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

by Noel Hynd

  Although the Oakes case was officially dormant, many reputable law enforcement authorities who had studied the evidence felt that the mystery remained wide open and that the mastermind was still walking the streets of Nassau. Just as the investigation of the Lindbergh kidnapping was bungled by the New Jersey State Police, then an organization chiefly concerned with traffic regulations, so was the Oakes case messed up by a police department that didn’t even possess modern fingerprint equipment and a Crown governor who, for one reason or another, was intent on sending every mechanism of investigation in the wrong direction.

  The specific weapon used to kill Sir Harry was never located, never identified in court and was only guessed at several years later. A man was officially accused of the crime and tried for it. The case against him turned out to be as full of holes as a screen door. But as far as the local authorities were concerned, the case ended there anyway. The trial, in short, posed more questions than it answered.

  I wrote an incisive summary article. Its title was Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes? I accused no one, just laid out the events and the facts as I saw them. An innocent man was accused, an innocent man was acquitted. Thereafter, no one in any position of authority had any interest in finding the real killer. Or specifically, I wrote,

  One thing is officially certain. Marie Alfred Fouquereaux de Marigny was not guilty of the murder. Another thing is equally certain. The powers that be down in the Bahamas have demonstrated that they don’t want Schindler, or anybody else, to prove guilty the real killer of Sir Harry Oakes. Whoever did in the old boy is probably still walking the streets.

  My article was published around the world in a dozen languages, first in magazines, later in several books. Predictably, the reaction in Nassau was far from enthusiastic. I found myself officially banned from the island. Persona non grata, summa cum laude, to coin a new legal term.

  I got a phone call from Raymond Schindler a few days after the article appeared.

  “Alan, have you won an uncontested divorce from your common sense?” he asked.

  “Probably, Ray,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “The Oakes case. I’d shut the hell up if I were you,” Ray said.

  “I’m fifteen hundred miles away, Ray. What are they going to do?”

  “Come after you,” he said.

  “I’m not buying it,” I said. “I’m not that easy to find. I’ll be fine.”

  “I warned you,” he said. “Let it drop. Don’t mess with them.”

  I put the phone down. Ray’s advice was ominous and not to be taken lightly. I vowed to be more careful, if possible.

  I had a radio friend in those days named John Zimmerman. He would produce some spot shows in New York. He was a big guy, maybe six four, but never weighed more than one sixty. A bean pole. A smart bean pole. He later got his own show and called himself, “Long John Nebel.” He had serious writers, kooks and nuts and was eventually on all night: from midnight to five thirty a.m. when normal people started to wake up.

  I’d go on his show and talk. I’d talk about my many cases, including Oakes. I’d elaborate on my theories. Why not? It was a free country. In many parts of the world, where the Reds had taken over, you couldn’t say what you wanted on radio. God bless America. It was safe to say anything, or so I thought.

  By now I had moved the family to Connecticut. It was 1951. I had rented a great house in a section of Fairfield called Greenfield Hill. My kids were in school. I had my morning coffee in our kitchen, I was the only coffee drinker in the house. Then I went to my study to work on a new book. There was something, it seemed, a little “off” about the coffee. It had a strange peppery subtlety to it, with an undertone of sweetness. A little unusual. But coffee batches were inconsistent in those days. I didn’t think much about it. It didn’t even taste bad.

  In the late morning, I started to not feel so good. I went to lie down. I felt worse. My wife was with me. She called the doctor who made an emergency house call. He stayed till evening. I began to sweat. My heart began to race. I wanted to vomit, but couldn’t. Gradually, there was a burning, tearing sensation and tightness in my throat. The doctor tried to give me water but I could barely swallow liquid or solid food because of the excruciating pain I was in.

  Just before I passed out, the doctor called an ambulance. I was taken to Bridgeport Hospital. My last thoughts as they put me into the ambulance were borderline hallucinatory. It seemed as if they were putting me in a dark green hearse. I was thinking about the trip to the cemetery. I pictured my own tombstone and pictured it in a hot tropical place.

  That would have been appropriate. I was convinced that I was dying. I wasn’t far wrong. After I’d been at the hospital for an hour, one of the emergency room doctors came out and told my wife that things didn’t look for good for survival. Vital signs were failing. But they were doing what they could.

  She nodded. She cried.

  Then he asked my wife if I’d recently been in the Bahamas.

  “Not for several years,” she answered.

  “How many is several?”

  “Seven. Almost eight.”

  “Strange.”

  “Why?”

  “It looks like poisoning from manchineel bark,” the doctor said. “That’s the theory of one of our doctors who’s from the West Indies. Maybe manchineel concealed in another substance. Those are the symptoms. We can’t figure anything else so we’re applying manchineel antidotes.”

  She nodded. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

  “There’s a chapel down the hall,” he said gently. “I’d wait there if I were you. And be at peace. There’s only so much we can do.”

  I woke up a day later, eyes fluttering into consciousness and out of it. My midsection was in agony. I felt as if I had been stabbed or shot. I was in an oxygen tent. The tent was over my entire body, a strange clear plastic canopy that attempted to provide oxygen at a higher level than normal.

  I remembered the trouble I had had breathing when they had brought me in here. That difficulty was gone, but I was still wincing with each breath at the extreme pain in my chest. It was much like the tightness associated with a heart attack.

  There were figures moving around me. Gradually, they came into focus. I discovered that I was looking straight into the eyes of an Episcopal priest.

  He had white hair and a kindly smile.

  I could hear him through the canvas of the tent and the low hum of my oxygen supply. “Hello,” he said.

  I tried to raise a hand to acknowledge.

  “I’m alive?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Apparently,” he said. “And against the odds, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  I glanced around the hospital room. The shades were drawn.

  “Remind me. Where am I?” I asked.

  “Bridgeport General Hospital,” he said.

  “Oh,” I whispered. “Of course. Right.”

  I took a few moments to look around the room. I only hazily remembered arriving.

  “Why are the shades drawn?” I asked, indicating the windows.

  “There was a fire across the street,” the priest replied. “We didn’t want you to wake up, see the fire, and think you’d gone to the ‘other place.’”

  “Oh,” I said again. I’m not sure, but I think I managed a weak laugh.

  He smiled and touched my hand. “I’ll summon your wife,” he said. “You’re going to survive. You’ll be okay.”

  CHAPTER 33

  It took almost two years, but gradually I recovered from my “illness.”

  That’s what everyone called it. An illness. But I knew better and so did my doctors. So did my editors, so did my wife, so did Ray Schindler and so did a lot of other folks.

  No longer did I ever feel completely safe. I knew another attempt on my life could happen again. I knew deep in my heart that the same people who had killed Harry Oakes had come after me. They didn’t like what I had written.

  Sometimes I had deepl
y depressive mood spells during the daylight hours, only to be followed by savage nightmares at night. I saw Harry in his bed being set aflame more times than I could count, more times than any man could sanely tolerate. I could hear the metal instrument, whatever it was, crashing into his skull. I can hear his initial anguish, his pain, his screams, his cries and then I see the final spasms. Then the blood, the fire, the smoke.

  I saw Harry in my mind’s eye. But I also knew it was me.

  I think part of my memory disappeared forever, surrendered or compromised in my illness. Perhaps part of my past went with it, along with the final tiny pieces of any idealism or good intentions I might have had. My daughter forever afterwards told me about things we did together when she was younger, in Short Hills, New Jersey, days at the beaches, flying kites, and I do not remember these things.

  Nor do I admit that I do not remember. I take her hand, try to be strong and be a father. There are things no child should know or see. And yet, there is an irony: I cannot completely remember and I cannot completely forget.

  Nonetheless, I was back in some of the better magazines by 1953 and 1954. The Saturday Evening Post. Colliers. True. Plus many of the smaller magazines, True Detective, Official Detective, Master Detective. It wasn’t classy but it was bread and butter. And I still had some book contracts. A new book came out, in fact. Ironically, it was titled Alan Hynd’s Murder. It was a collection of murder cases, originally published in magazines. People wondered from the title, however: had I murdered someone or had I been murdered? The phraseology was too close for comfort.

  Speaking of crime, Thomas Dewey was back in the news around that time, too.

  Dewey’s third term as governor ended in 1955. Leaving the political arena at the end of his term as governor, Dewey marched back to his lucrative law practice. I kept my eye on him but had no direct contact ever again. It appeared to many that Dewey had suddenly begun to accommodate the very people he used to put in jail, notably gangsters and their casinos.

  Dewey eventually became a major stockholder in Mary Carter Paints, which held an interest in gambling in the Bahamas. In addition, Carter’s chief assistant was none other than Meyer Lansky, who was directly associated with the mafia commission, thus leading to more suspicions about Thomas E. Dewey and his dealings with the Mob. When I read this, our whole meeting in October of 1943 came back to me, but with a viciously different spin.

  In the fall of that year, my darkest suspicions about my “illness” were confirmed to me. I was in New York at the bar of the Algonquin Hotel. It was late afternoon. I had stopped drinking, but would come by for a Coke and leave the booze to other men. I was more interested in running into old friends. I was with my wife, but she had ducked away to the washroom.

  I was sipping a Coke when two men accosted me.

  I felt a powerful pair of hands hold both my arms from behind. Then someone slid into place beside me at the bar.

  “Hello, you schnook,” said a familiar gruff voice. I turned to my left. I was looking into the eyes of my old friend, Mike Todd, the producer. “What are you doing here, you lousy scribbler? I thought you lived in Connecticut, no?” Mike asked.

  The other man released me from behind. It was Aaron Fairstein, the radio producer. My two pals had gotten the drop on me from a remote table.

  I pumped Aaron’s hand. I embraced Mike. “I’m in town to take my wife to see Silk Stockings.”

  “I wish I had known,” Mike said. “I would have gotten you house seats for tonight.”

  “We just saw the show this afternoon. The matinee.”

  “The matinee? Only pimps go to matinees,” Mike answered.

  “Maybe so. Pimps and suburbanites. That would include me in the latter, but not the former, all right? What hell are you raising?” I asked.

  Mike had emerged from his most recent bankruptcy in grand style. From somewhere he had begged, borrowed and cajoled another pile of other people’s money. He had also plucked a script off the bookshelf of British producer Alexander Korda. It was a cinematic take on Around the World in 80 Days, the durable Nineteenth Century Jules Verne novel. Korda had been trying to find a way to film the story for years. Orson Welles had, too, after he’d produced a disastrous Broadway version that crashed and burned faster than Phileas Fogg’s balloon. Todd had lost a fistful of money on the Broadway show and, stubborn as ever, was looking to recoup his losses. Now, Mike had an expensive film in pre-production.

  “That’s good, Mike,” I said. “I’m pleased for you.”

  “I know you are. Thanks.” His expression changed. “Say, listen, old friend,” he said. “We’re glad we spotted you.”

  “That right?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Fairstein said. “I want to talk some business with you. Private like.”

  I looked my friends back and forth. I sensed something was up.

  “Sure,” I said. “Okay.”

  Aaron draped an arm around me. We left Mike at the bar.

  “I need to talk to you,” Aaron said. I expected a pitch about a radio project. He pulled me away from everyone else and lowered his voice. “What was all this shit with you and the Sir Harry Oakes case?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I wrote—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, interrupting me, “I read what you wrote. And I heard you popping off on Long John Nebel’s show a few times. Alan, Listen to me. I was just down in Puerto Rico a few weeks ago. I ran into some unpleasant people from the Bahamas at the Hilton Casino. They asked me if I knew you. I said, yes, but they knew the answer before they asked because you and me had the radio show together, know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “One of these bastards started with some pretty venal threats. He was the smallest one but he looked like he was in charge. You know how a fucked-up little man can strut even while he’s sitting down? This sawed-off little runt says, ‘Well, tell him we hope he feels better. Because the next time we fix him a Bahamian cocktail with manchineel juice we’ll finish off the son-of-a-bitch.’ Then they all laughed.”

  I felt what I could only describe as a surge of renewed fear. I waited again.

  “Does that crap mean anything to you?” Aaron asked.

  “Yes. It does. What did they look like?”

  “Bunch of obnoxious Brit colonials on a low-class holiday. Booze and tacky hookers. There was a big stupid fat one and a little monkey with a hat and a yellow tie. Know them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you own pistol?”

  “No.”

  “Of course, you do. You showed it to me one time when we were doing Wanted: Armed and Dangerous!”

  “I got rid of it. I stopped drinking, also.”

  “Well, you should get a new piece. Maybe something military. Want me to send you one?”

  “I have kids in the house, Aaron. No. No gun.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. Just be careful. These guys were serious shitbirds and they were mad as hell with you.” He paused. “I told them that you were pals with J. Edgar Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower from the war, and if anything no-good happened to you again, I was going to rat them out and they could expect a fucking bomb to fall on them!”

  “Jesus, Aaron. None of that’s true!”

  “Yeah, I know. But they got all quiet. They might have believed me. You got to take care of yourself.”

  “I’ll watch after myself,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Do that, kiddo,” Aaron said. “I don’t worry about too many people but I worry about you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Our hands clasped. My wife returned from the ladies’ room. She said hello to Mike. He cleaned up his lexicon and returned the gracious greeting. Mike was always a gentleman around other men’s wives unless he was planning to make a move on one. I introduced her to Aaron whom she had never met. He was cordial. My wife and I didn’t linger. I knew better. We went for our 6:02 train to Westport.

  “What did Mike have to say?” my wife
asked.

  “Nothing much,” I said. “He’s got a new film project.”

  “That other guy, the little one, gave me the creeps,” she said.

  “He does that sometimes.”

  “You know some strange people.”

  “I suppose I do.”

  I disappeared to my safe home in Westport, Connecticut. Mike went back to California and other points around the globe to make his movie. Around the World in 80 Days would be the ultimate Todd extravaganza, shot in thirteen countries and costing a then-astronomical six million dollars.

  Around the World in 80 Days told the story of a Victorian Englishman, Phileas Fogg, played by David Niven, who wagered everything he owned that he could circle the world in eighty days. What followed was a rambling chronicle of the exploits of Fogg and his French valet, Passepartout, played to the loopy hilt by the Mexican star, Cantinflas, as they journey by balloon, boat, train and elephant through locations beyond the imagination of most American viewers. What was unique, however, were the cameos of more than forty stars that dazzled from minute to minute: Peter Lorre as a stateroom attendant, Buster Keaton as a train conductor, Noel Coward as a banker, Frank Sinatra on piano and Marlene Dietrich as a leggy San Francisco saloon keeper. The voyage was pure kitsch, pure spectacle and pure Mike.

  But just as important for Mike was what had happened off the set. He had met a young woman of twenty-four named Elizabeth Taylor. She was less than half his age and three years younger than Mike’s son. Inconveniently, she was married to someone else, but stuff like that never stopped Mike. Their high-profile romance was tabloid stuff in the extreme. Eventually, Todd and Taylor were married in a lavish ceremony in Acapulco; a huge fireworks display, a gift from Cantinflas, lit up their names against the night sky.

  A few weeks later, Around the World in 80 Days lit up the night sky in Los Angeles. Todd’s film won five Oscars, including Best Picture, besting an impressive field: Giant, The Ten Commandments, The King and I, and Friendly Persuasion.