He sat across from me.
Counselor Corrigan must have known me from my press coverage, because there was no questioning tone when he said, “Mr. Heller,” and reached a thin, bony hand across for me to shake.
He removed his hat and glasses and lighted up a cigar. It had a sweet, pungent aroma—Romeo y Julieta? A waitress came over and we ordered beers—they had Hamm’s on tap. Waving out his match, he lifted his light blue eyes and smiled a little. More like a fold in his face, on a wrinkled puss like that.
“I made a phone call,” he said, “and was able to ascertain why you were subjected to that undignified roust, earlier. And I couldn’t be more embarrassed.”
Then why was he smiling?
He leaned close. “You see, I have an associate, who worked with me on the Sheppard trial, who has some … we’ll call them unsavory clients. These include a certain ‘Big Al.’”
He didn’t mean Capone—he referred to Alfred “Big Al” Polizzi, who Eliot had jailed from time to time.
“And as I’m sure you’re aware,” he said, “I have represented a few unsavory sorts myself.”
“Of course you have,” I said. “You’re the top criminal defense lawyer in town.”
A bus boy was clearing my plates.
“The thing of it is,” Corrigan said, his expression good-natured but his eyes holding me, “my associate happened to be at the coroner’s office this afternoon, on business.”
“Is that right.”
“I had made my associate aware that you were headed to town to look into the Sheppard case for Mr. Gardner. He saw you speaking with Dr. Gerber, recognized you, and became … concerned.”
“He knew me? Do I know him?”
The fold of a smile again. “There’s a case to be made that private detectives should perhaps not seek your level of publicity, Mr. Heller. At any rate, he waited and followed you to the Press building, where he saw you going into Mr. Seltzer’s office. He misinterpreted those visits as being counter to our efforts. Rather rashly, he made a phone call, and you know the rest. You have my apologies, although this is nothing I would have countenanced.”
I swigged some beer. “Well, no hard feelings. I would like to meet your associate and shake his hand.”
“Very decent of you.”
“Then throw him down the stairs. What kind of ‘associates’ do you have, anyway, Mr. Corrigan?”
He was looking past me, toward the cafeteria line. “Pity I’ve already eaten. An old Irishman like me has trouble resisting a steaming plate of corned beef and cabbage. That’s what you were having, wasn’t it?”
“Skip the blarney. Doesn’t your associate know I have friends in Chicago?”
I had a not entirely undeserved reputation for being “mobbed-up,” going back to Frank Nitti days. Which I leaned on, when it benefitted me.
“I didn’t get into that with him,” Corrigan said. “I can tell you I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that I didn’t approve of what he did. He’s not a partner of mine, understand.”
“But he was co-counsel on the Sheppard trial?”
He sighed cigar smoke. “Mr. Heller, whatever friendships you may have with certain individuals in Chicago, you are also known to have been associated with Senator Kefauver, and his investigations into labor unions and such.”
I showed him some teeth. “Just as you are known to have represented various racketeers at Kefauver’s hearings. That’s no license to grab me and shove guns at me. Who were those punks, anyway?”
The beers came.
“They are overenthusiastic youngsters, and I do apologize. You won’t be bothered again. You have to keep in mind what my associate and I were up against in the Sheppard case. The police arrest this man on a charge of first-degree murder, and only then do they try to find evidence to make the charge stick.”
I shrugged. “Sheppard was the obvious suspect.”
He shook his head and the white shock of hair in front bounced. “I know. And I will ruefully admit to you, Mr. Heller, that I started out thinking Sam Sheppard guilty. Imagine my surprise when it turned out I was defending an innocent man!”
“Now and then it happens. Was your assumption of Sam’s guilt why you advised him against taking a lie test?”
The fold in his face indicated distaste. “Perhaps in part. But chiefly because it would have been implemented in an adverse environment by police already satisfied that Dr. Sheppard was guilty. Not to mention that my client’s thinking may have been somewhat muddled due to his spinal and cranial injuries, suffered during the struggle with Mrs. Sheppard’s murderer.”
“But if Sam had passed the test,” I pointed out, “the case against him might have collapsed, in that early stage.”
He shook his head, white shock bouncing. “Not a risk worth taking.”
“But you do realize a polygraph is the first step toward getting full support from the Court of Last Resort.”
He nodded once. “With Mr. Gardner’s top polygraph experts, I’m convinced we’ll have a worthwhile outcome.”
He sipped beer, then sat forward.
“What, Mr. Heller, if I may ask, was Dr. Gerber’s reaction to the notion of Sam Sheppard submitting to a lie detector test at this late stage?”
I shrugged. “He seems all for it. And claims that, even at the cost of his own embarrassment, if an injustice was done to Dr. Sam, then let the chips fall where they may.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Oh hell no. From what I read in the file Gardner prepared for me, Gerber was the first to make a snap judgment about Sheppard’s guilt.” Actually, I knew this from witnessing it myself, when Eliot and I toured the murder house, but I didn’t go into that.
“And,” I went on, “the little half-pint’s been Sheppard’s adversary ever since.”
The blue eyes got wide for a moment. “I should say. Take that circus of an inquest—where yours truly, counsel for the defense, got thrown out bodily for speaking up for my client. And for having a stenographer keep a record! I was in the hallway at the close of that travesty, when our illustrious coroner came strutting out of that gymnasium, surrounded by mooning young females wanting autographs.”
Dr. Samuel Gerber seemed an unlikely teen idol.
Corrigan ranted on: “But the trial was little better. Reporters standing on tables, sitting on railings, hanging from the chandeliers! Movie cameras taking pictures of the jurors—when the prosecuting attorneys weren’t stepping in front of the lenses for their own glory. Did you know the jurors were given a tour of the murder house, including the bedroom and its bloody walls?”
“That I hadn’t heard.”
“Well, my client was hauled along in handcuffs under heavy guard, as if he were Baby Face Nelson planning an escape. Even the damnable weather was against him. No July Fourth holiday this—but an overcast gloomy day with an icy November wind cutting through. Lake Erie’s waves swallowed the little strip of beach—how could I ask the jurors to picture the murderer fleeing along it? Or to imagine Dr. Sheppard struggling with an assailant, much less lying unconscious for God knew how long, his body half on sand, half in the water. But on that day there was no sand!”
“Sometimes you can’t catch a break.”
He was shaking his head, lost in frustration. “All of my objections about TV cameras in the courtroom were overruled. Thanks to Louis Benson Seltzer, a voracious beast had been unleashed.”
“The press, you mean?”
“The press. The Cleveland Press in particular, but the press in general. Under the guise of news, the local papers and national ones as well covered the case in the most tasteless, rumor-mongering terms, including rabble-rousing editorials. Dr. Sam Sheppard was convicted in the minds of the public even before he was arrested and charged!”
“It was Seltzer who pushed Gerber into action in the first place, wasn’t it?”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Oh yes. The police department, the prosecutors, even Gerber himself, they’re all just pawns on
Louis Seltzer’s chessboard. You spoke to him today.”
“I did. His attitude on Dr. Sam’s guilt is unchanged and unapologetic. I called on him only to … keep him at bay. I told him Erle Gardner was an unbiased observer in this, and not taking sides. Just taking stock.”
“Is that true?”
I shrugged again. “If real doubt hadn’t been raised about your client’s guilt, I wouldn’t be here—Gardner is as straight a shooter as you’ll come across. And there’s little doubt that Sam Sheppard was denied a fair trial.”
The hypnotic blue eyes looked past me into nothing. “He should have had a new trial by now. I admit my shortcomings in this. You see, I wanted access to the house, but the court wouldn’t allow that unless I was supervised by the police. I wanted complete and free access, to bring my own forensics man in.”
“So instead all the jury got was the prosecution’s experts.”
He nodded glumly. “And their forensics were shoddy—no microscopic examination of the blood from the blows, which could’ve indicated the weapon’s composition. No test made for seminal fluid on the body or bedclothes. No effort by the fingerprint man to lift prints from the second-floor banister, doorjambs or bed.”
Another round of beers came.
“Finally, after the verdict,” he said, “we were able to take control of the house. I brought in my man—Dr. Paul Leland Kirk. Are you familiar with him?”
I nodded. Kirk was a top criminologist who had founded a lab in Chicago. Currently he was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley, the author of the respected Crime Investigation: Physical Evidence and the Police Laboratory. He’d been an associate of Eliot’s old mentor, August Vollmer.
“Dr. Kirk’s findings should have gotten us a new trial,” Corrigan said, after another sigh of smoke. “Consider what he was able to prove! That the killer was left-handed when Dr. Sheppard is right-handed. That injuries to Mrs. Sheppard’s teeth indicated she had bitten her attacker’s hand, with her husband showing no such wound. That the lack of blood on the ceiling indicated an attacker of limited power, as did the skull not being crushed despite so many blows. Most importantly, that a large bloodstain on the closet door, likely from the assailant’s bloody hand, did not match the blood types of Dr. or Mrs. Sheppard.”
“Which means a third person was in that room, and almost certainly the perpetrator.”
He waggled a lecturing finger. “Also, the murder weapon was cylindrical—a flashlight or a length of pipe—not a surgical instrument, as Gerber insisted, in a blatantly calculated way to make Dr. Sheppard appear guilty. And if Mr. Gardner provided you with photos, you know the physical evidence—the manner in which Mrs. Sheppard’s pajamas were disturbed, exposing her breasts and genital area—indicated the crime involved sexual assault.”
I nodded. “As did the way she’d been pulled down to where her legs were hemmed in under the bed’s foot rail. And, Mr. Corrigan—I saw more than just photos.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I was in the murder room that morning. Of course, so was everybody from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to the New York Yankees.”
The blue eyes were wide again. “Why in the world—”
I explained.
He was shaking his head at the coincidence. “You’re aware the county prosecutor was your late friend’s close associate? And there are others in this case who knew the former safety director well, worked with him.… Is that a conflict of interest for you?”
I shook my head. “If anything, it’ll open some doors. As for Prosecutor Cullitan, I met him a few times in the late ’30s, but that’s as far as it goes. Dr. Kirk and I are friendly acquaintances. I’ve used his Chicago lab from time to time.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then you must know what Dr. Gerber did to him.”
“I don’t, no.”
He shifted on the bench. “Dr. Gerber has effectively blackballed Dr. Kirk—kept him out of the American Academy of Forensic Science. Our coroner is an officer of that group. Lost him a research grant, as well.”
Kirk knew forensics, but Gerber knew politics.
Corrigan was saying, “When we went before Judge Blythin with our new evidence, Gerber joined the prosecutors to savage Dr. Kirk’s findings. And Blythin said the evidence could not be considered because we could have learned all this before the trial, if we’d only been diligent.”
I snorted a laugh. “Like Blythin would have overruled himself.”
“Precisely. We kept at it. And we still are, Mr. Heller. That’s why I’m happy to see you opening a private investigation of the case. And why I wholeheartedly support Mr. Gardner’s involvement.”
“Good to hear.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Of course, we both know a good polygraph result won’t be admissible as new evidence. But it would build positive public opinion. And any new evidence you turn up, well … that will be most appreciated. Right now I’m working up a writ of habeas corpus to file in the Supreme Court of Ohio.”
“On what grounds?”
“That the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense. Having to do with a missing or misfiled laboratory card with blood evidence. It’s as thin as the missing card, frankly. I’m just exhausting the last legal remedy in Ohio. I have my eye on the Supreme Court.”
I finished my beer. “Mr. Corrigan, I would appreciate it if you would help me line up some interviews—in some instances arrange them, and in others just provide addresses.”
“Most happy to, Mr. Heller. And I do apologize for that little joyride you were taken on by those overeager younger members of the labor movement.… You know, I think I will have some of that corned beef and cabbage.”
CHAPTER
7
The E-shaped, thousand-room hotel on the corner of Superior and Public Square had seen better days, but it remained a first-class hotel. It was part of the Union Terminal complex, which included Higbee’s department store, the post office, a trio of office buildings and looming Terminal Tower itself. For me, however, the Hotel Cleveland was just a great big haunted house.
Others agreed with me. Built over the site of the city’s first hotel, where any number of unhappy things happened, the hotel’s ghostly activity over the decades centered on the fourth floor. Water runs from faucets on their own, lights turn themselves off and on. But for me, a different kind of ghost was tugging at my memory.
In the grand ballroom, Charles Lindbergh had given a speech not long after his solo transatlantic flight, before the kidnapping of his child brought me into his life. Eliot and his second wife, Evaline, a fun and lovely gal, often dined and danced in the still-going Bronze Room upstairs. And Eliot and Leonarde Keeler had, in a suite on the fourteenth floor, made a polygraph examination of Lloyd Watterson, confirming him to be the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. President Truman, with whom I’d once eaten lobster in D.C., had stayed here. So had Eleanor Roosevelt, though not with Harry.
I’d left the rental Chevy in the hotel garage and was now trooping through what had once been an elegant lobby, still boasting a majestic fountain fashioned from marble out of the same quarry as Michelangelo’s David, or so the management claimed. But the vaulted lobby ceiling now ruled over bright-green-cushioned chairs, sea-foam couches built around the bases of gray marble columns, orange overstuffed faux-leather chairs, and a green-and-white paisley carpet that looked like the upholstery of your least favorite aunt’s couch. No wonder the ghosts stuck to the fourth floor.
Having checked in earlier, I was making my way to the elevator when a rather unsteady voice called out to me. “Mr. Heller! Nate.”
I turned and another ghost was walking toward me on legs even more unsteady than his voice. He hadn’t been young fifteen years ago, but now he was old. Eighty or nearly so. He had been one of those quiet men who could summon a powerhouse voice when raiding a gambling club or giving a summation that would send a man to the chair. He’d done the latter perhaps a dozen times.
County P
rosecutor Frank T. Cullitan—who’d been Eliot’s good friend and ally in both men’s primes—had been a rather fleshy man, not exactly heavy but sturdy-looking, a somewhat imposing six-footer. Now he looked like a stiff wind could take him down. He swam in his brown suit, his once salt-and-pepper hair pure salt now; the small chin still jutted, but the neck that had bulged with a second chin was currently as loose and wrinkled as the suit. The dark eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses looked rheumy.
“I’d just about given up on you,” he said.
That was as if we’d had an appointment, which we hadn’t.
“Frank,” I said. “Good to see you.”
We shook hands. It was like grasping a handful of twigs.
“Better than the last time,” he rasped.
He meant Eliot’s memorial.
“I was told you were in town,” he said, “and took a chance you’d head back here. The desk confirmed that—this always was one of your haunts.”
“Who told you I—”
The oval face, a bag in which his skull was loosely held, showed embarrassment. “Dr. Gerber called me, and said you’d stopped by to speak to him.”
Was that what this was about? Was Cullitan part of the anti-Sheppard squad?
“Let’s get a drink,” I said, and he thought that was a good idea. We headed to the bar off the lobby.
We hadn’t quite gotten there yet when I said, “How long had you been cooling your heels out here, Frank?”
He checked his watch. “Not quite two hours.”
That damn near startled me. “Most people aren’t willing to invest that much time in a chance to talk to me.”
“Well, to be honest … I fell asleep.” A little grin appeared above the jutting chin. He was as gray as wet newspaper. “I frankly just woke up and was heading out when I spotted you.”
A booth in the under-populated bar would give us all the privacy we might need. An attractive brunette waitress in form-fitting black-trimmed-white took our order—bourbon on the rocks for him, rum and Coke for me. The waitress and I exchanged flirty smiles that we both knew wouldn’t lead anywhere.
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