Blind Faith

by Joe McGinniss

  “Well, you can tell just by looking at him,” Mancuso said, “what a real party animal he is.”

  “Dancing up a storm with Mrs. Marshall,” Gladstone said.

  “Only fast dances,” Mancuso said.

  “Yeah, the slow ones she danced with her loving husband,” O’Brien said.

  “When he wasn’t too busy selling Myers IRAs,” Gladstone said.

  “That guy must really be a super-salesman,” Mancuso said. “Pitches an IRA account to a hardware clerk from Louisiana at a party and then follows it up with half a dozen brochures and thirty-one phone calls just to get the guy’s annual contribution of what, two thousand, twenty-five hundred, what’s the limit?”

  “Two thousand,” Gladstone said.

  “So his commission,” Mancuso said, “is what? Fifty bucks?”

  “Shit, he spent more than that on the phone calls,” O’Brien said.

  “Hey, I got an idea,” Gladstone said.

  The other two detectives looked at him.

  “Let’s go bowling.”

  So they did, across the river in Bossier City, but they didn’t run into Andrew Myers.

  On their way, however, they stopped by the home of Ernest Grandshaw of Jockey Club Lane, who made it clear from the outset that he was not pleased to see them. He was a tall, thin, dark-haired man who had a loud voice that he was not reluctant to raise. It seemed apparent to Gladstone that the New Jersey contingent was not the first group of law enforcement officers he’d ever encountered.

  They showed him the picture of Rob and Maria and he told them he’d never seen either one of those people in his life.

  Then they told him they wanted to talk to him about the murder of Maria and about his two brief visits to Atlantic City that summer, one of which coincided with the night she was killed, at a site only twenty-five miles from the motel at which he’d stayed.

  He told them he didn’t know a goddamned thing about any murder and he’d never been in Atlantic City or anywhere else in the goddamned state of New Jersey in his life and he wasn’t going to say one more goddamned word to them without first talking to a lawyer. Then he told them they could get the hell off his front steps and they could move their goddamned car out of his driveway.

  The next day, Thursday, September 20, Bob Gladstone went to the barbershop next door to Caddo Hardware and got a haircut. “Just trying to soak up local atmosphere,” he explained.

  Then he went before a Caddo Parish judge and obtained a search warrant that would permit the three detectives to return to the home of Ernest Grandshaw of Jockey Club Lane and pay him a more serious visit.

  “Tell me again,” O’Brien said, “what are we looking for? I mean, besides his Dale Carnegie videotapes.”

  “More pieces, Dan,” Gladstone said. “Just to make blindfolded jigsaw more challenging. It could be anything. It could be the forty-five used to shoot Maria. He was in Atlantic City the night she got killed, and except for Rob-O himself, there’s nobody else we’ve turned up who we can say that about. And somebody using the pay phone at the motel he stayed at called Marshall early that morning. And eight minutes later got a call back from the 7-Eleven just down the street from Marshall’s office. And yesterday he tells us that he’s never been to New Jersey in his life. I think that justifies a little authorized snooping around.”

  As it happened, Gladstone was proven correct. Later that day, in a desk drawer in Grandshaw’s house, Mancuso found a receipt for a Western Union money order sent to Grandshaw from Toms River on June 25 by a James McAlister of Philadelphia.

  In another drawer, Gladstone found a piece of paper torn from a Caddo Hardware memo pad. On it was written the name James McAlister, with a Philadelphia address, and the notation that McAlister would be sending a three-thousand-dollar money order to Ernie Grandshaw.

  “You know anything about these?” Gladstone asked.

  “Not a damn thing,” Grandshaw said.

  “That your handwriting?”

  “It sure ain’t. And I ain’t gonna answer no more questions without a lawyer.”

  Grandshaw’s wife had been standing by, watching all this, and growing ever more agitated. Now, she erupted.

  “Goddamn, you, Ernie Grandshaw, what in the hell are you into now?”

  “Be quiet,” he told her.

  “The hell I’ll be quiet, while you go dragging our name down into the gutter where all those friends of yours belong!” Then she turned to Gladstone. “You step outside here with me,” she said. “I want to talk to you alone.”

  “Goddamn it, woman, don’t you go talkin’ to that cop!” Grandshaw shouted.

  “If I left it to you you’d have both of us arrested before midnight. This is a murder these men are down here about, Ernie, and there are a few things I think they’d better know. Before they take you home with ’em in handcuffs.”

  Grandshaw’s wife took Gladstone into the kitchen and, speaking in a much softer voice, explained that her husband had been in trouble with the law on prior occasions, but had never been involved with murder. If it was murder they were investigating, she felt they would do better to focus on a friend of her husband’s named Ferlin L’Heureux. L’Heureux, she said, was a former policeman and “the kind of person who would do a murder.”

  She also said that following their visit the night before, her husband had left the house to meet with L’Heureux but upon his return had refused to say what they’d talked about, though she was sure what it had amounted to was L’Heureux threatening to hurt him or kill him if he said anything to the police.

  The three detectives left the Grandshaw house. They went back to downtown Shreveport and obtained a subpoena for all Western Union records pertaining to money orders sent from Toms River, New Jersey, to Ernest Grandshaw of Shreveport.

  They also asked local detectives what was known about a Ferlin L’Heureux. And that turned out to be a question with many answers.

  The L’Heureuxs were a family well known in Shreveport. Ferlin’s father had “been in real estate,” which is one of the expressions people in Shreveport used to describe a wide range of activities, most of which were probably even legal.

  Ferlin himself had been involved in a wide range of activities, some of which unquestionably were legal. For twelve years—to take just one example—he’d been a deputy sheriff in Caddo Parish. His law enforcement career had come to an end in 1978, after he’d been sent out to investigate a traffic accident involving an overturned tractor trailer that had been carrying a full load of plywood.

  In northern Louisiana, it was explained to Gladstone, a load of plywood—like a brand-new Cadillac—is one of those things a man would do just about anything to have. Never mind that he didn’t need it—plywood had cachet. The possessor of a full load of brand-new plywood was, de facto, a man of substance and accomplishment, a man with whom to be reckoned.

  It was in such terms that Ferlin had thought of himself anyway—the plywood would simply confirm it. Therefore, in the course of investigating the accident, Ferlin acquired the plywood. Eventually, this led to his rather abrupt resignation from the department and the end of his formal career in law enforcement.

  Ferlin, twice married and the father of six, went “into real estate,” as his father had done. He also went into car sales. He would buy a car in Texas and sell it in Alabama. And vice versa. Or he would buy a car in the morning and sell it in the afternoon. Or sometimes sell it in the morning and not get around to buying it until the afternoon. All of this was very informal—especially as regards the original ownership of the vehicles involved—but at no time did it lead to Ferlin’s arrest.

  He also dabbled for a time in the field of private investigation. The story they loved to tell in Shreveport was of the time he was hired by the wife of an airline executive who suspected (correctly) that her husband was having an affair with his secretary. The executive suspected (also correctly) that the wife was using an investigator to try to compile evidence that would be useful in
a divorce suit, so what he did was, he drove his customized van with the dark-tinted windows into the middle of a big open field and stayed inside with the secretary. He had the tape deck, the champagne bucket, the waterbed mattress, everything he needed, in the back of the van.

  Except a toilet. The secretary had to leave the van in order to pee. It was Ferlin’s notion to photograph her in the act, making sure to get the van in the same frame. The problem was that the field in which the man parked was so big and so empty that you would have to take the picture from the edge of the highway, and Ferlin did not own a telephoto lens powerful enough to produce a useful picture from that distance.

  His solution, which they loved to tell about in Shreveport, was to drag a cardboard washing-machine box into the middle of the field and climb inside and hunker down, cutting a small hole in the side for the camera lens. When the executive parked his van, Ferlin figured, he could just waddle forward until he was close enough to take the picture when the secretary got out of the van to pee.

  Seeing that Ferlin was six one and 250 pounds, it was no easy waddle. Especially when the thought occurred to Ferlin (as it did) that the executive might decide to start blasting away at the box with the .357 Magnum that Ferlin knew he kept inside the van. Which he would do, Ferlin was convinced, if he had the slightest suspicion that it was anything other than a gentle Louisiana zephyr that had caused the washing-machine box to wind up fifty yards closer to the van than it had been when the executive had first parked it.

  “Target practice,” was all the man would have to say if anyone ever asked. What could be more innocent, especially in northwestern Louisiana, than an airline executive engaging in a bit of target practice to impress the secretary he’d brought with him to share a picnic lunch on a lovely spring day? No reason in the world for him to have suspected that a former Caddo Parish deputy sheriff had been squatting inside trying to focus a 35-millimeter camera.

  Not that anyone would ever ask. Ferlin, all 250 sweaty pounds of him (it would be less if you figured in the blood loss) could lie inside that box for weeks—riddled with bullets—and nobody but the carrion birds would even know it.

  Eventually, his overwrought imagination became too much for Ferlin and he burst forth from the carton, threw his camera in the air, and, with his empty hands raised above his head, sprinted for the highway at top speed, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I resign!”

  At least that’s the way they liked to tell the story down in Shreveport. But they told plenty of others about Ferlin, too, and not all were in quite such a humorous vein.

  Ferlin liked to race stock cars. For a time, he’d even owned his own little racetrack in east Texas, but he’d drive anywhere in the South there was a race: Montgomery, Biloxi, Nashville, anywhere.

  Often, there would be a bank or two in the towns in which Ferlin drove. And often, friends of his would have an interest in the banks. Not a proprietary interest, as in, say, the case of a stockholder, and not a managerial interest, either. This was more an interest in what was inside the banks—i.e., money—and an interest in seeing it removed.

  Ferlin, it was explained to Gladstone, was involved with a gang of bank robbers who had made successful scores all across the South. He wasn’t a hard-core member of the gang. He was more out on the fringe, sometimes included, sometimes not, and never entrusted with any task more central to the enterprise than the driving of the getaway car.

  This was where his informal career in law enforcement entered the picture. For, Gladstone was led to believe, Ferlin had a little something going on the side. A little something with the federal authorities, whereby he kept them advised, from time to time, as to the gang’s plans for the future. Not to mention its membership.

  Some might describe this as trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Others might see it as suggestive of a death wish. In either case, it meant that Ferlin L’Heureux led a complicated life, and that, in the opinion of the Shreveport police, it was entirely possible (though they couldn’t quite imagine how) that he could have gotten ensnarled in a plot to murder a New Jersey woman for insurance money. Especially if the payoff was big enough.

  “A million five?” Gladstone said.

  “Big enough,” said the Shreveport detective to whom he was speaking. But then he added a cautionary note. “Ferlin’s a no-good bastard,” the detective said, “but he probably wouldn’t have the heart to kill a woman.”

  * * *

  On Friday, September 21, McGuire called Gladstone in Shreveport with the results of his Western Union inquiry. Ernie Grandshaw had received not one but two money orders from Toms River in June. The second, for three thousand dollars, had been the one for which they’d already found the receipt in Grandshaw’s house. The name listed as sender on that one was James McAlister, as the memo written on the Caddo Hardware pad had indicated.

  But there had also been a twenty-five-hundred-dollar money order, transmitted June 13, from Toms River to Ernie Grandshaw of Shreveport. The sender’s name on that first money order was Robert O. Marshall.

  The handwriting on the two money orders, McGuire said, appeared to be identical. It appeared to be the handwriting of Robert O. Marshall.

  “You know, Al,” Gladstone said, “here’s what I think you’d better do. I think you’d better swing by eight eight four Crest Ridge Drive this afternoon and put a couple of questions to Mr. Marshall. We know he knows Myers, that’s not the point. But Myers isn’t the guy he sent money to. He sent money to Grandshaw. And five days after he sends the first installment, Grandshaw turns up at Harrah’s Marina. The next time Grandshaw turns up, Maria Marshall turns up dead.

  “So ask Rob-O if the name Ernie Grandshaw means anything to him. And watch his face closely when he answers. Then try out one other name. Ask him if he knows anyone named Ferlin L’Heureux.

  “And you know what else, Al? Long as you’re in the neighborhood, stop by the Riccios’ house. Have a little talk with them, if you can. Ask them what’s the story with Andrew Myers. I’d like to know a little more about that friendship.”

  When he hung up, he turned to O’Brien and Mancuso. “Gentlemen, what’s your pleasure? A haircut, perhaps? Or would you rather we had another go at tenpins?”

  “I saw a poster back at the hardware store,” O’Brien said. “Advertising a crocodile barbecue. I think it’s tonight at the Legion hall.”

  “That sounds good, Dan,” Gladstone said. “I know Mancuso here hasn’t had a good piece of crocodile since we left Newark.”

  “That’s not all I haven’t had,” Mancuso said.

  “You want to go back to Caddo Hardware and check the details?” O’Brien said.

  “No,” Gladstone said. “I don’t think so. I’d rather arrange for our own crocodile barbecue. Dan, why don’t you call the store and see if you can’t persuade Mr. Myers to come downtown here this evening and be the crocodile. I think a few of the pieces are starting to fit.”

  O’Brien made the call at 5 P.M. “Yeah, he said he’d be down,” O’Brien reported. “He just wanted to call his wife and say he’d be a little late for supper.”

  “Like maybe thirty years late,” Mancuso said.

  “Thirty years?” Gladstone asked.

  “Yeah. That’s the minimum sentence before parole eligibility following a conviction for conspiracy to murder in a case involving the use of firearms.”

  “But all Myers did was dance with the broad,” O’Brien said.

  “Yeah,” Mancuso said, “but what did he do with her husband?”

  15

  This time, they read Myers his rights.

  Through the money orders and Atlantic City motel registrations they had linked Myers to Marshall. The link in itself was not necessarily suggestive of criminal activity, but at least they had established a connection.

  Through the meeting at the Riccio party and the dozens of phone calls that followed, they had linked Myers to Marshall. Again, there was no evidence of wrongdoing, but the three detect
ives did not believe for a minute that Marshall’s repeated calls to Myers at both work and home had been intended solely or primarily (or at all) to sell him a plan for his Individual Retirement Account.

  The problem now was to link Myers with Grandshaw somehow. And then, once the links were in place, to see where they led. All three detectives strongly suspected that they would lead to the Oyster Creek picnic area on the Garden State Parkway and to the body of Maria Marshall, facedown on the front seat of her husband’s ivory Cadillac with two closely spaced bullet holes in her back.

  “Andy,” Gladstone was saying, “I’d like you to tell us a little more about this telephone conversation you had with Mrs. Riccio. The one where she told you that Mrs. Marshall had been killed.”

  “Right. Well, like I said, I called her and when she answered, I said, ‘Happy Birthday. I know it’s early.’ You see, the more I think, I think her birthday is actually the eighteenth. But I knew I was calling either early or late. Anyway, I talked to John, too, and I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And Carol, Mrs. Riccio, she told me that her son, the one from the birthday party, was engaged to get married. And I asked when the wedding was going to be and she said June of next year, June ’85, and I said, ‘Are you going to send us an invitation?’ And she said, ‘Sure, we will.’ And I said, ‘Thank you.’ And then she said John’s cousin passed away, and I said, ‘John’s cousin?’ And she gave me a name, and I said, ‘I don’t think I know him.’ And she said, ‘No, I only think you met him once.’”

  “Golf clubs,” O’Brien said. “He passed away due to golf clubs.”

  “Excuse me?” Myers said.

  “Never mind,” O’Brien said. “Keep talking.”

  “All right. And then she says, I believe she just said, ‘Maria got killed.’ And I said, ‘Who?’ ‘Maria Marshall, the one you danced with.’ And I says, ‘What happened? What are you talking about?’ And she said that she was—they were coming back from Atlantic City and he got hit over the head and she was shot. And I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ And then we talked generally about everything else. And that was it.”