Mrs. Houdini(69)

Harry’s response was anguished. Damn it, man, he wrote. Go back out there if you’ve got a lead. The expense is no concern.

In 1918 there was more news to report: Fletcher had located Romario in an archived newspaper photograph taken when the train arrived. He had included a copy of the picture in his letter. Bess held it up to the light. She recognized him from the photograph Charles had shown her; he was standing among a group of children, a cap pulled over his head, looking at something out of view of the camera. Bess stared at the picture for a long time. How might their lives have changed, she thought, if they had found him?

Harry must have kept his discovery a secret, Bess realized, not only because he didn’t want to risk damaging their marriage but because he knew how much she had wanted a child. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that the fault lay in her own body, not his; all those years, he could have left her for someone else, had more children with another woman, but he chose not to. And he couldn’t bear to tell her that there was an orphan out there who could be theirs, if she wanted him, only to have her hopes dashed when the boy was never found.

But he had never given up hope; he had looked for Charles for the rest of his life. In the 1926 letter—the last from Fletcher, as Harry had died that year—the trail had grown completely cold. Romario would have been thirty years old by then, and he could have been anywhere. Fletcher suggested dropping the investigation. Harry’s response was tortured. How can I continue my life, surrounded by wealth and fame, knowing somewhere out there this boy is alone? To me, he is not thirty; he will always be a little boy. I will find him, even if it’s not in this life.

His prediction was eerily accurate; it was only in death that Harry had located Charles after all.

Bess clutched the letters to her chest as the clock struck nine. She looked at it, panic setting in. The first trains out of New York began running at five in the morning. Charles could very well be in New Jersey already.

“Gladys,” she breathed urgently. “We have to go after him.” She scribbled a note for George asking him to call Niall about the tearoom; then she grabbed her fringed wrap from the hall closet and flung open the front door.

“What are you going to tell him?”

“Everything. And we’re going to finish piecing together Harry’s message.”

The one thing Bess couldn’t understand, still, as she and Gladys climbed into a taxicab, was why, if Harry was indeed able to communicate with her, as it seemed he was, he would have chosen a method so vague. Why wasn’t he simply able to appear to her in a mirror, say, or a dream? Or through a medium? Why all these preposterous clues?

Fifteen minutes later, they emerged from the taxi onto the street corner in front of the terminal. The building was a shining architectural gem, which stood imposingly, its domed windows like the eyes of a giant stone monster. The sunlight gave the rooms inside a dusty, pearl-like glimmer. Bess’s hands trembled. She had to find Charles. She felt as if she were on the edge of a precipice.

The massive vestibule was scattered with tired passengers sitting on their luggage, waiting for the trains. Many were sleeping on the benches that ran along the walls. Bess searched the room. Maybe Charles had been bluffing about leaving town. It was possible he was still sleeping at this very moment in some cheap hotel.

But he was there. He stood, his back to her, on the marble staircase, looking at the clock. His coat was hanging over his elbow, and he had one foot on the next step above, looking like a man she had seen before, a man who had waited for her on staircases all over the world. As she approached him, he turned. And for a shimmering moment, he could almost have been young Ehrich Weiss, coming to take her back to Coney Island, to have dinner at the Brighton Beach Hotel.

“Why don’t you sing anymore?” Harry had asked her. “I miss your singing.” It was a Sunday in Atlantic City; they were waiting for a ride on the carousel, which had been dubbed the Palace of Flying Animals. Hymnals were being passed out for riders to sing along to organ music as they rode.

The funny thing was, she didn’t know why she had stopped singing. She could not even remember the words to most of her old songs. She had had a good voice, once.

Harry had handed their tokens to the operator. “You’ll go on the Flip-Flap Railroad with me after this, won’t you?” His eyes had gleamed.

“Certainly not.” The railroad went upside down, in a loop, next to the pier. Many riders had said it had damaged their backs. “You know your body can’t handle that kind of stress.”

He had laughed and raised his eyebrows suggestively. “My dear, my body can handle anything.”

She’d swatted at him. “You shouldn’t be vulgar, Harry. You’re a public figure now.”

“Charles, thank God. I thought you’d be gone.” Bess stood at the base of the staircase looking up at the young man, her arm looped through Gladys’s elbow. Her lower lip quivered. She reached into her purse and thrust the postcard toward him. “I have to know if you’ve seen this before.”

Charles looked at her with suspicion. “What are you doing here?” He stared at her outstretched hand and seemed to consider it for a moment disdainfully. Finally, he took the card and studied it. His expression changed. “This is my photograph,” he said. “It was one of the first photographs I ever sold. I was only seventeen.” He looked up at her, his expression still mistrustful. “Why did you come all the way here to show me this?”