“I can trust you not to open the package or the envelope, right?” he said, as he dug into the last bite of apple pie, then pushed that plate away and started in on the enormous slab of chocolate layer cake.
“I don’t like the sound of this, Goldblatt,” I answered, doing my best to look away from the epicurean spectacle going on in front of me.
“What’s not to like?”
“You want me to go to the deserted boardwalk, in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, with no one else around, carrying God knows what, meeting God knows who, for God knows what reason.”
“Well, if you put it that way …”
“What the fuck other way is there to put it? And the kicker is, you’re not even paying me for this. Do I look like a moron to you?”
“You owe me, Swann.”
“How do you figure?”
“How many times have you asked me to dig up information for you?”
“Three.”
“What’re you, keeping count? I thought it was more.”
“Three.”
“So I’m asking you for one favor and then I’ll call it even.”
I laughed. Because he was entertaining. And because he was persistent. Would it kill me to do a favor for him? No. Was I going to do one for him? In the end, I probably would. Not because it was Goldblatt, but because I hate owing anyone anything. And the truth is, I’d probably need him again. But I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“Five hundred, plus expenses,” I said, waiting to see him choke on his chocolate cake.
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“You’re killing me, Swann. But I’ll tell you this: I pay you five hundred, which I’m not saying I will, and then you and me are finished.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you go to someone else when you need information. Because I’m finished letting you take advantage of me and my good nature.”
He was right and I knew it. I owed him at least this much. He had helped me out in the past and he never asked for anything but a meal, although with Goldblatt that wasn’t a cheap tab. But I wasn’t about to let him off easy. “Tell you what, you tell me what this is all about and what’s in that package and I’ll cut it in half.”
He put down his fork, which was unusual for him, since there was still half a slice of cake left on his plate. He almost smiled. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”
I laughed. “And I can trust you? Maybe both of us ought to give it a try.”
He was silent a moment, looked down at his cake, then whacked off another hunk with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth. “The name Starr Faithfull mean anything to you?”
“It’s got a familiar ring.”
“In June 1931, a beachcomber found the body of this beautiful twenty-five-year-old chick named Starr Faithfull.”
“And this has what to do with you?”
“I’ve got a little something going.”
“What?”
He leaned forward. “This is top secret, Swann.”
“Cut the crap, Goldblatt. You know and I know it’s got everything to do with—” I rubbed my fingers together “—and in that case, we’re on the same page. You want me to get into something, I need to know what it is. And I need to get paid for it.”
“Okay. Faithfull was a slut and she was involved with a bunch of important people, some of whom might have wanted her dead. Even her own sister said,
I’m not sorry she’s dead. She’s happier. Everybody’s happier
. The DA admitted that lots of people in high places would rest easier with her out of the way. They did an autopsy and found that she was full of Veronal, the Ecstasy of its day. The coroner ruled it was death by drowning, but the DA said it was
brought about by someone interested in closing her lips
. Not long before she died she wrote a friend saying she was playing
a dangerous game
, and that there was
no telling where I’ll land
. She was leading this double life, see. She went to the finest finishing schools, but she was also a wild child, like that Paris Hilton chick. She was heavy into drugs and sleeping around. One of her boyfriends was this guy Andrew Peters, a former mayor, ex-congressman, and Woodrow Wilson’s assistant secretary of the treasury. His wife was Starr’s mother’s first cousin.”
“Get to the point, Goldblatt.”
“Keep your shirt on, Swann. Starr left a couple of diaries along with a bunch of letters, some of them filled with suicidal thoughts. But her father claimed they were forgeries. One of the diaries told all about her fourteen years of sexual, shall we say, adventures, with close to twenty guys, including British aristocrats and well-heeled Manhattan playboys. A lot of them gave her money. Apparently, one of them was Peters. The
Daily News
started an investigation and claimed Starr’s stepfather was nearly broke and that a few days before Starr disappeared he’d traveled to Boston to get payoffs from Peters. The question is, for what?”
“I still don’t know what all this has to do with you.”
“There’s another diary. One that no one ever knew about.”
“So that’s what’s in the package.”
“Yeah.”
“And how did all this come to you?”
“I’ve got a lot of connections, Swann. That’s why you come to me for help.”
“Why is this diary important now, eighty years after the fact? Who the hell cares about Starr Faithfull?”
“There’s interest, okay? That’s all I’m gonna say and that’s all you gotta know. You in or out?”
“I want a piece of your action, Goldblatt.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“You wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t mean you weren’t getting something out of it. You make money, I make money. That’s what friends do for friends.”
“So now you’re my friend. One percent.”
I laughed.
“Five percent.”
I laughed harder.
“Ten percent. But that’s it.”
“Give me the envelope.”
Just my luck, the next day the weather turned bad. Very bad. Okay, it was winter, first week in January, but what happened to the January thaw? It was raw. It was cold. It was windy. It was also depressing, now that all the holiday lights across the city had been taken down. It was back to grim reality, eleven months of it, and I didn’t like it one damn bit. Life was bad enough without having the lights turned out all the time. To make matters worse, by the time I got to Penn Station there was the smell of snow in the air.
I didn’t trust Goldblatt. It’s not that he’s a bad guy, it’s that he plays the angles. And the thing is, he’s not even that good at it. That’s why he’s not a lawyer anymore. He dipped his hand into his clients’ pockets once too often and he got caught. But I had the sense that he might be on to something here. I didn’t tell him the whole truth when I said the name Starr Faithfull rang a bell. I knew exactly who she was. My grandfather, who used to be a Long Beach cop, told me about the case when I was a kid. He was one of those who thought it wasn’t a suicide, that she was murdered, but he was told to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t easy for a guy who liked to talk, but in the end he did. A lost Starr Faithfull diary might prove that my grandfather was right. I don’t know why that was important to me. It wasn’t like the guy was a saint, because he wasn’t. The Long Beach cops weren’t above having their hand out and I’m sure one of those hands was his. But the Faithfull case always haunted him, probably because it was a lot bigger than fixing parking tickets and shutting your eyes when it came to after-hours joints.
To Goldblatt, the lost diary obviously meant some kind of payday. He wasn’t above a little blackmail, but who was left to blackmail? Would the families of anyone named in Starr’s diary care? Only if someone mentioned was very famous and revered. But it was possible that Goldblatt had other fish to fry. I knew he had publishing and film connections. Maybe he was concocting a book or movie deal. Whatever it was, I was in for 10 percent—plus the $250 and expenses. So any way you sliced it, I would come out with something. That’s the way I liked it.
It was a fifty-plus-minute ride on the LIRR out to Long Beach, which was the last stop on the line. I made a seven-ten train, which would give me plenty of time to grab a bite, then walk the three or four blocks to the boardwalk. The heavy commute was over, so I pretty much had the train to myself, which suited me fine. I took out the heavy-duty manila envelope and looked at it. It felt like there was money inside. And plenty of it. I thought about opening it up to see how much, but then I realized it didn’t matter. I wondered how Goldblatt got his hands on so much cash, even the wad he waved in my face. However he did, I suspected there was something funny about it. But that wasn’t any of my business.
I knew Long Beach, or at least a good part of it, like the back of my hand. My father didn’t talk much, but my grandfather loved to regale me with stories of the town, which had led a remarkably checkered past.
Around the turn of the last century, a real estate developer named William Reynolds, who was behind Coney Island’s Dreamland, the world’s largest amusement park, bought up a bunch of oceanfront property so he could build a boardwalk, homes, and hotels. As a publicity stunt, Reynolds had a herd of elephants march from Dreamland to Long Beach, supposedly to help build the boardwalk. Reynolds touted the area as “the Riviera of the East,” and required every building he constructed to be in the Mediterranean style, with white stucco walls and red tile roofs. The thing was, these homes could only be occupied by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
When Reynolds’s company went bankrupt, these restrictions were lifted and the town began to attract wealthy businessmen and entertainers, many of whom my grandmother claimed to have seen at a theater Reynolds built called Castles by the Sea, with the largest dance floor in the world, which was intended for the famous hoofers Vernon and Irene Castle.
Later, in the ’40s, she claimed she saw the likes of Zero Mostel, Mae West, and Jose Ferrer perform, while Jack Dempsey, Cab Calloway, Bogart, Valentino, Flo Ziegfeld, Cagney, Clara Bow, and John Barrymore lived in Long Beach. Then the town became home to Billy Crystal, Joan Jett, Derek Jeter, and the infamous “Long Island Lolita,” Amy Fisher.
But there was another, much darker side to Long Beach, one my grandfather was far more familiar with. In the early ’20s, the legendary prohibition agents Izzy and Moe raided the Nassau hotel and arrested three men for bootlegging. Police corruption ran rampant, to the point that an uncooperative mayor was shot by a police officer. In 1930, five Long Beach cops were charged with offering a bribe to a U.S. Coast Guard office to allow liquor to be off-loaded.
By the 1950s, Long Beach had turned from a resort area to a bedroom community. The rundown boardwalk hotels became homes for welfare recipients and the elderly. A decade later, the town turned into a drug haven, as kids from other towns on Long Island flocked there. By this time my grandfather had retired from the force. He was bitter and he was angry. I never knew exactly why, but I think at least part of it was that he regretted some of the things he’d done, the way he’d lived his life. I got the feeling that the Faithfull case might have turned things around for him, if he hadn’t been muzzled.
Over the last couple decades the town had undergone a renaissance. Most of the drug dealers had been run out and in the summer the boardwalk and beach became a magnet to those who couldn’t afford to summer in the Hamptons or Fire Island.
By the time the train arrived at the Long Beach station, the weather had changed and not for the good. A storm had blown in and the wind was whipping around large, wet flakes of snow that stung my face and assaulted my eyes. It was just after eight o’clock, and I could have waited in the warm, inviting station, but I was hungry, so I crossed the boulevard and ducked into a Burger King on the corner.
I sat alone at the window, watching the streets and sidewalks fill with snow, wondering what the hell I was doing out here. I thought seriously about packing it in and going back to the city. It wasn’t loyalty to Goldblatt that kept me. I’d long since given up the idea of being loyal to anyone or anything. It was curiosity. I wanted to see this thing through, just so I could figure out the twisted little scheme Goldblatt had hatched.
I looked at my watch. Ten to nine. I waited five more minutes. I didn’t want to be the first one there. I wanted to see what was waiting for me.
I patted the inside pocket of my peacoat to make sure the envelope was there, buttoned up, turned up the collar, pulled my wool watch cap over my ears, and headed out into the storm, a lone figure in blue set out against the blanket of white that covered the streets. I wished I’d worn something more substantial on my feet, because my socks, exposed to the elements, were already damp.
As I headed down Edwards Avenue toward the boardwalk, for every three steps I took the wind blew me back one. I crossed Olive, then Beech, then Penn, till I finally reached Broadway. Only one block left. It was so quiet, the only thing I could hear was the crunching sound my shoes made in the newly fallen snow. Before I crossed the street, I looked back, and my eyes followed my footsteps imprinted in the snow. By morning, my footprints would be long gone and the snow would turn a shade of black that wasn’t known to nature.
From the illumination of a streetlight in front of me, I could make out the ramp leading to the boardwalk. I crossed Broadway and started up the ramp toward the boardwalk. All I could hear was the sound of the wind and the waves. A chill ran up my back, and I pressed my arms closer to my body and lowered my head, as if I were using it as a battering ram against the wind.
The boardwalk, bustling in the summer with joggers, bikers, and beach-goers, was empty. The hut was about a hundred yards to my left. I squinted through the falling snow in an attempt to see if anyone was waiting there. No one. I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes past nine. Was this all a wild goose chase?
I headed toward the hut, my hands jammed deep in my pockets. Maybe I should have brought a gun, only I didn’t own one. Why should I? That’s not the kind of work I do. It wasn’t the kind of work I wanted to do. But keeping my hands in my pockets might make someone think I was packing and that might give me an edge, if I needed one.