The Lost Pilots

by Corey Mead

  “That looks like—it is a photostatic copy of my check.”

  “And on the back is Mr. Gentry Shelton, Sr.’s endorsement. On the front is marked, ‘Returned. First National Bank. Account closed.’ ”

  Lancaster appeared genuinely baffled. “Until this moment I didn’t know that check had been presented.”

  “Then he has betrayed your trust?”

  “Yes, he has. Very much so.”

  Hawthorne was attempting to portray Lancaster as a liar, but the jurors’ faces indicated that they thought Lancaster was telling the truth. Still Hawthorne pressed ahead.

  “Why did you give him the check? Why not a memorandum—an I.O.U.?”

  “His son asked me to.”

  “So you gave him a check on a bank where you had no account?”

  “The account was closed since I have been in this jail. I didn’t close it.”

  Hawthorne’s tone was sarcastic: “Then, Captain Lancaster, the bank has betrayed you too?”

  “To my knowledge, the account is not closed. But all my checks and statements are in the state’s possession.” Lancaster’s serene response made Hawthorne’s manner appear overbearing. His line of questioning appeared to be backfiring.

  Hawthorne denied that he possessed Lancaster’s financial records. “I have also been charged with having letters Haden Clarke wrote to you in St. Louis,” he added, “but I have never seen them.”

  Carson stood up. “May it please the court,” he noted wryly, “we have never accused Mr. Hawthorne of having these letters, but if he wishes to plead guilty we will accept his plea.”

  At this, the spectators burst into cheers, stomping their feet and clapping their hands in approval, proving just how thoroughly Hawthorne had lost the room. “This is not a vaudeville show,” Judge Atkinson bellowed, the sound of his gavel barely audible above the crowd’s continued applause. The bailiffs shouted for calm, and Judge Atkinson threatened to clear the court, but the noise continued. When at last the spectators quieted, Judge Atkinson angrily declared that further interruptions would not be tolerated. The next time, he said, all spectators would be removed.

  Hawthorne acted unfazed by the disruption. “Isn’t it true,” he continued, “that the manner of closing an account is to take all your money out of the bank?”

  “Yes,” Lancaster answered, “unless they write that they no longer want your account and enclose a check for the balance.”

  “Did they write to you?”

  “As far as I know, no. I just have a two or three dollar balance there.”

  “Didn’t you make an affidavit in this court that you were totally without funds?” Hawthorne was again trying to catch Lancaster in a lie.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you?”

  “To the best of my ability I can say I am without funds. Gentry Shelton was indebted to me.”

  “What amount?”

  “One hundred and twenty dollars.”

  “Have you tried to collect that?”

  “Yes. Gentry Shelton told Mr. Lathero in a phone conversation that he would send five hundred dollars to pay off that debt and to assist me here.”

  “Did he send it?”

  “No.”

  “Does Latin-American Airways owe you any money?”

  “Yes. Two or three hundred dollars.”

  “Did you mention that in your affidavit?”

  “No. I had no hope of getting it.”

  The spectators emitted murmurs of understanding, which Judge Atkinson promptly hushed.

  Hawthorne returned to the pistol. “Didn’t you say you didn’t know why you loaded the gun at Nashville?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you tell me the reason you loaded it was because you wanted to return it to Huston as he gave it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nashville was the last stop out of Miami, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you load the gun at night or morning?”

  “Night.”

  “The next night you were in Miami, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your diary shows there was dire need of funds at home.” Hawthorne was implying that it was suspicious for Lancaster to spend thirty dollars on a gun instead of sending the money to Jessie, who was broke. “Wasn’t Chubbie, and Haden Clarke, uppermost in your mind?”

  “No, I was afraid she might have been harmed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Haden.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, drinking,” Lancaster admitted.

  “The reason you were so worried about Chubbie was because you loved her better than anything in the world, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you lie for her?” Hawthorne asked.

  “I have,” Lancaster said.

  “Would you steal for her?”

  “I have stolen for her.”

  “WOULD YOU KILL FOR HER?” Hawthorne shouted.

  “I WOULD,” Lancaster boomed back.

  “Did you?” Hawthorne pushed.

  “I did not,” Lancaster said wearily.

  The tone of Lancaster’s response, which seemed genuine as opposed to practiced, played well with the room. Hawthorne shifted course, detouring into questions about Lancaster’s family life, seeking to highlight Lancaster’s abandonment of his wife and daughters. “Have you any children?” he asked.

  “Mr. Hawthorne, I’d like to keep my wife and children out of this,” Lancaster replied.

  An objection by Carson was sustained; Hawthorne, stymied, again changed course.

  “You said you acted like a schoolboy after receiving the letters of Chubbie and Clarke in St. Louis. What were your actions?”

  “I wouldn’t eat my dinner.”

  “Did you go to a nightclub that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you act like a schoolboy?”

  “Yes. There were girls there and I wouldn’t dance with them. I was blue and sat at the table, thinking about Chubbie.”

  Next Hawthorne brought up Russell’s testimony that Lancaster had pledged to “get rid of” Clarke. Lancaster, echoing his response to Carson’s earlier inquiries, dismissed Russell’s claims as “absolute lies.”

  “You found out before you got home, and from the lips of Clarke, that he had a serious malady?” Hawthorne asked.

  “You’re quite right.”

  “Did the love affair of Clarke and Chubbie still appear quite beautiful to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The knowledge of the malady didn’t affect you?”

  “No. They were very much in love and I saw only that.”

  “Then you learned later of the intimacies between them, while you were away, and it still appeared beautiful to you?”

  “There was a beautiful side to it which I wanted to consider. That was the better side of Clarke’s character.”

  “He proved that in the end by committing suicide, didn’t he?” Hawthorne’s tone was edged with sarcasm.

  “Not in the manner in which he did, but the fact that he did showed he had good intentions.”

  “Do you still feel that way?”

  “I would like to.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you feel relieved when you dropped off to sleep that night?”

  “Yes. In my heart I knew that Clarke would never marry Chubbie.”

  “Why? Because he would commit suicide before morning?”

  “No, because he had promised to tell Chubbie in the morning all of the misstatements he had admitted to me that night, and if he didn’t I would.”

  Hawthorne pounced: “But you were going back to St. Louis.”

  “No, that was earlier in the evening when I planned that,” Lancaster countered, in keeping with his and Jessie’s earlier testimony.

  Hawthorne asked why Lancaster had entrusted Jessie to Clarke’s care in the first place: “You left Chubbie w
ith Clarke, a drinker, and she was a drinker?”

  “Yes, but his reputation was quite good.”

  “According to your standards, Captain Lancaster? Hadn’t he used your home as a home of prostitution?”

  “No.”

  “Hadn’t he stayed there three nights with a woman to whom he was not married?”

  “Yes. That was not prostitution as I understand it.”

  Hawthorne and Carson tussled briefly over the definition of the word “prostitution.”

  “But he had used your home as a house of debauchery, hadn’t he?” Hawthorne asked.

  “Haden spent some nights drinking there with girls.”

  “Had anybody else?”

  “No.”

  “But Clarke had—with your knowledge, consent, and approval.”

  “I didn’t consent, but I didn’t hold it against him.”

  Hawthorne’s sarcasm was immediate: “It was beautiful to you.”

  “No.”

  “Who was head of that household?”

  “Mrs. Keith-Miller’s name was on the lease.”

  “Didn’t you live with her?”

  “I didn’t live at her apartment with her in New York.”

  “But you lived under the same roof in Miami.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it became beautiful in Miami.”

  “I never described the relationship as beautiful.”

  To his probable frustration, Hawthorne’s attempt to paint Lancaster as debauched appeared to be gaining little traction in the room. Sensing this, Hawthorne switched to what he surely thought would be a damaging point. “Did you write an entry in your diary for January 7?”

  When Lancaster said yes, Hawthorne asked him to read the entry out loud.

  “Fined fifty dollars with a suspended license on a complaint filed by driver of Buick,” Lancaster began. “American justice is all wet. The evidence given was insufficient to convict me but, like all matters in American courts, they are subject to the inefficiency of the court officials and police.”

  “What did you mean when you wrote: ‘American justice is all wet’?” Hawthorne asked.

  “I had been found guilty of something I hadn’t done. I now realize that I should not have written it. I’m sorry you don’t like it.”

  Hawthorne gave a snort. “Being an American,” he pronounced imperiously, “I don’t like any of it.” But again Hawthorne had misjudged his audience, which appeared to find Lancaster’s response appropriately contrite. Carson leaped up to object. Hawthorne withdrew his comment.

  “Did you ever utter threats about Clarke in front of Tancrel and Russell?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you ever tell Gentry Shelton that you had seen hundreds die under machine-gun fire and you wouldn’t mind seeing another dead man?”

  “No.”

  “Shelton isn’t here, is he?”

  “He promised he’d come down.”

  “He promised me he would, too,” Hawthorne said meaningfully, implying that there was something dubious about Shelton’s absence from the trial.

  “If Russell testified that he showed you in Los Angeles letters from his wife,” Hawthorne continued, “was that true?”

  “Yes, true.”

  “If he told you he would meet you at the Burbank Airport, was that true?”

  “Yes, true.”

  “Then your statement that Russell’s testimony was a tissue of lies relates only to what he testified you told him about Haden Clarke?”

  “No.”

  “What, then? You previously said it was all a tissue of lies.”

  “You produced letters which Russell said he showed me, untrue. He said I made threats against Haden Clarke, untrue. He said he had been for gasoline for the flight to Los Angeles, untrue. If you will have the reporter read Russell’s testimony I can point out other lies.” Lancaster’s rapid-fire answer played well in the already sympathetic courtroom.

  “Just state what you remember, Captain,” Hawthorne said.

  “The only thing I told him about Haden Clarke in Los Angeles was, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, I trust Chubbie.’ ”

  “Did you tell Gentry Shelton you would see Haden Clarke dead before he would marry Chubbie?”

  “I did not. That night I drank the pint of Scotch I might have uttered threats. . . . I said, ‘If Haden Clarke hurts Chubbie, he’ll have to answer to me.’ ”

  “Would you consider his behavior as harming her?”

  “I would, but when I arrived here I overlooked it.”

  “You went to bed with an entirely different picture as a result of that confidential talk with Haden Clarke, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Haden Clarke went to bed laughing?”

  Lancaster ignored Hawthorne’s exaggeration. “Yes, he laughed at the story of Tancrel’s paper-hanging exploits.”

  “And his last words were?” Hawthorne appeared to be fishing for inconsistencies in Lancaster’s various testimonies.

  “ ‘Bill, you’re the whitest man I know.’ ”

  “And he also said, ‘Bill, you can have Chubbie’?”

  “I have never said that.”

  “But did he say that?”

  “No.”

  “And in the stress and strain you wrote the notes before calling for a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw many persons die in the war?”

  “Yes, quite a few.”

  “Did you ever remember a person living with a similar wound in the head? Live or talk again?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “How long did it take you to type the notes?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “How long was it from the time the shot was fired until you had completed the notes and called Mrs. Keith-Miller?”

  “No more than eight minutes.”

  Though Hawthorne thought Lancaster had shot Clarke, he also wanted to emphasize Lancaster’s negligence in waiting so long to call for help. Now he tried to prove that Lancaster was underestimating, deliberately or not, how long it had taken to ring for medical assistance.

  “Would you mind rewriting the notes on the typewriter now?” Hawthorne asked.

  “Certainly not.”

  Clarke’s typewriter, which had been introduced in evidence, was placed on the court reporter’s table, and Lancaster was handed paper and the two “suicide” notes. The court clerk, the attorneys, and several spectators took out their watches, but Lancaster didn’t notice because he was adjusting the paper in the typewriter. He began typing, but paused after a few words. “I haven’t the exact wording here,” he said.

  “Go on, Captain,” Hawthorne replied.

  Lancaster noticed the watches. “Am I being timed?” he asked. “Is it a contest?”

  “This is not a contest, Captain Lancaster,” Hawthorne said with exasperation. “It is just an exhibition.”

  “Then you want it to be a fair exhibition?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Lancaster started over again; as he worked, the click of the typewriter, along with the occasional cough, were the only sounds in the room. The spectators leaned forward as he finished typing the second note.

  “Two minutes and a half,” the court clerk announced. Hawthorne, it seemed, had misjudged; Lancaster had shown that eight minutes might in fact have been a lengthy estimate.

  Lancaster was handed the “death pencil,” as the newspapers had dubbed it, and he signed the two notes.

  “You told Mr. Carson this morning that Clarke had said he was ‘not making the grade,’ ” Hawthorne said. “Were you trying to use those words or did they come to you spontaneously?”

  “I must have been. I came to the typewriter, thought for a second, and then typed the notes.”

  “You wrote the notes in the same manner and touch as you wrote them here?”

  “Not much difference. I’ve been in jail three months and I am under a strain here, but I was probably
under a greater strain then.”

  Lancaster’s demonstration complete, Judge Atkinson recessed the court until the following day.

  20

  THE MAN FROM AUBURN

  On Thursday, August 11, Judge Atkinson began the proceedings by ordering that the jury be taken from the courtroom. He then stood up on the bench and announced to the hundreds of spectators that any outbursts like those of the previous day, when audience members had stamped their feet and clapped their hands, would force him to “drastic action.” Those sorts of demonstrations were against the law, Atkinson noted sternly, because they were inclined to influence jurors, and the whole point of keeping the jury segregated during a murder trial was to keep the members’ minds from outside influence.

  His speech concluded, Atkinson asked the attorneys if they wished to supplement his remarks. Hawthorne declined, but Carson, for the defense, asked the crowd to refrain from further demonstrations so as not to prejudice Lancaster’s chances for a fair trial. Then, in a surprise move, perhaps inspired by his missteps the previous day, Hawthorne announced that he would not further cross-examine Lancaster.

  Carson, after briefly questioning Lancaster about his finances, called J. P. Moe, a deputy U.S. marshal, to the stand. Moe had admitted Tancrel to the courthouse jail after Tancrel had been transferred from California to Miami for the trial.

  “What did Tancrel say on the way to the cells?” Carson asked.

  “I asked him how he’d like to be put in the same cell with Lancaster, and he said, ‘Don’t do that, I’d have to kill him.’ ”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” Moe replied. “He said, ‘I’ll do all I can to see that Lancaster burns.’ ”

  Coming from a U.S. marshal, Moe’s testimony, despite its lack of witnesses, had a noted effect on the jurors, as it called into question Tancrel’s—and, by extension, Russell’s—entire testimony.

  Carson then moved to deepen his previous portrayal of Haden Clarke as an unstable, even suicidal, individual. He called to the stand a young man named Dick Lavender, Clarke’s former roommate from New Orleans. Lavender had met Clarke in a speakeasy where both men were drinking.

  “Did you and Clarke have any habits in common?” Carson asked.

  “Just drinking.”

  “Did he have any in which you did not share?”

  “He smoked marijuana torpedoes,” Lavender said, explaining that torpedoes were slightly larger than cigarettes. (The day’s newspapers reported that marijuana was “commonly called hasheesh.”)