The Last Man to Die (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Naturally, when one says ‘local government,’ one thinks of City Hall. But it’s more complicated: There’re two sheriffs offices, the coroner’s office, the district attorney’s office, the clerk of court, the assessor, the councilmen … All are elected, and while a single machine has often managed to have all its candidates placed in these offices, there have been times when, for example, a reform mayor or sheriff was elected, and had to fight all the other elected officeholders.” He produced a third and fourth card and put them with the others. He lifted each of the four then and studied it, frowning and muttering to himself. Then he began searching again. Once in a while he raised a card from the file, considered it, growled to himself, then thrust it back into oblivion. At last he uttered a sigh and put the card file back on the desk.

  “Well, I don’t know about this Landry. It’s a common name and I have several in the files, but I don’t think they’re the ones you want.” He lifted the original four cards. “Now these, I think, may be what you’re looking for.”

  He thumped one card with his finger.

  “Nick Angelloz was an administrator for the coroner’s office in 1948. Then he left and nobody knows what happened to him. Gerald Dennehy worked as assistant district attorney from 1941 to February 1949. Francis LaMatta was a deputy clerk of court from 1943 to late in ’forty-eight. And Prosper Fortier was a deputy assessor until late ’forty-eight or early ’forty-nine. I don’t know when he was hired.” Mann smacked his lips. “Yes. These four are the ones you want. I don’t know about the Landry.”

  “Why not one of the Landrys in your file?” I asked.

  He shook his head and rumbled.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “You mean because these four quit at about the same time?” I asked finally.

  He gave me a satisfied grin. “Quit? No, you don’t understand. None of them quit, Mr. Dunn: Each of these four vanished, just like Max Chantry. They were here one minute and the next they were gone without a trace.”

  CHAPTER 15

  We stared at each other.

  “You mean.…?” I began.

  His head jerked up and down. “Absolutely. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it, because I conducted these interviews over a period of years, and there was nothing to connect these people. You see, they all worked for different offices: the D.A., the assessor, the clerk of court. But on each card here, it says that they dropped from sight. One left a note that he was headed for Brazil. Another called his wife and said he was leaving for another woman. Another, his family wouldn’t talk to me about it. Hmm. One wrote his family from somewhere else and said he was ill and had left to spare them.… I see I commented on the cards that there was a suspicion they’d really been sent away by the Mob, to get them out of sight, because of some investigations.”

  “Can I copy the dates of their disappearances?” I asked. “If they just vanished, it would probably be mentioned in the newspaper.”

  “Yes, of course.” He held each card in turn while I copied relevant information. My pad was on my knee as I wrote and I realized he was looking at my arm.

  “When was Chantry declared missing?” he asked.

  “August 1949,” I said.

  “That’s this month.”

  “Yes. Forty-three years ago.”

  “It looks, then, as if he was the last in a series of disappearances.” He gave me a crooked smile. “Or you might say he was the last man to die.”

  “Yes. There’s a story that he had a list of people who were the contacts in parish government between the Mob and the machine.”

  “Ah. And you think these are the men. Could be. Could very well be. And someone was doing everything he could to keep them out of his hands.”

  “Yes.”

  “Some sort of éminence grise in local politics.”

  “Something like that.”

  He shook his head.

  “You know, it seems to me I tried to interview Chantry’s widow.” He delved back into the card file. “Here it is! Three years ago. She wouldn’t see me. Illness. Her son, a rather disagreeable lawyer, threatened prosecution if I kept at it.”

  A knock sounded on the door and Edith came in with a tray. We served ourselves and she left again, closing the door behind her.

  “If someone killed all these people, they must be very old now,” Mann said. “In fact, they’re probably dead. You’d have to find a witness. And witnesses can lie or misremember.”

  “I know.”

  “I try to keep track of my own sources and even in the last five years at least a dozen of the people I originally talked to have died. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of anybody who could help you. Unless”—he chuckled grimly and indicated the file box—“you want to start with the first card and run through all these. It took me ten years.”

  I finished my coffee and he cocked his head.

  “I’m not a policeman, but doesn’t it seem strange to you?”

  “What?”

  “Well, there were five disappearances—probably six, when you find your Landry. But it began with a bombing. And I remember something about somebody being found in the river?”

  “The man generally thought to have planted the bomb.”

  “Yes. Well, you see what I mean.”

  “The method?”

  “Yes. A bomb; a knifing or shooting or whatever for the man in the river. And then six people vanish from the face of the earth. One of them a candidate in an election only a few weeks away.”

  “I thought about that. You’re right, of course.”

  “And mirabile dictu, there is no outcry such as you might expect. No one calls the national press, the FBI isn’t asked to investigate, the cases just sort of die away.”

  “Maybe nobody linked them,” I said.

  “Ah! The devil’s advocate. But why wouldn’t they? There were people downtown who would have been quite well aware of all this. Why wouldn’t one of the newspapers have picked it up?”

  “You’re saying there was somebody with enough power to squelch both the authorities and the newspapers.”

  “Seems like a plausible hypothesis. But for the life of me I can’t think who that might be.”

  “Or how they could have such an influence forty years afterward,” I said. “Tell me: Was Max Chantry a major candidate?”

  The professor shrugged. “Do I think he would have made the runoff? Probably not. Too straitlaced. He scared people. This is New Orleans.”

  “So it wasn’t like the main contender vanished.”

  “No, but the newspapers, as I recall, liked Max Chantry. He was good press. They would have liked to have broken the story about whoever killed him. But all they did was report him missing and do a few feeble follow-ups.”

  “Did your research deal much with a man named Al Silvano?” I asked.

  “The gangster. You think he might be the one we’re talking about?”

  I shrugged.

  He went back to the card file. “Silvano was dead when I started my research. I tried to get to see a man named Noto but he wouldn’t help. What I have on Silvano is all from archival sources and witnesses, though none of the gang members. He was reputedly in charge of vice in the forties and early fifties. There were several murders attributed to him and a number attributed to his people. He was mentioned in the Kefauver hearings. I suppose it’s possible he was our mysterious man in the background.”

  I dredged up the memory of a name from my interview with Lydia Goodfather.

  “What about the police chief, O’Reilly?”

  Once more to the file. “Ah, yes. Sean O’Reilly. His name pops up a lot, too. Apparently an integral part of the political machine the reformers were trying to dismantle. He resigned in 1950 and went to prison for a few months in ’fifty-one. Died of cancer in 1958. Who knows? But my sense is that he was an expediter, not a commander.”

  “Any other possibilities?” I asked.

  “Well, there’s ex-mayor Maestri, but I d
on’t think he was interested in politics by the time he left office. There was the district attorney, but there’s nothing specific there to link him. The criminal sheriff, the civil sheriff … You have your choice.”

  “It looks like it,” I said.

  I left him with his books and card file and drove past Geofind, but there was no one there. That meant Sandy had either gone to the hospital with Carol, or was still working from her own apartment near the lake. So I went back to St. Charles and then down Henry Clay to O’Rourke’s house. He opened the door as if he wasn’t surprised to see me and told me before I was all the way in that he and his secretary had struck out.

  “Nobody remembers the name,” he pronounced.

  I flopped in one of his chairs and told him what I had learned at Mann’s.

  “Somebody was killing them,” I said. “And that person had the power to keep it quiet.”

  “You’re thinking of Lydia?” he asked.

  “No. She couldn’t orchestrate something like that.” I laughed. “I think her son could, but that’s a lot to expect from an eight-year-old.”

  “Who else is left?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I need to talk to Marsh.”

  “Good luck.”

  I called my office and got my machine, so I drove over to the hospital.

  By rights I should be hitting all the retirement homes but I wanted to see what, if anything, Sandy had come up with.

  She was standing in the hallway, outside Sam’s room.

  “I can’t stand that little bastard,” she muttered as I walked up. “If you ask me, Carol is a fool.”

  “Everybody is, about some things,” I said. I told her about my visit with Professor Mann. “It looks like we may have stumbled on something everybody missed at the time.”

  “Then we’ve got to find this Marsh woman, don’t we?”

  “It would help. Any luck with the rest of the phone numbers?”

  She shook her head. “None. Two still don’t answer and I’ll drive out there. But I have a feeling we’ll have to come up with something else.”

  I mentioned the American Association of Retired Persons. “See what you can get from them,” I said. “My guess is they have some kind of round-the-clock hotline for insurance emergencies.”

  “Will do,” she promised. “You going to take over with the lady in there?”

  “Sure.” I watched her walk off down the hall, all her body language an advertisement for self-confidence. I wished I had the same attitude. I pushed open the door and walked into the hospital room.

  Sam was sitting up, a scowl on his face.

  “He’s feeling better,” Carol said, as if to preempt him, but it didn’t matter.

  “I want out of this fucking place,” Sam snapped. “Do you know what they charge for a day in here?”

  “We have small-business insurance,” Carol said soothingly.

  “I never saw an insurance company yet that came through like they were supposed to,” Sam complained. “Anyway, what does it matter who pays? This is still highway robbery. I have a good mind to sue the bastards.”

  Carol gave me a weary look.

  “Anything new?”

  I started to tell her about Mann, but changed my mind. I didn’t need to stir Sam up any more.

  “Not really.”

  “Of course not,” Sam said. “The cops in this town couldn’t catch a cold. That murderer is probably still out there. He may be in this hospital right now, for all anybody knows. I told them I wanted a cop outside this room, but they just blew me off. They’re too busy trying to get free passes to the Saints games.”

  “Well, you’re probably safe enough here,” I said. “Of everybody in this, you probably are the least threat to anybody.”

  He was still trying to decide whether that was an insult or a compliment when I left the room. A few minutes later Carol came out into the hall.

  “This is getting on everybody’s nerves,” she said. “Not just Sam’s. I don’t know how long I can go on with somebody watching me like I was a baby.”

  “Well, try to look at it as a unique experience,” I said. “Anyway, it’s my turn, now. I thought we’d visit some retirement villages and homes and see if this Idola Marsh turns up. If you don’t want to go, I can take you back to Sandy’s place, of course. I don’t think anybody else knows about it. You’d be safe there.”

  She shook her head. “I’d rather go with you. It gives me something to do.”

  For the rest of the afternoon we visited retirement homes, retirement villages, and nursing establishments in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. At each I explained I was a nephew, Fred, from out of town, and I’d been told my Aunt Idola was a resident. At each I was told there was no Idola registered.

  The last was a seedy frame structure in Algiers, where a couple of bums huddled over a paper bag on the street corner, and bottles littered the roadside ditch. Before, I’d been sure we weren’t being followed, and so I’d left Carol in the car. This time, though I saw no follower, I took her in with me to get her away from the local street life. The frumpy woman who met us seemed not to care whether Aunt Idola was there or not.

  “Never heard of her,” she mumbled and went back to the National Enquirer. I noted the flaking walls and a heat level that told me that either the central air was about to go belly up or the establishment was saving money on electricity bills, and I said a prayer of thanks that I didn’t have to see the human wrecks who were sentenced to wither away inside this place.

  “She’s come into some money,” I said. “Quite a substantial amount. I’m her only heir, of course, but they say she has to sign some papers. Uncle Felix was very well off, you know.”

  The woman looked up at me from under heavily penciled brows.

  “Rich, you say? What was her name?”

  “Idola Marsh.”

  The woman went to a card file and thumbed through it. Finally she shrugged.

  “Ain’t here,” she said.

  “And you never heard of her.”

  “That’s what I told you.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “I guess all the money will go to Uncle Felix’s cat.”

  I walked back out into the sunlight, Carol at my side, hoping against hope that the woman would call after me. But it wasn’t to be.

  “You really are a devious son-of-a-bitch,” Carol said. “All these lies.”

  “That’s what I get paid to do,” I said, as we walked down the sidewalk toward where a bum teetered on the edge of the ditch, eyes on my car.

  “I’m not paying you to do that,” she giggled. “In fact, I’m not paying you anything. To speak of.”

  The bum moved toward us, hand out.

  “Wanna share somma the stuff?”

  I put my key into the passenger door.

  His claw came out to touch my arm.

  “I said you wanna help a poor man an’ share somma stuff?”

  “What stuff?” Carol asked as I opened the door.

  “Stuff back there,” he said. “Hining.”

  “Hiding?” Carol asked. “I’m sorry.” She reached to shut the door but I held it with my hand.

  “What stuff is hiding?” I asked the man.

  He smiled a toothless grin, and saliva leaked down from the corner of his mouth. His clothes stank of cheap wine and urine, and his eyes were glazed over, and yet he was telling us he had seen something.

  “Gimme something for my trouble,” he managed.

  I reached into my pocket and removed a five-dollar bill from my billfold.

  “This is yours if you tell me exactly what you mean.”

  He shrugged. “ ’Kay. Back there.” He pointed toward the rear of the car. “The stuff. Where your friend put it.”

  I felt the blood leave my face and I turned to Carol.

  “Get out of the car,” I said. “Very slowly. Don’t make any unnecessary movement.”

  She frowned. “What the hell?”

  “Do what I say no
w.”

  She sensed the urgency in my voice and, moving a muscle at a time, slowly swung her legs back onto the pavement and, one hand in mine, let me pull her into a standing position, away from the vehicle. I turned around, looking for the bum.

  He was already bending over near the trunk.

  “Get out of there,” I yelled.

  He was reaching now, under the bumper, toward the exhaust.

  I had a choice to make. There was no way I could get to him. I shoved Carol into the ditch and fell on top of her.

  A wave of heat branded my back and a roar of sound hammered me into silence. I was conscious of her body under me and the stink of fetid earth, and then the odor of burning gasoline. Fear flooded through me and I tried to rise but nothing worked.

  So, I thought, this is how it ends.

  CHAPTER 16

  I was out a few seconds but they seemed like eternity. Afterward, events flashed past like scenes in a film: crawling out of the ditch, lugging Carol after me, feeling the heat on one side of my body and the comparative cool of afternoon on the other. Sirens. Monster faces peering down from stalklike necks, consuming us with their smiles.

  “… got a gun in his belt. Must be a cop.”

  “… must’ve broke his arm, look how he can’t use it, don’t touch him, wait for the ambulance …”

  Dragging myself to my feet and turning to face the fire that once was my car.

  “My God, Micah, what happened?”

  “It was a bomb,” I heard myself say, and wondered how I could be so calm. “Somebody was watching us. When we went inside they stuck it against the gas tank with a magnet. It worked with a mercury switch. It just takes a little motion to go off.”

  Wavering like a bum, feeling her arms around me, steadying …

  The bum …

  I dropped my eyes. Nobody could have survived.

  “It’s a mercy,” the CIA man said, looking over the ruin of the Saigon hospital. “Most of ’em wouldn’t have recovered anyway. No legs, no arms, balls and dicks shot off. Look at it as a mercy.”

  I was thinking of somebody else then, and another smoldering car from forty years ago.