Carter Beats the Devil (46 page)
“You mean I told you about television for
this
?”
“Didn’t I say you shouldn’t be disappointed?”
“Yeah, but . . .” Borax folded his arms. “Yeah.”
“We’ve stumbled onto something here. I think having secrets protects the audience, not the magician.”
They exchanged a few more social comments after that, Carter mentioning his motorcycle, Borax suggesting he use the vehicle and the fine weather they’d been having to impress a lady or two, and Carter agreed that this was a fine idea.
As Carter left the house, his spirits fell. In twenty years, he’d never rubbed against Borax. He felt like they’d gone into in the forest and lost something on the way.
A hundred yards from the house, he saw a familiar graffito in red paint, lowercase letters across a turned-over wheelbarrow.
She never died
, it read. Such a phrase, beaten down and yet hopeful.
She never died
put Carter, stepping over the fallen trees, finding his BMW, into a contemplative mood. You can’t save anyone, Borax had said. He did his good works, but no longer fully believed in the spirit his unfortunate women showed every time they wrote that phrase in paint or ink or with a stick in the dirt. Now, finding his motorcycle, turning it around, ready to return a pair of gloves, Carter knew exactly what made him so sad: when faith is gone, what always takes its place is profit.
Carter & Company took up one impressive-looking floor of 333 Pine Street. Here, behind frosted glass doors, or in the wide-open bullpen,
clerks fed contracts and cables and bids and quotes into tubes that, by pneumatic means, shot across the floor to be cross-examined under green eyeshades, then executed or returned or filed in great mahogany cabinets. Teams of men read the ticker tape quotes aloud to those manning the broad electric page tape machine, which brought financial stories via teletype and, together, they rushed facts and strong hunches to apron-wearing boys who marked the great chalkboards with net changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which stood today at a strong-as-a-dollar eighty-eight.
But the real work occurred in two small offices toward the back, fiercely plain in design, save for personal photographs and, in James’s case, one framed Carter the Great poster he rather liked, an early one celebrating “A Masterful Escape from a Locked Pillory.”
As was their custom when returning after months abroad, James went from person to person, from the receptionist to the seniormost auditor, ensuring that business was on course. Tom opened mail, the way he had at home, as his demeanor was unsuited for motivational pep talks and chats.
At 12:30 the office was mostly at lunch. Thus James, regarding the trail of paper pumping from their stock ticker, was alone when he heard Tom yell “Sweet Jesus!” from the back office.
Tom was prone to such exaltations, so James hardly looked up until he saw Tom standing in front of him, his face ashen, even more ashen than usual. He had in his hand a letter. “So, this arrived this morning, meaning it was at the bottom of the pile, thank you. We don’t need this.”
James saw it was addressed to him, and to Tom, at Carter & Company, and had spelled their names correctly, thus clearing the first hurdle for solicitations.
“‘Dear Messrs. Crandall and Carter: I understand you occasionally finance individual corporate development if you judge it worthy. I cannot make any promises as to its worthiness, but I have a working model for a device,’” James got to this point, and whispered, “
oh no
” before continuing, “‘that combines radio and pictures. It is called television.’”
James looked at Tom, the blood beginning to drain from his face. Tom said, “Keep reading.”
I will be publicly demonstrating television this afternoon at 5:00
P
.
M
. at Wheeler Auditorium, on the University of California campus. I have invited many local financiers, in hopes of better understanding what backing, if any, my device will receive.
I apologize for the short notice, but the brief lead time will discourage copycats.
Philo T. Farnsworth
“It gets worse,” Tom said.
“You always think that,” James returned, and then Tom handed him the financial section of the
Examiner
. On page three was a public advertisement for Farnsworth’s demonstration, at the University, at five. “We’re going,” James said grimly. “Call out our messenger boys. We need to make sure Charlie’s there, too.”
In summer 1771, a courier galloping away from Frankfurt-on-the-Main was struck dead by a single bolt of lightning that came from an otherwise clear blue sky. Witnesses—not just simple farmers, but a doctor and a landowner—noted that the body was cooked through to its center, but a leather satchel escaped unharmed. Inside the satchel was a tract, “Original Shift in Days of Illuminations,” a plan to manipulate world events in the name of the previously unknown organization the Illuminati. It was an age where reason and tactical planning was beginning to influence the masses, and the discovery of this secret society horrified the populace, which wondered if spreading secular doctrines—such as democracy—was inherently evil.
If the tract was a theoretical monstrosity, something more concrete and far more troubling was also found on the body: a silk purse containing a dozen tiny ivory skulls, each with a three-digit gilt number embossed on its jaw.
The numbers were in sequence, skipping 322, which had been sent to an agent in the rebellious American colonies “so the agents in place there too may contribute to the new world order.”
When the Skull and Bones society appeared at Yale University, in Lodge Room 322, the connection was ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so, as Bonesmen were devoted to world domination (or so it was said) through secrecy and ambiguity.
At the noon hour, while Carter sat with Borax, and Tom Crandall was just uncovering Farnsworth’s solicitation, Agent Samuelson was having the telephone conversation of his life with a man three levels his superior. Samuelson sat at a phone booth by a luncheon counter, taking
notes furiously. Cologned, hair slicked back with exactly the acceptable amount of cream, a Yale man who made quite the show of never seeming to mention he was a Yale man, Samuelson had been waiting for his entire life for this conversation. He played with his watch fob: ivory, carved in the shape of a human skull engraved with gilt numbers—322.
The first three minutes of the conversation were a blur to him. He said “Thank you, sir,” so many times he had to stop himself. He could only remember certain phrases the Colonel had used in the beginning, “How is the weather?” and “This requires discretion and flexibility” and “With Agent Griffin’s invaluable assistance, we’ve put together a profile . . .” and, finally, “We could of course continue to use Agent Griffin in this matter, as he’s one of our finest veterans,” and then the slightest hesitation, “but the situation is quite dynamic.”
Colonel Starling cut to the chase then and there. Though he was no longer suspected of withholding evidence, Charles Carter would probably try to interfere in Treasury Department business being conducted at the University of California at seventeen hundred hours. As a personal favor, would Samuelson mind giving him a
nudge
? Just
detain
him at sixteen thirty?
Samuelson accepted, of course. On its face, it was just a step higher than taking a bootlegger for a ride. But Samuelson was ambitious, and understood what the Colonel meant when he added, “And off the record here, son, the magician has evaded capture that relied on accepted methods.” A pause. “We’d like him off the field for a couple hours, minimum, and, frankly, there is no maximum. Do you follow?”
“I do, sir. Thank you, sir, for trusting me.”
The mistake they’d made trying to detain him before was in not treating him like a magician. Samuelson had seen magic shows, like anyone, and knew the protocol whereby magicians bested volunteers. He spent the better part of an hour revising a plan that was just clever enough to get himself promoted. He rehearsed saying “It was nothing, really,” when other agents would ask him about it. “Ultimately we showed Mr. Carter who the best men were.” Said solemnly, like a Skull and Bonesman.
And fifteen minutes later, in a small room at the Palace, Samuelson was addressing O’Brien, Hollis, and Stutz rationally, laying out every step of the plan. At the end, he added, “We’ll show him who the best men are.”
Nods all around. Stutz, whose froggy voice had been silent, muttered, “Think we’d have to knock him unconscious?”
“Well, that could be part of it,” Samuelson admitted.
Stutz swallowed. “I’ll handle it.”
Samuelson continued talking, fielding questions with a precision that he had always known was his great, untested skill.
Walking to the library, Griffin whistled to himself as if careless. He stopped and bought a newspaper; at intersections, he waved at policemen. He was also catching reflections in windows, on parked cars, and looking for faces to show themselves in the afternoon crowd more than twice.
He had no way of knowing that no one was watching him, and no one much cared how he occupied himself today. But his senses were on alert, and even a simple bureaucratic motion—an assignment in Albuquerque, for instance—seemed tinged with sinister meaning. Would he be met on the train by another agent, taken between cars for a smoke, and then would he, Jack Griffin, career washout, be found the next day on the tracks, a suicide?
He showed identification to the construction crew at the library and put on his hardhat. When he entered the gloomy newspaper room, Miss White waved gaily.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Griffin took a book from his pocket:
Anderson’s Fly Fishing
. It was his only book, but at least he’d had something in his hand when walking to the library. “Miss White.”
“It’s so,
so
good of you to return the book.” She took the book from him and examined the spine. “Ah, Doyle, Doyle, Doyle.” Her voice fell to a whisper, perhaps the loudest whisper Griffin had ever heard. “Follow me.”
She took him to a small, glassed-in office at the corner of the room. When she turned on the lights, the glare caused Griffin to wince. The walls of the room were covered, floor to ceiling, in newspaper headlines from around the world.
She beamed at him—downward—for even slouching, she still stood an inch taller than Griffin. “Mr. Griffin, you are so clever to actually bring a book, but then again, that’s your job, isn’t it?”
There was a certain type of woman who liked the Secret Service; warnings were posted about them everywhere. But Miss White was far more intelligent than those women who, Griffin had to admit, never gave him the time of day anyway.
“The job’s more boring than you’d think.”
“I can’t imagine anything that you do would be boring.” She said this
innocently, her eyes the size of pie plates. “But what happened to you?” She pointed a desk lamp at him. “Were you in a fight? A few days ago? It’s plain as day under these lights—when I saw you the first time, you must have just been in a fight and you didn’t even talk about it.”
He had no business explaining Eight Righteous Men to an outsider, so he just swallowed roughly. “Did you have something to tell me, Miss White?”
“Olive. Oh, I do.” Unlocking a deep file drawer, she asked, “How goes your research into Mr. Carter?”
“We don’t talk—”
“Oh, of course. I understand. I do understand. Here, this is what I wanted to show you.” It was a bound journal, like the one devoted to Charles Carter. The label read “Warren Harding in San Francisco, Summer, 1923.”
Griffin opened it. First were headlines proclaiming San Francisco as a stop on the Voyage of Understanding; then updates on his itinerary; then notices about the President’s ill health; photographs of the mayors of Oakland, San Francisco, and Sacramento greeting Harding; an article listing all the canceled appointments due to illness; an interview with J. Phillip Roemer, head chef of the Palace Hotel, promising that only the most healthful of vitals would reach the President (“‘’Twill be no fault of mine,’ he added, wagging his head over shining copper kettles, ‘if the President’s appetite does not improve’”).