After hours in Godfrey Higgs’ modest Bay Street second-floor office, his secretary long gone, the affable, athletic-looking lawyer sat behind a battle-scarred desk with his feet up, vest unbuttoned and tie loosened, jacket over the chair. His hands were locked behind his head, making wings of his arms and elbows.
He was smiling, but it was a frozen smile, a crack in his oval face; his parted-in-the-middle dark hair, usually slicked back, fell wearily over his forehead.
“Perhaps I’m no judge,” he said, “this being my first major criminal case…but I can’t imagine a better, more diligent, thorough investigator than yourself.”
“Thanks,” I said. I was reclining on his leather couch against a pebbled-glass-and-wood wall. His offices were not unlike those of A-1’s back home. The only light came from the green-shaded banker’s lamp on Higgs’ desk; that, and some neon glow from busy Bay Street outside the window behind him. It was close to eight o’clock and neither of us had had supper.
“However,” he began.
I groaned. “I knew there would be either a ‘however’ or a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“However, very little of what you’ve come up with is usable, or even admissible, in court.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t say that,” I said, doing a serviceable imitation of Peavy on The Great Gildersleeve.
That made Higgs chuckle. “All right-I’ll grant you your expert witness is damn near the backbone of our case…between what you came up with regarding the time limitations of the crime, and what Professor Keeler will have to say about the fingerprint evidence, we may well be able to clear Freddie.”
“Let’s not forget Captain Sears,” I pointed out. “His placing Christie in downtown Nassau when Christie says he was sleeping at Westbourne diverts suspicion from our client.”
“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have generalized. It’s just so damned frustrating that so much of what you’ve dug up isn’t going to make it into court….”
“Like what?”
He hauled his feet off his desk, brushed his hair back in place, shrugged, just a little. “The crime syndicate connection. Everything you’ve put together linking Lansky and Christie…we simply can’t establish relevance.”
I sighed. “If that caretaker out at Lyford Cay hadn’t ‘accidentally drowned,’ we could.”
“What we need to discredit Christie,” Higgs said, “is for your friend’s letter to show.”
He was referring to the letter Eliot had sent me over two weeks ago, containing the certified copy of the federal records indicating that outstanding warrant against Christie; but it had not yet arrived.
And we now knew it most likely wouldn’t: Eliot’s letter, like any letter arriving in Nassau, was subject to wartime censorship; it seemed likely the censorship board-populated with Christie cronies-was withholding it. Contacting the censors directly about the letter was against regulations, and there was not time, before the trial, to have Eliot run the red-tape hurdles for a second time.
Higgs asked, “You haven’t had any luck establishing that Sir Harry was a rounder, either, have you?”
I shook my head no. “I’ve asked some questions, but here’s where my limitation as an outsider really hurts us. You might be better off putting a local dick on it.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Frankly-no offense meant-but I have. He’s come up with nothing, either. He runs into the adultery rumor, now and again, but no substantiation. And as for the gold coins…” He shrugged again. “Another dead end.”
I had checked with Nancy, who asked her mother about the coin collection; Lady Oakes was unconcerned about its being missing, saying that Sir Harry liked to move the little treasure chest from here to there, and it would most likely “turn up” at one of their many residences-they had four homes in the Bahamas, after all, and three more in the United States, another in Canada, and two in Great Britain.
“You could ask Lady Oakes about the coins on the witness stand,” I said. “She’s going to testify, isn’t she?”
He nodded. “I certainly could do that. But she’ll only reiterate what she told Nancy-that the collection is not missing, merely misplaced; that, at any rate, it isn’t very valuable, anyway.”
“It might seem pretty darn valuable to a native.”
He shrugged elaborately. “Then why didn’t that native take anything else from Westbourne? There was cash in Harry’s desk; valuable objects everywhere-from a gold nugget paperweight to Lady Oakes’ jewelry box.”
“It is thin, isn’t it?”
“Yes. So the horde of gold, like Meyer Lansky, like Sir Harry’s randy reputation, stays out of court. On the other hand, assuming Adderley doesn’t spring too many surprises on us, I think we have a formidable case.”
“Hell, Godfrey, all you have to do is fillet Barker on the stand.”
He arched an eyebrow. “He’s a damn good witness, Nate. He’s no virgin when it comes to giving expert testimony.”
“He’s no virgin, period. Godfrey, you can nail him-no fingerprint ‘expert’ can justify those bullshit methods.”
Higgs sighed, smiled in a less weary fashion, lifted his suitcoat from the back of his chair and slipped into it.
“My wife is waiting dinner on me. Care to stop by? The kids have been asking about you.”
I dragged myself off the couch. “I won’t impose. You guys put up with me enough, when I was staying with you. I’ll grab a bite at Dirty Dick’s.”
“How’s life at Shangri La?”
“Swell. I’m a Ronald Colman kind of guy, you know.”
“Where’s Di?”
“Oh, she had to fly to Mexico City for a few days, to confer with her boss.”
He was opening the door to his outer office for me when he narrowed his eyes and said, “If you don’t mind my asking…when did you start carrying that weapon around?”
“I thought this new suit Lunn made me disguised the fact.”
“It does, fairly well. You’re on shaky legal ground-would you like me to try to get you a temporary permit?”
We were walking through the outer office now.
“No thanks. I’ll just plead ignorance, which is something I’m used to. If we ask permission, they’ll only take it away from me.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Why am I heeled, as we say back in the States? I don’t know. With Lansky involved, with Barker and Melchen beating the shit out of witnesses, with voodoo and jealous husbands and burned-to-a-crisp millionaires, it just seemed…”
He opened the door. “Prudent?”
“Prudent,” I said.
We headed down the stairs to the street with Higgs in the lead.
“At least they’re not following you around anymore.” Higgs grinned. “With those practical jokes you played on them, and wild-goose chases you sent them on, I would imagine our local constabulary-and their Miami advisers-have learned their lesson.”
We stepped out onto Bay Street; the balmy Bahamas breeze felt good-not hot, not cold.
“I’m not so sure, Godfrey. The last couple days I’ve felt like they had a tail on me again.”
“Really?”
“Yeah-a couple times I’ve spotted a guy. Tall. White. He’s good-in a car, he turns off on a side street before he gets made; on foot, he disappears into the nearest store or restaurant, and doesn’t reemerge…but it’s the same damn guy every time.”
“Could be a reporter, you know. They’ve been streaming in of late.”
“I don’t think so. This one’s a cop of some kind.”
Higgs shook his head. “Well-with the trial coming up in a few days, it’ll be over soon. This harassment will end.”
Higgs nodded and headed toward where his car was parked, and I turned the other way; Dirty Dick’s was just two blocks down. I’d gone half that distance when I noticed him.
Not you again, I thought, catching his reflection in a shop window.
He was across Bay Street, keeping half a block behind me; tailing me from the opposite side of the street was a good touch, but with all but a few of the stores closed, and hardly anybody on the sidewalks, painfully obvious nonetheless.
For a tail, he just wasn’t anonymous enough: tall, lean, dapperly touristy in a powder-blue jacket, yellow shirt and tan pants; a long, cruel, handsome face interrupted by a nose that had been broken at least once, with high cheekbones and sunken cheeks; dark hair falling in a comma over his forehead; cigarette dangling from tight, thin lips.
I unbuttoned my jacket and crossed the street; he kept walking as if he hadn’t seen me. I was walking toward him now, and when I passed him, I turned on a dime and came immediately up behind him and put the nine-millimeter’s nose in the small of his back.
“Let’s talk,” I said.
“Why don’t we?” he said, blandly British.
“The alley should do.”
“It should do nicely,” he agreed.
I walked him to the alley; an American sailor and a woman who was probably some RAF pilot’s wife walked by arm in arm, smiling at each other. My shadow-who I was sticking to like his shadow-marched calmly into the alleyway, where I escorted him into near darkness. I could smell his lime cologne.
“Turn slowly,” I said, “and stand with your back to the wall.”
But he didn’t turn slowly-he whirled, and then his hand was on my wrist, and the fucker flipped me.
When I landed on my ass, hard on the gravel, I was sitting up with both my hands empty. I looked up at him and he was studying me with an expression of sheer boredom. My gun was in his hand, casually.
“Do let me help you up,” he said.
“Thanks ever so,” I said.
He dropped my gun in his sport-coat pocket and offered me his hand and I buried my head in his stomach and rammed him up against the nearest wall.
“Perhaps I should introduce myself,” he said, groaning, as I held him pinned there. I threw a fist toward his midsection and a hand gripped my wrist and stopped me.
“I’m…an agent with His Majesty’s Royal Naval Intelligence,” he said. “So let’s dispense with the foreplay, and get right to the intercourse-shall we?”
I backed away, breathing hard. I held out my hand. “Give me back my gun.”
His smile was faint and crinkled. He viewed me as a parent might a petulant child, though he was no older than me, I’d wager.
“Certainly, Mr. Heller,” he said, and lifted the gun gingerly from his pocket and held it out to me by its barrel.
I put it back under my arm. “That was a nice job of knocking me on my ass.”
“Judo,” he explained, smoothing out his jacket. “Those bloody Japs do know their stuff.”
“You seem to know my name,” I said, brushing off the back of my pants. “You got one-or just a number?”
He was withdrawing a cigarette from an oxidized gold case, tamping it down.
“Fleming,” he said. He lighted up the cigarette and turned the harsh angles of his face orange. “Ian Fleming.”
We took a back booth at Dirty Dick’s. A steel band was banging away on the little stage, and a high-yellow native woman in a skimpy two-piece outfit was doing a dance called the limbo, which amounted to an acrobatic feat of shimmying under a progressively lowered pole held by two darker grinning male cohorts. The crowd was grinning, too, and I recognized among the faces many of the reporters here to cover the trial.
“Remarkable dexterity,” Fleming said, exhaling smoke.
“She’s more flexible than I am. What the hell’s this about, anyway?”
“Just a moment-let’s let this charming girl take our order.”
The almost-pretty dark-haired waitress was white, but she wore a well-filled floral sarong and had a matching flower in her hair. She was probably twenty-five and fairly immune to come-ons by now, but she warmed to Fleming immediately, though he did nothing but bestow her a mild smile.
“Bourbon and branch water, dear,” he said.
“Rum and Coke,” I said.
She beamed at Fleming, fluttering elaborate fake lashes, and he granted her another little smile.
“As you may have guessed, Mr. Heller, I’m taking an extended layover in Nassau to…shall we say, keep tabs on the Oakes case.”
“Why would British Naval Intelligence have any interest in a murder case involving civilians? Even rich ones?”
Fleming stamped out his cigarette in a glass ashtray and immediately withdrew another from his gold case and lighted up. “Well, one of the people involved on the periphery is not, after all, strictly speaking, a civilian. He’s what you call a VIP-and he’s in a…delicate position. A vulnerable position.”
Now I was getting it.
‘The Duke of Windsor, you mean. The ex-King with the Nazi sympathies. He’s a living, breathing embarrassment to your country, isn’t he?”
Fleming’s smile was almost a sneer. “On the contrary-the Duke is beloved, worldwide. My government’s concern is that he not be…misused. That he, himself, not be embarrassed.”
“Yeah, right.”
The waitress brought our drinks; she and Fleming exchanged smiles, hers generous, his miserly.
“I’m afraid the Duke is rather easy prey for financial operators. He’s known to…resent the limitations of his annual allowance, particularly in wartime.”
“I may bust out crying.”
“The Duke also resents the limitations imposed on exchange control-limitations designed to keep British money available to the British war effort.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow any of this, let alone see how it relates to the Oakes murder.”
“Oh but it does.” Fleming sipped his drink; smoke curled from the cigarette between the fingers of his other hand. “You see, several years ago, the Duke entered into a partnership with Sir Harry Oakes.”
“So?”
“The other partners included Harold Christie, as you might well imagine, and a certain Axel Wenner-Gren.” Fleming raised an eyebrow. “Now, the Duke’s friendship with Wenner-Gren has, I will admit, been a source of embarrassment for the Crown.”
I shrugged. “There are those in Nassau who say Wenner-Gren got a bum rap when he was blacklisted.”
He laughed silently. Then he said, “Allow me to tell you a little story about the wealthy Wenner-Gren. In September of ‘39, Wenner-Gren was sailing the Southern Cross from Gothenburg to the Bahamas. Off the northern coast of Scotland, he quite coincidentally happened to see the British liner Athenia as it was torpedoed by a German U-boat. He picked up several hundred survivors on his yacht, great humanitarian that he is, and wired President Roosevelt, encouraging him to utilize the ‘horror of this disaster’ as a basis for peace efforts with Germany. Now, we in Naval Intelligence were just wondering why the Southern Cross, with its many radio aerials, and unusually powerful transmitters and receivers, just happened to be in that particular spot in that ocean at that particular moment.”
“That is an interesting coincidence.”
“Other fantastic coincidences were to follow-the Southern Cross was also conveniently on hand when Allied pilots, training in the Bahamas, crashed into the sea. He rescued these pilots-but had he been watching them train? Before he was banished from these waters, Wenner-Gren liked to keep aboard his ship samples-in depth-of the various armaments manufactured by his company, the Bofors Munition Works. He also kept unusually large fuel tanks aboard the Southern Cross, which led to the nasty rumor that he’d been refueling U-boats.”
I sat forward in the booth. “And this is the same ship that the Duke and Duchess would take little outings to America on?”
“Oh yes. Wenner-Gren would ferry the Duchess to Miami so she could see her dentist. The Windsors’ favorite dessert? An immense sherbet replica of the Southern Cross.”
“Charming.”
“Isn’t it? Still, there are those of us in Naval Intelligence who are just cynical enough to consider Axel a…bad influence on our boy.”
The native band was still clanging away at their steel drums, but I barely heard them.
“Well, Wenner-Gren’s in Cuernavaca or someplace, isn’t he? What harm can he do now, where your Duke is concerned?”
“The harm, Mr. Heller, if indeed there is any, has to do with that business relationship I mentioned-the one the Duke shares with Christie and Wenner-Gren, and the late Sir Harry Oakes. That mutual business venture, you see, is a bank. Specifically, Banco Continental in Mexico City.”
I shrugged and sat back. “So what? International finances are what you’d expect of people on that level.”
Fleming drew on his cigarette. Blew out smoke, smiled mysteriously. “Mr. Heller, I am being frank with you, but there are limits on just how much I can explain. Let me see if I can put this succinctly for you. During war time, certain practices are…discouraged. Such as sending money illegally from a struggling Empire to invest alongside blacklisted neutrals in a country ripe for sabotage.”
“Oh.”
“The Duke’s involvement with Banco Continental is unfortunate-it’s a rather well-kept secret, however, and I doubt the Duke even knows that Naval Intelligence is aware of it. But we are. And now, so are you.”
“Why me, for God’s sake?”
The waitress was back, bringing another round, exchanging smiles with Fleming.
“You mind if I duck your question? Just for a moment?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He sipped his second bourbon and branch water. “When I was nine, vacationing with my family at St. Ives, Cornwall, I was searching the caves off the beach for amethyst quartz when I stumbled onto a lump of ambergris as big as a child’s football.”
I wasn’t sure what ambergris was, but I knew it was valuable. I should have been irritated, but this aloof son of a bitch was a good storyteller.
“Now, I knew at once I would be rich-I would live on milk chocolate, and I wouldn’t have to go back to my private school, or indeed do any work at all-I’d found the short cut to success and happiness. But on my way home it began to melt, and soon I was a bit of a mess. My mother asked me what I was carrying, and I told her, It’s ambergris! It’s worth a thousand pounds an ounce, and I’m never going back to school!’”
He paused to sip his drink again. Then resumed.
“But my ambergris, as it turned out, was actually a lump of very rancid butter, which a supply ship had dumped off the coast. My mother was not amused.”
“Neither am I. What’s the point?”
“The point, Mr. Heller, is merely that sometimes ambergris turns out to be rancid butter.” He smiled again, mostly to himself; blew smoke through his nose. “Wenner-Gren is your host right now, so to speak.”
“I’ve never even met the man. Never seen him, outside of an oil painting.”
“But you’re spending time with the charming Lady Medcalf, are you not?”
“Yeah. She’s been helpful, too.”
“Has she? I wonder. What do you know about her?”
His perpetual mild amusement was starting to irritate me. I said, “She’s the widow of some pal of the Duke’s; she’s very high up in royal society or whatever the hell you call it.”
He smiled and showed his teeth now; it turned his handsome face horsey. “Diane Medcalf is the former June Diane Sims of the Blackfriars settlement in the East End of London. Strictly lowerclass.”
I blinked; swallowed thickly. “How is it possible she could wind up married to a lord?”
He shrugged one shoulder, gestured mildly with his cigarette-in-hand. “David Windsor gave up the throne for a twice-divorced American said to have done a stint in a Hong Kong brothel.” He put out the cigarette and flipped open his gold case to get another. “Hell, man-you’ve seen ‘Lady Diane’…a damn sight closer up than I have. She’s a smart woman and a beautiful one.”
“I still don’t see how…”
He lighted up his new cigarette and said, almost impatiently, “She was a lowly clerk with the Royal International Horse Show, an annual event held at the Olympia in London-home of the Windsor Cup, till the abdication. At any rate, it’s a year-round organizing job, and Miss Sims worked her way up to assistant manager-where she came in contact with the poshest toffs in town.”
“All right,” I said defensively. “So she wasn’t born with a silver spoon.”
“I just thought you should know who exactly it was you were…seeing.”
I laughed. “You don’t look like the kind of ‘bloke’ who checks a girl’s pedigree before climbing in the sack with her, yourself.”
He nodded agreement. “Women do have their uses…for release of male tension. Although Englishwomen have little appeal for me. They so seldom bathe. Or is Lady Diane an exception?”
“What exactly is your objection to Diane? Other than maybe she doesn’t take enough baths to suit you?”
He waved that off with the cigarette-in-hand, making smoke trails in the already smoky air. “Oh, I have no particular objection. But you may find it of interest that your lovely friend is…how would your Raymond Chandler put it? Wenner-Gren’s bag woman…and the Duke’s, for that matter. Making frequent trips to Mexico City, to Banco Continental, freighting currency and such. By the way, isn’t that where she is now?”
I wanted to smack the smug son of a bitch. “Even if that’s true, why the hell would it have anything to do with Sir Harry’s murder?”
“It doesn’t, necessarily. But I find it intriguing that Sir Harry himself made numerous sojourns south of the border, in the past year or so, with serious talk floating about of his relocating from the Bahamas to Mexico.”
“I still don’t see the connection.”
He waved it off, cigarette trail making a lazy S. “Perhaps there isn’t any. Nonetheless, I would very much like to catch Lady Di in some illegal act. It would be a pleasure to shut down the Duke’s activities without having to…embarrass him.”
“Or the Crown. So why the hell are you keeping an eye on me?”
“I’m not, really. Lady Medcalf is my interest.”
I got out of the booth. “Well, you’re right about one thing: Di’s my friend. And I have no intention of helping you catch her in any act.”
He shrugged with his eyes, exhaled smoke. “I don’t remember asking you to.”
Suddenly the native band’s steel drums seemed deafening.
“Then why tell me all this?”
“Strictly to keep you informed. You see, I’ve already gathered that if anyone might happen to unravel the truth of this case, Mr. Heller-it’s most likely to be you.”
I just looked at him. He smiled his faint smile and raised his glass to me.
“Do stay in touch,” he said.
When I glanced back before I went out, he was chatting smoothly with the waitress, who seemed entranced.
It was enough to make you wonder who was getting fucked tonight.