Blind Faith

by Joe McGinniss

  “You known her a long time, Andy?” Gladstone asked. “Mrs. Riccio?”

  “I knew her when we were twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old up in Perth Amboy and she was a Capodilupa at the time.”

  “And you stayed in pretty close touch over the years?”

  “Yeah, we just continued—my ex-girlfriend, more or less, at one time. And we just continued the friendship. My wife and I, and my daughter, we went up there a few years ago, visited them at their house. And I met them in New Orleans about a year ago. They were down there for some kind of convention, and I had a bowling tournament and we happened to hook up for a while.”

  “So how’d you happen to go up to the party?” Gladstone asked.

  “You see,” Myers said, “my daughter was in some advanced classes and from January on my wife and her were staying up to the wee hours of the morning and she was helping her. And, more or less, I felt left out in the cold, neglected, depressed. I tried to communicate and I wasn’t getting anywhere because she was looking at it from my daughter’s point of view instead of looking at it from my point of view. So instead of having a big family fight, when the invitation came in the mail, I just told her I was going somewhere and I went the other way.

  “You see, since I was going up there by myself, my wife would say, ‘Why are you going? Why don’t you just stay home?’ And I would have tried to explain to her my feelings of what was going on. And my wife is a very sentimental person. She cries very easily. And I can’t stand it for her to cry.

  “So I told a little white lie. I told her my knee was bothering me. I told her I was going to have it looked at. In a hospital. In San Antonio.”

  “How far’s San Antonio, Andy?” Gladstone asked.

  “Three hundred, maybe three hundred fifty miles.”

  “There’s no hospitals in Shreveport?”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Your knee,” O’Brien said. “Up until that time had you complained to your wife about any problems with your knee?”

  “Now and then,” Myers said, “but not every day.”

  “But that wouldn’t cause a fight? If you told her you were going to a hospital in San Antonio?”

  “No.”

  “But it would cause a fight if you told her you were going to New Jersey?”

  “Yes, if I told her why I was going up there, to go to the party. So I just told her I was going to San Antonio and then I went the other way.”

  “How long were you up there?” Gladstone asked.

  “Three days.”

  “Where’d you stay?” O’Brien asked.

  “My stepbrother, Bill Henderson, he has a place in Perth Amboy. I stayed with him.”

  “What’d you do?” Gladstone asked.

  “Oh, this and that. Took Bill’s daughter—she goes to a Catholic or private school—we would take her to school, we would stay around the house, b.s. a little bit. In the evening, his wife’s relatives came over and we played nickel-dime poker.”

  Yes, Mancuso thought to himself, a real party animal.

  “About the party, Andy,” O’Brien said. “How’d you get there?”

  “Rent-a-car.”

  “What time did you arrive?” Gladstone said.

  “Approximately six o’clock. I was early, so I sat at the bar. I had, I guess, two drinks, and then the guests started showing up.”

  “You didn’t join them?” O’Brien asked. “All these Riccios and Capodilupas and all these old friends from Perth Amboy who you’d just flown fifteen hundred miles up to see?”

  “Well, no, see, it got sort of crowded all at once there, and then Mr. and Mrs. Marshall showed up and all the tables had been taken and they was just standing there at the bar and he was having difficulty getting attention, and since the bar lady knew what I was drinking I waved at her and she came over, and I said, ‘These people would like to have an order.’

  “And then we just started general conversation, because he was thankful that I got him a drink.”

  “What’d you talk about?” Gladstone asked.

  “We talked about everything. We talked about me being in the service, how I knew the Riccios, what kind of business I was in. I told him I was a retired Air Force and he told me that he was in the Navy. We discussed IRAs. I told him I was interested in IRAs, and I told him my reason, which was, we—my wife and I—we had CDs, see, and the money is there and I pull it out too quick and I have to pay a penalty on it. And since I did have relatives, family, in New Jersey, I thought that if I can get something out of the state of Louisiana it would be harder for me to get the money back because I would have to write.”

  “Go on.” Gladstone nodded as if he were interested.

  “See,” Myers said, “I think we had two five-thousand-dollar CDs, if I’m not mistaken, in Commercial National Bank in Shreveport, and I told him that every time we put money away, either in the savings account or into a CD, I draw them out early and we pay a penalty. And I wanted something that was not within state. That if I needed the money I would have to send a letter. And by the time I did all that and the letter come back I wouldn’t need the money.”

  “But every once in a while,” O’Brien said, “you’d take a break from these financial discussions in order to dance, is that right?”

  “I just danced with her one time,” Myers said. “Fast dance. Every slow dance they would dance together. And when they were sitting, she would rest her elbow on his leg. I thought they were very much in love.”

  It was at this point that Bob Gladstone opened the folder that contained the memo about the Western Union money order. The memo on Caddo Hardware stationery.

  “Ever seen this before?” Gladstone asked.

  Myers’s Adam’s apple seemed to bob quickly up and down. Then he nodded. “Yes. I wrote that. That was a message I took for Ferlin.”

  Now it was Gladstone’s pulse that quickened.

  “Who’s Ferlin?” Gladstone asked.

  “Oh, he’s just a fella stops by the store sometimes. Kind of a wheeler-dealer, that type of guy.”

  “I don’t understand, Andy. This note that you wrote says that James McAlister of Philadelphia is going to send a three-thousand-dollar Western Union money order to Ernest Grandshaw here in Shreveport. If I remember correctly, you told us on Wednesday that you don’t know anyone named Ernest Grandshaw.”

  “That’s correct. Ernest Grandshaw is just a name that Ferlin was using.”

  “Ferlin who?” Gladstone said.

  “I don’t know his last name. He’s a big fella, like I say, a wheeler-dealer type, but Ferlin is all I’ve ever known him by.”

  “How about McAlister?” O’Brien said. “You know him?”

  “Well, now, you see, that’s another thing. McAlister isn’t real, either. That was the name Mr. Marshall told me he had used.”

  “Mr. Marshall?” Gladstone said.

  They could all see that Myers was beginning to perspire. “Listen, I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.

  “Nobody’s talking about wrong, Andy,” Gladstone said. “Just help us clear up this confusion. Then you can go home to your wife and a nice hot supper.”

  Myers was beginning to tremble as well as perspire.

  “You see, nobody really asked me this before, but, you know, Mr. Marshall called me a couple of times after the party, to see if I’d received the information he’d sent me about the IRAs. And I said, ‘Yes, sir, but I haven’t looked at it.’ And, ah, one of those times—you know, he might even have mentioned this at the party, now that I think about it—he wanted to know if I knew any investigators.”

  “Investigators?” Gladstone said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “He say what kind of investigator?” Gladstone asked.

  “No, no. Not at all. He just wondered if maybe there was somebody I could recommend, but I told him no, I didn’t know anybody in that line of work.”

  “Did he say he wanted an investigator?” Gladstone asked.


  “No, he didn’t. But that same day I think it was, just after Mr. Marshall had called me, this fellow Ferlin drove up and he drove up in a pretty nice-looking car. I’d seen him as a customer before because he was buying supplies, and I said, ‘What type of work do you do?’ And he says, ‘Well, I’m more or less a wheeler-dealer.’ And I said, ‘What is a wheeler-dealer?’ And he said, ‘I just bought this vehicle. I’m going to sell it and make a couple grand, and then I’m going to buy another. And if somebody wants to buy a piece of property, I act as the intermediary. And I get a commission.’

  “So then I asked him, ‘Do you know anybody who does investigations?’ And he asked me what type. I said, ‘I don’t know. There is a gentleman up north who wants an investigator.’ And he says, ‘Well, I do investigations.’ So I said, ‘Okay.’ And I called Mr. Marshall and said, ‘I think I found an investigator for you and he’ll be here at five thirty this afternoon if you want to call and talk to him.’”

  “Did he call?” Gladstone asked.

  “Yes, it was about quarter to six, and he apologized for calling so late. He wanted to know if the gentleman was still there. And I said, ‘Yes, just a minute.’ And I said, ‘Ferlin,’ and he said, ‘I’ll take it on the phone in the back.’”

  “How long did they talk?” Gladstone asked.

  “Twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes,” Myers said.

  “You hear any of the conversation?”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t listen. The only thing I couldn’t help hearing was that Ferlin gave Mr. Marshall his name as ‘Ernie Grandshaw, from Mississippi.’ And that made me curious, so after he hung up and we started to walk out, I asked him, ‘What’s Ernie Grandshaw—or who’s Ernie Grandshaw in Mississippi?’ And he says, ‘I never give my real name to a client until I know who I’m dealing with. I don’t know who this person is. And since I don’t know him, I gave him that name.’ And that was it. I walked out with him, locked up the store and went home.”

  “Listen, Myers,” O’Brien said. “We’ve got the phone company records. We know you and Marshall talked on the telephone thirty-one times between June fourth and the night Maria Marshall was murdered.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Myers said loudly. “I didn’t even know about it until after it happened.” Under the table, his legs were shaking up and down so hard that all three detectives could feel the vibrations.

  “You’re telling me,” O’Brien said, leaning in fast, “that every time Marshall called you or you called him all you talked about were IRAs?”

  “No,” Myers said. “I never said that.”

  “The hell you didn’t,” O’Brien said. “What did you tell those two Shreveport detectives last week?”

  “I answered their questions,” Myers said. “There were just certain questions they didn’t ask.”

  “Like what?” Gladstone said quietly.

  “Listen, I swear to God, I didn’t know anything was supposed to happen to that woman. She was a beautiful lady. You’d have to be crazy to want to hurt somebody like her.”

  “Or greedy,” O’Brien said.

  “Or desperate,” Gladstone said.

  Myers looked as if he were about to start to cry. “If anybody had asked me I would have told them. I don’t have anything to hide. Mr. Marshall and Ferlin used me to pass messages back and forth. Ferlin didn’t want Mr. Marshall to have his real phone number, or even to know who he was, so every time Mr. Marshall wanted to get in touch with him, he had to do it through me. But it was only for an investigation. That’s all that was going on, I swear it. At least, that’s all I knew about.”

  “Just sit tight, Andy. You want a cup of coffee?” Gladstone said. “I’m going out to get a few pictures.”

  “I don’t want to see her dead!” Myers called. “I didn’t have anything to do with it and I don’t want to see that lady dead!”

  “Relax, Andy,” Gladstone said. “These are just some ID photos to see if you can help us pick out your buddy Ferlin. You take anything in your coffee or you want it black?”

  But Myers now had his head in his hands and was starting to sob.

  He picked out Ferlin. Among eight photographs he was shown of white males in the Shreveport area, he pointed instantly and unerringly to the picture of Ferlin L’Heureux.

  “So what were you, Andy, a messenger boy?” Gladstone said softly.

  Myers nodded. “If Ferlin said he was going up to New Jersey, I’d call Mr. Marshall and tell him when. Or if Mr. Marshall called down here trying to reach Ferlin—which happened a lot more often—I’d pass the message along. It got so, in July, that Mr. Marshall was really bugging me. Finally, I told Ferlin he had to give me a phone number where Mr. Marshall could reach him directly. And he did, he did. He wouldn’t give me his home number, but he gave me a number he said he’d be at at specified times. It was a pay phone at some gas station near his house.”

  “Andy, did you call up there on September fifth?” Gladstone asked.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. I might have.”

  “What did you say, Andy, that time?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” Myers cried.

  “Did you say Ferlin was coming back up?”

  “Ernie Grandshaw.” Myers sobbed. “Ernie Grandshaw. That’s the only name Ferlin ever wanted me to use.”

  “And he did come back up!” O’Brien shouted suddenly. “And the next night that lady was murdered!”

  “I swear, I swear, I didn’t know anything about it,” Myers said. “All I was ever told was that it was an investigation. I didn’t even know what the investigation was about.”

  “Hey, Andy,” Gladstone said. “It’s ten o’clock. Maybe you want to call home. Tell your wife you’re going to be a little later.”

  When he reentered the room ten minutes later, Myers suffered a sudden panic attack. He fell to the floor and started to shake. Gladstone dumped out the coffee from Myers’s cup and called down the hall for a shot of something—brandy, vodka, anything—to replace it. Vodka was what the Shreveport police supplied. Gladstone measured a careful ounce into the cup and handed it to Myers, who was still on the floor but sitting up now, and crying, literally crying, that he wanted to go home.

  “You can go home, Andy,” Gladstone said. “All you have to do is tell us the truth.”

  “I have told you the truth,” Myers moaned.

  “The whole truth, Andy. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  “I want a lawyer,” Myers said. “Why didn’t you give me a chance to get a lawyer?”

  “Andy, we read you your rights,” Gladstone said. “We read them slowly and carefully and we informed you that you could consult an attorney of your choice at any time.”

  “Yeah,” Myers said, “but the only lawyer’s card I’ve got in my pocket is the one that Ferlin gave me this morning. And he’s Ferlin’s lawyer, not mine.”

  When they propped him up again, Myers told them about the earlier portion of his day.

  At 8:30 that morning, he had been standing behind the counter at Caddo Hardware, coffee in hand, just opening up for the day, when he heard a horn honking out front. He went to the door to see what was happening. Ferlin was what was happening. Honking, and now waving for Myers to come to the car.

  “It was sprinkling,” Myers said. “I ran out to the car—he was driving a Jeep was what it was. I had the cup of coffee in my hand, and he waved to me and told me to get in. And I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ Normally we talk—if you want to say something to me—we talk right there.

  “He said, ‘Please. The police may be listening.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ We went riding around and he says, ‘The police went over to Ernie Grandshaw’s house and they got the money order receipts.’ And I said to him, ‘There is an Ernie Grandshaw?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘God, what have I got involved in? The police here are questioning me and I don’t know what’s going on and I have a lot to lose and I don
’t know nothing.’

  “And then Ferlin says, ‘They’re tryin’ to make a mountain out of a molehill.’ He says, ‘Be cool. Don’t say nothin’. You know you got a lot to lose. Just don’t say nothin’. Don’t talk.’ And I said, ‘Please, take me back to the office,’ which he did. He took me back to the office. And I was shaking.

  “Then he called me from his lawyer’s office. He told me he was down there talking to his attorney and his attorney says for me not to say anything, to get a lawyer and just keep quiet. And I didn’t have a lawyer, and he says, ‘Well, write this man’s name down,’ and he gave me the name and number of his lawyer. But I didn’t even want to be on the phone with Ferlin anymore. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I told him I had to get back to work. ‘Just leave me alone and let me get back to work,’ I said, and I was still shaking.”

  “Not as much as you’re shaking now,” O’Brien said. “What I want to know is, when was the first time you saw Ferlin after Maria Marshall was murdered?”

  “Oh, Lord,” Myers said, “Oh, Lord. Don’t make me remember that.” But they did.

  He’d been in the store late on the afternoon of Monday, September 10, when Ferlin L’Heureux—all smiles—had driven up in his big white Cadillac, this time with his wife along.

  “Hi, Andy,” he’d said, grinning, “how are you-all doing this fine day?” Then he’d introduced Myers to his wife.

  “I’m kind of thirsty, Andy,” he’d said, walking toward a case where soft drinks were kept. “I find myself kind of thirsty today. Maybe I’ll just take two of these Co’-Colas here, one for me and one for my wife.”

  “That’s fine, Ferlin. You just help yourself.”

  “Yup, I’m feelin’ good, Andy, my man. Your friend up there in New Jersey, Mr. Marshall, he ought to be feelin’ good, too.” He grinned broadly. “Andy,” he said, “I have completed my investigation.”

  “Well, that’s fine, Ferlin. That’s just fine. I’m sure that’ll be a great relief to Mr. Marshall. He did seem to be getting kind of harried toward the end there.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, it’s all taken care of for him now. Say, Andy, I was wonderin’ if you could do me a favor. I’d sure like to get a newspaper from up north.”