Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone

Author:Alex Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins US

I HALF EXPECTED THE NEXT letter to arrive by homing pigeon or Hedwig the Owl. I waited for it with bated breath, on pins and needles and even a few steak knives. In the meantime, I began readying my defense. I’d decided I was going to make it a test case, a referendum on secrecy. I’d probably lose, but who knew? Maybe I’d manage to sway some liberal activist judge toward my rejectionist view of the magician’s code. I had visions of the Scopes trial. I fantasized about retaining Alan Dershowitz to represent me. I was preparing an amicus brief even though I had no idea what an amicus brief was. I had selected a philosopher friend as my co-counsel, along with a human rights lawyer from D.C. whom I’d met at a Halloween party. (I was Anton Chigurh, the killer in No Country for Old Men, and she was Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.) Court drawings would show my legal team—which I’d determined would include at least one clown—badgering the “ethics chairman” and those immaterial witnesses who’d lodged complaints against me wilting under the cross.

But it never happened.

December 24 came and went without incident. No letter. No owls. Nothing. The Society had backed away from the case. I’d called their bluff, stared them down with my legalese-laden letter, seizing victory before the first crack of the gavel. Case dismissed.

Well . . . sort of. My membership at the local assembly had lapsed, and Tom Klem, the head of our local order, was refusing to let me pay my dues. I’d paid them late in the past, so this was the board’s way of ousting me on a technicality, ex parte and without a hearing. But my membership in the National Assembly remained valid, which was far more important.

Still, I felt uneasy. Even though I’d been granted a reprieve (more or less), the whole ordeal had cast a pall over my year of magical thinking. Not helping matters much was the fact that Richard M. Dooley, former president of the National Assembly, was denying any knowledge of having signed my Magic Olympics entry form. (He not only signed it, but also mailed it for me.) Maybe he forgot or was too ashamed at having rubber-stamped a loser—not to mention a traitor. After the Olympics, a new president had taken office. Had Dooley been cashiered because of me? I was told this was not the case, but I had my doubts.

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