Authors: William Hjortsberg
My first stop was the dentist. I called him from the hospital, and he agreed to open his office in the Graybar Building long enough to fit me with temporary caps. We talked about fishing. He said it was a shame he wasn’t out dunking bloodworms into Sheepshead Bay.
Numb with painkiller, I hurried to make a one o’clock appointment in the lobby of the Chrysler Building. I was ten minutes late, but Howard Nussbaum patiently waited for me at the Lexington Avenue entrance.
“This is blackmail, Harry, pure and simple,” he said as he shook my hand. He was a small, worried-looking man in a brown suit.
“I don’t deny it, Howard. Be thankful I’m not after your money.”
“The wife and I planned an early start for Connecticut. She’s got relatives in New Canaan. So what’s a few hours, I said. Soon as I got your call I told Isobel we’d have to be a little late.”
Howard Nussbaum was in charge of key control for a company that handled security in a number of big midtown office buildings. He owed his job to me, or rather to the fact that I omitted his name from a report I once filed for his firm tracing a grand master that had turned up in the purse of a teenage prostitute. “Did you bring it?” I asked.
“Would I come and not bring it?” He reached inside his jacket and handed me a small unsealed brown envelope. I slid a brand-new key out onto the palm of my hand. It looked exactly like any other key.
“This a master?”
“I should trust you with a master key to the Chrysler Building?” Howard Nussbaum’s frown deepened. “It’s a submaster for the forty-fifth floor. There’s not a lock on the floor it won’t fit. Mind telling me who you’re going after?”
“Ask me no questions, Howard. That way you’re not an accessory.”
“I’m an accessory all right,” he said. “I’ve been an accessory all my life.”
“Have fun in Connecticut.”
I rode up in the elevator, studying the little brown envelope and picking my nose so that the operator looked away. The envelope was stamped and preaddressed. Howard’s instructions were to seal the key inside when I was done and drop it in the nearest mailbox. There was an off-chance that somewhere among my half-G set of twirls I had one that would work the same trick. But skeleton keys require locks with mechanisms worn through the use of duplicates, and Howard Nussbaum’s firm will replace a lock rather than save money on third-generation keys.
The lights were dim behind the frosted doors of Krusemark Maritime, Inc. At the other end of the corridor a distant typewriter tapped erratically. I pulled on my surgeon’s gloves and slipped the submaster into the first of many locks. It was a door-opening charm on a par with Margaret Krusemark’s mummified hand of glory.
I checked out the entire office, moving through rooms of shrouded typewriters and silent telephones. No over-ambitious junior executives giving up their golf games this Saturday. Even the Teletype machines had the weekend off.
I set up the Minox and the copying easel on the L-shaped desk and turned on the fluorescent lights. My penknife and a bent paperclip were all it took to pop the locked filing cabinets and desk drawers. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but Krusemark had something he wanted to hide bad enough to send the goon squad after me.
The afternoon dragged on. I thumbed through hundreds of files, photographing anything that looked promising. Several altered manifests and one letter referring to a congressman open to bribery were the best I could do in the way of criminal activity. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. There’s always a little crime under the corporate rug if you know where to look.
I shot fifteen rolls of film. Every major deal Krusemark Maritime had a finger in passed under my copying easel. Somewhere, lurking behind all the statistics, was enough crime to keep the D.A.’s office hopping for months.
When I finished the filing cabinets, I let myself into Krusemark’s private office with the submaster and bought myself a drink at the mirrored bar. I carried the crystal balloon snifter with me as I went over the wall paneling and looked behind all the paintings. There was no sign of a safe or any tricky carpentry.
Other than the couch, the bar, and the marble-slab desk, the room was bare; no files, no drawers or shelves. I sat my empty glass on the center of the gleaming desk. No papers or letters, not even a pen-and-pencil set disfigured the polished surface. The bronze statuette of Neptune stood far at the other end, poised above his perfect reflection.
I looked under the marble slab. You couldn’t see it from above, but a shallow recessed steel drawer was cleverly concealed underneath. It wasn’t locked. A small lever alongside released a catch and hidden springs sent it gliding open like a drawer in a cash register. Inside were several expensive fountain pens, a photograph of Margaret Krusemark in an oval silver frame, an eight-inch dirk with a gold-mounted ivory grip, and a scattering of letters.
I picked up a familiar envelope and removed the card. An inverted pentagram was embossed at the top. The Latin words were no longer a problem. Ethan Krusemark had his own invitation to the Black Mass.
FORTY-TWO
I put everything back the way I found it and packed my camera away. Before leaving, I rinsed the snifter in the executive washroom and set it carefully in line on a glass shelf above the bar. I had planned on leaving it on Krusemark’s desk so he’d have something to think about Monday morning, but it no longer seemed like such a cute idea.
When I hit the street it was raining. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees. I turned up my jacket collar and dodged across Lexington Avenue to Grand Central, calling Epiphany from the first empty phone booth. I asked how long it would take her to get ready. She said she’d been ready for hours.
“Sounds inviting, sweetheart,” I said, “but I’m talking about business. Take a cab. Meet me at my office in half an hour. We’ll have dinner and then go uptown to hear a lecture.”
“What lecture?”
“Maybe it’s a sermon.”
“Sermon?”
“Bring my raincoat in the front closet and don’t be late.”
Before heading for the subway, I found a newsstand with a key cutter and had a copy made of Howard Nussbaum’s submaster. The original I sealed in the little preaddressed envelope and dropped in a mailbox by a row of pay lockers.
I took the shuttle over to Times Square. It was still raining when I left the subway, and the reflections of neon signs and traffic lights writhed on the wet pavement like fire snakes. I dodged from doorway to doorway trying to keep dry. The pimps and pushers and teenage hookers huddled in the juice bars and penny arcades, forlorn as rain-soaked cats. I bought a pocketful of cigars at the store on the corner and glanced up through the drizzle at the headlines moving across Times Tower … TIBETANS BATTLE CHINESE IN LHASA …
When I got to my office at ten past six, Epiphany was waiting in the Naugahyde chair. She was all dressed up in her plum-colored suit and looked fantastic. She felt and tasted even better.
“Missed you,” she whispered. Her fingers lightly traced the bandage covering my left ear and hovered over the spot where my scalp was shaved. “Oh, Harry, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Maybe not so pretty anymore.”
“The way the side of your head is stitched makes you look like Frankenstein.”
“I’ve been avoiding mirrors.”
“And your poor, poor mouth.”
“How’s the nose?”
“About the same, only a little more so.”
We ate at Lindy’s. I told Epiphany if anyone stared at us, the other customers would think we were celebrities. No one stared.
“Did that Lieutenant come and see you?” She dunked a shrimp into a bowl of cocktail sauce packed in crushed ice.
“He brightened my breakfast hour. Smart of you to say you were the answering service.”
“I’m a smart girl.”
“You’re a good actress,” I said. “You fooled Sterne twice the same day.”
“I am not one woman, but many. Just as you are more than one man.”
“Is that voodoo?”
“That’s common sense.”
By eight o’clock we were driving uptown through the park. As we passed the Meer, I asked Epiphany why she and her group were out sacrificing under the stars that night, instead of at home in the humfo. She said something about tree loa.
“Loa?”
“Spirits. Manifestations of God. Many, many loa. Rada loa, petro loa: good and evil. Damballa is a loa. Bade is the loa of the wind; Sogbo, the lightning loa; Baron Samedi, the keeper of the cemetery, lord of sex and passion; Papa Legba watches over homes and meeting places, gates and fences. Maître Carrefour is the guardian of all crossroads.”
“He must be my patron loa,” I said.
“He is the protector of sorcerers.”
The New Temple of Hope on 144th Street had at one time been a movie house. The old marquee hung out over the sidewalk with EL ÇIFR in foot-high letters on all three sides. I parked further down the block and took Epiphany’s arm as we walked back toward the bright lights.
“What’re you interested in Çifr for?” she asked.
“He’s the magician in my dreams.”
“Çifr?”
“The good Doctor Cipher himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“This swami business is just one of several roles I’ve seen him play. He’s like a chameleon.”
Epiphany’s grip tightened on my arm. “Be careful, Harry, please.”
“I try to be,” I said.
“Don’t joke. If this man is what you say, he must have plenty power. He is no one to fool with.”
“Let’s go inside.”
A life-sized cardboard cutout of Louis Cyphre in his sheik’s outfit stood by the empty ticket booth, beckoning the faithful with an outstretched arm. The lobby was a gilded plaster pagoda, a movie-palace pleasure dome. In place of popcorn and candy, the refreshment stand carried a complete line of inspirational literature.
We found seats off the side aisle. An organ murmured behind the closed red-and-gold curtains. The orchestra and balcony filled to capacity. No one but me seemed to notice that I was the only Caucasian in sight.
“What denomination is this?” I whispered.
“Basic Baptist, with frills.” Epiphany folded her gloved hands in her lap. “This is the Reverend Love’s church. Don’t tell me you haven’t ever heard of him?”
I confessed my ignorance.
“Well, his car is about five times bigger than your office,” she said.
The houselights dimmed, the organ music swelled, and the curtain parted to reveal a one-hundred-voice choir grouped in the shape of a cross. The congregation rose to their feet, singing “Jesus Was a Fisherman.” I joined in the hand clapping and bestowed my smile upon Epiphany who surveyed the proceedings with the stern detachment of a true believer among the barbarians.
As the music reached a crescendo, a small brown man dressed in white satin appeared on stage. Diamonds flashed on both hands. The choir broke ranks as he stood there, marching with drill-team precision, and formed around him in white-robed rows, like rays of light reflecting from the risen moon.
I caught Epiphany’s eye and mouthed the question, “Reverend Love?”
She nodded.
“Please be seated, brothers and sisters,” Reverend Love spoke from center stage. His voice was comically high and shrill. He sounded like the emcee at Birdland.
“Brothers and sisters, I welcome you with love to the New Temple of Hope. I rejoice in the happy sound you make. Tonight, as you know, is not one of our regular meetings. We are honored to have with us this evening a very holy man, the illustrious el Çifr. Although not of our faith, this is a man I respect, a man of great wisdom with much to teach. It will profit us all to listen closely to the words of our esteemed guest, el Çifr.”
Reverend Love turned and held out his open arms toward the wings. The choir broke into a chorus of “A New Day Is Dawning.” The congregation clapped their hands as Louis Cyphre swirled onto the stage like a sultan.
I rummaged in my attaché case for the ten-power Tri-novids. Wrapped in his embroidered robes and crowned by a turban, el Çifr might well have been another man, but when I brought his features into focus through the binoculars, it was unmistakably my client in blackface. “It is the Moor, I know his trumpet,” I whispered to Epiphany.
“What?”
“Shakespeare.”
“?”
El Çifr greeted his audience with a fancy salaam. “May prosperity smile upon you all,” he said, bowing low. “Is it not written that Paradise is open to those who dare but enter?”
A smattering of “Amens” rippled through the congregation.
“The world belongs to the strong, not the meek. Is this not so? The lion devours the fold; the falcon feasts on the blood of the sparrow. Who denies this denies the order of the universe.”
“That’s true, that’s true,” an impassioned voice called from the balcony.
“Sounds like the flip side of the Sermon on the Mount,” Epiphany quipped out of the side of her mouth.
El Çifr paced the apron of the stage. He held his palms together like a supplicant, but his eyes were ablaze with raw fury. “It is the hand holding the whip that drives the wagon. The rider’s flesh does not feel the sting of the spurs. To be strong in this life requires an act of will. Choose to be a wolf, not a gazelle.”
The congregation responded to his every suggestion, clapping and shouting agreement. His words were chorused like Scripture. “Be a wolf … be a wolf …” they called.
“Look about you here on these crowded streets. Do not the strong rule?”
“They do. They do.”
“And the meek suffer in silence!”
“Amen. They surely suffer.”
“It is a wilderness out there, and only the strong shall survive.”
“Only the strong …”
“Be like the lion and the wolf, not the lamb. Let other throats be exit. Do not obey the herd-instinct of cowardice. Steep your hearts in bold deeds. If there can be but one winner, let it be you!”
“One winner … bold deeds … be a lion …”
He had them eating out of his hand. He whirled on the stage like a dervish, robes billowing, his melodic voice exhorting the faithful: “Be strong. Be bold. Know the urge to attack as well as the wisdom of retreat. When opportunity comes, seize it, as a lion seizes the fawn. Tear success out of defeat; rip it free; devour it. You are the most dangerous beast on the planet. What is there to be afraid of?”