6.The Alcatraz Rose

by Anthony Eglin

  “A counterfeiter and a gardener.” Kingston smiled. “A rare combination.”

  “He was a gifted man, all right. But that’s about all I can tell you.” Andy paused, shaking his head. “You know, Lawrence, over the years I’ve been asked the damnedest questions but very few about plants.”

  Kingston smiled back. “I beg to differ with Kipling when it comes to the world’s oldest profession. I believe that gardening came first.”

  Harris chuckled. “It would certainly make more sense. But not as much fun, maybe?”

  “I can’t argue against that,” Kingston said.

  Harris snapped his fingers. “Ryan Matthews, that was the gardener’s name, the counterfeiter. As kids, we were forbidden to talk to the prisoners, but I chatted with him briefly now and then. He was an exceptionally intelligent man and genuinely friendly.”

  “How many wardens were there over the years?”

  “Four, with very different and progressively more lenient management styles. The last two, Madigan and Blackwell, were the least strict—more humanitarian might be a better way to put it. Naturally they were the more popular, too. I think it would be fair to say that under their stewardship, more inmates were permitted to work on various tasks outside the prison walls. You, of all people, can appreciate that working in the gardens was one of the most sought-after jobs.”

  “What years were they running the prison?”

  Harris had to think for a moment. “From 1955 to 1963.”

  “Which happen to be the years following the robbery,” Kingston noted, sipping his wine. “Is there any evidence—records and such—to suggest that either of them was personally involved in gardening—a hands-on sort?”

  Harris smiled and shook his head. “Lawrence, give up on the warden idea. It’s not going to wash, take my word for it.”

  “I suppose you’re right. It’s too convenient an answer.”

  “Although—” Harris paused, frowning. “I just remembered something. Thinking of the two wardens reminded me. The secretary who served through both their terms was Elliot Hofmann. I’d have to check, but I’m pretty sure he had a hand in developing the gardens when he first came on board. I seem to recall that he was the one who influenced the warden to increase the number of privileged inmates allowed to work outside.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. So if it helps any, it’s possible he could’ve received permission from the warden to go ahead and purchase seeds and plants. But why would he have wanted to get his hands on a rare rose from another continent?”

  “You’d be amazed, Andy. Gardeners are among the most obsessive collectors in the world and sometimes go to extremes or pay huge sums for a rare plant. Not long ago, a Chinese orchid was sold at auction for £160,000—that’s nearly a quarter million dollars. You might not believe it but there are serious collectors out there who’ll pay up to $50,000 for a cycad.”

  “A cycad?”

  “It’s the oldest living plant on the planet, over 250 million years old. It’s sort of a cult plant. There are stories about collectors traipsing all over the world to find mature ones. I read about one man risking his life going into a guerrilla-held jungle area in Colombia to get a specimen. Needless to say, like arms and drugs, there’s an illegal trade in cycads, which, as we all know leads to smuggling and host of other crimes.”

  “Jeez, all for a damned plant? That’s hard to imagine. So, what you’re suggesting is that if Hofmann was fanatical about roses, he might have gone to similar extremes to get his hands on the world’s rarest rose?”

  “Maybe not quite that far. It could’ve been quite a trophy, though.”

  Harris was slow to answer, his expression muddled and mildly incredulous.

  “I just don’t think that’s the case, here,” he said. “We have an expression for it, you’re ‘whistling Dixie.’ These men—the wardens, the secretary, and the correctional officers—had far too much on their minds, huge responsibilities to deal with each day. I just can’t buy it.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Kingston replied. “I’m probably overreaching. But bear with me for a moment, and let’s stay with Hofmann. Assuming that he had set his mind on getting the rose, where could he have learned of its existence? Books, garden magazines, nursery catalogs, other members of the staff—there would have been plenty of sources. And what about all the civilian employees?”

  “As for civilians, I’m rusty when it comes to the numbers, but I believe that, at any given time, there were sixty families living on the island, about a hundred children. The number of guards hovered around a hundred, too.”

  “So any of those people could have learned of the rose and told Hofmann,” Kingston said, breaking off as the waiter appeared with two bowls of steaming clam chowder. Once placed in front of them, he checked the table to make sure everything was as it should be, then retreated with a polite, “Enjoy.”

  For a few minutes, all thoughts of Alcatraz and the robbery were cast aside as they enjoyed their soup. It wasn’t until the main courses arrived—boned Rex sole for Kingston and sautéed shellfish for Harris—that they picked up where they’d left off.

  “Going back to what you were saying, Lawrence—even discounting the fact that the rose was the best-kept horticultural secret of its day—I don’t think we will ever know how Hofmann or the warden would have learned about it—or if they even did.”

  Kingston detected a subtle change in Harris’s tone. Was he starting to lose interest? he wondered.

  He rested his fork and looked at Andy with a shamefaced smile. “I hope I’m not boring you to tears. Sometimes I get carried away without realizing it. Perhaps we should change the subject for a while?”

  “Not at all, Lawrence. I’m just as curious as you to get to the bottom of the mystery. Ninety percent of all the questions I ever get asked are about the prisoners and the escapes—Al Capone and the Birdman, the sensational stuff. So it’s actually a pleasant change for me to discuss other aspects of life on the island. Though, from what you’ve told me, I can now see that gardening can sometimes be a hazardous occupation.”

  “I haven’t told you about the plant hunters yet, Andy. Some of those stories would make Indiana Jones’s hair stand on end.”

  Kingston was wondering how to keep conversation on the subject alive. For the moment, he seemed to have run out of questions. Harris saved him from having to concoct one.

  “Well, maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way—backward,” Harris said, knife and fork suspended. “Perhaps we should be looking at it from the perspective of those on your side of the pond. Who acquired the rose and arranged for its shipment to Alcatraz? What difficulties would they have encountered and who would they be sending it to?”

  “Unfortunately, there’s not much to go on there, either. I doubt that export licenses for plant products were as stringent then as they are now. Even if it was sent by legitimate means, the chance of finding any records or documentation sixty years later is wishful thinking.”

  “I notice that when you talk about the rose, you refer to it as a plant. Why wouldn’t they ship seeds? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier?”

  “Generally, you’re right. But in our case, if someone wanted to be certain that the rose he was sending was identical to its parent, the Belmaris rose, the most reliable method of propagation at the time would have been by stem cuttings, which, incidentally is quite simple and can be done by a novice, if the right steps are followed.”

  Harris nodded. “I’ve heard about it.”

  “It’s done with many plants. Seeds are much trickier to deal with and often produce a plant and flower that differ from the rose the seeds came from. It’s complicated, all about pollination. Anyway, it can take a long time to germinate seeds, and you’ve got to know what your doing. It requires controlled conditions, and I doubt anyone would’ve wanted to go to all that trouble.”

  “What about shipping the cuttings?”

  “Not a problem. It’s been c
ommon practice for well over a hundred years, believe it or not. With the advent of the Internet, millions of newly propagated plants are shipped worldwide every year. It’s so simple that almost anyone can do it.” He paused, placed his knife and fork neatly side by side across the empty plate, and leaned back with a satisfied sigh.

  Harris smiled. “Good, eh?”

  “I should say. Best sole I’ve had in a long time.”

  Not thirty seconds later, the attentive waiter returned to take their plates and orders for coffee. Both declined dessert.

  “Talking of the plant hunters,” Kingston said, chagrined to realize he was about to lapse into his professorial mode but unable to stop himself, “in Queen Victoria’s day, the botanists used what were called Wardian cases to transport and ship young plants back to Britain from all over the globe. The wood-and-glass case was named after its inventor, Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward.”

  “Quite a handle.”

  Kingston smiled. “Very Dickensian. It was nothing more than a tightly sealed container of condensed moisture, that looked like a small greenhouse, the forerunner of today’s terrarium. He couldn’t have chosen a more demanding voyage to try them out, though. He shipped two cases filled with ferns and grasses to Australia, a journey that took several months. The plants arrived in perfectly good condition.”

  “You’re teaching me new respect for horticultural history.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me.” Kingston smiled and shook his head. “It’s been fifteen years now and I still forget I’m not in the classroom.”

  “Dealing with the history of Alcatraz every day, I know the feeling.”

  “I believe it was Samuel Butler who said, ‘God cannot alter the past, but historians can,’” Kingston said, smiling.

  “Amen.”

  Kingston’s smile faded as something suddenly occurred to him. “Andy, you raised the idea that we may have been going about all this backward, and should be looking at it from our viewpoint, from England.”

  Harris nodded. “It was just a thought, that’s all.”

  “But think about it. We’ve been assuming—or I have—that Jennings, aka Reginald Payne, wrote the notes in the book for a friend, or friend of a friend, who was interested in rare roses. But what if he did it not for anything as prosaic as an English garden, or for the warden of Alcatraz, but for one of the inmates?”

  Andy’s eyebrows shot up. “An inmate? What would a murderer or a bank robber want with a rose? It makes no sense.”

  Kingston held up a hand. “Perhaps not, but hear me out. What if one of the inmates approached the warden or his secretary—who happened to be obsessed with roses, as many people are—and said that he could lay his hands on the rarest rose on the planet? What do you think the response would be?”

  “I have no idea. Fiction is the first word that comes to mind. The men we’re talking about were America’s most notorious, hard-coreprisoners: murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and high-profile gang bosses. They spent most of their time figuring out how to escape, not planning how to import roses.”

  Coffee arrived, giving Kingston a short breather before having to respond to Harris’s unequivocal reaction. “You’re right, of course,” he said, stirring cream and sugar in his cup. “But what if—and this may be an even greater stretch—what if it was an inmate already known to Jennings?”

  Harris’s expression was ambiguous, and he seemed hesitant to answer right away. Either a sign of self-reproach, after his being so defensive, thought Kingston, or he was tiring of what he thought were harebrained questions.

  “Highly unlikely,” Harris said, “considering that Jennings is English and all the Alcatraz inmates were American.”

  Kingston took a careful sip of hot coffee, looking at the historian over the steam from his cup. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that Jennings couldn’t have had some kind of previous criminal relationship with one of the prisoners. I don’t have any evidence that Jennings went to the States, but it’s conceivable that one of the inmates might have crossed paths with Jennings in London.”

  “Even if that were the case, where does it get you? I can’t see that it changes anything.”

  While Harris was taking a long sip of his coffee, Kingston was pulling on his earlobe, his eyes wandering vacantly around the room. “I have a question, Andy,” he said, shrugging off his lapse of attention.

  “Shoot.”

  “The robbery in England took place in 1957, and Alcatraz closed in 1963. How many prisoners were on the island during those six years? A reasonable guess.”

  “Over twenty-nine years, the highest number of prisoners was around three hundred and the lowest about two hundred twenty. If I were to guess for the last six years, it would be the lower number.”

  “I assume there’s a list, a record of those incarcerated in those years?”

  “I’m sure there is.”

  “Would it provide a history, a background of each inmate?”

  “I can see where you’re going, but I still think it’s an exercise in futility. By combing through the lives of two-hundred-plus inmates, you hope to find evidence pointing to one prisoner who could have known Jennings?”

  Kingston shrugged. “It’s worth a try. We’ve exhausted everything else.”

  “You’re a stubborn son of a gun, I’ll say that much. I’ll see what I can come up with. All I can say is that you’ll have a lot of reading and crystal ball gazing to do.”

  At Sam’s front door, they shook hands and exchanged cards, with Harris promising to get to work right away pulling together the list of prisoners.

  Fifteen minutes later, Kingston stood on the deck of the Hornblower, the Alcatraz ferry, as it sliced through the whitecapped chop of San Francisco Bay, seagulls circling and squealing over the throb of its engines. On such a cheerful though breezy afternoon, the fast-a pproaching island, its gray rocks daubed with wildflower color and patches of untold shades of green, wasn’t quite so forbidding as he’d remembered from a previous visit twenty-some years ago when he was merely a curious tourist with no agenda.

  He was looking forward to the tour, particularly the restored gardens that Greg Robinson and Andy Harris had told him about and, of course, he was excited at the possibility of seeing the Belmaris rose, if it was still blooming.

  17

  CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The resounding metallic din echoed around the steel and concrete walls, stone floors, and three-story ceilings of Cell Block D. For effect, the park ranger conducting the tour had just slammed shut a steel-barred door to a nine-by-five-foot cell, the only fixtures a narrow bed, a toilet, a tiny wall-mounted sink, and a metal table, all affixed to the concrete walls.

  Kingston was among a group of two dozen visitors. Already knowing most of the facts and figures, he remained in back of the group, often moving away, more intent upon observing than listening, trying to imagine what it must have been like being an inmate in what was once the most formidable maximum-security prison of all time.

  “That’s a sound that no prisoner ever forgot, even if he was lucky enough to get out of here,” the ranger said, facing the unsmiling visitors. “Within these walls lived the country’s toughest and most dangerous and most famous prisoners.” He waved a circling hand.

  “When they arrived here, prisoners had a decision to make: whether to obey the rules or not. That decision affected their lives dramatically. Prisoners who chose not to behave ended up in a harsher place, here in the prison’s treatment unit.”

  “There are four blocks like this, A to D, and each of the corridors had a name. There was Michigan Avenue, Broadway, Sunset Boulevard—and this one, between Blocks C and D, was aptly nicknamed Seedy Street.”

  This is Block D,” he said, voice echoing. “Thirty six of the least popular cells in Alcatraz, where the unruly and violent inmates were housed. Inmates here stayed in their cells twenty-four hours a day. Typically they were only allowed out once a week for a shower and exercise.

  “Down there at th
e end,” he said, pointing, “are the solitary confinement cells, numbers nine through fourteen. The notorious ‘hole,’ as they were called. The cell doors there don’t have bars; they’re solid steel. Those isolation cells had no toilet or running water, no mattress, no light fixture, and they were colder than the other cells. Treatment in these cells sometimes included total darkness, sleeping on the floor with only a blanket, and a restricted diet. Confinement usually lasted several days, but no longer than nineteen. By the way, at night the wind used to howl through those windows up there. They face San Francisco and the setting sun.”

  Kingston looked up at the gun galleries at each end of the block, visualizing the armed guards watching the inmates round the clock. He closed his eyes, imagining the yelling and swearing, the whistles, the bells and incessant hubbub from the cells, the clatter of boots on the iron walkways and stairs, the guards shouting orders. It was grim and depressing. He walked back to his group.

  The ranger, standing next to the bars of one of the standard cells, was still talking. “Cells like this one had to be kept tidy and in good shape. Any articles found in the cells or on prisoners, such as drugs, alcohol, money, tools that could be used to inflict injury or employed in escape attempts, were considered contraband and subjected the inmate to disciplinary action. Toilet paper, matches, soap, and toiletries were issued to the cells twice a week, and inmates could request hot water and a mop to clean their cells. The bars, windows, and floors of the prison were cleaned daily. Talking was permitted in the cell block and in the dining hall as long as conversations were quiet and there was no shouting, loud talking, or singing. Any questions?”

  A young boy raised his hand. He wanted to know what the prisoners did all day.