Dan Hennessy had arranged for Jane to be picked up on neutral ground in front of the Stork Club on East Fifty-third. The car showed up right on time at 9:00 P.M., a black, nondescript Ford Deluxe. With Hennessy watching from the front steps of the club, Jane stepped into the back of the car, which then eased out into traffic, heading east first then north on Park Avenue.
A bull-faced man in his late twenties was sitting in the backseat. He was dressed in a suit but the thick-necked muscular body stuffed into it would have looked better in a stevedore’s overall. “Put this over your head and get down low,” said the man, handing Jane a dark blue wool blanket. Jane did as she was told, lifting her freshly healed arm with care to cover herself, then sliding off the seat to half crouch in the space between the seats.
A few minutes later they made a right turn and a minute or two after that Jane felt a lifting lurch and then heard the familiar, hollow humming sound of automobile tires on a bridge. The only bridge that close to the Stork Club was the Queensboro. By Jane’s estimate the rest of the trip took approximately half an hour. As far as she could tell they’d headed south after leaving the bridge, which meant she was probably somewhere in Brooklyn.
Eventually the car came to a stop. Still wearing the blanket, Jane was bundled out onto the sidewalk and then into a building. For a few seconds after being taken out of the Ford she’d smelled a faint salt breeze and she was sure she’d heard the lapping sounds of water and the distant echoing toot of a tugboat. The East River. Either the Atlantic or the Erie Basin.
The bull-faced man led her up a long flight of stairs then opened up a door and guided Jane by the arm to a wooden chair with arms. Coming up the stairs Jane had smelled rotten fruit and vegetables. A produce warehouse. The bull-faced man took the blanket off Jane’s head and waited for a moment until Jane’s eyes adjusted to the light.
She was sitting in a large, elevated office with windows on three sides that looked down into a dark warehouse at piles of wooden crates resting on pallets. In addition to the chair she was sitting in there were two others like it and a dark wooden office desk. Behind the desk a door led into a back room of some kind, maybe a toilet.
Next to the door was a wooden filing cabinet and on top of it a caged fan was turning, ticking as it reached the end of its arc, then starting back again. There was an overhead pan light with a dangling string and a gray, goosenecked lamp on the desk. The only other thing on the desk was a green blotter, a telephone and a flat tin ashtray.
The bull-necked man poked a finger in the air in front of Jane’s face. “You stay here until I come and get you, understand?”
“Sure,” said Jane. The man nodded, turned around and left the office, closing the door quietly behind him, then thumped down the long flight of stairs and into the warehouse. Jane moved uneasily in the chair; her arm and shoulder were still giving her a fair amount of pain, even though she’d swallowed a handful of aspirin with a seltzer back at the Stork.
A minute passed and then another. Down on the warehouse floor she could hear the ordinary sounds of dark places—small animal scutterings, a muffled bang, the scratching of pigeons on the metal roof over her head. After five minutes Jane started thinking about getting up and leaving, but then she thought about the bull-necked man and stayed where she was. A moment later she heard a floorboard creaking and then the door behind the desk opened and a man appeared.
He was of medium height and build with short, steel-gray hair, an oval face, lightly jowled and wearing round, steel-framed spectacles across a strong patrician nose. He had a wide chin and a small mouth showing small gray teeth. Late fifties or early sixties, wearing a very expensive-looking dark, single-breasted three-piece suit, both the vest and the jacket buttoned. The small-knotted tie was dark blue with small red flecks. None of Frankie Satin’s Mob flash. He sat down behind the desk. As he did so, Jane noted that he’d left the door slightly ajar behind him. No light leaked out. The back room was dark.
“My name is George Wolf. I am an attorney. You are Miss Jane Todd, the unfortunate young woman who was killed in an office explosion. For a dead woman you look extremely attractive. Particularly the shoes. I am a great lover of shoes.” Jane was wearing a pair of pug-toed Walkovers that she wouldn’t have really called the height of fashion, but everyone had their kinks. “I understand that you wished to see me,” Wolf said. His voice was clipped and efficient with no obvious inflection or emotion.
“Someone tried to kill me,” Jane answered and left it at that.
“Most people are of the opinion that someone succeeded.”
“I’d like to keep it that way. I’d also like to find out who did it.”
“Give me a dollar,” said Wolf.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Give me a dollar. You do have a dollar, don’t you, Miss Todd?”
“Sure, I’ve got a dollar.”
Jane reached into her new suede shoulder bag and pulled out her change purse, one of the few possessions that hadn’t been destroyed by the fire. She opened the little purse, took out a single and slid it across the table to Wolf. The lawyer folded the bill in half, then in half again, then stowed it in the watch pocket of his vest.
“You have now retained my services as a lawyer. I represent you. Therefore anything you say to me, or I say to you, is privileged information, protected under the law. I cannot be forced to divulge anything said at this meeting.”
“Neat trick.”
“Useful.”
“How does it get me to finding out who tried to kill me?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that, Miss Todd.”
“I’d also like to know why.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that, either.”
“Then why am I here? And why did you go through that rigamarole with the dollar?” Jane said. “And more important, Mr. Wolf, why are you giving up your valuable time to see me in some produce warehouse on a pier in Brooklyn?”
“I am a chivalrous man, Miss Todd. I always like to accommodate the wishes of an attractive woman.” He paused. “Has anyone ever mentioned to you that you bear a remarkable resemblance to Glenda Farrell, the actress? She appears in the—”
“Torchy Blane movies.” Jane nodded. “I have been told that.” She smiled. “She also appeared in Little Caesar, the Mob picture, but that was almost ten years back.” Jane paused, watching what passed for a smile flicker on and off the lawyer’s face. “I’d still like to know why you went to all the trouble to bring me here.”
“I like to know who my friends are, and my enemies.”
“I didn’t think I was either.”
“That remains to be seen,” Wolf murmured. “I deal in information, Miss Todd. To me it is a commodity of value.”
“My stock in trade too,” Jane answered. She pulled out her cigarettes and lit one. Wolf leaned forward and poked the tin ashtray forward.
“That being the case, we might well be able to make an exchange,” Wolf suggested.
“Who asks who?”
“Who asks whom,” Wolf said with a smile.
“I’m a photographer, not a reporter.” Jane breathed in a double lungful of smoke and let it out slowly. “So who asks the questions?”
“Ladies first.”
“Have you ever heard of a man named Howard Raines?”
“I knew Mr. Raines to see him. A young factotum at Fallon and McGee. What was he to you?”
“An old friend.”
“He must have been more than that, Miss Todd. Old friends don’t go to such lengths as you have recently, including the risking of your life.”
“We went back a long way. He’s part of who I am. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“All right. Do you know why he was killed?”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“I said an exchange of information, Miss Todd, not a gift of it.”
“Do you know a man named Joseph Shalleck?”
“Certainly. A well-known trial lawyer.”
“Mob lawyer.”
Wolf smiled thinly. “According to Mr. Hoover of the FBI there is no such thing as the Mob.”
“Dewey would disagree with you. So would I.”
“Mr. Dewey disagrees with everyone.”
“Shalleck got Howie to run an errand for him. In Havana.”
“Yes?”
“Did that errand have anything to do with Frank Costello?”
“No.”
“You seem very sure.”
“Mr. Costello is a client. Any information regarding Mr. Costello’s affairs as they relate to the law are sacrosanct, protected by attorney-client privilege, just as this conversation is. Thus, should I give you an unequivocal answer regarding Mr. Raines’s connection with Mr. Costello, you can assume that I am very sure and that there is no such connection. Am I making myself clear?”
As clear as a lawyer ever gets, Jane thought. “Do you know what the errand was?”
“Probably.”
“What was it?”
“We’ll get to that later.” Wolf raised one hand and adjusted his spectacles slightly. For the first time Jane was aware that Wolf’s ears protruded slightly. They were also barely without lobes at the bottom. The kind of thing Sherlock Holmes set such great store by.
“How is Joe Kennedy involved in all this?”
“Joe Kennedy?”
“The ambassador to the Court of St. James.”
“Ah, that Joe Kennedy.”
“Yeah. ‘Ah, that Joe Kennedy.” ’
“Why do you think Ambassador Kennedy is involved in Mr. Raines’s death?”
“The guys who dumped Howard Raines’s body used a car registered to a company Kennedy owns.”
“That hardly rates as a connection to murder, in a legal sense, anyway. Hypothetically these people could have stolen the vehicle.”
“We’re not talking about legal here, Mr. Wolf, or hypothetical. We’re talking putting a bomb in my office and putting me into a cast for a month. We’re talking about murder and attempted murder.”
“You must have some theory of your own about all this.”
“Shalleck is a Mob lawyer. He used to represent your guy Frank at trial. He was Rothstein’s lawyer and he also had Dutch Schultz and Dandy Phil Kastel as clients.”
“I fail to see your point.”
“He was also Farley’s bagman during the last election campaign and he’s friendly with Hague over in Jersey City. From what I can find out, Hague went out of his way to cover up my friend’s murder, or at least deflect attention away from it.”
“I still don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Wolf.
“Kennedy, Shalleck and Hague. All Democrats, all with Mob tie-ins.”
“A coincidence?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Is that all you know?”
“No.”
“What else do you know?”
“Your turn,” said Jane.
Wolf stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “All right. The man Howard Raines was going to see in Havana is a professional assassin. The best.”
“What’s his name?”
“He uses different names. I don’t think it matters.”
“Humor me.”
“In Havana he is known by the name Bone, John Bone. In this instance I believe he is calling himself Mr. Green.”
“Is he American?”
“No.”
“He’s not German, is he?”
“No.”
“Do you know his nationality?”
“Yes. It’s moot.”
“Humor me again.”
“He was born in Ireland and received his early training there. He has not lived in Ireland for many years and has no connection with it.”
“Howie wouldn’t have known a professional assassin if one came to the door and introduced himself. He wasn’t the type.”
Wolf nodded. “I would say you’re right.”
“So how did Howie find the man?”
“The assassin was recommended.”
“By who?”
“Whom,” said Wolf.
“Who recommended him?”
“A client.”
“No names?”
“A friend of Frank Hague’s.”
The Democrat overlord of Jersey City. “Who else is involved?”
“Your turn to answer questions.”
“Shoot.”
“I asked before if you had a theory about what was going on. You didn’t really answer the question.”
“I still don’t have enough information.”
The door behind Wolf opened wide and a short, very thin figure appeared. He looked to be around fifty with a hatchet face and iron-gray, short-cut hair. Jane had seen his picture in the newspapers a hundred times. She had even taken one or two. The man stepping into the room was Edward J. Flynn, head of the Bronx Democratic machine, a lawyer and onetime sheriff of Bronx County. Some people said he even had the president’s ear, and he’d had it since Roosevelt was governor of New York. “You’re Ed Flynn.”
“You know my name. Good for you, lady,” said Flynn. The face had the narrow, foxlike features of an Irishman but the accent was Bronx through and through. “I usually don’t do business with working girls.”
“Working girls sell their bodies for sex,” Jane answered. “I work, but I’m a woman.”
“Women should make babies and casseroles.”
“I prefer making money.”
“Most women like that who aren’t sec’etaries are bull-daggers. You one of those?”
“You’re being crude, Mr. Flynn. I’d expected you to be a little more charming.”
“Just having a bit of fun with you. Seeing what you were made of.”
“Sugar and spice,” Jane said dryly.
“Your presence here is ill-advised,” warned Wolf.
“Fuck ill-advised.” Flynn turned to Jane. “Your assassin was supposed to have a meeting in New Orleans a couple of days after Raines talked to him. You know who was going to be at this meeting?”
“No.”
“Joe Shalleck, for one. Another lawyer named Davis. A senator named Ernest Lundeen and a congressman named Lyndon Johnson. A bunch of hoods from the New Orleans Mob.” Flynn paused. “The killer never showed. Canceled the meeting because he said there were too many people going to be there. He was right. Security would have been compromised. He met with a much smaller group the following day.”
“Who was in this smaller group?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“What did they meet about?”
“A job for the killer.”
“What job?”
“Tell Mr. Flynn what else it is you know,” Wolf interrupted.
“They knew they were going to kill Howie right from the start.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“To shut him up. Because he knew who the assassin was, had seen his face, knew who was hiring him.”
“Anything else?”
“Whoever these people are, they’ve got the cops in their pocket, including Commissioner Valentine.” Jane paused. “And it’s big. Very big.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re here,” Jane responded. “You’re . . . Ed Flynn.” She paused, her eyes flickering to Wolf. “And he represents the Mob. Neither one of you would be talking to me if it wasn’t something important.”
“Maybe we just wanted to feast our eyes on you,” said Flynn. “Before we decided where to bury your lovely corpse.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you wouldn’t be leaving here alive?” said Wolf.
Jane smiled with a confidence she didn’t feel at all. “Sure,” she said. “I thought about that, and then I thought that if you were going to kill me you wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me. What would be the point? You’d just have the guy who drove me here put a pill in my ear and dump me like Howie Raines.” Christ, Howie, you sweet dumb cluck, what you started here! Jane thought wearily.
“Very thin logic,” Wolf suggested. “Perhaps we simply wanted to find out the extent of your knowledge.” His lips twitched briefly. “And then kill you.”
“I doubt that. I don’t know enough to be worth the trouble.” She turned and looked Flynn right in the eye. “Who tried to have me killed?”
“A group of people.”
“Including a couple of senators and some hitters from New Orleans?”
“A like-minded group of people who would rather Mr. Roosevelt not be president any longer than is absolutely necessary. Who would rather Mr. Roosevelt didn’t take us into another world war. They have their own program regarding the United States and its relationship with Mr. Hitler.”
Jane was stunned. “They’re going to have Roosevelt assassinated?”
Flynn shook his head. “The president is not the target.”
“Well who the hell is?” Then Jane saw it, saw how it would work, saw how it would succeed. “Jesus!” she whispered. “They’re going to kill the king and queen.”
“That would appear to be a logical assumption,” said Wolf.
“Appear?” said Jane. “You mean you don’t know for sure?”
“No.”
“So this is all guesswork?”
“Not that either,” said Wolf. “Most of it is fact, some of it is supposition. We know about the assassin. We know about the people in New Orleans.”
“We also know about the sons of bitches in my own party who are up to their ears in this . . . filth,” said Flynn, spitting out the last word. “Friends of Caesar, conspiring to ruin him!”
“How close are these . . . friends of Caesar?” Jane asked.
“As close as I am myself,” said Flynn bitterly. “Some even closer.” He paused. “At least for the moment.”
Jane ground out her cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lit another one. She puffed on it for a moment, thinking hard, then asked the obvious question. “Why are you telling me this? Why don’t you just spill the beans to Roosevelt?”
Flynn leaned over the desk, his hawk features stark in the light from the goosenecked lamp. “Because they didn’t tell me,” he said quietly. “Because they went behind the back of Edward J. Flynn, the bastards, because they knew what I’d do to them, especially that self-serving cocksucker Farley.” He paused and took a deep, snorting breath. “Because they’re cowards without the courage of their own convictions and I want to see them brought down. Do you understand me, Miss Todd? What they intend is not what this country was made for, not what it stands for. And if I told the president he’d cancel the whole royal tour on the spot, and how would that look? We’d be shamed. That’s how it would look, and there’s a lot more than that at stake, believe me.”
Jane stared at him. Flynn wasn’t outraged at the thought of the king and queen being murdered. He was pissed because they hadn’t brought him in on it. And he’d just mentioned the name Farley, which had to be James A. Farley, postmaster general, Democratic National as well as State Party Chairman and a rumored presidential candidate himself. Friends of Caesar indeed—Farley was Roosevelt’s Mark Antony, the man who’d run Roosevelt’s campaigns since the beginning. And Flynn had just called him a cocksucker.
“Given our relative social positions, neither Mr. Flynn nor I am in a position to reveal this information,” said Wolf.
“You want me to blow the whistle on this thing? I’m supposed to be the messenger? Like Howie Raines? No, thanks.”
“It’s the news story of the century, Miss Todd.”
“It’s not a news story,” said Jane. “It’s an ax waiting to fall. They’ve tried to kill me once, they’ll try again.”
“Go to the newspapers then!” said Flynn angrily. “Tell the world.”
“With what evidence?” Jane asked bluntly. “I’d get laughed out of every city room in New York.”
“Go to the authorities,” said Wolf. “We’ll give you what you need to convince them.”
“Which authorities would that be?” Jane asked skeptically. “Not the New York City Police Department.” She shook her head. “And not Dewey. He sure as hell wouldn’t believe anything Mr. Wolf had to tell him.”
“The FBI,” Wolf answered calmly.
“You said it yourself. Hoover doesn’t even think you people exist. He thinks Winchell made the Mob up on a napkin at the Stork. Not to mention the fact that he likes workingwomen less than you do.”
Wolf smiled thinly again. “Mr. Hoover is well aware that we exist,” he said quietly. “There’s just nothing he can do about it.” He paused. “And I wasn’t thinking about Mr. Hoover anyway.” Wolf reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, took out his wallet and removed a business card from it. He flipped it over, took out a pen and scribbled a few words on the blank side. He handed the card to Jane. The photographer flipped it over:
Sam Foxworth
Believe what she says.G.W.
“The head of the FBI New York office isn’t Sam Foxworth. It’s Percy,” said Jane.
“His friends call him Sam.” The implication was clear. Wolf leaned forward. “Hurry, Miss Todd. I don’t think we have very much time left.”
At 9:30 that evening, after an informal dinner at the Brantford Hotel on the Canadian side of the border at Niagara Falls, the king and queen rejoined the royal train, which then moved slowly and majestically across the International Bridge and into the United States of America, the first English monarchs ever to enter that great nation.
Joining the train on the American side was a welcoming delegation from Washington that included Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British ambassador, and Mr. Cordell Hull, the tall, silver-haired U.S. secretary of state.
Security provided by the RCMP was now no longer in evidence; the four-man contingent that had accompanied the royals ever since arriving in Quebec had been left behind in Canada and was now replaced by a much larger group of New York state troopers, an even dozen plainclothes Secret Service agents and, at least between Niagara Falls and Buffalo, troops spaced at hundred-yard intervals along both sides of the track, bayonets fixed.
Although nothing was said, it was clear that the special security was a response to the arrest of Sean Russell the previous day. For the first time weapons were in evidence on the train, which made some of the attending staff extremely nervous. The four-man group of Special Branch officers as well as both the king and the queen’s policemen had always been coy when asked questions concerning their own weapons, but if they were armed, at least they were discreet about it. The Americans seemed to take the opposite approach, assuming that a show of power and strength would provide a deterrence against violence.
The train arrived in Buffalo shortly after 11:00 P.M., and after the king and queen made a brief appearance on the observation platform the train moved off again. The queen retired for the night, as did the rest of the welcoming delegation, with the exception of Lindsay, the British ambassador, Cordell Hull and Tommy Lascelles, who adjourned to the lounge area of the royal rail car. It was here, after some brief, relaxing conversation and a cigar that the king, using a ceremonial sword and with Lindsay and Hull as witnesses, tapped Lascelles on each shoulder and bid him rise as Sir Alan Lascelles, Knight Commander of the Victorian Order.
An hour later, as the train thundered through the dark forests and river valleys of upstate New York, the newly invested knight retired to his own bedroom, changed into his favorite gray silk pajamas and poured himself a small celebratory tot of single malt from his private flask. He lit a cigarette, took out his pen and began to write in his green morocco-bound diary.
With Russell in jail the immediate danger to Their Majesties had been dealt with, but Lascelles was haunted by the possibility that over the next few days something would happen to destroy what he had worked so hard to achieve—the forging of a bond between England and the United States strong enough to withstand the coming war. He was well aware that any perceived slight or minor indiscretion might turn everything into a shambles.
Lascelles had already had a brief, private conversation with Lindsay, who confirmed that both FDR and Hull agreed that war was now almost a certainty. On the other hand, this was most certainly not a belief held by the majority of Americans, who were deeply skeptical of British motives.
Two days before the New York Times had run an editorial with the comment: “The British are never polite to us except when they want something.” The general sense in America was that they were safely insulated from any European war by the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean; clearly they knew very little of the range of German U-boats.
The whole thing, Lascelles knew, was a very tricky and delicate business. Lindbergh, Father Coughlin and the America Firsters talked long and loud about isolationism, but in the end it was the perception of the average American that held the key. Thus, the foreign secretary had not accompanied the king and queen, and even the redcoat RCMP had been left behind for the sake of appearances. That was only the tip of the iceberg.
Lascelles was well aware that a great many Americans still considered the Duke of Windsor the rightful owner of the British throne and that George, if the Americans thought about him at all, thought of him as a stuttering, colorless, weak personality, in thrall to an overbearing, plump little commoner. The king’s assistant private secretary sighed over the words he’d just written, knowing how accurate they were. He poured himself another finger of Scotch and lit another cigarette.
Even though the American part of the tour was supposed to be a side excursion, it was far and away the most important few days of the entire trip. If anything, the Canadian portion had been a tedious beard to cover the real meaning of events. If the king and queen, with Roosevelt’s help, could convince the American public that the royals were friendly folk, just like them, they might be worthy of their sympathy, their financial support and, if necessary, their arms.
A careful balance had to be struck between dignified regal reserve and democratic friendliness—not the easiest thing to do after Chamberlain’s groveling at Munich, not to mention the matter of the Duke of Windsor and Mrs. Simpson. The Americans had always liked Edward, and to abdicate the throne of England for the love of a woman, and an American woman at that, struck a popular, romantic chord. And Wallis Simpson had a much better figure than Her Royal Plumpness.
Lascelles sighed again, stroked out the last three words he’d written and replaced it with the single word Elizabeth. He screwed the top back on his pen and closed his diary and his eyes, leaning back against the seat, listening to the constant hammer of the steel wheels on the endless rails. This was not the world he’d been born into and not one that he really understood.
In his time the royal family had been sacrosanct, the image of vast power and the perfect symbol of an empire that spanned the globe. Over the years he’d watched the family and indeed the empire steadily decline following the death of Victoria, until it reached its present, sad state.
A week before leaving England he’d overheard the Duchess of Kent refer to Elizabeth, her sister-in-law, as “that common Scottish girl,” and tonight, with his own pen, he’d called her Her Royal Plumpness. It was true. She was a plump, common Scottish girl who resembled nothing so much as the female caddies he often used when he golfed at Pitlochcry or Royal St. Andrews.
Plump or not, common or not and Scottish or not, in America she would be the focus of as much if not more attention than her husband, the king. His Highness at least had been coached for weeks before the tour began concerning his possible conversations with Roosevelt and the other notables he would find himself being introduced to. Elizabeth, on the other hand, would have to rely on the endless frocks she’d brought with her, cut and colored to disguise the thickness of her waist and thighs and the muscular heaviness of those very common calves, better suited to striding over the moors looking out for grouse than dancing in the ballroom at the White House.
Lascelles, using every diplomatic skill he’d acquired over his career, had managed it so that she never gave a single speech, addressed no crowds, and God forbid, never talked to the reporters of the press corps that traveled with them. Lascelles had cared for kings and queens before, and knew just how easily a small gaffe could become a crumbling disaster or how one simple, innocent mistake could be transformed into outright catastrophe.
Sir Alan Lascelles, newly minted knight, opened his eyes and looked at the etched silver flask and its companion cup on the small table in front of him. Just one more tot to help him sleep and then he’d go to bed. A good night’s rest to gird his loins and then tomorrow—Washington and heartfelt prayers that this time the invading English would be welcomed there.