The Girl in the Glass Read online

  The Girl in the Glass

  Jeffrey Ford

  The critically acclaimed author of The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque and the New York Times Notable Book The Physiognomy returns with a spellbinding new masterwork -- a dark and haunting literary thriller that dazzles with originality and sheer storytelling energy as it brilliantly confounds all expectations.

  The Girl in the Glass

  The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair -- and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy ... and the hucksters who feed upon them.

  Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant rescued from the depths of poverty, owes his salvation to Thomas Schell, spiritual medium and master grifter. At the knee of his loving -- and beloved -- surrogate father, Diego has learned the most honored tricks of the trade. Along with Schell's gruff and powerful partner, Antony Cleopatra, the three have sailed comfortably, so far, through hard times, scamming New York's grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances. And with no lack of well-heeled true believers at their disposal, it appears the gravy train will chug along indefinitely -- until an impossible occurrence in a grand mansion on Long Island's elegant Gold Coast changes everything.

  While "communing with spirits" in the opulent home of George Parks, Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass -- the missing daughter of one of Parks's millionaire neighbors -- silently entreating the con man to help. Though well aware that his otherworldly "powers" are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services, and those of his partners, to help find the lost child. He draws Diego and Antony into a tangled maze of deadly secrets, terrible experimentation, and dark hungers among the very wealthy and obscenely powerful. As each cardinal rule dividing the grift from the real is unceremoniously broken, Diego's education is advanced into areas he never considered before. And the mentor's sudden vulnerable humanity forces the student into the role of master to confront an abomination that will ultimately spawn the nightmare of the century.

  At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a rich and vivid circus of complex, eccentric, and unforgettable characters and events, and a stunningly evocative portrait of Depression-era New York, Jeffrey Ford's The Girl in the Glass is yet another masterly literary adventure from a writer of exemplary vision and skill.

  Jeffrey Ford

  The Girl in the Glass

  For Jack, with all my love and respect.

  It's your move.

  A MEDIUM TO TRUTH

  Some days ago I sat by the window in my room, counting the number of sedative pills I've palmed over the course of the last three months. Even though my fingers tremble, I've discovered that the erratic action can be a boon to tricks involving sleight of hand. In the midst of my tabulation, I happened to look outside at the beautiful summer day. A breeze was blowing through the trees that bordered the small courtyard, and their silver-backed leaves flashed in the sunlight. It was then that I noticed a bright yellow butterfly flutter past and come to rest on the head of the weathered concrete Virgin that sits amid the colorful zinnias that nurse Carmen had planted in the spring. The orange dot on its lower wings told me it was an alfalfa, Colias eurytheme.

  The sight of this beautiful creature immediately reminded me of my benefactor and surrogate father, Thomas Schell, and I was swept back to my youth, far away in another country. I sat that day for hours, contemplating a series of events that took place sixty-seven years ago, in 1932, when I was seventeen. Decades have since died and been laid to rest, not to mention loved ones and personal dreams, but still that distant time materializes before me like a restless spirit at a sйance, insisting its story be told. Of course, now with pen in hand, I have no choice but to be a medium to its truths. All I ask is that you believe.

  ECTOPLASMIC PRECIPITATION

  Every time the widow Morrison cried, she farted, long and low like a call from beyond the grave. I almost busted a gut but had to keep it under my turban. There could certainly be no laughter from Ondoo, which was me, the spiritual savant of the subcontinent.

  We were sitting in the dark, holding hands in a circle, attempting to contact Garfield Morrison, the widow's long-dead husband, who fittingly enough had succumbed to mustard gas in a trench in France. Thomas Schell, ringmaster of this soiree, sat across from me, looking, in the glow from the candlelight, like a king of corpses himself-eyes rolled back, possessed of a bloodless pallor, wearing an expression straight from a nightmare of frantic pursuit.

  To my right, holding fast to the gloved dummy hand that stuck out of the end of my jacket sleeve, was the widow's sister, Luqueer, a thin, dried-out cornstalk of a crone, decked with diamonds, whose teeth rattled like shaken dice, and next to her was the young, beautiful niece (I forget her name), whom I rather wished was holding my prosthesis.

  On my other side was the widow herself, and between her and Schell sat Milton, the niece's fiancй, your typical scoffing unbeliever. He'd told us during our preliminary meeting with the widow that he was skeptical of our abilities; a fast follower of Dunninger and Houdini. Schell had nodded calmly at this news but said nothing.

  We didn't have to sit there long before Garfield made his presence known by causing the flame on the candle at the center of the table to gutter and dance.

  "Are you there?" called Schell, releasing his hands from those of the participants on either side of him and raising his arms out in front.

  He let a few moments pass to up the ante, and then, from just behind Milton's left shoulder, came a mumble, a grumble, a groan. Milton jerked his head around to see who it was and found only air. The niece gave a little yelp and the widow called out, "Garfield, is it you?"

  Then Schell opened his mouth wide, gave a sigh of agony, and a huge brown moth flew out. It made a circuit of the table, brushing the lashes of the young lady, causing her to shake her head in disgust. After perching briefly on the widow's dress, just above her heart (where earlier Schell had inconspicuously marked her with a dab of sugar water), it took to circling the flame. The table moved slightly, and there came a rhythmic noise, as if someone was rapping his knuckle against it. Which, in fact, someone was: it was me, from underneath, using the knuckle of my big toe.

  Ghostly sobbing filled the dark, which was my cue to slowly move my free arm inside my jacket, reach out at the collar for the pendant on my neck, and flip it around to reveal the back, which held a glass-encased portrait of Garfield. While the assembled family watched the moth orbit closer and closer to fiery destruction, Schell switched on the tiny beacon in his right sleeve while with his left hand he pumped the rubber ball attached to a thin hose beneath his jacket. A fine mist of water vapor shot forth from a hole in the flower on his lapel, creating an invisible screen in the air above the table.

  Just as the moth ditched into the flame, which surged with a crackle, sending a thin trail of smoke toward the ceiling, the beam of light from within Schell's sleeve hit my pendant, and I adjusted my position to direct the reflection upward into the vapor.

  "I'm here, Margaret," said a booming voice from nowhere and everywhere. Garfield's misty visage materialized above us. He stared hard out of death, his top lip curled back, his nostrils flared, as if even in the afterlife he'd caught wind of his wife's grief. The widow's sister took one look at him, croaked like a frog, and conked out cold onto the table. The widow herself let go of my hand and reached out toward the stern countenance.

  "Garfield," she said. "Garfield, I miss you."

  "And I you," said the phantom.

  "Are you in pain?" she asked. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. All's well here," he said.

  "How do I know it's really you?" she asked, holding one hand to her heart.

  "Do you remember tha
t summer day by the sound when we found the blue bottle, and I told you I loved you?"

  "Oh," cried the widow. "Oh, yes. I remember."

  The ghostly image slowly disintegrated.

  "Remember me," said the voice as it started to fade. "I'm waiting for you…"

  Milton, who was well shaken by the visitation, said in a faltering voice, "I believe it's raining in here."

  Schell spoke from the side of his mouth, "Merely ectoplasmic precipitation."

  The widow's sister came around then. The niece called, "Uncle Garfield, I have a question."

  Unfortunately Uncle Garfield had taken a powder. He spoke no more, but a few seconds after it had become obvious he was gone for good, a dead rat fell out of the darkness above and onto the table right in front of Milton, who gave a short scream and pushed back his chair, standing up.

  "What does this mean?" he yelled at Schell, pointing at the razor-toothed corpse before him. His eyes and hair were wild.

  Schell stared straight ahead.

  Milton turned to look at me just as I was in the process of stowing the fake hand in the pocket inside my jacket. If he wasn't so upset, he might have noticed that my left sleeve was empty.

  "My exalted Mr. Milton," I said in my best Bombay-by-way-of-Brooklyn accent, "the dead speak a strange symbolic language."

  He turned away and walked directly to the light switch. I slipped my arm into the sleeve, and the lights came up. The group was silent as they employed handkerchiefs.

  "We've made progress, Mrs. Morrison," said Schell.

  "Thank you so much for bringing him to me," she said. "How can I ever repay you?"

  "I ask only my fee."

  And a hefty one it was at that for half an hour's work. As we stood by the front door of the mansion, Schell stuffed the wad of bills into his coat pocket while lifting the widow's hand to kiss the back of it. I stood patiently, ever the assistant of the great man, but inside I was itching to get home and wash that dead rat residue out of my hair.

  "You must come back," said the widow.

  "It would be my express pleasure," said Schell.

  I'd noticed that while we stood gathered in the foyer that Milton tried to put his arm around Morrison's niece, but she shrugged his hand off her shoulder. Apparently she had no problem interpreting the strange symbolic language of the dead. Milton ignored this brush-off and stepped up to Schell.

  "Most uncanny," he said. "I too would like to employ you for a sйance."

  "I'll consider it," said Schell, "although, usually, I make my services available to only a certain quality of individual."

  Milton seemed to take this as an affirmation.

  I delivered my Ondoo nightcap, one of my favorites from the Rig-Veda, "May he whose head is flaming burn the demons, haters of prayer, so that the arrow slay them," and we left. It was our practice to always walk in single file with Schell first and myself behind, moving slow and measured, as if in a stately procession.

  Antony Cleopatra was waiting beside the Cord, dressed in his chauffeur uniform and cap, holding the door. Schell got in the front, and after closing the door, Antony came around and held open the other door for me. Once we were seated, he got in the driver's seat, squeezed his hulking mass behind the wheel, and started the engine. As we traveled down the long, winding driveway toward the road, I lifted the turban off my head.

  "How'd it go?" asked Antony.

  "That widow held more gas than a zeppelin," I said.

  "Or didn't," said Schell. "I was afraid to light the candle."

  "How'd you come up with the bit about them on the beach and the blue bottle?" I asked.

  "Passing through the parlor, on the way to the dining room where we had the sйance," said Schell, "there's a lovely photograph on the fireplace mantel of the widow and poor Garfield, standing on a beach. In her hand is the bottle."

  "But the color of it?" I asked.

  "It was of a distinct shape most commonly used to hold an old curative elixir, Angel's Broom, now outlawed for its alcoholic content. These were sometimes made of brown glass but more often blue. I simply played the odds on the color."

  I laughed in admiration. Thomas Schell possessed more flim-flam than a politician, a poet, and a pope put together. As Antony often put it, "He could sell matches to the devil."

  THE BUGATORIUM

  The world was on the skids, soup lines and Dust Bowls, but you would never have known it from the polished brass banisters and chandeliers of Mrs. Morrison's Gold Coast palace. The Depression wasn't our concern either as the three of us sat in Schell's Bugatorium (Antony's name for it), sipping champagne in celebration of a job well done. The air was alive around us with the flutter of tiny wings, a hundred colors floating by, like living confetti, to mark our success. An orange albatross, Appias nero, the caterpillars of which had arrived from Burma some weeks earlier, lighted on the rim of Schell's glass, and he leaned forward to study it.

  "I'm positive the widow will have us back," he said, "and when she does we'll have to give her a little more of a show. She's a vein we've only begun to tap."

  "Maybe Antony could pose as Garfield, you know, a flour job. We'll ghost him up," I said. "I noticed a window there in the dining room. If we could direct her to the window, he could be standing out in the garden in the shadows."

  "Not a bad idea," said Schell, coaxing the butterfly off his glass with a gentle nudge of his pinky.

  "I hate being dead people," said Antony.

  "You're a natural," I said.

  "Watch it, junior," said the big man.

  We waited a long while for Schell to jump back in the conversation, but he didn't. Instead he merely sighed, took one more sip of his drink, and set his glass on the table. "Gentlemen, I'm through," he said and stood up. "Nice work this evening." He stepped around to where I sat and shook my hand. This had been the protocol since I was a child; never a hug at bedtime, only hand shaking. He then moved on to Antony and did the same. "Remember, no smoking in here, Mr. Cleopatra," he said.

  "Whatever you say, Boss," said Antony.

  We watched Schell leave the room, moving wearily, as though carrying some invisible burden. A few minutes later, the muffled sound of Mozart's Requiem came to us from down the hall and through the closed door.

  Hearing the sad music in the distance, Antony poured another drink for himself and said, "Funeral time."

  "What's wrong with him these days?" I asked, holding out my glass for a refill.

  "No more booze for you tonight," he said.

  "Come on."

  "When you're eighteen."

  "Okay," I said, knowing not to test his patience. "But what about the boss?"

  "The boss?" he said, taking a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his shirt pocket. "His feelings are on unemployment."

  "Well put," I said.

  "You better believe it," said Antony, lighting the cigarette he'd placed between his lips.

  "Why, though?" I asked. "We could be out there scrounging for a crust of bread, but business has never been better."

  "This shit can get to you after a while. Bilking people, scamming old ladies." He leaned back and blew a big smoke ring. A beautiful blue morpho flew right through the center, dispersing it.

  "That's what he does, though, and he's the best at it," I said.

  "He's a fucking artist, for sure, but it's not really right."

  "The widow looked pretty pleased to see her husband again tonight," I said. "How much do you think that was worth to her?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I know the arguments, but I'm telling you, he's caught the funk from it," he said, standing to lean across the table and grab Schell's glass. As he sat back down, he flicked his ash into the remaining champagne, and it fizzed.

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "Back when I worked the carnivals, wrestling palookas and bending iron bars with my teeth, I saw all manner of shills. These guys, some of them were champs, you know, made a healthy living at it. Some of them would con their
old ladies for a quarter if they could, but some a them actually had a conscience, and after a while, even if they never thought about it up front, underneath, the unhonestness of it ate them away."

  "Schell…a conscience?" I asked.

  "If not, why'd he take you in? I told him back when first he brought you home, I said, 'Boss, the last thing you need's some spic brat running around your life.' He said, 'Too late, Antony, he's ours and we have to raise him.'"

  "And then you grew to love me," I said.

  "Yeah," he said. "But, the boss, he's caught between a shit and a sweat."

  I shook my head, unable to conceive of Thomas Schell ever being confused about anything. The revelation disturbed me, and Antony must have seen this in my expression.

  "Don't worry, we'll think of something," he said, dropping the spent butt into the champagne glass. He stood up. "I'm hitting the sack." He pointed to the glass with the butt in it. "Do me a favor and get rid a this crap so I don't get in trouble."

  "Okay," I whispered, still deep in thought.

  Antony walked around behind me and put his palm on top of my head, his long fingers encompassing my crown like a normal size hand holding an apple. He shook me gently back and forth. "Schell's gonna be fine," he said. "You're a good kid, Diego. You're a helluva swami."

  He let go and lumbered toward the door, a small swarm of pine whites following in his wake.

  "Good night, Antony," I said.

  "Sleep tight, babe," he called back and then slipped out of the room as quickly as he could to keep the butterflies in.

  I sat quietly, surveying the veritable jungle of plants and potted trees surrounding the table and chairs. The blossoms were as varied in color and shape as the insects. Up above, I could see the stars through the glass skylight. In his room, Schell had exchanged the platter on his Victrola for some equally melancholic piece, and the serenity of the scene made me ponder this turning point in my life. I'm sure the moment comes to most earlier, but few have had a "father" as extraordinary as mine. In my conversation with Antony, it had struck me for the first time that Schell was merely mortal. The thought of him troubled, confused, made the world seem instantly more sinister.