The Valentino Affair (18 page)

As the afternoon wore on, Jack Jr. cavorted happily on the rides and played cowboys with his pet pony. His father, either willfully or subconsciously, turned a blind eye to the clock and encouraged the lad to keep playing, unwilling to halt the youngster’s fun. At 5:00 p.m. Caroline arrived, expressly to see her elderly father. After greeting Jack and her nephew, she joined Marshall Ward, who had been invited to stay for dinner with the family, in the lounge for a pre-prandial cocktail. Shortly afterward, Jack and his son entered through the French windows that led from the garden to the living room. Upstairs, Julius Hadamek had temporarily relinquished his duties for Jack and was acting as valet for Major de Saulles, helping him dress for dinner.

Six o’clock, six-thirty, and Blanca’s mood was growing darker by the minute with still no sign of her son. In an atmosphere of frozen silence, the servants dutifully laid the dinner table. At 7:00 p.m., when the first course was served, Blanca didn’t touch a bite. Instead, she sat very still, staring blankly. Suddenly she leapt from the table, snatched up the phone, and called her ex-husband.

Hadamek answered.

“Where is Jack?”
²
Blanca shouted.

Hadamek explained that the boy had already been put to bed. Blanca exploded. She demanded that he bring the boy back to her house immediately. Hadamek said that, unless instructed by his master, he was powerless to intervene. Hovering at Hadamek’s elbow, Jack heard his incandescent ex-wife ask if he was in.

“Tell her I’m out—that I’ve gone to the club and will be back in an hour,”
³
he whispered.

“The master is out, madam,” said Hadamek. “He has gone to the Meadow Brook Club. He will be back in one hour.”
⁴

According to Hadamek, Blanca then said, “Very well, then do not say that I rang him up. I will be right over to get little Jack.”
⁵

She slammed down the phone and immediately called Mr. and Mrs. D. Stewart Iglehart, who lived at East Williston, a village between Crossways and The Box. They were old friends. Aida Iglehart had been born in Chile, and her polo-playing husband worked as an executive with W. R. Grace & Co, a multinational with extensive South American interests. Blanca begged Iglehart to accompany her to The Box to reclaim Jack Jr., but he understandably resisted, saying that he would “rather not take any part in the matter.”
⁶
He did offer to send his car over to pick up Blanca and bring her back to their place so that she might have dinner with them.

“No,” said Blanca. “I want to get Jack and put him to bed early after dinner.”
⁷

Iglehart further tried to defuse the situation by saying that he felt sure Jack Jr. would be all right and that Blanca was worrying unnecessarily. But Blanca was past mollification. She ended the call and shouted for Suzanne to get dressed. While Suzanne did so, Blanca placed another call.

At 7:15 p.m. she spoke to Raymond Hamilton, who ran a taxi service from Hamilton’s Garage in nearby Roslyn. He promised to send a cab immediately. Fifteen minutes later the cab still hadn’t arrived. Blanca called again, this time much angrier. Hamilton, anxious not to upset a high-value customer, did his best to appease Blanca, assuring her that the cab was on its way and would be with her soon.

Another half an hour passed, and still no cab. By now Blanca had become apoplectic. Just before eight o’clock, Hamilton took a third call. He wasn’t sure if the irate lady on the other end of the line was Blanca, but the caller was plenty steamed. In between the loud complaints, he offered his apologies, explaining that there had been some kind of mix-up and that another driver, James J. Donner, had been dispatched and would be there in a couple of minutes.

Reassured, Blanca and Suzanne readied themselves to leave. Blanca told Tagliabue that she would be gone only a matter of minutes, that she would eat later, and that he await her return to the dining room. While Suzanne fastened the leash on Senator, Blanca’s white English bulldog, her mistress gathered some last-minute items for the journey, and then the two women let themselves out the front door. They had just reached the front gate when James J. Donner skidded his automobile to a halt. He tried to apologize for the delay, but Blanca brushed him aside and climbed quickly into the vehicle, telling him to drive to The Box as soon as possible.

Her fury took on an icy chill as the car barreled across Hempstead Plain. When they reached The Box, she and Suzanne left Senator with Donner, then made their way across the lawn. Parked directly in front of the house was Jack’s automobile. As she’d suspected, he hadn’t gone to the club at all. He was still at home.

What happened in the next few minutes depends on which version of events one believes. According to one of the servants, who happened to be outside the house at the time, Blanca and her maid crept up to the living room and peered through the window. Blanca would later insist that she had done nothing so underhanded. No, she and Suzanne had marched up the front steps and glanced through the window as they did so. Only then did she see her little boy, in his pajamas, still up and playing with his grandfather in the living room. Blanca glowered. Hadamek had lied to her not once but
twice,
albeit on his employer’s instructions. Also in the front room were Jack, Caroline Degener, and Marshall Ward, sipping drinks and listening to the Victrola. Whether the inhabitants of the house knew that Blanca was outside is not known, but for some reason Caroline chose that precise moment to whisk Jack Jr. out of the living room and toward the broad Colonial staircase.

Blanca rang the bell. Hadamek answered. Behind him, Caroline and little Jack had reached the fourth step on the stairs when Blanca entered the front door. Blanca didn’t spare them a single glance. Instead, she snapped at Hadamek, “Where is Mr. de Saulles?”
⁸
Hadamek replied that her ex-husband was in the living room.

“What is the meaning of it that you keep Jack here?”
⁹
Blanca demanded of Hadamek. The lean and swarthy valet shifted uncomfortably as Blanca tore into him. “It is my time to have him.”
¹⁰

At that moment—much to Hadamek’s relief—the phone rang in the hallway. He excused himself and backed away to answer the call. Only then did Blanca acknowledge her ex-sister-in-law, who stood protectively beside Jack Jr. on the stairs. “Good evening, Blanca,” said Caroline, coming down the stairs, leaving Jack Jr. behind her. “This is an unexpected call.”
¹¹

“Good evening, Caroline. I wish to see Jack.”
¹²

Caroline reiterated that Jack was in the living room, then watched as Blanca swung right and marched into the front room. Suzanne, a pace or two behind, stopped just short of the doorway. Caroline didn’t follow Blanca into the living room but remained in the hall alongside Suzanne, ears pricked for the bust-up she felt sure was about to ensue. Behind her on the stairs, her little nephew dutifully remained where she had left him.

In the spacious living room, Jack had draped himself across a sofa that overlooked the wide French windows. Some way to his right sat his father on a couch. In front of them both, Marshall Ward was perched on a small stool in the center of the room. As a thunderous-looking Blanca, hands plunged deep into the pockets of her white silk sweater, stalked into the room, Ward rose and inched his way toward the mantelpiece. He would have squeezed past Blanca if he could, but she was blocking the doorway. Jack rose from the couch and approached, hand extended, until he stood about three feet from his ex-wife.

“How are you, Blanquita?”

“I want Jack”
¹³
was the frosty response. Ward, sensing matters were about to turn really ugly, put more distance between himself and the warring couple by taking up a new position alongside the baby grand piano.

“You can’t have him,” said Jack. “The court awarded him to me this month. I’m sorry; I do not want to discuss it further.”
¹⁴
He swung his hands up, palms outward, in front of his chest, a characteristic gesture of his when he wished to end a conversation. Then he turned away from Blanca and began staring out the French windows, emphasizing his decision by saying, “No! No! No!”
¹⁵

A .32 caliber Smith & Wesson “lemon squeezer” revolver, the kind Blanca used to kill Jack in the shooting

Blanca didn’t cry, or argue, or become hysterical. Instead she said, quite calmly, “Then there is only one thing for me to do.”
¹⁶
She withdrew her left hand from her sweater pocket, revealing the .32 Smith & Wesson revolver that Jack had bought her for protection all those years before. In a steady, matter-of-fact voice, she said: “If I can’t have my boy, take this.”
¹⁷
The first bullet probably struck Jack in the side. He lurched toward the French windows, raising a protective arm. Four more shots ripped into his body, throwing him back into a chair.

For a second no one moved, frozen in time.

Then the room transformed into a blur of activity. Ward rushed over and grabbed Blanca by the arms. “It had to be done,”
¹⁸
she muttered.

An instant later, Hadamek raced in, and he and Major de Saulles helped the stricken Jack onto a couch. Hadamek looked up imploringly at Blanca. “Madam, what have you done?”

“I had to do it,” said Blanca. “I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
¹⁹
Then she meandered into the hall, where she encountered Caroline, who grabbed Blanca’s arm and cried, “Blanquita, Blanquita, what have you done?”

Those huge, dark eyes bore right through Caroline. “I’m sorry,” said Blanca. “It had to be done.”
²⁰
Then, as an afterthought: “You might send for the police.”
²¹

Back in the living room, Ward was tending to the wounded man. Fortunately Jack’s injuries didn’t look that severe. “Where is the boy?” he whispered. Before Ward could answer, he said, “Don’t let her get at me again.”

In the immediate aftermath, no one knew what had happened to Jack Jr. Some time later, he was found upstairs, having fled to the safety of his bedroom, scared out of his wits by the gunshots.

Meanwhile, Jack was grimacing badly as he lay on the sofa. “Did you send for the police?”
²²
he asked Ward. In the confusion, multiple phone calls for assistance were made, with Caroline, Ward, and Hadamek all later claiming to have phoned for a doctor. Until assistance arrived, Ward administered some rudimentary first aid.

The first medical man on the scene was Dr. Bryan C. Sword, in his capacity as ambulance surgeon for the Nassau Hospital. He examined Jack more thoroughly, frowning as he did so. These injuries needed emergency treatment. He told Ward, who ran upstairs and packed a pair of pajamas and a change of clothing for his wounded friend, thinking that he would be hospitalized for a week or two at most.

Oddly enough, the architect of all this commotion was the calmest person on the scene. After the shooting she walked into the front garden, accompanied by Suzanne, and sedately arranged herself on a seat in the shadow of a tall hedge. She was still sitting there when Hadamek next saw her. She called him over. “Jules, get me my boy.”

“Madam, I cannot do it.”

“Jules, what shall I do?”

“Madam, it is no use to run away.”
²³

He was right. The police, in the bulky form of Sheriff Phineas A. Seaman, were already on their way. Unfortunately Seaman was a stranger to this heavily wooded section of the two-hundred-acre Ladenburg estate—it wasn’t exactly a high-crime area—and he had no idea where The Box lay. What followed was a few minutes of pure Keystone Kops farce as the sheriff navigated the unfamiliar roads and lanes aimlessly until he chanced across an automobile parked by the side of the road.