The Fitzgerald Ruse

by Mark de Castrique

  “I worked out a possible code based on what your aunt told me. Nakayla hid it in case the police searched me.”

  “Code to what?”

  “I don’t know, but Calvin suggested this box might contain something that needed deciphering. We now know he wasn’t speculating.”

  He handed the sheet to me and then removed a roughly eighteen by nine inch rectangle half covered in ripped, yellow-tinged wrapping paper that was once white. He pulled free a picture frame whose back had been pried loose. A dust jacket for The Great Gatsby stuck out from the top as if someone had partially removed it. A woman’s disembodied eyes and lips floated in a night sky over a brightly lit amusement park. The image was strangely haunting. Strangely modern.

  “The gift,” Nakayla said. “The one the summer lover gave Fitzgerald and he gave to Ethel.”

  In the lower right corner of the front flap were written the words: “To my darling Scott. No novel can capture my love for you. Beatrice.”

  Donaldson laughed. “If I remember your deal correctly, then here’s your payment.”

  I took the framed book cover and set it aside.

  A manila envelope with “Fitzgerald” penciled across the front was the next item. Donaldson pulled out a sheaf of papers covered in handwriting. There was no title or numbering to the pages. He flipped through them quickly and we saw blocks of words crossed out.

  “Hmmm,” Donaldson muttered. “I don’t think this is a story. More like notes.” He passed a few pages around.

  I didn’t know Fitzgerald’s work enough to understand what I was reading.

  “This section is like a true confession,” Nakayla said. “He’s going on about the sense of futility and the inevitability of failure.”

  “‘The Crack-Up,’” Donaldson said. “That was the name of an essay he wrote for Esquire that came out in the spring of 1936. A mea culpa of his despair. The irony was that by lamenting his mental collapse, he proved he could still write.”

  “This is what your aunt felt guilty about taking?” Nakayla asked. “Some notes for an essay?”

  “Ethel saw things differently,” Donaldson said. “These rambling reflections must have destroyed Pelley’s hope that Fitzgerald could be enlisted as a voice for his cause. Not exactly the fervent rallying cry equal to ‘The Silver Shirts Are Marching.’ But Ethel read the pain and anguish underneath. She would have thought it a betrayal to make this public. Even seventy years later. Yet I’m sure she couldn’t bring herself to destroy a raw view into Fitzgerald’s soul.” Donaldson collected the pages, slid them in the envelope, and dropped it behind the chest.

  Next he pulled out a thin file folder closed with a rusty paper clip. The tab read “Pelley vs. the State of North Carolina.”

  “That’s the case where your father was one of the defense attorneys,” I said.

  “Yes. But this should be much thicker.” Donaldson extracted only two sheets of paper. The first was an invoice from his father’s law office for $10,500 of itemized charges and expenses for the case. The second was a receipt from The Pollosco Life Assurance Society for a single premium of $10,500 paid on a permanent life insurance policy with a term rider.

  “There’s the money trail,” Donaldson exclaimed. “His legal fees. The rider probably bought term insurance with dividends to increase the face amount over time.”

  “So Ethel’s money is clean,” Nakayla said.

  “No. It might not be a Nazi payoff, but it’s dirty.”

  “Why?” Nakayla asked.

  “Because my father was Pelley’s attorney, and he was spying on him for the FBI. How could he take money from a man he was supposed to be representing while betraying him?”

  “Does that mean your father didn’t do the best job he could?” Nakayla asked. “The court records showed Pelley was charged with sixteen counts of stock fraud and related offenses. His defense team got thirteen dismissed, and of the three remaining that went to the jury, he was convicted of only two and received a suspended sentence. I’d say your father did his job well.”

  “The law is based on principle, not the circumstance of success.”

  “So he distanced himself from his earnings,” I said. “And in uncertain economic times, he kept them as a last resource for his family. Would you rather he be a fascist?”

  Donaldson studied the documents in the file. “No. But my share of the money will be a resource that I can feel good about. Amanda Whitfield’s quadriplegic husband needs a lifetime of medical care. I’ll guarantee he has at least two and a half million dollars worth.”

  I looked across Donaldson and saw Nakayla smile. We’d made nearly two and a half million dollars in our first week as a detective agency. With Donaldson’s gift to Amanda’s husband, we’d be splitting our take two ways instead of three, giving an equal share to the families of Ed Cuomo and Charlie Grigg, the men who’d come home in body bags because of Calvin’s betrayal.

  Donaldson set the file aside and pulled a ledger book from the bottom of the chest. On the cover, a scarlet capital L had been painted in the center of a silver oval.

  “The insignia of the Silver Legion of America,” Donaldson said. “And there’s a matching book underneath this one.” He set the first volume on the counter and opened it.

  The pale green lined pages were filled with letters and numbers. None of the words made any sense. Donaldson flipped from page to page. Occasionally a heading would be sandwiched between two blank lines, but that too was unintelligible.

  “This would have driven them nuts,” Donaldson said. “I can see why they came after my aunt.”

  I unfolded the matrix of letters I’d created from the underlined sentence in Ethel Barkley’s copy of The Great Gatsby. “Turn to the first page.” Across the top line appeared LONNOX JD—EIPOR. “Have you got something to write with?”

  Donaldson fished through a kitchen drawer for a pen. I ran down my columns, converting each letter to its equivalent.

  PELLEY WD—CHIEF

  Donaldson clapped his hands. “By God, you figured it out. Chief. That was the title Pelley’s followers used for him.”

  “Sounds a lot like Führer,” Nakayla said.

  Chief. The nickname Calvin had chosen for me.

  Donaldson looked at me with undisguised amazement. “How the hell could you do that without knowing what you were decoding?”

  “The clues were in your aunt’s book, her copy of The Great Gatsby that the police have.”

  “You mean your copy. I’ll work it out with my cousin to make sure you get it.” He pointed to a header in the middle of the next page. “See what this is.”

  TNTHTVT transcoded into ALABAMA. Under it, TSOYW YHM became AKERS RBT.

  “I’ll bet it’s the name Robert Akers,” Donaldson said. “The next lines are probably his address.” He placed his index finger under the number 150000 written to the right of the name. “And this must be his contribution. I’d say it’s $1,500.00 without any decimal point.”

  “Pelley’s whole organization,” Nakayla said. “Laid out state by state.”

  “Ethel kept it ready for him,” I said. “And she thought the money was part of the deal. But Pelley’s condition for a pardon was no political activity, and he never came back to Asheville.”

  “Are you going to give this to Agent Keith?” Nakayla asked.

  Donaldson shut the ledger and dropped it back in the lockbox. “Hell no. What would the FBI do with it except create pain for families whose loved ones are either ancient or dead and buried. The past is hard enough to escape without the government throwing it in your face.”

  Can you ever escape your past? I thought. Mine had come back with a vengeance and left a string of bodies in its wake.

  Donaldson turned to a cabinet behind us and pulled down a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt scotch. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a shot.”

  “It’s late,” I said, and looked to Nakayla. She’d had the worst of the ordeal—kidnapped, bound, and gagge
d.

  “Maybe a short one,” she said. “I read somewhere a good detective never turns down a drink.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Todd Creek Baptist Church had been erected on a hill a few miles west of Asheville. The brick building consisted of a sanctuary and an el-wing for offices and Sunday School classes. After getting only three hours of sleep, Nakayla and I arrived twenty minutes before the eleven o’clock service. The gravel parking lot was filling quickly as a community came together on a Saturday morning to remember someone they loved. Amanda Whitfield had obviously touched many during her brief life.

  We found seats in a pew near the rear. Across the aisle I saw Detective Newland flanked by his twin nephews in their uniforms. He nodded a greeting and then cocked his head with a question in his eyes. I shook mine to tell him there would be no new revelations for his case file. His lips tightened and I knew he was disappointed. I could only hope he trusted my judgment.

  I looked down at my bulletin. A single cross projecting rays of ascending light graced the cover. Beneath it were the words “Celebrating the Life of Amanda Whitfield—September 15, 2007.”

  The service was short and sad, although the minister and music focused on joy in the hereafter. I heard Nakayla sniffle a few times, and I took her hand. In some ways, the heritage of her African-American homegoing funerals like the one I’d attended for her sister let emotions break out with greater freedom and cathartic release.

  At the end of the service, we were told that the family would greet people in the Fellowship Hall in the basement, and that the women of the church had prepared light food. Nakayla and I had expected a small country congregation would have a covered-dish reception, and we stopped by my car before joining the throng. Downstairs, I approached one of the ladies behind a long table and handed her the box of fresh-baked blueberry muffins we’d picked up from City Bakery Café.

  At the head of the receiving line sat a good-looking young man in a wheelchair, his arms and legs useless appendages and his head cushioned into a fixed position on the backrest. The soreness in my stump seemed but a faint echo of the physical and mental pain that young widower endured. For all the courage required of me the previous night, I couldn’t muster enough to speak to him.

  “When can we catch up?”

  I turned to find Nathan Armitage behind us. He shook my hand and hugged Nakayla.

  “God, that was close,” he said, and his voice choked.

  “We’re okay,” I said. “Sorry to abandon you, but I had no choice.”

  He shrugged. “You two are a helluva team. My friends were very impressed.”

  “I assume the black water flowed back to its source. Let me know what I owe you.”

  “Nothing. They were glad to assist. No one likes to think they’ve trained criminals.”

  “Seems to be our national pastime,” I said, and then regretted voicing something so petty as politics at Amanda Whitfield’s funeral.

  Nathan had more class and let my comment slide. “Maybe tomorrow afternoon you’d drop by the house. The Panthers are playing and we could sort through things.”

  “Sure,” Nakayla said. “We’d like that.”

  The residents of Golden Oaks entered the assembly hall in a parade interspersed with walkers and wheelchairs. Nakayla and I made sure all the seniors had seats before finding our own. The afternoon service came right after the dining hall closed and we’d had to hurry from Amanda’s to be on time for Ethel’s.

  Here were the professional funeral attendees who’d lost so many friends and family that mixing solemnity with gregariousness had been perfected into a fine art. The chaplain of the retirement center led an informal ceremony. Hewitt Donaldson spoke on behalf of the family, thanking Ethel’s friends and the Golden Oaks’ staff for their kindness toward his aunt.

  A number of the old timers stood at their seats as the chaplain brought a wireless mike for them to use for sharing memories. The P.A. system blared so that even the deaf could hear.

  Harry Young got a round of applause for his story about Ethel reading his palm. That triggered a number of Ethel’s palm reading stories, and I noticed how many of the fading generation looked down at their hands, seeming to marvel that such lined and wrinkled things were attached to their bodies.

  Afterwards, I greeted Hewitt Donaldson and his cousin Terry Barkley. We said nothing of our early morning search through the lockbox, but Barkley shook my hand vigorously and thanked us for our help. I doubted Donaldson had told him much other than we’d safeguarded his inheritance. He didn’t need or want to hear any more.

  I left Nakayla with them and went to find Captain. He was speaking to the chaplain and when he saw me, he came as fast as he could push his walker. He stopped about a yard away.

  “You got them, boy. You told me you would, and you got them.”

  I gave him our customary salute, but instead of returning it, he slung his walker aside and closed the distance between us on his frail legs, not stopping till he’d embraced me. I felt his tears on my cheek.

  Old soldiers never die, but the good ones are man enough to cry.

  “There’s plenty of beer and guacamole.” Nathan Armitage handed each of us a bottle of Heineken and then set a plate of corn chips and dip on the coffee table. A widescreen TV on the wall tuned in the game between the Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans. “Now eat up, or Helen will think I was a bad host.”

  “She’s not a football fan?” Nakayla asked.

  Nathan popped the cap from his beer and sat in a leather lounge chair. “She gets into it when the Panthers make the playoffs. She’s at some church committee meeting this afternoon. If I heard her correctly, it’s a committee studying committees. I increase my pledge just to stay off the damn things.”

  “You want a rundown before she comes home?” I asked.

  “If you’re up to telling the story.”

  Nathan was well aware of our financial picture so Nakayla and I told him everything including our raid on Calvin’s secret account.

  When we’d finished, he sat quietly for a few minutes, twirling his empty bottle between his palms. He looked worried. “You sure there’s no way anyone left in Ali Baba will discover what happened?”

  “I can’t be completely sure, but I think anyone else would be local Iraqis who wouldn’t have been privy to anything other than their immediate tasks. And even Hernandez and Lucas didn’t know Calvin had siphoned off their funds, so the account’s untraceable.”

  “You got a way to get that money to the families of your buddies?”

  “That might be trickier than I thought. It’s one thing for Nakayla and me to keep money offshore and bring it in through the detective agency and another thing to get money into someone’s personal U.S. bank account with a plausible explanation.”

  Nathan stood and held the empty bottle by his side. “I’d say you ought to learn more about the families and what they need. That could lead you to the best way to help them.” He thought a second. “And you might feed Hewitt Donaldson enough information to get his take. He’s a crafty bastard and he owes you more than a book.”

  Nakayla and I laughed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The book’s a first edition,” I said.

  “So, what’s it worth? A couple grand?”

  “Pretty close,” I said. “Maybe even four.”

  “Not too shabby,” he conceded.

  “But the cover. Tell him, Nakayla.”

  Her face lit up. “I did a little Internet search this morning. Seems there are only about twenty known dust jackets for that first edition still in existence and most of them are in poor shape. At a recent auction, a copy of The Great Gatsby with its dust jacket went for near $50,000.”

  “And ours is signed to Fitzgerald by his lover,” I added.

  “What are you going to do?” Nathan asked me.

  “I thought maybe I’d read it.”

  Acknowledgments

  Although this book is a
work of fiction, certain real events and locations provided inspiration for the story.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed in Asheville, North Carolina, during the summers of 1935 and 1936. His favorite room in The Grove Park Inn was 441, and I’m indebted to Derrick Swing, Bill Kelley, and the staff and management of The Grove Park Inn and Spa for their assistance and cooperation. Special thanks to Derrick for making an appearance in the novel.

  Laura Guthrie Hearne was a palm reader and the part-time secretary of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her account of that relationship appeared in the December 1964 issue of Esquire as an article entitled “A Summer with F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Tony Buttitta’s book, The Lost Summer: A Personal Memoir of F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a fascinating look at Fitzgerald in 1935. Fitzgerald introduced Buttitta to his “dollar woman,” Laura Guthrie Hearne, and had her read his palm.

  In 1933, William Dudley Pelley founded the Silver Legion of America, headquartered in Asheville, and at one point the fascist organization had more than fifteen thousand Silver Shirt members in chapters across twenty-two states. Pelley was indicted and convicted on two stock fraud charges in 1934 and on sedition charges in 1942. Fitzgerald and Pelley never met, although Buttitta describes Fitzgerald as being scornfully curious about the man.

  The poem “The Silver Shirts Are Marching!” is from a 1936 bound and hand-typed manuscript, The Door to Revelation: An Intimate Biography by William Dudley Pelley. I’m grateful to the Pack Library of Asheville for research assistance with Pelley materials. The character of Hugh Donaldson was not Pelley’s attorney and is my creation.

  The Kenilworth Inn opened in 1891 as a grand hotel and for many years was a military hospital and mental health facility. Developer Frank Howington rescued the Kenilworth from demolition, and the renovated and restored building is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Thanks to Frank and Mikell Howington, Pete Parham, and Allie Broman-Fulks for making Sam Blackman and me feel at home.

  Blackwater Worldwide is a security services corporation headquartered in Moyock, North Carolina. Its relationship with the U.S. government has generated controversy that led to an examination of contracts involving the outsourcing of paramilitary and security operations, particularly in Iraq. No Blackwater employees or former employees have any connection to the fictional events of this story. However, on September 16, 2007, seventeen Iraqi civilians died during an altercation in Nisour Square, Baghdad, involving Blackwater guards escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles. As of February 2009, five guards have been indicted on federal manslaughter and weapon charges and a sixth entered into a plea-bargain agreement. Defense attorneys say newly released Blackwater radio logs lend credence to claims that the convoy was under fire. One can only hope that justice will prevail for all involved, Iraqis and Americans.