Up Jumps the Devil (18 page)

You couldn't blame any of them for wanting to forget the Second Battle of Trenton. Even history would tuck that one away in the attic.

AFTER TRENTON
, Washington was a more complicated figure to his nation, both fatherly and fearsome. In time, he became their president.

The Devil watched from the crowd as President Washington, in his Freemason's apron, laid the cornerstone of the mighty Capitol Building.

When he dropped by the president's hotel in Alexandria that night, hoping for nostalgic conversation and a glass of Madeira, he found Washington not in.

“Hang it,” he said. He had plans to stir up Indian trouble in the territories, and wanted to get started. Maybe he'd find a good tavern on the road out of town. He struck off down the highway, and woods rose up on either side as he left the new capital behind. He was thinking of mutton and rum, grateful for the light of the full moon, when a dark shape came hurtling out of the night.

Glimpsing wet fangs and razor claws, the Devil drew his knife, but the shadow stopped in the underbrush on four legs, ragged breath steaming from its awful snout.

Then the creature stood up like a man. It looked at the Devil with strangely intelligent eyes.

It said, “You!”

The Devil, at a loss, said nothing.

Then the figure before him melted and changed, becoming a naked man of noble bearing and honorable years.

“Washington!” gasped the Devil.

“You bit me,” said Washington, wiping—
blood?
—from his lips.

“We were losing,” explained the Devil.

He offered Washington his coat, and the president accepted without remark.

“You have your nation,” observed the Devil.

He thought about people he had bitten, down through the ages, and how his bite had transformed them. Here, at last, this dark gift had been put to good use.

“
Mankind
has its nation,” argued Washington.

“Would you like to see it?” asked the Devil, producing his clear glass ball.

They hiked up to a low, treeless summit overlooking the mess that would become America's capital. Here and there, derricks rose, and scaffolding, amid mountains of lumber, marble, and brick.

They held the ball between them.

In the future, they saw a great green mall, a wide lawn broad enough to hold entire towns, framed by great white colonnades. A mile away sat a temple of alabaster stone and soaring columns, in which sat a stone god neither of them recognized.

Washington scanned the marble city in awe.

“It's Rome,” whispered Washington.

“And Egypt,” added the Devil, for in the middle of it all a white obelisk reached for Heaven itself.

“That's for you,” said the Devil.

“It's a fang,” said Washington, a nocturnal light in his eyes. “That's as it should be.”

“Good work,” said the Devil.

They shook hands.

Then Washington, still wearing the Devil's coat, headed downhill toward his hotel, his clothes, and, presumably, a good hard scrubbing.

Chicago, 1970

THE LOGO OF ASSURANCE
Mutual Life Insurance was a golden anchor.

In the field offices, the young guns in their first good suits whispered that the golden anchor was real. That Mark Fish had stolen a golden anchor from the Devil, and hocked it for cash to start the company.

“He's still got it,” some said, over the watercooler. “It's in Chicago, in the company vault.”

In Chicago, at the home office, they were careful about what they said, because Fish cruised those very halls.

Fish hadn't stolen shit from the Devil, some argued, hush-hush, whether they worked in Chicago or not. He had a
deal
with the Devil. How else did a guy twenty-five years old own the fastest-growing life insurance confederacy in the Midwest?

“It's just the Midwest,” said some.

“Yeah, but the Midwest is like the New York of insurance. Besides, he was an extraordinary young blade even before. He played at Woodstock, man.”

Late at night, they whispered that Fish had once killed a man.

“With what? Why?”

“With an ashtray. For wearing shitty cologne. How would I know?”

IT WASN'T EASY
being a top dog at Assurance Mutual. Because you could get conflicting orders sometimes, and your job might hang on which conflicting order you followed.

“It's more like conflicting philosophies,” some said.

The more challenging philosophy did not come from the legendary Fish, but from a mysterious lieutenant of his: Mr. Scratch. No one seemed to know exactly what this lieutenant's title was or where, exactly, he fit among the cogs and wheels of the Assurance Mutual machine. People did observe that he had enough juice to contradict Fish and not get his ass handed to him. Beyond that, he seemed attended by the same sort of half myths and superstitions that attended the boss himself. He was sometimes found sitting in rooms he had not been seen to enter, and had a hand made of wood. Those who professed to know what kind of car he drove said he had either the balls or the explosive bad taste to drive an exact replica of the JFK death car, and there were others who whispered it wasn't a replica.

Mr. Scratch was known, one way or another, to campaign quietly—he was always quiet—for actuarial science.

Scratch somehow had lifestyle and mortality statistics going back three thousand years, and he'd made up tables based on those statistics.

The tables were scary.

“Scratch made a prediction one time,” they whispered. “There was a car salesman in Lexington with three kids, on his second marriage, looked healthy, and exercised. Took maybe five drinks a week, and didn't smoke. But Scratch factored in stress from his divorce and some great-granddad of his who had a stroke, like, back before the Civil War, multiplied it by where he lived and divided it by his shoe size, and predicted this guy was going to kick on his forty-first birthday. Talked him into one huge down payment for a policy with a lot of fine print, and saved a hundred grand when the guy kicked exactly when he said he would. Scratch called it to the day.”

Mr. Scratch's science was one philosophy. New men who had graduated from heavy eastern colleges tended to go with it.

The other philosophy, pushed loudly by Fish, was never to pay anybody any money if they could help it. “Deny all claims” was the first thing adjusters and investigators learned. Anytime someone asked to collect, you said “No.” If they asked again, you gave them as little as you could get away with. You made them beg for every little penny. A lot of people, it turned out, didn't ask twice, and were too proud to beg.

Between these two philosophies, a lot of good people got ground up, and a lot of money got made.

ASSURANCE MUTUAL
occupied most of a Chicago high-rise. Fish insisted on decorating all the offices and halls in polished mahogany, and framed pictures with scenes from history. Like George Washington crossing the Delaware, and Daniel Boone leading settlers into Kentucky.

The largest of these was a painting of Pocahontas saving John Smith from having his head smashed on a rock. It hung beside the elevator for one day before Mr. Scratch happened to see it.

“Take that down,” he told the custodian in an odd, sad kind of tone.

The custodian said, “Well, now, Mr. Fish said for me to put it up there.”

Mr. Scratch gave the custodian a certain look, and the painting was taken down.

The custodian was one of those people who got ground up.

THE WORKER BEES
at Assurance Mutual knew very little about the private lives of their superiors.

They didn't know that the reason they saw more of Fish in the morning and less of him in the afternoon was that he was often drunk after lunch.

They didn't know that Scratch was the Devil. They didn't know he'd had a broken heart since the beginning of time. Or that he loved—
loved!
—the movie
Mary Poppins
.

SCRATCH TOOK FISH
to a party for his twenty-sixth birthday. They chartered a private jet and flew south, drinking mai tais all the way.

“Enjoy,” Scratch told Fish, raising his glass.

Fish enjoyed.

The jet flew south of the border, and landed on a grassy airstrip in the middle of nowhere.

The airstrip was attached to a sprawling, mazelike house, hidden among orchards and hills and man-made lakes, and in this astonishing house was a party that had been going on for a hundred years.

New people came and went, but the party itself was immortal. There was beer and wine and girls and opium. And boys. And acid and smack and cocaine. There was a Great Dane named Fidel, who wandered the party wearing a gold chain collar, and after two drinks he might talk to you.

SCRATCH WAS DRUNK
. He was sitting at one end of a steaming hot tub, in the middle of a fake indoor rain forest. He felt good.

They had accomplished something, he and Fish. Built something. Betcher ass God had never built an insurance company!

And the company, the money, was only the start. He hoped.

Money ruined some people, but he had a hunch that Fish could be tempered by its touch. He would grow, become a person of value. He might become what the Devil thought of as the perfect human: someone who had power
and
vision. Who would focus his strength on making the world better, faster, and stronger. The kind of people the Devil needed on his planet, and who had yet to be born in any significant numbers.

Maybe such paragons weren't born. Maybe, like Fish, like an ugly duckling, they had to grow into it. And money would be their teacher, the mountain they measured themselves against. It had to be, because money was the fiery engine of civilization. Money itself was neither good nor evil. What a childish idea! Fish would master the fiery engine. The evil he did would be necessary, and bear fruit.

“We're on our way,” said the Devil. “We've got our own building, for crying out loud.”

“We?” said Fish, at the other end of the hot tub, nearly obscured by steam.

A toucan flew between them.

“You,” said Scratch. “You know what I mean. Don't be an asshole.”

He also
liked
Fish. The kid was pure devil. He had yanked a man through a window and killed him with an ashtray.

For that same reason, he often
dis
liked Fish.

He was insolent. He was proud. He was ambitious. That was pure devil, too, except rebellion was only great if
you
were the proud rebel. When someone else turned that shit on you, forget it.

Fish needed a lesson. A reminder. A growing pain.

“I want to show you something,” said Scratch. “See that guy over there by the pool? The fat fucker in the black trunks, talking loud, obviously thinks he's a big deal?”

“No,” answered Fish. “It's too steamy.”

“Well, he's there. Let me tell you about him.”

And he told Fish that this fat fucker had made himself president of a Caribbean island nation when he was only thirty years old, promising the military some nice things, promising the CIA some nice things, and then gaining the support of the people by promising
them
nice things. But then he didn't deliver. He got full of himself, and got very rich, and turned his island into a massive drug factory (which was the nice thing he'd promised the CIA). But you could only go so far like that before all you had around you were a bunch of disappointed, coked-up generals and a starving population.

“Sounds like a bonehead,” said Fish.

The giant dog Fidel wandered by, ponderously sniffing the fake rain-forest soil, following the edge of the tub.

“
Buenas noches
, Fidel,” called the Devil. Fidel loped away without answering.

Seconds later the Caribbean president ducked through the fake trees and slid his bulk into the hot tub, an oversize Japanese beer bottle in hand.

“Qué tal?”
he boomed, saluting Scratch. Sensing someone hidden in the steam, he raised his bottle in that direction, too.

“Salud,”
said the Devil, sipping his mai tai.

The Caribbean president looked suddenly uneasy, as if he recognized Scratch's voice, but couldn't see Scratch quite well enough yet to place him.

“Dígame,”
began the president.
“Sois ustedes los—”

“You quit answering your phone, Chico,” said Scratch, eyes glowing. “The special red phone I gave you? Bad manners, amigo. Very rude.”

The president dropped his beer and tried to scramble out of the tub, but he didn't get far. Scratch waved his drink, and President Chico became a screaming torch of blue flame. Eyes popping, fat boiling, he writhed and bled for a moment before the flames shrank to a point and vanished, taking him with them.