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

by Noel Hynd

  Now Phillips asked to see the records that the missing number referred to.

  The records related to Harold Christie and his alleged infraction of a federal statute. Included in the records was the unserved arrest warrant. Somebody had removed from the indexes the number leading to the warrant, a suspicious event right there. If it hadn’t been for Phillips’ search, the records in the Christie case might have been overlooked till doomsday.

  Phillips made a copy of the federal record and took the train to New York late that afternoon. The next morning Walter Schindler took a photograph of it and mailed it to Raymond in Nassau.

  The copy of the federal record could be an important piece of paper at the trial. If Christie, a principal witness for the Crown, were to be revealed as something less than a knight in armor by a detailed disclosure of his past, the Crown’s case might begin to implode. But of course, it could have no effect whatsoever until it arrived.

  CHAPTER 19

  During my brief return to New York, my wife wanted to see Frank Sinatra perform live, but name a woman who didn’t. I agreed to take her, ready to hold on tight if Frankie the notorious lounge lizard crept too close. Sinatra was married to his first wife, Nancy, back in those days, but the rumors were all over the city that he wasn’t working too hard at it.

  In Manhattan in September of 1943, there was a new night spot at 151 East 57th Street called the Riobamba. It was owned by one of Thomas Dewey’s nemeses, American Mafia boss Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. Thanks to Dewey, Lepke was on death row awaiting execution, but that didn’t interfere with his ownership of the club. His wife ran it along with a couple of mobbed-up managers.

  While I was in Nassau, Frank Sinatra’s people tried to book Blue Eyes at the Copacabana, which was then the hottest night club in New York. No go, Frankie. Yes, he was a star but he still struggled to get some of the top-line bookings. So Frank and his people settled for a three-week engagement at the Riobamba. At first, he was billed an extra act. He knocked the place out. Management moved him quickly to the main act in the middle of his first week. The wise guys always managed their clubs efficiently.

  The Riobamba was a glitzy little jewel box of a joint, smaller and more intimate than the also-mobbed-up Copacabana ten blocks away. There was no stage at the Riobamba. Performers leaned on a piano or even the tables where the patrons sat. If you dared, and wanted to bump elbows with guys who had shoulder holsters under their jackets, there was a small dance floor. My wife and I dared a couple of times. Some of the hoods wanted to dance with my wife, and I said no but eventually we stopped going out on the floor.

  Floor shows at the Riobamba were at 8:30 p.m., midnight, and two a.m. Dance troupes and relief bands performed at other times. Shows featured a stand-up comedian, dancers, and an orchestra in addition to the main act, usually a crooner. At the beginning of each show, a line of spectacular chorus girls came out singing a song called Riobamba. New York being a wonderfully decadent place in those days, the chorus girls had bare breasts for the two late shows. The Riobamba tune had been written by a young music guy named Leonard Bernstein who sold it to Lepke’s club for fifty bucks. The next year he re-adapted the same music into a ballet called Fancy Free. Never sell something you wrote once if you can sell it more than once: that’s an old writer’s wisdom. Good deal for everyone.

  The early shows at the Riobamba were sold out so we booked a table for eight for the two a.m. show. That’s right, two a.m., wartime blackouts be damned. A couple of the other writers from the pulp detective mags came along with us. Also in our group was a Newark police captain, Tommy Callahan, an old friend across the years. Captain Callahan went with us so we’d have some presence, an unofficial armed bodyguard. It was a good idea. There was no one at the show except magazine and newspaper people, cops, call girls and connected guys. Who the hell else is out at that hour?

  Sinatra looked boyish and jittery, unnerved maybe by the small size of the performance area. He was in a dinner jacket, the focal point of a small narrow spotlight, and jammed right up next to a royal blue Steinway baby grand. He had a small curl that fell gently toward his right eye. With a twitching lip, in a breathless voice, he sang That Old Black Magic, She’s Funny That Way, Polka Dots and Moon Beams and Night and Day.

  My wife and I were so close that we could see Frankie’s eyes get misty. He fiddled with his wedding ring. He unhooked his bow tie. Frankie worked the room, flirting with every female within twenty feet, avoiding the eyes of any men. In the gaze of my wife there was a glow of warmth and happiness. She put her hand on mine. When Sinatra finished and the lights went up, the applause and shrieking was deafening. I thought the paint on the ceiling was going to peel off and the upper floors of the building were going to crash down on us.

  Sinatra bowed once, then eased away in a thin slouch and disappeared into the shadows. He came back out, nodded, and gave us one encore, I’ll Be Seeing You, which had some extra poignancy for my wife and me. We knew a return to Nassau loomed in my near future. A few minutes later, we settled our bills and were out into the night. The club was only a few blocks from our home. My sister and her husband were staying with us, watching my daughter.

  So it went in October of 1943. Some of us were out late at clubs, leading normal if privileged lives. Others were dying in trenches or prison camps or on death marches in the darker parts of the globe. It wasn’t fair. It never would be.

  ***

  A few evenings later, at an earlier and much saner hour, I was on my way back into the elevator at my apartment building, normally a safe and secure place. I heard footsteps behind me. They accelerated. Before I could turn I heard a gruff voice.

  “Okay! Hold it right there you son of a bitch or I’ll blow your damned head off!”

  I entered the elevator but a hand was on my shoulder. I whirled and raised my own hands to defend myself, only to find myself staring into the face of a sturdy stocky dark-haired man with a square, bristly cut.

  The butch haircut accentuated his crooked nose, giving him the look of a retired pugilist. He grinned and slapped my arm, all in good cheer. I gazed into the dancing eyes of my pal, Mike Todd, the Broadway producer. Mike was currently making a fortune with a show called Stars and Garters.

  The elevator attendant didn’t bat an eyelash. Nor did he ask which floors. It was a luxury Park Avenue building. He knew us both. He also knew how to listen without hearing anything.

  “Mike!” I said with affection. “You bastard.”

  “You’re a nervous fucker these days, Alan,” he said amiably. “What’s up, schnook? Haven’t seen you for weeks!”

  “I’ve been out of town covering a murder case. I’m only back for a few days.”

  “Which case?”

  “Sir Harry Oakes. Bahamas.”

  “Whoa! No shit? That one?”

  “That one.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Not the guy who’s accused.”

  The elevator began to ascend. Mike lived on twelve.

  “What about you?” I asked. “What are you messing with? Broadway? Hollywood? Booze? Gambling? Gorgeous women? The usual dull stuff?”

  “Pretty much. All of the above.”

  “Details, Mike.”

  “Oh, I’m producing a little comedy on Broadway,” he said. “It’s called The Naked Genius.”

  “Sounds like one of yours,” I said. “You playing the lead?”

  “Ha! I take that as a compliment coming from you, pal,” he said. “But you’re right. It’s a straight up two-act comedy at the Plymouth Theatre. Should be a small show, but you know I can’t control myself. I got forty-three cast members, seven dogs, a god damned rooster and a fucking monkey named Herman, the most charming damned simian you’ve ever seen. This mini-ape can actually smile on cue, I swear. You gotta see his teeth. And his balls. We should all have nuts that big, Alan! He’s smarter than half the actors I’m paying. Gypsy Rose Lee wrote the show for me and it stars Joan Blondell. It’s a story about a
star stripper trying to lead a normal private life.”

  “Sounds very ‘you’, Mike,” I said.

  We arrived at the eighth floor. “God damned right it is!” Mike said. He walloped my arm again.

  Mike was always a whirlwind. I always imagined that in school he’d never been able to sit still. I knew these days he couldn’t. Mike was a married guy but I also knew Gypsy Rose Lee was a former paramour, and the top-secret rumor around town, known only to the millions of people who read the scandal sheets, was that Blondell was his current one, burnishing Todd’s reputation around town as a skilled and inexhaustible stud.

  I knew the rumor was true. I knew it was true because when we arrived at the eighth floor, Mike jammed his meaty forearm against the closing door, forced it to re-open and explained—right there in front of the elevator man—how Joan Blondell was struggling to extricate herself from a failing marriage to actor Dick Powell, one-time song-and-dance man and, according to Mike, soon-to-be celluloid tough guy in Raymond Chandler’s Murder, My Sweet.

  “If you’re back in town when The Naked Genius opens, call me, you prick. Or kick in my door. Or send me a threatening note. I’ll comp you with some house seats, you two-bit true crime hack, you know I’m kidding, Alan, right?”

  “Right. Thanks, Mike. Always a pleasure.”

  “I imagine it is,” he humbly conceded. “How’s your wife?”

  “She’s wonderful. She’s my second one and I’d like to keep her.”

  “That’s great to hear. Say hello for me.”

  We shook hands and I exited.

  I returned home out of breath from two minutes with Mike.

  The next day I heard from Ray Schindler by Western Union.

  Things were heating up again in Nassau. Two days later, on the twelfth of October, I kissed my wife good-bye, gave my daughter a long lingering hug and started the harsh three-day journey back to the Bahamas and into the depths of my soul.

  CHAPTER 20

  The evening that I arrived back in Nassau, I followed our game plan and met Ray Schindler again in Dirty Dick’s. “There’ve been some new developments,” Ray said ominously. “And they don’t look good for de Marigny.”

  I asked what they were.

  “The prosecution is taking testimony from five more people,” Schindler said. “One of the new witnesses is a man named Thomas Lavelle. He’s one of de Marigny’s neighbors over on Victoria Avenue. He claims that there was more hostility between de Marigny and Oakes than anyone knew about. Money. Inheritance. Maybe women. I don’t know. They don’t tell me what he has to say, certainly.”

  “They’re stacking the deck even higher against him,” I said, half a question and half a statement.

  “Well, that’s pretty damned clear,” Ray said with a rueful laugh. “Maybe they’ll have the gallows rope reinforced also.”

  Then there was the issue of Colonel R. A. Erskine-Lindop, the Superintendent of Police and one of the first to reach the scene of the murder. Colonel Erskine-Lindop was one of the most scrupulously honest men in Nassau. He was also reputed to have his doubts about the guilt of the Count. De Marigny’s attorney, Godfrey Higgs had been planning to call the colonel as a friendly witness. That would no longer be possible.

  Colonel Erskine-Lindop had been transferred to the island of Trinidad. There he was to become Assistant Commissioner of Police.

  “The Crown claims that the transfer has been in the works for months,” Schindler said. “From long before the murder of Sir Harry Oakes.”

  “Nonetheless, it’s rather queer that Erskine-Lindop won’t be called as a witness at the trial,” I said.

  “That young lawyer Higgs better have some good stuff up his sleeve,” Schindler said. “And he’s going to have to come down hard on the fingerprint issue. Otherwise, de Marigny swings at the end of the rope. It’s that simple.”

  He took a sip of whiskey.

  “Think it’s a lost cause?” I asked.

  “It’s never lost until the trap door opens and the victim drops through it,” Ray said. “But it’s getting pretty close.”

  “Then you agree with me that it’s a frame up?” I asked.

  “Who said that?” he said, turning on me quickly.

  “You did,” I said. “You used the word ‘victim,’” I said.

  He smiled.

  “So I did, Alan,” he allowed. “So I did.”

  “You know, my brother Walter was sending me some stuff about Harold Christie from New York. The envelope hasn’t arrived.”

  “That’s odd, too, isn’t it?”

  “It’s par for the course,” he said.

  Schindler hadn’t exactly expected fast delivery of the envelope containing the derogatory information on Harold Christie once it reached Nassau. The envelope, like all other mail arriving at the island, would have been subjected to wartime censorship…also meaning that someone who didn’t like the contents could pick it off and destroy it.

  Schindler knew it was against regulations to try to contact the censors directly. He could have contacted Harold Christie to see if Christie could inquire into the matter for him, since Christie, who in effect running the island, had power over the censors. But asking Christie to investigate the fate of an envelope loaded with a blast against himself was laughably out of the question.

  “The defense has another problem, too,” Ray said to me in a low voice. There was a night watchman Higgs was interviewing. The watchman and one of his friends were going to give evidence in favor of our French friend. He’s disappeared.”

  “Who? The watchman? Or his friend?” I asked.

  “Both.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said.

  “I’m going to make a little trip on the island tomorrow in reference to that. I expect it to be unpleasant. Want to come along?”

  “Why would I want to miss something unpleasant?”

  He smiled. “Good man,” he said. “Go into the New Providence Hotel at three p.m. tomorrow. Go out the fire door at the rear. I’ll be there with a man named Kayo. We’ll be in a panel truck. We’ll go for a drive.”

  “No airplanes? No boats?”

  “We’ll be taking a small boat. But we won’t be leaving the island.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  We laughed. Ray sipped his Dewar’s. I sipped my rum and Coke. We exchanged a long glance. There was something on my mind, however, and I wanted to air it out.

  “I’ll tell you something, though, Ray,” I began. “A lot of that stuff years ago at the Graphic was amusing. The fake pictures. The hokey dialogue. But it wore thin after a while. It’s okay for a young man to be shameless, maybe. But I’m done with it. I’m looking to be a better writer and reporter in the future.”

  “Your bestseller has given you a touch of class,” he said with a raised white eyebrow. “Is that it, Alan?”

  “Maybe,” I allowed. “Or maybe because I’ve turned forty. And have a family. And a reputation. Or maybe a combination of all of these.”

  “Fair enough,” Ray allowed.

  “Listen,” I expanded over the drinks, “none of us are perfect. We make errors in reporting. Everyone does. Hopefully they’re not big errors. But we have an obligation to try our best to get the facts straight. You don’t invent facts as a detective, so we shouldn’t invent them in what we write.”

  Ray opened his mouth to speak. I kept going.

  “Maybe the Lindbergh case changed me,” I said. “The case and ten years to think about it. I covered the investigation, the trial and Bruno Hauptmann’s execution by the state of New Jersey. Hauptmann was innocent as charged, but no one wanted to hear about it. We have a higher obligation than the Hearst rags or tabloid media would have you believe. People’s lives are at stake.” I paused for a moment, trying not to sound too sanctimonious. “Every time an innocent man is convicted at least one guilty man walks free,” I said. “There’s that angle, too.”

  “I suppose that’s what keeps both of us in business.�
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  I poured more out of the bottle of rum that had been left on the table. I took a long sip. I reminded myself that I never cut down on the booze. Well, after the Oakes case, after I was back in the United States, I told myself. Later. Not now.

  I looked back to Ray. In some ways, maybe I was subconsciously trying out my thoughts on him. He was twenty years my senior and twenty years my mentor. What I hadn’t seen, what I hadn’t learned, he probably had. Plus, while I might be involved in a case, I was still very much the observer, the person trying to view my way in and make sense of it. Ray was more the participant, the actor in the drama. I didn’t force events, other than to report them and wait and see a reaction. Ray could force the issues.

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Sure. I agree with you. We’re professionals. We have our pride. Most of us have standards. Pretty high ones, too. But let me ask you: Are you being paid to be here?”

  “Of course, I am. You know that.”

  “And I am, also,” Schindler said. “What’s your assignment?”

  “To report that case. As I see it.”

  “Not as your editor sees it? Not as your editor wants it?”

  I grimaced. “That was the mistake I made on the Lindbergh case,” I said. “And I suppose it’s one I’m willing to make again. The situation is a little different. I’m way down here in the Bahamas. It’s more difficult to call me back. In New Jersey I was just a day’s drive in the auto from the editor’s desk. Much easier and less expensive to replace me.”

  “So, fine! Your job is to file reports. As you see things?” he said.

  “Correct,” I allowed.

  “And Nancy de Marigny hired me,” he said. “I receive her money. Now follow carefully. Nancy is convinced that her husband is innocent. At this point I am, too. Same as you, I reason. I accept her money to find evidence that acquits her husband. My job is to uncover material that will be admissible in a British court that will vindicate him. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.” He paused. “And that’s where it stops. I’m under no obligation to resolve the inquiry. But I’m also under no moral need to provide a guilty party or in any other way drag the culprit or culprits kicking and screaming to justice,” Ray said. “Remember that, Alan.”