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

by Noel Hynd

  “Back seat,” Carlos said with an accent.

  “Slump low,” Schindler added. “You’re not Black Jack Pershing and this isn’t a ticker tape parade.”

  I obeyed. I left my bag on the front seat. Ray also had a bag on the floorboards. Carlos turned and we headed out of town. Immediately I felt better. We were moving.

  “Give your people the slip?” Schindler asked.

  “I’m pretty sure. You?”

  “Of course. They’re idiots, you know. What they lack in intelligence, they make up for in venality, however. There’s the problem.”

  “One of the problems,” I corrected.

  “Yup.”

  “You bring booze?” he asked.

  “No. Didn’t have a chance.”

  The driver, Carlos, laughed. He thrust his hand under the seat and reached for something. His hand came up. He handed us a bottle of Bacardi’s. The glass was filthy. It was beautiful. We were on our way.

  He took a rough pot-holed road out of town, the opposite direction as the airport. He drove steadily, about a mile every two minutes. We passed agricultural fields and local people on bicycles. Carlos turned and watched every pretty girl. I didn’t blame him. Every pretty girl responded with a smile. I didn’t blame them, either. I was starting to feel better.

  After a fifteen-minute drive, Carlos turned into a battered fuel station. He jumped out and told us to follow. A shirtless teenage boy with skin the color of mahogany raised a garage door with a chain. Carlos’ eyes were scanning everything on the road that went past the station. But it was quiet. The kid pushed the Chrysler into the garage. We went around back. A path led through some trees. Carlos led us.

  I swatted insects the whole way but had not a word of complaint. We came out in a small clearing. The aircraft was a small Cessna, a taildragger as promised, light blue with no lettering, so that it couldn’t be seen easily on a watery horizon. It was under a canvas that was stretched across six poles, with foliage growing over it so that it couldn’t be seen from the air. I looked at the sun to find my direction. We were on the northern part of the island. It was hazy from the heat, but clear.

  Carlos turned to Schindler. He didn’t say anything. Ray reached into his pocket and withdrew two hundred-dollar bills.

  “May I contribute?” I asked.

  “This one’s on me, Alan,” he said. “You’re a good travelling companion. It’s the least I can do.”

  “You’re very generous.”

  “Treat me well when you write up the Oakes case,” he said. “But I’ll invoice Lady Oakes, anyway,” he said. He winked. “She’s very happy today. She has her husband back. How long her happiness will last is another question. Time will tell, won’t it? It always does.” He put away his wallet. Carlos pocketed the money. “Come on,” Ray said.

  The three of us pushed the taildragger out of its sleeping quarters. Carlos got the front propeller going and we piled in. He pushed a revolver into his belt. We closed the doors and buckled in. A smuggler’s aircraft, indeed. There were a couple of bullet holes in the floor. There was another bottle of rum and a larger pistol. Carlos was not a man to be messed with.

  The Cuban’s little bird crept out on to a runway that was nothing more than a hundred-yard patch of grass. But it was enough. To my mind it was beautiful.

  We started to accelerate and bounce down the runway. Then we climbed into the sky. We flew low. Ray and I passed the bottle of rum back and forth. The coastline of Florida was visible within twenty minutes. We had a few more bounces, but Carlos knew his way, and we landed seventy-six minutes after departure, finally back on the mainland of the United States. My heart was in my throat. God, it was good to be back on U.S. soil!

  Carlos set us up with a local family. The parents spoke no English but they had a beautiful daughter who was bilingual in Spanish and English. She fed us. No phone. We stayed indoors. Precautions. We lay low for a couple of days.

  On the third day, another driver appeared and took us to the sleepy naval city of Jacksonville. When I saw the American flag for the first time in weeks, waving free and proud over the airfield, I caught a lump in my throat that I would always remember. America may have had its flaws, but it was a damn sight better than a lot of other places.

  From Jacksonville, we took a train to Atlanta. In the station, I went to one of the big telephone rooms and called my wife. I choked up again on the line when I heard her voice.

  “Hello?” she asked twice. “Hello?”

  “I’m in Atlanta,” I said. “I’m back in a free country. I’m almost home.” I added, “I’m safe and I love you.”

  Then it was her turn to choke up.

  We stayed overnight at a hotel and we finally able to bathe. God knew what hell was happening in Nassau, but I sure knew there were folks unhappy with us.

  “Tough crap for them,” Schindler said over dinner before we took a morning train the next day that would eventually get us to New York’s Pennsylvania Station. “Now,” he then said. “Have you decided what you’re going to write?”

  “I have,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “I don’t want to know in advance. Just spell my name right.”

  By the next evening we were back in New York City. I couldn’t have been happier and more relieved. At majestic Pennsylvania Station, a creature of habit, I bought a box of chocolates for my wife, a Whitman Sampler, an expensive doll for my daughter, and a bunch of red roses for both.

  I found a cab and gave the address.

  I rang the doorbell and when my wife answered, I fell into her arms again or she fell into mine. I couldn’t tell which and it made no difference.

  CHAPTER 30

  In November, the Nassau Yacht club gave de Marigny a big party. They presented him with all his trophies from the preceding season. Then they told him to put all the silverware in a sack and get off the island fast.

  The distant royal cat’s paw again? An official in the Cuban government invited Nancy and Alfred de Marigny to Cuba. Another wrinkle: There was no direct passage from Nassau to Havana. Every boat or plane now connected through Florida. Though de Marigny had visited the United States maybe two dozen times in the past, this time a transit visa was denied.

  Time was running out. The Bahamian jail loomed. Once they had had a rope ready for de Marigny. Now there was a cement and iron cell, populated with spiders, mosquitoes and rats.

  De Marigny contacted a local fisherman, or maybe it was a retired rum runner. On December sixth, he sailed to Cuba. There were winter seas. At least one big storm. Nonetheless, a week later, they arrived. It was not exactly a romantic sail into the sunset of happiness.

  The Cuban government announced there had been a misunderstanding. There had been no actual invitation. But since de Marigny and his wife were there, they could stay anyway if they could find a place.

  Before the war, de Marigny and his wife had crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Normandie, before it had become a target for saboteurs in New York. On board, they had struck up a friendship with Ernest Hemmingway. Papa now continued to maintain his place a few miles east of Havana in San Francisco de Paula, where he was knocking out top drawer short stories about bullfights, social injustice and smuggling, all the while working on a manuscript about a fisherman stuck on Joe DiMaggio while chasing a big stubborn fish. So when Nancy and Alfred de Marigny found their way to Cuba, they eventually stayed on the estate of de Marigny’s friend, Ernest Hemingway.

  As about the same time, on December tenth, the Marquis de Visdelou left Nassau alone, bound for Haiti, one of the most backward places in North America, an untamed land of descendants of freed slaves, a toxic mix of French and African culture, voodoo rituals, staunch Catholicism and harsh rum.

  The old French colony was not a happy venue for the displaced Marquis. Betty Roberts took a powder on following her Mauritian stud into exile. That was the last anyone heard of the Marquis. He vanished into the haze. I also heard Betty had gone to Europe and married a Russian
count. Who knew? Not me, but I hoped she landed on her charming feet.

  Thereupon, 1943 ended. Mercifully.

  1944 began. Optimistically.

  The tide of the Second World War had turned both in Europe and Asia. Allied troops were advancing northward through Italy, meeting resistance from Germans who were dug in and none from Italians who had wisely capitulated.

  The Bahamas continued to fester in the Caribbean sun. And so did the aftermath of the Oakes murder trial.

  It was impossible not to see the self-satisfied mug of the Duke of Windsor in the newspapers. His Former Highness tried to give the appearance of governing the islands during wartime, but seemed to make it to Florida and New York with the Duchess as often as he pleased. Official cameras would show him trying to look diligent at official meetings, but, as is usually the case, the truth lay far beneath the surface. There were parties, masked balls, golfing dates and the like. Any good reporter with his ear to the ground in New York picked up the stories. Most of them made him out to be an insensitive putz at best, a wealthy moron at worst.

  I kept in touch with Ray Schindler and some of the other Americans who had worked on the case. It was difficult not to. Those of us who had been prevented from seeing any sort of justice for Sir Harry formed out own little press cabal. The Oakes case was like a train wreck. You hated it but couldn’t take your eyes off it.

  Ray continued his brilliant career out of his office on West 44th Street. But then even he couldn’t resist another glimpse of the train wreck. Schindler’s pal John Edgar Hoover had offered to send American FBI agents to Nassau to take the case to its next level and find the killer or killers of Sir Harry. Schindler again wrote to the Duke of Windsor and asked that Scotland Yard reopen the investigation. Ray offered his services for free.

  Windsor replied that the Crown didn’t think that was such a good idea. In fact, he labeled it an insult.

  Schindler flew to Nassau, anyway. The day after his arrival, he was playing golf with an old friend when the friend was called to the clubhouse in mid-bogie. The friend vanished, then returned, looking shaken.

  “What was that about?” Schindler asked.

  “The call was from Government House,” the friend said, referring to the Duke’s private residence. “I’m to tell you that if you ask me or anyone else one question about the Oakes case, you’ll be deported immediately.”

  Schindler remained for two or three more days. He was followed everywhere. Everyone he spoke to, everyone he knew, had received the same message. He took the hint and flew back to the United States, deeply frustrated.

  And yet Schindler was not finished with the Oakes case. Nor, it turned out, was I.

  Raymond Schindler, sitting in his office in New York in the months after the trial in Nassau, went through the whole business with his friend, former Attorney General Homer Cummings. Cummings pondered the matter, then wrote Schindler this letter:

  From what I can see from the record, the police in Nassau fell into a mistake common to inexperienced officers everywhere. They found their logical suspect first and then proceeded to search for facts to fit him. From this first step, it was easy to fall into a state of mind where the investigator makes himself blind to every bit of evidence except that which he can apply to the preconceived theory he has created in his own mind.

  Exactly what royal hand pointed to the “logical suspect” was something Cummings didn’t address, at least not in writing.

  Next Schindler dictated this letter to the Duke of Windsor:

  Knowing your deep concern for the welfare of the citizens of the Bahamas, I take the liberty of addressing you on a matter of great importance. It is my considered opinion that the murderer of Sir Harry Oakes can be found, identified, convicted and brought to justice. During the incarceration and trial of Alfred de Marigny no adequate investigation was possible. Statements which failed to point toward the defendant were ignored. It goes without saying that I and my associate, Leonarde Keeler, would welcome an opportunity to work on the case. We would willingly offer our services without compensation.

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lifelong mystery fan, had been following the Oakes case, as well he could despite his declining health. The President had been a distinguished graduate of Columbia University Law School. He had formed his own theories about the legal proceedings and de Marigny was not his culprit.

  The President, like practically everybody else in possession of the salient facts, had the definite feeling that the investigation into the scragging of the Baronet had been intentionally fouled up. Former Attorney General Cummings, in discussing the case with the President one day, received a tacit nod at his suggestion that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, busy as it was turning up spies, might be able to send a few men down to Nassau and take the mystery apart. Scotland Yard could have done the same thing.

  But His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor wanted none of it. One of his secretaries sent Schindler a form letter saying thank you, no.

  The Duke had done one thing, though. He ordered an investigation of law enforcement in the islands. To no one’s surprise, the probe accomplished approximately as much as a probe into the gambling situation in practically any American city.

  The Nassau Daily Tribune blew some predictable smoke. A friend of mine mailed me a clipping:

  Nassau can now relax after witnessing nearly a month of the tensest possible emotions engendered by the trial of Alfred de Marigny …

  Before the trial had progressed very far it was aptly described as “The Tragedy of Errors.” The first and perhaps the greatest error was made when His Royal Highness the Governor called long distance and obviously got the wrong number. But in passing judgment on this action it must be conceded that His Royal Highness acted in good faith, doing what he be believed to be in the best interest of the Colony …

  It is pleasing that, in the closing chapter of this case, the cloud which threatened to obscure the life work and career of the Honorable Harold Christie was completely lifted by the defense, the prosecution and the bench. Mr. Christie has served this country well and its citizens owe him a large measure of good will.

  When I read the above. I wanted to vomit.

  Nancy Oakes de Marigny stayed in Cuba for a short while. She found Papa Ernie to be crude and obnoxious. No surprise there. But she was smitten by his son, Jack, with whom she started to share a bed. Thereafter, the de Marignys’ problems as a couple multiplied, not that they needed adultery to give it a push. Nancy returned to the Bahamas.

  When it was safe to travel again on or above the open seas, Nancy fled to the United States and left her husband behind. Still denied a visa to travel, Alfred couldn’t follow. The U.S.A. was still off-limits. Rumors abounded that Windsor had put the fix in through some wealthy American friends. It may have been true.

  Stranded in Cuba for several months, de Marigny eventually signed on as crew on a merchant ship carrying sugar from Havana to Halifax. He arranged to meet his wife in Montreal. He shouldn’t have bothered. When she got there, Nancy Oakes announced that their marriage was over. She wanted nothing further to do with him. They were divorced in 1944.

  At mid-life, having worked his way through three women, three fortunes, one poultry farm, one murder trial and who-knew-what-else, Alfred de Marigny was broke.

  What next? Hitting bottom, he joined the Canadian Army as a private.

  My old acquaintance Thomas Dewey ran for President as a Republican in 1944. He was a heavy underdog. Some nasty stories started to surface. One of the Hearst papers in New York, The Daily Mirror, ran stories claiming that Dewey sent top-ranking Murder Incorporated man Louis Lepke, the late owner of the Riobamba, to the electric chair in 1944 with a direct connection to a payoff from the mob.

  The Mirror speculated that Lepke, in an attempt to save his own life, offered Dewey information that would link President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his cabinet members to several crimes, including a homicide. Lepke tried to convince Dewey that it
would make him an unbeatable presidential candidate. Dewey granted Lepke a 48-hour reprieve, but with the consequences being too explosive, he did not make a deal. Lepke went to the hot seat in Sing Sing.

  I have no idea if the Mirror’s story was true. But I was coming around to the opinion, shared by millions, that Dewey was a snake. There was also something about the man that just seemed fake. Or shady. A lot of people agreed. My vote went again for FDR. The nation re-elected an ailing Roosevelt, frail, weak, and aged beyond his years. Beyond the knowledge of most Americans, Roosevelt, a chain-smoker, had been in quickly declining physical health since at least 1940. By1944 he was terminally fatigued. In March 1944, shortly after his 62nd birthday, he underwent testing at Bethesda Hospital and was found to have high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease causing angina pectoris, and congestive heart failure. He was now in the last six months of his life.

  The President died in Warm Springs, George on April 12th, 1945. The war in Europe ended less than a month later. The Duke of Windsor resigned his duties as governor of the Bahamas the day the war in Europe ended. The war in Asia ended ninety days afterward.

  Thank God. Twenty million people had been killed worldwide in World War Two. Why? If you wanted to believe there was no God, this was a good time for it. If you wanted to think mankind was evil, it was an easy sell. At least Fascism and Hitler had been defeated and most of the crazy little corporal’s henchman would swing from nooses in Nuremberg. But Bolshevism was triumphant, living to imprison people and contaminate the world for the decades to follow.

  In the days after Roosevelt’s passing, an editorial by The New York Times declared, “Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House.” At the time, most Americans would have agreed. Whatever else the criticisms of the thirty-second President, and there were many legitimate ones, the United States had come out of the war as a victorious.