The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Part 38

"I found him on the doorstep. Quite literally."

G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Tommy," Sammy said. "I walked you into the building. building. I saw you go into your I saw you go into your homeroom. homeroom. How did you get out?" How did you get out?"

Tommy didn't say anything. He just stood looking down at the eye Patch in his hands.

Another escape artist," Detective Lieber said. "It must run in the family."

4

A great feat of engineering is an object of perpetual interest to people bent on self-destruction. Since its completion, the Empire State Building, a gigantic shard of the Hoosier State torn from the mild limestone bosom of the Midwest and upended, on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria, in the midst of the heaviest traffic in the world, had been a magnet for dislocated souls hoping to ensure the finality of their impact, or to mock the bold productions of human vanity. Since its opening almost twenty-three years earlier, a dozen people had attempted to leap from its ledges or its pinnacle to the street below; about half had managed the trick. None, however, had ever before given such clear and considerate warning of his intentions. For the building's private police and firefighting squadrons, working in concert with their munic.i.p.al brethren, there had been ample time to post officers at all the street entrances and points of ingress, at the stairwell doors and elevator banks. The twenty-fifth floor, where the offices of Empire Comics were still to be found, swarmed with building cops in their big-shouldered bra.s.s and wool uniforms, with those old-fashioned peaked caps designed, legend had it, by the late Al Smith himself. Alerts had been issued to the building's fifteen thousand tenants, warning them to be on the lookout for a lean, hawk-faced madman, perhaps dressed in a dark blue union suit, or perhaps in a moth-eaten blue tuxedo with extravagant tails. Firefighters in canvas coveralls ringed the building on three sides, from Thirty-third Street, around Fifth Avenue, to Thirty-fourth. They peered up through fine German binoculars, scanning the infinite planes of Indiana rock for any emerging hand or foot. They were ready, insofar as readiness was possible. Should the madman actually make it through a window and out into the darkening stuff of the evening, their course of action was less clear. But they were hopeful.

"We'll get him before he goes," predicted Captain Harley, still in command of the building's police force after all these years, his blighted eye glittering brighter and more irascible than ever. "We'll get the poor dumb mud-turk."

The daily circulation of the New York Herald-Tribune Herald-Tribune in 1954 was four hundred and fifty thousand. Of these readers, some two hundred had been drawn, by the letter printed in their newspaper that morning, to stand in wondering clumps behind police lines, gazing up. They were mostly men in their twenties and thirties, in jackets and ties, shipping clerks, commercial draftsmen, clothing and textile wholesalers working their way up in their fathers' businesses. Many of them were employed in the neighborhood. They checked their watches and made the hard-bitten remarks of New Yorkers at the prospect of a suicide-"I wish he'd do it already, I got a date"-but they did not take their eyes from the sides of the building. They had grown up on the Escapist, or had discovered him and his adventures in a foxhole in Belgium or in a transport off Bougainville. In some of these men, the name Joe Kavalier stirred long-dormant memories of reckless, violent, beautiful release. in 1954 was four hundred and fifty thousand. Of these readers, some two hundred had been drawn, by the letter printed in their newspaper that morning, to stand in wondering clumps behind police lines, gazing up. They were mostly men in their twenties and thirties, in jackets and ties, shipping clerks, commercial draftsmen, clothing and textile wholesalers working their way up in their fathers' businesses. Many of them were employed in the neighborhood. They checked their watches and made the hard-bitten remarks of New Yorkers at the prospect of a suicide-"I wish he'd do it already, I got a date"-but they did not take their eyes from the sides of the building. They had grown up on the Escapist, or had discovered him and his adventures in a foxhole in Belgium or in a transport off Bougainville. In some of these men, the name Joe Kavalier stirred long-dormant memories of reckless, violent, beautiful release.

Then there were the pa.s.sersby, the shoppers and office workers headed for home, drawn by the flashing lights and uniforms. Word of the promised entertainment had spread quickly among them. Where the flow of information flagged or was r.e.t.a.r.ded by tight-lipped policemen, the small but voluble contingent of comic book men was on hand to fill in and embellish the details of Joe Kavalier's misfortunate career.

"I hear it's all a hoax," said Joe Simon, who, with his own partner, Jack Kirby, had created Captain America. The rights to Captain America had earned, and in the future would continue to earn, great sums for their owner, Timely Publications, one day to be better known as Marvel Comics. "I heard that from Stan."

By five-thirty, when no one had been found skulking in the building or had inched himself out onto a windblown sill, Captain Harley began to come to the same conclusion. He was standing with some of his men just in front of the Thirty-third Street entrance, chewing on the end of a briar pipe. For the eighth time, he took out a gold pocket watch and consulted its face. He snapped it shut and chuckled.

"It's a hoax," he said. "I knew it all along."

"More and more I'm inclined to agree," said Detective Lieber.

"Maybe his watch stopped," Sammy Clay said almost hopefully. Lieber got the feeling that if the threat did turn out to be a hoax, Clay was going to be disappointed.

"Tell me this," Lieber said to Clay. As a family member, the little writer-that was how Lieber thought of him-had been permitted within the police cordon. In the event that Joe Kavalier appeared, his cousin would be on hand for last-minute pleas and counsel. There was also the boy. Ordinary procedure would have barred children from such an event, but experience had taught Lieber, who had spent nine years as a patrolman in Brownsville, that every so often the face of a child, or even its voice over a telephone, could draw a person in from the ledge. "Before today, how many people knew this whole story about how you and your cousin were robbed and cheated and taken advantage of?"

"I resent that, Detective," said Sheldon Anapol. The big man had come down from the Empire offices at five o'clock precisely. He was wrapped in a long black overcoat, a tiny gray tyrolean cap roosting on his head like a pigeon, its feather troubled by the breeze. The day was turning cold and bitter now. The light was failing. "You don't know enough about this matter to pa.s.s judgment like that. There were contracts involved, copyrights. Not to mention the fact that, while they were working for us, both Mr. Kavalier and Mr. Clay made more money than almost anyone in the business."

"I'm sorry," Lieber said, unapologetically. He turned back to Sammy. "But you see my point." sorry," Lieber said, unapologetically. He turned back to Sammy. "But you see my point."

Sammy shrugged, nodding, mouth pursed. He saw the detective's point.

"Not a h.e.l.l of a lot before today. A few dozen guys in the business. A lot of them jokers, I have to admit. Some lawyers, probably. My wife."

"Well, now, look at this."

Lieber gestured toward the swelling crowd, pushed back to the opposite sidewalk, the streets blocked off and filled with honking cabs, the reporters and photographers, everyone looking up at the building around which the untold Escapist millions had coalesced for so many years. They had been told the names of the princ.i.p.al players, Sam Clay, Sheldon Anapol; they gestured and murmured and scowled at the publisher in his funereal coat. The sum of money out of which the team of Kavalier Clay had been cheated by Empire Comics, though no one had ever actually sat down and calculated it, was widely current in the crowd, and growing by the moment.

"You can't buy this kind of publicity." Lieber's experience with suicides was fairly extensive. There was a very small set of them who chose to do away with themselves publicly, and, within this group, an even smaller subset who would provide an exact time and place in advance. Of these-and he could think of perhaps two in all the years since he got his badge in 1940-none was ever late for his appointment. "Mr. Anapol here"-he nodded to the publisher-"through no fault of his own, naturally, ends up looking like the bad guy."

"Character a.s.sa.s.sination," Anapol agreed. "That's what it amounts to."

Again Captain Harley of the building police snapped the watch shut, this time with greater finality. "I'm going to send my boys home," he said. "I don't think any of you have anything to worry about."

Lieber winked at the boy, a sullen, staring kid who, for the last forty-five minutes, had been standing in the lee of his vast grandfather with a Finger in his mouth, looking as if he was going to vomit. When Lieber winked, the kid turned pale. The detective frowned. In his years as a beat cop on and off Pitkin Avenue, he had frightened children with a friendly wink or h.e.l.lo many times, but rarely one so old who did not have something on his conscience.

"I don't get it," said Sammy. "I mean, I see what you're saying. I thought the same thing. Maybe it is is all just a stunt to get attention and he never had any intention of jumping at all. But then why did he steal the costume from my office?" all just a stunt to get attention and he never had any intention of jumping at all. But then why did he steal the costume from my office?"

"Can you prove that he he took the costume?" Lieber said. "Look, I don't know. Maybe he just got cold feet. Maybe he was run down by a pushcart or a taxicab. I'll check the hospitals, just in case." took the costume?" Lieber said. "Look, I don't know. Maybe he just got cold feet. Maybe he was run down by a pushcart or a taxicab. I'll check the hospitals, just in case."

He nodded to Captain Harley and agreed that it was time to pack up the show. Then he turned back to the boy. He didn't know exactly what he was going to say; the chain of reasons and possibilities lay still unconnected in his mind. It was just a fleeting policeman's impulse, a nose for trouble, that prompted his question. He was one of those men who couldn't help giving a squirrelly little kid a hard time.

"I hear you've been skipping school, young man, to come into our fair city and be a gadabout," he said.

The boy's eyes widened. He was good-looking, a little overfed but with thick black curls and big blue eyes that now grew even larger. The detective wasn't sure yet whether the boy was dreading punishment or longing for it. Usually, with solemn little reprobates of this sort, it was the latter.

"I don't want to catch you loose in my town again, you hear me? You stay out on Long Island where you belong."

He winked at the father now. Sam Clay laughed.

"Thank you, Detective," he said. He grabbed a fistful of his son's hair and shook the boy's head back and forth in a way that looked quite painful to Lieber. "He's become quite the forger, this one. Does his mother's signature on his excuses better than she can."

Lieber felt the links of the chain beginning to reach toward each other.

"Is that so?" he said. "Tell me, do you have one of these little masterpieces all ready to go for tomorrow?"

With three swift, mute nods of his head, the boy confessed that he did. Lieber held out his hand. The boy reached into his satchel and took out a manila folder. He opened it. A single leaf of good paper lay within, neatly typed and signed. He handed the paper over to Lieber. His movements were precise and preternaturally careful, almost showily so, and Lieber remembered that the boy's father believed his son had been sneaking into the city to hang out with stage magicians at Louis Tannen's Magic Shop. Lieber scanned the boy's note.

Dear Mr. Savarese, Please excuse Tommy's absence from school yesterday. Once again as I told you previously I believe he required ophthalmologic type treatments from his specialist in the city. Sincerely, Mrs. Rosa Clay "I'm afraid your boy was responsible for all this," Lieber said, pa.s.sing the letter to the boy's father. "He wrote the letter to the Herald-Tribune." Herald-Tribune."

"I had a feeling," the grandfather said. "I thought I recognized the style."

"What?" Sam Clay said. "What makes you say that?"

"Typewriters have personalities," said the boy in a small voice, looking down at his feet. "Like fingerprints."

"That is very often the case," Lieber agreed.

Sammy examined the note, then gave the boy a queer look. "Tommy, is this true?"

"Yes, sir."

"You mean n.o.body is going to jump?"

Tommy shook his head.

"You made up this whole thing yourself?"

He nodded.

"Well," said Lieber. "This is a serious thing you've done, son. I'm afraid you may have committed a crime." He looked at the father. "I'm sorry about your cousin," he said. "I know you were hoping he had come back."

"I was," Sammy said, surprised, either by the realization or by the fact that Lieber had guessed it. "You know, I guess I really was."

"He has has come back!" The boy shouted this, and even Lieber jumped a little. "He's here." come back!" The boy shouted this, and even Lieber jumped a little. "He's here."

"In New York?" the father said. The boy nodded. "Joe Kavalier is here in New York." Another nod. "Where? How do you know? Tommy, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, where is your cousin Joe?"

The boy muttered something, his voice nearly inaudible. Then, to their surprise, he turned and walked into the building. He went over to the banks of express elevators and pressed the b.u.t.ton for those that went all the way to the top.

5

It all began-or had begun again-with the Ultimate Demon Wonder Box. Last July 3, his eleventh birthday, Tommy's father had taken him to The Story of Robin Hood The Story of Robin Hood at the Criterion, to lunch at the Automat, and to visit a reproduction, at the Forty-second Street Library, of Sherlock Holmes's apartment, complete with unopened letters addressed to the sleuth, a curl-toed slipper filled with tobacco, the paw print of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and a stuffed Giant Rat of Sumatra. All of this was by Tommy's request, and in lieu of the usual birthday party. Tommy's one friend, Eugene Begelman, had moved to Florida at the end of fourth grade, and Tommy had had no desire to fill the Clays' living room with antsy, sullen, eye-rolling kids whose parents had forced them, out of politeness to his own, to attend. He was a solitary boy, unpopular with teachers and students alike. He still slept with a stuffed beaver named Bucky. But he was, at the same time, proud-even belligerent in defense-of his estrangement from the world of the normal, stupid, happy, enviable children of Bloomtown. The mystery of his real father, who-he had decided, deciphering the overheard hints and swiftly hushed remarks of his parents and his grandmother before her death-had been a soldier killed in Europe, was at once a source of amour propre and of bitter yearning, a grand opportunity that he had missed out on but that nevertheless could have befallen only him. He always sympathized with young people in novels whose parents had died or abandoned them (as much to help them fulfill their singular destinies as future Emperors or Pirate Kings, as out of the general grinding cruelty toward children of the world). There was no doubt in his mind that such a destiny awaited him, perhaps in the Martian colonies or the plutonium mines of the asteroid belt. Tommy was a little pudgy, and small for his age. He had been the target of some standard-issue cruelty over the years, but his taciturnity and his spectacularly average performance in school had earned him a certain measure of safe invisibility. Thus, over time, he had won the right to opt completely out of the usual theaters of juvenile strategy and angst-the playground coups, the permanent floating card-flipping games, the Halloween and pool and birthday parties. These interested him, but he forbade himself to care. If he could not see his health drunk in the huge oaken banquet room of a castle, filled with the smell of spit-roasted boar and venison, by tankard-clinking stalwart bowmen and adventurers, then a day in New York City with his father would have to do. at the Criterion, to lunch at the Automat, and to visit a reproduction, at the Forty-second Street Library, of Sherlock Holmes's apartment, complete with unopened letters addressed to the sleuth, a curl-toed slipper filled with tobacco, the paw print of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and a stuffed Giant Rat of Sumatra. All of this was by Tommy's request, and in lieu of the usual birthday party. Tommy's one friend, Eugene Begelman, had moved to Florida at the end of fourth grade, and Tommy had had no desire to fill the Clays' living room with antsy, sullen, eye-rolling kids whose parents had forced them, out of politeness to his own, to attend. He was a solitary boy, unpopular with teachers and students alike. He still slept with a stuffed beaver named Bucky. But he was, at the same time, proud-even belligerent in defense-of his estrangement from the world of the normal, stupid, happy, enviable children of Bloomtown. The mystery of his real father, who-he had decided, deciphering the overheard hints and swiftly hushed remarks of his parents and his grandmother before her death-had been a soldier killed in Europe, was at once a source of amour propre and of bitter yearning, a grand opportunity that he had missed out on but that nevertheless could have befallen only him. He always sympathized with young people in novels whose parents had died or abandoned them (as much to help them fulfill their singular destinies as future Emperors or Pirate Kings, as out of the general grinding cruelty toward children of the world). There was no doubt in his mind that such a destiny awaited him, perhaps in the Martian colonies or the plutonium mines of the asteroid belt. Tommy was a little pudgy, and small for his age. He had been the target of some standard-issue cruelty over the years, but his taciturnity and his spectacularly average performance in school had earned him a certain measure of safe invisibility. Thus, over time, he had won the right to opt completely out of the usual theaters of juvenile strategy and angst-the playground coups, the permanent floating card-flipping games, the Halloween and pool and birthday parties. These interested him, but he forbade himself to care. If he could not see his health drunk in the huge oaken banquet room of a castle, filled with the smell of spit-roasted boar and venison, by tankard-clinking stalwart bowmen and adventurers, then a day in New York City with his father would have to do.

The crux, the key element of the celebration, was a stop at Louis Tannen's Magic Shop, on West Forty-second Street, to buy the birthday present that Tommy had requested: the Ultimate Demon Wonder Box. At $17.95, it represented considerable largesse on his parents' part, but they had been from the first remarkably indulgent of his recent interest in magic, as if it accorded with some secret itinerary they had charted out for him in their minds.

Eugene Begelman had started the whole magic business after his father returned from a business trip to Chicago with an oblong box in playing-card colors that contained, its label claimed, "everything necessary to AMAZE and ASTOUND your friends and turn YOU into the life of every party." Naturally, Tommy had affected to scorn such an agenda, but after Eugene briefly caused most of a hard-boiled egg to disappear, and nearly succeeded in pulling a rather limp artificial mouse out of a supposedly normal lady's stocking, Tommy had grown impatient. Such impatience-a tightening in his chest, a tapping of his feet, a feeling like the need to urinate-unbearable at times, always seemed to come over him whenever he came across something he could not figure out. He had borrowed the Al-A-Kazzam! Junior Magic Kit from Eugene and taken it home; over one weekend he had mastered every trick. Eugene said he could keep the kit.

Next, Tommy had gone to the library and discovered a hitherto unsuspected shelf of books on card tricks, coin tricks, tricks with silks and scarves and cigarettes. His hands were large for a boy his age, with long fingers, and he had a capacity for standing in front of the mirror with a quarter or a book of matches, repeating the same tiny flexings of his fingers over and over again, that surprised even him. It soothed him, practicing his palmings and fades.

It had not been long before he discovered Louis Tannen's. The greatest supplier of tricks and supplies on the Eastern seaboard, it was, in 1953, still the unofficial capital of professional conjuring in America, a kind of informal magicians' club where generations of silk-hat men, pa.s.sing through town on their way north, south, or west to the vaudeville and burlesque houses, the nightclubs and variety theaters of the nation, had met to exchange information, to cadge money, and to dazzle one another with refinements too artistic and subtle to waste on an audience of elephant gapers and leerers at sawn-in-two ladies. The Ultimate Demon Wonder Box was one of Mr. Louis Tannen's signature tricks, a perennial bestseller that he personally guaranteed to reduce an audience-not, surely, of card-flipping, stickball-playing fifth graders but, Tommy imagined, of tuxedo-wearing types smoking long cigarettes on ocean liners, and women with gardenias in their hair-to a layer of baffled jelly on the floor. Its name alone was enough to render Tommy breathless with impatience.

At the back of the shop, Tommy had noticed on prior visits, were two doorways. One, painted green, led to the stockroom where the steel rings, trick birdcages, and false-bottomed trunks were kept. The other door, painted black, generally was kept closed, but sometimes a man would come in from the street, greet Louis Tannen or one of the salesmen, and pa.s.s through it, giving a glimpse of the world beyond; or else a man might come out, waving to whomever he was leaving behind, tucking five dollars into his pocket or shaking his head in wonderment over whatever miracle he had just witnessed. This was Tannen's famous back room. Tommy would have given anything-he would have forgone the Ultimate Demon Wonder Box, The Story of Robin Hood, The Story of Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes's Baker Street digs, and the Automat-just to be able to get a peek back there, and to watch the old pros brandish the puzzling flowers of their art. While Mr. Tannen himself was giving Tommy's father a demonstration of the Wonder Box, showing him that it was empty, feeding it seven scarves, then opening it to show him that it was still empty, a man wandered in, said, "h.e.l.lo, Lou," and went on through to the back. As the door opened and closed, Tommy caught a glimpse of some magicians, in sweaters and suits, standing with their backs to him. They were watching another magician at work, a tall, slender guy with a large nose. The man with the large nose looked up, smiling at whatever little stunt he had just pulled off, his deep-set, heavy-lidded blue eyes unimpressed with himself. The other magicians swore in appreciation of the trick. The sad blue eyes met Tommy's. They widened. The door closed. Sherlock Holmes's Baker Street digs, and the Automat-just to be able to get a peek back there, and to watch the old pros brandish the puzzling flowers of their art. While Mr. Tannen himself was giving Tommy's father a demonstration of the Wonder Box, showing him that it was empty, feeding it seven scarves, then opening it to show him that it was still empty, a man wandered in, said, "h.e.l.lo, Lou," and went on through to the back. As the door opened and closed, Tommy caught a glimpse of some magicians, in sweaters and suits, standing with their backs to him. They were watching another magician at work, a tall, slender guy with a large nose. The man with the large nose looked up, smiling at whatever little stunt he had just pulled off, his deep-set, heavy-lidded blue eyes unimpressed with himself. The other magicians swore in appreciation of the trick. The sad blue eyes met Tommy's. They widened. The door closed.

"Amazing," Sammy Clay said, taking out his wallet. "Worth every penny."

Mr. Tannen handed the box to Tommy, and he took it, his eyes still on the door. He had focused his thoughts into a sharp diamond beam and aimed them at the doork.n.o.b, willing it to turn. Nothing happened.

"Tommy?" Tommy looked up. His father was staring down at him. He looked irritated, and his voice had a tone of false good humor. "Do you have even an iota of desire left in your body for that thing?"

And he nodded, though his father had guessed the truth. He looked at the blue lacquered wooden box for which he had ached only last night with a fervor that kept him awake till past midnight. But knowing the secrets of the Ultimate Demon Wonder Box would never get him through the door to Tannen's back room, where travel-hardened men concocted private wonders for their own melancholy amus.e.m.e.nt. He looked from the Wonder Box to the black door. It remained closed. The Bug, he knew, would have made a break for it.

"It's great, Dad," Tommy said. "I love it. Thanks."

Three days later, on a Monday, Tommy stopped in at Spiegelman's Drugs to arrange the comic books. This was a service he provided at no charge and, so far as he knew, unbeknownst to Mr. Spiegelman. The week's new comics arrived on Monday, and by Thursday, particularly toward the end of the month, the long rows of wire racks along the wall at the back of the store were often a jumble of disordered and dog-eared t.i.tles. Every week, Tommy sorted and alphabetized, putting the Nationals with the Nationals, the E.C.s with the E.C.s, the Timelys with the Timelys, reuniting the estranged members of the Marvel Family, isolating the romance t.i.tles, which, though he tried to conceal this fact from his mother, he despised, in a bottom corner. Of course he reserved the centermost racks for the nineteen Pharaoh t.i.tles. He kept careful count over these, rejoicing when Spiegelman's sold out its order of Bra.s.s Knuckle Bra.s.s Knuckle in a week, feeling a mysterious pity and shame for his father when, for an entire month, all six copies of in a week, feeling a mysterious pity and shame for his father when, for an entire month, all six copies of Sea Yarns, Sea Yarns, a personal favorite of Tommy's, languished unpurchased on Spiegelman's rack. He did all of his rearranging surrept.i.tiously, under the guise of browsing. Whenever another kid came in, or Mr. Spiegelman walked by, Tommy quickly stuffed back whatever errant stack he was holding, any old way, and engaged in a transparent bit of innocent whistling. He further concealed his covert librarianship-which arose chiefly out of loyalty to his father but was also due to an innate dislike of messes-by spending a precious weekly dime on a comic book. This even though his father regularly brought him home big stacks of "the compet.i.tion," including many t.i.tles that Spiegelman's didn't even carry. a personal favorite of Tommy's, languished unpurchased on Spiegelman's rack. He did all of his rearranging surrept.i.tiously, under the guise of browsing. Whenever another kid came in, or Mr. Spiegelman walked by, Tommy quickly stuffed back whatever errant stack he was holding, any old way, and engaged in a transparent bit of innocent whistling. He further concealed his covert librarianship-which arose chiefly out of loyalty to his father but was also due to an innate dislike of messes-by spending a precious weekly dime on a comic book. This even though his father regularly brought him home big stacks of "the compet.i.tion," including many t.i.tles that Spiegelman's didn't even carry.

Logically, if Tommy were throwing his money away, it ought to have been on one of the lesser-read Pharaohs, such as Farm Stories Farm Stories or the aforementioned nautical book. But when Tommy walked out of Spiegelman's every Thursday, it was with an Empire comic book in his hand. This was his small, dark act of disloyalty to his father: Tommy loved the Escapist. He admired his golden mane, his strict, at times obsessive, adherence to the rules of fair play, and the good-natured grin he wore at all times, even when taking it on the chin from Kommandant X (who had quite easily made the transition from n.a.z.i to Commie), or from one of the giant henchmen of Poison Rose. The Escapist's murky origins, in the minds of his father and their lost cousin Joe, chimed obscurely in his imagination with his own. He would read the entire book on the way home from Spiegelman's, going slow, savoring it, aware of the sc.r.a.pe of his sneakers against the fresh-laid sidewalk, the bobbing progress of his body through the darkness that gathered around the outer margins of the pages as he turned them. Just before he turned the corner onto Lavoisier Drive, he would toss the comic book into the D'Abruzzios' trash can. or the aforementioned nautical book. But when Tommy walked out of Spiegelman's every Thursday, it was with an Empire comic book in his hand. This was his small, dark act of disloyalty to his father: Tommy loved the Escapist. He admired his golden mane, his strict, at times obsessive, adherence to the rules of fair play, and the good-natured grin he wore at all times, even when taking it on the chin from Kommandant X (who had quite easily made the transition from n.a.z.i to Commie), or from one of the giant henchmen of Poison Rose. The Escapist's murky origins, in the minds of his father and their lost cousin Joe, chimed obscurely in his imagination with his own. He would read the entire book on the way home from Spiegelman's, going slow, savoring it, aware of the sc.r.a.pe of his sneakers against the fresh-laid sidewalk, the bobbing progress of his body through the darkness that gathered around the outer margins of the pages as he turned them. Just before he turned the corner onto Lavoisier Drive, he would toss the comic book into the D'Abruzzios' trash can.

Those portions of his walk to and from school that were not taken up with his reading-in addition to comics, he devoured science fiction, sea stories H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Buchan, and novels dealing with American or British history-or with detailed menta1 rehearsals of the full-evening magic shows by which he one day planned to dazzle the world, Tommy pa.s.sed as sc.r.a.ppy Tommy Clay, All-American schoolboy, known to none as the Bug. The Bug was the name of his costumed crime-fighting alter ego, who had appeared one morning when Tommy was in the first grade, and whose adventures and increasingly involuted mythology he had privately been chronicling in his mind ever since. He had drawn several thick volumes' worth of Bug stories, although his artistic ability was incommensurate with the vivid scope of his mental imagery, and the resultant mess of graphite smudges and eraser crumbs always discouraged him. The Bug was a bug, an actual insect-a scarab beetle, in his current version- who had been caught, along with a human baby, in the blast from an atomic explosion. Somehow-Tommy was vague on this point-their natures had been mingled, and now the beetle's mind and spirit, armed with his beetle hardness and proportionate beetle strength, inhabited the four-foot-high body of a human boy who sat in the third row of Mr. Landauer's cla.s.s, under a bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sometimes he could avail himself, again rather vaguely, of the characteristic abilities-flight, stinging, silk-spinning-of other varieties of bug. It was always wrapped in the imaginary mantle, as it were, of the Bug that he performed his clandestine work at the Spiegelman's racks, feelers extended and tensed to detect the slightest tremor of the approach of Mr. Spiegelman, whom Tommy generally cast in this situation as the nefarious Steel Clamp, a charter member of the Bug's Rogue's Gallery.

That afternoon, as he was smoothing back the flagged corner of a copy of Weird Date, Weird Date, something surprising occurred. For the first time that he could remember, he felt an actual twinge in the Bug's keen antennae. Someone was watching him. He looked around. A man was standing there, half-hidden behind a rotating drum spangled with the lenses of fifty-cent reading gla.s.ses. The man snapped his face away and Pretended that, all along, he had been looking at a tremble of pink and blue light on the back wall of the store. Tommy recognized him at once as the sad-eyed magician from Tannen's back room. He was not at all surprised to see the man there, in Spiegelman's Drugs in Bloomtown, Long Island; this was something he always remembered afterward. He even felt-maybe this was a little surprising-glad to see the man. At Tannen's, the magician's appearance had struck Tommy as somehow pleasing. He had felt an inexplicable affection for the unruly mane of black curls, the lanky frame in a stained white suit, the large sympathetic eyes. Now Tommy perceived that this displaced sense of fondness had been merely the first stirring of recognition. something surprising occurred. For the first time that he could remember, he felt an actual twinge in the Bug's keen antennae. Someone was watching him. He looked around. A man was standing there, half-hidden behind a rotating drum spangled with the lenses of fifty-cent reading gla.s.ses. The man snapped his face away and Pretended that, all along, he had been looking at a tremble of pink and blue light on the back wall of the store. Tommy recognized him at once as the sad-eyed magician from Tannen's back room. He was not at all surprised to see the man there, in Spiegelman's Drugs in Bloomtown, Long Island; this was something he always remembered afterward. He even felt-maybe this was a little surprising-glad to see the man. At Tannen's, the magician's appearance had struck Tommy as somehow pleasing. He had felt an inexplicable affection for the unruly mane of black curls, the lanky frame in a stained white suit, the large sympathetic eyes. Now Tommy perceived that this displaced sense of fondness had been merely the first stirring of recognition.

When the man realized that Tommy was staring at him, he gave up his pretense. For one instant he hung there, shoulders hunched, red-faced. He looked as if he were planning to flee; that was another thing Tommy remembered afterward. Then the man smiled.

"h.e.l.lo there," he said. His voice was soft and faintly accented.

"h.e.l.lo," said Tommy.

"I've always wondered what they keep in those jars." The man pointed to the front window of the store, where two gla.s.s vessels, baroque beakers with onion-dome lids, contained their perpetual gallons of clear fluid, tinted respectively pink and blue. The late-afternoon sun cut through them, casting the rippling pair of pastel shadows on the back wall.

"I asked Mr. Spiegelman that," Tommy said. "A couple times."

"What did he say?"

"That it's a mystery of his profession."

The man nodded solemnly. "One we must respect." He reached into his pocket and took out a package of Old Gold cigarettes. He lit one with a snap of his lighter and inhaled slowly, his eyes on Tommy, his expression troubled, as Tommy somehow expected it to be.

"I'm your cousin," the man said. "Josef Kavalier."

"I know," said Tommy. "I saw your picture."

The man nodded and took another drag on his cigarette.

"Are you coming over to our house?"

"Not today."

"Do you live in Canada?"

"No," said the man. "I don't live in Canada. I could tell you where I live, but if I do, you must promise not to reveal my whereabouts or ident.i.ty to any persons. It's top secret."

There was a gritty scratch of leather sole against linoleum. Cousin Joe glanced up and smiled a brittle adult smile, eyes shifting uneasily to one side.

"Tommy?" It was Mr. Spiegelman. He was staring curiously at Cousin Joe, not in an unfriendly way, but with an interest that Tommy recognized as distinctly unmercantile. "I don't believe I know your friend."

"This ... is ... Joe," Tommy said. "I... I know him." The intrusion of Mr. Spiegelman into the comic book aisle rattled him. The dreamlike sense of calm with which he had reencountered, in a Long Island pharmacy, the cousin who had disappeared from a military transport off the coast of Virginia eight years before, abandoned him. Joe Kavalier was the great silencer of adults in the Clay household; whenever Tommy entered a room and everyone stopped talking, he knew they had been discussing Cousin Joe. Naturally, he had pestered them mercilessly for information on this man of mystery. His father generally refused to talk about the early days of the partnership that had produced the Escapist-"All that stuff kind of depresses me, buddy," he would say- but he could sometimes be induced to speculate on Joe's current location, the path of his wanderings, the likelihood of his ever coming back. Such talk, however, made Tommy's father nervous. He would reach for his cigarettes, a newspaper, the switch of the radio: anything to cut the conversation short.

It was his mother who had provided Tommy with most of what he knew about Joe Kavalier. From her he had learned the full story of the Escapist's birth, of the vast fortunes that the owners of Empire Comics had made off the work of his father and his cousin. His mother worried about money. The lost bonanza that the Escapist would have represented to the family if they had not been cheated by Sheldon Anapol and Jack Ashkenazy haunted her. "They were robbed," she often said. Generally, she confined such statements to moments when mother and son were alone, but occasionally, when Tommy's father was around, she would drag up his sorry history in the comic book business, of which Cousin Joe had once formed a key part, to bolster some larger, more abstruse point about the state of their lives that Tommy, clinging fiercely to his childish understanding of things, every time managed to miss. His mother, as it happened, was in possession of all manner of interesting facts about Joe. She knew where he had gone to school in Prague, when and by what route he had come to America, the places he had lived in Manhattan. She knew which comic books he had drawn, and what Dolores Del Rio had said to him one spring night in 1941 ("You dance like my father"). Tommy's mother knew that Joe had been indifferent to music and partial to bananas.

Tommy had always taken the particularity, the enduring intensity, of his mother's memories of Joe as a matter of course, but then one afternoon the previous summer, at the beach, he had overheard Eugene's mother talking to another neighborhood woman. Tommy, feigning sleep on his towel, lay eavesdropping on the hushed conversation. It was hard to follow, but one phrase caught his ear and lodged there for many weeks afterward.

"She's been carrying a torch for him all these years," the other woman said to Helene Begelman. She was speaking, Tommy knew, of his mother. For some reason, he thought at once of the picture of Joe, dressed in a tuxedo and brandishing a straight flush, that his mother kept on the vanity she had built for herself in her bedroom closet, in a small silver frame. But the full meaning of this expression, "carrying a torch," remained opaque to Tommy for several more months, until one day, listening with his father to Frank Sinatra sing the intro to "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry," its sense had become clear to him; at the same instant, he realized he had known all his life that his mother was in love with Cousin Joe. The information pleased him for some reason. It seemed to accord with certain ideas he had formed about what adult life was really like from perusing his mother's stories in Heartache, Sweetheart, Heartache, Sweetheart, and and Love Crazy. Love Crazy.

Still, Tommy didn't really know Cousin Joe at all, and he had to admit, seeing him through Mr. Spiegelman's eyes, that he looked kind of shady, loitering there in his wrinkled suit, several day's growth on his chin. The coils of his hair sprang upward from his head like excelsior. He had a pale, blinking aspect, as if he didn't get out into the light too often. It was going to be hard to explain him to Mr. Spiegelman without revealing that he was a relative. And why shouldn't he reveal this? Why shouldn't he tell everyone he knew-in particular his parents-that Cousin Joe had returned from his wanderings? This was big news. If it later emerged that he had kept this from his mother and father, he would certainly get into trouble.

"This is my-uh-" he stammered, seeing the look of mistrust in Mr. Spiegelman's mild blue eyes grow keener. "My-" He was just about to say "cousin," and was even considering prefixing it with the melodramatic novelty of "long-lost," when a far more interesting narrative possibility occurred to him: clearly Cousin Joe had come looking especially for him. There had been that moment when their eyes met across the counter at Louis Tannen's Magic Shop, and then, over the next few days, somehow or other, Joe had tracked Tommy down, observed his habits, even followed him around, waiting for the opportune moment. Whatever his reasons for concealing his return from the rest of the family, he had chosen to reveal himself to Tommy. It would be wrong and foolish, Tommy thought, not to respect that choice. The heroes of John Buchan's novels never blurted out the truth in these situations. For them, a word was always sufficient, and discretion was the better part of valor. The same sense of melodramatic cliche prevented him from considering the possibility that his parents knew all about Cousin's Joe's return and had merely, as was their habit with interesting news, kept it from him. "My magic teacher," he finished. "I told him I'd meet him here. The houses all look alike, you know."

"That is certainly true," Joe said.

"Magic teacher," said Mr. Spiegelman. "That's a new one to me."

"You have to have a teacher, Mr. Spiegelman," Tommy said. "All the great ones do." Then Tommy did something that surprised him. He reached out and took hold of his cousin's hand. "Well, come on, I'll show you the way. You just have to count the corners. The houses don't really all look alike. We have eight different models."