Linda Fairstein - The DeadHouse

"Where's Lola?" The man's eyes were alive with interest, the fine light blue color coated with a thin layer of glaucoma-like haze.

Mike mumbled under his breath. "On ice."

"You say you were with Lola?"

"I told you they were Lola's friends, Gramps." Skip tried again to explain our connection to Lola without mentioning her death. The old man didn't get it. As they talked I could see the yellowed front page of the New York Herald Tribune, framed on the table at his elbow, with its banner headlines proclaiming the top news story of January 24,1934: gangster rule of island smashed by maccormick. "Worst Prison in World Recaptured from Control of Prison Mob Bosses."

The lead article, with its photograph of MacCormick and the young, good-looking former prosecutor at his side, appeared just above the news that the notorious John Dillinger had been taken into custody in Tucson, Arizona.

I seated myself on an ottoman facing Orlyn Lockhart, our knees practically touching as we spoke. "Someone tried to hurt Lola, so we thought we should find out why. We're talking to all her friends."

"Seems to me you should talk to her enemies. That's what I would have done."

Mike winked at me as he sat next to Skip's grandfather. "Score that one for Banton's boys, blondie. Bet he never lost his touch."

"What did Lola like to talk about with you? Can you tell me?"

He kept it all in the present tense. "We don't have to wait for her. She's heard most of my tales. Loves to hear me talk about the island."

The telephone rang and Skip stood up to walk to the kitchen. "Will you call me if you would like something to drink or eat? Gramps, you okay? I've got some phoning to do."

Orlyn kept talking right over Skip's announcement. "Biggest thugs in New York, and they were the ones running the penitentiary-from inside, no less. It started with Boss Tweed, back before I was born. You know he stole millions from the City of New York, and when they finally caught up with him, they sentenced him to twelve years on Blackwells Island.

"Want to know how he was treated? Tweed was given a furnished apartment in the penitentiary. Never locked. Had his own library and even a private secretary who came in to do his work. Wore his own suits and fancy clothes. Even had his lady friends in to visit. Died there before he could serve out his sentence."

"How did you get involved?"

"I'd done my prosecutorial work in the Rackets Bureau, trying to bust organized criminals who were taking over the town. Did I hear you say you're a detective, young man?"

Mike explained his assignment to Lockhart. At the same time, I tried to remember what my father had told me about the workings of neurons and the degeneration of brain tissue, how some contemporary memories become completely inaccessible but events deep in the past could be as distinct as if they had occurred the day before.

"Perhaps you've heard stories about the island in my day?" he asked.

"Not really."

"First thing they did, turn of the last century, was change its name. Not to Roosevelt, mind you. That didn't happen until after the Second World War. But for a brief time they called it Welfare Island.

"Most people thought Blackwells was cursed. The city closed down most of the hospitals and moved the sick and insane to more benign places. All shut down, except for the penitentiary. Ever hear of Dutch Schultz?"

"Sure," Mike answered. "Arthur Flegenheimer. Legendary mobster. Controlled a lot of business in the city."

Orlyn Lockhart zoned out on me. He had found a responsive audience in Mike and was playing to him. "I put his right-hand man away." He was tapping his forefinger against his chest. "I tried the case myself. Joseph Reggio. Know that name, too?"

"Harlem racketeer. Probably the number two guy in the mob at the time."

"Convicted him of extortion, ran the beer and soda water trade. Word got back to us, down at the district attorney's office, that Reggio had set himself up in prison like a king. He'd bribed all the authorities to get the inmates in the jail's clinic moved out to the general population. Reggio took over and made that infirmary his home. Dressed in silk robes and used lavender cologne. Cultivated a nice garden, kept a pet cow to get his own milk. Dined on the finest steaks and wines in his own apartment."

"In the penitentiary?"

"Two of them, there were, took over the prison hospital. Reggio ran his men, and the Irish hoodlums were led by a guy called Edward Cleary. That's the guy who kept his German shepherd with him in his room. Named it Screw Hater. 'Screws' are what they used to call the guards. Both of these toughs kept homing pigeons with them. Actual cotes of birds that carried notes-and probably narcotics-in and out of the jail.

"These two mobsters swaggered around while the regular crooks waited on them like slaves. Sad part is that the men who really needed medical treatment were just dumped into the general population. All the boys with social diseases-that's what we used to call it back then-they were mixing freely with the healthy ones. The whole place was a sea of misery. Full of degenerates. Faded tigers." "Excuse me?"

"Didn't you ever read Dickens, young lady? When he visited New York, he asked to be taken to see old Blackwells."

I thought I had plowed through most of him in my undergraduate days, but the phrase didn't sound at all familiar. Perhaps that explained why Dickens's sketch was on Lola Dakota's bulletin board. Just one more notable figure who had connected with this island that so fascinated her. Now what we still needed to know was why Charlotte Voight's picture was there.

Lockhart was mumbling on about Dickens's visit to the prison, inmates dressed in the black-and-buff garb that the Englishman likened to faded tigers.

"Tell me about the raid," Mike said. Skip came back into the room with chamomile tea for his grandfather and mugs of coffee for us. He put them on the table, smiling at Mike's enthusiasm for the tales he had heard so many times and walking back to the kitchen. "Did you actually go along?"

"Go along, sir? MacCormick and I led the whole thing ourselves. I handpicked the detectives and wardens to come with us, but we led the very charge into the pens. First one to fall was a deputy warden who'd been on the take the whole time. Placed him right under arrest."

"I'd like to have been at your side," Mike said, egging him on. "MacCormick had this planned to the minute. Closed down the prison switchboard so no one could call out while the raid was on. He dispatched the first men to the hospital ward to drag out Reggio and Cleary." Lockhart was chortling as he sipped his tea. "Guess he was afraid to let us get at each other. So he had them taken out of their luxurious quarters and thrown into solitary confinement." "But you, did you go into the prison itself?"

"My boy, I can still smell it today. Most of the prisoners had been turned into dope fiends."

"After they went inside the walls?"

"Reggio and Cleary were running a drug smuggling business in the jailhouse. That's how they got all their lackeys to keep them in style, and segregated. First thing I saw were rows of men, shivering on benches, pleading with us to let them take their drugs. Most of them were covered with needle scars, all up and down their arms. Word spread that Commissioner MacCormick was walking through the three-tiered cell block himself."

"Never happen today. They'd just show for the photo op." "All of a sudden we heard lots of clanging and things being thrown about. I went running to see what it was. Turns out prisoners were throwing their weapons, and their drug paraphernalia, out from between their bars. Nobody wanted to be caught with contraband in their cells. I leaned over and picked up some blackened spoons, what they cooked the drugs in. Spikes they used to shoot up. Whole sets of hypodermics. Cloths soaked in a heroin solution."