Max Collins - True Detective

Dutch Reagan went into acting, too.

Campagna was fishing in Florida in 1955, reeling in a thirty-pound catch, when he had a heart attack and died. He was fifty-seven.

I lost track of Miller; he was kicked off the department and left the city, as best I know. Lang was found guilty at his trial but was immediately granted a petition for a new trial. He had loudly told reporters he would “blow the lid off the Democratic party” if he went to jail. A year and some eighteen continuances later, the case was thrown out of court. Lang waited a few years for the heat to die down, then sued the city for reinstatement as a detective sergeant and got that and restoration of full pay for the time he’d missed. I had run-ins with him from time to time thereafter, as you well might guess; but I don’t know what became of him after he finally did retire from the department.

Mary Ann, of course, went to Hollywood and changed her name to something you would recognize more readily than Mary Ann Beame. She did several pictures for Monogram before Twentieth Century-Fox bought up her contract. I was supposed to go out to Hollywood and we would get married. Mary Ann got married, all right; several times — never to me. She died last year of lung cancer; she was a heavy smoker, the National Enquirer said.

When I read of Mary Ann’s death, it brought memories rushing back. I was (and am) living in Florida, having retired some years ago. I am married to a wonderful woman who is not a character in this book. We live in Boca Raton, but we get to Miami from time to time. We were walking through Bayfront Park one sunny February afternoon when I came to the memorial with the inscription “I’m glad it was me instead of you,” and started to laugh. My wife wanted to know what was so funny, and I told her. And she suggested I write this book.

So I have.

As for the Century of Progress, it was held over for another year. And when they finally closed the fair down, crowds swarmed the lakefront to watch the demolition crews dismantle the City of Tomorrow. Last to go was the east tower of the Sky Ride. On Saturday, August 31, 1935, two hundred thousand people were on hand to watch the biggest crash since Wall Street. Engineers had placed seven hundred and fifty pounds of Thermit explosive in boxes wired to the north legs of the structure, and at the appointed time Rufus Dawes pushed the button and “the great tower” fell.

It made quite a racket.