“Why? What about her did you like?” Mike asked, while I thought of the photographs in Queenie Ransome’s bedroom, those of her in costume as well as the nudes.
“Queenie? Now that girl had a life.” Logan became animated, gesturing with his hands as he told us what he knew about her childhood in Alabama, and how she ran away from home to come to New York City to become a dancer.
“In the legitimate theater?” Mike asked.
“That was her dream. But it didn’t happen, Detective. There weren’t a whole lot of roles on Broadway for colored girls in the forties.”
“She knew Josephine Baker, though.”
“Yeah, you’ve checked out those pictures in her apartment? I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman in my life. Somebody brought her to the attention of Baker, right at the beginning of the Second World War. Josephine was staging a revival of Chocolate Dandies, the revue that made her famous in the 1920s. She came to New York for auditions. Queenie tried out just hoping to be part of the chorus line, but she had real star quality. Rose right to the top.”
Mike remembered the photographs that we had seen together. “She performed for the troops during the war?”
“Yeah. Went everywhere that Josephine Baker did at first, till she spread her own wings a little later on. You know about De Gaulle giving them each the Legion of Honor?”
“Nope. I’d like to hear it.”
“I got it all on tape, the stories she told me. Queenie and Baker both worked as intelligence agents during the war. Celebrities were able to move around much more freely than anybody else. Claims she even carried secret military reports from England to Portugal that were written on her sheet music in invisible ink. She was a hot ticket.”
“What did you say about De Gaulle?”
“Baker worked with the French Red Cross. She was very active in the Resistance. She got Queenie involved, too. They were especially good at using their various-let me say, ‘charms’-to convince foreign dignitaries to issue visas to some of the young women who needed to get out of Eastern Europe. Between the two of them, they saved a lot of lives.”
“That sounds fairly dangerous,” Mike said.
“She seemed to thrive on hazardous duty. There wasn’t much that scared her. That was probably the second most dangerous thing Queenie did.”
“I’ll bite. What was the first?”
“Gathering intelligence for the American government.”
“Spying?”
“You got it.”
“On whom?”
“The king of Egypt.”
“Farouk?” I asked, sitting bolt upright.
“Yes, ma’am, Farouk. The Night Crawler-that’s what she called him. McQueen Ransome was King Farouk’s mistress, Ms. Cooper.”
Josephine Baker, the Revue N��gre, the French Resistance, and General Charles de Gaulle. I thought of the letters R du R, the old Parisian label in the mink coat that Tiffany Gatts had stolen from the apartment, and I traced them with my fingertip against the green desk blotter.
“Ransome du Roi,“I said to Mike Chapman. “The King’s Ransom.”
21
Less than half an hour had elapsed since Battaglia had mentioned Farouk’s name. Paige Vallis’s father had tutored the playboy prince in the mid-1930s. Then Vallis had also been posted in Egypt later on, when Farouk’s monarchy was deposed. I had not even had the chance to tell Mike about my talk with Battaglia before walking into the room to meet Spike Logan.
“These tape recordings you made with Queenie, where are they now?” Mike asked.
“In a bank vault on Martha’s Vineyard.”
Dozens of questions raced through my mind, and I needed to break in on Mike’s interrogation. But I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Logan’s answers by stepping out of the room and bringing Mike up to speed. I didn’t want Logan to know that he might have hit on something of consequence.
“You mind turning them over to us?” Mike asked.
Logan hesitated.
“Ms. Cooper can give you a subpoena.”
The slip of paper would have no authority in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it might take me a few days to secure one via the local prosecutor, but Logan didn’t know that.
“Let me think about it,” Logan said.
“Why, what’s on ‘em that concerns you?”
“That’s all the lady’s private thoughts, Mr. Chapman. I signed a contract with her, through the Schomburg, that none of the stories of her intimate relationships would be made public until twenty-five years after her death. You know, it’s got anecdotes about lots of famous people-some of them still alive today.”
I stepped on Mike’s toe, signaling him to lay off the issue of the tapes. I’d find a legal way to get them produced so we could explore them for any information of value.
“What can we tell you about Ms. Ransome?” I asked. Perhaps by making this process a two-way street, we could soften Spike Logan to give us more facts.
He asked questions about how she died, whether anyone had appeared to claim her body or her possessions, and what point we had reached in the investigation.
When we had satisfied his interest, I turned the tables again. “I’m fascinated about this relationship with the Egyptian king. Do you know how all that started?”
Mike Chapman stood and opened the door. “You and your girlfriends eat up all this crap about the royals. A commoner like me couldn’t get lucky in your crowd if I was hung like a stallion. Either of you guys want coffee?”
“Yes, please. Get me two. Spike?”
“Could I have a sandwich and some soda?”
“Sure. Be back in ten.”
It was obvious that Logan liked talking about McQueen Ransome. “So Josephine Baker was responsible for taking Queenie to Europe to perform. There was never quite the color barrier there that there was for entertainers in this country.”
“Paris?”
“That’s where it all started, dancing in the Folies-Berg��re. But once they got involved with Resistance work, Queenie was sent on missions all over Europe. Farouk had become king of Egypt in 1936, but by 1939, the British had taken over control of the country. Rommel was in the desert, ready to pounce, so the Allied troops packed the Egyptians off to guard the Suez Canal, and took over the government, basically.”
“And what became of Farouk when the British took charge?” I asked.
“Just left to be a figurehead. He was barely in his twenties, with a net worth of one hundred fifty million dollars. He had the full run of a five-hundred-room palace, freedom to play with all his toys-yachts, airplanes, racing cars, breeding horses-and to chase broads.”
“Was he married?”
“Not very happily.”
“How did Queenie meet him?”
“She’d been sent to Egypt supposedly to entertain the troops. It was much later in the war-about forty-four. And she performed at the king’s favorite nightclub in Cairo-Auberge des Pyramides.”
“Farouk went to clubs during the war?”
“That’s how he got the nickname the Night Crawler.”
Chapman had used the same phrase himself, but he referred to the vermin who crept around the city streets from dark to daybreak, looking for trouble.
“Every night he was out carousing-belly dancers, jazz bands, caviar and champagne. Next to Mussolini and Goebbels, who got private tours of the pyramids, his favorite people were showgirls.”
“So Queenie was really ordered there for the purpose of seducing Farouk?”
“She took the assignment as kind of a dare. She didn’t believe he’d go for her.”
“Looking at those pictures, it would be hard to imagine why not.”
“‘Cause he liked them blonde, Ms. Cooper, and he liked them no older than sixteen. She was the same age as the king, and a bit more mocha than he usually fell for.”
“What happened?”
“Queenie Ransome danced. She came out onstage and moved that magnificent body l
ike no one else could.”
I thought of her photograph in the Scheherazade costume and imagined her dancing in it for Farouk.
“After the performance, one of his bodyguards came backstage and invited her to join the king’s party. King Farouk stood up to greet Queenie, and when she curtsied to him, he took a necklace out of his pocket and draped it around her neck. ‘This is your passport to my palace,’ he said. ‘The guards will bring you to me later tonight.’”
Logan stopped to laugh. “Queenie told me she unhooked it and took a look at it. Sapphires all around it the size of quail eggs. She dropped it into his soup bowl and told him, ‘I think you have me confused with the next act, Your Highness. She’s the whore. I’m just a dancer.’”
“She walked away?”
“Right out the door and back to the Red Cross headquarters, where she was staying. Night after night Farouk came to the club to ply her with gifts but she refused to see him. When he finally showed up empty-handed, and came backstage to apologize, it was the first time Queenie agreed to speak with him.” Logan paused. “She played hard-to-get for a few more weeks. Demanded a real courtship.”
“And then?”
“The royal affair. Nights in the palace, cruises up the Nile, mingling with all the high society in Cairo and Alexandria, which were quite sophisticated places at the time. There was a big American colony in Egypt. Queenie said Farouk used to invite dozens of Americans in to see Hollywood’s latest propaganda-movies like Casablanca, musical scores from brand-new Broadway shows like Oklahoma! “
“Was she on duty or in love?” I asked.
“It started as an assignment. Hell, she was picking up whatever intelligence she could from within the bedroom. She was there when President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill stopped to meet Farouk on their way back from the Yalta Conference. Farouk’s wife even moved out of the palace-”
“Because of his affair with Queenie?”
“Not entirely. Because she had failed in her efforts to produce an heir to the throne. Three daughters, but not the son that Farouk needed to guarantee succession for the Egyptian monarchy. It just meant that Queenie had his full attention at the time, and his complete confidence. And yes, she fell in love with him.”
“Did she tell you why?”
Logan thought for a minute. “He wasn’t the pathetic old exile the world got to know later on, when he had worked himself up into a three-hundred-fifty-pound glutton. Queenie showed me the photo of him that was on the cover of Time magazine when he was crowned, sort of the great white hope of the Middle East. Prince Charming in the land of the pharaohs. He was smart, spoke seven languages, was a high-liver, and he loved women.”
“I guess the sapphires didn’t hurt, either.”
“Queenie had a good laugh about that one,” Logan said. “The necklace he tried to give her the first night? A total fake. He carried costume jewelry with him every night that he went out on the town to give away to the showgirls and hookers. He had millions, but he was a real cheapskate with the ladies. I think it fascinated him that Queenie didn’t care about his possessions-the jewels, the cars, all the other things.”
“What do you mean, ‘things’?”
“The king was a collector. Of things, loads of things. Weird things, expensive things. He just had to own whatever he could get his hands on.”
“What exactly did he collect?”
“The way Queenie talked, to me it sounded like everything. You know about the pornography, right?”
“No, no. I don’t.”
“Hasn’t anyone told you about those pictures in Queenie’s bedroom?” Logan asked.
“The ones by James Van Derzee?”
“Not them. Those are great photos. Really classy. The Schomburg has his whole collection of those-very artistic, very elegant.”
I didn’t want to tell Logan that the killer had stopped to pose his victim the same way the great photographer had memorialized her. Maybe he already knew that.
“What pornography do you mean?”
“King Farouk had the world’s most extensive pornography collection. Erotic art, objects and devices of every kind, timepieces with fornicating couples gyrating on the watch face as the hands moved around. Pornographic neckties, playing cards, calendars, corkscrews. Then he got the bright idea to make Queenie pose for photographs.”
“And she did?”
“She did at first. She never minded displaying that body of hers. It was only after the king wanted her to perform sexual acts with other men, so that they could be photographed for his collection, that she objected. She refused to do that. It was the beginning of the end of their relationship.”
“The pornography-what became of all of it?”
“Queenie took whatever pictures she could with her when she left Egypt in 1946. When Sotheby’s auctioned the rest of Farouk’s collections after he was deposed, she contacted them to see whether she could buy some of the photographs, so they wouldn’t become public. But at the last minute Sotheby’s withdrew the pornography from the auction, along with some other royal loot. She never knew what happened to the stuff. Didn’t much matter, though. Her spirit was already broken.”
“Because?”
“Fabian, her son.”
“Had he died?”
“Yeah. He had contracted polio. Infantile paralysis. Nineteen fifty-five, a few months before the vaccine was approved for use in the States. Shortly before the auction.”
I did the math in my head. “Fabian was-”
“King Farouk’s son. The prince of Egypt, heir to the throne.”
We were both silent.
“That blond child with fair skin looked exactly like his old man,” Logan said. “I’ll show you the pictures.”
“She must have been devastated.”
“Still couldn’t talk about it without breaking up, Ms. Cooper. I mean, she knew long before she became pregnant that she wasn’t much more than one in a long line of royal concubines. There were belly dancers and British diplomats’ wives in the same club as Queenie. Two of the king’s favorite mistresses were Jewish-it was a different Egypt in those days-but none of them was likely to become the queen.”
“Did he know she was pregnant when she left him?”
He nodded his head. “She was too proud to tell him. But after she gave birth to their son here in the States, she sent him some photographs, knowing how badly he wanted a male heir, and seeing how closely the child resembled the young Farouk. She did the F thing, too.”
“What?”
“Farouk’s father, King Fuad, had once consulted a seer, who told him that all his good fortune derived from the letter F. Fuad then demanded that everyone in the royal family be named based on that prophecy-Farouk himself, and his sisters Fawzia, Faiza, Faika. Like that. He had even made his wife change her name. Queenie thought she’d get his attention that way. ‘Here’s your prince, Fabian, just look at him.’”
“Did Farouk respond to her?”
“She never heard from him again. He divorced his wife and married a sixteen-year-old girl, who finally gave birth to an heir-the next Fuad.”
“Did he ever contact Fabian? Support him?”
“Queenie didn’t want money from him. She just wanted him to acknowledge the boy, to know that she had done what the royal princess failed to do until that time.”
“But how did she live? Did she continue to dance?”
“Not for very long,” Logan said, stopping to open his mouth wide and stroke his goatee. He seemed to be thinking about whether to go on. Then he leaned back and reached into the pocket of his jeans.
“Queenie gave this to me in June, for my birthday,” he said, handing me a pocket watch.
It was in a solid-gold case, and on the back were the initials F.R. “Farouk Rex,” Logan said. “Given to him by his pal, the Duke of Windsor.”
“And Farouk, he gave things like this to Queenie?”
“Not exactly,” Spike Logan said, smiling. “My girl got
a few kicks in before she left town to come back to Harlem. She stole this from the king.”
22
McQueen Ransome stole a gold watch from the King of Egypt. What else of value might she have taken in a fit of pique, out of favor and heading for home?
“Did she tell you,” I asked Spike Logan, “whether she took any of Farouk’s other ‘things’ when she left?”
“Hey, it all started as a prank. There was a well-known story at the time about Farouk pardoning a famous pickpocket from one of Alexandria’s penitentiaries. In return, the king wanted lessons from the guy. So the thief agreed, and taught His Majesty how to steal by sewing tiny bells into each of his own pockets, like little alarms, before filling them with objects. By the end of his lessons, Farouk had mastered the art of light-fingered lifting. You never heard the story about Churchill’s watch?”
“No.”
“Churchill was visiting the troops and stopped to have dinner with Farouk, who lifted his watch from the prime minister’s waistcoat during cocktails, without the great statesman having a clue. Only after the meal, when Churchill asked the time, did the king pull out the old guy’s watch from his pocket and tell him.”
I laughed at the image.
“Farouk thought it would be fun to teach Queenie, too. She got a platinum cigarette case off No��l Coward one night, and the money clip that Jack Benny carried in the inner pocket of his dinner jacket when he came to perform for the troops.”
“But she carried it farther than that, I take it.”
Logan got serious. “She could see what was coming, Ms. Cooper. The king was losing interest in her, she knew she couldn’t make a living dancing while she was pregnant, and she didn’t know what kind of hard times she was facing back in the States, going home to Harlem after the war.”
“What did she admit to you that she took with her?”
Logan’s fingers tapped on the desktop. “I don’t remember, exactly.” He seemed to recognize that he was displaying Queenie in a negative way.
The Kills Page 18
