The Crime Boss and the Illusionist

The maximum security prison recreation room was crowded that evening. The famous illusionist, Robert Pennyhold, was on TV. He was a favorite of the inmates, who liked to argue about how he did his spectacular illusions and made his famous escapes. When the boss of Chicago's northwest side, Boris Ivanachev, entered, his cell mate, "Banger" Bornga called to him, "Hey Boris, I saved you a seat in the front row."

Ivanachev slowly strolled over, waving a friendly hand to inmates in his prison gang, glaring at his enemies, letting them know he hadn't forgotten whatever transgression made him angry. He was a lifer in his fifties. The feds had finally caught up to him at a time when he'd been contemplating retirement. However much longer he had to live, he would behind prison walls. Finally, he plopped his muscular frame into the seat next to Bornga. "What's the big deal about this guy Pennyhold? You'd think his tricks were real the way these cons stare at the boob tube."

"Tricks or not, they're sure spectacular. He does things I've never seen any other magician pull off."

As the show began, Ivanachev lit a cigarette, which was against the prison rules, but the guards dared not stop him. They feared him. Everybody knew that Ivanachev would have a person blown away simply for looking cross eyed at him.

On the TV dramatic music started. Assistants made a box out of paper panels. The music peaked, and Pennyworth crashed through the paper sheet of the front panel. He went into his patter and did small illusions, such as making fire appear and disappear from his fingers, card tricks, illusions with birds, and so forth. He went on to his more spectacular stuff, sticking swords into a box that his beautiful assistant was crunched up into, teleporting her from a box on one side of the stage to the other, sawing her in two with an electric saw and putting her together again, floating her and himself up to the ceiling and then disappearing to appear somewhere else.

Each illusion was more spectacular than the last. Nonetheless, Ivanachev yawned, bored. Big deal, it's all tricks. This Pennyhold is just a cut above his peers, he thought.

For the finale, Pennyhold did one of his famous escapes. He stripped down to a bathing suit so that the audience could see that he had nothing hidden in his clothing. His assistants handcuffed his hands behind his back, shackled his ankles together, put a straight jacket on him, and wound chains around him which they locked with a padlock. Members of the audience were brought up to the stage to examine that Pennyhold was so bound up that he could barely move a muscle and that all the locks and chains were real. His assistants laid him in a wooden coffin and chained it shut with more padlocks which the members of the audience were also allowed to examine. The coffin was placed in a metal container with an open top. Gasoline was poured into the metal container and lit. Flames shot up high, obscuring the coffin. The sounds of chains rattling could be heard. Suddenly, Pennyhold leaped out of the flames, unhurt, brushing off a few sparks that lingered on his skin.

Ivanachev rubbed his chin thoughtfully. For the first time during the performance, he was really impressed. A brilliant idea came to him. If I could learn how this Pennyhold does his escapes, I could get out of here.