The DeadHouse

22

The old man wanted to tell the story his way.

"MacCormick was right. He knew that Freeland Jennings was my friend, so he didn't think I ought to be anywhere near his quarters during the raid. As soon as my deputies seized Reggio and Cleary, their hoodlums scattered pretty quickly. Mind you, the mob lieutenants weren't even under lock and key at the time. There were a couple of dozen of them scrambling around, knowing they were about to get shipped up the river for real. These were their last moments of freedom before their corrupt world collapsed.

"Two of the most vicious broke into Jennings's apartment and cornered him there. He wasn't part of the rackets, of course, so he wasn't one of their own. They'd been treating him special only because he was paying the two top dogs for his privileges."

"They wanted his money, I guess."

"They wanted everything he had. And so a legend had grown up around my old acquaintance." He glanced back over at me. "This is the part you girls like. Story goes that what Joseph Reggio had demanded from Freeland Jennings was diamonds. Sparkling pieces of ice that could be smuggled out with ease. Forget about needing a pocket or pouch to hold them. You might actually come across an honest warden who would search in those things. Why, these'd fit inside a shoe without anybody noticing. Sneaked out in the folds of a hem when a lady visitor passed through. The most perfect currency for an imprisoned privateer."

"Did Jennings really keep diamonds in the penitentiary?"

"Well, he certainly hinted to me that he had. Did what he needed to do to stay alive."

"Did he have them right in his room?"

"This is the stuff of legends, now, son. I'm telling you what the boys told Commissioner MacCormick and me, not what I saw for myself. They said Jennings was the wily type and didn't trust any of these goons around him. Most he ever kept in his apartment were two or three gems, 'cause one of them went a long way at that time. It would have been a lot easier to hide a small stone than it was to try to conceal a stack of bills or enough gold to keep Reggio happy.

"But there were other places on the island, see, to keep his jewels."

"I realize they had the run of the penitentiary, Mr. Lockhart," Mike said, "but not access to the rest of the land beyond the jail walls."

"Ah, but you're forgetting what most of the prisoners did every day."

"Some of them had to work as caretakers in the other hospitals and asylums," I offered, still chilled by that startling fact.

"But most of them, missy, were doing hard labor. The island abounded with rich deposits of stone. Desirable building material, granite and gneiss. Most of the convicts were sent out in their striped uniforms to spend their days excavating the rock.

"And some of Reggio's men believed that Jennings had bought the services of a laborer to dig him a secure place in one of the quarries. A concealed lair in which he could secrete his cache of precious gems. That way, he didn't have to be afraid that if the thugs found everything he had in his room and robbed him of it, he'd lose his means to pay Reggio."

"So someone would smuggle the diamonds in to Mr. Jennings, and he'd use them as he needed them?"

"I suspect it was his lawyer who brought in the jewels. You know, since ancient times, there's been a universal method of carrying loose stones. You just fold them into a paper pouch, smaller than the palm of one's hand, and you can pretty much go anywhere you want, unmolested."

Lockhart was right. To this day, throughout the diamond district in midtown Manhattan and in the gem trade all over the world, the most incredibly valuable stones were carried this way- wrapped only in a thin slip of paper-in the pockets of pants and jackets of the most unlikely-looking couriers.

"Were any found during the raid?"

"Just two. Saw them myself, right in the warden's office, when one of the detectives carried them in to us. There was a rose-colored one, about the size of a pigeon's egg, sewed right into the cuff of a pair of pants. And then a crystal-clear diamond with more brilliance than the brightest star I've ever seen. It was just a small one, and it was stuffed in a tiny slit inside the leather cover of Freeland's mother's Bible that he kept next to the bed." He laughed to himself. "Guess it wouldn't occur to the thugs to look in the Lord's book.

"Problem was that one of Reggio's men-believe his name might have been Kennelly, but can't be sure-thought he could strong-arm Jennings right at the start of the raid. Knew it was his only chance to get the diamonds, and so he stormed the apartment with a cohort and demanded the gems." Lockhart was flagging now, and something had made him sad. "Blame myself, in some ways, for the fact that he died."

"How so?"

"If there really were other diamonds, well-the reason poor Freeland didn't yield to the bastards was because he thought he'd be perfectly safe during the raid."

"He knew that you and MacCormick were coming?"

"Let me say this, young man. I never betrayed a confidence of the commissioner's, but I was the one to whom Jennings was sending the letters. I certainly wanted to give his lawyer an assurance that we had heeded his message."

Lockhart stiffened in his chair and bored his eyes into Chapman's. "I wanted Jennings to understand that we believed the stories he was sending out. We should have made him safe the instant we got in. I argued with MacCormick about it, but he was all consumed with nailing the door shut on Reggio and Cleary. Just didn't figure that anything could go so very wrong."

"What happened to Jennings?"

"Kennelly and some other tough started roughing him about. They knew he had been assigned a couple of laborers to do his dirty work, but if he had actually trusted one of them to go out and bury his gems, my friend wasn't talking." He shook his head from side to side. "Might even have been smug about it because he was confident I'd be coming along.

"Whatever it was, Jennings was up against men who didn't know how to play by the rules. When they threatened him with a meat cleaver from Reggio's private kitchen, so the story goes, he picked up a sharpened knife he kept next to his bed. Beside the Bible, actually. He tried to use it to repel Kennelly, but he was no match for that animal. The two of them overpowered poor Jennings and one of them shoved the knife right between his ribs. Killed him instantly."

"And the diamonds?"

"My detectives were on these two fellows pretty quickly. Mind you, at the time, no one knew the men were in Jennings's room to find jewels. That's the story that other prisoners began to tell long after the dust settled. They both were examined quite thoroughly since we were all looking for contraband and drugs, small things that could be concealed. No jewels, my dear."

"Was the island searched?"

"By the time these stories surfaced, the penitentiary had long been abandoned and the quarries on the island had been mined of their riches. People have scoured it and fools will continue to do so well after I'm gone, if you ask me.

"Course, if I didn't have this tale to tell, probably wouldn't get a single visitor anymore. That's why Lola comes." He lifted his left arm and squinted to see the time. "She's late."

"Was Lola looking for Jennings's diamonds?"

"She may guess that I'm stupid and senile, but if Lola thinks I believe there's any other reason she's been here to visit me, she's mistaken. She's been all through my diaries, too. I suspect she's looking for clues that she thinks I've forgotten by now. Probably knows more about all my lady friends and some of the crooks I represented in my practice than she does about any buried treasure"-he smiled broadly now-"but if it keeps her coming back here to chat with me, she's welcome to them. Hell, I've answered to more important people than Lola about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Old MacCormick himself called me on the carpet many years after the raid. Thought I was living mighty high on the hog and had heard all the rumors by then. Looked me straight in the eye and asked whether Jennings had paid me off before the raid, or had I known where his stash was hidden. Even the mayor bought me a drink one night. Fiorello La Guardia. Over at the 21 Club it was. Had to know about the diamonds, he said, and whether I thought they were really there."

"What did-?"

"And Jennings's son. He was going off to Europe to fight. Middle of the Second World War. I call him Jennings's son, but all I know for sure is that his mother was Ariana. Hard to figure whether Freeland had been cuckolded by that tart before the kid was born. The boy had run through most of his old man's money and felt the diamonds were his due. He wasn't just curious. He accused me of stealing the damn things out from under my dead friend. Angry with me, he was. But it didn't make any difference. Never saw him again after that."

"Did you ever look for the diamonds yourself?"

"I only set foot on the island once, the day of the raid. No reason to go back, in my book."

"Did Lola talk to you about the deadhouse?"

He snapped his head to look at me. "You damn well must be her friend. What is it? Where is it? Damned if I ever heard that word before she sat at my feet going at me. Doesn't mean a thing to me, young lady."

"May we come back and visit you sometime, Mr. Lockhart?" Mike was on his feet, hand on the shoulder of the old guy so he didn't feel the need to stand up with us.

"Certainly, certainly you must. Come to the party next week. Skip's having a little holiday party at the house." His eyes brightened and he looked up at me. "You'll bring me some licorice, will you? And you, miss, you'll send my best to Mr. Hogan?"

Frank Hogan had been one of America's great prosecutors, before Bob Morgenthau and Paul Battaglia. He had died in 1974 after twenty-eight years as Manhattan's district attorney. I wondered anew how much of what Orlyn Lockhart had been telling us was fact, and how much was lost in the confusion of time past. Perhaps I could get some articles from the microfiche newspaper files at the New York Public Library and research the story of Freeland Jennings and the penitentiary raid.

We made our way back through the kitchen, where the professor was working on his laptop computer. He looked up as we entered the room. "Thanks for listening to my grandfather. You've just spelled me for an hour and I've gotten some work done."

Chapman was annoyed. "When I asked you about whether you'd ever called Ms. Dakota a gold digger, you jerked me around. Seems pretty obvious to me that you know she's been nagging the old man about buried treasure. You gonna tell me you haven't been party to her diamond excavations?"

Skip Lockhart stood up to face Mike. "Look, half of the stuff the guy's talking about is just nonsense he makes up, I'm sure of it. He likes to have an audience, and quite frankly, it's worn most of the family pretty thin over the years."

"But it's his story that interested you in the Blackwells project in the first place."

"Sure it is. But that's on an intellectual level. The raid really happened. The prison conditions that he probably described to you are quite accurate. I've researched all that. But my grandfather doesn't know any more about missing diamonds than you do."

"Except that he actually eyeballed two gemstones the very day of the raid. That gives some credence to the whole story, doesn't it? When will you be back in your office in the city?"

"Next Thursday, January second."

"Expect me. Early and often. And I'll want to see the reports of all your trips over to the island with Lola Dakota-and anything else that might relate to the project. Have them ready. And a list of the students who've worked on the dig with both of you."

My beeper began to vibrate as I buttoned my coat and walked out the door. I shuddered once against the cold and then a second time when I recognized Pat McKinney's home number. I opened the car door and dialed my cell phone.

"So what do you do for excitement when you and Chapman aren't making people's lives miserable?"

"That does seem to account for an inordinate amount of our time, Pat." It was clear he was about to unload some kind of bad news on me. "Want me to think about it and get back to you?"

"I figured if you had nothing better to do today you could get yourself back over to New Jersey, to the medical center near Hackensack. Bart Frankel's car was rear-ended early this morning by a Mack truck. The truck won."