Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (25 page)

“What on earth are they doing for the Adlers?” asked the woman.

“They’re giving the Adlers their vote,” he said. “In the last election, you may remember that Lee and Emma supported Spencer Lawton for district attorney against Bubsy Ryan. The Adlers were among the largest contributors to Lawton’s campaign. One can assume Lee passed the word to the black ministers that he was supporting Lawton. Presto, the black Ministerial Alliance, which had backed Ryan in the past, switched over to Lawton. Lawton won the black vote, and the black vote gave him his margin of victory. So whether he planned it or not, Lee Adler emerged from his crisis with a black-power base. And with the district attorney grateful to him for his help. This makes Lee a political power. It makes it
impolitic
for any city official to op
pose Lee in any of his little housing ventures.” The man raised his eyebrows as if to say, “I rest my case.”

“Well, I do see your point,” the woman said dryly.

The man then looked over at Cynthia Collins, but at that moment Mrs. Collins was stealing a glance at her watch. A flicker of concern crossed her brow. She caught the eye of the maid by the door. “Pass napkins,” she whispered.

At this point in my experiment in bi-urban living, I found myself spending more time in Savannah than New York. The weather alone would have been reason enough for the tilt. By late April, New York was still struggling to free itself from the clutches of winter, and Savannah was well into the unfolding pageantry of a warm and leisurely spring. Camellias, jonquils, and paper-whites had bloomed in December and January. Wisteria and red-buds had followed, and then in mid-March the azaleas burst forth in gigantic pillows of white, red, and vermilion. White dogwood blossoms floated like clouds of confectioner’s sugar above the azaleas. The scent of honeysuckle, Confederate jasmine, and the first magnolia blossoms were already beginning to perfume the air. Who needed the chill of New York?

So I lingered in Savannah. Its hushed and somnolent streets became my streets of choice. I stayed put, just as Savannahians did. Savannahians often talked about other places, as if they traveled a lot, but usually it was just talk. Savannahians liked to talk about Charleston most of all, especially in the presence of a newcomer. They would compare the two cities endlessly. Savannah was the Hostess City; Charleston was the Holy City (because it had a lot of churches). Savannah’s streetscape was
superior to Charleston’s, but Charleston had finer interiors. Savannah was thoroughly English in style and temperament; Charleston had French and Spanish influences as well as English. Savannah preferred hunting, fishing, and going to parties over intellectual pursuits; in Charleston it was the other way around. Savannah was attractive to tourists; Charleston was overrun by them. On and on. In the minds of most Americans, Savannah and Charleston were sister cities. If so, the sisters were barely on speaking terms. Savannahians rarely went to Charleston, even though it was less than two hours away by car. But then Savannahians rarely went anywhere at all. They could not be bothered. They were content to remain in their isolated city under self-imposed house arrest. There were exceptions, of course, and Chablis was one of them.

Chablis took her act on the road via Trailways, just as she said she would—to Augusta, Columbia, Atlanta, and Jacksonville. She came back to Savannah between swings, long enough to freshen her wardrobe and avail herself of Dr. Myra Bishop’s female hormone shots. When she was finished at Dr. Bishop’s, she invariably called me up or threw pebbles at my window, and I would come down and drive her home. She came to look upon these rides as a ceremonial aspect of her sexual journey. The estrogen would be working its magic inside her, transforming the tomboy into a graceful empress even as we drove through the streets of Savannah.

One Saturday morning in early May, I was preparing to drive out to Fort Jackson to watch one of Savannah’s traditional annual sporting events, the Scottish games, when the telephone rang. It was Chablis.

“It’s the bitch, honey,” she said. “It’s The Lady. I ain’t lookin’ for a ride this time, though. I’m just checkin’ to see if you’ve had a look at your morning paper yet.”

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “Why?”

“Remember that antique dealer you told me you met? The one with the big house on Monterey Square?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Didn’t you tell me his name was Jim Williams?”

“Yes, I did. What about him?”

“James A.
Williams?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Age fifty-two?”

“Sounds right,” I said.

“Of 429 Bull Street?”

“Come on, Chablis. What happened?”

“She shot somebody last night.”

“What?
Chablis, are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that. That’s what it says right here in the paper. It says James A. Williams shot Danny Lewis Hansford, twenty-one. It happened inside Mercer House. They got a big ol’ picture of your friend James A. Williams on the front page, but they ain’t got one of the twenty-one-year-old, dammit, and that’s the one I wanna see.”

“Did Danny Hansford die?” I asked.

“He musta did, honey, ’Cause they’re chargin’ Miss Williams with murder.”

Under the banner headline
WILLIAMS CHARGED IN SLAYING
, the story was very brief. It said that at 3:00
A.M.
, police had been summoned to Mercer House, where they found Danny Hansford, twenty-one, lying dead on the floor in the study, his blood pouring out onto an oriental carpet. He had been shot in the head and chest. There were two pistols at the scene. Several objects in the house had been broken. Williams had been taken into custody, charged with murder, and held on $25,000 bond. Fifteen minutes later, a friend of Williams had arrived at police headquarters with a paper bag containing 250 one-hundred-dollar bills, and Williams was released. That was all the newspaper said about the shooting. Williams was identified as an antiques dealer, a restorer of historic houses, and a giver of elegant parties at his “showplace” home, which Jacqueline Onassis had visited and offered to buy for $2 million. About Danny Hansford, the paper gave no information other than his age.

The next day’s newspaper carried a more detailed account of the shooting. According to Williams, he had shot Danny Hansford in self-defense. He and Danny had attended a drive-in movie, he said, and returned to Mercer House after midnight. Back at the house, Hansford suddenly went wild, just as Williams
said he had done a month earlier. He stomped a video game, broke a chair, smashed an eighteenth-century English grandfather clock. Then—just as he had done before—he grabbed one of Williams’s German Lugers. But this time he did not fire it into the floor or out into Monterey Square. This time he aimed it directly at Williams, who was sitting behind his desk. He fired three shots. All three missed. When he pulled the trigger to fire again, the gun jammed. That was when Williams reached into his desk drawer and took out another Luger. Danny was struggling to unjam his gun when Williams shot him.

Later in the week, Williams elaborated further in an interview in the weekly newspaper the
Georgia Gazette.
His tone was confident, even a little defiant. “If I had not shot Danny,” he said, “it would have been my obituary that was published.” Williams said the movie at the drive-in had been a violent horror film. “Lots of throats being slashed and that sort of thing. I told Danny we should leave and go play backgammon or chess or something, and we did.”

By the time Williams and Hansford arrived back at Mercer House, Danny had smoked nine joints and consumed a half-pint of whiskey. They played a video game for a while and then a board game. At that point, Hansford launched into an irrational tirade against his mother, his girlfriend Bonnie, and his buddy George Hill. Suddenly, in a flash of anger, he stomped the video control panel. “Games!” he screamed. “It’s all games. That’s what it’s all about!” Williams stood up to leave the room. Hansford grabbed him by the throat and threw him up against a doorjamb. “You’ve been sick,” he screamed. “Why don’t you just go off someplace and die?” Williams wrenched himself out of Hansford’s grip and went into his study, where he sat down at his desk. He heard loud crashing noises—the grandfather clock falling to the floor, glass breaking, and other sounds of destruction. Danny came into the room carrying a German Luger. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said, “but you’re leaving tonight!” With that, he took aim at Williams and fired. Williams said he felt a breeze as one of the bullets passed his left arm.
Then Danny’s gun jammed. Williams grabbed his own gun and fired.

After Danny fell, Williams put his gun down on the desk, walked around the desk, saw that Danny was dead, then went back behind the desk and called a former employee, Joe Goodman. Williams told Goodman he had just shot Hansford and to come to Mercer House right away. After that, Williams called his lawyer. Then he called the police.

Williams’s lawyer, the police, Joe Goodman, and Joe Goodman’s girlfriend all arrived at Mercer House at the same time. Williams was standing at the open door. “I just shot him,” he said. “He’s in the other room.”

The first policeman to arrive on the scene, Corporal Michael Anderson, recognized Danny immediately. Corporal Anderson was the same policeman who had come to Mercer House a month earlier to take Danny into custody after his previous rampage. On that occasion, he had found Danny upstairs stretched across the bed, fully clothed. This time he found him lying on a Persian carpet in Williams’s study with his face in a pool of blood. His right arm was outstretched above his head, his hand cupped lightly over a gun.

Toward 7:00
A.M.
, the police escorted Williams to headquarters. They fingerprinted him, booked him for murder, and set bond at $25,000. Williams went to a telephone and called Joe Goodman, who was still waiting back at Mercer House. “Joe, now listen carefully,” he said. “Go upstairs to the tall cabinet outside the organ room. Stand on the chair next to it, reach up, and take down a paper sack that’s sitting on top.” Fifteen minutes later, Goodman arrived at police headquarters with a brown paper bag containing 250 one-hundred-dollar bills, and Williams went home.

A few days later, the police announced that certain lab tests would show whether or not Danny Hansford had actually fired a pistol as Williams claimed. A crucial test would be the presence, or absence, of gunshot powder on Hansford’s hands. If gunshot residue could be detected, it would mean Hansford had
fired his gun before Williams killed him; the absence of residue would mean he had not fired. Police said the results would be ready in a week or so and could make or break the case against Williams.

Despite the heavy charges hanging over him, Williams went calmly about his affairs. On Wednesday, four days after he shot Hansford, he asked the court for permission to fly to Europe on an antiques-buying trip. The judge raised his bond to $100,000 and let him go. In London, Williams stayed in his favorite suite at the Ritz and played roulette at Crockford’s Club. Then he flew on to Geneva to attend a sale of Fabergé. He returned to Savannah a week later.