“Suppose,” I said to Lady Oakes, “that I work for your daughter, on the following condition: if I find evidence of her husband’s guilt, I won’t suppress it. It goes straight to the prosecution-right to the Attorney General.”
The widow’s smile turned approving; but Nancy was frowning, and said, “But…”
“Otherwise,” I told the lovely Mrs. de Marigny, “it would be a conflict of interests. I’d be working against your father-who is, after all, my client.”
Nancy thought about that. “Well, Freddie’s innocent. So you’re not going to turn anything up that would work against him.”
“There you go,” I said.
“And you’d answer to me,” Nancy said. “I’m your client now.”
“Yes. With that one condition.”
“Well…it’s acceptable to me,” Nancy said, uncertainly.
“It’s acceptable to me, as well,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at her daughter with a softer expression. “We won’t be enemies, you and I. I’m championing my husband, and you are championing yours. I expect you to stand by him….”
Now Nancy was getting teary-eyed again; she clutched her mother and her mother patted her, somewhat stingily I thought, but patted her.
“All I need,” I said, “is for good old Uncle Walter Foskett to write up a letter acknowledging I’m working out my ten-thousand-dollar retainer-and that when it’s used up, my meter is still running, at three hundred dollars per day and expenses.”
Lady Oakes smiled frostily at me. “That’s between you and your client.” She turned to her daughter. “I’ll see you in Nassau, my dear.”
And she was gone.
10
The taxi deposited me at the International Seaplane Base on Biscayne Bay, just south of Miami, and I hauled my duffel bag toward what might have been a fashionable yacht club, with its manicured lawn, decorative nautical pennants, and stream of blue-and-white-uniformed flight crews. Along the seawall, sightseers-some of them tourists no doubt, but locals as well-were passing this dazzling sunny afternoon by taking in the spectacle of the awkward-looking yet streamlined black-and-silver flying boats as they streaked through the water, coming and going. The roar of engines and churn of seawater and noise of sightseers were more air show than airport.
According to the bulletin board in the waiting room, my plane was on time. I knew Nancy de Marigny would not be joining me, as she was going out on a later flight; but I glanced around, wondering if Lady Oakes would be one of the thirty passengers taking the Caribbean Clipper to Nassau at one o’clock.
She didn’t seem to be, which was fine with me. I didn’t dislike her-she was a smart, tough lady, if possessed of that superiority that comes of a shopgirl marrying big money-but the notion of being cooped up with her in the clipper cabin for an hour was less than enticing.
Bag checked, ticket punched, I followed a small, stout, wide-shouldered man in Western shirt and chinos down a canopied walk that opened onto sunshine and the landing dock. I followed the hick down the few steps through a hatchway into the plane; turned out I had the seat across the aisle from him, and he smiled at me, an affable character who was probably a farmer or a rancher or something.
He said, “First trip to the Bahamas?”
He had a grating yet ingratiating voice; for a guy clearly in his mid-fifties-as the broad oval of his tanned, weather-beaten face attested-he had a boyish look. Behind gold wire-frames, his eyes narrowed as he smiled, and his longish brown hair, short and gray at the temples, was combed back carelessly.
“Actually,” I said, “my second in two weeks.”
“Oh. Go there often, do you? On business?”
“It’s my second trip, period-but it is business, yes.”
“Don’t mean to pry,” he said, with a smile, and he looked out the porthole next to him.
The four engines started up, one at a time, the hatchway clanged shut, and the plane began to coast down the watery runway. It took the pilot half a mile of plowing down the bay, pontoons cleaving the water, till he got into position for the wind, and then the plane yanked itself forward into the sky. I looked out my porthole window, but it was washed with spray.
The cabin was full, mostly men, business types.
I leaned into the aisle and said to the hick, “Wonder how many of these guys are reporters?”
He grinned. “On their way to cover the Oakes case, you mean? Probably damn near all of ‘em. Myself included.”
“You’re a reporter?”
“In a half-assed sort of way.” He extended a hand. “Name’s Gardner. Friends call me Erle.”
“Nate Heller,” I said, and accepted his firm handshake. I rolled his name around in my head for a couple seconds, then said, “Not Erle Stanley Gardner?”
“That’s right.” He beamed, pleased to have his name recognized. “Ever read my stuff?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I never read mystery novels.”
“Not your cup of tea?”
“More like busman’s holiday.”
“Oh?”
We were both having to work our voices up a bit, over the roar of the props.
“I’m president of the A-1 Detective Agency in Chicago,” I said.
His eyes slitted in thought. Then he pointed at me. “Nathan Heller! Damn. I should’ve recognized the name.”
“Hardly.”
He was shaking his head, smiling one-sidedly. “No, I should’ve. The Lindbergh case got you a lot of press. You damn near sprung Hauptmann!”
“Close only counts in horseshoes,” I said.
“Point well taken-they did fry the boy. But you’ve been in the thick of all sorts of major cases…the Dillinger shooting, this movie union scandal that’s still in the papers. You’re the genuine article! I’m the goddamn pretender. I’d like to pick your brain, son.”
“Trust me, Mr. Gardner-if you could pick a brain, it wouldn’t be mine.”
He had a hearty laugh over that one.
“What’s a mystery writer doing covering a real-life crime?”
“I’m Hearst’s trained seal,” he said with a smirk.
“Trained seal?”
“You know-these big-city papers like to have some famous-name ‘expert’ who isn’t a newspaperman do color on a big story like this. They want me to stick around for the trial and tell the public how Perry Mason would’ve handled it.”
“Who?”
For some reason that amused him. “That’s a character I write about.”
“Oh.” It did sound familiar. “I may have seen a movie based on one of your books.”
“Did it stink?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you probably did. Those Hollywood sons of bitches pay good money to buy a good story and then invent a thousand new ways to turn it lousy.”
“I wouldn’t think a successful book writer like you would even want to bother with newspaper work.”
He snorted a laugh. “I don’t. When they approached my agent, he knew I didn’t want the job and made an outrageous offer. That goddamn Hearst double-crossed us and accepted it!”
Hearst sending one of America’s most popular writers to cover the case meant Sir Harry’s murder wasn’t just the hot story of the moment: it would stay big news through the trial, at least.
Gardner was a likable, energetic, jovial guy and made pleasant company on the ride. His Western apparel and leathery complexion were explained by the four-hundred-acre ranch he lived on in Southern California. Seemed he did most of his writing in a trailer that he hauled around his own property, as well as on excursions to Arizona and Mexico.
“I’m strictly a free-lance writer,” he said. “It’s one of the few businesses where you can take your work with you, anywhere you go.”
I’d met my share of literary lions in Chicago, some of whom-like Nelson Algren and Willard Motley-were men’s men who belied the artsy-fartsy stereotype. But even so, this Gardner was one of a kind: an outdoorsman who viewed writing as a trade, not an art.
He’d be writing a daily column for Hearst on the Oakes case, for the foreseeable future, while working on a novel and radio scripts for an upcoming show about his Mason character. Like his fictional hero, Gardner-despite his unpretentious farmer appearance-was a criminal lawyer himself, though he didn’t practice anymore.