Carter Beats the Devil (50 page)

On the ground, crowds were forming—if “crowds” were clots of three or four or five pedestrians who had folded their arms and cocked their heads skyward—and the orchestra’s brass section stood at the edge of the fruit orchards, playing Handel.

But in spite of all contrary evidence, the park made quite a lovely show of putting on a good time for all.

“You know what the hardest thing is?” Phoebe said, as the first pair of fireworks went up. “The hardest thing is to know everything you know so far and still have faith.”

A sizzling sound, as a ratty-looking brownish smoke trail ignited, and bits of carbonized paper rained down. And then two purple ones, twisting like a pair of snakes, and a
boom
as sparks made a brief, flickering halo.

It would be easy to pretend to feel faith this moment, suspended over Oakland, with fireworks bursting. Carter closed his eyes. To hear them was to notice that no matter how bright, they were all launched with dull thumps.

But then the people. The cries from the ground, the exclamations.

He opened his eyes. He saw Phoebe, listening to pops and
whizzing above. He wasn’t lonely. Faith was a choice. So, it followed, was wonder.

By the finale of the display, a half-dozen rose-colored smoke trails dusted with glitter that caught the sunlight like diamonds, he’d found a voice in himself, calling “bravo” with the rest of the crowd. It was unbelievable—he was actually disappointed when they ended.

. . .

About a half-hour later, he took her to the gate of the Home, and after they dismounted, they stood on the gravel path. There was a huge Italian cypress between them and the house and a brick pillar, to which the gate was attached, between them and the street. She still wore his jacket and he was in shirtsleeves. “That was swell,” she said.

“Rocky at first, but yes, ultimately swell.”

She put her fists into the jacket pockets and pushed outward, like she had wings. “So.”

“So.”

“Sew buttons, we’ve got enough thread,” she said quickly. She buckled at the knee, then straightened.

“Have you ever noticed how foolish two people begin to sound right before they kiss?”

“No. Never.” She shook her head.

“What if we took off your glasses?”

“There are
so many
possibilities.”

Gently, he eased off her glasses. Her eyes were clenched shut. When he put a hand on each shoulder, she suddenly relaxed and opened her eyes wide. They were bottle green, like a chemist’s belladonna tincture. The pupils, which did not fix, shivered from point to point like hummingbirds.

“Here I am,” she said.

She looked helpless like this. Carter could sense delicate veins alive beneath the skin. “You’re shaking.”

“I don’t like having my glasses off.”

“Phoebe.” He tried to read her face the way she had used her hands to read his. He imagined he saw things he couldn’t quite place, as if they were words in a language in which he had never been fluent.

“I’m going to think you’re cruel,” she whispered.

“Who hurt you?”

“May I put my glasses back on?”

“No.”

“How about a bag over my head?”

“I want to look at you still.”

“There’s a one-way street.” She made a grab for them, and on went the glasses, and with them, she regained some composure. “Charles, if you don’t kiss me in five seconds, I’m going to run.”

He kissed her on the mouth, lightly, and in return she put her hands around his neck and kissed him until he remembered he needed to breathe. He started to pull up for air, but she protested.

“You can breathe with me,” she whispered, returning her open mouth to his. And with her hands on his face, and his against the small of her back, where her shirt had come untucked, they shared a breath, and another.

She broke their embrace, her shoulders bowed so that he caught a glimpse of her collarbone and then, in shadow below it, the flicker of an undergarment.

“Was that enough?” she whispered.

“No.”

She patted him on the chest. She stepped carefully away from the pillar they’d been leaning against, finding the gravel on the road, and then walking the well-practiced path away from him, back toward the home. Slowly, he closed his mouth. He could not take his eyes off her. What was that sound in his ears, echoing with her footsteps? His heartbeat.

CHAPTER 20

Jossie Dover’s speakeasy had no formal name. She’d come back from Paris in 1920, an early complainer about all the Americans who’d “roont the joint,” and opened her own private club the day Prohibition started. It was known universally as “the Lips,” for if the police had really wanted to find it, all they had to do was look right under their nose.

Griffin approached the steel-plated door. He knocked briskly, and a small plate in the door opened up. Behind it, a pair of serious eyes looked down on him. Unless the guy was standing on a stool, he had to be almost seven feet tall.

Griffin made an “a-okay” sign and waved it left-to-right. There was the sound of a bolt being thrown, and the door opened.

The guy was in fact almost seven feet tall and handsome as a movie star. The rest of the place was nothing special. It was like every speakeasy he’d seen: dark, choking with fumes, walls draped with velvet curtains to
give it a classy sheen. Since it was after lunch, but before dark, business was light: a few men at a long zinc bar, a few more in the candlelit corners, several of whom had young women in their laps: amateurs.

Griffin approached the bar with four one-dollar bills. “Two rolls of nickels, please.”

The bartender didn’t take his money. She was short, grey-haired, and wore a nubby man’s suit. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, with a hint of an English accent. “I’m Jossie.”

“My pleasure.” They shook hands. “Jack Griffin, Treasury Department. Two rolls of nickels, please.”

She inclined her head toward the nearest barstool. “Have you met Captain Morgan?” Morgan grimaced at the mention of his name, but made no other motions. “As you’re a federal agent you might not be familiar with our Chief of Police, but here he is.”

“This isn’t a shakedown,” Griffin said. “If it makes you feel better, get me two rolls of nickels and a beer, you can tell anyone who asks I got loaded. I just want to see the rabbi.”

“Oh!” She slapped the bar. “Mr. Griffin, pardon me for being a poor hostess.” Drawing a long draft for him, she expertly minimized the head. “When the late President was in town, every two-bit Federale thought he could help himself to my cash register.” She took his money and passed him the rolls of nickels. “Rabbi Golod is at the last table on your left.”

Griffin thanked her, and she went off to help other patrons. Sipping at the beer—his first alcohol in more than a week—he took out the list of rabbis Olive White had prepared for him. Golod was near the top. According to his registration under the Volstead Act, Rabbi Golod was allowed sacramental wine shipments to fulfill the religious needs of the fifteen thousand Jews who worshipped at his synagogue. Given that there were only two thousand Jews within fifty miles of San Francisco, Golod was either optimistic about increasing his flock or as crooked as the eight other local rabbis who claimed congregations of more than five thousand.

“Rabbi Golod?” Griffin stood by a table in the very back. The rabbi was hard to see, as he had a flapper in his lap. She was drinking gin, straight.

“Yeah?” The voice came from behind her. “Excuse me, honey.” Rabbi Golod peeked around her narrow shoulders. Bearded, he had a dreamy smile and benevolent eyes.

Griffin showed his badge. “My name’s Jack Griffin. I’m with the Secret Service.”

The rabbi bodily lifted the girl from his lap. “Baby, this is business.” He gave her a swat on the rump. “G’wan, scoot!” He kept his eyes on her
rear as she left, and then he said to Griffin, “There’s documentation on file for me. Each and every one of those names will check out.”

Griffin looked at him as innocent as a sun-dappled fawn. “What names?”

“My congregation,” he said, with a rising inflection, like he was asking a question.

“Good,” said Griffin. “I’d like to convert.”

“Pardon me?”

“I’d like to convert.” He leaned forward, and dropped both rolls of nickels so they banged against the table.

“You . . . want to what? Be Jewish?”

“Yeah. I had enough of being Presbyterian. It doesn’t satisfy me. I want to be a Jew.” He picked up one roll of nickels, then the other, making fists around them.

“That’s noble.” Rabbi Golod’s eyes set on Griffin’s fists.

“So what exactly do I need to do to convert?”

“You have to do many things. It’s a long process.”

Griffin arched his neck, looking him over. “Don’t rabbis wear those fringes? What are they called?”

“Hey, I
am
a rabbi, see? You got nothing on me.”

It was beautiful watching him crack. Griffin wished he’d come up with this strategy himself, but it had been pioneered by Izzy Einstein, one of the only honest Prohibition Agents. “So how do I start getting converted? Do I study the Bible, or—”

“That’s a good idea. You should eat kosher foods, and study the Bible for . . . forty days, that’s how it starts.”

“Thank you, Rabbi Golod.” Griffin unwrapped his hand from the roll of nickels. He took out a piece of paper.

“What are you writing?”

“I’m writing your name down. See, I’m writing a letter to the, uh, how do you say this?” He pointed at the name he’d copied out from Izzy Einstein’s memo. “The B’nai B’rith. I’m going to tell them you were very helpful in telling me I needed to study the Bible for forty days.” The B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation had sprung up recently and, among other duties, ferreted out wet rabbis who’d recently found religion.

“Okay!” Rabbi Golod slammed his hand onto the table. “What? What do you want?”

Griffin could have prolonged this—it was actually fun. Instead, he opened his satchel and passed him the wine bottle. “Where’d this come from?”

“Huh!” He grabbed it and looked at it under the dim light. He looked at the dimple in the bottom and at the label again. “Home brew. Could of come from anywhere.”

Griffin silently picked up his two rolls of nickels again.

“Honest,” Golod exclaimed. “I’m really not anxious to get worked over. I have a book in the back, has every label I ever carried, and one example of every bottle I ever saw. This one isn’t in there. Believe me.”

“How often you make deliveries to the Palace?”

“Whew. Ten times a minute, maybe. You serious?”

“Any of the guys about average height, average—”

“Girls. Jossie only uses girls. Anything I run to the Palace goes through her, she takes a cut.”

Griffin was ready to fold up his cards and go home, but he had a sudden, faint memory. “Any of your parishioners named Ledocq? Jewish, works for a magician.”

Golod frowned. “He works for a magician? Ledocq? We don’t get many Jews in here.”

Griffin noted this. Home brew. Much harder to trace. He’d hit a dead end, his time in San Francisco was over, and he wasn’t sure where to go next. He sipped his beer. “
Mikvah
,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Next guy comes in here looking to convert, just drop the word
mikvah
in there somewhere. That should shake him.” Golod glared at him for the whole time it took him to drain his beer. Griffin didn’t even know why he was being so generous lately.

Outside again, he checked his watch. In a couple hours, he had to catch the train that would take him to New Mexico. He could try to harass Carter. He could bring the bottle to his superiors. He took about three steps toward his hotel, but then in a maneuver he could never quite explain to himself, turned 180 degrees and walked to the public library.

CHAPTER 21

There was no feeling that deserved more to be bottled and reapplied at leisure than having recently been kissed by a pretty girl. Waiting at an intersection, Carter touched his fingers to the scar on his lip and thought,
She felt this,
until a Model T behind him honked.

He took the curve onto Grand Avenue, a mild curve, with a deeper
lean than he needed to, but he felt at every moment like a daredevil.
What a smelly contraption!
Opening the throttle, he felt air rush up his shirtsleeves, and the engine make a slight flutter and gasp, a strange draw like he was pulling against elastic, which meant trouble. He was low on fuel. He turned the petcock to reserve and the R32’s power returned.

The top of Lake Merritt was home to two gasoline filling stations: a Standard and a Shell. Though Standard was papered with banners trumpeting their ethyl no-knock premium, Carter chose the Shell—he always chose the Shell—because it sported a fine view of the lake, the attendants’ uniforms were the more regal, and especially because the station-house was molded into a thirty-foot yellow stucco clamshell.

When he pulled in, he was greeted by a swarm of attendants, six of them, each about eighteen years old, all gawking at his BMW. They had a patter about their fine products and were required to recite it for every customer, but all that blew away in the warm summer winds—no one had ever seen a motorcycle like Carter’s.

“Mr. Carter, this is the bee’s knees,” said Jimmy, a young man whom Carter particularly liked. Jimmy’s father was a haberdasher, but Jimmy was mechanically inclined.

“It’s the cat’s meow,” another one cried. “What’s she take?”

“Aviation fuel,” Carter responded, which caused a babble of appreciation, and then one boy who hadn’t spoken yet concluded, “It’s the cat’s pajamas.” That was a new one to Carter.

“You do have aviation fuel, don’t you?”

“Do we ever!”

Carter reached for his expense journal and remembered it was in the pocket of his jacket. An excuse to visit her again. He unscrewed the gasoline cap and then the six boys did a ro-sham-bo to win the privilege of pushing the bike to the aviation-grade pump. Jimmy was an early loser of the contest, and ended up walking, head down and hands in pockets, to the farthest pump, where a matte black bread truck was parked.