Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07

by Carnal Hours (v5. 0)

  She climbed onto the bed gingerly and held me in her arms like a big baby, which is exactly what I was crying like. I don’t know why—later, in retrospect, killing Lady Diane Medcalf seemed not only logical but necessary and even admirable. She was at least as evil as any mobster I ever knew.

  But right now I was crying. I think I was crying for the death of the funny, bitchy society dame I had thought she was—not the slum girl who clawed her way into royal circles, though maybe she deserved some tears, too.

  Marjorie never asked me what I meant; she never asked me about the woman I said I killed. She had to have wondered, but she knew what I needed was comfort, not questions, let alone recriminations.

  She was a special girl, Marjorie—one of a kind, and when I look back, I wonder why I didn’t drag her off to some out island and raise crops and kids, black or white or speckled—who gave a shit, with a woman like this at your side?

  Which is why I cried so long. At some point the sorrow or guilt or whatever the hell it was I was feeling for Di merged with the overwhelming bittersweet ache I felt knowing that this sweet woman who was holding me, comforting me, nursing me back to health, was as lost to me as the dead one.

  My tears weren’t just for Di. They were for both the lovely women I’d lost in the Caribbean.

  Fleming appeared in the doorway that evening like a pastel illusion—light blue sportcoat, pale yellow sport shirt, white trousers. He looked like a tourist with exceptional taste.

  “Back in the land of the living, I see,” he said, smiling faintly. Marjorie had only one small lamp on, and the near darkness threw shadows on his angular face.

  Marjorie stepped to the door, glanced our way shyly. “I’ll just walk outside in the moonlight while you gentlemen are talkin’.”

  Fleming turned his smile on her, melting the girl. “Thank you, my dear.”

  Beaming, Marjorie slipped outside.

  Fleming’s smile settled in one cheek. “Lovely child. You’re fortunate to have a nurse with such exceptional qualities.”

  “She thinks you’re sweet, too.”

  He withdrew a smoke from his battered gold case. “Most women do. Would you like one?”

  He meant cigarettes, not women.

  “No thanks. The mood’s passed.”

  “How is your mood?”

  “All right, considering. Hurts a little.”

  “Your side or your psyche?”

  “Choose your poison. Why did you bring me here, Fleming? How did you know to bring me to Marjorie?”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  His smile crinkled. “Asking me to bring you here. You were barely conscious, but you clearly said, ‘Marjorie Bristol,’ and when I asked where to find her, you said, ‘Westbourne guest cottage.’ Then you put a period on the sentence by spitting up some blood.”

  “What about Diane? She is dead, isn’t she?”

  He nodded. “There are services tomorrow. Nancy is quite crushed, poor girl. You see, Diane died in a boating accident—went down with the craft that bore her name. Body wasn’t recovered—lost at sea.”

  I laughed without humor. “You secret agents really are good at ‘tidying up,’ aren’t you?”

  “We have to be, with the likes of Nathan Heller making messes. Besides, you’re lucky we’re so fastidious. If I hadn’t come back to Shangri La to tidy up further, after disposing of that carrion, you’d be lost at sea, as well.”

  “So that’s how you stumbled onto me.”

  “Yes. Now—tell me how it happened.”

  “How I killed, her, you mean?”

  He nodded again, blowing smoke through his nose like a dragon. “And what led up to it, if you don’t mind.”

  I did, including dropping in on Lansky and Christie, and my theory about the Banco Continental being a Nazi repository.

  “Very insightful, Heller. Banco Continental is indeed where much of the Nazi spoils of Europe are cached. Of course, the Banco is much more than that.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  He shrugged. “Among Banco Continental’s other significant investments and holdings is its funding of a syndicate supplying Japan with oil, as well as platinum and other rare metals. That same syndicate has cornered the market in hemp, copper and mercury as well—crucial war materials for the U.S.”

  “And you agree with me that Harry got royally pissed off when he got wind of all that?”

  “Not only do I agree,” the British agent said, “your FBI does as well. I’ve checked with them. Sir Harry had made some preliminary contacts.”

  “Jesus. I ought to go into the detective business.”

  “Or the spy game. That was an impressive showing, the other night—quite a savage beast lurks beneath that relatively civilized exterior of yours.”

  “Gee thanks. Tell me—do you think the Duke knows his precious Banco is an Axis operation?”

  “I would imagine not. At least, I would hope not. My thinking is that Wenner-Gren kept certain of the members of his consortium in the dark about various aspects of Banco Continental’s activities. Trust me when I say the Duke will soon be briefed in detail, and cautioned to curtail these activities in the future.”

  “Where does that leave me?”

  “As pertains to what?”

  “As pertains to the Oakes case. Nancy de Marigny hired me to stay with it, you know!”

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. Neither your government nor mine needs the sorry scandal of the Duke’s activities publicly aired. Perhaps when the war is over.”

  “What do I tell Nancy?”

  “What did you promise her, exactly?”

  I told him about seeing Hallinan and Pemberton; about the letter they’d requested from me.

  “Write the letter,” he said. “If I were you, however, I would not be specific about the new evidence…hold that back for another day.”

  “Because on this particular day, the Duke will quash any investigation?”

  “Certainly. But by writing that letter, your pledge to Mrs. de Marigny will be fulfilled. I think with the imminent deportation of her husband, and the tragic death of her best friend coming upon the heels of the loss of her father, Nancy Oakes de Marigny will be ready to get on with her life.”

  He was probably right.

  “This still isn’t over, you know,” I said.

  “I should say from your standpoint it is.”

  “Not hardly. There’s still that son of a bitch Axel Wenner-Gren to deal with. If I have to paddle a canoe up the Amazon, I’ll find that fucker and put a bullet in his brain.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Because he masterminded the whole goddamn affair!”

  “Perhaps he did. Or perhaps Diane Medcalf took it upon herself to do these things. The answer to that question is at the bottom of the sea.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care. Either way, it’s still the fault of that evil cocksucker. As Meyer Lansky was kind enough to remind me, I’m a Jew. I’m not going to sit back and let these Nazi bastards get away with murder.”

  He was lighting up a fresh cigarette; he seemed vaguely amused, and that pissed me off.

  “What the hell is so funny, Fleming?”

  He waved out his match, twitched a smile, said, “Sorry. It’s just that Wenner-Gren is no more a Nazi than the late Lady Medcalf.”

  “Well, what the fuck is he, then?”

  “Among other things, he’s the architect of Swedish neutrality, Goering’s financial advisor, Krupp’s front man…and so much more. He’s just not a Nazi, per se. But he is one of a consortium of some of the richest, most powerful men in the world—men who exist on a level above and beyond politics.”

  “You mean Christie and the Duke and Wenner-Gren weren’t alone in their Mexican banking scheme.”

  “To phrase it in the American argot: not by a long shot. Included, among various wealthy, respected Europeans, are some of the most p
rominent and influential American businessmen.”

  “Backing Nazis?”

  “Making money. Your General Motors poured one hundred million dollars into Hitler’s Germany, and they are hardly an isolated example. Heller, I would be content, were I you, with having dispatched the villains you’ve managed to dispatch. Aspiring to the shit list, as you might well put it, of that particular powerful consortium would find you rather on the deceased side, in very short order.”

  I sat up sharply; it made my midsection hurt but I didn’t give a damn. “So Christie walks. And Axel Wenner-Gren…shit, I never even met the son of a bitch….”

  “You should leave it that way.” He shrugged, drew in smoke. “The great villains of the world seldom get what they deserve.”

  “Hitler will—Mussolini just did.”

  He exhaled a blue cloud. “Possibly—but they are, after all, only petty politicians. And who’s to say Adolf himself won’t wind up in South America with all that bounty Wenner-Gren helped storehouse?”

  “Do you believe that?”

  Fleming’s smile was sadly ironic. “I’m afraid, Heller, the masterminds of evil only meet their due justice in the realm of fantasy. Best leave it to Sax Rohmer and Sapper.”

  “Who are they?”

  He laughed. “Nobody, really. Just writers.”

  It had been a week and a half and I was, for the most part, healed. Certain wounds never heal, but I was getting used to that. I walked on the ivory beach under a poker-chip moon with my arm around Marjorie Bristol’s waist; she wore a white scoop-neck blouse with coral jewelry and the full blue-and-white-checked skirt with petticoats that swished.

  “You saved my life,” I said.

  “That British man, he saved your life.”

  “He saved my body. You saved my life.”

  “Not your soul, Nathan?”

  “A little late for that.”

  “Not your body?”

  “That’s yours anytime you like.”

  We walked some more; Westbourne was silhouetted against the clear night sky. The sand under our feet was warm, the breeze cool.

  “Not mine anytime, anymore,” she said.

  We turned back and walked until we were near the cottage. She removed the skirt, stepped out of the petticoats; she was naked beneath, the dark triangle drawing me. I put my hand there while she pulled the blouse over her head.

  She stood, naked but for the coral necklace, washed with moonlight, unbuttoning my shirt, unzipping my trousers, pulling them around my ankles. I stepped out, barefoot; took off my shorts. I was wearing only the fresh bandage she’d applied about an hour ago.

  We waded in, not so deep that I got my bandage wet. We stood with the water brushing our legs and embraced and kissed, kissed deeply, in every sense of the word. She lay in the sand half in the water and I eased on top of her and kissed her mouth and her eyes and her face and her neck and her breasts and her stomach and my lips brushed downward across the harsh curls stopping at wet warmth where I kissed her some more.

  Her lovely face, ivory in the moonlight, lost in passion, was a vision I would never forget; I knew, as I was impressing that image forever in my mind, even as I pressed myself within her, that we would never do this again.

  We lay together, nuzzling, kissing, saying nothing at all; then we sat and watched the shimmer of the ocean and the moon reflected there, breaking and reforming, breaking and reforming.

  “Just a summer romance, Marjorie?”

  “Not ‘just,’ a summer romance, Nathan…but a summer romance.”

  “Summer’s over.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Hand in hand, we walked back inside.

  I wrote my letter, although I mailed it directly to the Duke of Windsor with carbon copies to Attorney General Hallinan and Major Pemberton. In it I spoke of recognizing the Duke’s “deep concern for the welfare of the citizens of the Bahamas,” as I addressed him on a matter of “great importance.”

  “During the incarceration and trial of Alfred de Marigny,” I wrote, “no adequate investigation was possible. Statements and evidence which failed to point toward the defendant were ignored.”

  I closed by saying that “I, and my associate, Leonard Keeler, would welcome an opportunity to work on the Oakes murder case. We would willingly offer our services without compensation.”

  I received a curt letter from Leslie Heape saying, thank you, no; and I heard nothing from Hallinan or Pemberton. Eliot later told me that at around the same time, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had written the estimable Governor of the Bahamas to offer the services of the FBI in the case. FDR’s offer was declined, too.

  I wrote Nancy, stepping aside from the case and enclosing copies of both my letter and the one from the Duke’s flunky, and my bill with itemized expenses. She wrote a brief note of thanks and enclosed full payment.

  Fleming had been right about her: Nancy had other, more pressing problems. Within a week of the end of the murder trial, de Marigny and his pal the Marquis de Visdelou were convicted and fined one hundred pounds each for illegal possession of gasoline. Within three weeks, Freddie—appealing neither the gasoline conviction nor the deportation order—hired a small fishing boat and a crew and, with Nancy at his side, sailed to Cuba.

  She didn’t stay at his side long, however—after only a few months she moved to Maine for dance lessons and sinus surgery. De Marigny had been denied a visa to the United States, and within a year his marriage to Nancy was over.

  Nancy returned to the Oakes family fold, although she remained just as convinced of her ex-husband’s innocence as her mother was of his guilt. In fact, Lady Oakes was from time to time the victim of extortion schemes in which she traded money for evidence of Freddie’s guilt.

  The entire Oakes family had a rough go of it. Two of Nancy’s brothers died young—Sydney (who I never met but over whose affections Sir Harry and Freddie had clashed), killed in an automobile accident; and William, of acute alcoholism before he reached thirty.

  Only Nancy’s younger sister, Shirley, seemed to have a charmed life: a law degree at Yale; classmate and bridesmaid of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy; marriage to a banker who shared her liberal philosophies and worked in support of black businessmen and politicians in Nassau. But after her husband went into business with Robert Vesco, their fortune was lost, their marriage over, and Shirley herself was crippled in a car crash.

  There were family squabbles, too, among the Oakes clan—over money and possessions. Sir Harry left a considerable estate, but nothing like the two hundred million he’d been said to be worth.

  Apparently the other investors of Banco Continental enjoyed a windfall when Sir Harry was silenced, as much of his fortune had seemingly already been moved south. Now it had simply gone south, and the Oakes trustees couldn’t find it, and the family just had to make do on the odd ten million or so.

  The former Mrs. de Marigny remained unlucky in love—she was all set to marry a dashing Danish Royal Air Force officer, but the prospective groom was killed in a plane crash in 1946. A long love affair with an English matinee idol ended when he decided marriage might upset his female fans. In 1950 she married Baron Ernest von Hoynigen-Huene, whose title turned out to be more impressive than his financial status, but the union lasted long enough for Nancy to give birth to two children, a boy and girl, who were to fill her life with joy and frustration. Nothing unusual about that.

  Her society-page romances between marriages included the heir of a famous French wine family; Queen Elizabeth’s male secretary; and a central figure in the Christine Keeler-John Profumo scandal. Nancy did get around. She married again in 1962, and divorced a decade or so later. Perhaps the oddest footnote in her story is that, last time I heard, she was living in Mexico, in Cuernavaca—the country of her father’s downfall, the city of her father’s sinister associate Axel Wenner-Gren’s wartime exile.

  Nancy—despite countless operations and continued ill health—remains to this day a hands
ome woman; I haven’t seen her in years, but photographs attest to her enduring beauty. Apparently she’s remained relatively cordial with Freddie, who has in the intervening years led the sort of checkered yet storybook existence you might expect.

  De Marigny became a man without a country, shunned by not only the United States and Great Britain, but his homeland Mauritius. In Cuba, palling around with Ernest Hemingway, Freddie was the target of an apparent murder attempt, shots ringing through his bedroom window; he decided to leave the tropics. He went from being a seaman with the Canadian merchant marine to a private with the Canadian army, but his application to become a citizen of that country was denied, anyway. He bounced around the Caribbean—steering clear of the British possessions he was barred from—and spent some time in the Dominican Republic. Finally in 1947 he was granted a U.S. visa, only to discover that funds being held for him in New York were lost in the estate of a dead broker.

  He walked dogs for rich old ladies, sold shoes and peddled his own blood on his road to a Salvation Army soup kitchen. But his luck was better than Nancy’s: in 1952, having worked his way up from selling aluminum storm doors to operating a Los Angeles marriage agency, he wed Mary Taylor, an American girl, a union which has sustained to this day, I understand. They had three sons and have lived in Florida, Cuba and Mexico but mostly in Texas, where I’m told they still reside. Supposedly Freddie has been moderately successful in several businesses, including lithographing. He still sails.

  The friendship between the Marquis Georges de Visdelou and Count Alfred de Marigny apparently did not survive the Oakes trial. De Visdelou is said to have asked young Betty Roberts to marry him, only to be rejected; forlorn, he went to England and joined the British army. Apparently the French Foreign Legion didn’t have any openings.

  Betty Roberts, on the other hand, was said to have gone to New York, where the newspaper columns announced her impending marriage to a Russian count.

  Immediately after the war, five months short of a governor’s usual term, the Duke of Windsor and his Duchess left the Bahamas. Never again did Great Britain entrust its former King with a position of even the remotest responsibility, despite constant applications from His Royal Highness; he and Wallis spent their remaining years golfing, gardening and attending fancy dress balls, making the New York-to-Palm Beach, Paris-to-the-Riviera circuit. Windsor died of cancer in 1972, and Wallis lived to the age of ninety. At her burial in 1986, she was granted the concession of being buried next to her husband in a royal plot.