A Penny for the Hangman

by Tom Savage

  Karen hated waiting. She was a New York woman, and perpetual motion was in her constitution. She made lists of goals, checking off items as they were accomplished. Keeping busy was important to her, mainly because it prevented her from having to take stock of her life. Aside from her profession, she didn’t really have all that much to show for her twenty-seven years on earth, and she didn’t much like to contemplate that fact.

  Well, at least her life was looking up lately. She was in love with Jim O’Brien, that was certain. Jim was an improvement over the men she’d dated in college, and he was serious about her—serious enough to want to get married, which made her nervous. She didn’t know if she was ready for it, but she was determined to make a decision about him soon; it was the first thing she wrote on every list these days. Maybe she should find a mate for Ruth Rendell, her Siamese, the latest in a long line of feline companions. She could call him Raymond Chandler. Yes, Ruth and Raymond…

  Karen was avoiding reality again, and she forced herself to return to the present. She drained the mug of cool, sweet punch and sat back in her chair, adjusting a strap on her brand-new bikini. The main professional asset she had now was this gig, whatever it turned out to be. She had a feeling about it, the nagging certainty that this forthcoming interview would be a milestone of some kind, a defining moment for her. Seeing the placement of her article in this week’s issue, the first of her four-parter, she felt that certainty again.

  The magazine had kicked off her series with a dramatic cover photo of the two young actors who played the leads in Bad Boys and the title of her first installment, “PARADISE LOST,” in bold capitals. Her first cover story! Several pictures accompanied the article—a mix of color stills from the new movie and black-and-white shots of the actual people involved in the 1959 scandal.

  The interview would be the final entry, the culmination of her series of pieces on the crime. Part one was the background, mood music to set the scene. She’d already handed in part three, the section about the incident’s enduring legend over the past fifty years, and she’d nearly finished part two as well, the quotes from people who’d known the two boys at the time of the murders. She would send part two off to Sally in New York for next week’s issue as soon as she dined with one last witness, which was scheduled for tomorrow night.

  The waiter arrived to ask if she’d like anything else, so she ordered another fruit punch. He smiled, glanced at her cleavage, and hurried off. Karen laughed to herself as she looked down at her carefully lotioned, nearly naked body. Gwen Levene, her friend and colleague at Visions, had insisted on the scanty blue bikini, not to mention the halters, shorts, jeans, and summer dresses crammed into the new suitcase in Karen’s room upstairs. She’d probably be here for only three or four days, tops, but she’d brought enough clothes for a month.

  Gwen. Yes, Karen had some nice friends. Gwen was a lot of fun, but her taste in men was questionable. Her latest conquest was a man named Sidney Singleton. Karen hadn’t met this Sidney guy yet, but already he’d managed to annoy her, sight unseen. According to Gwen, he called himself a “freelance investigative reporter,” which Karen assumed meant he couldn’t hold a steady job, but he apparently thought he was the next Bob Woodward. He also considered himself the World’s Leading Authority on famous crimes. Gwen told her that Sidney had always dreamed of writing a book about Harper and Anderman, and when he’d heard that Karen was coming down here, and why, he was green with envy. Aside from her employers, Karen had informed only Jim and Gwen about the sinister phone calls, but Gwen had blabbed the news to her new flame in some misguided, Gwen-like attempt to impress him. Sorry, Sid, Karen thought with a little thrill of smug satisfaction. This one is mine.

  If he ever calls…

  She cast another impatient glance at the cell phone before snatching up the new issue of Visions and resuming her story.

  —

  “Paradise Lost”

  The most famous instance of parricide in America before 1959 differed from this one in important respects. In Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892, 32-year-old Lizzie Andrew Borden was accused of killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet while they slept, but Lizzie Borden was an adult, the charge was never proved in court, and the case remains officially unsolved. The Harper/Anderman murders presented the Virgin Islands judicial system with a more complex problem.

  —

  He stood at the railing of the dining terrace above the pool patio of the Frenchman’s Reef, gazing down at the woman in the blue bikini. She sat at one of the umbrella tables almost directly beneath him, her back to him, reading her own article about the Harper/Anderman murders. The new issue of Visions had become available this morning, but he’d already read her cover story online. She was an excellent writer. And she was extremely pretty….

  A group of boisterous tourist children was playing a game in the pool, the object of which seemed to be splashing one another and dunking the loser. Their excited screams drew Karen Tyler’s attention briefly. She glanced over at them, smiling, then back down at the magazine. Her cell phone was lying on the table, and he knew she was waiting for a call. An important call for both of them.

  He leaned forward on the railing and watched the woman below him as she continued to read.

  —

  “Paradise Lost” (continued)

  Rodney Harper was 15 at the time of the incident, and his friend, Wulfgar Anderman, was 14. Both boys were Caucasian, Rodney of British/Scottish/Irish stock and Wulf a pure Dane. They were from rich, prominent families, born and raised in St. Thomas. Rodney’s father, Tobias Harper, 48, was the island’s most successful land developer, and his mother, Lucinda Harper, 45, was a Boston socialite whom Tobias had met while attending Harvard. Dr. Felix Anderman, 44, Wulf’s father, was the best internist and surgeon in St. Thomas, and his mother, Hjordis Anderman, 37, was the daughter of an executive of the local Danish West India Company.

  The Harpers and the Andermans had spent most of their adult lives in the Islands. They were part of that closed circle of upper-class whites who made up some ten percent of St. Thomas’s population. In addition to the rich white crowd, there was a small black aristocracy who owned nearly everything worth owning in the region. These two groups occasionally socialized with each other, and together they virtually ran the U.S. Virgin Islands. The rest of the populace were the native poor, many of them descendants of slaves of the original sugar plantations. If there was a middle class, it was too small to be noticed.

  Wulf was an only child, whereas Rodney was the younger of two sons. Tobias Harper, Jr., 19, was away at college, his father’s alma mater, so he was not in the Harper mansion, Tamarind, on that fateful Friday the 13th. His parents and Dr. and Mrs. Anderman and an Afro-Caribbean woman named Bernice Watkins were not so lucky.

  —

  “Ms. Tyler?”

  “Yes?” She looked up from the magazine. It was the waiter again, the one who had so admired Karen’s new bikini. He stood over her, holding out a cordless receiver.

  “You have a phone call. He says you’re expecting it.”

  Karen blinked at the instrument in his hand, then glanced down at the cell phone on the table. “But I thought—”

  “The gentleman said he tried your cell number, but he couldn’t get through, so he called the hotel instead. I’m afraid cells don’t always work everywhere in the Islands.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” She took the receiver from him, waiting until he moved away before raising it to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Welcome to St. Thomas, Miss Tyler.” It was the familiar voice, low and clear, with perfect enunciation. She noted the “Miss” again, another clue that this was an older man, well bred and old-fashioned, as Harper or Anderman would be.

  “Hello, Deep Throat,” she said, “or is it Mr. Huxley?”

  He emitted a raspy sound that she interpreted as a laugh. “I trust you’re enjoying the hotel.”

  “Yes, I’m having a lovely time. It’s very hot here, but i
t’s amazing how quickly you become used to the heat. The sun is marvelous. I’m getting a nice tan.” She was practically babbling because she was nervous, but she didn’t want him to know it. His next words shattered all hope of that.

  “Well,” he said, “you don’t want to burn yourself, so stay under that umbrella.”

  Despite the equatorial warmth, Karen felt a sudden rush of numbing cold inside her. It was a familiar sensation, one she’d experienced several times in her life, and she thought for a brief moment of the phantom presence she had frequently felt before, the prickling on her skin that she’d always referred to as The Watcher. The idea was immediately dismissed, however; her Watcher was a benevolent spirit, rather like a guardian angel, and this new stab of intuition, this unmistakable sense of being observed, was definitely unfriendly, hostile, perhaps even dangerous.

  She slowly lowered the phone to the glass tabletop and gazed around her on the patio. The noisy gaggle of children in the pool; young, oily-limbed honeymooners stretched out on chaises; small groups of tourists and moneyed locals at tables, enjoying pre-dinner drinks in the last afternoon sunlight; attentive waiters in smart hotel uniforms milling among the tables. At least five people near her were talking on cell phones, and two of them were older men: a fortyish white guy in pink Jams and a sixtyish African American in a business suit. No, neither of those men could possibly be—

  She felt another chill pierce the heat as the new fact occurred to her. Cell phones: everyone here on the patio was using them, and they were having no trouble with reception. Now, too late, the journalist in her put it together. There could very well be bad reception in certain parts of this island, but not here. A deluxe resort hotel such as this one would have that particular problem covered. She’d been too preoccupied to think of that when the waiter had handed her the hotel phone…

  “Miss Tyler? Miss Tyler?”

  Quickly recovering from her shock, Karen raised the phone again and spoke in what she hoped was her neutral journalist’s tone. “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Ah, I thought I’d lost you. As I was saying, you should look around the island tomorrow, and Wednesday at noon my representative will call for you at your hotel and bring you to me. Is that amenable to you?”

  Karen didn’t ask the obvious questions, but she thought them: Why Wednesday? Why not tomorrow, or tonight? Instead, she said, “That will be fine. Who—um, whom shall I expect?”

  “Mr. Graves will fetch you.”

  “Mr. Graves. Okay. I’ll be waiting in the lobby at noon on Wednesday.”

  “Excellent,” he said. The voice was soft, polite but firm, utterly persuasive. Not for the first time in these phone calls, Karen was aware of this man’s charm. “Do have a look around the island tomorrow. Enjoy your sightseeing, and give my regards to MacArthur. Goodbye.” There was a click on the line, and he was gone.

  Karen stared at the receiver for a moment before placing it on the table. She sipped her fruit punch, thinking MacArthur? Had he said “MacArthur”? Yes, he had definitely uttered that name, but she had no idea what he’d meant.

  Another mystery. Whoever he was, he definitely loved mysteries. The hotel phone was an obvious ploy: His number was blocked, so he had no fear of her tracing the call, but using the hotel’s system was yet another little way of telling her that he was in charge of everything. Not that there was any doubt of that, but it was clearly important to him. Oh, well, she’d find out who he was soon enough—and if she met anyone named MacArthur in the meantime, she’d be sure to give him her mysterious host’s regards.

  The crowd around the pool was thinning, and soon she would go inside to dress for dinner. The sun was low on the horizon beyond the harbor, and shadows were lengthening. There was a golden tinge to everything—her first tropical sunset. She looked around, admiring the rich filter of color, consciously avoiding any further inspection of the people nearby. This man, if he was really here observing her, was definitely not her Watcher, her friendly spirit, and he would reveal himself to her in his own good time. Until then, she knew it was pointless to seek him out. She would never find him.

  She made a mental note to tell Jim about all this when she called him tonight. She knew that her boyfriend didn’t fully approve of her being here. She wondered if she was being wise in allowing this stranger to call the shots. Then again, she was determined to get a good story, and she just might have to take a few risks for it.

  She picked up her cell phone and called Information.

  “What listing, please?”

  “The Virgin Islands Daily News,” Karen said. She listened for the number and punched it in, and a woman answered. “Hello, this is Karen Tyler from Visions magazine. I believe my editor arranged for a photographer—”

  “Oh, yes, Ms. Tyler. Your photographer will be Don Price. He’s not here right now, but I can take a message.”

  “Don Price,” Karen repeated, picking up a pen and jotting the name in the margin of her magazine article. “Please ask Don Price to meet me in the lobby of the Frenchman’s Reef Wednesday at noon. Did my editor discuss finances?”

  “Yes, that’s all been arranged,” the woman said. “I’ll give Don the message.”

  “Thank you,” Karen said, and she disconnected. She’d have someone with her at the interview on Wednesday. A man. Jim would approve of that.

  With a sigh and a shrug of her newly tanned shoulders, Karen picked up Visions again and returned her attention to the final paragraphs of her article.

  —

  “Paradise Lost” (conclusion)

  In the strict social hierarchy of the Islands at that time, Bernice Watkins was a prime example of the lower echelons. She was the Harpers’ live-in cook-housekeeper, in charge of the house and the other three West Indians who worked there, two women and a man who came in as daily help.

  Bernice was a “down-islander” from Dominica, one of many illegal aliens who crept into St. Thomas to find good-paying work, hoping the local Immigration Services would look the other way. The 29-year-old single mother of a 5-year-old boy was grateful for the job and the accompanying room and board provided by the Harper family. She’d emigrated just in time to have her baby on American soil, so he was a U.S. citizen, and she, as his mother, was granted a work visa. She was a plump, pleasant woman and a good cook whose only known flaw was a weakness for gin. She’d been with the Harper family just over four years, having obtained her post soon after her son was born.

  At 6:00 in the evening that Friday, March 13, Dr. and Mrs. Anderman arrived at Tamarind for dinner. For the two couples, Friday night meals together were a long-standing tradition, with alternate Fridays hosted at alternate homes. Their teenage sons never attended these parties; they were usually off somewhere else on Friday evenings. Neither the Harpers nor the Andermans kept close tabs on their sons.

  This week was the Harpers’ turn as hosts, and Bernice served them their customary pitchers of martinis on the veranda. Then she went to the kitchen to prepare the salad, roast lamb, and potatoes she would serve at exactly 8 p.m., as ever. She had already dismissed the day staff; she always saw to the Harpers’ evening meals alone.

  At 7:30, the four people on the veranda had consumed two pitchers of martinis, and they were uncharacteristically quiet, dozing in their rattan chairs. In the kitchen, Bernice, who had sneaked her usual martinis from the pitchers before serving them, was also feeling unaccountably tired, so she decided to sit at the breakfast table for a few moments before going into the dining room to set the formal dinner table.

  By 7:45, all five people in the house were asleep, overwhelmed by the secobarbital that had been added to the martini pitchers. In the silence that descended on Tamarind with the encroaching darkness, two slender, dark-clad figures detached themselves from the shadows among the trees and made their way toward the lights of the veranda.

  Bernice’s 5-year-old son, Gabriel Watkins, was also asleep, but he was in his bed in the old slave quarters, the outbuilding behind the mai
n house where he lived with his mother. He was the incident’s only survivor.

  At approximately 8:00 o’clock, the killing began.

  They were unlikely criminals in the least likely place on earth. This Friday, March 13, fifty years to the day after the murders, David Chan’s new film, Bad Boys, opens in theaters everywhere. It is the latest chapter in the ever-growing legend of the crime that sullied Paradise and shocked the world.

  —

  He watched Karen Tyler close her magazine and stand up from the table, reaching for her blouse and cell phone. The waiter hurried over with her check. She asked him to recommend a place for dinner in the hotel, and he told her about a restaurant on the lower concourse, where a steel band would perform. She thanked him and went inside.

  The man on the patio watched her go. He’d heard every word of her end of both phone calls, and she had clearly stated her agenda. Today was Monday, and at noon on Wednesday an emissary would escort her to her interview. She was expecting to be joined by a photographer from the Daily News, a man named Don Price….

  Smiling to himself, Sidney Singleton followed Karen Tyler into the hotel, just as he’d followed her to Kennedy Airport yesterday, and to this island. She didn’t know he was here. Hell, even Gwen—her colleague and his girlfriend—didn’t know he was here. On Wednesday, when Karen’s escort arrived, she would lead Sidney to her informant, and he would beat her to the punch, getting her story and publishing it before she did.

  Sidney entered the lobby on the trail of Karen Tyler, unaware of another set of eyes watching him from a table at the far end of the terrace.