“And the two guns?” Leisure asked.
“The .45 was mine,” Massie said. “The .32 Colt was Lord’s…it’s missing. I don’t know what became of it.”
Kahahawai had been killed with a .32.
I asked, “You prepared the fake summons, Mrs. Fortescue?”
She gestured gracefully again. “Yes, and I would have preferred to use a typewriter on the warrant, but the machine was at Thalia’s. So I hand-printed it—‘Territorial Police, Major Ross Commanding, Summons to Appear—Kahahawai, Joe’…putting his last name first made it seem more official. Tommie provided a gold seal from a diploma of his…”
“Chemical warfare,” Massie said, “at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. The diploma wasn’t of any use to me, so I just snipped off the gold seal and Mrs. Fortescue glued it on the paper.”
Mrs. Fortescue sipped her coffee, then said thoughtfully, “But the piece of paper still looked…insufficient somehow. Lying on my desk was that morning’s paper…I spied a paragraph that seemed about the right size, clipped it, and pasted it on the warrant. It looked better.”
Leisure asked, “Were you aware of the implicit irony in the words of that clipping?”
“No,” she said with a faint smile. “It was an accident of fate, the philosophical nature of that paragraph…but those words have been so widely quoted, I can reel them off to you now, if you like: ‘Life is a mysterious and exciting affair and anything can be a thrill if you know how to look for it, and what to do with opportunity when it comes.’”
Darrow, Leisure and I exchanged glances again.
“The next mornin’,” Massie said with a grim smile, “we all had a laugh over it, at breakfast.”
Leisure asked, “You ate breakfast before you went out on your…mission?”
“I cooked up some eggs for the sailors,” Mrs. Fortescue said, “but they didn’t seem to have any appetite. All they wanted was coffee. I suggested we leave, so we’d be at the courthouse by eight o’clock.”
“We were wearing civilian clothes,” Massie explained, “and I had a chauffeur’s cap and dark glasses on, as a disguise. I gave Lord the .45—he was going to watch the back entrance—and he and Jones and I got in the rented Buick and drove to the courthouse. Mrs. Fortescue followed in her roadster.”
“I parked in front of the courthouse,” she said. “Why not? I had nothing to conceal. Tommie parked in front of the post office, nearby; the two sailors got out, Tommie staying behind the wheel of the parked sedan. I left my car and gave Jones the picture of the native I’d cut from the paper; he already had the sham summons. Jones went to the main entrance, to await our man, and I returned to my car. Mrs. Whitmore noticed me and stopped and we had a friendly little chat.”
“Perhaps a minute after Mrs. Whitmore went inside,” Massie said, picking it up, “we saw two natives crossin’ the courthouse grounds. One of them was a little guy, but the other one was big, heavy—Kahahawai, wearin’ a blue shirt and a brown cap. I pulled up the sedan alongside the curb just as Lord was approachin’ the two natives. He showed Kahahawai the summons, and Kahahawai wanted the other fella to come along, but Jones grabs him and says, ‘Just you,’ and shoves Kahahawai in back of the car. Jones got in after him and we headed out King Street, toward Waikiki.”
“I saw Lord coming around the side of the courthouse,” Mrs. Fortescue said. “The sedan was already out of sight when I picked him up and…”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” Darrow said. “But I need to back things up a tad, to ask Tommie here a few pertinent questions.”
Why was Darrow cutting in, just when it was getting good? Just when we were about to find out what had happened behind the closed doors of the house on Kolowalu Street that resulted in Joseph Kahahawai’s demise, courtesy of a .32 slug under the left nipple?
“Your mother-in-law indicates,” Darrow was saying to Massie, “that you suffered a mental strain due not only to the heinous crime committed upon your sweet wife, but to these foul rumors flying about.”
Massie didn’t understand this interruption, either. There was confusion in his voice as he said, “Yes, sir.”
“Did you seek any medical help? For your restlessness, your insomnia…”
“I talked to several doctors, who seemed concerned about my physical state.”
“And your mental state?”
“Well, I was advised by Dr. Porter to take Thalia and leave the islands, for both our sakes…but I was adamant that my wife’s honor be cleared, and that flight from this island would be seen as an admission that these slanders were of substance….”
Darrow, behind a tent of his hands, was nodding, eyes narrowed.
“If I might continue,” Massie said, clearly wanting to get on with his story and get it out of the way, “we arrived at the house on Kolowalu Street and—”
“Details, at this point, won’t be necessary,” Darrow said, with a wave of the hand.
I looked at Leisure and he looked back at me; I wonder which of us had the more startled expression.
“Why bother, right now, with the sordid particulars—I think we all know what happened within that house,” Darrow said. “I think it’s obvious whose hand held the weapon that took Joseph Kahahawai’s life.”
“It is?” Massie said, with a puzzled frown.
“Well, it can’t be this lovely lady,” Darrow said with a gracious gesture. “She is too refined, too dignified, too much a picture of motherhood touched by tragedy. And it could not have been either of those two sailor boys, because after all, that would be murder, plain and simple, wouldn’t it?”
“It would?” Massie asked.
“It most certainly would. We’re very fortunate that neither of them pulled the trigger, because you, as an officer, enlisting their aid, well, that would amount to incitement.”
Mrs. Fortescue wasn’t following any of this. Massie, however, had turned even paler. Whiter than milk, though not nearly so healthy.
Darrow was smiling, but it was a smile that frowned. “Only one person could possibly have pulled that trigger—the man with the motive, the man whose wife’s good name had been defiled even as had she herself been so woefully defiled.”
Massie squinted. “What…what do you think happened in that house?”
“What I would imagine happened,” Darrow said, “was that Joseph Kahahawai, confronted by the righteousness of the man he had wronged, blurted a confession, and in so doing, sparked an inevitable reaction from that righteous wronged man, in fact provoked an insane act…”
“You’re not suggesting I construct a story…” Massie began.
Darrow’s eyes flared. “Certainly not! If you don’t remember shooting Kahahawai, in fact if everything is a sort of haze, that would only make sense, under these circumstances.”
Darrow clapped his hands together, and we all jumped a little.
“Well, now,” he said, “I certainly don’t mean to put words in your mouth…. Why don’t we come back to the events within that house, at a later date…tomorrow, let’s say, after you’ve had a chance to collect your thoughts…and perhaps speak with Mrs. Fortescue, and your two sailor friends, and compare your recollections—not to come up with a unified story, of course, but rather to see if, among you, your collective memory might be jogged.”
Massie was nodding. Mrs. Fortescue was quietly smiling; she got it—now, she got it.
“Now,” Darrow said, rising, “let’s go meet those sailor boys, shall we? Let’s just get acquainted. I don’t think I’ll want to question them about the incident…not just yet. Then perhaps we can have a bite of late lunch in the mess hall, Mrs. Fortescue, and if you’re up to it, you can relate your adventures with the police.”
Those “adventures,” of course, had to do with the attempt the conspirators had made to dump Kahahawai’s sheet-wrapped naked body; they’d been caught by the cops with the corpse in the backseat of the rental Buick on the way to Hanauma Bay.
It seemed the other native, the “l
ittle guy” who’d been walking across the Judiciary Building grounds with Joe Kahahawai when the fake summons was served, was Joe’s cousin Edward Ulii, who had been suspicious about Joe getting shoved into that Buick, and immediately reported it as a possible abduction. When a radio car spotted the Buick speeding toward Koko Head, shades drawn, Mrs. Fortescue’s jig was up.
“I’d be delighted, Mr. Darrow,” Mrs. Fortescue said.
And soon we were walking along the old gun deck of the cruiser, past empty weapon ports; up ahead Darrow was walking along with his arm around Mrs. Fortescue, Massie following like a puppy.
“This may be the most straightforward case of felony murder I ever encountered,” Leisure whispered to me. “Premeditation all the way…”
I let out a short laugh. “Why do you think C.D. pulled that temporary insanity rabbit out of his hat?”
“I have to admit I was shocked,” Leisure said, shaking his head. “He stopped just short of suborning perjury. I’ve never witnessed a more blatant display of questionable ethics in my career.”
“Come to Chicago,” I advised. “We got plenty more where that came from.”
“You’re not offended?”
“Hardly.” I nodded up toward Massie and his mother-in-law as they walked with Darrow. “Do you think those two misguided souls deserve life in prison?”
“They probably deserve a good thrashing, but…no.”
“Neither does C.D. He’s just doing what it takes to give them the best goddamn defense he can muster.”
We followed echoing laughter to where Jones and Lord were playing a spirited round of Ping-Pong in a room that could have handled ten times as many cots as the two unmade ones on its either side. No guard was watching them. Both were short, muscular, good-looking gobs in their early twenties.
Jones was a wiry wiseguy with his brown hair slicked back on a square head, and Lord a curly-headed Dick Powell type with a massive build for a little guy. Seeing us enter, they stopped their game and doffed their seamen’s hats.
Mrs. Fortescue rather grandly said, “Allow me to introduce Mr. Clarence Darrow.”
There were handshakes all around, and Darrow made our introductions as well, and informed the sailors he wasn’t here to talk in depth about the case just yet, merely to say hello.
“Boy, are we glad to see you,” Jones said. “I feel sorry for the other side!”
“It’s an honor meeting you, sir,” Lord said.
“Show them your memory book!” Mrs. Fortescue urged Jones.
“Sure thing, missus!” Jones said, and dragged out a thick scrapbook from under one of the unmade cots. “I just pasted in some more today.”
Lord and Massie were off to one side of the room, lighting up cigarettes, chatting, laughing, kidding each other. I found a chair to sit on while Leisure leaned against a bulkhead, silently shaking his head.
And Clarence Darrow was sitting on the edge of the cot next to the grinning Jones, who turned the pages of the scrapbook, already overflowing with clippings, while Mrs. Fortescue stood with hands fig-leafed before her, watching with delight as her savior and one of her servants conferred.
“I ain’t never got my name in the papers before,” the proud sailor said.
I wondered if sports star Joe Kahahawai had kept a scrapbook, too; he’d made the papers lots of times. Mostly the sports page. He’d make it again, in the coming weeks.
Then it was pretty likely to taper off.
7
You might have found the Alexander Young Hotel—a massive block-long brownstone with two six-story wings bookending a long, four-story midsection—in downtown Milwaukee or maybe Cleveland. Like so many buildings built around the turn of the century, it straddled eras—stubbornly unembellished, neither modern nor old-fashioned, the Young was a commercial hotel whose only concession to being located in paradise was a few potted palm plants and occasional halfhearted vases of colorful flowers in an otherwise no-nonsense lobby.
The reporters were waiting when we arrived midafternoon, and they swarmed us in a pack as we moved steadily toward the elevators in the company of the hotel manager. The mustached little man had met us at the curb not only to greet us, but to let C.D. and Leisure know the numbers of the suites where they would find their wives.
“I’ve spoken to my clients,” Darrow said to the reporters as we moved along, “and have heard enough to decide upon my line of defense. And that’s all I have to say about the subject at present.”
The overlapping requests for further clarification were pretty much unintelligible, but the words “unwritten law” were in there a good deal.
Darrow stopped suddenly, and the reporters tumbled into each other, like an auto pileup.
“I’m down here to defend four people,” he said, “who have been accused of a crime that I do not think is a crime.”
Then he pressed on, while the reporters—stalled momentarily by that cryptic comment—lagged behind as the old boy deftly stepped onto a waiting elevator. And Leisure and I were right there with him, while the hotel manager stayed out, holding back the press like a traffic cop.
One newshound yelled, “The Hawaiian legislature must agree with you—they’ve just made rape a capital offense.”
“And isn’t that a magnificent piece of lawmaking,” Darrow said bitterly. “Now a man committing a rape knows he’ll receive the same punishment if he goes ahead and kills his victim, too. He might as well go all the way, and get rid of the evidence!”
The elevator operator swung the door shut, and the cage began to rise.
Slumped next to me, Darrow shook his big head, the comma of gray hair flopping on his forehead. “That goddamn Lindbergh case,” he muttered.
“What about the Lindbergh case, C.D.?” I asked. I’d spent enough time on that crime to have a sort of proprietary attitude.
“It got this wave of blood thirst going among the populace. Whoever snatched that poor infant opened the door for capital punishment for kidnappers…and how many kidnap victims are going to die because of that?”
Ruby Darrow met us at the door of the suite; her smile of greeting turned immediately to one of concern.
“Clarence, you look terribly tired…you simply must get some rest.”
But Darrow would hear none of it. He invited us into the outer sitting area of the suite, where again the Hawaiian influence was nil: dark furnishings, oriental rug, pale walls with wooden trim. We might have been in a suite at the Congress on Michigan Avenue, though the seductive breeze drifting in the open windows indicated we weren’t.
“These were waiting at the desk for you,” Ruby said testily, and handed him several envelopes.
He sorted through them, as if this were his morning mail at home, tossed them on a small table by the door. Then he removed his baggy suit coat and flung it over a chair; Leisure and I took his lead and removed our suit coats, but draped them more carefully over a coffee table by a comfortable-looking sofa whose floral pattern was the only vaguely Island touch in the suite.
C.D. settled into an easy chair, put his feet up on a settee, and began making a cigarette. Leisure and I took the couch as a clearly distressed Ruby, shaking her head, disappeared off into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her, not slamming it, exactly.
“Ruby thinks I’m going to die someday,” Darrow said. “I may just fool her. George, you’ve been remarkably silent since Pearl Harbor. Might I assume you’re displeased with me?”
Leisure sat up; it was the kind of sofa you sank down into, so this took effort. “I’m your co-counsel. I’m here to assist, and follow your lead.”
“But…”
“But,” Leisure said, “taking Tommie Massie by the hand like that, and steering him into a temporary insanity plea—”
“George, we have four clients who quite obviously caused the death of Joseph Kahahawai due to their felonious conspiracy. They face a second-degree murder charge, and a reasonable argument could be made that they’re lucky the grand jury didn’t
slap them with murder in the first.”
“Agreed.”
“So we have no choice: we have to prove extenuating circumstances. What extenuating circumstances avail themselves to us? Well, there’s no question that Tommie Massie’s stress-ravaged mental condition is our best, perhaps our only, recourse.”
“I certainly wouldn’t want to try to prove Mrs. Fortescue insane,” Leisure said with a smirk. “She’s about as deliberate and self-controlled an individual as I’ve ever met.”
“And those two sailors aren’t nuts,” I said. “They’re just idiots.”
Darrow nodded. “And idiocy is no defense…but temporary insanity is. All four were in agreement to commit a felony—kidnapping Kahahawai, the use of firearms to threaten and intimidate their victim…”
“No question about it,” I said, “Tommie’s the best shooter for the jury to pin its sympathy on.”
“I agree,” Leisure said, and he whapped the back of one hand rhythmically into the open palm of the other, as he made his point. “But the felony murder concept still prevails—all four are equally guilty, no matter who fired the shot.”
“No!” Darrow said. “If Tommie Massie, while temporarily insane, fired the shot, he is not guilty…and if Tommie is not guilty, then none of them are, because there is no crime! The felony evaporates and so does the concept of felony murder right along with it.”
Leisure’s eyes were open wide; then he sighed and began nodding. “Obviously these clumsy fools had no intention of murdering Kahahawai.”
“They’re as much victims in this as Kahahawai,” Darrow said gravely.
“I wouldn’t go quite that far, C.D.,” I said. “Mrs. Fortescue and the boys aren’t in the ground.”
The only sound in the room was the gentle whir of a ceiling fan.
“I have misgivings myself,” Darrow admitted, sighing heavily. “After all, I’ve never employed the insanity defense….”
“Sure you did, C.D.,” I said. Was his memory completely gone? How could he forget his most famous trial?
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