Ashes From A Burning Corpse (An American True Crime Reporter in the 20th Century Book 3)

by Noel Hynd

  “Listen!” he snapped. “I visited that house many times. The screen could have been somewhere else and I touched it. I don’t remember. What I can tell you is that I was not in the old bastard’s bedroom during or after the murder! The print of my little finger on the screen in Sir Harry’s room might have been faked! Yes, faked! Those two American cops, and most of the local cops, have just been too damned eager to pin the rap on me! Why the devil didn’t they look around a bit? I could name a dozen people who had a lot to explain but hadn’t even been questioned!”

  With that, guards appeared. They announced that de Marigny’s allotted time with his visitor had expired. They led him back to his cell.

  The next morning a wave of paranoia overcame me.

  I had developed a sense over the years, one that comes from asking unpopular questions sometimes, being punched, cursed at threated, menaced with firearms, not to mention the threatening mail, most of it with Bronx and Brooklyn postmarks. There was always the notion that someone was watching, someone would someday suddenly demand a moment of reckoning, either out of a story from the past or one smack in current day. And I had that feeling now. I decided to run a little gambit, a newspaperman’s test that I’d picked up in Philadelphia on the 1920’s working on the case of a guy who was engraving plates to make five-dollar bills in his basement.

  I wasn’t planning to see Ray that day. But I decided to do some of my own detective work. I went downstairs to the dining room where I had a light breakfast. Then I stopped in the lobby where I found the bell captain, a man named Sonny.

  “Is Felix here?” I asked Sonny, inquiring after my driver.

  “He’s outside.”

  “Does he have his hack?”

  “Assuredly, sir,” Sonny said.

  Before I could stop him, Sonny put his sturdy fingers between his teeth and shrilled a whistle that could have raised the dead. Felix came in with a determined trot.

  “Could you take me for a ride? In maybe twenty minutes?” I asked.

  “Where to, sir?” Felix asked.

  “The church. The big one. The one everyone says I must see. Near the open-air market.”

  “I’ll be ready, sir,” Felix said.

  “What’s the address?” I asked.

  “Montrose Road, near George Street.”

  “That will be fine,” I said.

  Felix went out to the street to stand by his ’36 Hudson. I went upstairs to my room. There was a phone directory of only thirty-six pages; there weren’t that many folks who had phones. I opened the directory. I choose a name at random. I called.

  A man answered. I didn’t even introduce myself. I just spoke quickly.

  “We’re meeting in front of St. Ambrose church in thirty minutes,” I said. “Just as you suggested. I’m bringing the money, all of it.”

  I rang off before the individual on the other end could say anything. I repeated the procedure with two more numbers. Random calls, random recipients. Then I hustled down the stairs to Felix’s hack. I confirmed the address. I sat in the back while Felix drove. The streets were hot but there was little traffic due to gasoline rationing. We were within sight of the church within seven minutes. I asked Felix to stop three blocks away and wait.

  “Yes, Mr. Alan,” he said.

  I stepped out, drew a breath and walked in the direction of the church, looking as much as a Yank tourist as I could. I conspicuously carried a guidebook. There were trees and some construction; I took advantage of cover as best I could. When I came to the last side street, I glanced down it. I saw what I had expected: one police car hovering next to a hydrant. I made a point of taking in the church’s architecture. With my peripheral view, I saw two men in a café across the street. They weren’t talking. They were just watching in my direction. I bought two pieces of chilled fruit at a market next to the church. I ate one as I walked back to the taxi.

  I was quiet as I stepped back into hot cab. I handed Felix the second piece of fruit. A gift. He was surprised. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Anyone come by to bother you?” I asked. “Or ask questions?”

  “No, Mr. Alan.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then we’re going back to the hotel, Felix.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Alan.”

  We rode back in silence. But that didn’t mean my mind wasn’t in overdrive.

  My telephone was tapped. Someone knew exactly where I was going. And someone involved with the murder of Sir Harry Oakes was getting official protection. Both were already undeniable.

  CHAPTER 11

  One way that Ray Schindler operated was to do the unexpected as often as possible. I knew how he worked but he surprised even me with his next move.

  “I’m leaving Nassau,” he told me one evening during the last week of July.

  “What?”

  “All the phones here are tapped,” he said. “Or at least the ones I’d have access to are. I need to get off this island, confer with some experts and maybe bring in some further assistance.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Sick of this place yet?”

  “You want an honest answer or a polite answer?” I asked.

  “Honest. Always.”

  “I’d love to get home and see my wife and daughter,” I said. “I know, I know: not good to walk away from the story. But we seem bogged down right now in pre-trial procedure and investigation. There hasn’t been much new in the last few days.”

  “True enough,” he said.

  “And I really miss my family,” I confessed.

  “I can tell.”

  “Can you?”

  “It’s written all over your face,” he said. “Listen. I’ll go for a short time, then we’ll figure a time for you to go. You cover for me, keep your eyes and ears open and your head down. We compare notes, then I’ll cover for you. How’s that?”

  “Deal!” I said.

  We shook on it. We drank to it. We smoked Chesterfields to it.

  “So where are you headed?” I asked.

  “New Orleans and Chicago,” he said. “Maybe with quick stops in New York and Washington.”

  “What are you up to?” I asked.

  “Off the record?”

  “Off the record,” I promised.

  Ray’s eyes narrowed. “If you examine what we’ve heard so far,” he said, “the Crown has a tenuous case against Nancy’s husband. There’s a lot of hearsay, a world of bias and a mountain of ill will. But there’s not much evidence other than one thing.”

  “The fingerprint?” I asked.

  “Exactly. That’s what our side needs to attack.”

  ***

  Two days later, telling no one other than his hosts and me, Ray left Nassau by air to Miami, then he connected to New Orleans and Chicago. Realizing the importance that fingerprint evidence was to assume in the investigation, Schindler sought the best talent possible. Within two days, he had contacted the men he needed. Then he continued to Washington where he conferred with another old friend and working contact, Homer S. Cummings, a former United States Attorney General of the United States under Franklin Roosevelt.

  Schindler wanted Cummings’ advice about what he had found, and Cummings was just the man to give it. Years before, when he was a prosecuting attorney in Connecticut, the Attorney General had found himself in a unique situation. A young fellow was accused of a murder, and although it was up to Cummings to prosecute, he was convinced that the fellow had not committed the crime. So instead of prosecuting, Cummings set out to prove that the defendant was innocent. And he did prove the fellow’s innocence—the defendant had been a victim of mistaken identity.

  When Cummings heard Schindler’s story, he said, “Ray, I think Count de Marigny is innocent. If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.”

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but a consensus was emerging about de Marigny’s innocence. Whether it would keep him off the gallows in Nassau was beside the point.


  Then Ray was back up to New York City to keep an eye on his office and meet other aids and confidents.

  ***

  Just as Ray had predicted, little of substance was transpiring in hot sleepy Nassau during August. I was starting to wish for a respite from the island and its miseries, also.

  One day had been particularly harsh. There had been no new developments in the Oakes case and no announcements from the prosecution or the police. That evening, I looked into Dirty Dick’s and didn’t see much of promise, nor did any other gin mills on the side streets appear inviting. My inclination was to go back to the hotel for dinner. I also knew shaking up my pattern was a good thing.

  There was a little Mexican place called Juanita’s Cantina, one door down on Kent Street. I eyeballed it from the door. It looked cozy and there was the enticing sound of south-of-the border music. A dozen tables were going and about a dozen empty. I walked in. The smell of tamales greeted me. A moment later, so did Juanita. She was a pretty woman in her mid-twenties with a lovely face and lovely skin the color of a milky coffee. There was also a bar, populated by white people only. Behind the bar was a fierce looking man with a droopy moustache, a white shirt and a red scarf. He kept a sharp eye on Juanita and the front door. I had a feeling that he was the security system as well as the barkeep. I assumed he had a pistol. I had already noticed that most people who had to work nights or go home late in Nassau carried artillery.

  “A table by yourself, señor?” she asked in English.

  “Yes. Please,” I said.

  I hadn’t taken two steps before a nearby voice barked at me from a partially obscured table in the rear.

  “Alan! Hey, partner! Join us!” a voice bellowed.

  After an eight-day absence, Raymond Schindler had re-appeared.

  Ray had a table in the corner, seated with his back to the wall, so that with equal ease he could watch the room and the window that gave onto the street. It was a table for four, but one of the other chairs was not yet taken. He beckoned me and indicated that I should sit in the empty chair to his left, the one that was also against a wall. I caught on quickly.

  “How did you find us?” he asked. “I thought I was the detective.”

  “The same way a lot of reporters find things,” I said. “Pure dumb luck.”

  “Ha! No such thing, Listen, I want you to meet some people,” Ray said, indicating his guests. “I didn’t want to phone you, of course. I don’t think there’s any surveillance here but Bay Street will catch on quickly. Sit. Meet my associates.”

  With him were his two fingerprint men whom he had imported from the United States. Like Schindler, they were as welcome to the Nassau police as ants in a picnic sandwich.

  They were Captain Maurice B. O’Neil, chief of the Bureau of Identification of the New Orleans Police Department and Professor Leonarde B. Keeler, executive director of the State of Illinois Crime Bureau.

  I was honored to be included at the table. From having written true crime for almost a quarter of a century, I knew well who these men were, yet until now, I had never had the pleasure of meeting them.

  Captain O’Neil was recognized in official circles throughout the United States as one of the country’s top fingerprint experts. He was a thoroughly honest and professional policeman, having supervised one of the most important departments in New Orleans for two decades. He had made his reputation in using fingerprints to clear an eccentrically cuckoo couple in the Goat Castle murder case in Natchez, Mississippi in 1932, a case I had written up for Colliers.

  “That was quite a case,” I said. It involved the brutal shooting of a spinster recluse named Jennie Surget Merrill. The case had been all over the tabloid newspapers, with details of wealth, beautiful women, European royalty, Southern aristocracy, army generals and ambassadors, plus madness, incest, racism, bitter internecine feuds, mind-boggling tumbles from grace and a hefty dose of overall perversity. All of this in huge helpings. I hated to think how many trees had been cut down to print all the newspapers the case sold.

  “That case got me into the International Association for Identification,” O’Neil said.

  “Isn’t that the same organization that James Barker is in?” I asked. “One of the cops that the Duke called in.”

  “It is,” O’Neil said.

  “Do you know Barker?”

  “I know him.”

  “He’s a friend of yours?” I asked, intrigued.

  “No,” O’Neil said with a heavy pause. “I know him.”

  I read the eyes around the table. I changed the subject.

  The other man at the table, Leonarde Keeler, was a quiet, handsome man in his early forties. Named after Leonardo di Vinci, he had more than lived up to his namesake. Keeler was the co-inventor of the lie detector and an authority on scientific crime detection. He had been a partner of the famous John Augustus Larson, a cerebral Police Officer in Berkeley, California, United States. Larson was the first American police officer to have an academic doctorate and to use polygraph in criminal investigations. In February of 1935, he conducted the first use of their invention, the Keeler Polygraph, on two criminals in Portage, Wisconsin. They were later convicted of assault when the lie detector results were introduced in court.

  Both Keeler and O’Neil were old friends of Schindler.

  I shook hands with both men and settled in. It appeared as if Ray and his friends had just been served their meal. Juanita stayed with us, menus in her hand.

  “What are we drinking tonight?” I asked around the table.

  “Tequila. Iced,” Ray said. “Try it.”

  “I’m more of a rum drinker. Or Scotch.”

  Ray turned to Juanita. “Alan will have a tequila, also. We must educate the young man. Open his worldview, what do you think?” My muffled protest was ignored. The others laughed.

  “Tequila will put some hair on your chest, Alan,” Schindler said. “Shut up. This isn’t tea time.”

  I didn’t bother to protest a second time.

  “Something to eat, sir?” Juanita asked me.

  “Yes, definitely.”

  She offered me a menu. Ray intercepted it and handed it back to her.

  “Alan will have the same as I have. Corn tamales with hot sauce. Delicious.”

  I shrugged to the very pretty young woman. “He’s the boss,” I said.

  “Damned right I am and don’t any of you forget it,” he said good naturedly.

  Juanita winked to me and disappeared. Then Ray set to work on his food, taking several mouthfuls. My drink arrived quickly. I tried it and liked it, though by that point on this day I was predisposed to enjoy anything chilled with an alcoholic content.

  The four of us exchanged small talk around the table and some banter about the Oakes case. I was flattered anew when both Keeler and O’Neil revealed that they had read many of my stories. Captain O’Neil asked me what had been the strangest case I’d ever written up.

  “That’s an easy one,” I answered. “It’s the one I called The Case of the Attic Lover. It involved a woman named Wanda Walburger who kept a paramour in her attic for ten years without her husband finding out. The lover came downstairs when Wanda was having a fight with her husband and shot him.”

  “I remember that one,” O’Neil said.

  “Did she get convicted?” Keeler asked.

  “What do you think?” I laughed.

  “No,” Keeler said.

  “Correct,” I said.

  My meal arrived. Ray looked up. “This Mexican stuff is pretty good. You’ll like it.”

  “I’ve had it before. My wife and I went to Acapulco after we were first married.”

  “You like it?’

  “Which? The Mexican food or Acapulco?”

  “Either.”

  “Both,” I said. “Also, the marriage.”

  “Wise man. Smart man,” Ray said. His eyes twinkled.

  “Are we alone in here tonight,” I asked, “or do we have a shadow?”

 
“You never know, but I seem to have shaken off my usual armada of bumbling busybodies,” Schindler said. “It won’t last long. They’ll find out where I went tonight, who I was with, and they’ll be in here tomorrow. So maybe I’ll come in to let them think they’re smart, which they’re not, or maybe I’ll give them the slip again. We’ll see.”

  “I’m sure we will,” I said.

  “Tell me something I’ve always wondered about, Alan,” Captain O’Neil then asked me. “How did you get started in crime writing?”

  “I was assigned to it,” he said. “By my editor. A tough guy Irishman like yourself named Eddie Dunn. City editor on The Boston Post.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “My second day on The Boston Post,” I answered, “there was this laborer in the South End. O’Hara, I think his name was. He was arrested at the tenement house on D Street where he lived with his brother-in-law, a man named McDermott. O’Hara used a straight razor to cut McDermott’s throat. When the police arrived, they found blood all over the walls and on a table. Both men had been drunk. O’Hara claimed he was lying in bed asleep with his wife when McDermott broke down the door to their two-room apartment, came in, brandished a hammer and threatened to kill both. Apparently, O’Hara slept with a straight razor under his mattress—it was that type of neighborhood. O’Hara came up with the razor, slashed at his brother-in-law and caught him clean and hard across the front of the throat. The wife supported her husband’s account. I remember standing there listening to O’Hara give his account to the police. The dead man was still lying there and the cops were laughing. I remember looking down at the floor and seeing all the blood. I’d been standing there for half an hour without moving. Transfixed. And my shoes were sticking to the floor because the blood was drying.”

  “And that was your start?”

  “Yes, sir. Eddie Dunn, the editor, sent me from tenement to tenement. Deaths in small hotel rooms, rapes and murders in basements. Slashings in elevators, shootings in gambling dens, stabbings in open air markets. There was no limit to the variety, no depths to the depravity or brutality. Looking back, I wonder if Mr. Dunn and the other editors were having a game with me, wanting to see if I’d quit or could take it. Next thing I knew, after maybe a hundred homicides, the editors changed. Mr. Dunn promoted me and I was put on a higher issue of crime. Bank robbery, forgeries. From there I landed on the Ponzi case, one of several reporters. That was 1920.”