The Art of the Devil

by John Altman

  Finger hovering against trigger, Hart held his breath.

  For a long while, or so it seemed, Isherwood just sat, gripping the steering wheel, listening to the distant echo of shrieking tires and metal through the valley.

  His mind had slowed to a deliberate crawl, as it had during times of action during the war. The air reeked of shredded rubber and spilled oil and fresh winter pines. He had lost his cigarette somewhere. He started to reach for another, and then slowly reconsidered – not with that oil-stink in the air.

  A tire had blown out. He had gone into a skid, a bad one. But he had recovered, gentling the bullet nose back from the precipice. With the immediate danger now past, time should have returned to its normal, easy flow. Yet his perception kept scissoring each instant into microscopic units, as it had during combat. Because the danger wasn’t past, his body was insisting to his brain. Appearances deceived.

  The events leading up to the crash replayed methodically past his mind’s eye. He had thought of giving Evy her perfume; he had switched on the radio. The weather was turning cold, and Big Four talks had failed. He had snapped off the radio, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the last. He missed his wife, missed his cats. He had gone up a steep hill and come down the other side, his stomach giving a commensurate lift and drop. Then had come a distant crack, and the tire had blown out. The crack had been flat and dry, he remembered, and if the window had not been open, he would not have heard it at all. And then he had come within a hair’s breadth of going over into the edge, into the ravine.

  Again he replayed the scenario. The flat, dry crack; the tire exploding. At last, sluggishly, the thought formed:

  Someone had shot out his tire.

  As the ticking of the engine slowed, his mind quickened. The shooter must be up on the wooded rise to the right of the road – which meant that with Isherwood now facing backwards, the man was behind him, over his left shoulder. And if Isherwood left the car without taking care, the sniper could ask for no better target.

  He had only barely heard the rifle’s report, and only by chance – any sane man would have kept his windows closed in this chill. And he had not seen the muzzle flash. So whoever had fired had taken care to find cover on the mountainside, to avoid discovery. The line of thought could be extended: whoever had done this had carefully chosen this stretch of deserted road, where Isherwood would hit the guard rail with such force that his death might look accidental.

  And along those lines – here his eyes flicked to the side-view mirror, seeking a stirring in the night – the would-be assassin must have realized that there was no guarantee the car would go over the edge. So he would be prepared to help things along, if necessary, mano-a-mano.

  Isherwood’s hand moved at last: not for the cigarettes, but for his snub-nosed Colt Detective Special.

  Drawing the gun from its holster, he held it in his lap. The enemy was out there in the night. But why wasn’t the sniper shooting again, from his wooded rise, as Isherwood sat here behind the wheel, pondering?

  Because the man didn’t have a clear shot, of course … and because he fully expected Isherwood, not realizing that he was dealing with anything except a blow-out, to exit the car and inspect the damage, presenting himself as an easy target in the headlights.

  In battle, Eisenhower’s voice said, high ground counts for everything.

  After another moment, Isherwood reached for the latch, his hand remarkably steady.

  Opening the driver’s-side door, he slipped out of the car, staying low, avoiding the pooling headlights. He ran toward the treeline. No rifle fired. He slipped into dense woods, where the fragrances of pinesap and rosemary hung thick. He moved with surprising dexterity for a man so many years removed from active operations; not blundering, avoiding the worst of the crackling twigs and snapping branches. Some deep-seated instinct had come into play – the same instinct which had allowed him to sneak up behind the Nazi boy, on that long-ago night, with such cruel efficacy – placing his feet for him.

  He climbed the hill in a straight line from the place where the car had stopped. He would find the high ground, like Chamberlain at Gettysburg, Philip II at Chaeronea, the Taborite at Hořice. At worst, a stalemate would be attained. At best, he would find a chance to turn the tables on his unwitting enemy …

  Up he went, beneath a moon one shade less than full.

  Minutes kept passing, with no figure appearing in the headlights.

  Hart took the scope from his eye at last. He wiped at his mouth with his handkerchief, hard enough to draw blood. Had the man left the car, under cover of darkness, and slipped away?

  The more Hart considered, the more likely this seemed. So he should go down and find the man and finish it now, before another car happened by and complicated matters. Yes; that was what he should do.

  Still he hesitated. Here on the rise with the high ground and the rifle, he retained every advantage. Walking downhill with the pistol, however, he opened himself to the possibility of a firefight. The will-o’-the-wisp, his father had said, tempted travelers from safe paths. The gypsy fortune-teller whispered ruefully in his ear: You see here, how the ominous line crosses the lifeline – a short life, this one; a pity.

  Another minute passed. Still the driver did not show himself. Shaking his head, Hart finally stood, slinging the M1903A4 Springfield rifle over his shoulder. Reluctantly, he unholstered his Browning 9mm. He checked the load, thirteen Parabellum rounds nestled inside a detachable box magazine. For a last moment, before striking off, he thought wistfully about his Buick, parked a half-mile distant. It was not too late to choose another place, another time.

  But he had already failed the senator twice.

  Setting his feet carefully, he started down the hill.

  The forest around him rustled secretly. Branches shivered as animals fled his approach. Quiet gathered again in his wake. The night sky glistened in a thousand subtle overlays. Near the mountain tops, the stars faded to blue.

  Before leaving the protective reef of forest and stepping onto the road, he took out the handkerchief and compulsively touched his mouth one last time. With renewed determination, then, he cleared all extraneous thoughts from his mind. At this moment there was only hunter and prey. If the man was still inside the car, Hart would get the drop on him. If not, the situation must be resolved now, before a passing vehicle interfered.

  Raising the Browning straight-armed, he moved swiftly toward the Studebaker from behind, through the smells of spilled oil and scorched rubber.

  The car was empty.

  The door hung ajar; a small parcel sat on the passenger seat, still in its wrapping from the chemist’s.

  ‘Drop your weapon,’ commanded a cold voice behind him.

  Hart froze.

  His testicles crawled up into his body; his belly turned to lead. His own goddamned fault. He had followed the will-o’-the-wisp, tempted from his safe path like a fool. He had not heeded the fortune-teller’s warning – and from somewhere far away, across the years, she cackled laughter.

  Time slowed, turning thick and golden and sweet. He wondered if he could spin around quickly enough to snap off a shot before the man fired. One way to find out …

  ‘Drop your weapon,’ the voice ordered again.

  The moment lingered, suspended. Something in the back of Hart’s mind made an odd humming sound.

  Then he spun: almost offhandedly, dropping to one knee, lifting the Browning. A thunderclap rent open the night. He reeled onto his back, the Browning spinning from his limp hand, into the road and then over the side, vanishing into the ravine. A tremendous pressure rose in his right shoulder. His numb hand was trying to fire a gun it no longer held, to empty thirteen Parabellum rounds in the direction of the silhouette he could now see standing not ten feet away: a dark shadow against darker trees, feet planted wide, fedora pushed back, pistol held unshaking in a two-handed grip.

  Rolling, Hart reached to unloop the Springfield from over his shoulder. Ish
erwood fired again and a hot new pressure bloomed in Hart’s arm. The rifle fumbled, dropped with a clatter.

  When Hart reached stubbornly for the fallen rifle, a third shot rang out, kicking him meanly again in his poor right arm, the report echoing antically across the valley. Then he was tumbling backward, over the same guard rail against which the Studebaker had ridden. The metal was gouged and scratched and still warm. Yelping, he pitched down the steep drop. This wasn’t right; it was Isherwood who was supposed to go over the edge, down this rocky slope, Isherwood in his Studebaker—

  But it was Hart going down, flipping over now as gravity took more solid hold of him. His wounded arm bounced off a jagged rock, and he cried out sharply.

  The world narrowed; time skipped, like a phonograph needle jumping a groove.

  When awareness returned he was lying on his back, looking up at stars and an almost full moon. At first he didn’t know where he was, although a sense of general urgency enveloped him. Trying to gain his feet, he found his head swimming. His right arm throbbed. One leg twisted beneath him at an unnatural angle. Falling onto his back again, he considered that angle with clinical distance. If that limb really belonged to him, then it was broken in at least one place. Thankfully, he felt no pain.

  The world blackened again, like a sheet of paper catching fire from the edges inward. When he returned to himself, he had shifted position slightly on the cold ground. Now only half his field of vision was comprised of moon and stars. The other half was a dark, rocky mountainside, stretching up to a faraway guard rail. A silhouetted and fedora-topped figure leaned over the guard rail, small with distance, searching.

  Hart almost giggled. He had tumbled down the hill, suffering the fate he had meant for his target. The bright side: here at the bottom of the rocky slope, he was beyond Isherwood’s reach. There was an undeniable dark humor to it all, a certain poetic justice.

  Drifting for a time, he had difficulty separating fantasy from reality. A truck or similarly large vehicle stopped on the road overhead, brakes squealing; he heard tinny voices engaged in discussion. Or was that just a dream? The night sky wheeled dizzyingly, streaking the stars until they looked like shreds of tinsel hanging from a Christmas tree. He felt warm, then cold. A shooting star crossed his field of vision; and he took aim through his scope at a Nazi commander who wore glistening black boots and many decorations; and he took aim from a ridge above the George Washington Memorial Parkway at President Eisenhower, who cowered inside his bubble-topped Chrysler; and he foolishly followed the will-o’-the-wisp, the ghost-fire of legend, the pixie light, which beckoned lost souls; and the old fortune-teller bent close and declared, her voice like a seething nest of vipers, that he would have a short life, a pity.

  Then he turned his head, slowly, and saw the sun starting to rise behind jagged mountains.

  The light in the sky was unmistakably real. Cars passed on the road above, regularly if infrequently. Daybreak was near. The humming in his head was back, a nest of mad bees.

  Isherwood was gone.

  And Hart had survived the night.

  He began the process of getting his functioning leg beneath himself: painstakingly, using his one good arm as a lever. By the time he realized the task was impossible – if he wanted to move, he would need to crawl – the sun had risen higher in the sky, the low clouds beyond the mountains shading from pink to yellow.

  And so he struck off in a clumsy slither, dragging his wounded leg behind himself, flopping his ruined arm uselessly, moving in the direction of the scenic overlook and his waiting Buick. He would survive this, he told himself. And next time, he would not underestimate his target. Next time, he would pay more heed to the warnings of the fortune-teller and the will-o’-the-wisp.

  He slithered: scowling, cursing, weeping with the pain that now flooded his body, overwhelming, all-encompassing; and with every excruciating movement he cursed Jesus, Mary, Joseph, his own errors of judgment, and most of all Agent Francis Isherwood.

  SEVEN

  THE TREASURY BUILDING: NOVEMBER 17

  Behind his desk at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, Max Whitman stared philosophically into space, his broad mouth forming a thoughtful moue.

  He pictured a beautiful young girl with hair the color of autumn dusk, sitting just on the other side of the desk. You’re so handsome, Max. Letting you go was the worst mistake of my life. I’ll never leave you again. I love you …

  The door to the reception area leaned open; and there stood Francis Isherwood, looking even less rested and more bedraggled than the last time Max Whitman had seen him. For an instant, the secretary couldn’t keep the surprise off his face.

  Then he recovered. ‘Ish,’ he said, managing strained bonhomie.

  Stepping into the office, Isherwood let a long moment fall away. At last he said darkly: ‘Need to see the Chief.’

  ‘He’s in a meeting. You, uh, should have called ahead.’ Max glanced around furtively. Leaning across the desk, he dropped his voice. ‘Where the hell were you last night? I was standing out in that damned pumpkin patch until the cock crowed.’

  ‘Just let the Chief know I’m here.’

  ‘He gave specific instructions not to be—’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  For the next quarter-hour, Isherwood shared the reception area with Max Whitman without once looking in his direction. At last a man wearing pinstripes emerged from the inner sanctum; Isherwood promptly stood. ‘Better let me give him a holler,’ Max started, but Isherwood had already breezed past him, moving into the office and closing the door resoundingly.

  Max tried to distract himself by shuffling papers around the desk. If worse came to worst, he thought, it would be Isherwood’s word against his. Unless, that was, they had evidence he didn’t know about. Perhaps he had been photographed visiting the senator’s mansion in Charlottesville, or talking with someone at the bar of the Mayflower Hotel. Perhaps he should just leave his desk, walk out of the building, and make a run for it. But those would be the actions of a guilty man. He would ruin any future he might still have in Treasury. And there was his wife to consider, his two precious daughters—

  Sitting across the desk, the ghost of Betsy Martin wore her default expression, of concerned benevolence. But there was a distracted quality to it, Max noted, as always. Of course, that was how she had been in life too. Sitting alone with him in a parlor, she’d forever given the impression that half of her mind was elsewhere.

  Still: that she would sit with him in a parlor at all had been a pleasant surprise. That had been the year of ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ and ‘In A Shanty in Old Shanty Town’. Unemployment had reached twenty-four percent, and the suicide rate had risen accordingly. The Depression had worked over the nation like a dog working a bone. Max’s world, already painted in squalid shades of gray, had seemed darker every day … and then there in the midst of the gloom had appeared this beautiful young girl wearing a fresh blue-and-white dress, with kohl pencil around her eyes and a sweet, disarming smile.

  How had he ever found the gumption to walk up to her, that day on the street, and strike up a conversation? The answer: he had been too young and stupid to know any better. And of course Emil Spooner had been by his side, egging him on.

  ‘Go on,’ Emil had urged. ‘Look how she’s standing. Look at those eyes. She’s begging for it.’

  ‘So you talk to her,’ Max had answered.

  Emil laughed at the absurdity. Short and scrawny, he had cultivated, that year, the affectations of a tough guy – the Emil who cared nothing for outward appearances was still decades away – wearing a straw hat far back on the crown of his head, as he had seen Pretty Boy Floyd do in photographs, and holding a Cherry Coke into which he had splashed some of his father’s whiskey. Emil and Max had played hooky that day, pitching pennies and shoplifting from Woolworths. Now, in late afternoon, they had found Betsy standing on a street corner at the edge of Hooverville, near a hobo sleeping beneath a newspaper on a bench.

&n
bsp; ‘She’s out of my league,’ Emil said. ‘But I can tell she likes the strong, silent type. That’s you, glamor boy.’

  ‘What’s she doing there?’ asked Max: hazily, as if confused by his own question. ‘What’s she waiting for?’

  ‘I’m telling you, buddy, she’s waiting for you. She just don’t know it yet.’

  So Max forced his feet into motion, distracted, nearly getting run down by a streetcar after two steps. Licking his lips, he pressed forward, even as Emil laughed behind him. Approaching Betsy, he smoothed down his bushy cowlick.

  As he drew near, she smiled. This confused him. Max Whitman was grindingly poor, even by Depression standards. Nobody would ever mistake him for smart, and his own mother didn’t think he was especially handsome – yet, for some reason, Betsy was smiling.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I know you. You’re Betsy.’ He scratched his cowlick. ‘I’m Max.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You beat the hell out of Walter Addams, last year, in the school yard.’

  Turning, Max gestured in explanation toward Emil Spooner, standing on the other side of the street. ‘He called my friend an Abercrombie.’

  ‘You sent Walt to the hospital, huh?’ Her eyes gave a febrile glitter.

  Max only shrugged.

  ‘Want to buy me a Moxie?’

  ‘Uh … sure.’

  She crooked out an arm. ‘Lead the way, slugger.’

  She had no brother or sister to look out for her. Her father worked late hours as a bookkeeper; her mother, occupied with mysterious errands from sunup to sundown, showed no interest in chaperoning. And for whatever reason, Betsy seemed only too happy to give Max a whirl.

  They went to movies, sat in chairs of fumed oak in her father’s parlor, and walked hand-in-hand around the block. At a local dance hall, they swayed together across a packed floor to ‘Mood Indigo’, through smoky darkness and the fragrance of black market booze. She smiled up at him, all eyes and lips. ‘I don’t bite, slugger,’ she said, and so he stole his first kiss.