Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 09 (28 page)

“It is.”

“I mean, you serving in the Pacific, and all.”

A natural assumption, on her part: I’d been a Marine. Guadalcanal.

I said, “It’s other memories.”

“What other memories?”

“I was here before the war.”

“Really?”

“Didn’t I ever mention it? The case with Clarence Darrow?”

She smiled skeptically. “You knew Clarence Darrow?”

“Sure. Didn’t you ever wonder why it took so long for Hawaii to become a state?”

So I took her around, in our rental car, and gave her a tour no tour guide could have given her. The Pali was still there, of course, and the Blowhole; and the beach nearby, which my wife was excited to see.

“It’s the
From Here to Eternity
beach!” she said. “Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr! That’s where they made passionate love…”

And it was, too.

But so much was gone. Waikiki was ugly high-rise hotels, cheap souvenir shops, and hordes of Japanese tourists. The Royal Hawaiian (where we stayed) seemed largely unchanged, but dwarfed by its colorless skyscraper neighbors, and a shopping center squatted on the original entrance off Kalakaua Avenue.

The
mauka
(mountain) side of Ala Moana Boulevard was now littered with office buildings, shopping centers, and pastel apartment houses. On the seaward side, a public park with coral pathways and bathhouses lined the beach shore. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t turn any of this into the Ala Moana of the old Animal Quarantine Station and squattersville and thickets leading to the ocean.

In Manoa Valley, the bungalow where Thalia and Tommie had lived was in fine shape; it looked cozier than ever. I wondered if the current residents knew its history. The house where Joe Kahahawai had died was there, too—the shabbiest house on an otherwise gentrified block, the only structure gone to seed, the only overgrown yard with a dead car in it….

“Jesus,” I said, sitting across the way in the rental car. “It’s like the rotting tooth in the neighborhood’s smile.”

“That’s not a bad line,” my wife said. “You want me to write it down?”

“Why?”

“For when you write the Massie story.”

“Who says I’m going to write it?”

But she’d seen the stacks of handwritten pages in the study in our condo in Boca Raton; she knew, one by one, I was recording my cases.

“Well,” she said, getting out her checkbook, using a deposit slip to jot down the line, “you’ll thank me for doing this, later.”

Thank you, sweetheart.

Because I did use it, didn’t I? And I did write the Massie story, colored by imagination and dream.

It was either that or sit idly in silence and just wait for the night to come.

Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and a few liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of conflicting source material.

Most of the characters in this novel are real and appear with their true names. Jimmy Bradford and Ray Stockdale are fictional characters with real-life counterparts. Dr. Joseph Bowers is a composite of two prosecution psychiatric witnesses. Isabel Bell is a fictional character, whose moral support for her cousin is suggested by that of the various real members of the Bell family and of Thalia’s teenage sister, Helene. Nate Heller’s “date” with Beatrice Nakamura is fanciful; most of the damning information Thalia Massie’s maid gives Heller is based on interviews she gave to the Pinkerton operatives who in June 1932 undertook a confidential investigation into the case at Governor Judd’s behest. A good deal of what Heller uncovers in this novel parallels this actual investigation.

The Pinkerton investigators and Nate Heller came to similar conclusions, although the notion that Daniel Lyman and Lui Kaikapu may have been among Thalia Massie’s actual attackers is my own and, to my knowledge, new to this book.

The only major shifting of time in this novel pertains to the capture of Daniel Lyman, which took place earlier than its climactic placement, here (although Lyman did elude authorities for an embarrassingly long time). The participation in that capture by my fictional detective Nathan Heller (and real-life detective Chang Apana) is fanciful.

Devotees of the Massie case will note that I have omitted or greatly downplayed some individuals with significant secondary roles in the case. To deal substantially with every police officer, lawyer, and judge involved with both the Ala Moana case and the Massie murder trial would have been a burden to both author and readers. Clarence Darrow and George Leisure, for example, were backed up by local Honolulu lawyers (already attached to the Fortescue/Massie defense and mentioned in passing, here) and by a Navy attorney (who does make a brief appearance in the novel). While other members of the Honolulu Police Department are mentioned in passing, John Jardine—who did play a major role in the Ala Moana investigation—represents the plainclothes cops who worked the case, just as Inspector Mclntosh (also a key player) represents the hierarchy of the department. While I stand behind my depiction of Admiral Stirling Yates, I must admit that others in the Navy Department—notably, Rear Admiral William V. Pratt and Admiral George T. Pettengill—shared similar racist, uninformed, antidemocratic views of Hawaii; in fact, Stirling often seemed the voice of reason compared to Pratt, then Acting Secretary of the Navy.

My longtime research associate George Hagenauer—a valued collaborator on the Heller “memoirs”—again dug out newspaper and magazine material, and spent many hours with me trying to figure out what really might have happened to Thalia Massie on September 12, 1931. In particular, George’s enthusiasm and feel for Clarence Darrow led the way not only to key research information about the twentieth century’s foremost criminal lawyer, but provided me with a basis for my characterization of Nate Heller’s surrogate father.

Among the books consulted in regard to Darrow were Irving Stone’s seminal
Clarence Darrow for the Defense
(1941) and Darrow’s autobiography,
The Story of My Life
(1932). Stone’s glowing portrayal would seem the source of such romanticized versions of Darrow as those found in Meyer Levin’s
Compulsion
(and the play and film that followed) and Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play
Inherit the Wind
(and its film version). For the purposes of this novel, Stone’s account of the Massie case proved overly brief and surprisingly inaccurate. Darrow’s is one of the most enjoyable autobiographies I’ve ever read, though it is almost absurdly sketchy about the facts of his life (and his famous cases), with an emphasis on his philosophy.

Two later Darrow biographies—
Clarence Darrow: A Sentimental Rebel
(1980), Arthur and Lila Weinberg, and
Darrow: A Biography
(1979), Kevin Tierney—are both worthwhile.
Rebel
suffers from hero worship of its subject and is, again, brief and inaccurate where the Massie case is concerned (Arthur Weinberg also edited an excellent annotated collection of Darrow’s closing arguments,
Attorney for the Damned,
1957, which provided a basis for Darrow’s summation here). The Tierney book is a more objective study, the closest thing to a “warts-and-all” treatment of Darrow, with a solid Massie chapter. Perhaps the frankest, most illuminating Darrow book to date is Geoffrey Cowan’s
The People vs. Clarence Darrow
(1993), which raises fascinating questions about the great attorney’s ethics and beliefs in focusing on his 1912 bribery/jury tampering trial.

Having ascertained that Chang Apana had not yet retired from the Honolulu Police at the time of the Massie case, I was determined to have Nate Heller meet the “real” Charlie Chan. The indefatigable Lynn Myers took on the key assignment of searching out background material on Apana, who is frequently mentioned in discussions of the Chan movies and/or novels, but about whom I hadn’t found anything substantial. Lynn did: an extremely good, in-depth 1982 article in the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
by Susan Yim, “In Search of Chan,” detailing the successful efforts of a Chan fan, Gilbert Martines, to learn the truth about the real detective who provided inspiration to author Earl Derr Biggers for his famous Honolulu-based Chinese sleuth. Lynn also found, among other Apana materials, an obituary that filled in gaps the Yim article did not.

The only liberty I took with Chang was to ignore the suggestion in Yim’s article that the detective, while fluent in several languages, spoke a badly broken pidgin English; I felt this would get in the way of the characterization. Chang Apana’s aphorisms are largely drawn from Derr Biggers’s novels (some are of my own invention) and reflect the real Apana’s pride in having been Chan’s prototype. Incidentally, the blacksnake whip was indeed Chang Apana’s tool of choice. In addition to rereading several of Derr Biggers’s novels, I drew upon Otto Penzler’s Chan article in his entertaining
The Private Lives of Private Eyes, Spies, Crime Fighters and Other Good Guys
(1977), as well as
Charlie Chan at the Movies
(1989), Ken Hanke. Very helpful was the only Chan movie shot on location in Honolulu—
The Black Camel
(1931)—which includes scenes shot at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Material on Chang Apana (and John Jardine) was also culled from
Detective Jardine: Crimes in Honolulu
(1984), John Jardine with Edward Rohrbough and Bob Krauss, which has an excellent chapter on the Massie case from the police point of view.

In addition to searching out Chang Apana material, Lynn Myers located a crucial multipart 1932
Liberty
magazine article by Grace Fortescue, entitled “The Honolulu Martyrdom.” Also, unrepentant B-movie fan Lynn lobbied for the inclusion in this narrative of Buster Crabbe, which I resisted (my policy is no celebrity cameos for the sake of a celebrity cameo) until I came upon Crabbe’s connection to the Waikiki beach boys, which did seem pertinent to the narrative. An interview of Crabbe by Don Shay provided much of the basis for the characterization, and information about Crabbe and the beach boys in general was drawn from
Waikiki Beachboy
(1989), Grady Timmons.

Three book-length nonfiction studies of the Massie case have been published to date, all of them in 1966:
The Massie Case,
Peter Packer and Bob Thomas;
Rape in Paradise,
Theon Wright; and
Something Terrible Has Happened,
Peter Van Slingerland. The coincidence of the only factual books on the case being published more or less simultaneously results in three very different views of the case (including numerous conflicting “facts” for me to sort out). Significantly, none of these authors accept the Ala Moana boys as the guilty parties. Each book has its merits: Thomas and Packer present a tight, novelistic, highly readable narrative; Wright, a reporter who covered the trial, is more in-depth and pursues various theories and tangential events; and Van Slingerland is at least as indepth as Wright, with perceptive social commentary and follow-up interviews with some of the participants. Nate Heller’s latter-day barroom conversation with Albert Jones mirrors an interview Van Slingerland reports having with Jones, who indeed did freely admit pulling the trigger on Joseph Kahahawai. If pressed, I would give Van Slingerland the nod, but any of these three books would provide an interested reader with a worthwhile true crime version of this tale; a paperback edition of Wright’s volume, with a good introduction by Glen Grant, is at this writing in print (Mutual Publishing, Honolulu).

Several books devote chapters or entire sections to the Massie case:
Crimes of Passion
(1975), published anonymously by Verdict Press (useful pictures but a wildly inaccurate account);
Lawrence M. Judd & Hawaii
(1971), Lawrence M. Judd as told to Hugh W. Lytle;
Sea Duty: The Memoirs of a Fighting Admiral
(1939), Yates Stirling; and
Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands
(1968), Gavan Daws.

Two famous novels inspired by the Massie case may be of interest to readers who enjoyed
Damned in Paradise.
Norman Katkov’s
Blood and Orchids
was a bestseller a decade ago; I avoided reading it so as not to be unduly influenced here, but am told that while Mr. Katkov intentionally took great liberties with the facts (including changing dates, names, and events), he presents a vivid, large landscape picture of the political and social turmoil of this fascinating time in Hawaii’s history. Many years ago I read and enjoyed another book very loosely based on the Massie case (so loosely the Hawaii setting is jettisoned),
Anatomy of a Murder
by Robert Traver; I particularly admire the Otto Preminger film based on that novel.

Many books on Hawaii were consulted, but none was more valuable than
When You Go to Hawaii
(1930), Townsend Griffiss; this 350-page travel guide, which I rooted out in a Honolulu used bookstore, was to
Damned in Paradise
what the WPA guides have been to previous Heller novels. Also helpful were
Aloha Waikiki
(1985), DeSoto Brown;
Around the World Confidential
(1956), Lee Mortimer;
Hawaii and Its Race Problem
(1932), William Atherton Du Puy;
Hawaii Recalls
(1982), DeSoto Brown, Anne Ellett, and Gary Giemza;
Hawaii: Restless Rampart
(1941), Joseph Barber Jr.;
Hawaiian Tapestry
(1937), Antoinette Withington;
Hawaii! “…Wish You Were Here”
(1994), Ray and Jo Miller;
Hawaiian Yesterdays
(1982), Ray Jerome Baker;
The Japanese in Hawaii: A Century of Struggle
(1985), Roland Kotani;
The Pink Palace
(1986), Stan Cohen;
Remembering Pearl Harbor
(1984), Michael Slackman;
Roaming Hawaii
(1937), Harry A. Franck; and
The View from Diamond Head
(1986), Don Hibbard and David Franzen.

Coverage by Russell Owens in the
New York Times
was also of great help.

Of use in researching the non-Hawaii aspects of this novel were
The Great Luxury Liners 1927-1954
(1981), William H. Miller Jr.;
New York: The Glamour Years (1919-1945)
(1987), Thomas and Virginia Aylesworth; and
Off the Wall at Sardi’s
(1991), Vincent Sardi, Jr., and Thomas Edward West.

I would again like to thank my editor, Michaela Hamilton, and her associate, Joe Pittman, for their support and belief in Nate Heller and me; and my agent, Dominick Abel, for his continued professional and personal support.

My talented wife, writer Barbara Collins, accompanied me on a research trip to Oahu in May 1995. Like Nate Heller and his wife, we tracked down the houses where the Massies and Mrs. Fortescue had lived. After accompanying me on the previous two Nate Heller research trips (to the Bahamas and Louisiana), Barb understandably said, “Could we just once go to a vacation wonderland and
not
be looking for the murder house?” Thank you, sweetheart.