging saloon doors,
we'd have heard them creak.

"I—I'm
afraid I can't help you there, sir," said the barman.

"Not
to worry!" said the magnanimous Harry. "But if you should
happen to see him—or any of his acquaintances—I would be
obliged if you would pass along a message. Tell him that the Great
Houdini is looking for him. Good day!"

Harry
headed for the door. I followed four steps behind, hoping no one had
noticed that we came in together.

"I
think that went very well," he said on the sidewalk outside. He
pointed to another saloon. "Let's try in here!"

"Harry—"
I grabbed his arm but he shrugged it off.

"Honestly,
Dash. Sometimes I don't know who fusses over me more—you or
Mama."

And
so we repeated the scene in every saloon and flop house for three
streets running. In each instance Harry would saunter up to the bar,
slap his hand on the counter and announce his interest in Jake
Stein—"the notorious criminal," as he took to
describing him.

The
reactions ranged from shock to bemusement to outright laughter, but
Harry soldiered on with dogged persistence. "Tell him the Great
Houdini is looking for him!" he called at each stop.

We
were just exiting a gambling house on Humphrey Street when I noticed
that we were no longer alone in our wanderings. There were two of
them, stocky rough-hewn characters wearing gray cloth coats and
peaked caps. They dogged us through five more stops, keeping a fair
distance, but paying close attention. At last, as we worked our way
over to Bowery Street, the taller of the pair stepped up and tapped
Harry on the shoulder. "Understand you're looking for Mr.
Stein?" His cap made it difficult to make out his features,
except for his nose. It was clear he had put in some time in a boxing
ring.

"Why,
yes," said my brother. "Would you happen—?"

Our
friend put a finger to his lips. "This way," he said,
motioning down an alley.

"Uh,
Harry—" I began.

"Come
along, Dash!" Harry called over his shoulder, gaily. "Mustn't
keep Mr. Stein waiting! Honestly—" he turned to deliver
some comment on the intransigence of younger brothers, but the remark
was cut short by the thud of a fist to the solar plexus. Harry went
down hard, gasping violently for breath. Rough hands twisted my arms
behind my back and shoved me against a brick wall. "Not—not
fair," Harry gasped, raising himself up on one elbow. "I
wasn't—I wasn't set."

Our
two attackers glanced at each other, amused by
the
pluck of the little man with the tidy bow tie. "Did you hear
that?" said the one who had floored Harry. "He wasn't set."
He grinned and said it again. That turned out to be a mistake.

My
brother and I had been fairly green when we arrived in New York some
ten years earlier. We did not stay green for long. We learned to make
our way with our fists, and there were few neighborhood hooligans and
bullies who had not mixed it up with the Brothers Houdini now and
again. We were tough boys who grew into tough young men. My brother
could bend iron bars in his bare hands. Me, I was just plain scrappy.

"He
wasn't set," said the one pinning my arms, still enjoying a nice
chuckle over it.

"I
wasn't either," I said, and I drove the heel of my shoe into his
instep. His grip loosened and I bought some fighting room with an
elbow to the windpipe. Harry, meanwhile, plowed his head into the
stomach of the shorter man. A metal pipe clattered onto the paving
stones.

"Now,
my man," Harry said, "we shall see how you do in a fair
contest!"

"Harry,"
I said, fending off a rabbit punch, "just shut up and fight."

"Very
well," he said, somewhat exasperated. He cocked his arm and
hurled his thunderbolt—a right hand straight to the other man's
jaw hinge. It made a sound like a cracking walnut off the hard bone.
The man's head snapped back but his feet never moved. He was out
before he hit the ground.

This
put a healthy scare into the taller one. I saw his hand move under
his coat and I figured I didn't want to know what was under there. I
sent a kick to the knee and hopped back while his legs melted under
him. He dropped to a kneeling position as I grabbed the back of his
head and brought it smashing down on my knee, which happened to be
shooting upward at the time. His head made a funny sound, too, but
his was a whole lot wetter. I let go and he flopped backward in a
heap.

Harry
examined his knuckles for bruising, in much the way he might have
chosen an apple from the corner vendor's cart. "I wasn't set,"
he said.

"So
I gathered. Come on."

We
turned and walked toward the mouth of the alley, and that's when we
ran into the man with the Smith and Wesson. He was small, red-haired,
and he had three friends with him. One of them was cracking his
knuckles, another had a length of chain wrapped around his first, and
the third had a knife that he kept flicking open and closed.

"Which
one of you is the Great Houdini?" asked the man with the gun.

"I
am," my brother said.

"Mr.
Stein will see you now."

The
red-haired man kept the gun trained on us while his associates
dragged our two unconscious sparring partners out of the alley. The
pair were loaded roughly into a waiting carriage. When they returned,
one of the men held a hank of coarse bailing rope. "Hands behind
your backs," said the red-haired man. His voice was strangely
high and musical.

"You're
tying up the Great Houdini?" Harry asked incredulously. "This
is—"

"Shut
up, Harry," I said, as a blindfold was slipped over my eyes and
tied roughly at the back.

"Nobody
needs to get hurt," said the high voice. "We're just taking
a little ride."

It's
fortunate that gangster movies were still some years away, or I
imagine that phrase would have filled me with dread. I wouldn't say I
was thrilled about "taking a little ride'' in any case, but I
didn't know enough to conjure visions of cement overshoes. Harry, for
his part, was busy muttering about the indignity of having his hands
tied in a "saucy little half-hitch." Happily, our captors
seemed to be ignoring him.

We
were bundled into a covered carriage and I heard a rap on the roof to
signal the driver, who whipped the horses to a brisk trot. In spite
of my blindfold, which smelled faintly of salted fish, I was able to
hold onto a loose thread of where we were going. I knew the area
well, and could track our progress by a variety of sounds bobbing up
through the constant clatter of the wooden wheels on granite
slabs—the shrill cry of a fruit vendor, the gaseous roar of the
elevated train, the tinny wheeze of an organ grinder. Aromas, too,
seemed much stronger to me as I sat blindfolded in the back of the
carriage. The warm balm of roasting nuts mingled horribly with the
sickly stench of an open sewer; the all-pervading funk of horse
effluvia blended with the gritty bite of burning coal. Gradually
these gave way to the sounds of birds and water, and I realized we
were nearing the East River. The granite beneath our wheels now
yielded to wooden planking. "We're getting out," the high
voice said as the carriage drew to a halt. "Don't even think
about giving us the slip." Mercifully, my brother said nothing.

Rough
hands pushed me out of the carriage and I stumbled badly as I
misjudged the step. Someone took hold of me at the elbow and led me
forward, with the ludicrous warning "Watch your step." A
change in wind signalled our progress along a dock.

"Step
up," I was told. I realized with a shock, as I climbed a shallow
set of stairs, that I was being helped aboard a boat of some kind.
Several pairs of hands half-lifted, half-pushed me a short distance
through the air, and my feet came down with a thump onto a wooden
deck. I felt the gentle roll of the water beneath me. I scarcely had
time to register these new sensations when I heard the thud of my
brother's feet hitting the deck,
and
a shouted instruction to "bring 'em below."

Someone
pushed my head from behind. I bent forward, passing through what was
evidently a low doorway. I heard latches working and doors creaking
as we passed along a short corridor, then down a steep set of step
rungs.

Finally
we appeared to reach our destination. I heard a low murmur of voices,
and a clinging whiff of stale cigars reached my nostrils. A voice
said, "Take off the blindfolds."

We
were in a large but sparsely appointed ship's cabin. The furnishings
were those of a warehouse rather than a sailing vessel—seven
wooden filing cabinets, a dozen packing crates, four ladder-stools,
and a flat, highly-polished deal table. Maps of the city covered the
wall opposite us, with a spray of yellow-headed pins jabbed in at
various points. Four or five young men were arrayed along the map
wall, some of them standing, the others perched on stools. A much
older man sat in a cane-backed swivel chair behind the deal table. He
was squat and pudgy, with cool gray eyes that regarded us from behind
a pair of round spectacles. A coil of white hair swept forward from
the back of his head, struggling to conceal a wrinkled and spotted
pate. A heavy shading of bluish stubble covered his jawline. He
waited a moment as we took in our surroundings, then removed a wet
panatela from his teeth. "Sorry about the rough treatment,"
he said. "I'm Jake Stein."

I
suppose we merely stared. He certainly did not fit my boyhood
impression of a legendary criminal, a man rumored to have beaten a
pair of traitorous underlings to death with his bare hands. He looked
instead like one of the men I saw playing chess each day in the lobby
of my mother's apartment building. Perhaps his only notable feature
was the coarse, labored quality of his voice, which sounded as if it
had been dipped in hot oil.

"Which
one of you is the Great Houdini?" he asked, gesturing with the
cigar.

"I
am," my brother said. "It is kind of you to receive us."
His tone sounded bright and firm—his stage voice.

"What
are you, some sort of circus act? The Great Houdini?"

"I
am the world-renowned handcuff king and prison breaker, the justly
celebrated self-liberator."

"Come
again?"

"I
escape from handcuffs and ropes."

"Seems
to me we've got you tied up pretty good right now," Stein said,
leaning back and swinging his feet onto the table.

"These
bonds?" Harry gave an indignant snort. "Child's play. If
your associate had not pointed a gun at me, I would have disposed of
these ropes in an instant."

"That
so?" Stein squinted hard at Harry's face, trying to make up his
mind about something. "I'd like to see that. Why don't you
just—"