Waiting

by Stephen Jones

  “We need to get hold of one of these Hands of Old Glory. It may be, as you say, the phonus balonus, but we need to make sure. So we got to find the severed hand of an executed criminal. Am I right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hoover.”

  “And it’s got to be fresh, I reckon. Let me just check out who’s coming up for the hot squat.” He pressed a button on his intercom and spoke into it. “Miss Gandy, will you bring in a list of the folks who are going to the electric chair in the coming fortnight?”

  Brady heard a faint “Right away, Mr. Hoover!” and surprisingly soon Miss Gandy was in the office with a neatly-typed list which she laid on Hoover’s desk before leaving the room, casting a quick friendly smile in Brady’s direction as she did so. Hoover studied the document.

  “Huh, so there’s ‘Machine Gun’ Willie Biggs down in Idaho, but he’s got a mother who’ll kick up hell if we take the body. These mothers of condemned criminals are the pits. Officially we need consent from the penitentiary and the prisoner and the relations to get hold of the body. Then, there’s Velma van Horn, but just maybe she didn’t hack her husband to pieces and feed him to her pet ’gator, and her uncle’s a Congressman. Could be a reprieve for the broad . . . Steve ‘Slugger’ Smith . . . No. He’s got God, so he won’t buy it—Wait a minute! Here’s Obadiah Willums in Sing Sing. An old guy: cut off his wife’s head with a pruning hook because she yacked too much. He’s got no one who cares about him, least of all the relatives who get the farm. He might just say yes. We tell him the FBI laboratories want his body for studies in the brain of the superior criminal or some such balonus. That might hook him. Now when is he due to meet Old Sparky? Sing Sing on the thirteenth! New York State. We’re in the money, young man. Ever been to Sing Sing, Brady? I’ll get Miss Gandy to arrange a visit as soon as possible.”

  March 4th, 1937 (from the diary of H. P. Lovecraft)

  When Mr. Brady called yesterday I was able to tell him I had seen the Doc he recommended. Apparently he was already acquainted with the results of my examination, and had made provisional arrangements for me to go into hospital to undergo further tests and possibly an operation. I protested in the strongest possible terms at this intrusion into my personal affairs. Mr. Brady listened patiently to my outburst, then remarked quietly that my continued health and well-being was his greatest concern. He told me that all expenses for my treatment and operation would be taken care of, but before that could happen, he would ask one favour of me. I told him to name it.

  “I would like you to help me to break into the Miskatonic Library and steal the Necronomicon,” he said.

  My utter astonishment can without difficulty, I presume, be imagined. I asked him in crudely vernacular terms what his “game” was, and he, as the vernacular also has it, “came clean.”

  After he had explained, it took several minutes for me to regain my customary coolth and composure. So the visions were real! My dismay that I had been something of a dupe these last few weeks was mitigated by Mr. Brady’s sincere admiration for my work. And, after all, I am a patriot and my respect for that great American Mr. J. Edgar Hoover knows no bounds. It would seem that I am to become an ex officio G-Man! Mr. Brady enjoined on me the utter secrecy of this mission, which not even Aunt Annie must know about. I agreed.

  Last night my visions took me back to that accursed theatre. Brady was there and in mortal danger. I tried in my dream to cry out to him to be wary, but no sound came. I await news from him with trepidation. For all his underhandedness he is, like me, a gentleman, and I can’t help liking the fellow.

  March 5, 1937

  As Hoover had correctly surmised, Brady had never been to Sing Sing. He had interviewed prisoners in other penitentiaries, but never one of the condemned on Death Row. The prison governor seemed most anxious to assist and asked Brady to convey his best regards to “Mr. Hoover.” Brady found this degree of courtesy, often to the point of obsequiousness, among officials where J. Edgar Hoover was concerned, and wondered if the director “had something on” the governor. It was usually the case.

  As he led Brady through a succession of metallic passages and locked doors, he said, “You’ll find Obadiah Willums a queer sort of guy. I reckon he’s positively looking forward to the chair. Why does the Bureau want the body, by the way? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Our forensic laboratories are conducting a number of highly advanced scientific experiments on brains that will enable us to identify the criminal mind almost from birth in the future.” Brady was astonished and ashamed at his ability to come up with this sort of nonsense.

  “Really? Really? Modern science is a wondrous thing, sir. That’s most interesting. Mr. Hoover is a truly great man.”

  “He is indeed, sir.”

  “But I wouldn’t say Willums is exactly a criminal; more crazy. He told me that this kind of weird creature came out of the well in his yard and told him to snuff his old lady. I reckon he ought to be in a booby hatch rather than Sing Sing, but he won’t have it. He says he’s sane and he wants to go to the chair, but if he really wants to sit in Old Sparky he must be bughouse.”

  “Mr. Hoover is particularly interested in the criminally insane.”

  “Well, okay then. Mr. Hoover is one hell of a great guy. And you be sure to tell him I said so.”

  “I certainly will, sir.”

  “And if he—or you—ever want to come down to see an execution with Old Sparky at work, you only have to ask. You will be most welcome.”

  “Thank you, governor. That is very generous. I am sure Mr. Hoover will appreciate the offer.”

  “I sure hope he does. Well, here we are: Death Row. You’ll notice I have just had everything repainted. Cerise-pink. My wife, Florine, chose the color. It’s part of our humane policy to make things feel kind of homey here. I’ll hand you over now to the Reverend Mortice, our Death Row chaplain. He does a great job here with the prisoners, saving their souls and such.”

  The Reverend Mortice was a small, round, smiling individual with the manner of a practiced receiver of confessions, like a solicitor with extra unction. As he led Brady to the interview room, he smiled at the guards in the corridor and spoke to each by their Christian names and waved to all the men in their condemned cells.

  “I have a great love in my heart for Obadiah,” he told Brady, “but, sadly, I cannot get him to repent. If only they repent then they can go straight from that chair of death into the life eternal of paradise. It’s the free gift from the Lord to all us sinners. But if they will not repent, then they must go to Hell. It gives me great distress to think of any of these poor souls in a place of eternal torment. Perhaps you can persuade him to repent.”

  “I think that’s your job, reverend. I am here to—on another mission.” Then, witnessing the crushed look on the Reverend Mortice’s face, he added: “I’ll do my best.”

  Mortice beamed. He opened the door of the interview room, which was painted the same hideous shade of “cerise-pink” as the corridor. It reminded Brady of flayed flesh. “Someone to see you, Obadiah.”

  A little wizened, bald old man in dungarees sat rigid and upright at a table. He glanced with scorn at Mortice, but showed mild interest in his new visitor. He did not speak until the chaplain had left the room and then he fixed Brady with a disconcertingly mild gaze.

  “You can see me, son,” said Obadiah Willums, “but I ain’t going to say no more. Tomorrow I’m going to meet Old Sparky and we’ll get along just fine.”

  In quiet, respectful tones, Brady stated the purpose of his visit, which was for Willums to sign a paper giving consent for his body after execution to be handed over to the FBI for “research.”

  “Search?” said Willums. “Search for what? You won’t find nothing save bones and a bit of old gristle. What’s the use of searching for that?”

  “Well, in that case, that is what we will find out, Mr. Willums.”

  “You folk are the darndest fools. Still, ain’t no concern of mine. But I done nothin’
wrong, son.”

  Brady looked at Willums enquiringly. A miscarriage of justice would complicate matters beyond measure.

  “Oh, I killed the old beaver all right. Cut her head clean off.” Brady heaved an involuntary sigh of relief. “Nice and neat too. But I had to, son, and I don’t regret it, no, sir. The Old One tells me to.”

  “The Old One?”

  “Yes. The Old ’Un. Ain’t you heared of the Old ’Uns? You college-educated boys don’t know nothing, do you? Up Dunwich way where I lives, you get the Old Ones. They comes up from under and speak to you, not in words like other folk, but like light through the brain. And they smell like thunder, and sometimes you see them and sometimes you don’t, but you sure know when and where they’ve been. For they come with all Hell in their wings, which they stretch up to the stars from where they come a long way back. My grandaddy spoke with them and taught me to speak with them too. And we had an Old ’Un specially ours and he lived in that there old well in our backyard. And every midsummer eve we’d lay flowers on the well and throw a cow down there or maybe a couple of hogs, but mostly a cow, hogs being too valuable. And the Old ’Un’d come up and maybe show himself or maybe not, but my wife, Martha, she never see’d him because she didn’t hold with the Old ’Un, being in with the Holy Joes up the Baptist Chapel. And she called the Old ’Un all kinds of names, like Old Moloch and Beelzebub and Satan’s Brood and such, and the Old ’Un took it til one day he says to me, ‘Oby’—that’s what he calls me, see—‘Oby, that old lady of yours don’t like me, nor you, nor your hogs, and she ain’t no use anymore. You give me her head; I’ll see you right.’ So that’s how it come about. And so one night close to the end of summer, when the whippoorwills were a’screaming in the dusky air, I picks up my pruning hook and I snips her head and I throws it down the well to the Old ’Un. And the Old ’Un goes Boom! And up comes a smell like thunder, and all the whippoorwills stop their screeching, and a great peace comes down on the earth. And later comes the po-lice and all, and they find Martha sitting upright on a kitchen chair with the gurt old Bible open at the fifth chapter of Matthew in front of her on the table, but no head to read it. So here I be. And you can do with my old body what you like because Old Sparky, he’s going to take my soul right back down to the Old ’Un, where I belong.”

  There was a silence in the room when Willums had finished speaking. For a full minute Brady hardly dared move. Then, slowly, he took out a pen and passed it across the table with the paper for Willums to sign, while the old man hummed gently to himself.

  “What do you think I’ve ordered for my last meal, son?” said Willums suddenly.

  Brady shook his head.

  “Pork!” And he chuckled with delight. “I’ve always kept hogs, see, since I were a young shaver. I was known for my hogs, so I’m going to have pork. Best darned meat in the whole world, pork. That’s one reason why I had to kill my old lady. The Old ’Un told me she didn’t respect my hogs no more. I couldn’t have that, so I got out my old pruning hook—not a gun. I don’t hold with no guns, ever since my Daddy shot off his foot chasin’ a bear—and I sliced off her mean old head neat as you like. So I’m going to have some nice fat pork with a bully piece o’cracklin’ before I sits me down in Old Sparky. Do you think you can fix me that, son, for sure? Nice piece o’cracklin’?”

  “I sure can, Mr. Willums.”

  “Then I’ll sign your paper. Anything more I can do for you, son?”

  Brady, who felt unaccountably sorry for Mortice, gently hinted that Obadiah Willums would make the chaplain very happy if he repented of his crime.

  “But I don’t repent it, son,” said Willums. “I’m darn glad I sliced off her mean old head. She was all dried-up like a stick, with not an ounce of juice left in her. That Old ’Un had the right of it.”

  “But you could say you repent, couldn’t you Mr. Willums? Just to keep Reverend Mortice happy. You don’t have to mean it.”

  Willums was silent for a while, considering this, then he slapped his thigh and let out a yell of laughter.

  “My! If that isn’t the durndest thing I ever heared of! I’ll give him repentance, the old coyote! I’ll lead that smirking, psalm-singing preacher man in a square dance he won’t forget, no sir! And inside, me and the Old ’Un will be laughing fit to bust. Here’s your paper, son. Signed and sealed. Darn me! That’s the biggest laugh I’ve had since old Great Aunt Thirza fell into the grain silo and drownded herself in corn!”

  As he left the interview room, Brady could still hear Obadiah Willums chortling to himself. In the corridor he met Reverend Mortice, who heard the noise and looked at him enquiringly.

  “He is sobbing over his sins,” said Brady. “Give him a few moments. I think you’ll find him ready to repent.”

  “Bless you, Mr. Brady,” said Reverend Mortice, a wide smile splitting his round face. “And Praise the Lord! Today you and Mr. Hoover have saved a soul for paradise!”

  It would have been inhuman of Brady not to feel a little ashamed; still, the body of Obadiah Willums, condemned murderer, now belonged to the FBI.

  THREE

  The Armies of the Night

  I

  March 6, 1937

  NATHAN BRADY’S SEAT AT the Roxy Palace Theater was some way toward the back of the circle, but he had a good view. It had been kind of Miss Ellie Jackson to secure him the complimentary seat. He looked down into the audience. Most of the men were wearing black tie and dinner jackets, like him, though a few people in the boxes were in white tie and tails. Among them, Brady was astonished to see his own director, J. Edgar Hoover, with his faithful assistant, Clyde Tolson. Brady noted, with something of the innate snobbery of the well-favored, that a white tie did not in any way diminish Hoover’s air of squat brutishness.

  But his boss’s farouche appearance was nothing to the man in whose box they were evidently guests. A huge man, mightily built though not grossly fat, stood behind them smiling proprietorially on the proceedings. He was florid in his complexion, and his black curly hair, sleekly oiled, was abundant. His features, apart from a calamitously broken nose, were still classically regular, and Brady could just imagine that he might once have been a handsome, even a pretty youth, though more Murillo urchin than Botticelli angel. For this, as Brady knew from consulting the photograph in his remarkably slender FBI file, was Micky “the Angel” Buonarotti. But what were the director of the FBI and his assistant doing in his box?

  Brady decided to dismiss this puzzle from his mind as the conductor, to a ripple of applause, took his place and the overture began.

  He was no connoisseur of musical comedy, but Brady judged that Zip Ahoy! might well be a hit. It was certainly cheered and applauded enough to give that appearance, though Brady knew that it was the Broadway critics who would have the last word. The numbers were perhaps a little too big and brassy for his rather over-refined taste but, whenever the chorus came on, his attention was instantly drawn to Miss Ellie Jackson. Her golden skin and lustrous eyes marked her out. Was it just his own personal preference? She certainly danced superbly, with a lithe and natural grace, and Brady thought he could pick out her voice among the others: lower, smoother, silkier.

  She had one line to say, and it got a laugh. Was he falling under her spell? Given Mr. Hoover’s less than advanced views on race, it was a dangerous thing for Brady to do. He dismissed the thought from his mind—theirs was a purely professional, albeit friendly, relationship, he told himself.

  He made a note, too, of Miss Billie Bernard, who played the part of Ruby Emerald, the jewel thief. It was a showy part with one or two good numbers, and Billie Bernard had made a fair fist of it, he supposed. She danced well, but her voice was a little thin and her personality didn’t run to much.

  While the audience was filing out, Brady made his way toward the pass door to the stage at the right-hand end of the circle. Ellie had told him that she would leave it unlocked. Once through, Brady found himself on a metal walkway above the stage where, behind th
e fallen curtain, he could look down on the heads of the cast still milling and hugging.

  Brady waited until they dispersed and only stagehands were present, moving scenery into place for the start of the show the following night. Unobserved, he moved across the walkway and through a second pass door into the upper dressing room corridor, where the chorus lived.

  On one of the doors Brady knocked and asked for Miss Ellie, opening it a fraction to do so. Presently she slipped through the aperture and came out into the corridor.

  She had her hair up and wore a long white silk dressing gown, tightly belted to show off her exquisite figure. Though she was out of makeup and en déshabillé, Brady thought he had never seen anyone look more glorious. She gave him that warm generous smile that could melt an iceberg a league away.

  “Thank you for those lovely flowers, Nathan. All the girls in there think you must be my beau.”

  “I hope I am your very, very good friend, Miss Ellie.”

  “You see that door at the end of the corridor? That’s the wardrobe, and nobody will be in there till six tomorrow morning at the earliest. I had a key copied. Here. Now you go in there and lock yourself in. I’ll make sure I’m one of the last to leave, and I’ll knock on the door three times to let you know it’s clear. But you watch yourself. Micky Angel don’t like anyone creeping round his theater, ’specially not the FBI, I guess. Are you packing a rod?”

  Brady opened his jacket to reveal a Colt .38 special neatly tucked into a leather holster strapped close to the left side of his ribcage.

  “My!” she said. “It doesn’t show with your tux buttoned at all!”

  “I told my tailor to make allowances,” said Brady, a little self-consciously. “What are you giggling at, Miss Ellie?”

  “Oh, nothing! Just that for a G-Man, you really are quite sweet.” And she kissed him on both cheeks. Brady blushed. “Remember. When you’re done with the snooping, I’ll be at the show party at Sardi’s all night.”