JO03 - Detour to Murder

by Jeff Sherratt

  I looked down at the jacket of my best suit. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing. Forget it. If anybody says anything, I’ll tell them that you’re my manservant, a gentleman's gentleman. Now come along, Jeeves.”

  Christ, they didn’t say anything about this in law school.

  We entered the hotel lobby and found our way to the main ballroom. Some pimply-faced kid wearing a hotel security blazer stood at attention, guarding the door. “Sir, I’ll need to see your invitations.”

  “Sure,” Sol said, slipping something into the guy’s palm. “It’s got a picture of Ben Franklin on it.”

  The kid looked down at what Sol had just handed him. “Oh, yeah. It sure does.” He held the door open and we slipped into the room.

  Sol and I lurked in the back. The room was filled with tables surrounded by men and women resplendent in their formal attire. The meal was winding down and waiters bustled about picking up plates while others poured coffee and wine.

  On the stage, under a purple and white banner that read: The chief business of the American people is business, CEO types sat at a banquet table facing the audience. Donning frozen smiles, they exhibited the zestful flamboyance often noticed at a mass for the dead.

  One of the men leaned over and said something to the man sitting to his right. That guy nodded, got up and went to the podium. He adjusted the mike, scanned the crowd, and started to speak.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be among such an illustrious group of people…”

  He introduced the men seated on the dais—an executive who headed one of Haskell’s corporations, a couple of bankers, high-level politicians, and several businessmen who had contributed to their organization. One of them was Raymond Haskell.

  “I hope you’ll pardon me if I seem overly enthusiastic in my admiration of Raymond Haskell, a man of many accomplishments…”

  The master of ceremonies droned on ad nauseum, describing Haskell’s success in the world of business and finance, his generous contributions to the numerous charities that his foundation supported, and his unparalleled funding of the arts and humanities.

  He finally got around to highlighting Haskell’s World War II experiences. Words and phrases such as hero, selfless valor, and patriotic courage were bandied about.

  The speaker described one mission in particular, Haskell’s last mission, a bomb run over Augsburg, Germany: “…Captain Raymond Haskell exhibited fearless determination as countless fighters attacked his B-17. Still he continued on, flying to his assigned target. But close to the Messerschmitt factory heavy German anti-aircraft gunfire proved to be too much. Shrapnel from the exploding shells ripped through the fuselage. The bomber caught fire and the cockpit was soon engulfed in flames.

  “Ray could have bailed out right then, but at grave risk to his own life he thought only of his men. He unbuckled his seat belt and was trying to help his wounded co-pilot when suddenly the B-17 exploded. Fate intervened. The explosion blew Ray clear of the plane, rendering him unconscious. But thank God, he awoke in time and opened his parachute. All of his crewmates perished, however…”

  Over Bavaria, March 1944

  No, Sims thought, he was not going to die today, not for these assholes.

  Fuck ’em. They’re all dead anyway.

  Earl Lee Sims bailed out through the main entrance hatch an instant before the bomber exploded.

  His chute opened and as he fell he noticed a curious sight. One of the crewmembers had been blown out of the airplane.

  He watched as the man descended fast in freefall. Was he dead or alive?

  Now below him, Sims saw the airman’s chute pop open just seconds before he hit the ground.

  Sims drifted slowly down, finally making contact less than a hundred yards from his wounded crewmate. He gathered his parachute canopy, hid it behind some bushes, and cautiously approached the crewmember.

  Capt. Raymond Haskell uttered, “Sims… thank God you made it. Help me… I’m hurt.”

  Earl Lee Sims drew his army issue .45 caliber automatic from its holster and put the barrel to Haskell's head…

  C H A P T E R 44

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” the master of ceremonies said. “Without further ado, I give you our guest of honor, the esteemed Raymond Haskell.”

  Everyone stood. Applause filled the room as Haskell stood and walked purposefully to the podium.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sol’s driver come into the hall past the security kid. He slipped up behind Sol and whispered, “Boss, the FBI called. They’re on their way.” He paused.

  “So nu?” Sol said with impatience. “What else?”

  “The prints matched.”

  Sol and I looked at each other, and I took a deep breath. Sol pumped his fist. “You nailed him, Jimmy.”

  I smiled. “We both did, my friend.”

  On stage, Haskell readjusted the mike, nodded to the others on the podium, took a sip of water, and began: “Thank you, John. Distinguished guests, members of the press, I’m humbled to be standing here before you tonight…”

  I started to boil inside, thinking of all the years that Al Roberts had rotted in a prison hellhole because of that bastard up there on the stage. How could a cowardly son-of-a-bitch like that receive so much adulation?

  No, the hell with this! “He can bite my ass,” I told Sol. “We’re not waiting for the FBI. C’mon, let’s take him now!”

  “Christ, Jimmy, wait—!” Sol exclaimed.

  But I’d already started to move to the front of the hall. Sol ran up beside me as we elbowed our way through the crowd, which was still on its feet.

  Reaching the foot of the stage, I shouted up at Haskell, “Hey, Earl! Yeah, I’m talking to you, Earl Lee Sims!”

  Haskell’s mouth dropped. He stood in silent shock, but only for a moment. “What the hell is this? Are you out of your mind—?”

  “Don’t give us any bullshit,” Sol interrupted. “We know who you really are.” He turned and faced the crowd. “This man—this imposter—is a murdering son-of-a-bitch. He killed two helpless women—and who knows how many others!”

  The bigwigs on the dais jumped to their feet and stared down at us, not knowing what to do. Two big goons rushed toward us and tried to grab our arms. I recognized both from the Reagan dinner: Haskell’s bodyguards.

  “Get your filthy hands off of me, you prick!” Sol snapped at one of them.

  “Hey, you’re the crazy bastards that hassled me in the Beverly Wilshire restroom. Joe, Roy, get these assholes out of here,” Haskell/Sims yelled to his bodyguards.

  Sol, fighting off his attacker, shouted again: “Did you kill the real Raymond Haskell too, before you stole his dog tags and assumed the identity of a real war hero?”

  A collective gasp arose from the crowd as I slammed the guy trying to contain me in his gut with my elbow. He let out a whoosh and loosened his grip. I spun around and smashed him in the face. He dropped like a stone.

  Sol, a hell of a strong man, was making short work of the other asshole.

  A bullhorn sounded at the back of the room. “This is the FBI. Everyone hold their places.” The agent in the lead stared at us, and his jaw dropped. “Silverman, what the hell…”

  Half a dozen FBI agents now started working their way through the mass of people, all standing in horrified silence.

  Haskell/Sims turned his head from side to side like it was on a swivel. Then he stopped and stared, wide-eyed, at the government agents as they moved closer. Sol shouted up at him, “Hey, schmuck, we’ve compared your fingerprints. We know who you are.”

  Somehow, the bodyguard being pummeled by Sol managed to pull a gun. Sol twisted his arm up behind his back. The gun went off, the bullet probably lodging in the ceiling. “You fucking coward!” Sol bellowed. “I think I’m going to beat the crap out of you.”

  “Okay, okay, goddammit.” He let go of the gun. “I ain’t being paid enough to get killed.”

&nbs
p; Hearing the gunshot, the crowd stampeded for the exits. The FBI guys tried frantically to move against the flow of the frightened horde.

  Sims now made a mad dash for the stage door. I jumped up and raced after him. After flattening the other bodyguard, Sol followed.

  We chased Sims down a dim corridor. I caught up quickly, took a flying leap and tackled him to the ground. Grabbing him by his scrawny neck, I looked into his eyes. No defiance now; the asshole was terrified.

  “You might as well kill me right now, O’Brien. I can’t go to prison,” he whined. Tears started to flow, and he buried his head in his hands.

  I shook him. “Look at me, you no-good bastard. For what you did to Al Roberts, I ought to bash your head in. But you’ll live a long time, rotting in a dingy cell. You’ll be alone, except for the ghosts of everyone whose lives you’ve destroyed. They’ll be there too, haunting your every waking moment!”

  I stood and jerked Sims to his feet as Sol came up beside me. Three FBI agents moved in, arrested Sims, and led him away in cuffs.

  “There goes our fearless war hero,” Sol said. “Crying like a goddamn baby.”

  I laughed—it sounded more like a crazed cackle. “Do you think I was too rough on him? Maybe he won’t give me back my Corvette.”

  Sol put his arm around my shoulder. “O’Brien, boychik, you’re something else.”

  We moseyed down the corridor, out of the ballroom, and headed straight for the bar.

  C H A P T E R 45

  Almost immediately, the national news wires picked up the story of Earl Lee Sims stealing Raymond Haskell’s identity and getting away with it for almost three decades. By ten that night, reporters were camped in front of my apartment. Cruising down my street, I saw the media vans parked there and didn’t stop. I drove to my office on Cecilia St. and didn’t see any reporters around, so I parked and went in.

  I sat at my desk in the dark, quietly thinking about the events that had happened earlier that night at the Ambassador. I thought about that look in Sims’s eyes when he asked me to kill him. Uh-uh, killing him would be too easy. There would be no long-term suffering, no payback for all that he had done, for the lives he’d taken—for the lives he had destroyed.

  Turning on my desk lamp, I started to rearrange the stuff on my desk. Mrs. Hathaway’s shoebox sat next to a stale donut. I took out the old newspaper, the Shreveport Journal, dated June 11, 1945 and looked it over again.

  There was a lot of news on the front page about the war raging in the Pacific. Page two had an article about movie queen Hedy Lamarr’s new baby. But what had caught my eye back at Sol’s office was an article with photos. The Associated Press piece had been put on the national wire.

  The Journal picked up the story and carried it on page three. The headline: WAR HERO AND HEIR RETURNS HOME. The picture showed a close-up of Raymond Haskell stepping off a plane in Los Angeles. The article told about his final mission and his time spent as a POW. It went on to tell how he was the only survivor of the doomed aircraft. In smaller print the article listed the names of his crewmembers killed in action. The piece also listed the dead airmens’ next of kin. Among those allegedly killed was Earl Lee Sims. His only known relative was a sister, whereabouts unknown, named Vera Sims.

  Then I pulled out the page torn from the 1945 motel guest register that Mrs. Hathaway must’ve stuck in the shoebox prior to giving it to her niece. I looked again at the two faded signatures on the paper: Al Roberts—and Vera Sims.

  Unfolding the two small obituary clippings, I spread them on my desk. Both had a small picture of Sims, and each said essentially the same thing. Sergeant Earl Lee Sims, USAAF, was killed last week when the B-17 he crewed exploded over Germany after encountering heavy flak. Prior to his enlistment, Sims, a native of Caddo Parish, had been in trouble with the law. He had joined the army in order to avoid a long prison term…

  Sol’s PR people had scheduled a press conference for me to meet with the media the following afternoon, a Monday. He explained that it would be the only way I’d get these guys off my ass, plus the publicity would do my firm good. I liked that idea.

  The conference was held in the office parking lot. Rita, wearing a dark business suit and a white ruffled blouse, stood beside me at the makeshift podium, facing the journalists and TV cameras. Mabel sat at a small table we had set up near the entrance. She handed out factsheets to the reporters as they signed in. The TV camera lights snapped on and the conference got underway at exactly 2:06 p.m.

  “How did Sims think he could get away with such an outlandish scheme, Jimmy?” a journalist from Newsweek asked.

  “Well, he did get away with it for almost thirty years. But I don’t think he planned it that way at all. He just went with the flow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here’s how Sims told it in his confession: After he bailed out of the B-17 over Germany, he knew he’d be captured eventually. He figured that he’d get better treatment in a German POW camp if he were an officer rather than an enlisted man. When he spotted Raymond Haskell on the ground wounded, he shot him in the head, exchanged uniforms, and stole his dog tags. So of course, when the Germans did, in fact, capture him, they logged him in as Capt. Raymond Haskell. When he was liberated at the end of the war in Europe, he wasn’t reunited with his original group. After a short stay in a military hospital in the States, he was sent to New York, where he received his discharge."

  “If you look at the vital statistics, which we included in the fact sheet, you’ll see that Sims and Haskell were similar in size and weight,” Rita added. “And they were even similar in appearance: eye color, hair, and complexion.”

  I continued: “When Sims returned to the States and read in the papers the account of his—or rather Haskell’s—heroic return, he found out a little about Haskell’s life. His mother was dead, and his father was in a coma, near death. He had no relatives, except for Charles Jr., who had been estranged from his father for years. Charles had run away from home when he was fifteen. The last time Charles had seen Raymond was when Raymond was twelve years old. The lawyers were looking for heirs. So Sims figured he’d show up—his discharge papers would prove his identity—and pick up as much cash as he could. Then he’d disappear. But when he found out that Charles had died and no one else had come forth to dispute his claim, he decided to stick around. Why settle for small change when so many millions were at stake?

  “The only fly in the ointment for Sims, of course, was his sister, Vera.”

  “Didn’t Raymond Haskell have any close friends, high school buddies who knew him well enough to spot a phony?” Stan Chambers from KTLA asked.

  “Not really. His parents sent him away when he was a kid to a military academy in Roanoke, Virginia, then college at an Ivy League school. When the war broke out, he enlisted.”

  “How’d Vera find out about her brother’s deception?”

  “We can only surmise. But based on Sims’s confession, and what we were able to put together from what Charles Haskell Jr. had told Al Roberts during the drive across Arizona, we have a fairly good idea of how she knew about her brother’s activities. Vera saw the newspaper article about Raymond Haskell’s return from WW II and must’ve recognized her brother, a small-time crook who had joined the army to avoid prison. At that time she lived in Shreveport, same as Charles Haskell Jr., who was a big-time bookmaker. Vera didn’t know him personally, but she knew of him. After she showed him the paper, they headed off to L.A. together to confront the impersonator. Somewhere along the way they got in a fight. Charles Haskell Jr. kicked Vera out of the car in Arizona. But after he died, Vera saw an opportunity to cash in by blackmailing her brother.”

  “My God, Sims murdered his own sister,” Jack Smith of the L.A. Times said.

  “Yes, strangled her with his bare hands.”

  “What happened after that?” someone from the back shouted.

  “Sims got lucky. Soon after the murder the police picked up Al Roberts and charged him with
the crime. Of course, Sims wanted Roberts to go directly to prison without a trial so that none of the stuff about Vera would come out. He knew the DA at the time, Frank Byron, would go along because Raymond’s father, Charles Sr., had been in the rackets before he died and had Byron on his payroll.”

  “Is anyone going to look into the Byron/Haskell connection?”

  “I don’t think so. Rinehart certainly isn’t going to dig up the past. Anyway, all the crimes Byron may have committed are beyond the statute of limitations.”

  “How did the murdered woman who owned the motel…” The reporter looked at his notes. “…ah, Ida Hathaway, get involved?”

  “Mrs. Hathaway had discovered Vera’s body. But before she called the cops, she scooped up some of Vera’s stuff and hid it in a shoebox. Included in the room were the old newspaper and some obit clippings. But Hathaway didn’t make the Sims/Haskell connection until almost thirty years later. She figured it out when she went through the shoebox retrieving some old phone bills for me. She matched Vera’s name on the hotel register with the name in the paper and deduced what Vera had been up to. That’s when she decided to blackmail Sims.”

  “But she got the same fate as Vera.”

  “Yeah. Sims sent his goons, a couple of bruisers named Danny and Rollo, to the motel to find the newspaper and the page torn from the old guest register.”

  “They killed her but didn’t find the stuff they were looking for,” Rita said.

  “Hathaway’s niece had the papers the thugs were after all along,” I added. “Hathaway gave the items to her for safekeeping. And of course, her niece didn’t realize that the 1945 newspaper, which Vera had brought with her from back east, was such a big deal. She gave it to me. Sol Silverman, Rita, and I finally made the connection.”

  “That’s all well and good, but an old newspaper article doesn’t prove Sims was impersonating Raymond Haskell.”

  “You’re right. It wasn’t proved until Sol Silverman, the world’s greatest detective, asked the FBI to inspect the war records of the B-17 crew. He asked them to check Raymond Haskell’s and Earl Lee Sims’s fingerprints taken when they were inducted during the war, and compare them with Haskell’s prints on his current driver’s license. When the prints matched, we knew without a doubt that the man calling himself Raymond Haskell was actually Earl Lee Sims, and the rest of it fell into place.”