The Last Man to Die (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  The Chantry home was lit and a couple of times I saw a shadow pass back and forth in front of the front window.

  What was I doing here? Did I really expect to learn anything sitting in the darkness outside an old woman’s house at eight o’clock on a warm summer’s night?

  I didn’t want to think of Max becoming another Julius. I told myself that the times had been different, that there was no reason for Max to have become complacent. He had fought the good fight, first in Europe and then in the streets of his city.

  But I had fought the good fight, too.…

  I rolled my window down, leaned my head back against the seat, and closed my eyes, inhaling the pungent smell of the camphor. Why did I have the stupid notion that everything made sense at some level, that all I had to do was follow the right thread? The war should have broken me of that. The war, my wound, a failed marriage, and now Katherine.

  A car door slammed and my eyes shot open. I saw a portly figure hurrying up the walkway, toward the house. Julius. As he neared the door, it opened and a woman in white came out to meet him. There was a sense of urgency in their movements and I fought the impulse to get out myself and ask what had happened.

  The door closed behind Julius, and I waited. Thirty minutes passed. An hour. An hour and a half. The roving security patrol cruised past and gave me a suspicious look. I tried to decide whether to give it up or whether a few more minutes would pay off.

  Then another car, a Coupe de Ville, slid in behind Julius’s and a tall man got out, carrying a bag. He went up the walkway to the door, his movements brisk, and Julius came out onto the porch and shook hands with him, showing him inside.

  Some doctors still make house calls, I thought. If the patient has enough money. I slipped out of my car, walked across the street to the Caddy, and wrote down the license number. Doctors are hard to get information from, but you can never tell.

  Half an hour later the doctor came back out, got into his car, and drove away. No crisis tonight, I thought, and started my own engine.

  I drove downtown and stopped on Natchez, just before Camp Street. The buildings were bathed in the yellowish glow of street lamps and I had the feeling I was watching a movie set. The building at the end of the block dated from the late thirties. The brass plaque said it housed an import-export business. But forty-three years ago the bottom floor had housed a law firm. Levinthal and Chantry. This was the place where Max had lost his partner in a bomb blast. This was the office Max had left on the last day of his life.

  And suddenly it clicked, just as I’d known it would: The name I had left out, the name of the person I had to try to find.

  Max Chantry’s secretary. Idola Marsh.

  CHAPTER 14

  Most missing people are not that hard to find. You start with the last place they lived, or you go to the post office and file a request for their last known address. License numbers are public information, as are driving records and voter registrations. Marriages, property transfers, divorces, births, and deaths are all carefully recorded, and you only need to know where to go. There are telephone directories, city directories, and directories of various professions. Sometimes you can worm information out of a bank, and occasionally you can even finagle medical records from a hospital.

  Finding somebody after forty years is another proposition.

  I didn’t even know if Idola Marsh was still alive. All I knew as I sat in front of my breakfast that Saturday morning was that she had been about forty when Max had died; I got that by a call to Herb Junior at his home. Herb didn’t think she was married. And she had been with his father as long as he could remember. After Max’s death the family lost contact with her.

  Ordinarily, I’d have called NOPSI, New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated, told them my aunt hadn’t gotten her utilities bill, and asked them to check the address. But today was Saturday, and anyway it didn’t always work.

  So the first place I looked was the directory. I knew it was asking for a lot, but I do find people that way. People may not be listed, but they have relatives. With about twenty-five Marshes on the page, that meant an hour or so of calling. Not that they would all be home. But I could try them again later.

  First, though, I called Sandy. She wouldn’t have been able to follow through on the names, since it was now the weekend, but I wanted to find out if anything worth knowing had happened. She growled a little about the visit to the hospital: Sam wasn’t one of her favorite people, I gathered. Otherwise, the night had been uneventful.

  “I remembered the name of Chantry’s secretary,” I told her. “Lydia gave it to me the other day. But we’re going to have to track her down.”

  “We?”

  I told her how many names there were in the book.

  “How about half-and-half?” I proposed.

  She sighed and asked for a second to find a pencil. Then she got out her copy of the directory, turned to the page I gave her, and counted down twelve names. She promised to call me back in half an hour.

  Next I called John O’Rourke.

  “I need you to do some checking for me,” I said.

  I heard him yawn.

  “It’s nine o’clock Saturday morning. Don’t make me get a judge off the golf course.”

  I told him about Idola Marsh. “You must know some retired judge or lawyer who might remember her. Chances are she went to some other law office when Levinthal and Chantry shut down.”

  “I could ask a few old-timers, I guess. But it would be strictly hit-and-miss.”

  “What about Abby?”

  “My secretary?”

  “Right. Every profession I know has some kind of society or association. Don’t legal secretaries? If there is, Abby could call some older member and see if she remembers this woman.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” the lawyer promised.

  I thanked him, hung up, and started calling the names on the list.

  I got nine answers, eight of whom were adults who had never heard of the woman and one of whom was a child who didn’t know what I was asking. Three numbers didn’t answer.

  Next I called the Tulane professor, William Mann, and made a ten-thirty appointment to visit him in his home on Cherokee. He seemed unsurprised by the call and at ease with the idea of letting me pick his brain. It would be a welcome relief from most of my interviews.

  I had settled into my chair, waiting. When the phone rang, I reached for it, thinking it was Sandy. Instead, it was Jake Kelso.

  “Hey, lucky I got you,” he whispered. “Elaine and the kids are down by the water and Tom went in for groceries. I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to call if I didn’t do it now. So what’s up? They caught Frake yet?”

  “No luck,” I said. “We’re looking in other directions right now.”

  “Oh?”

  I hesitated. He’d been a big help and maybe he’d earned the right to know about Idola Marsh, but I’d seen too many people in ’Nam killed because of sloppy security. And knowledge could be as dangerous to Kelso as to Marsh.

  “Nothing in particular,” I said finally. “Just trying to run down everybody who had anything to do with the case.”

  “For that you’ll need an army. Well, I’ll be back in town tomorrow night. I can help you then.”

  “Good,” I said, not knowing whether I meant it or not.

  “I’ll call you,” he said and I told him that would be fine.

  But what the hell? He’d found out about Ted Frake, and he’d gotten me in to see the city’s chief gangster.

  I tried the three remaining names, got one who told me she’d never heard of the lady, and hung up in time to catch Sandy’s call, reporting the same kind of luck. I read her the numbers I hadn’t gotten an answer from and the number where the child had answered and she agreed to keep trying.

  I thought about calling Mancuso then, to get him to see if there was a driver’s license issued in Idola Marsh’s name, but I knew they’d want a date of birth. Besides, it would awaken his sus
picions.

  Five minutes later I was still reviewing my options when a knock sounded on my door. I reached into my desk drawer for the .38, got up, and moved over to the entrance.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Me,” a man’s voice croaked. “LaVelle.”

  I opened the door and the little shopkeeper slid in. There was something pungent on his clothes, and my nose began to tickle.

  “What in the hell is that?” I demanded, sticking the gun in my belt and reaching for a handkerchief.

  “I might ask the same about the pistol.” He sniffed. “I didn’t come here with the expectation of getting shot.”

  “Jesus,” I said, and sneezed.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” he asked. “I spent two days trying to get the formula right.”

  “Formula? Formula for what?” I asked.

  “The corpse powder,” he said. “What you’re smelling on me.”

  “The what?”

  “Corpse powder. It’s a Navajo Indian witchcraft charm. Or is it Zulu? I forget. And it doesn’t really matter. As long as they believe it works. It’s something you use on your enemies. It makes them weaken and die.”

  “What do they do, sneeze themselves to death?”

  “Maybe it is a little strong. I can add some talcum.”

  I coughed and went over to open the window. Even the muggy, exhaust-laden air of the city was a relief.

  “So what is it, David? Come up here to fumigate me, or did you want to use my kitchen to mix up a batch of the stuff? In either case, it’s no.”

  “Jesus, Micah, you are eternally cranky,” he said, raising his palms in disclaimer. “I came here to do you a favor.”

  “Now I’m really worried.”

  “Well, if you think you can track this down by yourself …”

  “Track down what?”

  “This name and address.” He held up a slip of paper.

  “What name and address is that?”

  “The name and address,” he explained patiently, “of the man you asked me to look for: Joe Hunt, the proprietor of the Class Act Modeling Agency.”

  It was a long five seconds before I could answer.

  “How did you manage that?”

  “I asked around. In my appetite for a meaningful life I have had occasion to rub shoulders with people who are not members of Rex or Comus. I asked some of them if they had ever heard of this agency. One fellow had. He was quite unhappy with this Hunt. Joe Hunt had promised to provide several femmes for a social occasion and had fallen woefully short. One of the ladies he provided was positively matronly and the other refused to do more than dance with the clients. So he went after this Hunt to get his money back.”

  “Did he find him?”

  “Oh, yes. It wasn’t hard.”

  “Well?”

  “For the last day or so he’s been a guest of the Parish. I took the liberty of calling up. Told them I was a lawyer. The charges are pandering, fraud, gambling, and possession of a half-ounce of marijuana.”

  “You mean a good pimp can’t make bail for that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that he was a good pimp. I don’t know anything except what I just told you. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Sorry. I guess I owe you one, Henri.”

  He inclined his head. “Yes, you do. And I wouldn’t do it for you, I hope you know. It’s for Katherine. She was always very kind to me. You could learn something from her.”

  I watched him go back down the stairs and closed the door.

  I knew I had to get out of the office now, so I drove down to the Howard-Tilton Library on Freret. I went to the reference section and got the index for the Times-Picayune. The index doesn’t go all the way back, just to 1972. I checked deaths for the name Marsh. There were no Idolas, which meant that if she’d died in New Orleans during that period, she’d been too destitute to get a mention on the obit page. So she could have died before that, or she might have moved away and died. Or she might still be alive. Nor was she mentioned elsewhere in the index.

  I put back the volume and made a list on a sheet from my pocket notebook.

  Nursing homes.

  Retirement villages.

  American Association of Retired Persons.

  I liked the last one. I decided I’d have Sandy call them, to say she’d stopped getting her insurance check and to ask them to check her address. I’d never heard Sandy imitate a helpless, confused old lady before, but she could pass as almost anyone else. The first two I’d have to canvass myself, though. I had the feeling it was going to take a very long time.

  Right now, though, it was ten-fifteen. I had a quarter of an hour to get over to Cherokee and meet Professor William Mann.

  The Mann house was on a shady corner three blocks off Broadway. I passed a tricycle on the sidewalk and as I started up the steps to the front porch a boy of about nine shot past me, with another, a year or so older, in hot pursuit. A woman was not far behind, pushing the door open and then drawing back slightly when she saw me.

  “Oh,” she said, flushing slightly. “I’m sorry.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Yours?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” she admitted. She was homely, with a round face and unkempt hair. But she had friendly eyes. I wondered from the bulge at her waistline if she weren’t pregnant again.

  “My name is Dunn,” I said. “I called Dr. Mann a few hours ago.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” She held the door open for me.

  “William,” she called. “Your company is here.”

  She glanced around the living room, where toys and books lay in disordered piles on the floor.

  “I’m sorry. I never seem to be able to get ahead.”

  The door to the study opened then and a man, maybe thirty-five, came out. His round, good-natured face was framed by a dark beard. He had the beef of a halfback, but if he’d ever been in sports it had been a long time ago, because he’d grown a spare tire and his shoulders hunched as he stood there, a book in one hand.

  “You’re Mr. Gunn,” he said, smiling.

  “Dunn.”

  “Yes, of course.” He had a Midwestern accent and I wondered how long he had been in Louisiana.

  “Edith, would you get us some coffee, please?” He shook my hand quickly, as if it embarrassed him, and peered at me over his bifocals. “You do drink coffee, Mr. Dunn?”

  “Thank you. Sugar and cream.”

  “You aren’t from here,” he said, still smiling.

  “No. I was brought up in Charleston.”

  “Of course. I thought your accent wasn’t quite New Orleans.”

  “Neither is yours.”

  “Illinois,” he said. “I came down here ten years ago, right after my doctorate. This is where I met Edith. She’s the one who got me interested in New Orleans politics. I had been a Stevenson scholar, you know.”

  He showed me into his study, which was every bit as cluttered as the living room. There were already two empty coffee cups on the desk, and an empty plate.

  “Sit down.” He hurriedly shifted some folders from a chair to the floor. “I was going over some things when you came.”

  I took the seat and watched him shuffle the papers around. He maintained an almost subvocal conversation with himself as he searched. Finally he spied something on the desk before him and uttered a little cry of satisfaction.

  “Ah. In front of me all the time.” He flourished a folder of papers. “This is my book on the Earl Long—Chep Morrison rivalry. Morrison was a veteran, and was elected mayor in 1946, as a reform candidate. Then, in the fifties, he ran for governor twice and was beaten twice. Long was governor three times, once through succession and twice by election in his own right. Morrison symbolized New Orleans, the largest center of population in the state, and the upper classes, while Long came from the backwoods. I think a neo-Marxist model has utility here.”

  I fought back a smile. Only an academic would be talking Marxism the year after the fall o
f the Soviet Union.

  “You’re familiar with the early Morrison era then,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It’s my specialty. Are you a historian?”

  “No. I’m trying to find somebody who was a part of that period.”

  “Who?”

  “Idola Marsh. She was a legal secretary in the time between the end of World War Two and the Korean War.”

  Another shrug.

  “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “She worked for the firm of Levinthal and Chantry.”

  A glow of recognition passed over his features.

  “Levinthal and Chantry. Of course. I just saw a story in the newspaper about their finding some remains. I clipped it. Let’s see …” He turned to a card file on his desk and began to thumb through it.

  “Ha!” He held up a file card. “Herbert Levinthal was killed in a bombing in 1948. Most people thought it was politically motivated. His partner, Max Chantry, was a candidate for district attorney in the 1949 election. But Chantry dropped out of sight before the election was held. One of the interesting footnotes to the era.”

  “Max Chantry was murdered,” I told him. “I thought if I talked to his secretary she might be able to give me some ideas.”

  “I’m sorry. But it is rather intriguing, isn’t it?”

  I thought of the man with dough for a face. “Yes.”

  Then I asked the question I had come to ask in the first place:

  “Have you ever run across the names Dennehy, LaMatta, Fortier, Angelloz, or Landry as political figures in that era? They probably worked in city or parish government.”

  “Do you have first names?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He stroked his chin for a moment, then reached for the card file.

  “You know, I’ve interviewed a great many people already. Ex-Senator Long, ex-Congresswoman Boggs, and probably a hundred other people who were connected or had something to do with the politics of the time. Of course, many of the old-timers are dead …” His fingers stopped and came up with a card, which he laid on the table beside his typewriter. “But I managed to create a file of names of the people who were active in the local government of the time.” He lifted out another card, nodded to himself, and laid it atop the first one.