Lowell sat back. “That’s it?”
“Afraid so.”
The top of the receipt bore only the words, in scripty type, “The Hudson House.”
No city, no state, no phone number.
“I tried to track it down but didn’t have any luck.”
Lowell said, “So aside from the idyllic countryside and the house of God, the only thing we know for sure is that he was, at least part of the time, in Pittsburgh the last two years of his life.”
“That’s right.”
“What was he doing there?” Lowell asked.
“Oh, he was hanging out with a murderer.”
Back in the city, at his desk, Frederick Lowell flipped open the Malone biography — the author had insisted he take one with him, suitably inscribed. He read the chapters describing Goodwin’s connection to Pittsburgh.
Goodwin had been a crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune but took time off in 1965 to write an account of a horrific murder in Pennsylvania.
Jon Everett Coe came from an affluent and well-educated family in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, his father a physician, his mother a principal of an exclusive private school. A troublesome child from a very young age, Coe excelled academically through his first year in college, then began suffering increasingly severe breaks with reality, threatening neighbors, his parents and his younger siblings, acting incoherently. Finally he snapped altogether and, in 1962, was arrested and convicted for murdering his mother.
At trial it was revealed that Mary Coe, embarrassed about her son’s condition, relentlessly pushed him to become “normal,” pressuring him into treatments and to return to school. The woman was known to be strident and demanding of all her children but didn’t seem to realize that Jon could not be handled with conventional discipline — until it was too late.
By the time that Edward Goodwin became aware of the case, Coe was on death row at Statesville Prison outside of Pittsburgh. Goodwin was curious to know how such a troubled individual could be found sane and executed. The answer seemed to be, as the prosecutor pointed out, that when he was not in a delusional or fugal phase, Coe was remarkably thoughtful, articulate, and insightful. He wrote his own appeals, which judges praised for their clear reasoning. He sketched and painted excellent landscapes and portraits, and he wrote reams of poetry, some of which was published and critically well received. Goodwin felt it was patently unfair that a man who committed a crime in the midst of a psychotic episode receive the death penalty, and he wanted to use this injustice as the theme of his book.
It seemed that in 1966 and ‘67 Goodwin was splitting his time between Chicago and Pittsburg, interviewing Coe. This was an astonishingly productive time. He not only spent hundreds of hours researching the nonfiction but he wrote Cedar Hills and, apparently, much of the novel’s sequel then too. Though he complained from time to time in his letters to his editor about writer’s block, he also commented occasionally that, thanks to his “muse,” he’d made good progress in his writing.
This was all very interesting, but Lowell had learned nothing that moved him closer to his goal of finding Anderson’s Hope.
Jon Coe was, of course, long gone, executed in September of ‘67. But Coe’s last surviving family member, his younger brother, was alive. Samuel Coe, a physician like his father, was still living in Bucks County. He was a psychiatrist and Lowell wondered if he’d gone into the profession because of his brother’s condition.
Lowell called Samuel Coe and explained his mission regarding the sequel, then delicately inquired as to whether the man would mind a few questions about the time leading up to his brother’s execution.
“No, not really. I don’t talk to reporters but if you have a connection with Edward Goodwin, I’m happy to help.”
“Did you ever meet him? Goodwin?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” the psychiatrist said. “My sister and I were young then, just teenagers, and our father wouldn’t let us speak to reporters. I know Dad talked to Goodwin a few times but I have no idea about what.”
Nor had the doctor heard any talk about sequels to Cedar Hills Road.
Lowell then asked if the “idyllic countryside” in the letter might be Bucks County, where the murder had occurred, but again Dr. Coe couldn’t provide insights other than to confirm that if any place was idyllic it was that portion of Pennsylvania.
Not surprisingly the doctor could not provide insights either into any “house of God” where Goodwin had spent time.
Lowell then asked, “Any chance you have any correspondence between Jon and Goodwin?”
“No, we tried to get back my brother’s effects and the contents of his cell after they executed him but the prison said it had all been disposed of. Frankly, I didn’t want it anyway. I was very conflicted about Jon, as you can imagine.”
“Did he ever talk to you about Goodwin?”
“Yes, a little, when he wasn’t delusional. Nothing about Cedar Hills, though. Mostly he told me about how Goodwin was a friend. He treated my brother like a decent person. They’d talk for hours and hours. He taught Jon how to type, so he could write his own appeals for court. He got permission from the prison to lend my brother his typewriter.” The man paused. “I still remember the night of the execution. I was the last person Jon called. Goodwin had passed away by then and Jon said that when the book about the murder and trial was published and they made a movie, I was supposed to make sure the director did right by Goodwin.”
Samuel Coe gave a sad laugh. “Of course, most death row movies are about lawyers or journalists saving innocent prisoners at the last minute. I couldn’t very well tell Jon that Hollywood probably wouldn’t be interested in a story where the prisoner dismembered his mother’s body and wrote poetry in her blood on the wall while waiting for the police to show up.”
The call to Samuel Coe hadn’t been productive. But it did give Frederick Lowell another idea.
When production of the film of Cedar Hills Road began, in the fall of ‘66, Edward Goodwin had gone out to Hollywood briefly to meet the stars and the director and some executives at Cantor Brothers Studios. It was solely a social visit. He didn’t work on the script — a screenwriter cannot, as Goodwin apparently did with some frequency, wait for a muse to inspire him. Scripts are written on demand, under tight deadlines.
According to Malone’s biography, he hit it off well with everyone in LA and even dined with Elizabeth Taylor and William Holden.
Lowell called a lawyer he knew at a mega-entertainment company, one of whose smaller divisions was all that remained of the once-regal Cantor Brothers. He put Lowell in touch with the head of the division, Cantor Classics, which still produced a few independent films a year and retained all the rights to the filmed version of Cedar Hills Road.
Ira Lepke sounded as if he were seventeen years old and said, “ah ah ah” a lot, as thoughts flew from his mind like batter from a Mix Master. Lowell suspected, though, that the scattered verbal skills didn’t hurt his ability to take home a million or two a year in producer’s fees.
“Ah ah ah, that’s one of our righteous solids, Cedar Hills is.”
Solids.
Lowell was both amused and irritated by the ease with which Hollywood coined words.
“Cedar made the studio some major rev. I’m speaking, ah ah ah, dirigibles of money.”
That couldn’t be an expression.
Lepke continued, “Aside from Elizabeth and Bill and Karl, casting cost us nothing. Sets were on the back lot and location shots were in Indiana. It was a phenom, you know. Beyond great.”