Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  She stopped here. Carter stared at her dumbfounded. He felt chills like someone was running a fingernail up the back of his neck. Even as he began to suspect the answer, he asked the question. “Your first name—”

  “It’s Sarah.”

  ACT TWO

  AN INQUIRY INTO THE SPIRIT WORLD

  * * *

  1923

  Long experience has taught me that the crux of my fortunes is whether I can radiate good will toward my audience. There is only one way to do it and that is to feel it. You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot fool their hearts.

  —HOWARD THURSTON

  When it comes to the requirements for pleasing an audience, all the knowledge and instruction and apparatus in the world is worth less than one ounce of soul.

  —OTTAWA KEYES

  CHAPTER 1

  Once upon a time, Jack Griffin had been lean and hungry enough to slither down a chimney, and had in fact done so in 1901 on his first assignment, in Mochnacz Flats, Cleveland. It was a terrible area, home to the dregs of the melting pot, dangerous even in midday, and he went there alone, at midnight. His mission was to eavesdrop on a meeting held on the top floor of a boardinghouse on the corner of Broadway and Fleet.

  He was a twenty-two-year-old Treasury agent, serving the first year of his Secret Service duties. So far, he had attended classes in counterfeiting and pension fraud (dull to him, deathly dull), the use of fisticuffs and armaments (far more gripping), and information gathering and interrogation. His scores in the last areas were so dizzying that Chief Wilkie had pulled him aside to ask if he would perhaps enjoy a special assignment.

  Griffin had heard rumors of these assignments; they were why he had joined the Service in the first place. When Chief Wilkie’s hand fell on his shoulder, and the twinkling black eyes looked up into his, Griffin stood straight, as if ready to salute an unseen flag.

  “Sport,” Wilkie creaked, for all green agents were “Sport” to him, “I have a plan. It ain’t in the budget yet. But one day, it will be. Especially if you do good.” Wilkie had a vision that only a fool or a politician, he was fond of saying, couldn’t see: the Secret Service would one day protect the Commander in Chief. For years, he’d lobbied Congress, which didn’t believe the threat of assassination was real. “High-and-mighty, primrose-picking, harp-playing bastards on the hill,” Wilkie moaned, voice popping from the excitement.

  There would be no pay for it, Wilkie explained to Griffin, and the duties would be hazardous and thankless. Griffin was to follow all leads, especially foreigners, and a very good lead was what brought him to Mochnacz Flats, where anarchists would gather in less than an hour.

  His plan was to climb the fire escape, to sit outside the window, and listen carefully for incriminating schemes. But as he circled the building twice, he discovered there was no fire escape. He had never in his life seen a boardinghouse without a fire escape. He felt sorry for the people of Mochnacz Flats, but not sorry enough to excuse plots to overthrow the government. Then he saw it: a broken clothesline hanging off a spool anchored into the bricks. He tested it for strength. It held. Scaling two stories to the roof was as easy and quick as the ropes at the Treasury’s obstacle course.

  But once on the roof, he realized the lack of a fire escape meant there was no place from which he could watch the anarchists’ meeting. The roof itself was almost featureless—very few places to hide in case someone came up the stairway: only the chimney, which he could crouch behind, and the hooded accessway to the stairs. Without a noise, Griffin stepped around the perimeter of the roof, looking out and over the edge. One top-floor room glowed, lights on. The windows were closed. Voices carried upward faintly, but he couldn’t hear much.

  How could he listen to the meeting? He leaned back against the chimney, and chewed on the ends of his mustache. He ran his tongue across the back of his teeth, and counted off the ways to infiltrate a cell: disguise; paid informants; listening from a common wall; secretion within the room. All of these required preparation he no longer had time for. He butted the back of his head against the red bricks as if the proper ploy could be dislodged like the last bean in a frying pan.

  The chimney. Low, squat, wide. Wider than his shoulders? Removing his jacket, he went in, feet first. His clothes would be ruined, and there were men at the Treasury, the sons of rich men, for whom that would be no consideration. Griffin could in no way afford a new pair of trousers, and yet that very thought propelled him into the chimney. Let it be a sacrifice.

  Arms over his head, he slithered, he squirmed until his whole body was stuffed snugly like a rag into bottle. He had one moment of panic, but only one, the moment he lost sight of the roof. The walls were tight around his chest, and he couldn’t breathe deeply. He thought, I wouldn’t want to breathe deeply here anyway.

  The descent, once he created a system for it, required that he stretch out the points of his shoes, find a rough piece of mortar, hook into it, then, simultaneously, push down from above with his hands. Two, three inches at a time. When he was done with this assignment, he would be covered in soot, and his clothes would be tattered. He would report to Chief Wilkie like that, just to see what the old man said.

  If his fellow agents asked what had happened, Griffin would dummy up. He knew how to play it. There were already a dozen stories circulating about Griffin and the first was true: when he was just four months old, he had become an orphan. He and his parents, crossing the usually tranquil Appleton Ridge in their wagon, had been caught in a freak summer storm. The wagon tumbled off the trail and into a ditch, instantly killing the horses, and pinning his parents underneath. The afternoon turned to evening, and the rains continued, bringing flash floods. When a search party arrived the next morning, they saw the wagon wheels turning as the muddy river rushed past. There was no immediate sign of survivors.

  But they soon saw a sight the whole county would discuss for the next ten years: upstream, beyond the islands made by the drowned snouts and broken legs of the two geldings, baby Jack was suspended in the air, dirty and asleep, exhausted and safe.

  They thought he had come to rest in the branches of a tree. It wasn’t until they waded to the middle of the river to rescue him that they saw he was held in his drowned mother’s hands.

  Griffin, when joining the Service, said that he admired beyond all other qualities the following: sacrifice, tenacity, and the application of will against overwhelming odds. He was no stranger to performing the impossible. Tonight, he would climb down a chimney. Tomorrow, he would do something new: find counterfeit money secreted in a hive of bees, perhaps, or disarm a man with a bomb.

  His eyes stung with dust and grit; he had kept them closed most of the way down, as the only sight was the increasingly distant opening to the evening sky. His hands ached where he’d cut them. To keep the pain away, he imagined bringing flowers to Lucy, Senator Hartley’s daughter—caught in the act, he would confront the Senator, who might chide the lovers at first, but be so impressed with Griffin’s tenacity, he would give their union his blessing, and then agree with Griffin’s sudden and inspired soliloquy: “By gum, you’re right, pension fraud and counterfeiting are important, but the Service should also be allowed to protect the President.”

  Griffin’s feet found empty air: he was at the bottom of the chimney. The chamber belled out a little. He lowered himself into the firebox, where he could crouch and catch his breath without being seen by the room’s occupants. His eyes, caked and clogged with soot, were almost useless; blinking made them worse. He willed them to fill with tears, to wash them out.

  He could hear women, two of them, speaking in a foreign language, but haltingly, with long pauses, as if each found her companion terribly dull. Griffin chanced dipping his head down for a moment. Sitting in chairs with their backs to him were two stout women, hair up, in widow wear. They faced the door to the room. One of them talked glumly, showing off the backs of her hands. Age spots, Griffin thought. She’s complaining. />
  Two informants had promised him there would be a meeting tonight. What kind of a meeting was this?

  The women stopped talking. Footsteps in the hall, then three quick knocks on the door and, a heartbeat later, a fourth knock. A code! When the door opened, Griffin let his head hang down again. A group of dirty-looking men filled the hallway.

  “Thank you for coming,” one woman said, in English, like it was a phrase she’d been forced to memorize. Then she added, “Go downstairs.”

  Griffin couldn’t hear the response, but apparently there was one, for she continued.

  “Leon said up here was maybe a bad thing. People listening here. Maybe. Something. So, in basement.” She shut the door, and addressed her companion. “Schmucks.”

  Griffin noticed the Colt Peacemaker the other woman cradled in her lap. It was an old gun, and she looked ill trained in its use, but that was hardly a comfort. Griffin had to get to the basement, and a frightened woman with a gun was harder to predict than a trained killer.

  Somewhere below him, the meeting of anarchists had begun. If he dropped to the floor, he would probably be shot before he said a word, and if not, the women undoubtedly had a way to send an alarm.

  Up, he thought. Back up the chimney. He regarded the flue wearily, the way a logger who has just felled a mighty oak might size up the long mile to the sawmill.

  The ascent was where Griffin, tugging with his hands, inching up, then securing footholds, pushing from there, repeating, began to tire. When the placket of his shirt gave way, the stones tore freely into the skin on his chest and back, and he no longer imagined Lucy Hartley enjoying his guitar serenades—he wondered if he would get to the roof alive. He started to hope the meeting would be over before he could find it.

  His hands found the opening; he thought he could pull himself up seconds later, but his muscles were so depleted he had to stay in the chimney, arms over his head, feet braced just so, until he had the energy to push, stagger, and then actually fall out, landing on the roof hand-first.

  He squawked like a bird. His wrist! He pulled his arm close to his chest, rocking back and forth.

  Then he remembered there was no fire escape.

  His wrist meant he couldn’t use the clothesline. He walked around the edges of the roof, shuffling, really—one leg seemed to be asleep. Then, without even knowing he’d done it, he was sitting down.

  The roof access stairs—they led inside the building. He lurched to the stairhouse, and threw the door open. It banged against the wall, ringing in his ears. Too loud! He half ran, half tripped down three flights of boardinghouse stairs, expecting doors to be thrown open, women to start yelling, or firing on him.

  When he thudded to the street, light glowed from the basement windows, partially eclipsed by rotting wooden boards nailed over them. Griffin couldn’t stay in plain view—he was shirtless, and where he wasn’t blackened with soot, he was bleeding.

  Then he saw the coal chute. A little reluctantly, he opened the hatch, and peered inside. It was empty, free and clear all the way to the bottom. Another cramped passageway tonight.

  One last time, he cast aside all physical complaints, and began the part of his mission that would make him famous to a generation of Secret Service agents: he climbed into the coal chute. He slid on his own perspiration down to the bottom.

  His luck had turned. The moment his shoes hit the door in the basement, the sound was muffled by applause coming from within. The coal chute, though chilly, was a far more comfortable spot for eavesdropping; Griffin could in fact huddle with his ear against the door and relax.

  He was there for no more than twenty minutes. He heard a voice, Griffin’s age, maybe, declaiming in Midwestern English. Griffin heard some ideological talk. He’d been trained in such talk, but this speech still made no sense to him. He heard the sounds of a pointer hitting a corkboard, and he imagined there were diagrams showing the masses, the bourgeoisie, the wealthy, the merchants. The usual. At some point, Griffin began to pay more attention to the twinging in his wrist. The assignment seemed like a wash.

  But the lecturer changed topics. In words Griffin was never able to accurately reconstruct, he began to present a plan to assassinate President McKinley.

  Later, Griffin said that made him sit up and take notice, but the truth was, he so disbelieved his own ears, he had to hear it twice before he understood what he’d heard. Luckily, the speaker was poorly organized, and given to repeating every point he made: Gaetano Bresci had murdered King Umberto of Italy in the name of anarchy, and this deeply impressed the American anarchists, who’d been too often accused of enjoying the glamour of anarchy, but not the hard work. So, to show the Italians and the rest of the world, it was time to kill the President of the United States. At the agreed-upon spot. Griffin heard the sound of the pointer hitting the board. What spot? Where? He brought all his powers of investigation into focus and away went the aches and pains.

  “The President will be in the crowd,” the lecturer said slowly, and Griffin moved, very slightly, to hear better. The coal chute creaked.

  The voice stopped.

  Griffin froze.

  “Was there a noise?”

  Griffin heard other voices he hadn’t heard before. There were five or six of them. He opened his mouth to breathe orally. He would not move. If they opened the chute, he would burst out and the door would knock the first man down. There had to be chairs in the room, and they made fine weapons.

  “I heard a noise from the coal chute,” the lecturer said, and Griffin could imagine him, wild-eyed, suspicious, ready to shoot. And then something happened that made Griffin feel like he was on a ship swamped by a monstrous wave: the coal chute creaked again, though he hadn’t moved a muscle. More creaking, and then the sight of the evening sky as someone threw open the street-level hatch.

  At the same time someone in the basement set the lecturer’s mind at ease.

  “Don’t worry, Leon,” Griffin heard, “it’s the coal man.”

  “At this time of night?” a second man asked.

  “He steals it for us,” answered a third.

  “Ahh,” said Leon—Griffin’s last bit of inductive reasoning that night told him the anarchist’s name was Leon—“then let us return to the matter. A man with a bandaged right hand will approach the President—”

  A rumble, the sound of an approaching landslide, as the coal man made his delivery. Griffin threw his hands over his head and then a hundredweight of coal fell down the shaft, crashing into him like a steam engine, forty freight cars, and caboose.

  He did not hear the rest of the plan.

  . . .

  When Griffin regained consciousness, the pain was indescribable. In a fetal position, he pressed against the metal door of the coal chute; all it took was a little shouldering, and he spilled onto the floor, registering the daylight outside, then landing, again, on his broken wrist.

  He eventually limped away from the boardinghouse, and somehow found his way to Wilkie to make his report—in tatters, though that no longer seemed so heroic. He had learned much that night, but he had not learned everything, for he still believed he understood how the world worked. He believed in struggle, setback, reward, as if that process were as immutable a law as gravity.

  Wilkie did not react as Griffin had expected. Because Griffin was the greenest of all agents, his story was not believed. Griffin swore he would prove himself, and would keep a steady eye out for a man with a bandaged right hand.

  Less than a week later, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President McKinley greeted a large crowd at the Temple of Music. Griffin, guarding him, noticed the President shaking a swarthy man’s left hand—his right hand was bandaged. At once, Griffin dove for the man, knocking him down, and putting the President into a direct line of sight, at point-blank range, with Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated him.

  . . .

  Soon after, the Secret Service received its charter to begin protecting the Commander in Ch
ief from all enemies foreign and domestic. Griffin received a commendation, at a nearly silent ceremony that no other agents chose to attend. There are few sights from which the world turns its head faster than a golden boy who has died. The old stories about Griffin ceased; the new ones he never heard to his face.

  He began a twenty-year cycle of drinking, and probation, and menial duties, still trying to understand what lesson—for he persisted in believing that life was a series of lessons—he had learned in the coal chute. Be more ambitious? Surely he’d been ambitious enough, leaping from roof to chimney to basement in an evening. Show caution? No amount of caution could have caused the coal to arrive an hour later. He had similar problems believing the lesson related to piety, intelligence, stamina, courage, fortitude, or even developing a philosophy.

  And yet, as he grew older, he did not leave the Service. When asked why he stayed—and some agents did indeed ask this—his answers “Why not?” or “They’ll have to drag me out by my blue, blue heels” were not the whole story. He was still an agent because he held out hope.

  His notes, which usually spelled out duty rosters and expenses, also speculated about sacrifice. There were lists of assassination methods (poison, bombs, a sabotaged boat) matched with lists of fates that would befall the dedicated agent (coma, mutilation, drowning). The opportunity to die justly gave him a reason to live. No matter how hard he was hammered at, Agent Griffin still felt this small, flickering hope.

  CHAPTER 2

  WEDNESDAY AUGUST 2, 1923—FINAL REPORT—EYES ONLY (cont’d)

  16:00 Px Harding rests (headache)—aspirin prescribed by Palace Hotel MD Midvale; unsupervised mtg w/MD

  17:30 Px / Mrs dinner in hotel room (room service). (Px: salmon, fried potatoes, asparagus, dinner rolls, butter, chocolate cake, water; Mrs: lamb, rice, asparagus, water.)