Mid-June in Atlantic City was crowded, and the heat was scalding. Even in the early evening, the beaches were a patchwork of colored blankets, on top of which parents had placed picnic baskets and sleeping babies in white Moses baskets. Young women lounged in kelly green bathing costumes and stockings rolled down to the knees. The crash of the surf reached all the way to the boardwalk, where Bess stood scanning the row of hotels that stretched for miles.
Locating the photographer Charles Radley had not been difficult. Harry’s old secretary had found him easily enough, in under two weeks, through a few letters of inquiry to friends in Atlantic City. Bess felt certain this man was safeguarding some secret of Harry’s; perhaps Harry had even left with him the message he intended for Bess. But Charles Radley, it turned out, was no more than a newspaperman, a photographer for The Atlantic City Daily Press who also did some freelance work on his own time. She had never heard of him. She herself had only been to Atlantic City a handful of times with Harry, when he had performed his bridge-jumping stunts during the busy summer months.
She had written to Mr. Radley under a pseudonym, asking him to meet her at the United States Hotel. She had heard he did freelance photography, she said, and she wanted to hire him for a job.
When Stella heard Bess was traveling to Atlantic City for the weekend, she jumped at the chance to accompany her. The baby was due in the fall, and she wanted to be home with Abby when she got bigger. And Fred was so busy at work. She desperately needed a vacation, she said.
Bess couldn’t tell her that the trip was really about following the trail of the second code—she knew Stella would think she was imagining things—but still, she hated to travel alone. She told Stella she was going for some business meetings related to Harry’s estate, but she would mostly be free. Niall had offered to look after the café while she was gone, and they traveled by train into New Jersey and arrived only an hour before Bess was scheduled to meet with Mr. Radley. She left Stella in the hotel room and made her way downstairs to the lobby.
She was uneasy about the meeting. So much of her marriage with Harry had been about the written word, the notes they left for each other in one room or another; and so much of Harry’s career had involved using images to mislead, that it did seem plausible that he could be communicating his second code to her through the words inside photographs. But what if she was wrong? She wasn’t sure she would be able to believe in much if she could not believe in this.
The United States Hotel was massive and garish; it spanned fourteen acres between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. It was the largest hotel in the nation, and a marvel of architecture. She and Harry had stayed there after it had first been built; the hotel was hosting Harry’s performances for two weeks, and a suite of rooms was included in the contract, for the Houdinis as well as their employees. Bess had been delighted by the ghastly size of the property; she had found the place to be a playground. From the outside, the building was an identical series of brick stories with long white balconies; on the inside, the corridors were carpeted in the same red carpet throughout. While Harry buried himself in work, she went swimming and came back holding pink boxes of saltwater taffy and newspapers with his picture on the front page. Even after fame had found him, he never ceased being thrilled by his face on newsprint.