Authors: William Hjortsberg
Times Square blazed like a neon purgatory. I fingered my improbable nose and tried to remember the past. Most of it was gone, wiped out by a French artillery round at Oran. Bits and pieces remained. Smells often bring them back. Damn it, I knew who I was. I know who I am.
The lights were on in my office when we pulled to a stop in front of the novelty shop. The meter said seventy-five cents. I thrust a dollar at the driver and mumbled, “Keep the change.” I hoped there was still time.
I took the fire stairs to the third floor so the noise of the elevator wouldn’t give me away. The hallway was dark, ditto my waiting room, but the light from the inner office shone on the pebbled glass in the front door. I pulled my gun and eased inside. The door to the inner office stood wide open, spilling light across my threadbare carpet. I waited a moment but didn’t hear a thing.
The office was a mess; my desk ransacked, drawers upended, the contents scattered on the linoleum. The dented green filing cabinet was lying on its side, glossy photographs of runaway kids curled like autumn leaves in the corner. When I righted my overturned swivel chair I saw the steel door to the office safe hanging open.
Then the lights went out. Not in the office, inside my head. Someone got the drop on me with what felt like a baseball bat. I heard the sharp crack it made connecting even as I fell forward into blackness.
Cold water splashing on my face brought me around. I sat up, sputtering and blinking. My head throbbed like an aspirin jingle. Louis Cyphre stood above me, dressed in a tuxedo, pouring water from a paper cup. In his other hand he held my Smith & Wesson.
“Find what you were looking for?” I asked.
Cyphre smiled. “Yes, thank you.” He crumpled the paper cup and added it to the mess on the floor. “A man in your profession shouldn’t house his secrets in tin cans like that one.” He pulled the horoscope Margaret Krusemark did of me from his inside jacket pocket. “I imagine the police will be happy to have this.”
“You’ll never get away with it.”
“But, Mr. Angel, I already have.”
“Why did you come back? You had the chart.”
“I never left. I was in the other room. You walked right past me.”
“A trap.”
“Indeed, and a good one, too. You fell into it most eagerly.” Cyphre slipped the horoscope back into his pocket. “Sorry about that nasty tap, but I needed some of your things.”
“Such as?”
“Your revolver. I have use for it.” He reached into his pocket and slowly removed the dogtags, dangling them in front of me by the beaded chain. “And for these.”
“That was clever,” I said. “Planting those in Margaret Krusemark’s apartment. How’d you get her father to cooperate?”
Cyphre’s smile widened. “How is Mr. Krusemark, by the way?”
“Dead.”
“Pity.”
“I can see you’re all broken up about it.”
“The loss of one of the faithful is always regrettable.” Cyphre toyed with the dogtags, winding the chain between tapered fingers. Dr. Fowler’s engraved golden ring flashed on his manicured hand.
“Cut the crap! Having a gag name doesn’t make you the real thing.”
“Would you prefer cloven hooves and a tail?”
“I didn’t figure it out until tonight. You were toying with me. Lunch at Voisin. I should have guessed when I learned that 666 was the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation. I’m not as quick as I used to be.”
“You disappoint me, Mr. Angel. I should have thought you would have had very little difficulty deciphering my name.” He chuckled out loud at his own lame joke.
“Framing me for your killings is pretty smart,” I said. “There’s just one hitch.”
“And what might that be?”
“Herman Winesap. No cop’d believe a story about a client pretending to be Lucifer — only a crackpot would come up with something like that. But I have Winesap to corroborate me.”
Cyphre hung the dogtags around his neck with a lupine grin. “Attorney Winesap was lost in a boating accident at Sag Harbor yesterday. Most unfortunate. The body has not yet been recovered.”
“Thought of everything, haven’t you?”
“I try to be thorough,” he said. “You must excuse me now, Mr. Angel. As enjoyable as this conversation is, I’m afraid I have business to attend to. It would be indeed unwise for you to try and stop me. Should you show yourself before I’m gone, I shall be forced to shoot.” Cyphre paused in the doorway like a showman milking his exit line. “As much as I’m eager to collect my collateral, it would be a real pity to be killed by your own gun.”
“Kiss my ass!” I said.
“No need for that, Johnny,” Cyphre smiled. “You’ve already kissed mine.”
He closed the outer office door quietly behind him. I scrambled on my hands and knees across the litter-strewn floor to the open safe. In an empty cigar box on the bottom shelf I kept an extra gun. I felt my heart tom-tomming inside my chest as I swept aside a concealing sheaf of documents. It was still there. I flipped up the lid and removed a .45-caliber Colt Commander. The big automatic felt like a dream come true in my hand.
I jammed the extra clip in my pocket and hurried to the outer door. With my ear to the glass, I listened for the sounds of the elevator closing. The moment I heard it, I slid back the pistol’s receiver, cocking the piece and introducing a round into the chamber. I saw the top of the elevator car slide past the circular glass window in the door as I ran for the fire stairs.
I took the stairs four at a time, clinging to the railing for balance, and set a new elevator-racing record. Gasping in the stairwell, I held the fire door open with my foot, the automatic braced against the jamb with both hands. My percussive heartbeat crashed in my ears.
I prayed that Cyphre would still have my gun in his hand when the door slid open. That would make it self-defense. Let’s see how good his magic was against Colonel Colt’s. I imagined the heavy slugs slamming into him, lifting him off his feet, his dark blood staining the lace-front evening shirt. Posing as the devil might con voodoo piano players and middle-aged lady astrologers, but it didn’t wash with me. He picked the wrong man to play the patsy.
The circular window in the outer door filled with light as the elevator clanked to a stop. I steadied my aim and held my breath. Louis Cyphre’s satanic charade had come to an end. The red metal door slid open. The car was empty.
I staggered forward like a sleepwalker, not believing what I saw. He couldn’t be gone. There was no way. I had watched the indicator above the door and seen the numbers light up as the car descended without stopping. He couldn’t get off it the car didn’t stop.
I got in and pushed the button for the top floor. As the car started up, I climbed onto the brass handrails, one foot braced against either wall, and pushed open the emergency trap on the ceiling.
I stuck my head through the opening and looked around. Cyphre was not on the roof of the car. Greased cables and spinning flywheels left no place to hide.
From the fourth floor, I climbed the fire stairs to the roof. I searched behind chimneys and air vents, the blistered tar-paper buckling underfoot. He was not on the roof. I leaned over the cornice ledge and looked down at the street, first up Seventh Avenue; then, from the corner, along 42nd Street. The Sunday night crowds were sparse. Only whores, male and female, lingered on the sidewalks. Louis Cyphre’s distinguished form was nowhere in sight.
I tried to combat my confusion with logic. If he was not on the street or the roof and didn’t get off the elevator, he must still be somewhere in the building. It was the only possible explanation. He was hiding somewhere. He had to be.
During the next half-hour, I went over the entire building. I looked in all the restrooms and broom closets. Using my skeleton keys, I let myself into every dark and empty office. I searched Ira Kipnis’ place and Olga’s Electrolysis without luck. I poked through the shabby waiting rooms of three cut-rate dentists and the closet-sized establishment of a rare-coin-and-stamp dealer. There was no one there.
I returned to my office feeling lost. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. No one can vanish into thin air. It had to be a trick. I sank back into the swivel chair, still holding the Colt Commander. Across the street, the unremitting march of the day’s news continued: … FALLOUT OF STRONTIUM-90 IS FOUND HIGHEST IN U.S… . INDIANS WORRIED OVER DALAI LAMA … By the time I thought to call Epiphany, it was too late. Tricked again by the greatest Trickster of them all.
FORTY-EIGHT
The endless ringing struck the same note of despair as the lonely voice of the Spanish sailor in Dr. Cipher’s bottle. Another lost soul like me. I sat for a long time with my ear to the receiver, surrounded by the desolate, trash-heap wreckage in my office. My mouth was dry and tasted of ashes. All hope was gone, abandoned. I had crossed the threshold of doom.
After a while, I got up and stumbled down the stairs to the street. I stood on the corner of the Crossroads of the World and wondered which way to go. It didn’t matter anymore. I had run long and far enough. I was all through running.
I spotted a cruising cab heading east on 42nd and flagged it down.
“Any special address?” The driver’s sarcasm broke a long and moody silence.
My words sounded far away, like someone else speaking. “Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street.”
We turned downtown on Seventh, and I slouched in the corner and stared out at a world gone dead. In the distance, fire trucks howled like raging demons. We passed the hulking columns of Penn Station, gray and somber in the lamplight. The driver didn’t speak. Under my breath, I hummed a Johnny Favorite tune popular during the war. It was one of my biggest hits.
Poor old Harry Angel, fed to the dogs like table scraps. I killed him and ate his heart, but it was me who died all the same. Not even magic and power can change that. I was living on borrowed time and another man’s memories; a corrupt hybrid creature trying to escape the past. I should have known it was impossible. No matter how cleverly you sneak up on a mirror your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.
“Been some excitement around here tonight.” The driver pulled to a stop across from the Chelsea where three squad cars and a police ambulance were double-parked. He flipped up the flag on his meter. “One-sixty, please.”
I paid with my emergency fifty and told him to keep the change.
“This ain’t no five, mister. You made a mistake.”
“Many mistakes,” I said and hurried across pavement the color of gravestones.
A patrolman was talking on the desk phone in the lobby but he let me pass without a glance. “… three black, five regular, one tea with lemon,” he said as the elevator door slid closed.
I got off at my floor. A wheeled stretcher sat in the hall. Two attendants slouched against the wall. “Why all the rush?” one of them complained. “They knew they had a stiff on their hands the whole time.”
My apartment door stood wide open. A flashbulb popped inside. The smell of cheap cigars filled the air. I strolled in without a word. Three uniformed cops paced around with nothing to do. Sergeant Deimos sat at the table with his back to me, giving my description to someone on the telephone. Another flashbulb went off in the bedroom.
I had a look inside. One was enough. Epiphany lay face up on the bed, wearing only my dogtags and tied by her wrists and ankles to the frame with four ugly neckties. My hammerless Smith & Wesson protruded from between her outspread legs, the snub barrel inserted like a lover. Her womb’s blood glistened on her open thighs, bold as roses.
Lieutenant Sterne was one of five plainclothes detectives watching with his hands in his overcoat pockets as the photographer knelt for a closeup. “Who the hell are you?” a patrolman asked behind me.
“I live here.”
Sterne looked in my direction. His sleepy eyes widened. “Angel?” Disbelief cracked his voice. “That’s the guy. Collar him!”
The cop behind me pinned my arms. I didn’t resist “Save the heroics,” I said.
“See if he’s heeled,” Sterne barked. The other cops looked at me like I was an animal in the zoo.
A pair of cuffs bit into my wrists. The cop frisked me down and pulled the Colt Commander from the waistband of my pants. “Heavy artillery,” he said, handing it to Sterne.
Sterne glanced at the gun, checked the safety, and set it on the bedside table. “Why’d you come back?”
“No place else to go.”
“Who is she?” Sterne jerked his thumb at Epiphany’s body.
“My daughter.”
“Bullshit!”
Sergeant Deimos sauntered into the bedroom. “Well, well, what have we here?”
“Deimos, call downtown and tell ‘em we’ve got the suspect in custody.”
“Right away,” the sergeant said, strolling from the room in no particular hurry.
“Give it to me again, Angel. Who’s the girl?”
“Epiphany Proudfoot. She runs an herb shop on 123rd and Lenox.”
One of the other detectives wrote it down. Sterne shoved me back into the living room. I sat on the couch. “How long you been shacking up with her?”
“Couple days.”
“Just long enough to kill her, right? Look what we found in the fireplace.” Sterne picked up my charred horoscope by the remaining unburned corner. “Want to tell us about it?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got all we need, unless that’s not your .38 stuck up her snatch.”
“It’s mine.”
“You’ll burn for this, Angel.”
“I’ll burn in hell.”
“Maybe. We’ll be sure and give you a head start upstate.” Sterne’s shark-slit mouth widened into an evil smile. I stared at his yellow teeth and remembered the laughing face painted on Steeplechase Park, a joker’s grin expanding with malice. There was only one other smile like it: the evil leer of Lucifer. I could almost hear His laughter fill the room. This time, the joke was on me.
A native New Yorker, William Hjortsberg has lived in the mountains of Montana for the past twenty-five years. He is the author of seven works of fiction, including
Nevermore
,
Alp
, and
Gray Matters
. Among his screen credits are
Legend
, directed by Ridley Scott, and
Angel Heart
, based on this novel. He is currently at work on his next novel.