By noon the overcast sky had transformed itself into something pure and blue, with a bright but not blazing sun, a reprieve that sent sunbathers scurrying in surprise to the white beach of the British Colonial. During the early morning hours, minions of the hotel had obviously cleared the branches and debris from the sand; the beach was pristine again, shimmering in the sun. The emerald sea rippled peacefully. It was as if the storm had never happened.
Davy Jones’ Locker, the hotel cafe overlooking the beach, was stone-walled, low-ceilinged, slate-floored. A black bartender in a colorful shirt mixed drinks before a mural of Davy himself, fast asleep while nubile mermaids and a school of quizzical comic fish gave him the once-over.
I got myself a hamburger with rare, sweetly marinated meat, a side of conch fritters and an orange rum punch the smiling barman called a Bahama Mama. Then out on the patio, I found a round wooden table under a beach umbrella and ate my lunch and watched the pretty girls on the beach. Occasionally one would even venture into the water.
“You must be in heaven, Heller,” a high-pitched, sultry voice said.
I recognized it at once-she had a faint, very sexy, unmistakable lisp-but turned just the same, to confirm this happy news.
Her smile was playful. “Nassau’s brimming over with pretty girls…all these lonely RAF wives. You must be going to town.”
“Helen! What the hell are you doing in Nassau?”
She swept off her sunglasses so we could have a better look at each other. A petite, shapely woman of forty who looked easily a decade younger, she owed some of it to great genes, and some of it to a great face lift.
She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, tied with an orange scarf under her chin, and a white robe over an orange-and-white floral bathing suit. Her skin was almost white; strands of her dark blond hair, pinned up under the hat, tickled a graceful neck. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her features didn’t need any: pert nose, full lips, apple cheeks, long-lashed eyes that were a green-blue shade even the Bahamas could envy.
“I’m just hanging around, after finishing a gig,” she said. “How about you?”
“Same. Sit! Have you had lunch?”
“No. Go get me some. Conch salad.”
“I’ll do that.”
I did. I was pleased to see Helen Beck, who was better known to the general public by her stage name: Sally Rand. We went way back, to the Chicago World’s Fair, where I worked pick-pocket security, and where she made a name for herself (not to mention kept the fair afloat financially) doing a graceful nude ballet behind huge fluffy ostrich feathers. Or, at times, an equally oversize bouncing bubble. Sally-or Helen, as she preferred me to call her-was versatile.
I brought her the salad and a Bahama Mama. She ate the salad heartily-raw chopped conch marinated in lime juice and spices with some chopped crunchy vegetables tossed in for good measure-but merely sipped at her rum punch.
“How’s Turk?” I asked.
She grimaced; now she took a belt of the punch.
Turk was her husband, a rodeo rider she’d met when she put together a revue called Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch; they’d been married since ‘41, but it had been a rocky ride. Last time I’d seen her, about four months ago in Chicago, they’d been separated.
“I gave him another chance, and he blew it big-time. Son of a bitch hit me, Heller!”
“We can’t have that.”
“Well, I can’t. I filed on the fucker.” Her expression was as hard as her language. “Sure, I feel sorry for him…I mean, he goes overseas to serve his country, can’t take it, cracks up, gets sent home on a Section Eight…I’d like to stand by him, but the guy’s nuts!”
“Sure.”
She looked at me and her expression melted; she leaned over and touched my hand. “I’m sorry, Heller…I forgot you went through the same damn thing.”
“No problem, Helen.”
She pulled back and her expression was troubled now. “He’s drinking too much. I had to throw him out. Why didn’t we get married, Heller? You and me?”
“I ask myself that, from time to time.”
“How often?”
I shrugged. “I just did.”
That made her smile; that wide smile of hers was a honey.
We chatted for a good hour. Not that we had much catching up to do; a few months ago in Chicago, we’d done our reminiscing about our summer together, back in ‘34. Some of that reminiscing had been between the sheets, but Helen and I weren’t lovers, anymore. Not really.
But we’d always be friends.
“I’m surprised to find you working Nassau in the off-season, Helen,” I said. “The wartime nightlife here is a little limited right now, or so I understand….”
She shrugged; she’d finished her lunch and was smoking a cigarette. “It was a Red Cross fund-raising drive benefit. You know how patriotic I am.”
And she was. She was an FDR fan, as well as a self-styled intellectual who leaned a bit left, and had attracted non-nude attention when she spoke out for the republican forces in the Spanish Civil War; she’d also got publicity out of lecturing at colleges. In between getting arrested for public indecency, of course.
“Sounds like you’re getting respectable in…”
“If you say ‘old age,’ Heller, I’ll conk you with a conch shell.”
“…these troubled times.”
Her smile turned crinkly. “I am respectable. Saturday night, at the Prince George. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were ringside.”
“Pretty posh audience at that.”
She lifted her chin, blew out smoke elegantly. “Not only am I respectable, but my perfectly round balloons…”
“You’ve always had perfectly round balloons.”
“Shut up, Heller. The perfectly round balloons I dance behind, which are manufactured to my personal specifications by a company that I own, are now being used by the U.S. government for target practice.”
That made me laugh, and she laughed along.
“Well, then,” I said, “it was patriotic of the Duke to watch you strut your stuff. Didn’t Wallis mind?”
I referred, of course, to Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee David Windsor, aka King Edward VIII, current Governor of the Bahamas, had abandoned his throne to marry-“the woman he loved!”
“Wallis smiled and giggled throughout. Frankly, the Duke was the one who seemed ill at ease. Embarrassed.”
“These ex-kings have no sense of humor.”
“I’ll say. I hear he’s issued an official ban on reporting that the Windsors actually saw my act. Of course, that ban doesn’t extend to my press agent back home.”
“Of course.” I clicked in my cheek. “The poor royal dears…banished to a tropical Elba like this.”
She lifted an arching, plucked eyebrow. “Well, there always have been rumors the Duke is a Nazi sympathizer. Churchill had to get him out of Europe so Hitler couldn’t grab him, and set Edward up as a puppet king!”
“What would I do, without a burlesque queen to explain world politics to me?”
She slapped my arm, but she was smiling. “You’re such a louse.”
“That’s what you like about me.”
“True. But I have to say, I really do admire Wallis…”
“Admire her? Everybody says she’s a shrew who pushes poor ol’ Dave around.”
“That’s ridiculous! You’re just threatened by strong women, Heller!”
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.
She smirked. “In fact, both the Duke and Duchess have chalked up a lot of good works to their credit, in the short time they’ve been here. The local Negro population has benefited particularly…”
“Here we go.”
“Be good. Did you know the Duke started a CCC-type farm, for the native men? And the Duchess works in the local Red Cross clinic, side by side with black women…something the local whites certainly wouldn’t lower themselves to do.”
“Really gets her hands dirty, huh?”
“Yes she does. Personally, I think they’re a lovely couple….”
“You, and every starry-eyed bobby-soxer in America. This bittersweet romance, these tragic lovers!” I laughed. “I can’t believe you’re seduced by this royal horseshit, a left-wing fan-dancing fanatic like you.”
“Heller, you’re getting cynical in your…”
“Watch it.”
“…these troubled times.”
“Thanks. Actually, I’ve always been cynical.”
“You just think you are. That’s why I should have married you: you’re the biggest, most romantic lug I ever met.”
“Fooled you.”
“You said you were doing a job here. Who for?”
“Sir Harry Oakes.”
The green-blue eyes lighted up; lashes fluttered. “No kidding! He’s a real character! You should have seen him at the benefit…eating peas with a knife, swearing like a sailor. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. What’s he like?”
“Dead,” I said.
Helen’s eyes were still saucers when somebody tapped my shoulder and I turned to see another pair of those dignified black bobbies.
“You must return to Westbourne, sir,” said the one who’d tapped on my shoulder.
And in their company, I did.
I was ushered into the billiards room, where the lights were off but for a small lamp on a fancy wooden card table along one wall. The effect was moody, like the lighting in an old Warner Brothers gangster movie. Looming above the card table was a huge stuffed fish-a swordfish or a marlin or something, I’m a city boy myself-swimming in the darkness.
Two men in baggy suits and fedoras were shrouded in these shadows. One was a tall, ruggedly handsome character in his forties, who looked like what a police detective was supposed to. The other, a fiftyish, chunky, hook-nosed guy in wire-frame glasses, was what police detectives did look like.
If the melodrama of this underlit room and these imposing figures was supposed to intimidate me, I could only stifle a laugh. Once upon a time, I was the youngest plainclothes officer in the history of the Chicago PD, thanks to a little honest graft, and could give these bozos lessons in scare tactics and the third degree.
In fact, all I could think of, when I looked at this pair, was Abbott and Costello.
“Is something funny?” the tall one asked.
“Not really,” I lied, and stopped smirking.
“You’re Heller?” the shorter pudgy one drawled.
“Yeah. And who would you be?”
“This is Captain Edward Melchen,” the tall one said, gesturing to his partner.
“And this is Captain James Barker,” the short one said, with a similar gesture.
Maybe I should wait for the applause to die down.
“You’re Miami PD,” I said.
“That’s right,” Barker said. Unlike his partner’s, his Southern accent was barely noticeable. “Sit down.” He gestured to the little lamp-lit table and the chair beside it.
I stayed put. “Why don’t you boys turn on the lights, take off your hats, and stay awhile?”
“I don’t like this guy,” Melchen said.
“I don’t like him either,” Barker said.
“Who’s on first?” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Barker snapped.
“Nothing. What are a couple Miami dicks doing working a murder in Nassau?”
“If it’s any of your business,” Barker said, “we were invited by the Duke of Windsor. We’re acquainted.”
Now I did laugh. “You’re acquainted with the Duke of Windsor?”
Melchen stepped forward; his bulldog face was tight. If I’d been twelve years old, I’d have been really scared. “We’ve handled security for him when he’s passed through Miami, from time to time. So, do we have your goddamn permission to be here?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Thanks for asking.”
Barker barked. “Sit down!”
I sat at the little table. Barker started to turn the lamp toward my face and I batted it away. “I’m from Chicago, boys. Spare me the musical comedy.”
Barker said, “You’re an ex-cop.”
“Mmm hmm.”
Melchen was looking at me thoughtfully, which seemed to be an effort. “Most private dicks are.”
That was a shrewd observation.
Barker spoke, and he’d drained the intimidation from his voice. “Mr. Heller, why don’t you tell us what your business with Sir Harry Oakes was.”
“Sure,” I said, and did.
Every now and then they would look at each other, and one of them would say, “De Marigny,” and the other would nod. Neither bothered taking any notes.
When I’d wrapped up my account, Barker said, “The estimated time of death is between one-thirty a.m. and three-thirty a.m. You’ve just placed Count de Marigny on the murdered man’s doorstep in that time frame. Perfectly.”
Melchen was smiling tightly and nodding.
“Fellas,” I said, “the Count’s a good suspect-don’t get me wrong. But the behavior I observed the day of the murder wasn’t consistent with somebody planning a crime.”
“Maybe it was spur of the moment,” Melchen said.
“Yeah,” said Barker. “He saw the lights on here at Westbourne, driving by, pulled in and had it out with the old man.”
“What,” I said, “and just happened to have a blowtorch in his pocket? I saw the crime scene, gentlemen. Sloppy as it is, murders don’t come much more premeditated.”
They both looked at me blankly, the way a dog might.
“Of course,” I said, “he may have been killed elsewhere and moved here.”
“What makes you say that?” Barker asked.
“The direction of the dried blood on his face. He was on his belly when he was shot.”
That made both of them smirk; Barker looked up smugly at Melchen, who was rocking on his heels like a fat top.
“Did I make a joke?” I asked.
Barker laughed soundlessly. “He wasn’t shot at all.”
“He was killed with a blunt instrument,” Melchen said.
“According to who?”
“According,” Baker said pointedly, “to Dr. Quackenbush.”
“Didn’t Groucho Marx play him?”
“Someday, boy,” Melchen said, in his molasses-mouth manner, shaking a finger, “you’re going to pay for that smart-ass mouth.”
“Deliver the bill anytime, fat man.”
Barker held Melchen back with an arm.
I don’t know why I was needling them, except to see if my initial reading of them as a couple of thick-headed strong-arm types was right. It was-although Barker was clearly the brains. So to speak.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m out of line. We’re all here for the same reason: to help find Sir Harry’s killer. Right?”
“Right,” Barker said. But Melchen was still fuming.
“Let me ask you-you fellas have seen the body, haven’t you?”
They looked at each other dumbly. In both senses of the word.
“It was moved before we got here,” Barker said, vaguely defensive. “It’s at Bahamas General for a post-mortem, then it’s being flown to Maine later tonight.”
“Maine,” I said. “What, for the funeral?”
Barker nodded.
“Well, have a look at those head wounds yourself. I think the old boy was shot.”
Footsteps interrupted us, and I turned to see Colonel Lindop silhouetted in the doorway.
“Gentlemen,” he said stiffly, addressing the Miami dicks, “the Governor is here. He would like a word with you.”
They scurried out of there. I followed, taking my time; Lindop was standing just outside the billiards room as I exited. I looked at him and raised my eyebrows and he shook his head in quiet disgust.
Down the hall, near the front door, by the scorched stairway, the former King of England-sad-eyed, almost slight, dressed in white, like a dapper ice-cream man-was conferring with the Miami cops. A hush had fallen across a hallway crowded with police and various hangers-on; everyone stood around watching breathlessly, respectfully.
I supposed I should have felt impressed. But it wasn’t like he was Capone or anything.
What was most impressive, to me at least, was the way the Duke was treating these Miami roughnecks like old friends, shaking their hands, even placing a gentle hand on Melchen’s shoulder at one point.
Despite the now-hushed hallway, I couldn’t make out anything of their low-pitched conversation. The Duke looked toward the stairs, gestured, and he and the American cops went upstairs, to check out the crime scene. Next to me, Colonel Lindop-who had not been asked along-watched them go, his face etched with the hollow hurt of a spurned suitor.
“Mr. Heller?” a musical voice said.
Down near the kitchen, there she was: Marjorie Bristol. She wore the same light blue dress as before, or an identical one; perhaps it was a maid’s uniform. I went to her.
In the kitchen, white cops in khaki and businessman types milled, while a heavyset colored woman in a bandanna kept busy at a counter, preparing small sandwiches.
“It’s a tragedy, Mr. Heller,” Miss Bristol said. The whites of her lovely dark eyes were filigreed red. “Sir Harry, he was a fine man.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Bristol. Were you here when it happened?”
“No. I left around ten, after I set Sir Harry’s nightclothes out on his bed….” She cupped her mouth; just the thought of his bed was jarring. “Then I…tuck in the mosquito nettin’, and spray the room for bugs.”
“Do you live here? Are there servants’ quarters…?”
“I live alone in a cottage…” She pointed. “…’tween the country club and here. Close enough that when Mr. Christie cry out, this mornin’, I could hear. And I came runnin’…but there was no helpin’ Sir Harry.”
“You didn’t see anything last night…”
“No. The storm was high. So much noise from the sea. I didn’t hear or see a thing. Are you goin’ to stay and find out who did this?”
“Well…no. Why did you think I would?”
Her reddened eyes widened. “You’re a detective. You worked for Sir Harry.”
“I’d like to help, Miss Bristol, but the people in charge of the investigation wouldn’t want my help, even if I were to offer it.”
“Well, you should try!”
“No…I’m sorry.”
“You’re goin’ back to America, then?”
“Yes. As soon as they let me. But I won’t soon forget meeting you, Miss Bristol.”
She was pouting, a little; she wasn’t happy that I wasn’t going to stay and crack the murder case. I had disappointed her-which is something I do sooner or later with most every woman in my life, but usually not this early on.
“Why should you remember me?” she asked.
I put a finger under her chin, raised it so she’d look at me. “Because I want to.”
The hallway, which had gotten noisy again, fell into another hush, which meant the Duke was returning from the murder room. Edward was coming down the stairs, with the detectives trailing him like schoolboys hanging on their master’s every precious word; at the bottom he paused, to shake hands with them again, and then turned to go. Several aides-de-camp fell in place behind him, replacing Barker and Melchen.
But just as he reached the door, de Marigny-making his second impressive entrance at Westbourne today-swept in, accompanied by a white, khakied cop.
The moment that followed is one I’ll remember to my dying day. Why? Because it was so goddamned odd….
The Duke froze, like a man confronted with a ghost, and de Marigny stopped in his tracks, too, and looked at the Duke curiously, the way you might pause to view a car wreck as you drove by.
Then the Duke’s expression turned hard and frankly contemptuous, and he moved swiftly on, and outside, his retinue following.
De Marigny, his wide lips hanging open, lending this man of obvious intelligence a remarkably stupid expression, gazed numbly toward where the Duke had exited. Then he sneered, and seemed both irritated and confused.
Was there something personal between these two?
The two Miami cops moved in on the casually dressed Count like he was Dillinger and they were the FBI; of course, nobody did any shooting.
But Melchen did place his hand on de Marigny’s arm and announce, “I’m Captain Melchen of the Miami Police Department-here at the Governor’s request. Would you mind answerin’ a few questions?”
“Certainly not,” de Marigny said suavely, withdrawing his arm from Melchen’s grasp.
They trooped him past me on their way to the billiards room, where they could subject him to dim lighting and dimmer questioning. Just before they went in, Barker motioned to me.
He seemed conciliatory. “You mind stepping inside with us?”
Melchen was already in the billiards room, showing de Marigny to the card table.
“I guess I don’t mind. What for?”
“I want you to see if what the Count says tallies with what you observed yesterday. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I positioned myself in the darkness, with a mounted moose head or some other damn thing with antlers looking over my shoulder.
At first they treated him almost politely. They played standard good cop/bad cop, with the pudgy Melchen, surprisingly, taking the ingratiating, friendly role. They questioned him about his movements last night, and his every answer-and despite his thick French accent, his English was impeccable-fit the facts as I knew them.
Barker came over to me. He whispered, “How’s all that tally?”
“Perfectly.”
“He’s a cunning son of a bitch.”
“Most gigolos are.”
Barker went back to the table and withdrew a magnifying glass from his pocket and set it down with a clunk. Great-now we were playing Sherlock Holmes.
“You don’t object if we have a look at your hands, do you?” Barker asked, casually snide.
“My hands? No. Go ahead.”
Barker took each of the Count’s hands, one at a time, and examined them carefully under the magnifying glass, like a palm reader with bad eyesight.
Then, without asking, he shifted to de Marigny’s face-specifically, his beard. Melchen turned the table lamp up so it would bathe their subject with light. Conducting a scientific examination in the dark was challenging, you know.
Barker turned and glanced at me, his face smug and tight. Then he looked at de Marigny and said, “The hairs on your hands and beard are singed.”
Even now, the house had a scorched smell. The significance of Barker’s discovery needed no explanation.
“Can you account for that?” Barker asked.
De Marigny shrugged. For once his confidence seemed shaken.
Then he pointed a finger at them and said, “Remember-I told you I was plucking chickens yesterday over a boiling drum.”
The cops said nothing.
“Also,” the Count said, “I smoke cigarettes and cigars…the dampness in Nassau requires frequent relighting. Oh! And I had the barber singe my beard, recently!”
The cops looked at each other skeptically.
“He also burned himself lighting a hurricane lamp,” I said. “Entertaining in his garden last night.”
Barker frowned at me. Melchen just looked confused.
“Yes, that’s right!” de Marigny said. And then he said to me, “How did you know that?”
I didn’t answer. He didn’t know who the hell I was, and I saw no reason to tell him.
“We’re going to clip hairs from your head, beard and arms,” Barker said to his suspect. “Any objection?”
“No,” de Marigny shrugged. “Shall I take off my shirt?”
“Yes,” Barker said. “But speaking of shirts…we want to see the clothes you were wearing last night.”
“I have no idea what clothes I was wearing last night.”
“Come on!” Melchen sneered.
“Really! I have an interchangeable wardrobe of white-and cream-colored silk and linen shirts. I think I remember what sport jacket I wore…and the slacks…but not the shirt. What the hell, gentlemen-go to my house, inspect my laundry if you like!”
“We’ll just take you up on that,” Melchen said nastily.
Barker rose and came over to me. He gave me a foul look. “That’s all, Heller.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, and went out.
I tried to find Marjorie Bristol, to say goodbye, but she didn’t seem to be around. So I looked up Lindop, who was in the hallway, amidst an ever-increasing, milling crowd; what a way to run an investigation.
“Can I go, Colonel? Watching those Keystone Kops play in the dark gives me a migraine.”
He smiled faintly. “You’ll need to give the Attorney General a deposition before you leave Nassau.”
“I figured as much, but I meant, right now….”
He touched the brim of his pith helmet, in a tipping-of-the-hat gesture. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Heller, you’re free to go. But frankly, I don’t seem to be in charge.”
He had a point; but I found the Bahamian bobbies who’d brought me here and told them they were supposed to take me back to the hotel.
And they did.
Hell-maybe I was in charge….