At eleven o’clock on the morning of Wednesday October 15, 1958, Nica drove out of New York City and into a whole lot of trouble. She had always, her contemporaries recalled, been a mischief magnet, the kind of child who climbed too high in trees, the sort of young woman who gave her chaperone the slip, the type of wife and mother who thought a regular routine was a death knell rather than an achievement. On this occasion the fortuitous combination of luck, breeding and charm that normally got Nica out of difficulty failed her, and for the first time in her life being white, rich, beautiful, British, well connected, female, titled and even perhaps innocent, counted for nothing. Although the Baroness left New York a free woman she would soon be caught up in a chain of events that would lead to a spectre not only of personal disaster but also of the end of the life she’d chosen, a life for which she’d sacrificed so much.
After a series of delays that morning, Nica pointed her Bentley Convertible downtown and left Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel, bound for a jazz club some three hundred miles south-east in Baltimore. In the back of the car was the young tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse and in the front seat was Monk. In Clint Eastwood’s storeroom, I found transcripts of interviews with Rouse and Colomby relating to this incident. In the Delaware Superior Court archives, the courtroom transcripts still exist and, using these sources, I was able to piece together what happened next.
The atmosphere in the car was tense. The trio had set off late and were unlikely to make Baltimore for a sound check, let alone a rehearsal. Neither the Baroness nor Monk was used to rising before noon and their departure had been further delayed when Monk insisted on trying on several suits and a variety of hats. Nellie, who normally chose his clothes and helped him dress, was unwell. That day Monk was particularly taciturn, not having slept for fifty-two hours. His manager Harry Colomby agonised about cancelling the gig but eventually decided to take the risk on the condition that Nica drove him and never left his side.
Nica understood how much the Baltimore gig meant to Monk. Since the return of his cabaret card in 1957, every concert from that day onwards, however small, represented a precious financial and emotional fillip. He had been off the scene for over seven years, and it was vital to keep him playing and to recapture his lost audience. Determined to keep Monk’s spirits up during the journey, Nica wedged the steering wheel under her right knee and, leaning into the back of the car, pressed the play button on her portable eight-track recorder. She often played back some of his recordings to boost Monk’s morale. She chose the track “Pannonica,” played most nights in the Five Spot Café.
“Good evening, everybody,” her distinctive voice reverberated around the car out of the machine.
Twenty years later, in an interview for the documentary Straight, No Chaser, Charlie Rouse remembered those few hours clearly.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nica turned to Rouse who was sitting alone in the back seat.
Realising that he was the only person looking at the oncoming traffic, Rouse whispered urgently, “Baroness!”
“What?” she replied, still leaning over the seat, trying to adjust the volume.
Rouse gesticulated towards an oncoming truck. Nica wrenched the wheel and the Bentley swerved back to its own side of the road, narrowly avoiding a major collision. To calm her nerves, she took a swig of whisky from a hip flask.
Within half an hour they had left the New Jersey Turnpike for Interstate 295 and the car was cruising comfortably at ninety miles per hour. Nica turned on the lunchtime news. That day CBS Radio reported that in Japan the death toll from Hurricane Ida had risen to 1,200. President Eisenhower was due to address the Senate on reports coming out of the USSR that nuclear tests had been performed at Novaya Zemlya, while BOAC’s new service offering passenger flights across the Atlantic was proving to be a smash hit. John Hamilton, the well-loved actor from The Adventures of Superman, had died that morning, aged sixty-one. For the fourth week running, the number one hit was Domenico Modugno singing “Volare.”
They had been driving for just over two hours when Monk spoke for the first time that day.
“I need to stop.”
Monk’s prostate problem would increasingly impact on his life and career, making travelling for any distance and eventually sitting at a piano uncomfortable.
“We’re only six miles from Wilmington. I know a place there,” Rouse piped up from the back seat.
“Stop,” Monk insisted.
Nica exchanged looks with Rouse in the rear-view mirror. All three understood that finding a suitable place for Monk to use a bathroom wasn’t going to be easy. They were west of the Mason-Dixon line, technically in the more emancipated North, but the state’s fortunes had been built on agriculture and slavery, so traditionally it sided with the South. Racial prejudice was the norm rather than the exception.
To a casual observer, New Castle was a quaint, unassuming town, red-bricked and clapboarded, with an annual chicken festival and a factory cranking out the finest nylon stockings. However, public whipping and segregated schools had only recently been abolished and racially segregated accommodation and bars were still commonplace. As Nica drove her car down Main Street, she looked in vain for an establishment that would allow Monk to use its facilities. The inhabitants of New Castle stopped and stared. The sight of a Bentley Convertible in itself was a surprise. The sight of this grand European car being driven by a woman in a fur coat was an event. But the sight of a Bentley being driven by a woman in a fur coat with two black men was a spectacle.
It took only a glance to see that the Cherry Corner Soda Shop on 2nd and Cherry Street would not let Monk use its facilities. Hostile white faces stared in outrage at the car. Comegy’s Oyster House on 12th looked equally uninviting and only white faces were visible in the Deerhead Hot-dog Store, Eddie’s Soda Fountain and Peterson’s House of Fudge. The only coloured faces at Baker Ben, at Gino’s and at the Charcoal Pit on Maryland Avenue were those cleaning the stoop.
Heading out on Route 40, Nica caught sight of the Plaza Motel and pulled off the road. Contemporary postcards reveal a low, orange-roofed building arranged in a horseshoe around a reception area. A sign proclaimed “All welcome.” Nica ignored the neatly painted parking spaces, headed straight for the front door, mounted the pavement with the Bentley’s nearside tyres and, yanking the handbrake up with both hands, came to an abrupt stop right by the entrance. “She’d park by crossings, in front of fire hydrants, you name it, she ignored the rules,” one frequent, and intrepid, passenger confirmed. Monk, as usual, looked smart in a homburg, a beige suit, black shirt and black pencil tie but, at a little over six foot two and weighing 250 pounds, he cut an imposing figure. Getting out of the car, he walked into the motel, past the desk clerk and towards the cloakrooms.
“All he wanted was to use the bathroom,” Rouse later reported. “He wasn’t threatening nobody. Delaware is a little prejudiced, a little backward, so I see what happened next as a racist thing.”
“The average cop down the street seeing a black guy and a white woman would probably be enraged,” Colomby added. “Even in Greenwich Village at that time, when the older folks used to see the interracial couples, they went nuts.”
Nica and Rouse sat in the car waiting. Every minute that passed spelled trouble.
Rouse spotted the state trooper’s car first. It passed the motel a few times, back and forth, like a great white shark circling its prey, then pulled in about twenty yards down the road. Nica saw a middle-aged man through her rear-view mirror. These were the types that you had to watch out for, musicians later told me, the ones who had missed promotion, who were finally forced to accept that their careers were on a fast track to nowhere and who’d decided social progress was firmly to blame.
Monk had used the bathroom but now he wanted water. He was sweating in the afternoon sun but perfectly calm.
“Water,” he said to the woman at the check-in desk. She could not understand his way of speaking; few could.
“Water,” Monk repeated loudly.
The woman began to feel scared.
“Water.” She rang the police.
Half a century later I read my great-aunt’s own account of the events that followed, notated in the transcript of the final appeal:
Q: When if at all did you see Officer Littel drive up in his troop car for the first time on October 15th, 1958?
NICA: I think it was about 1.15 and I saw Officer Littel drive up in his troop car and park a little way in front of me.
Q: What, if anything, did you observe Officer Littel do after he drove up in his troop car and, if anything, which you also heard him say?
NICA: He got out of his car and came back to my car on the side on which Monk was sitting and asked him to get out.
Q: What, if anything, did Monk do when the officer asked him to get out?
NICA: He didn’t do anything. He just stared at Trooper Littel and didn’t move.
Q: What conversation, if any, did you have with Trooper Littel at this time?
NICA: After Trooper Littel asked him a second time to get out and he didn’t move, I got out of my side of the car and went around the back to Trooper Littel and asked him what was wrong. Because I hadn’t seen anything happen, and I told him that Thelonious Monk was a very well-known musician and I was his manager licensed by the American Federation [of] Musicians and we were going to Baltimore for an engagement.
Q: What, if anything, did Trooper Littel reply to you?
NICA: He said, “All right” and went back to his car.
Putting the Bentley into first gear, Nica flipped the indicator and slowly pulled out onto the highway. The signpost showed how far it was to New York; they were on the right road but facing in the wrong direction. Nica made a U-turn. As they passed the patrol car again, all three noticed that the officer was still on his radio. Moments later they heard the siren. In her rear-view mirror Nica saw the patrol car also make a U-turn and speed towards them. Drawing up beside the Bentley, Littel stabbed his finger towards the kerb and on his loudspeaker instructed the Baroness to pull over. No one in the Bentley spoke. This time the troop car parked right in front of the Bentley. The officer got out of the car carrying a pair of handcuffs and yanked open the front passenger door. He tried to cuff Monk but the musician sat on his hands and turned his large frame away from the trooper.
Q: Did there come a time when the musician used a profanity in Trooper Littel’s presence?
NICA: It is possible he said, “What the hell,” or something like that.
Q: What conversation if any did you have with Trooper Littel at this time?
NICA: I said, “What are you doing this for?” And he said, “Because he’s under arrest.”
Littel straightened up and slowly walked around the car. “Driver’s licence and registration,” he commanded rather than asked, and then took the keys out of the ignition before returning to his own vehicle. Rouse, Nica and Monk watched in silence as Littel picked up his handset and radioed for help.
Q: What did you do next?
NICA: I got out of my car, went over to his and pleaded with him to take no further action. I assured him that if I asked Monk, he would get out of the car, if that is what he wanted.
Q: What was the trooper’s reply, if any?
NICA: He said, “He’ll get out all right.”
Q: After this conversation what did you do next?
NICA: I returned to my car but by that time there were already other troop cars arriving and lots of troopers got out.
Q: After the other troopers arrived would you describe what took place in connection with them and Monk at your car.
NICA: Three or four of them started trying to drag Monk out of the car and he resisted, and they began to hit him with coshes and blackjacks, and I asked them not to do it and be very careful of his hands because he was a pianist.
Rouse later said that at first Nica did ask the troopers to be careful with Monk’s hands, but when they ignored her and thunked the leather-covered lead down on to his fingers, she begged them to stop. “Soon she was screaming and begging, ‘Protect his hands, please protect his hands.’ ”
NICA: They didn’t take any notice and they finally dragged him out of the car, and they were on top of him on the ground, beating him, and they handcuffed him with his hands behind his back and dragged him to Officer Littel’s car and tried to get him in the back … I went over to a detective and said, please, I don’t want him to get hurt any more. Then I went over to my car but Officer Littel approached me and said, “You are under arrest too.”
Monk lost consciousness, probably following a trooper’s use of a beavertail sap with a flat profile. Once his body crumpled the troopers lifted Monk’s legs over his head and just closed the door on him. Detective Eckrich agreed to let Nica drive the Bentley to the local courthouse. Rouse was also arrested and transferred to another trooper’s car.
Not long after the Baroness and the musicians arrived at the local courthouse, news of the arrest had spread. The troopers told their families to come and see that day’s catch. Snotty-nosed kids pressed their faces against the window to get a better look at Monk, who was now conscious but in serious pain. There was nothing the Baroness could do apart from ask repeatedly to use a phone to call her lawyer. Rouse, also handcuffed for good measure, was held in another room.
“What is the charge?” Nica kept asking.
“Can we look in your pocketbook?”
“If you mean, can you search my handbag, then here it is. But can we please get a doctor for Mr. Monk. He’s sick. Surely you can see he’s sick? We’ll plead guilty. Let us pay the fine and let us go.”
“We need to search your car.”
“Go ahead.”
Things were about to get significantly worse.
Nica followed the officers outside and sat on the bank, watching. She took out her sketchbook and began to doodle.
Q: How did you happen to have a pad with you?
NICA: I always have a pad with me, and when I am under stress and strain I usually start doodling. That’s what I was doing.
Q: At the time the officers took your luggage out of the car, you knew, did you not, that the Indian hemp was in the suitcase.
NICA: Yes.
Q: (continuing) Why, Baroness, did you not refuse, if you had any choice, to let them make these searches?
NICA: I was surrounded by police officers and troopers and detectives, and I was rather frightened. I had asked for my attorney and had been told I couldn’t telephone and I was really rather frightened and confused at this time and I just didn’t think there was any alternative to allowing them to search.
Q: Did you believe that you had a choice as to whether you could allow them to search or not search?
NICA: No.
Q: No choice?
NICA: No.
Q: (continuing) After you arrived at Judge Hatton’s, when, if at all, did you ask to use the telephone other than to call your lawyer?
NICA: I asked several times. When they found the needle marks on Monk, I wanted to call the doctor because I knew the doctor could explain the vitamin injections Monk was getting.
Monk was not only sweating but had track marks on his arms. It needed little more to convince the police that they had another junkie on their hands.
Nica, seconds after being charged, October 1958 (Photographic Credit 20.1)
Then they found marijuana in the car, which in those days was classified as a narcotic; those found in possession faced imprisonment. Fully aware of what she was doing, Nica claimed that the dope was hers.
Harry Colomby was teaching a class when he was summoned to the telephone. “Normally I wouldn’t take it but on that occasion …” He still remembers the phone call, the absolute despair that he felt and his lingering incredulity at the injustice of the system. “They even impounded the car. The car became a witness.”
Colomby described having to go back to his classroom and hear the students discuss literature but only being able to think that Monk would once again forfeit his cabaret card and his livelihood. Since getting back his licence to perform, Monk had had about fifteen months to build up an audience. “The response was staggering, it was great,” Colomby remembered. “The word was out. It was like a conversion, yes, that’s the word. Because for all those years he’d been an artist who had never had his due in terms of recognition and that was changing. Thelonious was vindicated. Then this happened.”
“But Nica said that the drugs were hers so surely Monk got off?” I asked.
“Yeah, she took the rap, but that didn’t mean anything.”
It meant everything to Nica. The consequences for her were appalling. She faced a long prison sentence of up to ten years, a large fine and then, on her release, immediate deportation. Her family had tolerated the death of an infamous, married, drug-addicted musician in her suite, but how would they treat her imprisonment for drugs? Would they cut her off finally and ostracise her? Jules had custody of their children but, up to now, he had allowed Nica limited access. If his former wife was found guilty, would Jules allow her to see their children at all? How many friends and relations would trek to a jail to visit her? If Nica lost the case, her life with Monk was finished. She was suspended between two worlds, the one that she had rejected and the other that she had come to love. Her future lay in the hands of lawyers and judges, and this time there was nothing that her influential family could do to help.
I wondered why Nica risked so much. Was the explanation simply that she loved Monk and was prepared to give up everything to spare him going to jail? One of her oldest friends, the historian Dan Morgenstern, told me: “She was prepared to sacrifice herself for him. She did not think twice about it. That was what she was like, the way she looked at things. That was the way she was.”