The Deadhouse (31 page)

"Did you ever accuse her of being a gold digger or a treasure
seeker?"

Lockhart blushed. "That's what I get for being out of town when all
this started. You've clearly covered some territory." He looked down at
his Top-Siders and back up at Chapman. "Not in a literal sense. She
wasn't after Ivan's money—if he really had any. It's just that she
would latch onto people and use them for whatever she could suck out of
them. Then she'd just discard them when they couldn't give her anything
else. It wasn't a nice thing to watch."

"What do you know about Claude Lavery?"

Lockhart was slow to answer. "More than I ever wanted to. I can't
tell you I objected to his activities at the college. I can't say he
was selling drugs to kids, exactly, but he introduced so many of them
to a culture in which there was a general acceptance of substance
abuse. There are so many rumors about his misappropriation of
funds—well, it just makes me furious. We've been struggling awfully
hard to get King's off the ground, and Lavery did everything he could
to allow intellectuals at the better schools to think we were just all
about street jive."

"What do you know about the missing money?"

"Not a thing. I'm on a tenure track myself, trying to keep my hands
clean and mind my own business."

"Lavery and Lola?"

"I didn't meddle with it. They were pals. Nothing intimate, of
course. She was working on something else with him, and I just put up a
Chinese wall between us."

"Would you mind if we talked with your grandfather, as long as we're
here?" I asked.

"Not at all. I'm sure he'd be delighted, too. Hope you don't have to
be anywhere very soon. You get him going on the MacCormick raid and
he'll bend your ear off."

Lockhart stood up to lead us out of the room, then turned back,
biting the corner of his lip.

"Something wrong?"

"I doubt he'll realize that Lola is dead. I've told him about it,
naturally, and I've read him the newspaper stories. It's just that he's
got a bit of a problem with his memory. Long-term, it's quite
remarkable. Doesn't forget a thing. But ask him what I gave him for
breakfast, or the fact that Lola was murdered last week, and he won't
know a thing about it. Some of the doctors believe it's an early stage
of Alzheimer's, while others assume it's just part of his aging
process."

Mike and I followed the young professor through the length of the
rambling house, beyond the enormous kitchen to a cheerful solarium,
where Lockhart's grandfather was sitting on a chintz sofa, washed in
the sunlight that was streaming through the glass-walled room.

"Gramps, these are some people who are trying to help Lola. They'd
like to talk to you."

"Lola? What's wrong with Lola?" The tall, lean man with an elegant
mane of white hair raised himself to his feet and shook hands with
Mike. "Orlyn Lockhart, sir. Who might you be?"

"I'm Michael Chapman. I'm a New York City detective. This is
Alexandra Cooper. She works in the district attorney's office."

He checked behind himself to be sure the sofa cushion was in place,
and as he lowered himself down, his grandson reached an arm out to
steady his descent. "Did young Orlyn tell you I used to work there
myself?"

"He certainly did." I smiled at Skip, who held up three fingers to
indicate to me that he was the third Orlyn Lockhart.

"What service do you perform there? Are you a secretary?" "No, sir.
I'm an assistant district attorney in Mr. Battaglia's office. I run the
Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit there."

"Still can't get used to the fact that women practice in the
criminal courts." The old gent was shaking his head back and forth.
"Wouldn't have seen one anywhere near the well of the courtroom in my
day. Not a lawyer, not even allowed to serve on the jury. Where'd you
go to school?" "University of Virginia."

"Mr. Jefferson's university? My alma mater, too, young lady. They've
come to let women in these days? I'm shocked. The whole damn school was
men only back then, and a great place. Came out and went right to work
in the best law office in the country. New York County district
attorney. Joab Banton—I was one of Banton's boys. Blame all these women
in the courtroom on Kate Hepburn. She started the whole damn thing with
her movies. And wearing pants, no less. Who's the DA now? It's not
still Dewey, is it?"

Not since 1941, when he left to run for election as the governor of
New York, before two unsuccessful attempts at the presidency. "No, sir.
Paul Battaglia." I was beginning to question how reliable a
conversation with this man could be.

"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."

"Did you find what you expected?"

"Worse than that. Far worse. Drugs of every sort. And then the
weapons started coming. We took out meat cleavers, hatchets, stilettos,
butcher knives. I've got pictures, missy, front page of every newspaper
in the country. Skip'll show you my scrapbooks. "These gorillas had a
real pecking order. The two at the top had their henchmen. There were
at least twenty-five of them who kept the lowlifes in line, living in
the worst conditions, waiting on Reggio and Cleary, and doing it all to
get narcotics. Meanwhile, the goon squad who helped the bosses lived
off the fat of the land. Taken off by van every day to work at the
warden's home and eat pretty well themselves."

"Did you actually see where Reggio lived?"

"You wouldn't believe the sight. Hell, I wouldn't have, unless I'd
been there in the flesh. After he'd been taken out, MacCormick and I
went up to see his lavish digs, just to find out whether the reports
we'd gotten had been exaggerated. Hah! Not a bit. He had a large suite
of rooms in the old hospital wing, all laid out with his finery. A
maroon cashmere lounging robe was spread across the foot of his bed,
with two pairs of shoes, shoe trees neatly in them, lined up
underneath."