Carter Beats the Devil (27 page)

Late in the evening of Sunday, August fifth, Griffin was on his bed in his undershirt, suspenders hanging in loops by his sides, when he heard a clatter in the other room of his suite. He had been playing solitaire, about to start his midnight-to-4-
A
.
M
. shift at Room 8064, and he held a card face up, suddenly unable to recall what play he’d just made. Had he only imagined the noise? Perhaps a new agent had shipped in or, more likely, one of the men knew the room next door was empty, and had elected to take an unauthorized nap. Griffin threw down the cards. He wasn’t going to let someone slack off.

He turned off the lights in his room, and quietly leaned against the suite door, listening for, and hearing, faint creaking sounds—someone sitting on the bed, possibly. He tested the doorknob and found that it was unlocked. Easing the door open, he breathed through his mouth, feeling his heels slide across the thick Palace carpets, and then he was in the next room, advancing slowly toward the bed in the dark. The shades down, blinds drawn, the room felt closed in, too warm and too musty, a curious pressure in the air as if it were full of stored furniture. Too late, Griffin heard a rustling by his side, and suddenly arms wrapped around him. He was being searched and he tried to cry out but strong hands found and clamped over his mouth and he was pulled again to his feet and a voice he recognized whispered, “Shut up, Griffin.”

Another voice, louder, “He didn’t bring his gun.” It sounded like Agent Stutz.

A third voice which he also knew. Wheeler. “Okay, lights. Get those lights on.”

One by one, the room lamps went on and Griffin saw, with a sinking heart, that the bed, armoire, and dresser had been pushed back to the walls to accommodate a group of his peers, and without even counting them, he felt sick in his craw: there had to be seven of them, plus one to appear. Eight Righteous Men.

Four of them stood in a loose line by the far side of the room. Two held him steady. Wheeler sat in a wooden-backed chair with a leather-bound book in his lap. Glancing up at Griffin, he adjusted his spectacles, smoothed back the thinning hair that he wore parted down the middle and slicked back in a style twenty years too young for him, and, picking up the book to read better by the lamplight, coughed into his hand.

“I know what you louses are up to,” Griffin said.

Wheeler read in measured tones, as if from a legal document. “‘To serve your government is a privilege few men will ever know. Only the elite are chosen for the Treasury’s law enforcement divisions. Only one percent of those who apply are accepted into any division of the Secret Service.’”

“Get on with it,” Griffin spat. “Where’s the eighth man?”

Wheeler continued to read. “‘Only the quintessence of that crop is allowed to guard the life of the President. To serve is to admit the imperfections of democracy. For with education and the love of God in his heart, every man should have only goodwill toward the President and the Service should not be needed. Yet the urge for anarchy lives in men’s souls.’”

“Hollis, Stutz,” Griffin barked at the men holding him, “are you two idiots with Wheeler?”

Stutz growled, “We’re here, aren’t we?”

Wheeler held up a hand for silence, and Griffin sighed. “I know the rest of this part. I was handling this kind of thing before any of you. Bring out your eighth man.”

Wheeler said, “‘For a Secret Service agent to be effective, he must show facility with deportment, foreign language, athletics, the pistol, the machine gun, observation, tactics, strategy, special investigative work, psychology, boxing and wrestling. To fail at any of these is to fail the Service, the President and the Country.’”

“‘Therefore,’” Griffin strained his arms which were now cramping; sitting in the pool of lamplight, Wheeler echoed him.

“‘Therefore the Service will never let a fellow Service member grow weak or infirm or shameful. If an enclave of eight righteous men says so, then an agent shall be called on to defend himself. If he fails, he does so
honorably, and men will not speak ill of him and the Service need not know why he has chosen to voluntarily retire. If he succeeds, the stigma is removed in his triumph.’” Wheeler closed the book and again pushed up his glasses. When he spoke now, his eyes were averted from Griffin. “We eight feel you, Jack Griffin, have behaved in a manner unbecoming. Francis O’Brien has issued the challenge.”

The door to the bathroom opened, and O’Brien lumbered out. Six foot four, 220 pounds, O’Brien had played left tackle for Notre Dame before the War. He was stripped to the waist, showing that he carried his weight gracefully.

“Why can’t you look me in the eye, O’Brien?” Griffin called. As O’Brien approached, the restraining hands fell away, and he was half released, half shoved into the room. “You guys think Harding was my fault? How do you figure that?”

Wheeler said, “You need to save your breath, mister.”

O’Brien began to circle Griffin, his meaty hands making small windmills in front of his chest. A slow and tenacious agent, he was known less for intelligence than ambition. Bitterly, Griffin thought that O’Brien would of course be the one to challenge him. It would be an easy win over a tired old man, but it would also be a dirty job that someone had to do, the type of scut work O’Brien had built his reputation on.

He squinted as if Griffin were an oddly shaped box he was required to lift. Griffin faced him reluctantly, arms hanging at his sides. O’Brien was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier. The only way out of this was his brain. “Is this your idea, O’Brien?” he asked. “You think you can hit a superior?”

“If I beat you, you won’t be my superior anymore.” His right fist flew just short of Griffin’s jaw and a quick left grazed his mouth, Griffin feeling a dull rap against his teeth. Griffin stepped back, allowing O’Brien to come forward, and, feet screwed into the floor, Griffin drove the heel of his hand straight up into O’Brien’s chin. O’Brien’s head snapped back, but that was all, and instead of falling, he used his arms to lift Griffin off the ground and squeeze him. Trying fruitlessly to move his pinned arms and grunting with exertion, Griffin could barely breathe, sweat already stinging his eyes. He thought, as the breath was crushed out of him, how O’Brien smelled like pickles and beer. The larger man enveloped him completely, Griffin’s legs uselessly flailing, arms losing strength, the only thing he could move was his head, from side to side, or just a little forward and Griffin dropped his head fully as if he’d lost all of the muscles in his neck, then, with every ounce of his
strength, he threw his head back, driving the back of his skull, full force, into O’Brien’s nose.

It sounded like a walnut cracking. O’Brien dropped him in a heap on the floor, where Griffin scrambled into a kneeling position, gagging, holding his ribs. O’Brien slowly came toward him, one hand outstretched, the other clutching his bloody nose, and Griffin realized O’Brien was bringing his foot toward his groin. With a grace he hadn’t known in years, Griffin threw himself head over heels backward; O’Brien missed him.

A kick in the nards! If he wanted to play that way, Griffin knew how to do that. With a glow on his face—freedom!—he grabbed O’Brien’s slippery neck from behind and slammed him face first into the armoire, O’Brien’s arms and elbows blocking most of the impact. Griffin pounded him repeatedly into the heavy oak piece with little leverage, until a three-foot length of oak brocade crashed to the floor. As O’Brien stumbled and searched for balance, Griffin grabbed the brocade plank and hefted it for weight like it was a baseball bat. Turning away from the armoire, O’Brien walked directly into the swinging oak bat that Griffin, starting from a full, roundhouse swing, brought directly into his solar plexus.

There was a great outrush of air, a mild squeak, then O’Brien tumbled to the floor, where he curled up like a cooked shrimp.

The other agents looked at each other, but none of them moved to help either fighter. Griffin, sucking in air, looked around the room as if sizing up other comers. He tossed the bat in Wheeler’s general direction; Wheeler flinched.

Griffin leaned over the wheezing O’Brien. He patted his shoulder, and muttered, “Don’t worry. You’ll get to be a Kentucky man one day.” Then he stood straight, catching his breath and straightening his clothing. At once he realized his tongue was slipping around his teeth unnaturally. One of his gold teeth had fallen to the floor.

Wheeler fidgeted with his book. “You’ve come through, Agent Griffin.” He offered his hand to shake. Griffin looked him over, trembling as the adrenaline left his body, nausea and pain spreading in its place. He took Wheeler’s hand and, instead of shaking it, turned it palm up and dropped his gold tooth into it.

Griffin spoke. “Courtesy of Agent Bell. A Righteous Man. Twenty-two years ago. I paid for the dentist last time. This time, I’m billing you. You have a problem with that?”

Wheeler shook his head.

Griffin stared down the others, who stood, uneasy and awkward, in the suite. “You should put the furniture back in place. I’m going to bed.”

Returning to his room, he shut the door behind him and collapsed against it. He did not move for several minutes. Then, weakly, he scooped up the half-finished game of solitaire and threw the playing cards into the Palace’s carved oak wastepaper basket.

His mouth ached. He reached for his flask, but thought better of it. Instead, he called Room Service for a bucket of ice, which they left in his room while he took a short, cold shower and gathered his thoughts. Once he heard an inquiring knock at his front door, but when he barked “Get out of here,” feet padded away on the thick hall carpeting.

He shimmered between anger and self-pity. He considered typing up his resignation and having it on the Director’s desk by morning. The Pinkertons were hiring, even losers, if he didn’t mind the pay cut. But that was surrendering and Griffin wasn’t about to surrender.

Even if he’d survived just now, he knew he was clear in name only. Nothing about his reputation had really changed. He couldn’t redeem himself through the usual channels. With his distance from President Coolidge, he couldn’t take a bullet or a bomb or knock poison out of his hands.

Jack Griffin had been blamed for too much in his life. He held ice to his gums, and when it came away bloody, he began leafing through his notes and telegrams about Harding’s Voyage of Understanding.

CHAPTER 3

The next morning, they broke the seal on Harding’s room at the Palace. Griffin doubted it was a coincidence that as soon as they realized they couldn’t get rid of him that easily, it was suddenly time to turn the last administration over to posterity. Told to catalogue all of the late President’s belongings, he responded with a seven-page memo that described, down to the carpet lint, the condition and disposition of every item as it was examined and packed for storage. He stood in Wheeler’s office on the second floor of the Mint while Wheeler flipped through documentation Griffin had prepared.

Wheeler murmured, “. . . five packs playing cards, all Bicycle decks, two decks unwrapped; one box cigars, three cigars missing; one Krazy Kat comic strip from 7/18/23, from
San Francisco Examiner
, glued to note on W. R. Hearst letterhead. Note reads: ‘Thought you’d get a chuckle over that meany Ignatz—Bill.’”

Griffin noted how Wheeler read now. It was nothing like the way he’d read the Eight Righteous Men charges. Right now, in his office, Griffin sensed no respect from Wheeler, no forgiveness—just fear.

The list went on. The remains of dinner and the chocolate cake Harding had eaten for dessert, all of which tested out clean. Harding’s suits of clothing, shoes, programs, and souvenirs from the Voyage of Understanding, the text of his speeches, newspaper and magazine clippings about himself. Harding had died while the Duchess was reading aloud a
Saturday Evening Post
article about the charitable work Harding had done. His last words had been, “Excellent. A happy description. May I have a glass of water?”

There were bottles of homeopathic medicine to fight infection, tongue depressors Griffin had found in the trash can, and two oxygen tanks that had been used in the futile attempt to revive Harding. There was even the final glass of water the Duchess had brought him.

Wheeler cleared his throat, which Griffin had long ago noted was his way of preparing to tell a joke. “Your memo doesn’t say whether the glass is half empty or half full.”

“Look at the appendix, sir.”

“Oh.” Halfheartedly, Wheeler flipped a few pages and read aloud. “Glass was completely empty, but was apparently, based on trace mineral residue, approximately one-fourth full of water upon Harding’s death.”

“And the lab says it was just normal San Francisco tap water.”

“Thank you, Agent Griffin.” Wheeler considered the papers in front of him, and then, with great effort, for the first time, looked at Griffin carefully.

“How’s the tooth, Jack?”

“Fine. Sir. You should be getting the bill soon.”

His embarrassed attempt at human contact now over, Wheeler returned to the memo. Its last page, marked Eyes Only, described several items Griffin had tucked away, separately. He’d found them in the false bottom of Harding’s toilet case: two letters from Nan Britton, asking for money for support of their child; notes from women in Chicago, Helena, and Seattle suggesting rendezvous; three tins of prophylactics.

Wheeler sighed. “Where is this separate package?”

Griffin placed it on his desk. Wheeler peered in, and pulled out one of the tins of Ramses. Following the King Tut craze, it was decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

“All three tins were unused, sir. Their conditions suggest President
Harding bought them over a year ago. As I note in my memo, I concluded that they don’t indicate new mistresses.”

“Very good.” Wheeler put the package under his desk. “I understand the crew at the White House found a few more of these in the Oval Office. None of them were used. I guess he just liked having them around.”

Griffin made no response.

“This is a commendable job, Agent Griffin. We have another assignment for you. More of a top priority.”