Dream of The Broken Horses, The Page 5

  "Curious little bitch is what you mean. You're just too polite to say it."

  "How'd you get in?"

  "Told the chambermaid I might have left a bra in there. Please don't get mad at her, David. She watched my every move."

  "What were you looking for?"

  "David Weiss. Like who are you, David?" She widens her eyes. "What're you up to? What's your game?"

  "What's yours, Pam?"

  "Investigative reporter." She smiles. "And you know what? I think that's your game, too."

  I stare at her more annoyed than angry, but I know I can't let her get away with what she did. "Talking your way into my room," I eye her sternly, "you've got a fucking nerve."

  She shrinks back as if taking a blow across the face. "I did it because you intrigue me so much. I know that's no excuse. Please forgive me," she pleads. "I'm sorry. I really am."

  Nothing hypocritical about her apology; I read sincerity in her eyes. "I like you, Pam. I really do. But don't ever do anything like that to me again."

  4

  I'm standing by the once grand entrance to the grounds of The Elms, a morose sight this sultry summer afternoon. The skeletal gate frames hang loose from rusted hinges. With most of the ornamental ironwork missing, they resemble an assembly of bare bones. The stone pillars on either side are also in decay — mortar crumbling, moss attacking the rock. Only one of the two statues of griffins that once perched upon them remains and that one's now headless. This deteriorated entrance would make a fine drawing, I think.

  In the old days, of course, these gates were well attended. Members arriving at night would find the griffins illuminated by lights concealed in the surrounding foliage. A guard would stop cars, then relay names by intercom to the reception desk up at the club. People in the cars, the men in tuxedos, the women swathed in furs, would wait with mock joviality for admittance.

  A night at The Elms was exciting; visitors felt they were entering forbidden terrain. Often too there would be anxiety in the car when the clearance procedure took longer than expected. Then laughter and relief when approval time came and the guard waved them through. Then the slow journey down the long lit drive between magnificent evenly spaced English elms; the arrival at the great house, its banks of leaded windows lit from within; a cheerful greeting from the parking valet; the sweet aroma of burning wood in the air on winter nights as guests strode up the broad flagstone steps to the main door.

  The walls of the entrance hall were adorned with third-tier old master paintings in heavy gilded frames. In winter, fires crackled in the hearths, for the club was installed in what had once been a great private home. The sound of a singer would drift out to the hall, one of those torch-song specialists Jack Cody, club owner and host, brought in from Chicago or New York. Then Jack himself would appear, ultra-suave in his trademark white double-breasted dinner jacket and Errol Flynn pencil-line mustache.

  Everyone was fascinated by Jack, a handsome, craggy-faced man of medium height and compact build, with a year-round tan, sharp eyes, crocodile smile, precision-cut salt and pepper hair, and a voice so husky and soft it came out in a fierce whisper. Men were charmed by his two-handed shake, women by his gallant kisses. Often he would honor arriving guests with a few choice words, perhaps notification that a famous ballplayer was in the house or a certain out-of-state high roller was at the craps table in back playing like there was no tomorrow.

  Then Jack would smoothly turn his clients over to Jürgen, the opaque maître d'hotel, who, rumor had it, had killed a man in Mexico, then served in the French Foreign Legion. Jürgen would escort them to their tables in the Cub Room, the air lightly permeated by a sumptuous aroma composed of the smoke of fine Havanas, a touch of Chanel № 5, and the lusty smell of fabulous thick, rare, juicy, broiled steaks.

  Elms staff members were expertly cast: short-skirted cigarette girl with dazzling smile; stoic barman with slicked-down black hair; hovering European waiters; cool black backup musicians; cooks in immaculate starched white jackets and high white hats; bearded sommelier with accent, tasting spoon, and cellar key. Steaks, lobsters, wine, and liquor were always superb, service attentive, chairs soft, flowers fresh, tablecloths damask. Everything was luxurious, expensive, ‘best of class.’

  The Elms, sometimes called a ‘roadhouse’ in the downtown papers, was the closest thing Calista had to a fantasy nightclub-casino. Its glamorous Manhattan atmosphere was borrowed from The Stork Club and El Morocco, and some of its particulars, alluring singers and back-room gaming parlor, from such Hollywood noir classics as Dead Reckoning and Casablanca.

  Jack Cody, imitating the ironic manner of Humphrey Bogart, always referred to the club as ‘my joint.’ Wealthy locals called it simply The Elms and were thrilled to dine and gamble there, not least because gambling was illegal throughout the state. The Elms was entirely Jack's creation. Everything that happened inside, every nuance, was choreographed by him for maximum effect.

  A sure sign that one had become a friend of the house would be a whispered confidence from Jack, a tip, say, on a horse running at a Florida track, or a choice piece of gossip about some sordid event of which even columnist Waldo Channing would be unaware — an adultery or financial scandal, a dope and sex party, a fistfight between gentlemen who'd stepped outside to settle a dispute, or an exchange of slaps in the lady's restroom.

  Such privileged information was not easily shared. Jack kept his distance until one became a regular or lost a minimum of twenty thousand dollars in his gaming room. After that anything was possible: a complimentary bottle of rare French wine sent to one's table; a speeding ticket efficiently fixed; a high-end call-girl introduction discreetly made. People said that due to his wide acquaintanceship there was nothing Jack could not arrange, and, in truth, he did seem to know everyone in town — athletes and entertainers, socialites and judges, politicians, cops and mobsters. It was this last category, Jack Cody's rumored underworld connections, that originally brought Barbara Fulraine within his ken.

  * * * * *

  At first we couldn't figure out what she was doing with the guy. Put him in a jail jumpsuit and he was just another cheap crook."

  Mace Bartel, chief investigator for the Calista County Sheriff's Department, is talking as we walk together down the long driveway toward The Elms. At my request, we've met at the ruined gates so that Mace can show me the remnants of the club. Twenty-six years ago when Barbara Fulraine and Tom Jessup were murdered at the Flamingo Court, Mace, then a young detective working County Homicide, was primary investigator on the case.

  "She was such an elegant lady and Cody was such a low-rent creep, we couldn't figure the relationship out. Then we learned she was steered to him because someone told her he could help her find her missing girl."

  As we approach the house, I'm struck by its façade: fine stonework, magnificent arrays of windows and eight turned brick chimneys rising symmetrically out of a complex of intersecting pitched slate roofs.

  "Cody strung her along," Mace continues. "Uncovered all these ‘rumors’ and ‘sightings,’ a tale about a pretty little white girl spotted with blacks in the bowels of the Gunktown ghetto. He told her he had ‘operatives’ working on it, ‘informants’ who'd been well paid and would sooner or later come up with solid info. It was bullshit, but she was vulnerable so she believed him. After that it wasn't long before he got into her pants."

  Mace sighs. "She must have liked that too, the way she kept coming back for more. Maybe she found Cody attractive because he seemed so dangerous. You know, the old hood glamour bit. And of course he liked her because she was unlike any woman he'd ever had: rich, classy, educated, superbly groomed, even — what's the word?"

  Demure?"

  Mace shrugs. "Whatever. Point is she wasn't a floozy. Barbara Fulraine was the real thing. Sure, The Elms was a gold mine, Cody was raking in money, but he recognized class when he saw it. Class was what he lacked and what he craved."

  Mace is rail thin. With his granny glasses and ca
refully tended goatee, he looks more like a professor than a cop. He's also, I'm discovering, a shrewd street-smart psychologist. That he'd struggled to reason out the attraction between this unlikely pair tells me he's probably good at his job.

  We're at the end of the drive, the turnabout area, heading toward the broad steps that lead to the front door.

  "We were sure Cody did it," Mace tells me. "He was vicious and he was jealous. Two years before the Flamingo killings, he found out his girlfriend, a singer, was two-timing him. He used the broken end of a gin bottle to rip her face, and, though there wasn't any proof, we were pretty sure he had her lover whacked. His body turned up in a ravine in Lucinda Heights. No family. Nobody cared. Cody's lawyers settled with the girl. She refused to press charges and left the state. It was common knowledge he was capable of whacking people who crossed him or people he thought had done so. So why not Mrs. Fulraine and Jessup? She was his mistress after all, then he found out she was spending dirty afternoons with this nothing schoolteacher. That made him murderously furious so he killed them. Least that's how we had it figured."

  The Elms house, unlike the gates, appears to be in good repair. When I mention this, Mace tells me a syndicate acquired the property last year with a plan to divide it into high-end condos.

  When Mace opens the front door, we're hit by a blast of over-heated air.

  "Closed up this time of year, it gets like a furnace. Of course Cody had it air-conditioned. They'll redo that, heating, wiring, plumbing. Some snazzy downtown firm's got it figured out. The top unit'll be a duplex enclosing the old gaming room, an upstairs suite, and the terrace and garden area off the back. I hear they'll be asking a million four for that one." Mace mops his brow. "Come on, I'll show you around..."

  He takes me first into the Cub Room where the torch singers performed. Even thought it's daytime and the room's been stripped of furniture, I can sense what it must have been like. Thick, plush carpeting, tufted white leather banquettes, tables arranged on tiers, and a sweeping, curving staircase like the one in the fabulous Buenos Aires nightclub in Gilda that Rita Hayworth descends while singing "Put the Blame on Mame."

  "The singers made their entrances down those steps," Mace tells me. "The musicians worked against the back wall. The dining banquettes were on the upper level, the smaller tables for drinkers below. There was a small dance floor for customer dancing between sets."

  He leads me into an adjoining room. Quieter dining in here." He points toward the glassed-in kitchen. "The partition's triple glazed so you could watch the chefs but not hear the noise."

  He shows me a small private dining room reserved for Cody's mob pals.

  "They'd start all-night poker games in here after the swells went home."

  "Swells?"

  "Mace laughs. "Don't you love it? Right out of the twenties. Even back twenty-six years, this scene was from another era. I tell you, this was one swanky joint."

  We retrace our steps to the entrance hall, pass through a small room with an intimate curved bar where people waited for friends or gamblers retired to take a break, then enter the long gaming room in the back, which extends the length of the building. It's a magnificent space with three sets of French doors leading to a terrace overlooking a garden, now gone to seed.

  Mace gestures. "This was the heart of The Elms. The Cub Room, bar and entertainers — they were just bait to lure the suckers. I'll say this for Cody, he ran an honest club. No fixed roulette wheel or loaded dice. Wasn't necessary. This room was a money machine. ‘Course he had his costs including payoffs to the local law enforcement. Every so often the complaints would pile up, forcing the sheriff to stage a raid. They never found anything. No craps tables, roulette wheels, or blackjack stands. Cody was always tipped with enough time to truck his stuff out. All they'd find when they got here would be a couple of old geezers shooting pool."

  Mace leans against the wall, lights a cigarette, and smokes it while I start a quick sketch of the gaming room. Later, I'll insert Jack Cody, Barbara Fulraine, and perhaps Jürgen the maître d', if I can find a photo of him.

  "They used each other," Mace says. "She slept with him so he'd keep looking for her daughter, and he told her he was getting closer to finding the kid so she'd continue to sleep with him. The part I could never figure was her stealing off to sleep with Jessup. Was she turned on by the notion of crossing Cody or did it just turn her on to sleep with different guys?"

  "Oh, there'd been plenty of lovers over the years — we found that out soon enough. Even when she was married to Fulraine, she had lovers on the side. She may have been classy, but she liked sex, so there was a carload of secondary suspects. Including Fulraine, who had a private investigator tailing her butt. He wanted custody of his boys and was looking for evidence to have her ruled unfit."

  I tell him about the Fessé photograph.

  "Doesn't surprise me," he says, stroking his goatee. "She was a complicated woman."

  He suggests we go upstairs to look at Cody's office. It turns out to be a handsome room paneled in fine mahogany. Mace feels around, then slides open a panel to reveal a concealed wall safe.

  "He kept the gaming receipts in here along with his private files. By the time we got a search warrant, he'd cleaned everything out."

  Cody, as prime suspect, had what amounted to a perfect alibi: at the exact time of the Flamingo shootings, he was lunching at the Downtown Athletic Club with a municipal judge. Mace wasn't surprised. In his view, the alibi only served to confirm Cody's involvement.

  "It was too pat, like he went to a lot of trouble to make sure his actions were accounted for that afternoon. That told me he'd ordered the hit, which from an investigative point of view was happy news. When whoever killed those people was picked up, he'd have something valuable to trade. And hitmen eventually are picked up, or else they boast to a pal or girlfriend. Then the pal develops a conscience or the girlfriend gets dumped, he/she's got a way to get payback."

  Cody's old living quarters are down the hall, with a one-way glass viewing window set into the floor so he could observe the action in the gaming room.

  "This is where they fucked," Mace tells me. "The bed was over there."

  He gazes almost wistfully at the empty space as if imagining Jack and Barbara making love. Watching him, I wonder if he felt a little in love with her back when he was actively working the case.

  "Did she spend nights here?" I ask, wondering too whether I'm starting to fall a little in love with her myself.

  Mace shakes his head. "She always went home. She had live-in help, but even years after the kidnapping she was afraid for her sons. Two or three times a week she'd drop in here for lunch, then she and Cody'd come up here and screw. But she'd always leave in time to meet her boys when they got home from school."

  "That final summer, when the boys were away at camp, she started meeting Cody here every night. That gave her free time in the afternoons to hook up with Jessup. Everyone knew she was sleeping with Cody, but no one knew about Jessup. To keep it that way, keep Cody and her ex from finding out, they'd meet secretly at that crummy motel. Except she wasn't so secretive. She drove a Jag. People spotted her turning into the motel lot. Still boggles my mind —she had such a tremendous amount to lose and still she risked it."

  We ascend the main stairs, exit the house, then circle round back to look at the gardens. Mace tells me that all the trees near the house were strung with lights, creating a magical effect outside the club window at night.

  "I've been waiting years for someone to come forward, say he knew who did the Flamingo hit on Cody's orders. But no one has. Maybe they figured once Jack was dead there was nothing to be gained."

  Mace describes how less than a year after the Flamingo killings, Cody was ambushed.

  "He was in his Cadillac, sitting beside his driver the way he liked to do, when they stopped at a traffic light at the corner of Joslin and Tremaine. Suddenly two gloved and helmeted motorcyclists pulled up on either side, drew pistols,
and blasted the driver and Cody at the same time. Then the shooter nearest Cody pulled open the door and shot him twice in the head. It was all over in a couple of seconds. Both shooters dropped their weapons, then peeled off in opposite directions."

  "Did this have anything to do with Flamingo?"

  "Not as far as we know. Cody was connected with the Torrance Hill mob, then there was a falling out. We thought it had to do with the big stickup happened out here. Quite an event. One Saturday night, just after the midnight floor show, eight guys with submachine guns, wearing fatigues and stocking masks, came in through the kitchen door, rounded up the staff, pushed them into the Cub Room, shot up the ceiling to get attention, announced a stickup, and demanded jewelry and wallets. Three of them went around collecting valuables while two escorted Cody upstairs, where they forced him to open his safe and hand over the weekend receipts. It was scary and also exciting. A couple of the more clever ladies had the presence of mind to hide their rings by dropping them into there coffees. One guy dumped his watch into a pitcher of cream. Later everyone spoke with admiration of how well Cody handled himself. Even though he was cleaned out, he never lost control. Next morning it was all over the papers: GAMING CLUB HEIST. Everyone was talking about it: ‘D’you hear what happened out at The Elms?’ ‘Wow, isn't that wild!’ Contrary to what you'd expect, it added another layer of glamour to the place. Among Cody's regulars, it was prestigious to have been here. People who were nowhere near at the time went around claiming they were among the robbed. Meantime, Cody told some of his friends he knew who'd done the job and promised he'd get even."

  We mount the terrace that runs along the length of the gaming room.

  "The robbers came in through there," Mace says, gesturing toward a field below the gardens. "They avoided Cody's security guys by crossing the adjacent property, then approaching from the rear. It was a slick operation, showed intimate knowledge of The Elms, which is why some, me included, thought it was Cody staged it."