The Art of the Devil (23 page)

Lou Candless stood quietly before the desk, seemingly distracted by the picture of Joe DiMaggio hanging crooked behind the Chief. ‘You're relieved,' said Spooner shortly. ‘Eddie, too. Get some rest.'

When the agent had gone, Spooner spent a few moments looking over the report again. The questions put to Max had been scrupulously recorded, as had the methods of encouragement implemented. Left to the imagination was the toll they had taken on that massive body, and of course the motivations behind the betrayal in the first place …

Her
, Max had sneered.

Who?

You don't even know. That's worst of all.

He lit another Winston, immediately felt nauseated, sent out smoke on a dry, rattling cough. The phone gave another buzz. He grabbed the receiver. ‘Spooner.'

As he listened, his secretary came in, carrying two steaming cups. Isherwood sat blowing ripples across the surface of his coffee, watching from the couch as the Chief grunted monosyllabic sounds of encouragement. After emptying the ashtray, the secretary left. Seconds later, the Chief hung up. Tenting one hand over his eyes, he sighed.

‘Maryland PD,' he said at length. ‘Found a man who picked up Hart, last night, outside the motor court. Get this: he's an administrative assistant in their third precinct. Saw the APB this morning and said, “I brought that man to Union Station.”'

A moment passed.

‘Ticket vendors,' Isherwood said then. ‘Conductors. Newsboys. Anyone who was on-board any train leaving Union Station last night …'

Spooner nodded, looking into his coffee desultorily. From a lower drawer he removed a freshly starched collar, used silver studs to pin it to his shirt. Then he reached again for the phone.

NEW YORK CITY

At the sound of the bell, Myron Kemper bolted upright.

Operating on instinct, he pulled a gun – his favorite pistol, a modified double-action Colt Python with a six-inch barrel – from beneath his pillow. Once the Python was trained on the door, he reached with his free hand for the glasses beside the bed. Balanced on the bridge of his nose, the thick spectacles brought the world into focus. He saw that the six locks running up the inside of the door-frame remained intact.

The bell sounded again; he leapt out of bed. A calendar tacked to the wall announced the day as Sunday, the twentieth of November. He had a meeting scheduled this morning, clearly marked – yet he had overslept. Disruptions of schedule made Myron Kemper nervous. As he processed the situation, an asthmatic wheeze rose from within his shallow chest.

Four strides brought him across a cramped apartment whose every level surface was covered with drills or barrel vises or borescopes or roll pins or torque drivers or carbon dies or gun components. Through the spyhole, he saw the face of the man who was ringing his doorbell. Warped by the curvature of the lens, foreshortened by the man's extreme height, the features formed a funhouse travesty – small slanted eyes, impossibly straight nose, and bizarrely huge chin – but Myron nonetheless recognized the visitor as one of the few men he trusted in this world.

He stuffed the Python into the back of his pajama bottoms; the elastic retained just enough tension to hold the two-pound weight. With practiced movements he opened the six locks, one after another. ‘Richard,' he said. ‘Sorry. I overslept …'

Absorbing his friend fully, he trailed off. Only a few days had passed since their last meeting, but Richard Hart presented a very different figure: leaning his entire weight against a crutch, right leg encased in a thick plaster cast, skin peeled from cheeks and temples, one eye blackened. Beneath a hat brim pulled low, the determined crimp of Hart's expression spoke of intense pain.

A tight steel cage closed inside Myron's sternum. He was not good at handling unexpected developments. He was much better with the cold, logical processes that came with designing and modifying firearms, which was why he had gone into this line of work in the first place.

Richard Hart managed a smile. ‘It's not as bad as it looks,' he said, and then after a moment: ‘May I come in?'

With a jerky nod Myron stepped aside, closing and relocking the door behind his guest, forgetting in his shock to feel self-conscious at his own striped pajamas. From long habit they endeavored their customary greeting, rolling back shirtsleeves (Hart, on his crutch, clumsily) to reveal matching tattoos. The unit insignia of the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment depicted a gold Chinese dragon and red acorns, rendered against a blue and white coat of arms. They pressed their forearms together briefly but significantly, a sacred rite.

‘Sit down,' said Myron breathlessly. ‘Let me get you a chair.'

‘No, Myron, I'm in a hurry. Have you finished?'

Despite his surprise at Hart's appearance, Myron found it within himself to be insulted. ‘I said I would, didn't I?'

As he went to fetch his work from a back room, Myron turned over in his mind the irrational alarm he felt at seeing Hart in this condition. Of course the man was one of his few friends, so it was somewhat natural to react with emotion … but this went deeper. They had been the only two in their company to emerge entirely physically unscathed from the war. On some unrecognized level, Myron had perhaps come to believe that they were specially blessed. But if Richard Hart could be injured by the world, so, too, could Myron Kemper.

Returning to the front room carrying the case, he was taken aback all over again. Propped by a workbench, Hart was absent-mindedly examining one of Myron's pet projects – a customized German Luger loaded, in an outré touch, with gold-plated bullets. Bludgeoned and battered, Richard Hart seemed a mockery of the respectable man he had recently become. After the war, like many others, he had fallen on hard times. But lately he had found an upscale crowd and made a new man of himself: always neatly groomed, well-dressed, reminiscent of one of the wealthy businessmen Myron saw through his window come cocktail hour. Sometimes Myron would watch those businessmen, strolling down the sidewalks with a secretary on each arm, through the cross hairs of a high-powered scope. Absorbing every detail of their placid, self-satisfied faces, he would relish a feeling of secret power. They had everything Myron lacked – pretty girls on their arms, wedding bands indicating wives at home, and no doubt nice suburban houses somewhere out on the Main Line, complete with kids and dogs – but Myron had something even better. He had their oblivious faces trapped in his cross hairs. All he need do was squeeze the trigger …

Richard Hart had offered a connection to a world from which Myron felt acutely excluded. But now Hart looked as maltreated as Myron himself felt. The disappointment was unexpectedly profound.

Forcing his mind forward, Myron laid the tweed case across a workbench and hit the catches. Business came first. ‘A nice job,' he said with a touch of smugness, ‘if I do say so myself.'

Setting down the Luger beside another of Myron's pet projects – a scalloped twelve-inch blade – Hart focused on the case. Inside, the Gibson nestled against fraying red velvet, to all appearances an ordinary guitar, with a slightly-nicked pick guard indicating gentle use.

‘Looks good – yes?' Myron removed the instrument from the case, carefully fingered an open E chord, and strummed once. ‘And sounds good. Yes?'

There was no denying, as the chord reverberated and lingered, that it sounded good – in fact, to Myron's satisfaction, the guitar sounded even better than when he had received it. In the course of doing his work he had corrected a warping of the neck and replaced a bent truss rod, discovering in the process a lost calling as a luthier.

‘We can't break it open – this is for a single use only – so you'll need to take my word for it,' Myron continued, ‘but the rifle exceeds your specifications. I found more than enough space inside the neck for a twenty-four inch barrel. Therefore I would feel perfectly comfortable firing this weapon from up to four hundred and fifty yards, using the ammunition you'll find inside the headstock – eight .30-06 cartridges – assuming my target was medium-sized big game.' He let the euphemism hang in the air for a moment, competing with the last reverberations of the chord, before moving on. ‘The barrel and the truss rod are one and the same, so once the rifle is assembled, the guitar won't play. But I assume you won't be using it to serenade anybody.'

Hart nodded briefly.

‘Here,' said Myron, tapping the saddle bridge at the base of the guitar's body, ‘is your scope. Just pop it out and turn it around. The assembly mechanism is self-evident. Zeroing the sights won't be possible, you said, and the user thus has concerns about accuracy. So just to be on the safe side, I've grooved the barrel a few extra times: eight in total. This weapon therefore possesses the spin stabilization of an Olympic-level instrument. As no conditions were made concerning weight, I've used a bull barrel; thus we avoid extra flex and vibration, further increasing our accuracy.'

Hart made a noise of acknowledgement.

‘All in all,' concluded Myron a bit prissily, ‘this was hardly a challenge. The only difficulty came in the haste with which I was required to work.'

Hart said nothing. Having expected more praise for a job clearly well done, Myron sniffed. Returning the guitar to its case, he closed the catches. ‘Okay?'

‘Excellent. As always.' Rearranging his crutch, Hart produced a buff envelope from an inside pocket, which he silently passed over. Myron opened the envelope and riffled through bills with fingertips. Forty, sixty, eighty …

‘Is this a joke? We agreed on a fee of one—'

Looking up, he blinked. His eyes had been averted for only a moment – but Richard Hart held the Luger, aimed at Myron's chest.

Myron started to laugh. But the sound caught in his narrow chest. Instead, he raised his eyebrows questioningly.

‘Turn around,' said Hart coldly.

‘Richard – what is this?'

‘Turn around.'

Slowly, Myron turned. He heard the clumping of the crutch; then the modified Python was plucked from the back of his waistband. The safety came off with a small but audible click.

‘Wait,' he just had time to say, before a cold barrel pressed against his temple.

‘Who knows about this rifle?' asked a steady voice in his ear.

Myron's tongue flicked out, frog-like. ‘Nobody,' he answered, ‘of course. If this is a joke, Richard, it's in very poor taste.'

‘A manufacturer, supplier, warehouse …?'

‘You know I keep all my equipment on-site.'

‘Do you keep records?'

‘What
is
this?' asked Myron in disbelief, twisting around.

The Python's barrel rapped against his temple, convincing him to cease the movement. Why, thought Myron, Richard Hart was betraying him; it was happening right now. The one man he'd fully trusted …

Suddenly, he felt like crying. Hart was the same as all the others. How could he have been such a fool?

The moment extended interminably. Was his so-called friend going to shoot him, or simply steal his work? As Myron wondered, he felt warmth rising in his ribcage – but the warmth seemed the least of his problems, unrelated to the gun as it was, so he shuffled it mentally aside.

If Hart planned on shooting,
he would have pulled the trigger by now. So this was a common robbery. That made the humiliation all the more bitter. But not pulling the trigger, thought Myron, had been a fatal mistake. For once Richard Hart completed his theft, he would leave the apartment, descend the switchback staircase, and step out onto the sidewalk. And then Myron would have every chance to frame his friend's face in the cross hairs of a sniper's rifle. And if the street was empty enough – and on a Sunday morning, it just might be – he would do it. He would pull the trigger. He would blow Richard Hart's brains all over the sidewalk. In fact, he was
glad
this had happened. Too many times had he targeted a gray-flannelled businessman outside his window, only to ultimately put up the gun unfired. Now he would find the chance to actually consummate the act, to experience the thrill of that ultimate secret power—

The balmy torpor spread through his right flank. In his last moment, Myron glanced down and was shocked to see his pajamas soaked through with coppery blood.

Then he slumped, folding onto the floor.

After wiping the scalloped blade clean on bloody pajamas, Richard Hart returned knife to workbench with one hand. Looking at the body, he repressed a shudder of self-loathing. Myron, like Arthur Glashow, had deserved better. But the senator's protocol for covering of tracks had been crystal clear – and the senator came first. The senator always came first …

A pack of cigarettes rested on a nearby table. Helping himself, Hart looked thoughtfully around the cluttered workshop/apartment. The place overflowed with vises and benches and tools. If you needed to dismember a body, he thought darkly, you couldn't choose a better place.

GETTYSBURG

T
he parlor glowed softly from gentle sunshine, still-lighted table lamps, and the flickering electric baubles of the Christmas tree; on the turntable, a needle danced across the run-out groove in an endless scratching loop.

Miss Dunbarton spent a long moment standing at the base of the staircase, absorbing the scene incredulously. At last her paralysis broke, and she moved gingerly forward. At the sound of her footsteps a couple leapt up from behind the couch, smoothing down rumpled clothes. The maid muttered an apology and ran upstairs. The Secret Service agent looked stricken, hung his head, and made for the side door.

Before she could find the heart to press on, Dunbarton bolstered herself with the hair of the dog. Then she set her jaw and pressed into the worst of the devastation, pausing to lift the needle from the turntable as she passed. Shards of broken ornaments and drinking glasses crackled underfoot. The smell of smoke was everywhere; her prohibition had been not only disobeyed but outright flouted. Give these girls an inch, and they took a mile. But the fault was partly her own. She had miscalculated her own consumption and retired earlier than intended – and now she was paying the price.