The DeadHouse

by Linda Fairstein

"Is Ivan too obvious a choice? I've only met him a couple of times, but I know she was very frightened of him. There are plenty of students who hold her responsible for their not making the dean's list or bringing down their averages, but I don't think we had any homicidal maniacs among them."

  "Did you ever accuse her of being a gold digger or a treasure seeker?"

  Lockhart blushed. "That's what I get for being out of town when all this started. You've clearly covered some territory." He looked down at his Top-Siders and back up at Chapman. "Not in a literal sense. She wasn't after Ivan's money-if he really had any. It's just that she would latch onto people and use them for whatever she could suck out of them. Then she'd just discard them when they couldn't give her anything else. It wasn't a nice thing to watch."

  "What do you know about Claude Lavery?"

  Lockhart was slow to answer. "More than I ever wanted to. I can't tell you I objected to his activities at the college. I can't say he was selling drugs to kids, exactly, but he introduced so many of them to a culture in which there was a general acceptance of substance abuse. There are so many rumors about his misappropriation of funds-well, it just makes me furious. We've been struggling awfully hard to get King's off the ground, and Lavery did everything he could to allow intellectuals at the better schools to think we were just all about street jive."

  "What do you know about the missing money?"

  "Not a thing. I'm on a tenure track myself, trying to keep my hands clean and mind my own business."

  "Lavery and Lola?"

  "I didn't meddle with it. They were pals. Nothing intimate, of course. She was working on something else with him, and I just put up a Chinese wall between us."

  "Would you mind if we talked with your grandfather, as long as we're here?" I asked.

  "Not at all. I'm sure he'd be delighted, too. Hope you don't have to be anywhere very soon. You get him going on the MacCormick raid and he'll bend your ear off."

  Lockhart stood up to lead us out of the room, then turned back, biting the corner of his lip.

  "Something wrong?"

  "I doubt he'll realize that Lola is dead. I've told him about it, naturally, and I've read him the newspaper stories. It's just that he's got a bit of a problem with his memory. Long-term, it's quite remarkable. Doesn't forget a thing. But ask him what I gave him for breakfast, or the fact that Lola was murdered last week, and he won't know a thing about it. Some of the doctors believe it's an early stage of Alzheimer's, while others assume it's just part of his aging process."

  Mike and I followed the young professor through the length of the rambling house, beyond the enormous kitchen to a cheerful solarium, where Lockhart's grandfather was sitting on a chintz sofa, washed in the sunlight that was streaming through the glass-walled room.

  "Gramps, these are some people who are trying to help Lola. They'd like to talk to you."

  "Lola? What's wrong with Lola?" The tall, lean man with an elegant mane of white hair raised himself to his feet and shook hands with Mike. "Orlyn Lockhart, sir. Who might you be?"

  "I'm Michael Chapman. I'm a New York City detective. This is Alexandra Cooper. She works in the district attorney's office."

  He checked behind himself to be sure the sofa cushion was in place, and as he lowered himself down, his grandson reached an arm out to steady his descent. "Did young Orlyn tell you I used to work there myself?"

  "He certainly did." I smiled at Skip, who held up three fingers to indicate to me that he was the third Orlyn Lockhart.

  "What service do you perform there? Are you a secretary?" "No, sir. I'm an assistant district attorney in Mr. Battaglia's office. I run the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit there."

  "Still can't get used to the fact that women practice in the criminal courts." The old gent was shaking his head back and forth. "Wouldn't have seen one anywhere near the well of the courtroom in my day. Not a lawyer, not even allowed to serve on the jury. Where'd you go to school?" "University of Virginia."

  "Mr. Jefferson's university? My alma mater, too, young lady. They've come to let women in these days? I'm shocked. The whole damn school was men only back then, and a great place. Came out and went right to work in the best law office in the country. New York County district attorney. Joab Banton-I was one of Banton's boys. Blame all these women in the courtroom on Kate Hepburn. She started the whole damn thing with her movies. And wearing pants, no less. Who's the DA now? It's not still Dewey, is it?"

  Not since 1941, when he left to run for election as the governor of New York, before two unsuccessful attempts at the presidency. "No, sir. Paul Battaglia." I was beginning to question how reliable a conversation with this man could be.

  "Where's Lola?" The man's eyes were alive with interest, the fine light blue color coated with a thin layer of glaucoma-like haze.

  Mike mumbled under his breath. "On ice."

  "You say you were with Lola?"

  "I told you they were Lola's friends, Gramps." Skip tried again to explain our connection to Lola without mentioning her death. The old man didn't get it. As they talked I could see the yellowed front page of the New York Herald Tribune, framed on the table at his elbow, with its banner headlines proclaiming the top news story of January 24,1934: gangster rule of island smashed by maccormick. "Worst Prison in World Recaptured from Control of Prison Mob Bosses."

  The lead article, with its photograph of MacCormick and the young, good-looking former prosecutor at his side, appeared just above the news that the notorious John Dillinger had been taken into custody in Tucson, Arizona.

  I seated myself on an ottoman facing Orlyn Lockhart, our knees practically touching as we spoke. "Someone tried to hurt Lola, so we thought we should find out why. We're talking to all her friends."

  "Seems to me you should talk to her enemies. That's what I would have done."

  Mike winked at me as he sat next to Skip's grandfather. "Score that one for Banton's boys, blondie. Bet he never lost his touch."

  "What did Lola like to talk about with you? Can you tell me?"

  He kept it all in the present tense. "We don't have to wait for her. She's heard most of my tales. Loves to hear me talk about the island."

  The telephone rang and Skip stood up to walk to the kitchen. "Will you call me if you would like something to drink or eat? Gramps, you okay? I've got some phoning to do."

  Orlyn kept talking right over Skip's announcement. "Biggest thugs in New York, and they were the ones running the penitentiary-from inside, no less. It started with Boss Tweed, back before I was born. You know he stole millions from the City of New York, and when they finally caught up with him, they sentenced him to twelve years on Blackwells Island.

  "Want to know how he was treated? Tweed was given a furnished apartment in the penitentiary. Never locked. Had his own library and even a private secretary who came in to do his work. Wore his own suits and fancy clothes. Even had his lady friends in to visit. Died there before he could serve out his sentence."

  "How did you get involved?"

  "I'd done my prosecutorial work in the Rackets Bureau, trying to bust organized criminals who were taking over the town. Did I hear you say you're a detective, young man?"

  Mike explained his assignment to Lockhart. At the same time, I tried to remember what my father had told me about the workings of neurons and the degeneration of brain tissue, how some contemporary memories become completely inaccessible but events deep in the past could be as distinct as if they had occurred the day before.

  "Perhaps you've heard stories about the island in my day?" he asked.

  "Not really."

  "First thing they did, turn of the last century, was change its name. Not to Roosevelt, mind you. That didn't happen until after the Second World War. But for a brief time they called it Welfare Island.

  "Most people thought Blackwells was cursed. The city closed down most of the hospitals and moved the sick and insane to more benign places. All shut down, except for the penitentiary. Ever hear of Dutch Schultz?"r />
  "Sure," Mike answered. "Arthur Flegenheimer. Legendary mobster. Controlled a lot of business in the city."

  Orlyn Lockhart zoned out on me. He had found a responsive audience in Mike and was playing to him. "I put his right-hand man away." He was tapping his forefinger against his chest. "I tried the case myself. Joseph Reggio. Know that name, too?"

  "Harlem racketeer. Probably the number two guy in the mob at the time."

  "Convicted him of extortion, ran the beer and soda water trade. Word got back to us, down at the district attorney's office, that Reggio had set himself up in prison like a king. He'd bribed all the authorities to get the inmates in the jail's clinic moved out to the general population. Reggio took over and made that infirmary his home. Dressed in silk robes and used lavender cologne. Cultivated a nice garden, kept a pet cow to get his own milk. Dined on the finest steaks and wines in his own apartment."

  "In the penitentiary?"

  "Two of them, there were, took over the prison hospital. Reggio ran his men, and the Irish hoodlums were led by a guy called Edward Cleary. That's the guy who kept his German shepherd with him in his room. Named it Screw Hater. 'Screws' are what they used to call the guards. Both of these toughs kept homing pigeons with them. Actual cotes of birds that carried notes-and probably narcotics-in and out of the jail.

  "These two mobsters swaggered around while the regular crooks waited on them like slaves. Sad part is that the men who really needed medical treatment were just dumped into the general population. All the boys with social diseases-that's what we used to call it back then-they were mixing freely with the healthy ones. The whole place was a sea of misery. Full of degenerates. Faded tigers." "Excuse me?"

  "Didn't you ever read Dickens, young lady? When he visited New York, he asked to be taken to see old Blackwells."

  I thought I had plowed through most of him in my undergraduate days, but the phrase didn't sound at all familiar. Perhaps that explained why Dickens's sketch was on Lola Dakota's bulletin board. Just one more notable figure who had connected with this island that so fascinated her. Now what we still needed to know was why Charlotte Voight's picture was there.

  Lockhart was mumbling on about Dickens's visit to the prison, inmates dressed in the black-and-buff garb that the Englishman likened to faded tigers.

  "Tell me about the raid," Mike said. Skip came back into the room with chamomile tea for his grandfather and mugs of coffee for us. He put them on the table, smiling at Mike's enthusiasm for the tales he had heard so many times and walking back to the kitchen. "Did you actually go along?"

  "Go along, sir? MacCormick and I led the whole thing ourselves. I handpicked the detectives and wardens to come with us, but we led the very charge into the pens. First one to fall was a deputy warden who'd been on the take the whole time. Placed him right under arrest."

  "I'd like to have been at your side," Mike said, egging him on. "MacCormick had this planned to the minute. Closed down the prison switchboard so no one could call out while the raid was on. He dispatched the first men to the hospital ward to drag out Reggio and Cleary." Lockhart was chortling as he sipped his tea. "Guess he was afraid to let us get at each other. So he had them taken out of their luxurious quarters and thrown into solitary confinement." "But you, did you go into the prison itself?"

  "My boy, I can still smell it today. Most of the prisoners had been turned into dope fiends."

  "After they went inside the walls?"

  "Reggio and Cleary were running a drug smuggling business in the jailhouse. That's how they got all their lackeys to keep them in style, and segregated. First thing I saw were rows of men, shivering on benches, pleading with us to let them take their drugs. Most of them were covered with needle scars, all up and down their arms. Word spread that Commissioner MacCormick was walking through the three-tiered cell block himself."

  "Never happen today. They'd just show for the photo op." "All of a sudden we heard lots of clanging and things being thrown about. I went running to see what it was. Turns out prisoners were throwing their weapons, and their drug paraphernalia, out from between their bars. Nobody wanted to be caught with contraband in their cells. I leaned over and picked up some blackened spoons, what they cooked the drugs in. Spikes they used to shoot up. Whole sets of hypodermics. Cloths soaked in a heroin solution."

  "Did you find what you expected?"

  "Worse than that. Far worse. Drugs of every sort. And then the weapons started coming. We took out meat cleavers, hatchets, stilettos, butcher knives. I've got pictures, missy, front page of every newspaper in the country. Skip'll show you my scrapbooks. "These gorillas had a real pecking order. The two at the top had their henchmen. There were at least twenty-five of them who kept the lowlifes in line, living in the worst conditions, waiting on Reggio and Cleary, and doing it all to get narcotics. Meanwhile, the goon squad who helped the bosses lived off the fat of the land. Taken off by van every day to work at the warden's home and eat pretty well themselves."

  "Did you actually see where Reggio lived?"

  "You wouldn't believe the sight. Hell, I wouldn't have, unless I'd been there in the flesh. After he'd been taken out, MacCormick and I went up to see his lavish digs, just to find out whether the reports we'd gotten had been exaggerated. Hah! Not a bit. He had a large suite of rooms in the old hospital wing, all laid out with his finery. A maroon cashmere lounging robe was spread across the foot of his bed, with two pairs of shoes, shoe trees neatly in them, lined up underneath."

  Lockhart was shaking his head and wringing his hands as though he were right in the middle of the scene he was describing.

  "There was a locker below the window and I got one of the boys to break it open. Inside there were a dozen boxes of expensive cigars, bars of perfumed soap, monogrammed stationery, face cream, kid gloves, linen handkerchiefs." He shook his head. "Here I thought I'd condemned him to purgatory when he was sentenced to jail, and he was living far better than most folks I knew. That was before I saw his kitchen and his garden."

  "His own kitchen?"

  "Well, Reggio and Cleary shared a private one. The men downstairs were eating slop and gruel, just like the old days. These guys had gallons of fresh milk, crates of cranberries, fresh meat, pickled herrings, bags of potatoes. They had a pretty nice stash of liquor, too.

  "Cleary, his room was a little less refined. Where Reggio had a crucifix over the bed and rosary beads beside it, Cleary had a dagger stuck in the wall over his head. I guess we'd interrupted him. There was an unplayed hand of pinochle on the table, some device up on the rafters that was concocting a home brew, and an empty pint bottle of whiskey. Screw Hater, the dog, was sitting next to the bed, trembling till we took him down and fed him one of his master's steaks. Then there was a little lounging area next to it where Cleary and his thugs spent the day, when he didn't choose to be out wandering the grounds."

  "What grounds?"

  "Behind the penitentiary. Reggio paid the other inmates to build him a garden. That's where he kept his milking cow and his pet goat. Beautiful spot it was, looking back over to Manhattan. He'd set up park benches and exquisite flowers, though they weren't in bloom that day. And he controlled who could enter the place. Kept the riffraff out.

  "The pigeon cote was up in the roof above Cleary's room. Each of them had about two hundred birds, cooing themselves up a storm. MacCormick truly thought that's how they got messages in and out. Hell, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. Once they'd bought the wardens, bribed them with all the mob money that Dutch Schultz could muster, they carried anything they wanted in and out the front door of the joint. Easy as that."

  "So it must have been a great day for you." Mike had picked up the framed clipping and was reading the text of the story. "I've closed down a lot of joints in my time, Mr. Lockhart, but not quite the way you did. I'm impressed."

  "Shut it tight. Demolished the entire building. A fortress, it was, and now it's just a pile of old stones." He pushed himself up and walked to the window
at the side of the house, looking for signs of movement in the driveway. "Where's my Lola? Always brings me licorice. Those little bits of black licorice. She likes the part about the man who was killed."

  "In the raid?"

  "Only one hurt in the whole damn thing. Could have cost me my job."

  "Why does Lola like that part?" I asked.

  "Ask Lola." He shuffled back to his seat and eased himself down.

  "One of the mobsters was killed?" Mike wanted to know.

  "No, no. A gentleman. One of the cosseted prisoners who lived there like a lord. Paid Reggio a fortune to be mollycoddled in his own private prison aerie. That's probably why Lola liked him. He was a real gentleman. I knew him too, before he wound up in the penitentiary."

  "Who was he?"

  "Freeland Jennings, Detective. Wasn't half bad. Do they still talk about him?"

  Mike and I exchanged glances. Neither of us had ever heard the name.

  "Talk about the stooges like Dutch Schultz and Edward Cleary and everyone knows the tales, but nobody remembers the men who built the city. Freeland Jennings was a merchant, a friend of Pierre Carder's. Cartier put him into the diamond trade and Jennings made himself a fortune. Spent half his life on ocean liners, crossing back and forth to London and Antwerp. But he was a great philanthropist, mind you. Helped Vanderbilt pay for the new opera house. Gave money to the public library and created the historical society."

  "How'd he wind up inside the walls of the penitentiary?" "Shot his wife. And I have to say, young lady"-Lockhart fixed his gaze on me and wagged his finger-"I have to say that it's a case I myself would never have prosecuted. Ariana, she was. Jennings married a foreigner. Clever, good-looking girl who had just about anything you could want. He showered her with jewels, of course, and showed her off everywhere. She'd have never been in the Social Register, being Italian and all, if she hadn't married Freeland. I used to play cards with him once a week, over at the University Club. Saw him just two days before the murder.

  "Ariana became restless while he was abroad so much. Took up with a lover, a real rogue. It wasn't unheard of in my time, but most people kept quiet about it. Not Ariana-she flaunted it so's it was all over town. Took him to Jennings's box at the Metropolitan Opera, danced with him in public, some even say he was the father of her child."