The Art of the Devil Read online

  ‘What if he’s mean to me? I won’t be able to take it. I won’t survive. Oh, but what if he ignores me completely? That would be even worse.’ With one pinky she removed a fleck of lipstick from a corner of her mouth. ‘You’re so lucky, Elisabeth. You’re beautiful and calm and elegant. Everybody admires you, you know. All the men want you. And all the girls want to be you.’

  Elisabeth said nothing.

  Josette turned from the mirror. ‘Just please don’t desert me tonight,’ she said. ‘Whatever happens, stick by my side. Hold my hand. All right? I’ll owe you, Libby. Anything you want, I’ll owe you.’

  GAITHERSBURG

  The Chief gazed blankly out a tinted window.

  The black Cadillac Fleetwood passed a red-bricked firehouse, the imperial dome of City Hall, and the now-empty county fairgrounds, barren and lonely beneath a cold wind. Achieving the residential west side, the car slowed, cruising through an upscale neighborhood of cropped lawns and stately towering oaks. When they passed a deserted baseball field, Spooner’s mind made a sudden cross-connection: Max Whitman as a lumbering youth, drawing back a broom handle during a game of stickball. Max had not been the fastest among them, nor the most coordinated. But he had definitely been the strongest, and when he did manage to connect with a pitch, people ducked and windows got broken. By contrast, Emil Spooner had been quick but delicate, some might have said puny.

  The Cadillac turned into the driveway of an ordinary two-story brick colonial with a gated picket fence. Leaving the car, Spooner moved slowly up a flagstone walk. The parlor was sparsely furnished, lacking a woman’s touch. A low-ceilinged hallway led past a wall of generic framed family photos. Beyond a scrupulously sanitized kitchen stood a padlocked cellar door. As Spooner watched, Lou Candless keyed the padlock open.

  During one game of stickball, a tall kid named Freddy Carlson had accused Spooner of cheating. Sharp-featured, crafty, with small, hot eyes and an angry red birthmark covering his right cheek, Carlson had advanced quickly, tearing the broom handle from Spooner’s surprised hand. But then Max Whitman had come trotting over from the manhole cover which doubled for third base, seizing the broom and breaking it neatly in two over Carlson’s head. The kid had gone running home with tears streaming down across his birthmark. And the funny thing about it, Spooner thought now, was that he had been cheating that day. He had taken advantage of the lack of chalk to claim that the pitch had gone outside the strike zone, when in fact it had been dead on target.

  Lou Candless stepped aside, gesturing the Chief forward and down.

  Through the cellar darkness drifted odors of blood and sweat and smoke and urine and ordure and ancient, exotic-smelling mosses. A single bright lamp faced away from the cement stairs, picking out chains and clamps and baseball bats and coils of wire hanging from the wall. On a metal tray table rested scalpels and syringes and ampoules. In one corner hulked beneath a tarp an ominous shape, barely larger than a shoebox.

  Coming off the bottom step, Spooner ducked a thick cobweb. He caught Eddie Grieg’s eye, and nodded.

  Grieg climbed the stairs, leaving Spooner alone with the man in the chair.

  Hands fastened behind back, ankles bound, Max Whitman seemed to remain unaware of the Chief’s presence for two full minutes. At last he raised his head sluggishly, his broad cheeks distended with bruises, face swollen almost beyond recognition. Beneath a mask of blood, his blue eyes glinted.

  He met Spooner’s gaze and gave a hideous, gallows humor smile, lacking two front teeth.

  The Chief took a step closer. ‘Max,’ he said.

  Whitman just kept grinning: a flower missing two petals.

  Spooner regarded the man from a new angle, lifting his chin, trying to see something he had never before seen. Then he realized this might be perceived – rightfully – as looking down his nose. He made his head drop, tucking chin into chest.

  Whitman laughed hoarsely. He choked on blood, and the laugh gurgled away. Shadows formed peaks and valleys on his swollen face.

  ‘Max,’ said Spooner again. He grappled for the right words. But that was like grappling after something falling into a deep well – hopeless – and all he could manage was, ‘Why?’

  Whitman turned his head, spat red onto the bare cinder-block floor. ‘It’s not … me.’

  ‘It had to be you.’

  ‘No.’ The macabre grin widened. ‘It’s … you.’

  Spooner frowned. He checked his rising temper. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said plaintively. ‘I gave you everything. I trusted you.’

  Another hoarse laugh.

  ‘Help me understand, Max. What are you talking about?’

  Whitman sneered. ‘Her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You don’t even … know. That’s worst … of all.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Help me—’

  ‘Help you … understand.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rot in hell.’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s not just us,’ said Spooner at length. ‘This isn’t just about us.’

  No reply.

  ‘It’s about our sworn duty.’ Spooner paused. ‘It’s about our families. Do you want your family to pay the price for your mistakes, Max?’

  ‘Take your … empty threats,’ said Whitman. ‘And take your …’ A spasm of coughing, followed by another messy expectoration of blood. ‘Self-righteousness,’ he managed. ‘And take … your goddamned ignorance … and your sworn … duty … and shove them right up … your bony … back-stabbing … ass.’

  For another long minute, Emil Spooner faced his aide without speaking.

  Then he turned, and climbed the stairs again.

  Emerging into the sunlit kitchen, he found Candless and Grieg.

  ‘The gloves come off,’ he said hollowly.

  CENTREVILLE, VIRGINIA

  Richard Hart ran his eyes restlessly over a latticework of cracks in the motor court’s ceiling.

  He saw himself walking by a riverside, with his father and older sister. Daddy was whistling a spry tune: ‘If You Knew Suzy’. Then his sister whistled a few bars. And then, naturally, young Richard tried to take a turn. But when he pursed his lips, no sound came out except a thin, reedy whisper. His sister laughed cruelly. You know what they say about a boy who can’t whistle, Daddy! And Father glanced over, wearing an expression Hart would never forget: sorrowful and abstract and far-seeing, as if he was looking not at his son but through him, at something distant, hazy, and very sad …

  Receiving in Charlottesville the news of Hart’s failure by Route 30, the senator’s face had looked just exactly the same.

  A car pulled out of the Esso station next door. Headlights splashed away; the motor court’s ceiling darkened. Fade to black.

  Then another car pulled up to the pumps, and the ceiling was illuminated again. Cracks shifted; the curtain lifted.

  He was a few years older than he had been by the river, paying two bits admission at the fairground. A calliope played, steam hooting. Grease and sugar and oil and roasted corn wafted on the air, and sawdust and manure and frying peppers and onions. The roller coaster and carousel creaked dangerously. Hollow pops sounded from the shooting gallery. Barkers cried hoarse pitches. Geeks, bingo, strongmen, bearded ladies, mirror mazes … and the gypsy fortune-teller, her breath sweetly rancid. Fingers leathery as she traced his palm. Eyes crusted with opaque cataracts. She leaned in close. A short life, this one; a pity.

  The car next door pulled away. Fade to black.

  He flipped over, groaning. The thin motor court mattress played hell with his already broken body. But Myron would not be ready with the rifle, in New York, until morning. The only option besides the motor court was returning to the senator’s mansion, facing the man with news of his latest failure – and seeing again that disappointed expression. And that was really no option at all.

  Headlights splashed, and the cracks rearranged.

  The scene now was the lodge in Charlottesville: t
he first day he had encountered Senator Bolin, the day which had given meaning to the rest of his life. BPOE read the banner, Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks. Hart had gone inside, that afternoon, seeking only shelter from the cold. But among a hodgepodge of local businessmen and laborers and drifters he had found the senator, tall and noble and patrician, spotless white suit flowing like liquid, striking a dramatic pose behind the lectern. John Bolin belonged to a dynasty of Virginia gentry which stretched back to the Mayflower – his ancestors had defended their plantation, tooth and nail and flintlock and musket, against Indians and Redcoats – and his stance communicated this noble lineage.

  Positioning himself in one dark corner, Hart listened. The senator spoke passionately about the dangers of integration, the feebleness of current foreign policy, the need to retake America for Americans. Then he mingled with the crowd, smiling grimly, shaking hands. His grip was just as Hart expected, strong and firm and uncompromising. His spectacled gaze was clear, charged with a peculiar paradoxical energy, both cold and hot. Hart volunteered on the spot to join the senator’s cause in whatever capacity might be available. Bolin looked back at him evenly, somewhat skeptically, and asked if he had been a veteran …

  Hart’s breath came out with a shudder. He flipped over again. Reaching for the low night-table, he lit a cigarette. Stabbing it out angrily, he lay back again and stared at the cracks. Must sleep, he thought. Must rest. Must stay sharp … Matter of life and death.

  But superstitions flickered behind a thin scrim in the back of his mind – fortune-tellers and will-o’-the-wisps and bad providence – and he heard his sister’s cackle: You know what they say about a boy who can’t whistle, Daddy!

  Headlights flooded the ceiling; the cracks shifted again. A narrow back alley, an intimate lounge, and a shadowy figure – Hart himself – stepping through the door.

  The bar’s patrons – all white, male, well-dressed, and studiously respectable-looking – engaged in muted conversation, which died away upon Hart’s entrance. Many wore green carnations in their lapels. Others wore red neckties or pinky rings. The bartender’s hair was cut like Caesar’s, lying in a straight line across his forehead. As the man mixed Hart’s drink, he used an unfrosted glass – a signal inside the subculture indicating that the recipient was to be considered suspicious until further notice.

  Opening a tab, Hart nursed the Martini, keeping head down and shoulders rounded. Slowly, banter around him recommenced, cautiously at first, and then with increasing freedom. By the time he finished his first drink, a man at his elbow had engaged him in conversation on the subject of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who after what seemed like eons of ‘waiting ’til next year’ had finally had their year. By the time he finished his second, the man was inviting him to a private house-party just around the corner – catnip to a vice cop; either the man had thrown caution to the wind, or was giving Hart enough rope with which to hang himself. Regretfully, Hart declined. He was just here, he said, to lay the dust. As a traveling salesman, he’d spent a long day on the road, and a bustling party sounded like a bit much. His next drink came in a chilled glass, sending a clear signal to the bar’s other patrons: all clear.

  He saw himself picking up his drink and ambling over to Arthur Glashow, who looked something like the actor Howard Keel, and wore a bracelet representing the Greek letter lambda. Hart indicated Glashow’s Martini and raised his own. ‘Great minds,’ he said. ‘Dirty? They’re best when dirty.’

  ‘I’ve never had one dirty,’ Glashow answered.

  ‘Well, your time has come. My treat.’

  Shadows flickered; then Hart saw himself sitting beside Glashow at the bar, checking his watch. ‘Got to get back to my hotel before the witching hour,’ he said, ‘or I’ll turn into a pumpkin. It’s just down the street …’

  Arthur Glashow checked his own watch. ‘Gee, it’s about my time, too.’

  They settled the bill and left the lounge together, stepping out into a balmy Indian summer night. After casting a cautious glance over his shoulder, Hart reached for the man. Of course, Hart was no queer. He did what he did in that alley only for the cause. Earlier in life, he had done it when necessary only for a roof above his head on a rainy night. And back in the hotel, he continued doing it only for the sake of the camera hidden behind the one-way mirror …

  You know what they say about a boy who can’t whistle, Daddy!

  And two weeks later, when he put a single bullet into Glashow’s hairline just below the right ear, dismembered the corpse, and scattered it between three bodies of water, he did it only for the senator. By then he had grown somewhat fond of Glashow, who had faithfully followed instructions, and had deserved better than a shot in the back of the head. But the senator came first. The senator always came first.

  Through slatted blinds, headlights continued to shift, advancing and receding. Again, the cracks in the ceiling dissolved, swirling to form a new picture … but this time, Hart’s attention remained on the window, behind which lights moved. An instinct was clamoring, from the deep place where superstitions take root. Nothing seemed to have changed …

  … but something was wrong.

  He levered himself off the mattress in darkness, following an intuition which hardened in the space of a heartbeat to a certainty.

  They’re here.

  He got a crutch beneath himself, crossed the room, and pulled down one slat of the blinds. There – by the hedges on the far side of the parking lot, beside his Buick, beneath a few plump flakes of falling snow: a police cruiser.

  And inside the lighted motor court office: a blue-suited officer, talking with the desk clerk.

  As Hart watched, the clerk pointed toward his room.

  THIRTEEN

  GETTYSBURG

  Most of the revelers seemed to have gotten a head start on the celebrating; well-oiled voices and laughter drowned out the music from the phonograph.

  Weaving back and forth through the throng, hauling armfuls of lambswool and Harris Tweed, Elisabeth saw much giggling, flirting, and slapping of rumps. Scotch flowed freely, along with wine and beer and Martinis and highballs. From the kitchen doorway Miss Dunbarton watched over the proceedings ceremoniously, skirt ballooning out above an absurd crinoline.

  Just before seven, someone switched on a floodlight mounted outside the north-facing window, catching the year’s first snowfall in an unexpected frieze. The party-goers paused, overcome with the timing. For a few seconds Bing Crosby’s was the only voice in the parlor, singing, appropriately enough, ‘White Christmas’.

  Then girls shrieked, men laughed, and a cheer was raised, along with countless glasses.

  When their shift ended, Josette led Elisabeth by one elbow to the powder room.

  As she touched up her make-up, the younger girl babbled on nervously about the men at the party – Bill Brennan was looking particularly handsome tonight – and the fact that James had not yet made his arrival. Probably, he was waiting, she said, to make a dramatic entrance. Everything was a calculation with him. That was the problem with attractive men; they thought of nobody except themselves. Next time she fell in love, she would find someone intelligent but ordinary – why not? What did she care for looks, really? At one point in her life, sure, but you only had to burn yourself so many times before you learned not to reach for a hot stove. What she needed was a good average man, a Jim Anderson type, a hard worker and steady provider, not some kind of film star gigolo. And speaking of hard work, had Elisabeth noticed what a lousy job Jane Carlson had done cleaning the parlor that afternoon? A good half-inch of dust remained everywhere. The Hummel figurines looked as if they stood in a snowdrift. Jane was a nice enough girl, but you could only cut corners for so long before it came back to haunt you … but here she went, blabbing again: her very worst trait.

  Adding a final unnecessary flourish of mascara, Josette batted her eyelashes in the mirror. ‘Now,’ she said bravely, ‘let’s join the party.’

  Together they left the
powder room. The bash was on an upward swing, with groups of girls waiting to be approached for a dance, and groups of farmhands and agents drinking, trying to gain courage to approach them. In the center of the parlor, an area near the Christmas tree served as a dance floor for those bold or drunk enough to make use of it.

  Smiling with determination, Josette headed straight for the bar, where she downed one scotch in a gulp and then took another to mingle. Elisabeth stuck close, holding an Old-Fashioned she didn’t plan on touching. As long as she stayed near Josette, she could avoid falling into any conversations of her own. Getting through the evening with the least possible interaction was her goal. As soon as escape seemed feasible, she would claim a headache and slip off to bed.

  They floated through the crowd, picking up threads of conversation. ‘You’d think some of the glamour of having him around might rub off,’ one girl told another, ‘but you’d be wrong; the old battleaxe makes sure of that.’ Two farmhands engaged in a lively, not to say contentious, debate, with one giving credit for the Bums’ recent victory to Johnny Podres for pitching his game seven shutout, and another loudly yielding that honor to left-fielder Sandy Amoros, for running down Yogi Berra’s long fly ball and thus enabling Pee Wee Reese to catch Gil McDougald at first. A clutch of Secret Service agents, looking ill-at-ease in checkered sports coats, watched the snowfall through a window. ‘Question is,’ said one sagely, ‘will it stick? If it warms up just five degrees, you won’t find anything on the ground by tomorrow afternoon.’

  Josette sidled up behind Bill Brennan, who was examining Jane Carlson’s stocking. ‘Well, you just can’t see the seam at all,’ he asked, ‘can you? Here, lift that ankle up a little bit higher and let me take a closer look …’

  Becoming aware of a presence behind him, he turned. ‘Why, if it isn’t Sister Rosetta Tharpe. My, but you clean up nice.’

  Josette giggled. ‘You ain’t so bad yourself, Bill.’

  He slung an arm over her shoulder. ‘How’s tricks, dollface?’

  ‘Now that my shift’s over,’ she said, ‘just fine. Bill, I want you to meet my friend Elisabeth. Libby, Bill Brennan.’