Max Collins - Carnal Hours

Gardner looked puzzled, now. “Did they mean to burn the place down?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe they just wanted to leave this phony voodoo calling card. Or maybe one of them burned and feathered Harry while the body was still on the floor, the other one getting the fire on the bed going real good, then they both tossed him on….”

“And took a powder while the fire was still blazing, figuring the whole place would burn down!”

I nodded slowly. “Maybe. But the wind put it out. You know, usually when a man kills for money-as de Marigny is accused of-he does it as quickly and simply as possible and makes his getaway.”

“These killers weren’t in a hurry,” Gardner said. “They took their time, either out of hatred for Sir Harry, or in an effort to suggest a ritual killing. Unless it was a ritual killing….”

“Whatever the case,” I said, “it’s no hit-and-run job.”

“Are you gentlemen in need of assistance?” said a voice from the doorway. A familiar voice, actually.

Colonel Lindop entered the room, his face long and dour under the pith helmet, hands behind him.

“You’ve been telling tales to my men,” he said dryly. His smile was thin and not pleased.

“I told them I was meeting you here,” I said. “And here we are-back in the old clubhouse.”

“Don’t underestimate my people,” he said. “Colored or not, they’re good men. They had the sense to call me.”

But not the sense to stop me from waltzing in.

“I’ll admit they do a hell of job destroying evidence,” I said. “They were scrubbing bloody fingerprints off the wall when we got here.”

Lindop blinked at the bare wall, then looked glumly my way.

“Not my doing,” he said softly.

“I didn’t figure it was.”

“But I must admit I didn’t expect to see you in Nassau again so soon,” he said, too curious to throw me the hell out, right away.

“I’m working for the defense,” I said.

The unflappable Lindop seemed flapped. “Really? For Mr. Higgs?”

“Mrs. de Marigny hired me.”

His features froze as he tried to fathom this news. Then he looked at Gardner and said, “And who would this gentleman be?”

“This is Erle Stanley Gardner, the famous writer. He’s an old friend of mine. Giving me his reading of the crime scene.”

“Fascinating, I’m sure,” Lindop said, with the slightest smirk. “You wouldn’t be covering this for the press, would you?”

“Actually,” Gardner said, with a sheepish grin, “I would. Pleased to meet you, Colonel Lindop….”

Lindop ignored the hand the writer offered. He said, “I’ll have to ask you to leave. We’ll be bringing the press out, en masse, one day soon.”

“Swell,” Gardner said.

“Before we go,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me take a few evidence samples, for the defense.”

Lindop looked at me, amazed. “Samples? Such as?”

“Pieces of the sheets and blankets and carpet.”

“Why?”

“To conduct experiments about rate of burning.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know…”

“I’m sure,” I said, “that the Miami dicks wouldn’t want you to allow this.”

He smiled faintly. “I see. Well…why don’t you go ahead, then. Take your samples.”

I did. Lindop watched, then saw us out. He was almost friendly.

“Oh, Colonel,” I said, outside on the front doorstep, “I wonder if you’d mind pointing out the picket fence, from which the murder weapon was supposedly plucked?”

Lindop smirked again. “I suppose you want to take one of the pickets, too,” he said, “for your scientific experiments.”

I exchanged shit-eating grins with Erle Stanley Gardner.

“Now that you mention it,” I said.

Brilliant late-morning sunlight careened off the high stone walls of the fortresslike Nassau Jail. The structure-which was at the end of a street called Prison Lane, fittingly enough-was atop a hill in a run-down colored district near the southern border of the city. A formidable iron gate swung open to allow the deep-blue Bentley into a courtyard overseen by placid black officers in towers and on walkways-unlike their counterparts on the streets of Nassau, these bobbies were armed, with rifles.

Godfrey Higgs, counsel for the defense, was driving. I was his passenger. I had spoken with Higgs on the phone the evening before, and we’d met for breakfast on a dining porch at the B.C., overlooking lush gardens and busy tennis courts.

I was sitting sipping orange juice when he strode through the hotel dining room over to where I sat by a window. Despite his three-piece suit, my first impression was that the tall, broad-shouldered attorney moved, and looked, like an athlete-even if it was in some ersatz sport like cricket or polo or something.

His forehead was high under dark, slicked-back, parted-in-the-middle hair; the eyes in his oval face were alert and hazel, smile broad and ready, nose sharp.

“Mr. Heller?”

“Mr Higgs?”

His grip was firm. He sat and ordered breakfast from a black waiter; my food was already on the way.

“One of Sir Harry’s good deeds, you know,” Higgs said.

“What’s that?”

“Giving hotel jobs to the colored population. That’s one of the reasons Sir Harry was so beloved.”

“I understand your client treats his Negro employees well, too.”

Higgs’ smile moved to one side of his face. “Yes…but not in the far-sweeping manner of Sir Harry Oakes. I’m afraid, right now, my client is as unpopular with the black population as he is with the social crowd he’s gone to such lengths, over the last few years, to alienate.”

“Why so much resentment against him? I’ve only viewed him at a distance, but he seems at least as charming as he is obnoxious.”

Higgs laughed brittlely. “Well put. But you’ll find soon enough, in your investigations, that outsiders here…unless they’re tourists spreading money around…are viewed with suspicion and disdain.”

I drank some coffee. “So that French accent of his, that charms the pants off the ladies, doesn’t win him points with the men.”

“That’s part of it.” His tea had arrived and he was stirring it idly, cooling it. “You see, Mr. Heller, the local people in Nassau…of either color…are unbelievably lazy. If an outsider comes in, and has the success that Fred has had…from his yachting victories to this chicken farm of his, which is so prosperous…it rankles.”

“But Sir Harry wasn’t resented that way?”

“Hardly. Oakes didn’t do anything but bring money in and spend it…which is what white men are supposed to do in the Bahamas. Freddie, on the other hand, arrived with an accent and a title, worked side by side with blacks, seduced the local ladies, and made himself a general pain in the posterior.”

“I like him better already. But the notion that an entire population is ‘lazy’ seems a little silly to me….”

His smile turned wry. “I understand you’re from Chicago. I’m told that’s a city where every citizen has his hand in another citizen’s pocket. Is that generalization at all true, or am I being offensive?”

Now I had to smile. “No-more like an attorney who’s made his point.”

He sipped the tea. Muscular-looking as he was, he moved with grace. “You see, Mr. Heller, Nassau is an easy-money town…it’s part of the pirate mentality.”

“What do you mean?”

His expression was almost condescending. “Don’t be taken in by all these lovely flowers and this luxurious sunshine-New Providence is a barren island…the soil is a thin layer over stone, nothing much can be grown here. The major crop of the Bahamas has always been, and probably always will be, piracy of one form or another.”