Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 09 (8 page)

And we left the admiral to ponder Darrow’s words.

Our limo driver remained our chaperon as we were led to that obsolete, decommissioned, rundown old cruiser sitting high and dry on a mudflat in Pearl Harbor, the U.S.S.
Alton.
The driver turned us over to the two armed Marine sentries at the mouth of the seventy-five-foot gangplank that separated the ship and the shore. One of the sentries escorted us aboard, leading the way as we danced across to the rickety wooden gangplanks tune.

Above this screaky melody, Leisure managed to be heard, whispering to Darrow, “The admiral gives quite a ringing endorsement of lynch law, wouldn’t you say?”

But if racial champion Darrow was expected to provide a biting condemnation of Stirling (now that our host was absent), he disappointed. Well, he disappointed Leisure. I knew C.D. well enough to have predicted he’d say something like: “Admiral Stirling is a Navy man, and a Southerner, and his statements are naturally prejudiced.”

Which is exactly what he said.

Our Marine escort led us to the top deck. “The
Alton’s
used as a general mess hall,” he said over the echo of our feet on metal, “and Officers’ Club.”

He led us into a wardroom, in the stern of the ship, saying, “Mrs. Fortescue and Lt. Massie are staying in the captain’s cabin, just through here.”

We were moving past a large mess table where a number of officers watched us with curiosity, several obviously recognizing Darrow as he shambled by. The interior of the ship, at least judging by this mess hall, was nothing like its sorry exterior: the walls were mahogany paneled, with framed oil paintings of admirals, display cases of trophies, and shining silver ornamentation.

Darrow asked, “The captain was so kind as to vacate his quarters for my clients?”

“No, sir—Captain Wortman lives in Honolulu with his wife. This stateroom is usually reserved for visiting admirals.”

Or very special guests, like defendants in murder trials.

Our escort knocked at the door, saying, “Mrs. Fortescue? Your guests are here.”

“Show them in,” a cultured, Southern, feminine voice responded.

The Marine opened the door and Darrow stepped in first, followed by Leisure and myself. The door clanged shut behind us, as if a reminder we’d entered a jail cell of sorts; but what a hell of a jail cell this was.

Mahogany paneled, spacious, with a big round mahogany table at the center of the room, this might have been a first-class cabin on the
Malolo
—dark attractive furnishings including wardrobe, chest of drawers, a single bed. Here and there, colorful Hawaiian flowers in vases and bowls gave a woman’s touch to these resolutely male quarters.

And greeting us like an elegant hostess was Mrs. Grace (née Granville) Fortescue, her hand extended to Darrow as if she expected him to kiss it.

So he did.

“What a pleasure and honor it is to meet you, Mr. Darrow,” she said.

Her Southern accent was as refined as she was: tall, slim, Grace Fortescue might have been hostessing a tea in her cherry-colored suit and jaunty matching hat, pearls looped around her rather long, slender, somewhat créped neck, single matching pearls dangling from her earlobes. Her dark blond hair (the same color as Thalia’s) was cut short, in a youthful, stylish bob, and she might have been as young as forty, or as old as (approaching) sixty—it was hard to say; but she was definitely at that age where a woman is no longer pretty but handsome, and despite her bright eyes (the same light blue as Isabel’s), there was no discounting a certain drawn, weary look to these finely carved features. There were lines in this haughty face etched by recent events.

Darrow introduced Leisure, and Mrs. Fortescue warmly offered him her hand—although he merely clasped it, not kissed it—and then Darrow turned to me and said, “And this is the young man we discussed, on the telephone.”

“The young detective Evalyn recommended!” she said with a lovely smile.

“Nathan Heller,” Darrow said, nodding, as I took the hand Mrs. Fortescue offered. I didn’t kiss it either.

“Evalyn?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

“Evalyn Walsh McLean,” she explained. “She’s one of my dearest friends. In fact, if I may be frank…”

“You’re definitely among friends, Mrs. Fortescue,” Darrow intoned with a smile.

“…Mrs. McLean is helping finance my defense. Without Evalyn’s help—and Eva Stotesbury’s—I honestly don’t know where I’d be.”

“You didn’t tell me…” I began to Darrow.

Darrow shrugged. “Didn’t seem pertinent.”

Here I’d thought the idea to use me on this case had been purely C.D.’s. In Washington, D.C., recently, I’d encountered Evalyn McLean—whose (estranged) husband owned the
Washington Post,
and who herself owned the Hope Diamond; Evalyn had been involved by a scam artist—knowing of her sympathy for Colonel Lindbergh (Evalyn having lost a child by tragedy herself)—in one of the numerous dead-end ransom schemes that plagued that case.

Evalyn was a very attractive older woman, and we’d hit it off famously. So famously, it had apparently gotten around….

“Evalyn suggested I inquire of Mr. Darrow if he was acquainted with you,” Mrs. Fortescue said, “seeing as how you’re both Chicagoans and in a criminal line of work.”

That was the best description of the common ground between lawyers and cops I’d ever heard: a criminal line of work.

“And imagine my surprise and delight,” she continued, “when Mr. Darrow said he’d known you since you were a lad.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever been a “lad,” and I just kind of gave her a glazed smile. One thing about working with Clarence Darrow: the surprises just kept coming.

“Tommie is resting,” she said, gesturing to a closed door. “Should I wake him?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Darrow said, “just yet.”

“Please sit down,” she said. “Would you gentlemen like some coffee, or perhaps tea?”

We settled on coffee, and she went to the door and called out, “Oh, steward!”

A mess hall sailor approached her and she asked him to fetch four cups of coffee with sugar and cream. He responded with a nod, and she shut the door. We all half-stood as she took her place at the round table.

“Now, Mrs. Fortescue,” Darrow began, getting his shipwreck of a self settled in his chair, “my associate, young Mr. Heller here, is going to take some notes. He’s not a stenographer, mind you—just some informal jotting down of this and that, to back up this feeble old memory. No objection?”

She beamed at me, fluttering her lashes. “That would be just fine.”

I wondered how much her friend Mrs. Walsh had told her about me.

“And just how are you bearing up, Mrs. Fortescue?” Darrow asked gently.

“Now that the worst is over,” she said, “I feel more at ease than I have in months. My mind is at peace. I’m satisfied.”

“Satisfied?” Leisure asked.

“Satisfied,” she said stiffly, sitting the same way, “that in our efforts to obtain a confession from that brute, we weren’t breaking the law, but attempting to aid it. I’ve slept better since the day of the murder than I have for a long time.”

A frown had tightened Darrow’s face on the word “murder,” but now he affected a benign, almost saintly smile as he patted her hand. “We’ll not be using that word ‘murder,’ Mrs. Fortescue. Not amongst ourselves, and certainly not to anyone with the press.”

“You must have read that interview in the
New York Times,”
she said, putting a hand to her chest, her expression mildly distressed. “I’m afraid I
was
indiscreet.”

His smile was lenient, but his eyes firm. “You were. I don’t mean that unkindly…but you were. No more talk of ‘murder.’ Or of your only regret being that you ‘bungled the job.’”

“That did look…clumsy in print, didn’t it?” she asked, but it was an admission, not a question.

“Are you really sleeping better now?” I asked her. “Pardon me for saying so, ma’am, but I would think the stress of this situation would have to take its toll.”

She raised her chin, nobly. “It’s much better with everything all out in the open. They suppressed my daughter’s name, in the first case, but that only made it worse. Rumors ran rampant. People would stare at her poor bruised cheek, and whisper and wonder.” Her face tightened, pinched; suddenly she looked sixty. “Lying gossip, filthy stories—a campaign calculated to drive my child out of Honolulu, or short of that, defame her character, and prejudice jurors if she dared to prosecute a second time. Not long before the…what
shall
I call the murder, Mr. Darrow?”

This time his smile was a twitch. “Let’s use the word ‘incident,’ shall we?”

She nodded. “Not long before the…incident…a few days, I think…I went to Judge Steadman—he’d been very kind to us, during the trial. I told him I feared for my daughter’s life. Not only were those five rapists running wild and free, this escaped criminal Lyman was reported to be in Moana Valley.”

“Who?” Darrow asked.

“Daniel Lyman,” Leisure said. “A murderer and rapist who walked out of Oahu Prison with a burglar pal of his on a New Year’s Eve pass. They’ve since ravished two more women, one of them white, and committed numerous robberies. The partner was captured but Lyman’s still at large. It’s been a major embarrassment to the Honolulu police.”

“But a boon to Admiral Stirling,” I said, “in his efforts to shake out the department.”

Darrow nodded, as if he knew what we were talking about. To Leisure he posed: “Was this in the materials Lt. Johnson provided us, before we boarded the
Malolo?”

Leisure nodded.

I turned to our client. “Mrs. Fortescue, were you afraid this Lyman might attack your daughter…?”

“No,” she said, with a bitter little smile, “but he would have made a convenient scapegoat, had she been found dead, would he not? And without Thalia, there is no case against those five defendants.” She frowned to herself. “Four defendants, now.”

Darrow leaned forward, brow furrowed. “Tell me—how did your son-in-law hold up under all of this pressure?”

She glanced toward the closed door behind which Lt. Massie napped. She lowered her voice to a whisper and said, melodramatically: “As much as I feared for Thalia’s life, I feared for Tommie’s sanity.”

Darrow arched an eyebrow. “His sanity, dear?”

“I feared he couldn’t withstand the strain—he’d become sullen, he wasn’t sleeping or eating well, he became uncharacteristically withdrawn….”

A knock at the door interrupted, and Mrs. Fortescue imperiously called, “Come!” and a galley gob came in with a silver tray bearing cups of coffee, a creamer, and a bowl of cube sugar.

As the sailor served us, I sat studying this proud, rather dignified society matron and tried to picture her masterminding the kidnapping of a brutal Hawaiian rapist. I could picture her serving
hors d’oeuvres;
I could picture her playing bridge. I could even picture her, just barely, inside that dusty bungalow on Kolowalu Street.

But picture her party to guns and blood and naked dead natives in bathtubs? I couldn’t form the image.

“You had no intention of taking a life,” Darrow said ever so gently, “did you, dear?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, and sipped her coffee, pinkie poised genteelly. “My upbringing is Southern, but I assure you, I am no believer in lynch law. I cannot state that too emphatically. My upbringing, my family traditions, early religious training, make the taking of another’s life repugnant to me. Like you, sir, I am opposed to capital punishment.”

Darrow was nodding, smiling. He liked the sound of this. I didn’t know if he bought any of it, but he liked the sound.

“Then exactly how did this happen?” I asked.

“Incrementally,” she said. “As you probably know, after the first trial ended in a hung jury, the five defendants were required to report to the Judiciary Building every morning. I think it may have been Judge Steadman’s hope that they would violate his edict, and he could issue orders for their imprisonment…but they were reporting regularly.”

“Who told you this?” I asked.

“Judge Steadman himself. I was also friendly with the clerk of the court, Mrs. Whitmore. She was the one, I’m afraid, who planted the seed.”

“The seed?” Leisure asked.

“Mrs. Whitmore’s the one who told me the second trial was being delayed indefinitely. The district attorney’s office was afraid of another hung jury—and after another mistrial, the accused could not be tried again—those beasts would go free! The prosecution, Mrs. Whitmore said, had made such a mess of things in the first trial, it was going to be impossible to bring about a conviction unless one of the defendants confessed.”

“So you decided,” I said, “to get a confession yourself.”

She gestured with a flowing hand, as if she were explaining why it had been necessary to postpone this afternoon’s flute recital, and substitute a string quartet.

“I had no sudden inspiration, Mr. Heller,” she said. “The notion emerged gradually, like a ship from the fog. I asked Mrs. Whitmore if the five men were still reporting to the courthouse, and she said they were. She mentioned that the big Hawaiian reported every morning.”

“By ‘the big Hawaiian,’” Leisure said, “she meant Joseph Kahahawai?”

Mrs. Fortescue nodded, once. “I lay awake that night thinking about what the clerk of court had said.”

“And the ship,” I said, “emerged from the fog.”

“With remarkable clarity,” she said. “The next day I went around to see Mrs. Whitmore again. I told her I’d heard a rumor that two of the accused rapists had been arrested, over at Hilo, for stealing a motor. She said she doubted that, but checked with the probation officer, a Mr. Dickson, who came out and spoke to me, assuring me that Kahahawai had just been in that morning. I asked, don’t they all come in together? And he told me, no, one at a time, and at specific hours—he couldn’t have them dropping in on him at just any old odd time,”

“So you established the basic time that Kahahawai reported in to his probation officer,” I said.

“Yes. Then I went to the office of the
Star-Bulletin
to get copies of newspapers with Kahahawai’s picture. I began studying his features in a clipping I carried with me. That evening, I spoke with Tommie about my idea. He admitted to me he’d had similar notions. And he’d heard a rumor that Kahahawai had confessed the rape to his stepfather! I suggested perhaps we might inveigle the brute into a car on some false pretense, whisk him to my home, and frighten him into confessing.”