‘I’ve been in this goddamn room for a month now. I’m getting sick of it.’
‘A month at the Plaza,’ said Dan Hennessy, perched at the end of the bed. ‘Most of us wouldn’t be complaining.’
Jane Todd shifted against the pillows behind her, trying to get comfortable. The plaster cast that ran from her left wrist up to her shoulder was itching terribly, the fresh scar under her right eye was burning and she still had pain in the badly fractured baby finger of her right hand. The worst of it was the god-awful pale pink quilted bedjacket Hennessy had picked up for her. After a month her other, less serious wounds had healed, most of them cuts and burns caused by the explosion.
‘This isn’t the Plaza,’ Jane grumbled. ‘It’s a prison cell.’ Pelay the bellman had put Jane in one of the almost unrentable turret rooms in what amounted to the attic above the eighteenth floor. It was small, dusty, only a few yards from the groaning cable reels of the elevator machinery and from all appearances the plumbing hadn’t been upgraded since the venerable hotel’s construction more than thirty years before.
Hennessy lit a cigarette, adding to the haze. ‘Quit carping,’ he said. ‘It’s better than being dead.’
Jane reached out with her bandaged right hand and tapped the folded newspaper on the bedside table. ‘According to Buschy’s creative little obit in the News that’s exactly what I am.’
‘Busch thought it was a good idea and so did I.’ Hennessy shrugged. ‘You know what they say about discretion, Jane.’ He paused, tapping his cigarette into the big crystal ashtray in his lap. ‘Someone tried to kill you. Better they think they succeeded.’ The detective shook his head. ‘Just be glad you got friends in all sorts of low places.’
Somehow Jane had managed to crawl halfway to the elevator after the explosion. Even so she came very close to being consumed by the fire that raged outward into the hallway from her office. The firemen called an ambulance and had Jane transported to the nearest hospital, which happened to be Bellevue, a stroke of luck since it was easy to get lost in the massive twelve-square-block facility even at the best of times.
Hennessy’s card was in the burned remains of the shoulder bag she’d managed to hang on to and he was the first person notified following Jane’s admission. After finding out from the firemen exactly what had happened at Jane’s office, Hennessy cautioned the attending physician about discussing Jane’s case with anyone, then had her file sent down to a lady friend of his in the medical examiner’s office in the Pathology Building where, at Hennessy’s request, she promptly lost it. With twenty thousand bodies a year passing through the morgue, almost half of which were never claimed, Hennessy knew that the chance of anyone finding out that Jane wasn’t actually dead was slim.
With the help of another friend, this one in the mortuary trade, Jane was taken to the rear of the Plaza in a funeral home meat wagon. With Pelay’s help, as well as that of Bill Hartery, the Plaza house dick, she was whisked up one of the service elevators to the turret room with none the wiser. Hennessy then quietly put out the word and the small news stories that appeared documenting the explosion and fire all said that Jane had died as a result of the incident, the fault presumably stemming from her darkroom chemicals.
‘Still no word about the bomb?’ Jane asked.
‘No,’ Hennessy answered. ‘Except for the fact that it was a bomb and a fairly sophisticated one.’ The policeman frowned. ‘You know I can’t nag the arson boys too much about this thing, Jane. They know you and I are friends but I don’t want to get anyone suspicious by asking too many questions. I’m in Safe and Loft now, remember, not the murder squad.’
Jane grinned. ‘Not interested in avenging my untimely death?’
‘I’m just being careful,’ Hennessy responded. ‘Someone did try to kill you, remember? The doc is coming in tomorrow morning to take off your cast and look at your finger. All of your poker pals chipped in, me included, and after the doctor gives you a clean bill we’re sending you on vacation. Far, far away, like L.A. maybe. I already talked to Birdwell and he’s going to set you up with one of his friends out there.’
‘You trying to get rid of me?’ She grinned. ‘Does this mean you don’t want to get into my pants anymore?’
‘Quit being a smart-ass broad. I’m trying to keep you alive.’
‘I want to find out who wants to see me dead.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Jane! What does it matter?’ He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned forward and banged the ashtray on the bedside table. ‘They blew up your whole fucking office! There’s nothing left. No cameras, no pictures, and from what I can tell, no insurance either.’
‘They murdered Ponce de Leon.’
‘He was a parrot.’
‘Still, he was my parrot.’
‘This isn’t a joke, pal.’
‘Light me a cigarette.’
‘The doctor said you shouldn’t smoke for a while yet.’
‘To hell with the doctor.’ Hennessy did as he was asked, leaning forward again to poke the Lucky between Jane’s bandaged fingers. The photographer dropped back against her pillows, took a deep drag and closed her eyes, resting for a few moments, gathering her thoughts. ‘Look,’ she said finally. ‘You put your finger on it. I’m tapped. I don’t even have the tools of the trade any more and there’s a good chance these people would try again if they knew I was still alive and kicking. Until I figure this thing out, until I find out who tried to kill me, I might just as well be dead just like the obituary says.’ She paused and drew on the cigarette again, wincing as the tip of her plaster-covered baby finger grazed her cheek. ‘They murdered Howie for no good reason except expediency, they put the squeeze on your own boss and God only knows who else and they tried to blow me to bits because they figured I was getting too close to whatever it is they’re trying to hide. You really think sending me to L.A. is going to do any good? Sooner or later word would get out that I was who I was and they’d plant another bomb and the chances are good they’d pull it off the second time.’ She shook her head ‘Besides, I’m not leaving Annie again. Bad enough I haven’t been to see her all this time.’
‘I can take care of Annie.’
‘She’s my sister, Dan, and I told you I’m not going to leave her again.’
‘You won’t do her any good dead.’
‘I barely do her any good alive,’ Jane answered. ‘I pay a little extra on the side so the nurses will keep her cleaned up and her hair brushed but that’s not what I mean and you know it.’
‘Yeah, I guess I do.’
‘So if I’m not going to L.A., I’d better find out who’s put the button on me. You said so yourself. It’s big. A story like that could make me forever in this town, not to mention the fact that I’m a little pissed about the whole thing.’
There was a long pause. Finally Hennessy spoke. ‘I think they’re watching me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Ever since the bombing.’
‘They as in other cops or they as in the people who tried to snuff me?’
‘Maybe both. It’s nothing I can really draw a bead on, just a funny feeling. Cars in front of my building. Seeing a stranger on the street I’m sure I’ve seen before.’
‘They ever follow you here?’
‘Once or twice. When I get the feeling I just go into the Oak Bar for a shot or I spend five minutes gabbing with Pelay.’
‘He know what’s going on?’
‘Not everything but enough.’
‘Hartery?’
‘Yeah, but just him, not his people.’ Hartery had a score of junior dicks under him, all but a few of whom were probably bribable.
‘There was a movie that came out, eight, nine years ago. Scared me half to death. An old lady who had a bell hooked up to her crypt. I swear, I almost peed my pants.’
‘I remember that.’ Hennessy nodded. ‘Creepy as hell. Murder by the Clock, I think it was called.’
‘That’s the one and that’s how I feel right now. Maybe I’m not dead but it feels like I’ve been buried alive.’ She took a final puff on the cigarette then held out her hand so Hennessy could pull it out from between her fingers before the bandage started smouldering. She twisted against the pillows again, still trying to find a position that was even remotely comfortable.
Hennessy put out the Lucky. ‘Okay, you won’t run away like anybody with a brain in her head so what is it you want to do?’
‘Like I said, find out who’s behind all this.’
‘Forget it. I told you that a couple of hours before you got blown out of your shoes. Nothing’s changed, pal o’ mine. It’s a stone wall.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jane. ‘But I’ve had quite a bit of time to think about it all.’
‘You’ve come to some kind of brilliant conclusion?’
Jane shrugged.
‘Spill.’
‘Try this on and see if it fits.’ Jane paused, looking briefly up at the low, cracked plaster of the ceiling above her head. ‘The only conclusion I came to is this – someone wanted Howie Raines dead, either for what he knew or what he heard or what he saw.’
‘This is news?’
‘No. The news part is the fact that they knew they were going to kill him before he even left New York for Havana. He was a dead man before he got onto that plane, except he was the only one who didn’t know it. It was all part of the plan, right from the start.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘The claim check from the queer baths at the Ariston and the bar receipt from Gloria’s. Evidence on him that was supposed to convince us he was gay.’
‘I still don’t see it.’
‘They didn’t pump a few pills into him and then try to cover with the claim check and the receipt. There wasn’t enough time between when he got back from Cuba and when this Frankie Satin kid saw the body being dumped. They knew ahead of time they were going to need the stuff to plant on him. They were ready and waiting – car, the three torpedoes and the place to drop the body.’
‘So what do you think this means?’
‘I think it means he was sent down to Havana by the same people who dimmed his headlights. He ran some kind of errand, reported back, and after they found out what they needed to know they snuffed him to make sure that was the end of the trail.’
‘What kind of an errand?’
‘He was a lawyer, a small-time one. What kind of errands does a small-time, expendable lawyer run?’
‘He do de Stepin Fetchit,’ Hennessy answered, doing a bad imitation of the well-known black actor.
‘Okay, what’s in Havana for a guy like that?’
‘Havana’s the Mob. I can’t think of anything else.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘Costello and Lansky.’ Two years before, at the request of Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s young dictator, the two New York gangsters had been asked to come south and run the military-controlled gambling operations in Havana with the proviso that they be allowed to set up their own casinos and bookie operations. Within twelve months Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello had millions of dollars flowing into both Batista’s coffers and their own.
‘But it’s not the Mob, we already figured that,’ said Jane. ‘Too many outsiders, like this thing with Kennedy.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t directly the Mob but they must have been involved.’
‘How? Prohibition’s over.’
‘Gambling?’ offered Hennessy. ‘La Guardia forced Costello out. Maybe it’s got something to do with that.’
Jane shook her head. ‘That was all showboating. Costello just set up again in Jersey and Louisiana, not to mention Havana. And Costello’s already established in Cuba so why would he send a flunky like Howie down there? It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘None of it does.’
‘You were the one who told me a crime was only a puzzle because pieces were missing. We find the missing pieces and we figure out the puzzle.’ Jane reached up with her bandaged hand and gently probed the fresh, puffy scar under her eye. ‘Lawyers,’ she said a few moments later. ‘It always comes back to the lawyers. Fallon and McGee, Shalleck, Howie.’
‘All Mob related.’
‘And according to Noel, all connected to the Democratic Party.’
‘You think this is political?’
‘If it’s not the Mob then that’s the only answer. Who else has the scratch and the weight to get to your boss Valentine?’
‘This is crazy.’
‘Maybe. But it makes sense.’
‘What sense? Why would they send your friend Raines down to Havana? Why would they kill him? What does the Mob have in Havana that the Democrats want? And which Democrats?’
‘Good questions. You sound like a reporter.’
‘No, I sound like a frustrated cop. We’re talking in circles here.’
‘So let’s stop talking and start doing something,’ said Jane.
‘Such as?’
‘Who’s Frank Costello’s mouthpiece?’
‘His lawyer? A guy named George Wolf. Why?’
‘Because maybe this Wolf character can tell me something about what Howie was doing in Havana.’
‘Why would he talk to you? Did you ever consider that maybe Costello might have something to do with blowing you up? That maybe Wolf knows about this?’
‘I need to start somewhere.’
‘You ever hear of Johnny Torrio?’
‘Sure,’ said Jane. ‘Big-shot hoodlum from Chicago.’
‘Born in Brooklyn and he’s back. An old, old friend of Costello’s. Al Capone’s mentor, Torrio was famous for getting rid of his enemies by sliding pipe bombs up the exhaust pipes of their cars. Sound familiar?’
‘I still don’t think it was the Mob. I think someone’s trying to make it look that way and I think that maybe Costello might be a little angry about being set up to take the fall for some political scheme.’
‘And what if you think wrong?’
‘You have any other suggestion? I can’t stay in here forever.’
‘You know what my suggestion is. Get on the Twentieth Century and go to Los Angeles. I’ll keep digging here on the Q.T. If I find out something, I’ll let you know and then you can decide what to do.’
‘Nice and logical.’
‘I like to think so.’
‘I was never the logical type. Set it up for me with Wolf.’ Jane stared at her friend. ‘As soon as you can.’
Tommy Lascelles sat in the open lounge area of his railway car and gazed out the window at the rushing scenery; an hour outside of Winnipeg and already there was no sign of the seemingly endless prairie they had been travelling through. Nothing now but endless forests of stunted cedar, huge, striated outcroppings of granite and thousands of pond-size lakes reflecting the steel-grey overcast. Lascelles stroked his moustache, lit a Senior Service and tried to put his thoughts into some kind of useful order.
Once upon a time he’d had a promising career in the military and even after the death of King George’s father there had been the possibility of a respectable future in the Foreign Office. But, as though possessed by some disease that robbed him of good sense, he’d given it all up for the House of Windsor, particularly its men and their wretched choice in women.
Today Her Royal Highness was grumbling for the hundredth time that every time she tried to reach her precious babies on the telephone they were asleep.
Although both Lascelles and the king had tried to explain the idea of time zones, the concept continued to escape her and she appeared convinced that Greenwich Mean Time followed her about like the Corgi dogs she kept as pets.
The rocks and trees and lakes continued flashing by the window, as Lascelles ruminated. As secretary to Bertie’s brother Edward before the abdication he’d been positive that there could be no more dangerous woman on the planet than Wallis Simpson. Now he wasn’t quite so sure.
The heavy door leading to the forward carriages pushed open noisily and the squat, roly-poly figure of Mackenzie King stepped into the car. Lascelles stood, making a short, stiff bow in the man’s direction. ‘Mr Prime Minister.’
The balding little man waved a pudgy hand as he came down the aisle. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said. Lascelles did so and a few seconds later, after wobbling down the lurching car, the Canadian prime minister joined him. Lascelles smiled pleasantly. King had a grating, twanging voice, was profoundly irritating and was a self-aggrandising, sometimes pompous ass, but he was also extremely intelligent, a shrewd politician and the man who had engineered the entire tour in the first place. Given the precarious state of the world he was also potentially one of England’s most useful allies. He appeared to be quite agitated, his hands clasped in his lap, fingers twitching around each other.
‘Is there a problem?’ asked Lascelles.
‘No, no,’ King responded. He glanced out the window. ‘Feeling a little bit at a loose end.’
Lascelles almost laughed out loud. Over the past weeks he’d been astounded at the Canadian’s boundless energy. Now, with virtually nothing to do as they rattled through a thousand miles of granite wilderness, he was clearly very frustrated. ‘Maybe you should try to get some rest,’ Lascelles suggested. ‘I have a suspicion America will be quite draining.’ The tall, thin man reached into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and brought out a yellow rectangle of paper – a telegraph tear off. ‘The weather in Washington is in the high eighties and low nineties. New York isn’t much better.’
‘I did want to talk about the American part of the tour,’ said King. ‘But not the weather.’
‘What then?’
‘The president’s infirmity, for one.’
‘The infantile paralysis.’
King nodded. ‘Polio, that’s right.’
‘It doesn’t seem to slow him down from what I’ve seen in the newsreels.’
‘Bunkum,’ said King. ‘In the pictures, you ever see him walking across a lawn or getting in and out of a car?’ King shook his head. ‘No, you’ve never seen it because he can’t. It’s all show. Always got some guy in a white uniform on his left, taking his arm. Mostly his chauffeur lifts him in and out of the car and when you see him driving, all cocky with that cigarette holder of his, he’s in a special Ford with the gas and brake controls on the steering wheel. Got ramps everywhere, I’ve seen it for myself.’
‘I wouldn’t have known,’ said Lascelles, trying to act surprised. It wasn’t true, of course; he’d been fully briefed long before leaving England and both the king and queen knew exactly what to expect.
‘That’s the idea,’ said King. ‘It wasn’t so bad when he was governor of New York but it’s been getting worse and worse. He got together with the press boys and they agreed not to show him in a wheelchair. Doesn’t think it looks good to Hitler and his pals if the president comes off looking like a cripple.’ The Canadian made a little snorting sound. ‘Or maybe he doesn’t think the American people would elect one.’
King put his hands up on the table between himself and Lascelles. ‘Just thought you should know in case it all came as a surprise. Throws protocol out the window sometimes, the ramps and the wheelchair and the special things he has to do.’ He paused, pursing his lips. ‘That’s one of the reasons he’s not coming to Niagara Falls to welcome Their Royal Highnesses onto American soil – too out in the open for his taste.’
‘I don’t think it will be a problem,’ Lascelles soothed. ‘Or at least not one that we can’t deal with.’ He gave King a small, formal nod. ‘However, I shall apprise their Majesties of your concerns and your kind advice.’ It was exactly the kind of overblown comment the little man loved. Lascelles had a sneaking suspicion King jotted them down somewhere for posterity.
‘Excellent,’ said King. He beamed then frowned, almost in the same moment. ‘I’ve also been talking with Commissioner Wood.’
‘Yes?’
‘He doesn’t seem to be getting very much cooperation from the FBI.’
‘You’re speaking of Sean Russell, presumably.’
‘That’s right,’ said King. ‘Has me a little worried.’
‘Do we know his whereabouts yet?’
‘That’s what I’m talking about. There was a rumour he went from San Francisco to somewhere in Montana.’
‘Why would he go to Montana?’ Lascelles asked. ‘It seems an unlikely spot for fundraising.’
‘Be surprised,’ King answered. ‘Lot of Irish went to the copper mines in Butte. More Sullivans in the telephone directory than there are Smiths.’
‘What a strange bit of knowledge.’ This time Lascelles did laugh.
‘I collect them.’ King grinned. ‘Ripley’s got nothing on me.’
‘So Russell could have been there – is that what you’re saying?’
‘What I’m saying is Commissioner Wood asked one of his CID inspectors in Ottawa to check the rumour out. Fellow named Camak. He got in touch with an FBI man named Bannister who told him Russell had never been in Butte and wasn’t expected.’
‘Seems cooperative enough.’
‘Sure, except that today Wood gets told that the post office inspector in Butte confirmed that Russell was staying there openly, entertaining guests in his hotel room.’
‘Odd.’
‘Very,’ King said. ‘Question is, what are we going to do about it?’
‘I don’t see that there’s much we can do,’ Lascelles answered. ‘But I must say this would seem to confirm my original opinion – entertaining guests in one’s hotel room doesn’t sound like something an assassin would do.’
‘Well,’ said King, ‘I can’t say I’ve known too many assassins in my time but the whole thing’s got me worried, I can tell you.’
‘What does Commissioner Wood say?’
King snorted again. ‘He’s a policeman, Tommy. If he had his way Their Highnesses would make the tour in bulletproof boiler suits, or even better, not make the tour at all.’
Lascelles grimaced slightly at the prime minister’s use of his first name but didn’t make an issue of it. He lit another cigarette instead. ‘Well, we all know there’ll be no boiler suits, bulletproof or not, and the king and queen will be continuing the tour so the whole thing is moot, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ King answered. ‘What I think is we should put some pressure on the Americans to find Russell and have him thrown in jail before he can do any harm.’
‘On what charge? The man can’t be arrested on the basis of a rumour.’
‘Who cares what charge? I’m sure the FBI can find something. To hell with due process, Tommy, we’re talking about the safety of the King and Queen of England.’
‘It’s not quite that simple, Prime Minister. The large security contingent travelling with Their Highnesses has already been noted in the press and not in flattering terms. They can’t be surrounded by a wall of policemen. It tends to put a damper on things.’
‘We can’t just sit around twiddling our thumbs,’ said King. He looked down at his hands and realised he was doing exactly that. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, flushing angrily. ‘We have to do something.’
‘I think what we’ll have to do,’ soothed Lascelles, ‘is assume that whatever security measures are seen to be sufficient for President Roosevelt’s safety will be sufficient for Their Majesties.’
The Canadian prime minister nodded gloomily. ‘Let’s hope you’re right, Tommy. God help us if you’re not.’
The king-emperor of the British Empire sat in his private drawing room and stared out the window as the car swayed back and forth, carrying them around endless curves through an infinity of bright small lakes, spiny outcrops of rust-stained stone and trees enough, it seemed, to build a house for everyone on the planet.
He’d been watching for the better part of an hour, ever since the prairie had so abruptly given way to these rocks and trees, and so far he’d seen no sign of civilisation anywhere except the lines of telegraph poles on this side of the track, some leaning drunkenly, dark with pitch, others green and true and straight, freshly planted into the hard gravel of the trackbed, spaced, by his rough measure, approximately a hundred feet apart.
He was glad for a moment to be away from Buffy and all the rest, supposedly to spend time on the journal he so often referred to but wasn’t really writing at all, if truth be known. He lit a Players and dragged the smoke deep into his lungs, expelling it with a grateful sigh. The trip was almost half over now and each of the telegraph poles whizzing by outside meant they were a hundred feet closer to home, but every passing mile seemed to add to Buffy’s irritation. No matter how he tried to give her solace he invariably failed.
Publicly and even to her friends, Buffy often said that being queen was a terrible burden and responsibility she’d never expected to have put upon her but the king knew that secretly she revelled in it, even if his own position dimmed slightly beside her energy and radiance. He was more than happy to have her take the lion’s share of the limelight, if truth be told, but she was clearly tiring under the constant strain of it.
Although he’d never tell her so, the king knew that what she was feeling was fear, an emotion she purportedly did not know the meaning of. It wasn’t a lack of courage that failed her now, it was the fear, much like his own, that now, with the American part of the tour coming closer, she’d make a cock-up of it all.
On their visit to France she’d charmed the French premier and the French people in general with her smiles and those thinning frocks designed for her by Hartnell, but would the Americans take to her the same way they’d taken to David when he was Prince of Wales or would they see her for what she always saw herself as – the plump little commoner from the north who had no business being a queen of any kind at all?
The king inhaled again and sighed again. It was fine for him to depend on her compassion for his faults and frailties but there was no way on earth she would accept his commiseration in return. He finished his cigarette and lit another.
At least she wouldn’t have to give any speeches while they were in America. By his count he’d be giving more than a dozen, and from all reports, giving them in hideously hot weather, beginning coincidentally in Niagara Falls, where years before his brother had dedicated the bridge they’d use to cross from Canada into the United States.
He stared out the window, a king surveying a small part of his kingdom, wishing more than anything else to be at home with his two little daughters, playing the fool for them, knowing that to them he was as good as any other man, and even better because to them he was simply ‘Father Dearest’ and not ‘His Royal Highness.’ He let his eyes go out of focus and concentrated on the regular rhythm of the wheels as they chattered over the rails, matching first his breathing to the sound, and then his words:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…