The Last Man to Die (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

“Probably.”

  “She may come back,” Sandy said consolingly. “I know she loves you. You just have to give her a chance.”

  “Yeah.” I pointed to the city directory on a corner of the desk. “How about getting me a phone number?”

  She gave me a pitying look and checked the address listings until she came up with what I needed. She wrote it down on a piece of paper.

  “Does this have a file?”

  “Not yet,” I said, and reached for the phone. She handed me the receiver and punched in the number for me, her expression showing curiosity.

  There was an answer on the second ring. A man’s voice.

  “I’m calling about Mr. Chantry,” I said. “My name is Micah Dunn. Would it be possible to speak to Mrs. Goodfather?”

  “Are you with the funeral home?” the man asked.

  “No. I realize this sounds funny, but I was there when they found him.”

  “You mean when they …?”

  “Yes.”

  I heard voices in the background and then something blotted them out. I figured the man had put his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Hello?” It was a woman’s voice, full and rich.

  “Mrs. Goodfather?”

  “This is Lydia Goodfather. Did you tell my son you were there when my husband was found?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know it sounds strange, but do you think I could come over and speak to you about it?”

  I thought I heard an intake of breath, and then she spoke again:

  “Yes. On a onetime basis, Mr.…”

  “Dunn. Micah Dunn.”

  “Do you know where I live, Mr. Dunn?”

  I glanced down at the slip of paper Sandy had handed me.

  “On Fontainbleau, isn’t it?”

  “That’s correct. Are you coming now, Mr. Dunn?”

  “If that’s all right.”

  “I’ll be expecting you.”

  I thanked her and hung up the phone.

  “You oughta stick to the boat pictures,” Sandy warned.

  It was quarter to six when I pulled up under the camphor trees on Fontainbleau. The houses along this stretch were ornate. In Max Chantry’s day they had been mansions. Today, they were slightly run-down, like courtesans too old to follow the action. Here and there along the street were FOR SALE signs, and the screens on one or two houses needed patching. Most of the old families had moved out and left the homes to renters.

  The house was a two-story of tan brick with an open porch and pillars. A swing moved slowly back and forth in the breeze and I wondered if it had been there when Max had walked out on his last day. The car in the drive was an Olds six years old, but a Volvo was at the curb. I pushed my door open and got out.

  Droplets of water showered down off the tree and soaked into my clothes. I went up the walk quickly, not sure if what I was doing made sense.

  I made it to the top of the steps and stood looking at the swing. It was made of iron, with green, flaking paint. You don’t see them around much anymore, because everything has gone to wood.

  There was a black wreath on the door, and I was still staring at it when the door opened.

  “Mr. Dunn,” a male voice said through the screen door. “Come in. My mother is waiting.”

  I stepped into the darkened living room, aware of the odor of mothballs. Something overhead cut swaths in the shadows; I glanced up: a ceiling fan. The air was moist and stirred with subtle currents, the kind you missed when there was air-conditioning.

  The man in front of me was portly and balding, with metal-rimmed glasses that caught fugitive glints of light and shot them back like an accusation.

  “I’m Julius Chantry,” he said, not bothering to offer me his hand. As he spoke I caught a faint odor of cologne. “I tried to convince my mother that it would serve no purpose to see you, but she’s a very strong-willed lady.” His voice had the educated New Orleans accent, slightly lengthened vowels and a lilting cadence. I tried to see a resemblance to the face of the man in the uniform, to Max Chantry, and failed. “But this has been a terrible shock to her, after so many years, and I have to ask you to be brief.”

  “Your mother remarried,” I said.

  He nodded. “Mr. Marcus Goodfather.” He shrugged. “I understand it was originally Bonpère, when his family came over in the last century, but they anglicized it for social reasons. In any event, he died of cancer ten years ago. She met him after my father died.”

  “You must have been very young when that happened,” I commented.

  He nodded. “I was eight years old. I have only the vaguest memories of him.”

  I looked around the room. The mantel with its bric-a-brac, the antique furniture, the ancient corner clock—they all seemed part of another world, distinct from the one with which I was familiar. This was a world of genteel folk who poured from crystal decanters and thought nothing of paying five or ten thousand for the right antique chair.

  “Would you step this way?” he invited.

  I followed him back across the rug, my feet sinking in as I walked. There were paintings on the walls, and one struck me: a heavyset elderly man in a business suit, holding a book. He had Julius’s eyes and I wondered if he was Lydia Goodfather’s father. We went down a hallway and Julius stopped before an open door.

  “Mother,” he announced, “he’s here.”

  I went after him into a sun room that looked out onto a patio. The room was artfully arranged, with just the right number of ferns and potplants; to one side, with silent, robotlike menace, sat a console with dials and hoses.

  I tore my eyes away to the center of the room, and the woman standing alone.

  Lydia Goodfather had been beautiful once, in a fragile sort of way, and even now, in her seventies, she seemed as elegant as a classical statue, with skin the same color.

  As I approached she tendered a hand with an artist’s thin fingers. I noticed she was wearing long sleeves, more appropriate for winter than for August heat.

  “Julius, would you get Mr. Dunn a chair,” she said. Her son dragged one from the corner and stood by expectantly. “Thank you, Julius. You can leave us,” she said, and Julius forced himself out of the room, half-closing the door behind him.

  “Julius will have his ear against the door, anyway, so we might as well let it stay partly open.” She laughed gently.

  “I know this must be a shock to you,” I said.

  “A shock? Yes, I suppose so. But we all knew he was dead.” She turned her head to face me. “You say you were there?”

  “Nearby. It was a team of archaeologists and—”

  “Yes, they told me. He was even wearing his wedding ring, you know. That was one of the ways they traced him: It had our names on it.”

  I nodded, waiting. Sometimes silence is the best interrogator.

  “Of course, there’s no doubt it’s Max,” she said. “There was his leg.”

  “He lost it in the war,” I said.

  “Yes. He went all the way through the Battle of the Bulge without a scratch. It happened in Germany, just a few days before the war ended, as if that wasn’t an irony. He left with two good legs and came back with one. I watched him struggle to walk with that prosthesis they gave him. I watched him fall down on the floor and lie there like a baby, cursing, and waving me to stay away, because he wanted to get up under his own power. Max was a very proud man, Mr. Dunn. He never let anyone but me see him without his leg. After a while, he managed to walk with just a slight limp. Many people didn’t know he even had a handicap. And he refused to use it in his campaign for district attorney.”

  My face went hot as I remembered the months after my return from ’Nam and the struggle to do with one hand what everyone else did with two. She frowned slightly and I realized her eyes were fixed on my left arm.

  “Mr. Dunn, you’re handicapped yourself, aren’t you? Is that why you’re so interested in Max, then?”

  It was my turn to frown. “I don’t know. Maybe it is.”


  “Well, my poor Max was an idealist. And a fighter. You could tell that by his broken nose.” She smiled. “He said you didn’t grow up in his neighborhood without having something broken.”

  “He came from a poor family?” I asked.

  “Oh, Lord, yes. The only way he got through Jesuit was by impressing the brothers with his earnestness. And he was earnest. He told me he’d thought of becoming a priest at one point. But then he got a football scholarship to Tulane and decided to enroll in law school. That’s where we met, you know: Tulane. I was at Newcomb. He was so romantic, unlike any of the boys I was used to. He seemed to know so much more about the world. And to be so eager to change it.”

  “He enlisted in the army?”

  “Yes. He was right out of law school and they put him in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps because he was a lawyer, but he insisted they transfer him to the infantry.” She twisted a finger through her pearls and smiled at me in a way that I associated with teenaged girls on a date. “Naturally, he became a war hero.”

  “What made him decide to take on the politicians?” I asked. “I heard there was a case, a man who was accused …”

  She waved her hand. “There were any number of cases. And Max took them all to heart. He said too many good men had died in the war for our country to be allowed to rot from inside. But you have to remember that he wasn’t the only one. There were others who felt the same way. Chep Morrison and his reform ticket would never have gotten elected without help from Max. And Max would have been elected district attorney if he’d lived.”

  “I heard that your husband had some kind of list of crooked politicians,” I said.

  “It’s true. They found somebody, I think Max called him a runner, who brought money to the politicians. He talked.”

  “Know who he was?”

  She shook her head. “Max never said. I asked, but he said it was dangerous for me to know too much.”

  “You never saw the list?”

  “Absolutely not. Max kept it locked up in his safety deposit box. Only he and a few others in his group knew who was on it. But it must have been important. He said it would send a lot of people to jail when he was elected. He said they’d kill for it.” She gave a little sigh. “I didn’t believe it then. It seemed so—well, melodramatic. But, of course, it turned out he was right.”

  “There was no list when the box was opened after his death?”

  “No.”

  “About the bombing,” I went on. “Was anybody ever charged by the police?”

  She gave a bitter little laugh. “Are you serious? Chief O’Reilly was the last person to want the truth to come out.”

  “I assume it only made Max more determined,” I said.

  “Yes. After that he was a man possessed. And some of the better people in the community were outraged. For a time it looked as if trying to kill Max had been a bad mistake. They even began to get some indictments.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Their main informant, the runner, disappeared.”

  That was predictable, I thought.

  “Max was very discouraged. But he wouldn’t give up. He said there were others on the list, that he’d find somebody else.”

  “And did he?”

  She shook her head. “No. Somehow, somebody got their hands on the list. The ones on it managed to slip away. Their friends took care of them, I’m sure.” She twisted the pearls some more, so that they bit into the parchmentlike skin. “But Max wouldn’t quit. He was sure he’d be elected and all the political corruption and the organized-crime element would come tumbling down.”

  “Did it?”

  “Some politicians went to jail, but the gangsters stayed. Only Max disappeared.”

  “I don’t guess you remember that day after all this time,” I said.

  “I remember it perfectly. Max left that morning and told me that there should be some good news by the end of the day. He left for his office on the streetcar. He worked there all day and then left to come home. But he never arrived.”

  “Where was his office?”

  “At Natchez and Camp, first floor.”

  “Nothing else unusual?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact there was. I had a call about two o’clock, here at the house. A man, his voice gruff, telling me that they were tired of Max’s interference. That’s what he said, ‘interference.’ He said they were going to have to do something if he didn’t quit. I called Max immediately, but he said not to worry, he’d gotten threats before. But it bothered me. This was the first time anyone had called the house.”

  “What did this man sound like?”

  “He had an Italian accent. Or at least it sounded like one. I told the police all this, but they weren’t very interested. They were owned by the Mob, you know.”

  “And when Max didn’t come home, what did you do then?”

  “After a couple of hours I called his secretary, Idola Marsh. She said he’d left on time, hours ago, headed for the streetcar line. After that, nobody ever saw him.”

  “In downtown New Orleans, at rush hour.”

  “Stranger things have happened, Mr. Dunn. Do you remember Judge Crater?”

  “Before my time,” I said, rising. “Well, Mrs. Goodfather, thank you very much for your help.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mr. Dunn. It all happened a long time ago. I loved Max passionately, but I had to go on living. So I remarried. My second husband was a good man. He wasn’t the passion of my youth, but he was a good man.”

  She gave me a smile that was meant to dazzle.

  I tiptoed out of the room and almost collided with Julius.

  “This has tired her,” he accused. “That’s why I didn’t want her to see you. This is her dialysis day. It’s always hard on her, and with this …”

  “I’m sorry.” I let him walk me to the front door, then halted. “By the way, this secretary of your father’s, Idola Marsh. Is she still alive?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” He edged me out of the door. “I do hope you’ll let this drop,” he said through gritted teeth. “It really doesn’t concern you.”

  “No,” I said. “I guess it doesn’t.”

  It was almost seven when I got back; the rain had left the streets slippery and there was a fender bender in front of Charity to tie up traffic for half a mile. I dragged myself up the outside steps and unlocked my door, too weary to pay much attention to the square of darkness framed by the door of my front office. I had flipped on the light and was already headed for my chair when I realized I had mail on my desk and that the top envelope bore Katherine’s handwriting.

  CHAPTER 4

  When I awoke the phone was ringing and it took me a while to figure out whether it was part of my dream.

  I didn’t want it to be, because Katherine had just left and I had been calling every number I knew to find her. When the phone rang I knew it was the telephone company telling me I’d run out of numbers and there wasn’t anywhere else to go.

  But it was daytime and I was in my bed and the phone was on the table a few feet away. I tried to shake off the dream and groped for the receiver.

  “Micah Dunn?” It wasn’t Katherine’s voice, but it was a woman. Carol Busby.

  “I’m here,” I said, sitting up. I glanced at the bedside clock. It was just after eight. I’d slept an hour longer than usual, and the empty glass by the clock told the reason why.

  “Are you awake?” she asked.

  “I’m awake,” I said.

  “You told me to keep you posted on the Gourrier business.”

  “Yes.” My mouth was dry and tasted of bourbon.

  “Well, I called her last night, like she wanted, and she was friendly and very enthusiastic. She told me she knew about the book that had been written, but it had some mistakes in it and she’d want me to fly to France anyway, and check some of the original records. She asked me if I could come by her home later on, that she’d be expecting me at ten. I said I wo
uld.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. It was a big turn-of-the-century place in the Garden District. Sam and I went there at ten, like she asked.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s just it: nothing. When we went to the door and knocked nobody came. We stayed for about fifteen minutes and then went to a phone booth at a drugstore and called. But nobody answered.”

  “You checked the number.”

  “Of course. It was the number she gave us, the number I called earlier.”

  “It does sound odd,” I agreed. “Well, I’ll see what I can turn up. Give me the address.”

  I scribbled the number on a piece of paper. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing, except Sam’s blaming me for screwing up the deal. He can’t stand it when things go wrong. There always has to be somebody at fault.”

  “Well, hang in there.”

  I replaced the receiver and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking.

  Maybe the woman had realized she’d made a mistake and no further research was necessary. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe it was a practical joke. Maybe a lot of things. But it wouldn’t hurt for me to drive over and get a firsthand impression of Miss Madeline Gourrier.

  I showered, trying to clean out my pores. How nice if the memories would go down the drain as easily as the dirty water, I thought. When I dressed and went into my front room, which served as an office, Katherine’s letter was still on my desk with the rest of the mail Sandy had brought up. Except that now the letter was open.

  I wished she hadn’t bothered to write.

  The first thing I’d thought when I saw her handwriting and the Mexican stamp was that she’d changed her mind, relented, and was coming back, or asking me to come there. But when I read it the truth was different.

  She hoped I’d understand about her feelings. She had a lot of things to sort out and right now she was in the middle of her fieldwork and there was enough pressure living in the field, in a foreign country, without having constant internal turmoil.

  It all made a lot of sense.

  But why did she have to write it at all?

  There was lead in my belly, and the mouthwash had done little to get the sourness out of my mouth, so I walked down the street to the Café du Monde and ordered a cup of black coffee and some beignets.