The Art of the Devil Read Free Page B

job, come back in the morning and we’ll talk.’
    Isherwood was looking at a framed, gilt-edged photograph on the desk. In the photograph, the Chief’s wife wore a wide-brimmed sun hat and a huge smile. Isherwood could not remember the last time his own wife had smiled so broadly – if she ever had.
    â€˜Do right by this,’ the Chief was saying, ‘and it may be your ticket back to active duty. You’re a good man. And everyone deserves a second chance now and then. Get it?’
    Isherwood jerked his chin up and down. ‘Got it,’ he said, in a voice not quite steady, and reached for his fedora on the desk.

TWO
    ANACOSTIA, WASHINGTON DC
    L ater that night Francis Isherwood sat in his study, stroking a tortoiseshell cat and restlessly quartering the bookcase with his gaze: Shakespeare, Milton, Mommsen, Housman; Shakespeare, Milton, Mommsen, Housman.
    The stillness was palpable. For as long as Evy had been in the house, the constant babble of the TV from the parlor had put his nerves on edge – but the absence of sound proved even worse. His gaze ticked to a calendar on the desk. The day was Friday, the eleventh of November, 1955. Veteran’s Day. Had Evy been here, he would have been trying to tune out the sound of Jack Bailey hamming it up with good-natured contestants on
Truth or Consequences
. Instead, he tried to tune out silence.
    Eventually, he pushed out of his chair. Moving closer to the bookcase, paced by cats winding between his ankles – with six cats in the house, four seemed to be underfoot at any given time – he ran his eyes along a line of photographs on a high shelf. Here was young Francis Isherwood, graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in criminal justice, his face shockingly boyish beneath a black mortar board. Here a slightly older Francis Isherwood posed as a state trooper, crisply outfitted in blue, half-sneering, proud to a fault. Here a still more mature variety wore a sober charcoal suit and navy tie, with a lugubrious expression to match. Appearances to the contrary, he thought, that had been the best year. He and Evy had been getting along like gangbusters, and at the tender age of twenty-seven, after less than eighteen months chasing counterfeiters, he had been assigned the plum role of presidential protection, safeguarding FDR himself.
    His gaze ended up in a window, from which his reflection gazed stonily back. And here was Francis Isherwood at rock bottom: jobless, wifeless, and lacking now even the comfort of the bottle.
    He returned to the desk, opened a drawer, removed a flask of Jack Daniels, and twisted off the cap.
    In a fit of sudden fury, he flung the open flask across the room, whipsawing streams of whiskey onto ceiling and floor, sending cats scattering.
    The flask landed on edge, pulsing liquor out onto the carpet. In a flash Isherwood was on his knees, cradling it like a wounded child. Too late; the contents had emptied with devastating speed. But there were other hoards, of course – in the living room and the glove compartment of his Studebaker, and beneath their marriage bed and inside the toilet tank, and in the package store or the bar just down the block. And if all else failed, there was always Sterno beneath the sink, waiting patiently between cobwebbed bottles of Lysol and Gold Dust.
    His hands were shaking worse than ever. God damn Evelyn, he thought. If he weakened and took a drink, the fault would be hers. He had done his best, but if his goddamned wife insisted on undermining him, his best would not be enough. Earlier that night he had placed a long-distance call to Boca Raton – damn the expense – where Evy was staying with her sister as she ‘figured things out’. He’d heard the desperate note in his own voice as he’d told her about Spooner’s call, begging her to come home and cover his back as he seized the long-awaited chance to redeem himself.
    Would it have