Part 39 (2/2)

”You really do have to kno to do a pass,” Cousin Joe said ”Even if it's only a false one”

6

The following Monday, To Pool and Recreation Center, which had just reopened following a polio scare When he ca for hi business envelope whose printed return address was Louis Tannen's Magic Shop He did not often receivehiuessed She stood by the kitchen counter, pencil poised over a grocery list that she wasas an hour and a half to co list He had his father's stoical tendency toward bullet-biting, but his mother was never one to hasten a task that she despised ”Louis Tannen died and left you the shop in his will”

Tommy shook his head, unable to smile at her jokes He was so excited that the sheet of foolscap, with its typed randiose and exotic terms, rattled in his hands He knew that the letter was all part of the plan, but for an instant he forgot what the plan was He was baffled with delight

”So what is it?”

Boldly, his sto, Tommy thrust the sheet of paper toward her She lifted to the bridge of her nose the reading glasses she wore on a silver chain around her neck These were a recent development, one that his lasses onto her nose, but h she wanted to have as little to do with the Silks? Empire of Pennies? Haunted Fountain en?” She squinted a little as she read the last word

”Tricks,” To the paper back from her lest she study it too closely ”It's a price list”

”I see that,” she said, eyeing hi Two N's”

”Hmm,” Toot you that demonic box of yours”

”I know,” he said ”It's just for wishi+ng”

”Well, wish away,” she said, lowering the glasses onceto the AP”

”May I please stay hoh”

”Not today”

”Please”

He saw that she was probably going to accede-they had been experi hi her pause was her detestation of grocery shopping

”You're going to o into the heart of darkness alone?”

He nodded

”You'll be all right?”

He nodded again, afraid that if he said anything ive it all away She hesitated a ed one shoulder, picked up her purse, and went out

He sat, holding the paper and envelope in his hands, until he heard the ine and the scrape of its rear buot the scissors from the kitchen draent to the kitchen cupboard, and took out a box of Post Toasties cereal He saw that his rocery list It ritten, he noticed, on the back of a strip torn froht have been froirl hid behind an old beached rowboat, spying on so her cry It was probably her doctor boyfriend kissing her best friend the nurse, or so like that

Tommy carried the scissors and the cereal to his room There was half an inch of , and hefor the last week, he studied the text printed on the back panel of the box, which described the scientifically formulated merits of the cereal in sober tones and which he no by heart When he was through, he balled up the bag and threw it into the wastebasket He picked up the scissors and carefully cut the back panel off the box He laid it flat on his desk With a pencil and a ruler, he drew a box around every instance of the words ”Post Toasties” Then he took the scissors and cut on the lines he had ular holes, and fit it over the purported list of ic tricks from Tannen's

That was how he learned that he was to catch the 10:04 train at the Bloo an eye patch that would be supplied, under cover of constituting part of a spurious trick called Pieces o' Eight, in a second letter from Joe Tommy was to sit in the last car, at the back, transfer at Ja blocks to, of all places, the E He was to ride the elevator to the seventy-second floor, go to Suite 7203, and rap out his initials on the door in Morse code If he encountered some family friend or other adult who questioned him and his destination, he was to point to the eye patch and say, siist”

Every Thursday for the next seven months, Tommy followed the routine established by that first secret letter froht forty-five, like every day, and started walking toward Williarade At the corner of Darwin Avenue, however, he turned left instead of right, slipped through the Marchettis' backyard, crossed Rutherford Drive, and then took his sweet ti across the half-built east side of Bloomtoard the bland new cinder-block-and-steel structure that had replaced the old Manticock station He spent the day with Cousin Joe, in his strange digs nine hundred feet above Fifth Avenue, and left at three o'clock Then, again following Joe's original prescription, he stopped outside Reliant Office Supplies on Thirty-third Street and typed out an excuse to hand to the principal, Mr Savarese, the next , on a piece of paper that Joe had already furnished with a perfect sinature

In the firstabout the trips into New York The cloak-and-dagger protocols, the risk of capture, and the soaring view froned to appeal to the e parts of every day pretending to pose as the secret identity of a super-powered humanoid insect He loved, first of all, the ride into the city As with many lonely children, his problem was not solitude itself but that he was never left free to enjoy it There were alell- to jolly him, to improve and counsel hi friends, speaking up, getting so with their facts and principles, when all he really needed was to be handed a stack of textbooks and left alone; and, worst of all, other children, who could not see hia hiely happy expression in the pitch and rumble of the LIRR trains, the stale breath of the heat blowers, the wararettes, the sere featureless prospect froiven over entirely to his He also loved the city itself Coe hihters and snap-brim hats in store s, follow the pushboys with their rustling racks of furs and trousers There were sailors and prizefighters; there were bus in their handbags Tommy would feel the sidewalks hum and shudder as the trains rolled past beneath hi opera On a sunny day, his peripheral vision would be spangled with light winking off the chrohts of taxicabs, the buckles on ladies' shoes, the badges of police orna vans This was Gotham City, Empire City, Metropolis Its skies and rooftops were alive with doers, saboteurs, and Co, on solitary patrol in New York City, soaring up frohty hind legs along Fifth Avenue in hot pursuit of Dr Hate or the Finagler, creeping unnoticed as an ant a humans, whose crude mammalian existences he had sworn to protect and defend, before at last dropping in on the secret aerial lair of one of his fellow le but ent enerally, in Tommy's fancy, by the moniker Secretman

Secretman lived in a two-room office suite with four s that looked out toward Bloo table, a stool, an armchair, a floor lamp, a complicatedantenna, and a special little cabinet whose many shalloere filled with pens, pencils, twisted tubes of paint, erasers There was no telephone; nor was there any stove, icebox, or proper bed

”It's illegal,” Cousin Joe told Tommy, the first time he visited ”You're not allowed to live in an office building That's why you can't tell anyone I'm here”

Even then, before he learned the depth and extent of Secretman's superhuman powers of self-concealment, Tommy did not entirely believe this explanation He sensed froe, both the nan to as latent in hi was the matter with, or had happened to, Joe But he was too thrilled with his cousin's style of life, and the opportunity it afforded, to think the problem over too carefully He watched as Joe went to a door on the other side of the room and opened it It was a supply closet There were stacks of paper and bottles of ink and other supplies There were also a folded cot, an electric hot plate, two boxes of clothes, a canvas gar, and a small porcelain sink

”Isn't there a janitor?” Toiven the question souard?”

”The janitor coht, and I uard and I are old friends by now”

Joe answered all of Tommy's questions about the particulars of his life, and showed hi the co he had been holed up in the E, and why he stayed there, and for what reason he kept his return a secret He would not say why he never left his rooms except to purchase those supplies that could not be delivered, often wearing a false beard and sunglasses, or to pay regular visits to Tannen's back room, or why, one afternoon in July, he hadIsland These were the mysteries of Secretman Such questions had occurred to Tomentary and inarticulate way After the first two visits, and for a while thereafter, he just took the entire situation for granted Joe taught him card tricks, coin tricks, bits with handkerchiefs and needles and thread They ate sandwiches brought in fro and farewell And, h they were always bubbling up on his lips and trying to escape

Toht only twice before the day on which it all came out The first timus who soon plumbed the shallow surface of Tommy's cover story Tommy spent much of November 1953, as a result, confined to his bedroom But in school-he considered it part of his punish the rounded-he consulted with Sharon Simchas, as nearly blind in one eye He sent his cousin an explanatory letter in care of Louis Tannen On the Thursday following the lifting of the punishain for Manhattan, equipped this time with the name and address of Sharon's doctor, one of the doctor's business cards, and a plausible diagnosis of strabismus The wobble-eyed ticket puncher, however, never reappeared

The second tiht came a month before the leap of the Escapist Tommy settled into his seat at the back of the last car and opened his copy of Walter B Gibson's Houdini on Magic Houdini on Magic Cousin Joe had given it to hined by the author, the creator of the Shadohom Joe still played cards from time to time Tommy had his shoes off, his eye patch on, and half a pack of Black Jack in his mouth He heard a clatter of heels and looked up in time to see his mother, in her sealskin coat, stu her best black hat down onto her head with one arm She was at the opposite end of a relatively full car, and there was a tall ht She sat doithout noticing her son This stroke of good fortune took a lanced down at the book in his lap The dark gray wad of gue; it had fallen out of his mouth He put it back in and lay down across the pair of seats in his row, his face hidden in the hood of his coat and behind the screen of his book His sense of guilt was exacerbated by the knowledge that Harry Houdini had idolized his own mother and doubtless never would have deceived or hidden from her At Elmont, the conductor came by to check his ticket, and Toave hih Toertip and tried to echo the nonchalance of Cousin Joe Cousin Joe had given it to hined by the author, the creator of the Shadohom Joe still played cards from time to time Tommy had his shoes off, his eye patch on, and half a pack of Black Jack in his mouth He heard a clatter of heels and looked up in time to see his mother, in her sealskin coat, stu her best black hat down onto her head with one arm She was at the opposite end of a relatively full car, and there was a tall ht She sat doithout noticing her son This stroke of good fortune took a lanced down at the book in his lap The dark gray wad of gue; it had fallen out of his mouth He put it back in and lay down across the pair of seats in his row, his face hidden in the hood of his coat and behind the screen of his book His sense of guilt was exacerbated by the knowledge that Harry Houdini had idolized his own mother and doubtless never would have deceived or hidden from her At Elmont, the conductor came by to check his ticket, and Toave hih Toertip and tried to echo the nonchalance of Cousin Joe

”Ophthalist,” he said

The conductor nodded and punched his ticket Tommy lay back down

At Jamaica, he waited until the car eot to the train for Penn Station just as the doors were closing There was no tiht have boarded The idea of waiting for a later train did not occur to hio of his earlobe-it was suggested to hiht into her, al her perfume an instant before a hard corner of her i poked him in the eye

”Oh!”

”Ouch!”

He sturabbed hied hirip, actually raised hi by the ears the rabbit he was about to des kicked at the pedals of an invisible bicycle Her cheeks were rouged, her eyelids lined with black paint like a Caniff girl's

”What are you doing? Why aren't you in school?”

”Nothing,” he said ”I'lanced around the car Naturally, all of the other passengers were staring at theht her face close to his The perfu off her was called Ambush

It sat on a mirrored tray on her dresser, under a mantle of dust He could not remember the last tian, but then she couldn't finish her sentence because she had started to laugh ”Take off that damned eye patch,” she said She lowered him to the floor of the train and lifted the patch He blinked She flicked the patch back over his eye Keeping her grip on the hood of his Mighty Mac, she dragged him down to the end of the car and pushed hi to yell at hi down beside hi her arht

”Thank you,” she said, her voice throaty and rough, the way it sounded the h a pack of cigarettes ”Thank you”