New York booklovers are a hardy lot. They refuse to be daunted by Mother Nature. Their footsteps had already flattened the snow on the steps to the main entrance of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street. Given the weather, no one was loitering about, as was the habit in summer, but children were throwing snowballs at Lady Astor and Lord Lenox, the giant marble lions guarding the main entrance.
Once inside, I clomped down the hall to the Periodicals Room. There I asked a librarian for copies of the Times, dating back to early January of ‘23. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or what relevance Powell’s death might have to Esther’s kidnapping. Probably none. But too much had happened around Mrs. Goodfellowe not to raise the question. An hour later, I had neat stacks of newspapers to one side. In short, this is the story they told:
On January 1, 1923, Mrs. G, then in her mid-fifties, marries Eric Alan Powell, age thirty-two. No one quite knows where the young man came from. They only know where he’s landed: in Mrs. G’s bed. There are stories about gambling and tales of criminal involvements. The tongues wag. The busybodies fuss. Mrs. G silences them quickly. Her new darling is handsome, apparently refined and profoundly witty. If people expect to see a young man who wastes her money, one who insists that she invest in various ridiculous if not nefarious schemes, then they’re disappointed. Powell conducts himself as a man worthy of the woman he’s married and the status he’s attained. After a while people simply accept it: Mrs. G and her new husband are one of those unlikely pairings that nature springs on decent society: unusual, but not unnatural. She has clearly never recovered from the double blow of losing her husband and her daughter, and now Fate has given her a genuine second chance at love. Her good friends sincerely rejoice at her newfound luck.
But Mrs. G’s new happiness is short-lived.
At 6 a.m. on the morning of October 6, 1923, a middle-aged Brooklyn secretary named Francine Baker takes her terrier, Snookums, for a walk along Surf Avenue, the main street of Coney Island’s amusement park. She treasures these walks, when the street is still quiet, well before visitors, even in autumn, fill it to capacity. She turns onto the boardwalk and takes a deep breath of salty ocean air. She holds her face to the wind, enjoying how it sweeps off the Atlantic. The beach is just the way she likes it—empty and peaceful.
Mrs. Baker resumes her stroll, but takes only a few steps before slowing to a halt. A car is parked to one side of the boardwalk, a brand new black Packard. Mrs. Baker automatically tightens her hold on Snookums’ leash. What’s such an expensive car doing there, at this time of morning? She glances around, but sees no one else. Snookums barks and strains at the leash. She eases up on it and he drags her forward, tail wagging. As she comes abreast of the car, she can see that she’s mistaken. The car is occupied. There’s the top of a man’s head. He’s in the driver’s seat, his head thrown back on the headrest. No doubt, he got drunk the night before and passed out.
The window on the driver’s side is rolled down. Mrs. Baker’s better instincts tell her to take a wide berth around the car, but curiosity and Snookums get the best of her. So she goes up to the window and gets an eyeful.
It’s a sight she’ll remember for the rest of her days.
With a piercing scream, she stumbles backward and falls flat on her butt. Snookums is hopping and yelping around her. After a moment’s shock, the woman scrambles to her feet and scurries home, the short-legged dog racing ahead of her. Her husband, Fred, can’t fully grasp what she’s babbling about. But he understands enough to call the cops.
Police find the body of a white male slumped behind the steering wheel. The dead man is of slender build. He’s wearing a black full-length cashmere coat over a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a gray-and-white checked silk tie with a rare black pearl tiepin. He’s also wearing a gold wedding band on his left hand and a diamond pinkie ring on his right. The fingers of his right hand pinch a blood-spattered cigarette stub and his left hand grips a dark gray hat. His Colt .380 is still in his shoulder holster. From the smoothness of the skin on his hands, one would say he’s in his twenties or thirties. It’s impossible to tell from his face.
He doesn’t have one.
Someone has used a Remington pump-action shotgun to great effect. The nose is gone and so are both eyes. The rest of the face is a pulp of splintered bone and raw meat.
The medical examiner estimates that the victim has been dead two to four hours. He deems the shooting too vicious for it to have been professional. The killer’s blowing the man’s face away gives the crime a touch of the personal.
The dead man is carrying no formal identification. His wallet and billfold are gone. But his car and clothes indicate wealth. One of the uniforms suggests organized crime, but the detective on the scene nixes that. The Packard is not the car of mobsters. It’s grand, all right, but it moves too slowly. No, this guy wasn’t a mobster. Just some poor rich slob who got himself into trouble, maybe with an angry husband who paid someone to off him.
The hat’s inner band contains the initials E.A.P. A check of the car registration shows it to belong to one Katherine Goodfellowe. The dead man is tentatively identified as Eric Alan Powell, her husband of eighteen months.
The widow is devastated, but she’s in for more bad news.
A check into Powell’s background unearths a wanted person ad in Chicago for marriage fraud. Investigators also turn up rumors about gambling debts. They learn that Powell was a familiar face in the demimonde of secret, affluent gamblers. He reportedly owed fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. Investigators theorize that Powell made the fatal mistake of crossing a loan shark. They begin to push the loan shark theory hot and heavy, but soon run into trouble. No one is willing to admit to having lent Powell money. This isn’t surprising, of course. No one wants to concede anything self-incriminating. But not even the snitches the cops depend on can supply a single name or firm figure to the amount of money Powell supposedly owed.
They do, however, turn up something else.
Word has it that Powell had a terrible argument with his best friend, a fellow by the name of Bobby Kelly. Powell and Kelly had been pals since childhood. Kelly is a convicted thief, albeit a small-time one. The argument is said to have been bitter and violent, and it took place only three days before the shooting.
Police reconstruct the crime as follows: The two men meet to supposedly work out their differences. They’re sitting talking in Powell’s car when Kelly makes an excuse to get out. Maybe he says he has to take a leak. He walks off, does his thing. He comes back and sees Powell relaxing behind the wheel, taking a smoke. Something clicks in Kelly’s head—or maybe this has been his plan all along. He takes out his shooter and holds it down low. He approaches the car and signals for Powell to roll down the window. Powell does and Kelly gives it to him—right in the kisser.
Police fan out, searching high and low for Bobby Kelly, but he’s nowhere to be found.
Despite all the rumors and information unearthed about Powell, no other viable suspects are developed. The investigation stalls, and then cranks to a halt. No one is ever arrested.
Good story. Did it have anything to do with Esther? Or her affair with Sexton Whitfield? Was there a connection between Whitfield, Powell and Kelly? Or was I just mixing apples with oranges?
The same photo of Powell accompanied each article. He sat cross-legged on a wooden chair next to a small writing desk in a gaudily furnished room, full of stuffed chairs with plaid throws and mincing tables with lace doilies. The gas lamp on the wall threw odd shadows, but you could see his face clearly enough, perceive the deep-set dark eyes, the smooth chin and arched cheekbones.
One small line in a Times report especially caught my eye. An unnamed source was quoted as having told police that he’d seen Kelly a week prior to Powell’s death and that Kelly had hinted he was on to “something big.” I found this interesting, but according to the news reports, investigators failed to find any use for this information.
Was Kelly’s “something big” the Goodfellowe heist?
Police suspected that Esther’s disappearance was tied to the heist because of the proximity of the two incidents. Couldn’t the same logic be applied to Powell’s death? Investigators had never confirmed the motive behind his murder. Could it have been related to the heist?
The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
Had he somehow fallen victim to the scheme? Perhaps stumbled upon it and had to be silenced? Or might he have been a knowing accomplice? Given the fact that Powell’s circle of acquaintances had apparently included criminal elements, and that his best friend and suspected murderer was a thief, it seemed much more likely that Powell’s involvement would’ve been active rather than accidental. Was Powell’s death the result of a falling out among thieves? If so, then what, if anything, did Esther have to do with it?