Piper Houdini Nightmare on Esopus Island

A crowd of fawning young women had gathered outside the Hotel Ambassador on Park Avenue and Fifty-First Street. The hotel was one of the first skyscrapers to be built in the city’s Turtle Bay residential district. But that wasn’t the reason for the shrill gathering outside the hotel’s rusticated and raised first story. Rumor had surfaced among the nearby and not-so-nearby residents that somewhere within the twenty-two story building a party was being thrown for the cast of Son of the Sheik. It was also said that Rudolph Valentino himself was staying in the top floor of the Hotel Ambassador’s stepped peak. A few weeks earlier, Valentino and his troupe had embarked on a nationwide tour to promote the new film. The critics had been heralding Valentino’s performance as one of the best in his career. It was Friday the 13th, a day that Valentino’s mother had always said was unlucky to undertake journeys or begin new projects. Valentino had heard that even the great Houdini, who was ordinarily without fear or superstition, would take no risks whatsoever on this day. Yet here he was, twenty-five hundred miles from his beautiful Falcon Lair in Beverly Hills. Outside the entrance to the hotel, police had erected barriers and posted armed guards. But the fortification was a pointless endeavor because at the moment, none of the movie’s cast was inside the building. The actual celebration was taking place a short distance from the Ambassador. A six-hundred-foot tunnel ran under the alley from the hotel to the Club Trocadero where the party was in full swing. Valentino, however, was not among the merrymakers. The thirty-one-year-old actor had returned to the dark tunnel hoping to sneak off for a quick tryst with his leading lady without fear of discovery by his agent or publicist. Or his bodyguard. Which may not have been the brightest idea, he thought, as a stocky silhouette emerged at the far end of the corridor. The figure approached him and Valentino shifted to the right to allow him to pass. The shadow also moved right. Valentino crossed to the left side of the tunnel. The shadow moved left. Oh, no. Not this again, Valentino thought. One of the hazards of being a movie star was that sometimes, pretentious men who had seen him brawl on the big screen would try to assert their masculinity by challenging him. Particularly jealous boyfriends. But despite the roles he played in the flickers, Valentino had never been much of a fighter. The figure stopped two feet in front of him. Though the underpass wasn’t well lit, the actor could tell that beneath his trilby hat the man’s features were categorically byzantine. But he couldn’t tell if it was a trick of the light or if his would-be contender’s hair actually gave off a reddish shimmer. “Rudolph Valentino?” the husky man asked in broken English. “Now look here, old sport—I don’t want any trouble,” Valentino began. The blow that followed was a delicate thrust to his lower abdomen. The actor put up his hand to ward off a second, much harder punch that he was certain would follow. But it never came. Valentino remained in a hunched position and gave his assailant a wary look. The strange-looking man tipped his hat and then walked to the end of the tunnel from which he had emerged. “I have some of the strangest fans,” Valentino mused, his voice echoing off the tunnel walls.