Carter Beats the Devil (48 page)

“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 searched 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.

They rode by the train tracks for miles, and then Carter pulled up to Idora’s northern entrance, admiring its great sign carved from panels of oak, each letter a different color of the rainbow: “Idora Park,” then, “Amusements for the Family,” and, in very small letters below, “Borax Smith, Proprietor.”

Carter held his arms out to help Phoebe balance as she dismounted, a careful task for a blind woman. He looked about, and saw no line at the box office, which simultaneously pleased and distressed him. He and Phoebe would have little company, but here was yet another failed investment by Borax.

He purchased their tickets (
thirty-five cents
for two people, he wrote in his journal), and walked her inside the park. A series of trails was flanked by shrubs and tall trees on which signs were nailed that pointed the way to the concession stands, the wooden opera house, the huge swimming tanks, the zoo, or the orchards where families could pick their own apples and peaches.

They passed the largest skating rink in the west. As today was Tuesday, the theme was
Jardin de Danse
, and all ladies were given handmade silk flowers scented with real French perfume. It sounded grand, but in large block letters was the necessary addendum: “No rough skating, shoving of ladies, or vile attentions.”

It was still a sunny day, a little humid and breezy, and Phoebe walked with her head tilted slightly upward, as if to catch both the sun and every scent. She had lost her rose somewhere on the motorcycle ride. Carter closed his eyes, too. He heard calliope music and shouts from distant rides, and he smelled popcorn and burned sugar.

“There’s something . . .” she said, and her voice trailed off.

“Yes?”

“At the Home, we get to know people by feeling their faces. It’s a queer thing to do, I know, but will you . . .”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps we could stand off the main path, then?” They walked into the shade of an elm, where there was a wide bench, and they sat. She tugged off her gloves, one finger at a time, and tucked them into the pocket of her work trousers. “It’s just a way of saying hello. Sometimes we say hello instead by saluting each other with pistols, but they frown on that indoors.”

She began at his crown, and if he’d expected a featherlight reading, the way she’d traced the rose’s veins, he was surprised that it felt more like being sculpted. “Your hair is very thick.”

“It’s a toupee.”

“You have to be quiet. Jan told me you’re handsome, and I have to see whether she was trying to make me feel better.” Her fingertips went over his forehead, lightly now, repeatedly, like rainwater trailing down a window pane. Over his eyebrows, his cheekbones, behind his ears, then both hands meeting at his nose, brushing over his upper lip, his lower lip, his chin, and his neck. Then the whole process in reverse, this time forcing him to close his eyes so she could feel his eyelashes.

She cupped his cheeks in her palms and didn’t move them. He could smell dust on her hands, and lanolin, and her vanilla and almonds. Her
right thumb was stroking an inch-long scar on his lower lip. He looked directly into her face, and read a deep concentration that he’d seen mind readers imitate. Though she had porcelain skin, she was in no way delicate. Nothing was ever quite still on her—her lips bowing, or her eyebrows darting above her glasses for a moment, as if she were powered by a hidden turbine. Under the black hair, kinky and knotted by the wind, and behind the glasses, he sensed a keen mind analyzing intimacies his face had blatantly shown.