Daniel Stashower - The Dime Museum Murders

The barman stopped polishing the counter. Conversations died. Heads turned toward my brother. If there had been swinging saloon doors, we'd have heard them creak.

"I-I'm afraid I can't help you there, sir," said the barman.

"Not to worry!" said the magnanimous Harry. "But if you should happen to see him-or any of his acquaintances-I would be obliged if you would pass along a message. Tell him that the Great Houdini is looking for him. Good day!"

Harry headed for the door. I followed four steps behind, hoping no one had noticed that we came in together.

"I think that went very well," he said on the sidewalk outside. He pointed to another saloon. "Let's try in here!"

"Harry-" I grabbed his arm but he shrugged it off.

"Honestly, Dash. Sometimes I don't know who fusses over me more-you or Mama."

And so we repeated the scene in every saloon and flop house for three streets running. In each instance Harry would saunter up to the bar, slap his hand on the counter and announce his interest in Jake Stein-"the notorious criminal," as he took to describing him.

The reactions ranged from shock to bemusement to outright laughter, but Harry soldiered on with dogged persistence. "Tell him the Great Houdini is looking for him!" he called at each stop.

We were just exiting a gambling house on Humphrey Street when I noticed that we were no longer alone in our wanderings. There were two of them, stocky rough-hewn characters wearing gray cloth coats and peaked caps. They dogged us through five more stops, keeping a fair distance, but paying close attention. At last, as we worked our way over to Bowery Street, the taller of the pair stepped up and tapped Harry on the shoulder. "Understand you're looking for Mr. Stein?" His cap made it difficult to make out his features, except for his nose. It was clear he had put in some time in a boxing ring.

"Why, yes," said my brother. "Would you happen-?"

Our friend put a finger to his lips. "This way," he said, motioning down an alley.

"Uh, Harry-" I began.

"Come along, Dash!" Harry called over his shoulder, gaily. "Mustn't keep Mr. Stein waiting! Honestly-" he turned to deliver some comment on the intransigence of younger brothers, but the remark was cut short by the thud of a fist to the solar plexus. Harry went down hard, gasping violently for breath. Rough hands twisted my arms behind my back and shoved me against a brick wall. "Not-not fair," Harry gasped, raising himself up on one elbow. "I wasn't-I wasn't set."

Our two attackers glanced at each other, amused by the pluck of the little man with the tidy bow tie. "Did you hear that?" said the one who had floored Harry. "He wasn't set." He grinned and said it again. That turned out to be a mistake.

My brother and I had been fairly green when we arrived in New York some ten years earlier. We did not stay green for long. We learned to make our way with our fists, and there were few neighborhood hooligans and bullies who had not mixed it up with the Brothers Houdini now and again. We were tough boys who grew into tough young men. My brother could bend iron bars in his bare hands. Me, I was just plain scrappy.

"He wasn't set," said the one pinning my arms, still enjoying a nice chuckle over it.

"I wasn't either," I said, and I drove the heel of my shoe into his instep. His grip loosened and I bought some fighting room with an elbow to the windpipe. Harry, meanwhile, plowed his head into the stomach of the shorter man. A metal pipe clattered onto the paving stones.

"Now, my man," Harry said, "we shall see how you do in a fair contest!"

"Harry," I said, fending off a rabbit punch, "just shut up and fight."

"Very well," he said, somewhat exasperated. He cocked his arm and hurled his thunderbolt-a right hand straight to the other man's jaw hinge. It made a sound like a cracking walnut off the hard bone. The man's head snapped back but his feet never moved. He was out before he hit the ground.

This put a healthy scare into the taller one. I saw his hand move under his coat and I figured I didn't want to know what was under there. I sent a kick to the knee and hopped back while his legs melted under him. He dropped to a kneeling position as I grabbed the back of his head and brought it smashing down on my knee, which happened to be shooting upward at the time. His head made a funny sound, too, but his was a whole lot wetter. I let go and he flopped backward in a heap.

Harry examined his knuckles for bruising, in much the way he might have chosen an apple from the corner vendor's cart. "I wasn't set," he said.

"So I gathered. Come on."

We turned and walked toward the mouth of the alley, and that's when we ran into the man with the Smith and Wesson. He was small, red-haired, and he had three friends with him. One of them was cracking his knuckles, another had a length of chain wrapped around his first, and the third had a knife that he kept flicking open and closed.

"Which one of you is the Great Houdini?" asked the man with the gun.

"I am," my brother said.

"Mr. Stein will see you now."

The red-haired man kept the gun trained on us while his associates dragged our two unconscious sparring partners out of the alley. The pair were loaded roughly into a waiting carriage. When they returned, one of the men held a hank of coarse bailing rope. "Hands behind your backs," said the red-haired man. His voice was strangely high and musical.

"You're tying up the Great Houdini?" Harry asked incredulously. "This is-"

"Shut up, Harry," I said, as a blindfold was slipped over my eyes and tied roughly at the back.

"Nobody needs to get hurt," said the high voice. "We're just taking a little ride."

It's fortunate that gangster movies were still some years away, or I imagine that phrase would have filled me with dread. I wouldn't say I was thrilled about "taking a little ride'' in any case, but I didn't know enough to conjure visions of cement overshoes. Harry, for his part, was busy muttering about the indignity of having his hands tied in a "saucy little half-hitch." Happily, our captors seemed to be ignoring him.

We were bundled into a covered carriage and I heard a rap on the roof to signal the driver, who whipped the horses to a brisk trot. In spite of my blindfold, which smelled faintly of salted fish, I was able to hold onto a loose thread of where we were going. I knew the area well, and could track our progress by a variety of sounds bobbing up through the constant clatter of the wooden wheels on granite slabs-the shrill cry of a fruit vendor, the gaseous roar of the elevated train, the tinny wheeze of an organ grinder. Aromas, too, seemed much stronger to me as I sat blindfolded in the back of the carriage. The warm balm of roasting nuts mingled horribly with the sickly stench of an open sewer; the all-pervading funk of horse effluvia blended with the gritty bite of burning coal. Gradually these gave way to the sounds of birds and water, and I realized we were nearing the East River. The granite beneath our wheels now yielded to wooden planking. "We're getting out," the high voice said as the carriage drew to a halt. "Don't even think about giving us the slip." Mercifully, my brother said nothing.

Rough hands pushed me out of the carriage and I stumbled badly as I misjudged the step. Someone took hold of me at the elbow and led me forward, with the ludicrous warning "Watch your step." A change in wind signalled our progress along a dock.

"Step up," I was told. I realized with a shock, as I climbed a shallow set of stairs, that I was being helped aboard a boat of some kind. Several pairs of hands half-lifted, half-pushed me a short distance through the air, and my feet came down with a thump onto a wooden deck. I felt the gentle roll of the water beneath me. I scarcely had time to register these new sensations when I heard the thud of my brother's feet hitting the deck, and a shouted instruction to "bring 'em below."