Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  There were people walking slowly, mostly in pairs, about the grounds. Carter nodded to them all, unsure of which, if any, were blind. He wondered where she was or if she was expecting him. He had several things he wanted to say, and all of them sounded idiotic, but at least he had stolen a rose from Borax’s, and secreted it in a pocket. As Borax had served him some repellent liverwurst, he popped open his PEZ tin and dropped two of them into his mouth.

  The front door to the Home flew open with a bang, and three women ran out. They held Bibles. One of them was crying, and the other two comforted her.

  “That was terrible!” cried the most visibly upset woman, who dabbed tears off her chin.

  “I’m sorry,” Carter said, but at the same time, on the porch, a woman in a white uniform cupped her hands around her mouth to yell, “I’m very sorry,” which drowned him out.

  “That was terrible!” the woman repeated. Then she burst into tears again, her two friends holding her upright as they shuffled toward a small bus parked nearby. Carter looked from them to the nurse, who was shaking her head.

  “Good afternoon,” he said, puzzled.

  “Excuse me.” She put her hand up, which stopped him, and then yelled back into the house, her voice broken with fatigue, for it had obviously been used in exactly this tone a thousand times before, “Phoebe!” And then, to Carter, “May I help you?”

  “I’m—actually I’m here to see Miss Kyle.”

  “Lord, what has she done now?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Honestly.”

  Her head tilted back as if to see better down her nose. He remembered his mother at the butcher’s, picking and choosing among game hens. Carter joined her on the porch nonetheless, and glanced into the house and down the main hall from where he stood. There was a braided cord on the wall, a handhold, at about hip level.

  “Are you Carter?” the nurse finally asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So you actually exist.”

  The way she said it, he was unsure whether she approved, so Carter simply tipped his hat.

  “You know she tells lies,” she continued.

  “I was unaware.”

  “I love her to bits and pieces, but she tells lies.”

  “All right,” he replied, because she seemed grave. “I’ll be careful.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “I—”

  “Phoebe,” she said again, this time quietly, as Phoebe had appeared at the door, one hand on the braided cord. She wore her gingham frock. Her black hair was tousled like she’d just fallen out of bed.

  “Mr. Carter,” she said. “How nice of you to come. Have you met Jan?” Phoebe patted Jan on the shoulder, found the crook of her elbow, and linked her arms around it. “I’ve disappointed her.”

  “You have to apologize, Phoebe.”

  “I know, I feel terrible,” she said pleasantly. “Mr. Carter, thank you. Thank you so much, isn’t he nice?” She extended her arms, palms up, which mystified Carter. It looked like she was ready to receive a gift.

  “Oh!” The rose in his jacket. So much for hiding it. Why hadn’t it dawned on him that sleight-of-hand, which he had used for small flirtations, would be utterly useless? He felt naked. Gently, he slipped the rose into her hands, which she brought to her nose. She touched her fingertips to the rose’s petals, tracing out tiny veins Carter hadn’t noticed. “I love this,” she whispered, brushing it against her white cheek, as if she could take the afternoon to fully appreciate it.

  “I was hoping to see you,” he said with such an attempt at gaiety he sounded demented.

  “You’ll have to wait your turn,” Jan said. “Phoebe—”

  “Oh, all right. Where are they?” She put the rose over her ear and secured it with a small clip. She held her hand out to be escorted. Carter surprised Jan by taking it before she could.

  When she touched him, he smelled a hint of a familiar scent—D’Orsay’s La Renommee, all vanilla and almonds, something several of the women in his troupe wore, but never so memorably.

  Carefully, they descended the stairs and walked toward the parking lot. He put her gloves into her free hand. She cleared her throat. “Transparent of me, I guess.”

  “I understand you tell lies,” he said.

  “I used to tell lies, when I was still drinking.”

  “Drinking.”

  “Pickled like a herring.” She clutched at his forearm twice, quickly, as if it were Morse code. “Do you promise not to eavesdrop right now?”

  “No, not really.”

  The women were already inside their bus, and their driver had started the engine. He had to turn it off to hear Phoebe, who stood nearby and rather tonelessly began her apology. Apparently, the women were Christian Scientists. They came twice a month, and this time had lectured that blindness was all in the mind, that if the inmates’ faith was strong enough, they would certainly see immediately. Two of the men who’d had horrible industrial accidents stood, declared they could see, and started walking into furniture and walls, causing a great commotion. Finally, they threw off their glasses and brought the pits of their eye sockets close to the women’s faces, and asked to be told if faith had brought their missing eyes back.

  This had led to tremendous, chaotic laughter among the blind, and shouts of congratulations to Phoebe, who had orchestrated it. Standing by the bus, listening to her detail all the reasons she’d been so bad, Carter wished desperately he’d arrived ten minutes earlier to witness it.

  She was concluding, “. . . really, honestly, terribly sorry. Truly.” She smiled.

  “Start the bus,” the eldest ordered. And to Phoebe, she said, “We’ll come back.”

  “Please do.”

  After the bus pulled away, and they’d been alone for several seconds, Phoebe said, “Mr. Carter, do you know Helen Keller?” Her tone was brisk, as if she hadn’t been enjoying herself a moment ago.

  “She and her caretaker—”

  “Anne Sullivan,” she said.

  “Yes. They came to a show once. Afterward, Helen came backstage to tell me how much she enjoyed it. She was quite inspirational.” As he spoke, he was thinking of taking Phoebe to the motorcycle now, for it seemed like a rebellious thing she might enjoy, but she seemed rooted to this patch of gravel.

  “Helen is so cheerful,” Phoebe said, with exactly the same tone she’d used when describing the Chong girls. “She makes a girl who’s only blind feel so inadequate.”

  “May I show you something?”

  “Please tell me it’s scotch.”

  He took her hand. “I thought you no longer drank.”

  “I want it,” she said grimly. “I want it every day.”

  They walked toward the motorcycle, feet crunching across the ground. “Here. Feel this.”

  The moment her hands touched the handlebars, she lit up, head to toe, seeming to burn off whatever blue clouds had been gathering. “Well, this is a fine beast.” Hands running down the tank, finding the two separate seats.

  “Would you like to go for a ride?”

  “A ride on a motorcycle?” She stood up, seeming dizzy with the thought. “Is that how you go courting girls?”

  “My rollerskates are in the shop.”

  “Bubbly, bubbly mahatma. Hmm.” She put both hands on the leather saddle, and leaned against it. Eased away. Her hands, brushing from one side of it to the other, finding the stitching around the edges. “No,” she murmured. “You never took her on a motorcycle.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve never given a girl a ride on a motorcycle.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but how—”

  “Mr. Carter, I’m awful company today. You should be riding your motorbike, dodging thugs, catching bullets in your teeth and sawing women in half, all sorts of things, but you shouldn’t be here with me.” She found his arm and began towing him toward the main house. “Not today. Thank you for my flower and my gloves.”

  He dragged his feet, and s
earched for something to say. “I don’t saw women in half,” he murmured. “My mother won’t let me.”

  Full stop on the pathway. Phoebe turned her head toward him. “You jest,” she said.

  “Oh, no, I certainly don’t jest. My mother, God help us all, never much liked the idea of sawing women in half. She is a lifelong student of psychology.” On this word, Carter sighed, which made Phoebe laugh with a single, coarse bark that sounded like a bat hitting a ball. He continued, “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “I have a moment free.”

  Carter told her, in a few not altogether clever sentences, how his mother had been convinced for years that P. T. Selbit, the magician who invented Sawing Through a Girl, secretly hated women. Each time she heard of a new Selbit illusion, she reported to Carter that her intuition was confirmed. The list of illusions was in fact quite awful: Stretching a Girl; Destroying a Girl; Crushing a Girl; the Stick Rack Girl; the Pincushion Lady; the Indestructible Girl, the last illusion actually proving that the girl could be destroyed if only the magician tried hard enough. Carter told Phoebe, “I thought Percy was simply reusing a profitable idea, but my mother made transatlantic phone calls, and learned that before he patented his first effect—”

  Without hesitation, Phoebe exclaimed, “His wife left him, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. His wife left him, and six months later, he destroyed his first girl.”

  “Your mother is wonderful.”

  “That would be the consensus.”

  She laughed again, and then she was quiet. They had stopped walking toward the house some time ago. He could look unabashedly at how beautiful she was. Years of being inside had left her skin translucent. He could see every kind of cloud passing through it: pleasure, sorrow, anger. Carter understood why women powdered their faces: it made great sense to try to look like Phoebe Kyle. She said, “I’ve been thinking about how I would saw someone in half. It seems to me, you’d have a secret compartment, and two girls—”

  “Oh, no, don’t ruin it for me,” Carter exclaimed.

  “If I’m riding on your motorcycle, I need to change into trousers,” she announced. And there was her smile, her beautiful smile.

  . . .

  Fifteen minutes later, the East Bay was swarming with activity. Samuelson and his team had secured the matériel they needed, including a truck, and were surveying the route they would take when Carter was their captive. Moving vans on the University of California campus were unloading crates stamped “Ogden, Utah” by the science lecture halls. One of James’s messenger boys was leaving Borax’s, and another was on his way to the Blind Home, and others were fanning out past the cafés, parks, and amusements Carter was known to haunt.

  No one, however, was paying attention to Jack Griffin, who still moved as if unseen eyes were plotting misfortune for him. At two o’clock, he had an experience that was unmatched in his career, in that it was easy and bore instant results.

  He had returned to the Palace Hotel, to the basement, where management provided kips for service people who’d earned enough seniority. These were small rooms with cots and lockers, and tiny slit windows that could open several inches on a chain. One room belonged to Tony Alhino, whom Griffin had interviewed once before. Twenty-seven years old, Portuguese, Alhino ran the Palace beverage service and had brought Harding his last glass of water.

  He came on duty at four, so there was no reason for him to be at his kip when Griffin knocked. And yet he was. He was dark, with a full mustache, and acne-scarred cheeks, and the moment he saw Griffin, he looked guilty of every crime committed in the State of California.

  “Tony Alhino?”

  “Ehhh . . .”

  “Griffin, with the Service. We talked earlier.”

  “Macacos me mordam,” he responded. He’d been shocked into speaking Portuguese, but as the words came out, he’d found a kind of power in them, and he finished with a grin, as if a second language gave him an edge over Griffin.

  So Griffin said the first thing that came to mind. “I don’t give a rat’s ass where monkeys are biting you.”

  Which shut Alhino down, completely. Griffin decided to press.

  “Listen, pal, let’s talk about a wine bottle.”

  “Oh, no.” Alhino sat on his cot. He put his face into his hands. “I have eight brothers and sisters. My dad, he’s a barber, but he’s getting the shakes.”

  “Where’s the wine bottle?”

  “I can’t lose my job!” he wailed.

  Griffin had seen a few kinds of whiners in his life. He actually felt sorry for this one, in his small room with grimy windows. The cot was too small for him to sit down, too, so he crouched, and said, gently, “É muita areia para a seu camioneta.” It was an old, folksy saying that adults used when telling children they were in over their heads.

  “Where’d you learn to speak Portuguese?” Alhino sniffed.

  “My ex-wife.” He rubbed his chin. “I liked to know what she was yelling when she was throwing chairs at me.”

  The younger man chuckled. Griffin offered him a smoke, which he accepted.

  “You have kids?” Alhino asked after a moment.

  “Daughter.”

  “I got a daughter. Is she sweet or fresh?”

  Griffin thought about it. “Both.”

  “Yeah. Ai!” Alhino stubbed out his cigarette, stood, and opened his locker. Inside, wrapped in a dish towel, was a wine bottle. With a sigh, he passed it to Griffin.

  This is the way it must be for guys like Starling, Griffin thought. Easy.

  Alhino explained: he took this out of the room around twelve forty-five, a quarter-hour before Harding died. He took it, in fact, the moment he saw it, because he didn’t want to be blamed for allowing liquor into the hotel. And he kept it as a souvenir. “You have to believe me. I didn’t bring it in the first place. You couldn’t, I don’t care if you’re the President, you couldn’t pay me to move hootch inside this hotel. I get fired, and you know who comes after me? My wife.” His brown eyes met Griffin’s. They understood each other.

  Griffin glanced at the bottle. Its label, a light beige, was typical of domestic wines: a bizarre cabalistic symbol. And the legend “For sacramental use only.” It was empty.

  “Who brought it?”

  Griffin hadn’t expected an answer, so his eyebrows shot up when Alhino said, “The guy from the speakeasy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy,” he said, as if that explained things. Elaborating, he said he’d passed a guy in the hallway just before all the reporters arrived. He was carrying a paper sack, and when Alhino was about to ask him what he was doing, the guy gave him the high sign. “Like this,” he said, making an “a-okay” with his right hand, and sweeping it left to right. “I didn’t tell about him because I didn’t want to lose my job. My wife—”

  “What’s this guy look like?”

  “Madre,” he said. “This is weeks ago.” He stumbled through a description that left Griffin fuming: average height, average build, dressed like any guy.

  “Did he have blue eyes?”

  “Phew,” he sighed. “Oh. He was wearing a hat,” he said with conviction.

  “Did he have black hair?”

  “Yeah,” Alhino brightened. “Yeah. Or blond. The hallway lights, not so good.”

  The returns on this rapidly diminishing, Griffin wrapped the wine bottle in its towel. “You’ll keep your job if you stay quiet,” he said.

  “Thank you. I don’t want trouble.”

  Griffin opened the door. He slowed. “Hey. Which speakeasy uses that high sign?”

  “Across the street.” Alhino waved toward the window. “It’s the big one.”

  “Where, exactly?”

  “The big one. Jossie’s, right under the police department.”

  CHAPTER 19

  North on Telegraph, bearing west on Shattuck, following Shattuck until it became Henry, Carter chose exactly the route that allowed him to keep the bike in second
gear and above, and then, finally, the road took on interesting serpentine shapes that demanded leaning, acceleration, and speed. Phoebe held on to him tightly. After the first set of curves, he asked if she was all right, and she responded, “More, please.”

  Beyond that exchange, they made little conversation, so Carter chose a destination: Neptune Beach, by the Alameda shoreline. He slowed down outside the entrance gate, a hulking Moorish tower through which people passed in their bathing suits, some holding towels and goggles. There was a pavilion just inside the gate, where a jazz band played for those who knew the new dance steps, and, beyond that, saltwater wading pools for the children, and a bathhouse, and a lengthy stretch of beach, seemingly packed solid.

  With the bike halted, Phoebe loosened her hands from around his waist. She took a deep breath, smelling the air. “The beach? I’m afraid I’m not much good in crowds.”

  He hadn’t thought of that. “Do you like the motorcycle?”

  “The speed is terrific. It’s great for such a smelly contraption. Say, wouldn’t that be a tremendous slogan!”

  “I’d like to find a place we can talk.”

  “I want to—how do you drive it? You do something with your wrists that accelerates, am I right?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  He helped her off, and then put the bike on its centerstand so Phoebe could sit on the main seat. “Excellent!” she cried, hunching over with her hands on the bars. She squeezed the front brake several times. “Are you ready to take a chance?” she called.

  “Mmmm. No. But you can start it up.” She followed his hands, turning the petcock on. “Careful of that feeder tube below it, or the fuel runs straight out. Good, now, put your foot here, and just push down.”

  She managed to turn it over on the third try, which caused her to jump up with both fists in the air. “Idora Park! We’ll go there. I know, it’s an odd place for a conversation, but there won’t be crowds, at least.”

  Carter admitted that she had a point, and so they got back on the bike. He merged into traffic, without looking backward, and since there was no rearview mirror, he couldn’t see the messenger boy running after him, then falling back, waving, beside the roadway.