Ashes From A Burning Corpse Read online

  I took a brief walk around, wondering what else I might uncover.

  Even this late in the afternoon, I saw black women dispensing flowers and homemade foods to grocers. The black people seemed to all know each other, their own little colonial and subjugated community. Near the shops, down a little from the administrative buildings, there was a brigade of chauffeurs, every one of them black because white men didn’t take these jobs. They wore sharply starched white uniforms, complete with jackets and ties in the eighty-five-degree heat. The drivers waited patiently on the right side of a fleet of new Fords, Chryslers and Buicks while their white employers—mostly British, American, Canadian and a few South African—shopped, chatted in the shade or dined. They stood in the crushing sunlight as their employers dined on cold meats and sipped iced drinks under ceiling fans.

  I arrived back at my hotel. My room was stuffy so I went back to the lobby. Then that evening, I sat in the dining room, nursed a couple of drinks and picked at a dinner. I missed my wife and daughter. I missed New York, even with the wartime blackouts. I missed the United States.

  But work was work. There was a murder to cover. I was already starting to ask myself some odd questions about why everyone seemed so anxious to walk the little Frenchman up to the gallows and hang him.

  I soon learned that I was not the only one entertaining such seditious thoughts.

  CHAPTER 8

  Seven scorching days after arrival in the Bahamas, I filed my first dispatch to my editors in New York. I wrote about the arrest of Alfred de Marigny and his protestations of innocence. I wrote about Sir Harry and who he had been, and how he had obtained the position in life that he had been in when he was murdered.

  Despite speculation on how and why he might have been murdered, I tried to stay away from those aspects of the crime. For the time being, I left the speculation for other scribblers. There were plenty of them who seized the opportunity.

  That morning, Lady Oakes had departed to the United States, taking her husband’s body for burial. The plan was to fly to Palm Beach and then board a train to Maine to return Harry to his boyhood home town. But therein lay an odd complication and a new set of rumors sweeping Nassau. Apparently, once the private aircraft carrying the body to the United States was aloft, a call came from Nassau demanding that the aircraft return. The pilot complied. Thereupon, according to the local gossips, it had been returned to Deputy Commissioner Pemberton and subjected to a new autopsy, or maybe even an initial autopsy. Or something. Then it had been shipped north again.

  This bizarre turn-around was done in the utmost secrecy. No one “unofficial” was supposed to know. I only knew because I’d overheard a couple of housekeepers talking in the hotel lobby. Apparently, some aircraft workers had seen the corpse return—they recognized the expensive casket and knew from the weight of it that it still had an inhabitant—and chattered to friends. Other eyes and ears on the street had seen the strange cargo arrive at the morgue a second time and then take off again.

  What the hell was this all about? Wasn’t the case strange enough already without medical examiners treating a corpse like a yo-yo? I started to ask a few questions. No one who knew much wanted to say much. Nothing unusual there.

  Then there was an even more macabre wrinkle: Nassau had already ordered, and received, a special sturdy hemp rope to be used for the hanging of de Marigny once he was convicted. I’d never seen a place in such a rush to put a man on the gallows. Why not just skip the trial completely?

  That evening, a thirst was upon me that matched my curiosity and my distaste for much that was going on. I had already chosen my favorite watering hole, Dirty Dick’s.

  I took off for a stroll to the bar. I followed some narrow passageways and twisting alleys between the buildings that led to less salubrious dwellings behind the pretty pastel-colored facades that fronted Bay Street. There was a scent of garbage and sewage that was distinctive of Nassau, as it was foul and spoiled and yet had the hint of rotting jasmine or roses. The stench was strong by the entrances to these side conduits. This being mid-summer, I still had plenty of daylight.

  I looked down a few alleys. More local charm.

  Gulls picked at trash, rats roamed in the late sunlight, and scavenging black crabs clicked along jagged off-kilter flagstones. I found the contrast between the exteriors of Bay Street and what lay just a few paces beyond it more than a little ironic. I’d covered crime for twenty-five years. It was my beat. I was under no more illusions here than anywhere else. Most of Nassau’s fortunes and more notable families had dark histories, pasts that were as questionable as their finances. No one chose to live here. This was a place of convenience as much as a flag of convenience on the stern of a suspicious ship. Much like the robber-barons of the United States of the 1890’s, only time could sanctify some wealth.

  At the far eastern end of Bay Street, within blue-and-silver reflections and the fresh salty scent of the harbor, there was a statue of Queen Victoria, dour and unforgiving as ever. Beyond there stood the Bahamian Assembly building with its white pillars, pink-washed walls, and green shutters. Before it was an open area with a massive sprawling cotton tree that cast welcome shade over a tidy town square.

  This tree stood in the administrative center of the capital. On one side was the Post Office; on another, Fire Brigade headquarters and the Central Police Station—green wooden verandah, white shutters, Victorian police lamp with blue glass. Next to this stood the Supreme Court, another impressive old building, but smaller than the Assembly House.

  Beyond that, mercifully, there was the hotel that hosted Dirty Dick’s. I ducked under a maroon canopy that led to the street. I walked in, parched. Never mind one drink, I was ready for a triple.

  The air was cooler, thanks to a series of fans, including a big one sweeping the ceiling. The walls were white. The beams across the ceiling were dark wood. There was a sea of round tables and chairs of the same dark finish as the beams. There were maybe two dozen people drinking, mostly men. Those seated at the tables were white. The staff was black. A black gentleman with a sweaty brow and a formal dark red coat gave me a bow as I entered.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said in a lilting accent.

  “Thank you,” I said. “To you, also.”

  He seemed surprised, pleased, by the response.

  “Welcome back,” he said.

  I gave him an appreciative nod.

  Heads turned toward me. I went to the bar. Conveniently, there was a space toward the near end. There was a crisp mirror behind the bar. Where I stood, there was also a glass case where the best Cuban and Dominican cigars were on display. I reached to my own pocket, found a pack of Chesterfields and my lighter. I lit up.

  A barman appeared in front of me. His service jacket bore the name, Charles, green stitched lettering on deep burgundy.

  “Rum and Coke,” I said. “A mighty big one. On ice.”

  “Double shot of rum, sir?” he asked.

  “Definitely. Thank you,” I said. “You’re a mind reader.”

  He gave me a wide smile. “Right away, sir,” he said.

  He went to work. His selected a double-sized glass. His hand came to rest above a bottle of Bacardi’s. Cuba’s best. He made my drink and presented it to me.

  “I haven’t had enough money changed yet. American currency is okay?” I asked.

  He said it was. I put two dollars on the bar. “Keep it,” I said.

  He banked it fast into a jar.

  I sipped. I sipped a second time and felt the excitement of the cold bubbling Coke and the double shot of booze hitting my throat and stomach. Then I heard a voice from the other end of the bar.

  “Alan!” someone barked. “Hey! Alan!”

  I had to lean forward. I looked to my left. I saw a ruddy-faced silver-haired barrel-chested gentleman in a tropical seersucker suit. White shirt, blue and red regimental tie. He flashed me a wide familiar smile. My friend withdrew from the gentlemen with whom he’d been speaking and walked
toward me, cutting behind the other drinkers.

  “Alan! I’ll be damned!” he said. “I should have known you’d be here!”

  Raymond Schindler. Ray was one of the greatest detectives in the world, and probably the most famous. He lumbered toward me, his hand outstretched. He stood around six feet but looked bigger: a jolly genial giant of a man.

  “Ray! Well, well!” I said, happy to see a friend, particularly this one in this place.

  He pumped my hand and it turned into a clasp of the elbow. He was a smooth, ruddy man in his early sixties, graying hair, with an impressive paunch from the better life,

  “Come over here and sit down,” he said, jerking his head toward an empty table. “Let me get away from these bores and poseurs,” he said in lowered tones. “I want to know exactly why you’re here.”

  “I might ask you the same,” I answered.

  Ray already had me by the arm and was guiding me along, dismissing his previous partners with a curt wave. “That’s what bars are for, aren’t they?” he asked.

  I grabbed my hard-earned drink and followed.

  “It’s one of their functions,” I allowed. “And I think it’s obvious why were both here.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said. “But the Devil is in the details, isn’t it? Come. Talk.”

  We went to a table toward the front. It was in a corner so we could watch the door and the saloon activity at the same time. Mr. Schindler put a five-pound note on the table. Our glasses were not allowed to be empty, the ice not allowed to melt. Someone turned on a radio. Bing Crosby warbled.

  Ray and I had known each other since New York in the 1920’s. We had worked on some of the same cases, he as a private detective, I as a reporter, particularly when I was with the Evening Graphic. We were kindred souls: men who had created our destinies in the tumult of the America of the first three and a half decades of the Twentieth Century.

  Ray had grown up poor in a one-horse town in Oswego County in upper New York State near Lake Ontario and the Canadian border. He hadn’t had much of a formal education, same as I, but had set out early to escape the rural doldrums and make his fortune. He had worked as a typewriter salesman, then went to California as a prospector when he was about twenty, ironically much like Harry Oakes. Ray had made himself some luck, struck a modest amount of gold, and for five years operated a small gold mine in the northern part of the state. He did okay, mined the gold out, but never amassed the fortune that he was hoping for or that Harry Oakes had eventually attained. Ray sold out his mining interests and went to San Francisco, arriving on April 19, 1906, the day after the big quake.

  Nosing around for a job, he struck up a friendship with William J. Burns, who owned a private eye agency in San Francisco. He went to work for Billy Burns personally, investigating insurance claims to see if they were quake damage, fire damage, or bookkeeper lightning.

  Four years later, Burns sent him to New York. He opened a chain of Burns offices, and was quickly in the headlines, cracking cases that the cops couldn’t solve. There was the murder of a ten-year-old girl named Marie Smith in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The year was 1911 and it was Raymond’s first capital case. The cops claimed a Negro named Black Diamond, a local troublemaker, had assaulted and killed her. Ray wasn’t buying it: he didn’t like official stories any more than I did. The cops were incompetent. Ray nailed a drifter in a rooming house and got a confession.

  The next year, he cracked the Arthur Warren Waite murder case. Waite was a bad apple dentist in New York City who shared his luxury apartment on Riverside Drive with his wife’s retired parents. His father-in-law, John Peck, had built up a sizeable fortune after a career as a pharmacist in the Middle West. Waite longed to inherit as much of the money as possible.

  Neither parent seemed in poor health. It occurred to Waite to give nature a helping hand by causing Peck to ingest harmful bacteria which would trigger an entirely convincing onset of a serious disease, followed by a severe physical decline and ultimate death, without anyone being held responsible.

  Waite succeeded with his wife’s mother, then couldn’t quite knock off the older man. He boosted the poison to arsenic instead of ordinary bacteria. Schindler got involved and Waite eventually traded his dentist’s chair for the electric one at Sing Sing.

  The newspapers made Raymond a hero, which he was, not to Dr. Waite but to everyone else.

  In 1912, Ray left Burns and opened his own agency, R.C. Schindler and Company at 7 West 44th Street. Now, two decades later, Raymond Schindler was the country’s leading private sleuth. His specialties were jewel theft and high-society blackmail, but he would entertain any case that was legal. He celebrated his own fame as much as the tabloids did. He liked posh places and smart people. He made much money and spent oodles of it. His principal client these days was Anna Gould, daughter of the notorious robber baron Jay Gould. Schindler currently lived on the Gould estate in a New York suburb. His residence was a guest cottage that was so lavish that it had its own bowling alley and swimming pool.

  Now, here in Nassau, Raymond Schindler was still savoring the peak of his career. He was a New York personality wherever he went. He was a party giver and a club guy. He had a reserved table at the “21 Club” and The Stork Club, hosted by our charming old bootlegger pal from Oklahoma, Sherman Billingsly. He was president of the Adventurers Club of New York, the president of the International Investigators, a fellow of the American Geological Society, the British Detectives Association and the American Polar Society. It went on forever. Or it could have.

  We travelled in different circles, the truth of it was, even though each of us was often on the clean edge of some dirty doings. And yet we were close friends. Our friendship fed off each other in the best possible way.

  By the time 1943 had arrived, after a quarter century, I had seen close-up maybe a thousand cases. I was a beer sort of guy. Ray, on the other hand, was a champagne sort of guy, even back during Prohibition. He worked on big cases. Maybe fifteen or twenty a year.

  So here was where we helped each other, the reason we often talked by phone. I had the street experience. There were few things I hadn’t seen, including many that I wished I hadn’t. Ray would phone me with a case and tell me about it and ask if it rang any bells, where I thought a suspect might be lurking, what threads of investigation to follow. I’d tell him what I felt. He would consider my ideas. Sometimes my tips and theories helped him, sometimes they didn’t. But he was always grateful.

  When he was close to resolving an investigation, he’d get back to me. I’d get the inside story. In return, I’d write it up. I’d stick to the facts, but I made sure Ray looked good because, after all, he was a pal and he deserved to look good.

  He was also a well-read man. He liked books and he liked writers. He always wanted to talk about books, the theatre and sports. He wanted to know who I knew, who I’d read, if I’d been to the big Dempsey or Joe Louis fight or if I’d been out to the Polo Grounds to watch Hubbell and Bill Terry or to Yankee Stadium to see Ruth or Joe DiMaggio. We talked each other’s language.

  There was one final aspect to it, strange as it sounds: mentor, protégé. Ray was twenty years old than I, almost exactly. I was the kid reporter, and he was the experienced teacher, or at least that’s how it had started out. Now perhaps we were equals, but the two decades of age difference still loomed between us. I always listened and was ready to learn. He was like an uncle with consistently solid advice.

  Now, here in Nassau Town, at our small round table in Dirty Dick’s, he pushed back his jacket sleeve from a powerful forearm and wrist. He lifted his perspiring glass with an equally sweaty hand.

  “Here’s to you, Alan,” he said. “Congratulations, my young friend.”

  I laughed. “For what? Arriving here safely?”

  “I keep an eye on you. You’re a bigshot best-selling author,” he said.

  I was flattered. “I got lucky,” I said.

  “We all hit luck from time to time. Good l
uck, bad luck. It’s like being dealt cards. It’s how you play things after your hand is dealt. Passport To Treason. That’s the name of your book, right?”

  “It is,” he said. As usual, Ray was correct. I’d spent 1942 writing a non-fiction expose on Nazi German espionage in the United States leading up to the current world war. The book had been published early this year, 1943. Then the great voice of American news radio, Walter Winchell, my old acquaintance from The Evening Graphic, had picked up the book and ballyhooed it on his radio show as a headline.

  “A book every good American should read!” he breathlessly proclaimed.

  Within a week, the stores were sold out. The publisher, McBride & Company, was falling over itself to reprint, and signed me fast to write another big spy exposé. Meanwhile, Passport to Treason hit the New York Times Best Seller list in May.

  It was gratifying. It was more than gratifying. I’d gone from a magazine editor-writer to a best-selling author overnight. Overnight, that is, after many years of pounding true crime beats in Trenton, Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

  “You deserve the success,” he said. “Got another one in the pipeline?”

  “Damned right,” I said.

  “What’s it called?”

  “It doesn’t have a title yet.”

  “What’s it about? Criminals? Spies? Tell all.”

  “It’s about our other enemy, the Imperial Japanese. Spy rings in the United States leading up to the war. From San Francisco to New York.”

  “Ah! Incendiary,” he said with a wink. “Sounds good. Should do well with our crazy wartime mentality.”

  “I’ve got a few nibbles from Hollywood already,” I said.

  “You know some producers out there, don’t you?” he asked.

  “A few. I wrote and narrated a radio show on NBC a few years ago. A series called Wanted: Armed and Dangerous! True crime. Criminals at large. I was the radio voice. It was produced by a man named Aaron Fairstein.”