"Shall I return it to you?" I asked.
Andrew shook his head. "No, I think you've let me off the hook as far as God is concerned."
"What was that sign you made?"
"I was asking for God's mercy on readers of dark secrets."
"Have you read any of it?"
"No."
"Then how do you know what it is?"
"You wouldn't have come here if those pages contained joy."
"Thank you," I said. Andrew didn't answer; he just watched me drive away.
I rented a room at a motel in Fond Du Lac and settled in to read John DeVries's memoirs.
I emptied the musty carton onto my bed and arranged the paper into three neat piles, each one about a foot high. I gave each stack a cursory look to see if the writing was legible. It was. The black ink was smeared by dampness and age, but DeVries had a neat, concise handwriting and a narrative style that belied his drug addiction and rage; there was both chronological and thematic unity in his writing. The pages were not compiled by date, but each sheet was dated at the top. I went through all three piles and collated them according to month and year.
John DeVries's journals covered the war years, and more than anything else they detailed his fascination with and subservience to Doc Harris, who had taken over the life of Johnny's domineering sister; who had become his father and teacher and more; who had taken his aimless rage and given it form. "Johnny the enforcer" had only to stand by his avatar's side and look intimidating, and by so doing gained more respect than he had ever known.
Johnny had been given the job of bringing back into line the recalcitrant burglars and buyers that Doc dealt with as middlemen:
November 5, 1943
This morning Doc and I drove out to Eagle Rock, ostensibly to move a supply of radios out of our garage there and up to our buyer at San Berdoo. Doc lectured on moral terror as I drove. He talked of the smallness of 99.9% of all lives, and how this smallness generates and regenerates until it creates an effect that is a "snowballing apocalypse of picayunity." He then said that the natural elite (i.e—us, and others like us) must send messages to the potential elite by "throwing a perpetual monkey wrench into the cogs of the picayunist's machinery." He explained that our buyer in San Berdoo was continually trying to bring us down in price by the intimidation tactic of threatening to look elsewhere for radios. Doc said that it could be tolerated no longer and that I should visit the man with a spiritual message that would teach him humility. Doc said no more until we had loaded our radios into the truck and were almost to San Berdoo, then he told me: "This picayune has a cat he dotes on. Picayunes love dumb animals because by comparison they are even more powerless than they themselves are. I want you to strangle that cat in front of its picayune owner. If you grab the cat lengthwise by its head, and wrap your little finger and thumb around its neck and squeeze abruptly with your first two fingers stationed firmly above its eyebrows, it will cause the cat's eyes to pop out of its head as you strangle it. Do this for me, Johnny, and I will teach you other ways to consolidate your power: the real mental power that I know you have." I did it. The buyer pleaded with us, pledging all his business to us exclusively and offering Doc three hundred dollars as a bonus. Doc declined the money and said, "My bonus is the lesson you have learned and the good that will come from it for you and many others."
I read on through 1943, as Doc Harris consolidated his hold over John DeVries, moving him into a widening arena of violence interspersed with counseling on the philosophy and psychology of terror. Johnny beat up and robbed homosexuals at Doc's command; he broke the arms and legs of bet welehers; he pistol-whipped burglars who Doc thought were holding out on their take. And he never, ever questioned his mentor. The philosophy with which Doc dominated him was Hitlerian-Utopian, tailored to fit Johnny's history of overdependence on supportive figures:
"You, Marcella and I are the natural elite. You must respect Marcella for saving you from Tunnel City, Wisconsin, and respect her as your blood; but know that she has her faults. She is weaker than we on the level of action; you and I have reached for the beast within ourselves and have externalized it. We will always do what we have to do, regardless of the consequences to others, rendering ourselves above all of man's laws and moral strictures designed to keep that beast at bay. Marcella will never reach that point, yet she is a valuable comrade for us at the level of wife and sister. Respect her and love her, but keep your emotional distance. Know that ultimately she is not of our morality.
"The Navy has you now, John, but soon we will have the Navy. Keep your uniform neatly pressed and shine your shoes. Play your part well, and you will be a rich man for life. Your sister is pregnant with the child who will be your nephew and my son and our moral heir. Watch your intake of hop and you will have the power of hop over millions. Listen and trust me, John. You must acquiesce more, and when you do that I will tell you of the literal power of life and death I have exercised over many people."
I saw where that paragraph was taking me, so I flipped ahead in time to August, 1945. What I already knew was strongly confirmed: John DeVries, Eddie Engels, and Lawrence Brubaker had robbed the infirmary of the aircraft carrier Appomattox of forty-five pounds of undiluted morphine. Doc Harris was the mastermind. DeVries, Brubaker, and Engels were questioned, then released. Doc's intimidation of Johnny was so absolute that Johnny never cracked under questioning. The diary indicated that Engels and Brubaker were equally cowed, equally in the grip of the incredible Doc Harris's stranglehold. What I had strongly suspected was also confirmed; Marcella Harris did not participate in the crime—she was in the naval hospital in Long Beach miscarrying her expected child.
It was then, for the first time, that Johnny saw Doc Harris shaken. Due to complications, Marcella would now be barren for life. It was then that Johnny came to his mentor's aid to offer to him what Doc would never himself achieve with Marcella—Johnny told Doc that the girlfriend of whom Doc had disapproved was now pregnant in Wisconsin, and due to give birth in two weeks.
Doc and Johnny flew there. Doc delivered the child in a house trailer parked in a wheat field south of Waukesha. Maggie had wanted to keep the baby, but Doc, aided in the birth by Larry Brubaker, had terrorized her into releasing the child to him, for safe delivery to a "special" orphanage for "special" children. Doc returned to Los Angeles and his wife with the child she so desperately wanted and his own "moral heir."
Again I skipped ahead in time, only to find that time abruptly stopped, shortly after Johnny described the events of August, 1945. But there were at least a hundred sheets of paper remaining, undated but crowded with words. Johnny had inexplicably switched to red ink, and in a few moments I realized why: Johnny had sought Doc's absolute knowledge, and Doc had given it to him in gratitude for his moral heir. Here was the story of "the literal power of life and death" that Doc had exercised over many people. Here it was, appropriately in red, for it was the story of the insane Doc Harris's murderous ten-year career as a traveling abortionist on the underside of skid rows throughout the Midwest, armed with scalpel for cutting, cheap whiskey for anesthesia, and his own insane elitist hatred as motivation.
Johnny continued to quote his teacher verbatim:
"Of course, I knew since medical school that it was my mission and my learning process; that the power of life and death was the ultimate learning ground. I knew that if I could effectively carry out this dreadful but necessary process of birth and elimination and withstand any emotional damage it might cause, I would possess the inviolate mind and soul of a god."