Falling Angel

by William Hjortsberg

  “With Satan’s help, Johnny made it big in a hurry. Real big. Overnight, he was a headliner; within a couple of years he was rich as Fort Knox. I guess it went to his head. He started thinking it was him that was the source of the power and not the Dark One. It wasn’t long before he was boasting he found a way to duck out of his end of the bargain.”

  “Did he?”

  “He tried. He had quite a library, and he came across an obscure rite in a manuscript by some Renaissance alchemist. It involved the transmutation of souls. Johnny had the idea that he could switch psychic-identities with someone else. Actually become the essence of the other person.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, he had to have a victim. Someone his own age, born under the same sign. Johnny found a young soldier just back from North Africa. One of our first casualties. He had a brand-new medical discharge and was out celebrating New Year’s Eve. Johnny picked him up in the crowd at Times Square. He drugged him in a bar and took him back to his place. That’s where the ceremony took place.”

  “What kind of ceremony?”

  “The transmutation rite. Meg assisted him. I was the witness. Johnny had an apartment at the Waldorf where he kept one room empty at all times for ceremonial use. The maids were told he practiced singing there.

  “Dark velour curtains covered the windows. The soldier was bound naked on his back on a rubber mat. Johnny branded a pentacle on his chest. There was an incense brazier smoking in each corner, but the smell of burning flesh was much stronger.

  “Meg unsheathed a virgin dagger, one never used before. Johnny blessed it in Hebrew and Greek. The prayers were new to me; I couldn’t understand a word. When he finished, he bathed the blade in the altar flame and cut the soldier deeply across each tit. He dipped the dagger into the kid’s blood and traced a circle with it on the floor around the body.

  “There were more chants and incantations then. I didn’t follow any of it. What I remember are the smells and the dancing shadows. Meg sprinkled handfuls of chemicals into the fire, and the flames changed color, green and blue, violet, pink. It was hypnotic.”

  “Sounds like the floorshow at the Copa. What happened to the soldier?”

  “Johnny ate his heart. He cut it out so fast it was still beating when he wolfed it down. That was the end of the ceremony. Maybe he did gain possession of the guy’s soul; he still looked like Johnny to me.”

  “What good did killing the soldier do him?”

  “His plan was to drop out of sight when he had the chance and resurface as the soldier. He’d been stashing money in secret hiding places for some time. Lord Satan presumably would never know the difference. Trouble was, he didn’t cover all the bases. He got shipped overseas before he could pull the switch and what came back couldn’t remember its own name let alone a Hebrew incantation.”

  “And that’s when your daughter entered the picture.”

  “Right. A year had gone by. Meg insisted we help him. I put up the cash to bribe the doctor, and we dropped Johnny off at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Meg made sure of that. It was the starring point, the last place the soldier remembered before Johnny drugged him.”

  “What happened to the body?”

  “They dismembered it and fed the pieces to the hunting dogs in my kennel upstate.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “Nothing really. Maybe Johnny laughing after it was over. He joked about the victim. Said the poor bastard had no luck at all. They sent him overseas to the invasion at Oran and who ends up shooting at him: the fucking French! Johnny thought that was really funny.”

  “I was at Oran!” I grabbed Krusemark by his shirt and slammed him back against the ladder. “What was the soldier’s name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were there in the room.”

  “I didn’t know anything about it until just before it happened. I was only the witness.”

  “Your daughter must have told you.”

  “No, she didn’t. She didn’t know herself. It was part of the magic. Only Johnny could know his victim’s true name. Someone he trusted had to guard the secret for him. He sealed the soldier’s dogtags in an ancient Egyptian Canopic urn and give it to Meg.”

  “What did this urn look like?” I was close to choking him. “Did you ever see it?”

  “Many times. Meg kept it on her desk. It was alabaster, white alabaster, and had a three-headed snake carved on the lid.”

  FORTY-SIX

  I was in a hurry. Keeping the .38 tight against Krusemark’s ribs, I unlocked the handcuffs and stuffed them in my jacket pocket. “Don’t make a move,” I said, backing toward the open entrance, my gun aimed at his midsection. “Don’t even breathe.”

  Krusemark rubbed his wrist. “What about the film? You promised me the film.”

  “Sorry. I was lying about that. I pick up bad habits hanging around guys like you.”

  “I must have that film.”

  “Yeah, I know. A blackmailer’s dream come true.”

  “If it’s money you want, Angel …”

  “You can wipe your ass with your stinking money.”

  “Angel!”

  “See you around, hotshot.” I stepped out onto the pathway as an uptown local thundered by. I didn’t care if the motorman saw me or not. My only mistake was shoving the Smith & Wesson back into my pocket. We all do dumb things sometimes.

  I didn’t hear Krusemark coming until he had me around the throat. I figured him all wrong. He was like a wild animal, dangerous and strong. Incredibly strong for a man his age. His breath came in short, angry snorts. He was the only one of us that was breathing.

  Even with both hands I couldn’t break his choke-hold. Shifting my weight, I got one of my feet hooked between his legs and pulled us off balance. We fell together against the side of the moving train, and the impact spun us apart like rag dolls, flinging me back against the subway wall.

  Krusemark managed to stay on his feet. I wasn’t so lucky. Sprawled like a drunk on the dusty path, I watched the iron wheels rush by, inches from my face. The train sped past. Krusemark aimed a kick at my head. I caught his foot and yanked him down. I’d been kicked enough for one week.

  There wasn’t time to grab the .38. Krusemark sat facing me on the path, and I sprang at him, driving my fist into the side of his neck. He made the sort of grunt you’d expect from a toad if you stepped on one. I hit him again, hard, and felt his nose collapse like rotten fruit. He grabbed my hair, yanking my head against his chest, and we grappled on the narrow pathway, gouging and kicking.

  There was nothing fair about the fight. The Marquis of Queensberry would not have approved. Krusemark got me down and had his hard hands around my throat. When I couldn’t part his weightlifter’s grip, I pushed my right palm under his chin and levered his head back. It didn’t work, so I jabbed my thumb into his eye.

  That did the trick. I heard Krusemark scream even as a local train roared on down the tunnel. His grasp relaxed, and I twisted free, sucking in air. I parried his groping hands, and we wrestled, rolling together onto the tracks. I ended up on top and heard Krusemark’s head thud against a wooden tie. I kneed him in the groin for good measure. There wasn’t much fight left in the old man.

  I stood up and felt my pocket for the Smith & Wesson. The gun was gone, lost in the struggle. A crunch of cinders alerted me as Krusemark’s shadowy form staggered upright. He lurched and threw a wild roundhouse right Stepping inside, I pounded him twice in the midsection. He was hard and solid, but I knew I hurt him.

  I took a left on the shoulder where it did no harm and poked my right fist into his face, connecting with the ridge of bone above his eye. It felt like hitting a stone wall. My hand went numb with pain.

  That punch didn’t slow Krusemark down at all. He lumbered on, throwing hard, skillful jabs as he came. I couldn’t block them all, and he stung me a few times as I groped in my jacket for the handcuffs. I used the bracelets like a flail, backhanding him acro
ss the face. The crack of steel on bone was music to my ears. I hit him again, above the ear, and he went down backward with a grunt.

  Krusemark’s sudden scream echoed and died in the dripping tunnel like the sound of someone falling from a great height. A metallic, beetle-wing hum of electricity crackled in the darkness. The third rail.

  I didn’t want to touch the body. It was too dark to see him clearly, and I stepped back onto the safety of the path. In the light of a distant bulb, I could make out his obscure form, sprawled across the tracks.

  I went back into the exit alcove and poked around inside the leather valise at the foot of the ladder. The papier-mâché lion mask snarled up at me. Under the tangled black cape, I found a small plastic flashlight. That was all. I stepped out into the tunnel and switched it on. Krusemark lay crumpled like a pile of old clothing, his face frozen in his final agony. The sightless eyes stared down the tracks above an open mouth arrested in a soundless scream. A curling tendril of acrid smoke rose above his scorched flesh.

  I wiped my prints off the handle and threw his valise down beside him. The mask fell out on the cinders. Hashing the beam up and down the pathway, I spotted my .38 lying against the wall a few feet away. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. The knuckles on my right hand throbbed painfully. The fingers wiggled, so I knew they weren’t broken. I couldn’t say the same for the Leica. A spiderweb of tiny cracks was frozen deep in the lens.

  I checked my pockets. Everything was there except Epiphany’s leather good-luck charm. It was lost in the fight. I had a quick look around but didn’t spot it. There were more important things to do. I kept Krusemark’s flash and hurried up the path, leaving the shipping millionaire lying on the tracks to be dismembered by the next train through. The rats would feast tonight.

  I left the subway at the 23rd Street station and caught an uptown cab at the corner of Park Avenue South. I gave the driver Margaret Krusemark’s address and ten minutes later he dropped me in front of Carnegie Hall. An old man in shabby clothes stood near the corner, cranking out Bach on a violin held together with masking tape.

  I took the elevator to the eleventh floor, not caring if the wizened operator remembered me or not. It was too late for such niceties. The door to Margaret Krusemark’s apartment had been sealed by the police. A strip of gummed paper was plastered across the lock. I tore it free, found the right twirl, and let myself in, wiping the knob with my sleeve.

  Switching on daddy’s flashlight, I probed the beam into the living room. The coffee table on which the body sprawled had been removed, along with the couch and the Persian carpet. In their place remained exact adhesive-tape outlines. The tracing of Margaret Krusemark’s arms and legs protruding at either end of the table’s rectangular shape looked like a cartoon of a man wearing a barrel.

  There was nothing that interested me in the living room, and I continued down the hallway to the witch’s bedchamber. The drawers on her desk and filing cabinets all wore a Police Department seal. I flashed my light across the desktop. The calendar and scattered papers were gone, but the row of research books stood intact. At one end, the alabaster Canopic urn gleamed like polished bone.

  My hands trembled as I picked it up. I fumbled for several minutes, but the lid with the carved three-headed snake remained stuck tight. In desperation, I hurled the jar to the floor. It shattered like glass.

  I spotted a metallic shine among the shards and grabbed the flashlight off the desk. A set of army dogtags gleamed in the coils of a beaded chain. I picked it up, holding the small, oblong tag under the light. An involuntary chill spread through my body. I ran my icy fingers across the raised letters. Along with the serial number and blood type was a machine-stamped name: ANGEL, HAROLD R.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The dogtags clinked in my pocket on the way down. I stared at the elevator operator’s shoes and ran my thumb over the indented metal letters like a blind man reading a text in Braille. My knees felt weak, but my mind raced along trying to put it all together. Nothing quite fit. It had to be a setup, the dogtags a plant. The Krusemarks, one or both, were in on it; Cyphre was the brains. But why? What was it all about?

  Out on the street, the chill night air stung me from my trance. I dropped Krusemark’s plastic flashlight in a litter basket and hailed a passing cab. Before anything else, I knew I had to destroy the evidence locked in my safe. “Forty-second and Seventh,” I told the driver, settling back with my feet up on the jumpseat as we headed straight down the avenue, catching each green light in sequence.

  Steam clouds curled from under the manhole covers like the last act of Faust. Johnny Favorite sold his soul to Mephistopheles, then tried to get out of it by sacrificing a soldier with my name. I thought of Louis Cyphre’s elegant smile. What did he hope to gain by this charade? I remembered New Year’s 1943 on Times Square as clearly as if it were the first night of my life. I was stone-cold sober in a sea of drunks, my dogtags securely in the coin pocket of my wallet when it got lifted. Sixteen years later they turn up in a dead woman’s apartment. What in hell was going on?

  Times Square blazed like a neon purgatory. I fingered my improbable nose and tried to remember the past. Most of it was gone, wiped out by a French artillery round at Oran. Bits and pieces remained. Smells often bring them back. Damn it, I knew who I was. I know who I am.

  The lights were on in my office when we pulled to a stop in front of the novelty shop. The meter said seventy-five cents. I thrust a dollar at the driver and mumbled, “Keep the change.” I hoped there was still time.

  I took the fire stairs to the third floor so the noise of the elevator wouldn’t give me away. The hallway was dark, ditto my waiting room, but the light from the inner office shone on the pebbled glass in the front door. I pulled my gun and eased inside. The door to the inner office stood wide open, spilling light across my threadbare carpet. I waited a moment but didn’t hear a thing.

  The office was a mess; my desk ransacked, drawers upended, the contents scattered on the linoleum. The dented green filing cabinet was lying on its side, glossy photographs of runaway kids curled like autumn leaves in the corner. When I righted my overturned swivel chair I saw the steel door to the office safe hanging open.

  Then the lights went out. Not in the office, inside my head. Someone got the drop on me with what felt like a baseball bat. I heard the sharp crack it made connecting even as I fell forward into blackness.

  Cold water splashing on my face brought me around. I sat up, sputtering and blinking. My head throbbed like an aspirin jingle. Louis Cyphre stood above me, dressed in a tuxedo, pouring water from a paper cup. In his other hand he held my Smith & Wesson.

  “Find what you were looking for?” I asked.

  Cyphre smiled. “Yes, thank you.” He crumpled the paper cup and added it to the mess on the floor. “A man in your profession shouldn’t house his secrets in tin cans like that one.” He pulled the horoscope Margaret Krusemark did of me from his inside jacket pocket. “I imagine the police will be happy to have this.”

  “You’ll never get away with it.”

  “But, Mr. Angel, I already have.”

  “Why did you come back? You had the chart.”

  “I never left. I was in the other room. You walked right past me.”

  “A trap.”

  “Indeed, and a good one, too. You fell into it most eagerly.” Cyphre slipped the horoscope back into his pocket. “Sorry about that nasty tap, but I needed some of your things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Your revolver. I have use for it.” He reached into his pocket and slowly removed the dogtags, dangling them in front of me by the beaded chain. “And for these.”

  “That was clever,” I said. “Planting those in Margaret Krusemark’s apartment. How’d you get her father to cooperate?”

  Cyphre’s smile widened. “How is Mr. Krusemark, by the way?”

  “Dead.”

  “Pity.”

  “I can see you’re all broken up about it.”
<
br />   “The loss of one of the faithful is always regrettable.” Cyphre toyed with the dogtags, winding the chain between tapered fingers. Dr. Fowler’s engraved golden ring flashed on his manicured hand.

  “Cut the crap! Having a gag name doesn’t make you the real thing.”

  “Would you prefer cloven hooves and a tail?”

  “I didn’t figure it out until tonight. You were toying with me. Lunch at Voisin. I should have guessed when I learned that 666 was the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation. I’m not as quick as I used to be.”

  “You disappoint me, Mr. Angel. I should have thought you would have had very little difficulty deciphering my name.” He chuckled out loud at his own lame joke.

  “Framing me for your killings is pretty smart,” I said. “There’s just one hitch.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Herman Winesap. No cop’d believe a story about a client pretending to be Lucifer — only a crackpot would come up with something like that. But I have Winesap to corroborate me.”

  Cyphre hung the dogtags around his neck with a lupine grin. “Attorney Winesap was lost in a boating accident at Sag Harbor yesterday. Most unfortunate. The body has not yet been recovered.”

  “Thought of everything, haven’t you?”

  “I try to be thorough,” he said. “You must excuse me now, Mr. Angel. As enjoyable as this conversation is, I’m afraid I have business to attend to. It would be indeed unwise for you to try and stop me. Should you show yourself before I’m gone, I shall be forced to shoot.” Cyphre paused in the doorway like a showman milking his exit line. “As much as I’m eager to collect my collateral, it would be a real pity to be killed by your own gun.”

  “Kiss my ass!” I said.

  “No need for that, Johnny,” Cyphre smiled. “You’ve already kissed mine.”

  He closed the outer office door quietly behind him. I scrambled on my hands and knees across the litter-strewn floor to the open safe. In an empty cigar box on the bottom shelf I kept an extra gun. I felt my heart tom-tomming inside my chest as I swept aside a concealing sheaf of documents. It was still there. I flipped up the lid and removed a .45-caliber Colt Commander. The big automatic felt like a dream come true in my hand.