I didn’t keep track of everybody. Occasionally I bumped into somebody who shared a piece of information; sometimes an obituary caught my eye. My friends—like Sally Rand and Eliot Ness—I stayed in contact with over the years. I did keep in touch with Godfrey Higgs, who kept me up to date, before he passed away.
Of the attorneys, only Ernest Callender, retired and respected in Nassau, remains alive at this writing; but they all had remarkable careers. Hallinan was knighted and was appointed Chief Justice of Cyprus, dying in 1988. Adderley flourished in both his law practice and in politics, but died of a heart attack on an airplane after representing the Bahamas at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Nassau police officers have retired, Colonel Lindop to suburban Wimbledon, Captain Sears and Major Pemberton in Nassau, with Pemberton working as secretary of the Bahamian Chamber of Commerce, last I heard. Whether any of them are still alive at this point, I don’t know; but they were all decent enough men.
The same, of course, can’t be said about Captains Barker and Melchen. Barker was brought before the International Association of Identification, which condemned his work on the Oakes case; under a cloud of accusations of mob links, Barker was allowed to leave the force on permanent sick leave. In the wake of the Oakes debacle, Barker—who had upon his return sustained an injury in a motorcycle crack-up—turned to illegal drugs for relief from pains real and psychological. As he spiraled into complete addiction, he abandoned his wife and grown son, also a Miami police officer.
Meanwhile, his partner Melchen was suffering under similar clouds of censure and suspicion, and quietly retired from the force, dying of a heart attack in 1948.
Barker promised his wife and son he would reform and begged to be allowed back in the home, which he was. But one night in 1952, Barker’s son found his father brutally beating his mother, and the son interceded, leaving his father a bloody unconscious heap on the floor. In the wee hours of the morning, Barker came to, and went after his son with a .38. There was a struggle and the Duke of Windsor’s fingerprint expert was dead.
After the war, many British citizens fled their new socialist government and confiscatory taxation for the nearly tax-free Bahamas, and in so doing, sent property values soaring and made Harold Christie an even richer man. Lyford Cay was developed into a haven for the very wealthy; high fences, sophisticated security measures and their own police station protect the rich and the famous, whose life-styles include a marina littered with motor cruisers and yachts, where once a native caretaker named Arthur, his murder not only unsolved but long forgotten, stood watch.
Harold Christie not only lived to see his tropical dream come true—his Bahamas were now both home to the rich and tourist magnet second to none—he saw himself rewarded with knighthood “for services to the Crown.” Sir Harold Christie finally married—a Palm Beach divorcée—but, for all his position and prosperity, lived out his remaining days in the shadow of suspicion.
I suppose I didn’t make Christie’s life any easier when, in postwar years, I boasted in newspaper and magazine articles, as well as on radio and TV broadcasts, that I could still, even at this late date, solve the Oakes case. Evidence had been suppressed, I would say, and a prominent Nassau citizen was being protected….
After all, over the years there had been odd, unexplained occurrences seemingly related to the case: shortly after the war, various out-island natives turn in over twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of gold coins to the government, which terms them “pirate treasure” despite the oldest dated coin being 1853 and other coins dating as recent as 1907; in 1950, a female reporter from Washington, asking around about the Oakes murder, winds up stripped, raped and dead at the bottom of a well; that same year, a stevedore drunk in a bar in California boasts of knowing who killed Sir Harry Oakes, is questioned by the FBI and held for questioning by the Nassau chief of police, who flies in and tells the press that the stevedore has correctly identified the killer, yet neither the FBI, Scotland Yard nor the Nassau police reopen the investigation; later, Harold Christie’s own secretary is mysteriously murdered.
Finally, in 1959, with the political power of the Bay Street Pirates foundering, a prominent figure in the Bahamian government, Cyril St. John Stevenson, introduced a resolution to reopen the Oakes investigation.
“I could point my finger at the man responsible,” Stevenson said.
Seated not ten feet away, in the House of Assembly, was a glowering Harold Christie, who nonetheless lamely tried to save face by voting along with the resolution.
When the resolution passed, the Governor of the Bahamas, Sir Raynor Arthur, referred the matter to Scotland Yard, which declined to get involved.
Nonetheless, Christie felt haunted by the case. “It gets tiresome,” he told the press bitterly, “being pointed out on the street, wherever you go—‘There he is, that’s the man who did it!’”
Today, in Nassau, his legacy is just that: ask about Harold Christie and you’re more likely to hear him described as a murderer than as the man who brought prosperity to those tropical shores.
He died in 1973 of a heart attack.
Erle Stanley Gardner continued writing his best-selling mysteries, of course, although he later got some competition from Ian Fleming. After the war, Fleming left Naval Intelligence and turned to a career in journalism; he wrote his first spy novel on a lark, vacationing in Jamaica, which is where he’d been stationed when I knew him. Fleming’s thrillers invariably focused on mastermind villains who met well-deserved fates, often in their tropical-island strongholds. When asked by friends and journalists if he’d ever killed a man during his own spy days, Fleming always said he had—once.
As for Gardner, his observations of the many injustices that surrounded the Oakes case led to the eventual formation of the Court of Last Resort, an organization designed to “improve the administration of justice.” Specifically, a board of experts was gathered to look into cases where gross miscarriages of justice may have been done. Leonard Keeler was the member in charge of polygraph, and Gardner invited me to head up detection. Many “underdogs” were aided in this effort, and someday, in another forum, I may discuss some of those cases.
Casinos finally did come to the Bahamas, but not until Castro’s coming to power in Cuba made it necessary for Meyer Lansky and his business associates to seek new venues. In 1963, after generous “consultant’s fees” were paid to various prominent Bahamian politicians, a casino opened on Lucayan Beach on Grand Bahama island. The FBI tracked the deliveries of the large amounts of cash from this first Bahamian casino to a man in Florida. That man was Meyer Lansky.
But the American press got hold of mob involvement in Bahamian casinos, and the scandal that followed finally ended white-minority, Bay Street Pirate rule in Nassau; the black-dominated Progressive Liberal Party came into power in 1967 and has been there ever since.
Of course, gambling has been there, too. A casino was even built on the former site of Westbourne, and Hog Island—sold by Axel Wenner-Gren to Huntington Hartford in 1961 in a twenty-million-dollar deal arranged by Harold Christie—became Paradise Island, home to high-rise hotels and glittering casinos.
Eventually Meyer Lansky became, as had Alfred de Marigny for too long a time, a man without a country: faced with federal indictments, he left the U.S.A. for Israel, which despite generous cash contributions eventually turned him away; after stops in Switzerland and South America, Lansky returned to the States, but was acquitted. He died in Miami Beach, just another retired business executive, in 1983.
One of the things that amazed me over the years, as I followed from a distance the fortunes and foibles of those involved in the Oakes case, was how seldom Axel Wenner-Gren’s name turned up anywhere. His public stance was that of philanthropist; however, one of his research foundations was (and is) devoted to the study of eugenics.
In 1960, a stewardess I was seeing invited me to fly with her to Nassau on some free tickets for a long weekend of (this is how she put
it) “funning and sunning on the beach, and fucking and sucking wherever.” It was a sincere invitation, and I accepted. If this sounds like a low-life response to a vulgar suggestion, keep in mind I was fifty-five and she was twenty-seven, and how many more offers like that could I hope to get?
Out of either nostalgia or habit, I got reservations at the B.C. It hadn’t changed much, and in fact was looking a little long in the tooth; but then, so was I. One evening, after my stewardess friend (whose name was Kelly and who had green eyes and blond hair in a Jackie Kennedy cut) had kept her promises, we dined at the Jungle Club, which hadn’t seemed to change a bit from when Higgs brought me here, over a decade and a half ago.
We dined in the shade of indoor palms under a thatched umbrella at a green table, enjoying conch chowder and a meal that included grouper and a pepper pot, and one of the sweet young saronged things came over and said, “Are you Mr. Heller?”
“Yes?”
“A gentleman would like to speak to you.”
The waitress pointed to a table across the way.
“Oh. Okay.”
I didn’t recognize him at first—and why should I? I’d never met him, really.
He stood, as I approached, and smiled in a disarmingly boyish manner for a big, older man: fleshy, pink-faced, his hair stark white, eyebrows wispy and all but invisible, a soft oval face with a nose enlarged with age and small wet eyes peering from flesh pouches. He was casually dressed, in a pink-and-white short-sleeve sport shirt and white slacks. He looked sturdy for a man pushing eighty, but he also looked like a man pushing eighty.
“Ah, Mr. Heller!” he said in a melodious voice touched with what I took for a Scandinavian accent. “At long last.”
Who the hell was this guy? I studied him, knowing I’d seen him somewhere before.
Seated at his table was a dark-haired handsome young man in a cream-color suit with a dark tie. He looked vaguely familiar, too, but not as familiar as my old friend who was extending his hand, which I shook. It was a firm handshake, despite his age.
Then I remembered.
I remembered the benignly, blandly smiling portrait above the fireplace, among the Inca masks, in the round living room.
“Axel Wenner-Gren,” I said numbly.
“This is my friend Huntington Hartford,” he said, gesturing to the handsome younger man, who smiled tightly at me, and we shook hands. “Please sit with us.”
I did.
“How did you know who I was?” I asked. “We never met.”
“I’ve seen your picture in the newspapers, many times. So many interesting, important cases you’ve been involved with! You should write a book.”
“Maybe after I retire.”
“Ah, you’re much too young to even think of retiring. Me, I’m beginning to divest myself of material concerns. My friend, Hunt, here, is trying to talk me into selling him Shangri La.”
“You still live there?”
Wenner-Gren smiled and shrugged; his manner was avuncular. “Winters, only.”
His dinner guest—the A&P heir who was worth fifty to seventy million, roughly—excused himself and rose. I wondered if that was prearranged.
Still smiling, Wenner-Gren leaned in and he patted my hand; his hand was cold. Like a goddamn ice pack.
“I have kept track of you, over the years. From time to time, you speak of the Oakes case, don’t you? To the press.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“It will never be reopened, you know. Some foolish people tried, last year, unsuccessfully. Even now, that whole matter is an embarrassment to the Bahamas and to England, as well.”
“I know.”
“Then why continue discussing the case? I’m just curious.”
“It’s good publicity. I mention the Lindbergh case, too, sometimes. That’s why I have branch offices all over the country, now. Back in Chicago, we call it capitalism.”
He smiled, more to himself; no teeth, just bloodshot apple cheeks. “You’re an amusing man. You have a reputation for a rough wit.”
“I also have a reputation for leaving well enough alone.”
He nodded. “Very wise. How very wise. You know…” And he patted my hand again. Cold! “I’ve wanted to thank you, for so many years.”
“Thank me?”
Now his face was somber as he nodded again. “For…eliminating that problem.”
“What problem?”
He licked his lips. “Lady Medcalf.”
I didn’t say anything. I was shaking a little. This smiling eighty-year-old philanthropist had me shaking.
“I know what you did,” he said, “and I’m grateful. And it gives me great pleasure to finally let you know, personally, that she was acting on her own devices.”
I nodded.
Then he smiled broadly. “Well, here comes Hunt again. Mr. Heller, I’ll let you get back to that charming young lady. Your daughter?”
“No.”
He beamed. “Isn’t that nice! Good evening, Mr. Heller.”
I said something or other, nodded at both of them, and walked numbly back to the table.
“Who was that?” Kelly asked.
“The devil,” I said.
“Oh, Heller—you’re so bad!”
“What did you say?”
She looked at me curiously. “I don’t know. What did I say?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
She wanted to stay to watch the limbo contest, but I wanted out of there. That was the last weekend I spent with that particular stewardess; seemed I hadn’t been much fun, on our little getaway, after a certain point.
Axel Wenner-Gren died of cancer a year later. His fortune was estimated at over one billion dollars.
It wasn’t till 1972 that I got back to the Bahamas, this time with a woman closer to my own age, who I happened to be married to. In fact, it was our honeymoon and my wife—second wife, actually—had always wanted to see the Bahamas.
Specifically, she wanted to see Government House, because she’d been so taken as a girl with the bittersweet love story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Nassau hadn’t changed much, although the ways it had changed weren’t for the better: American fast-food joints on the fringes and, on Bay Street, interminable T-shirt shops and an offer of drugs from a ganja-reeking black guy every few paces.
But there was (and is) a time machine known as Graycliff, a large old rambling Georgian Colonial home near Government House that first opened its doors as a small hotel back in 1844. The honeymoon suite, by the poolside, is a small separate building amidst an exotic tropical garden. The hotel restaurant—you dine here and there on the main floor, but we preferred the porch—is five-star.
The first evening we were there, after a meal that included goose-liver pâté with truffles and a Hollandaise-smothered steak as thick as a phone book and as tender as a mother’s touch, we were served steaming hot soufflés in custard cups.
“I’ve never had coconut soufflé before,” my wife said.
“I have. And as good as this place is, they’ll never beat it.”
She was having a taste. “Hmmm. You better try some and see if you still feel the same way….”
I broke the light brown skin and spooned the orangeish white custard and tasted its sweetness, the shredded coconut, the hints of banana and orange and rum….
“What’s wrong?” She leaned forward. “Too hot, dear?”
“Yellow Bird,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Waiter!”
He came over, a young handsome black. “Yes, sir?”
“Could I speak to the chef?”
“Sir, the chef is…”
“I have to compliment him on the dessert. It’s important.” I pressed a ten-spot into his hand.
My wife was looking at me like I was crazy; it wasn’t the first time, and it was hardly the last.
“Actually, sir, the chef doesn’t prepare the desserts and the pastries. His missus does.”
&n
bsp; “Take me to her.”
My wife was confused, and half-standing.
“Please, dear,” I said, patting the air with one hand. “Just wait here….”
I went back by the kitchen and waited and in a few seconds that were an eternity, she came out, wearing a white apron over a blue dress not unlike the maid’s uniform she wore so long ago.
She didn’t recognize me at first.
“Marjorie,” I said.
Her face—her lovely face, touched by age but gently—looked at first incredulous, then warmed, and she said, “Nathan? Nathan Heller?”
I took her in my arms; didn’t kiss her. Just held her.
“I’m here on my honeymoon,” I said.
I let go of her and we stood apart, but rather close. Her hair was lightly sprinkled with white, but her figure was about the same. Maybe a little thicker around the hips. We won’t discuss my gut.
She smiled widely. “Only just now you get married?”
“Well, this is the second time. I think this one’s going to last, or at least outlast me. And you’re married to the chef?”
“For twenty-five years. We got three little ones—well, not so little anymore. Got a boy in college.”
My eyes were getting wet. “That’s so wonderful.”
Her brow wrinkled. “How did you…?”
“That soufflé. One taste, and I knew you were responsible.”
“So you ordered that! It’s still good, isn’t it?”
“Still good.”
She hugged me again. “I have to get back to work. Where are you stayin’?”
“Right here. We have the honeymoon suite.”
“Well, I simply must meet your wife…if she won’t mind sharin’ you, just a little. You have to excuse me, now—”
Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07 Page 35
