Max Collins - Carnal Hours

“Okay, Nancy…okay. You made your point. What about a guy named Meyer Lansky? Ever hear of him?”

She shrugged. “No.”

I described him to her. “Ever see anybody who looked like that come around to talk to your father?”

“No.”

“Any Americans come around who didn’t seem like somebody who’d typically do business with your dad? Somebody…suspicious. Somebody with bodyguards, maybe.”

“A gangster or something? Hardly.”

I didn’t want to get into it with her, but I wondered what interest, or connection, Meyer Lansky might have to the murder. Last night his questions had been pointed, and knowledgeable; so knowledgeable that I wondered if he might not have been, in an oblique fashion, warning me off the case….

A knock at the door summoned Nancy, and I stayed and sipped my coffee, watching golfers golf, pondering Lansky’s possible warning. I heard Nancy’s voice, then another voice, but higher-pitched, and that of an older woman; both voices were raised in something approaching anger.

I went to have a look. Probably none of my business, but I’m a snoop by nature and profession….

“Mother,” Nancy was saying, “I did not sneak away. I left word where you could find me, and under what name, or else you wouldn’t have! Correct?”

Lady Eunice Oakes was tall, handsome, dignified, and royally pissed off. She was also just a tad stout, with a firm jaw and thin wide lips, her hair of medium length and graying blond. She was in black, of course, but stylishly so, with a black fur piece, black soupdish hat and dark glasses and black gloves. Even her nylons were in mourning.

“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice,” Lady Oakes snapped. “I don’t appreciate having to come running after you…chartering a plane at all hours…”

“You didn’t have to come ‘running after’ me, Mother. I’m of age. I’m a married woman.”

“You would have to remind me of that.”

Lady Oakes rustled in her purse-also black-for a hanky-white. She lowered her face into the hanky as Nancy tapped her on the shoulder.

“Mother,” Nancy said, nodding toward me. “We’re not alone….”

She put the hanky away and removed her sunglasses; her eyes, though bloodshot, were a clear, sky blue. Once upon a time, she could have given Nancy a run for the money in the looks department.

Studying me, she said, not unpleasantly, “And who are you, young man?”

A funny way to address me, since she probably only had five or six years on me.

I told her, and expressed my sympathies.

“You’re the detective my husband hired,” she said, and beamed. She strode over to me and offered me her gloved hand. I shook it, not knowing why this welcome was so warm.

“You provided valuable evidence in the case against my husband’s murderer,” she said, “and I would just like to thank you personally….”

“Mother-Mr. Heller is working for me, now. He’s going to prove Freddie’s innocence.”

She let go of my hand as if it were something disgusting. She looked at me the same way.

“I fail to see the humor in that,” she said.

“Me either,” I said.

“Mr. Heller,” Nancy said, “was paid ten thousand dollars to investigate my husband’s activities. I’m keeping him on the case. He’ll investigate, and prove Freddie’s innocence.”

Lady Oakes smiled, and it was a sly, smart smile.

“Am I to understand,” she said, addressing us both, looking from Nancy to me and back again, “that you intend to have Mr. Heller continue investigating…using up the money that your father paid him?”

“Yes,” Nancy said, indignantly.

“I think not,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at me. “I’ll speak to our attorney, Walter Foskett of Palm Beach, and fix your little red wagon, Mr. Heller.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t both threaten me with the same lawyer!”

“Mother,” Nancy began, and the two were arguing. Not yelling, but heatedly talking over each other’s words.

I put two fingers in my mouth and blew a whistle that would have brought Ringling Brothers to a standstill.

The two women looked at me, startled.

“I have a suggestion,” I said. I looked at Nancy. “Your mother has a point. My client here, in a very real sense, is your late father.”

Lady Oakes smiled smugly and nodded the same way. She folded her arms across a generous matronly bosom.

“Suppose,” I said to Lady Oakes, “that I work for your daughter, on the following condition: if I find evidence of her husband’s guilt, I won’t suppress it. It goes straight to the prosecution-right to the Attorney General.”

The widow’s smile turned approving; but Nancy was frowning, and said, “But…”

“Otherwise,” I told the lovely Mrs. de Marigny, “it would be a conflict of interests. I’d be working against your father-who is, after all, my client.”

Nancy thought about that. “Well, Freddie’s innocent. So you’re not going to turn anything up that would work against him.”

“There you go,” I said.

“And you’d answer to me,” Nancy said. “ I’m your client now.”

“Yes. With that one condition.”

“Well…it’s acceptable to me,” Nancy said, uncertainly.

“It’s acceptable to me, as well,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at her daughter with a softer expression. “We won’t be enemies, you and I. I’m championing my husband, and you are championing yours. I expect you to stand by him….”

Now Nancy was getting teary-eyed again; she clutched her mother and her mother patted her, somewhat stingily I thought, but patted her.

“All I need,” I said, “is for good old Uncle Walter Foskett to write up a letter acknowledging I’m working out my ten-thousand-dollar retainer-and that when it’s used up, my meter is still running, at three hundred dollars per day and expenses.”

Lady Oakes smiled frostily at me. “That’s between you and your client.” She turned to her daughter. “I’ll see you in Nassau, my dear.”

And she was gone.

The taxi deposited me at the International Seaplane Base on Biscayne Bay, just south of Miami, and I hauled my duffel bag toward what might have been a fashionable yacht club, with its manicured lawn, decorative nautical pennants, and stream of blue-and-white-uniformed flight crews. Along the seawall, sightseers-some of them tourists no doubt, but locals as well-were passing this dazzling sunny afternoon by taking in the spectacle of the awkward-looking yet streamlined black-and-silver flying boats as they streaked through the water, coming and going. The roar of engines and churn of seawater and noise of sightseers were more air show than airport.

According to the bulletin board in the waiting room, my plane was on time. I knew Nancy de Marigny would not be joining me, as she was going out on a later flight; but I glanced around, wondering if Lady Oakes would be one of the thirty passengers taking the Caribbean Clipper to Nassau at one o’clock.

She didn’t seem to be, which was fine with me. I didn’t dislike her-she was a smart, tough lady, if possessed of that superiority that comes of a shopgirl marrying big money-but the notion of being cooped up with her in the clipper cabin for an hour was less than enticing.

Bag checked, ticket punched, I followed a small, stout, wide-shouldered man in Western shirt and chinos down a canopied walk that opened onto sunshine and the landing dock. I followed the hick down the few steps through a hatchway into the plane; turned out I had the seat across the aisle from him, and he smiled at me, an affable character who was probably a farmer or a rancher or something.