Spooky
Melanie Bassett got off the plane at Heathrow, went through customs and headed toward the baggage claim carousels. As she waited for her luggage, she set her watch ahead five hours. Then, suitcase in hand, she made her way to the tube station where she got on an underground train to take her into the city. There was a ten-minute wait at Waterloo station, so she bought a newspaper before boarding the train to take her to Salisbury.
She found a seat near the window and perused her issue of the Daily Mail. Unlike American newspapers, the lead story was not about the fighting in Vietnam or Richard Nixon's bid for reelection. Instead, it announced the London High Court's ruling in favor of Paul McCartney's action to dissolve the Beatles partnership. The article brought back memories of her high school years. She smiled when she recalled the night of February 9, 1964, when John, Paul, George and Ringo appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Whether it was called the British Invasion or Beatlemania, it was one of the best times in Melanie's life.
When she was a senior, the one gift she wanted for graduation was a trip to Liverpool where she would walk in the footsteps of her idols. Unfortunately, her parents thought the money would be better spent on college tuition.
And now, here I am finally in England, seven years later, she thought, putting the newspaper down on the seat beside her. While I'm here, I'll go up to Liverpool for a day or so and then see a few sights in London before returning to New York. That way this trip won't be a complete waste of time.
Melanie, a journalist for the history magazine American Eagle, was on assignment to interview a man named Gilbert Spivey who claimed he was none other than "Spooky" Gus Spurling who rode with the notorious Barker Gang during the Great Depression.
"Yeah, and I'm Bonnie Parker," she told Nathan Keppler, her editor, when he assigned her to cover the story.
"There's a chance this guy might be on the level. Spurling was released on parole a few years ago and deported to Canada."
"I didn't know he was Canadian. I assumed he was an American."
"No. He was born in Montreal. He became a naturalized citizen, but due to the severity of his crimes, his citizenship was revoked."
"So, you think he left Canada, changed his name and settled in England?"
"That's what Gilbert Spivey claims."
"Does he offer any proof?"
"When I spoke to him, he seemed to know a lot about the Barker gang," Nathan replied.
"Maybe he read about them in the newspapers. Or, more likely, he saw the movie Bloody Mama that was released last year, the one that stars Shelley Winters as Ma Barker."
"You know how movies are. They fictionalize history. Maybe this guy is Spooky Spurling and just wants to set the story straight."
"Maybe. But is the magazine going to waste my time and its money on a maybe?"
"Look, if you're not interested, I can send Hoyt. Since it's the hundredth anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire this year, you can write about that instead."
"Do I get to go to Chicago?"
"Who are you going to interview there, Mrs. O'Leary's cow? No. You stay here in New York and write about it."
"Then let Hoyt have that article. I'll go to England and see this guy Spivey—wild goose chase or not."
* * *
From the Salisbury train station, Melanie took a taxi to the White Stag Inn where she would be staying. According to the map, it was just three blocks from Gilbert Spivey's apartment, or flat as they say in England.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" Hedwig Topham, the inn's proprietor, asked when she checked in.
"I don't suppose you have any coffee?"
"Yes, I do," the elderly woman replied. "It always seems to surprise Americans that we Brits drink more than just tea."
After the journalist finished her coffee, Hedwig handed her an old-fashioned barrel key that looked as though it had been around since Queen Victoria sat on the throne.
"You're in Room Number 3 on the first floor."
Melanie took the key and looked around the lobby as though confused by her surroundings.
"But I don't see any ...."
"Oh, sorry," the proprietor apologized. "Here in England, this is considered the ground floor. The first floor is the one above us."
"You mean over here the second floor is the first?"
"Yes."
"And I thought the only thing I'd have to get used to was watching for cars driving on the left-hand side of the road," she laughed.
"Don't worry, Miss Bassett. In no time at all, you'll be drinking tea, eating Yorkshire pudding and watching cricket."
After unpacking her suitcase, the journalist freshened up and, making sure she had a notebook and supply of pens, she left White Stag and headed for Saint Ann Street.
This must be it, she concluded, looking up at the flat above the butcher's shop.
An old man answered the door when she rang the bell. She could not tell by his appearance if he was a notorious criminal or just a crafty liar.
"You must be Mr. Spivey," she said. "I'm Melanie Bassett from American Eagle magazine."
"Won't you come in? I've been expecting you."
"You have no accent," she said.
"The people around here think I do. They know I'm a Yank the minute I open my mouth."
"So, you're from the Northeast?" she asked, hoping to trip him up and expose his lies.
"Actually, I was born in Canada and later granted American citizenship, but the government took it away from me when they kicked me out."
The old man's living space was small, but it was clean. As an unmarried pensioner, he didn't need a lot of room. Melanie sat in one of the two chairs and took her notebook and a pen out of her oversized handbag.
"Before we begin, would you like a cup of tea?"
"No thanks," she replied. "I had coffee at the inn."
"Mind if I have one?"
"Not at all."
"Biscuit?" he asked, offering her a piece of shortbread.
"I thought you people ate crumpets or scones with your tea," she laughed, biting into the buttery cookie.
"I'm not one of those people yet. I'm—what do they call it?—an expat."
Gilbert put his cup on the coffee table and sat in the chair opposite his guest. There was something about him that disturbed Melanie. Could it be that she was sitting in a room with someone who might be a cold-blooded killer? Just to be on the safe side, she carried a can of mace at the bottom of her purse.
"Well?" he asked. "Where do we begin?"
"Let me be frank with you. You seem too urbane to be a bank robber, kidnapper and killer."
"I've mellowed with age. You should have seen me when I was in my thirties!" he laughed.
"There's a woman named Anna Anderson living in Virginia who claims to be Grand Duchess Anastasia from Russia. No one has been able to prove her wrong, but it's obvious she's not the daughter of Nicholas II."
"You think I'm making all this up?"
"Are you?"
"No."
"Do you have any proof that you're Gus Spurling?"
So as not to upset him, she did not refer to him by his nickname "Spooky."
"You mean like a birth certificate or driver's license? No."
"What about any ID issued here in England?"
"All my paperwork carries the name Gilbert Spivey. After I was paroled, I didn't want anyone to know who I really was—for obvious reasons."
"Then why do you want to tell the world who you are now?"
"Because I haven't got long to live. It's my heart. I've got a bad ticker. The doctors here say I can go at any moment. It's funny. Some men when they know they're about to kick the bucket get religion. Not me. Whenever I see the spire of Salisbury Cathedral pointing up to the sky as though showing the way to heaven, I can't help feeling that it's mocking me. That it's telling me I don't stand a chance in hell of being saved. Me? I know I'm going to hell, so why bother? But when I do die, I want certain people to know who I was and what I did. That's why I called your editor. I want to use your magazine to tell my story."
Although she still doubted the old man's honesty, Melanie decided to do as Nathan suggested: interview him and write an article. She would let the readers decide for themselves if Gilbert Spivey was Spooky Gus Spurling.
* * *
"I began a life of crime when I was ten," Gilbert said. "By that time, my family left Canada, and we were living in Kansas."
"What types of crime did you commit?" Melanie asked, taking notes as he spoke.
"I picked pockets, shoplifted—nothing major. But as I got older, I became more daring. At nineteen, I was arrested for burglary and sent to the reformatory. I wasn't there long, though. I escaped. I was out for about a year when they caught me stealing a car and sent me back."
The journalist, who had taken a course in shorthand, had no difficulty keeping up with him, especially since Gilbert spoke at a slow pace.
"I was then transferred to the state penitentiary. That was where I met Fred."
"Fred Barker?"
"Yeah. One of the Barker Brothers, or as the papers called them, the 'Bloody Barkers.' There was Fred (he was the youngest) and Herman (the oldest), followed by Lloyd and Arthur, who everyone called 'Doc.' Then there was Ma."
"Ma? That's Arizona Barker, aka Arrie or Kate Barker, the mother and leader of the gang?"
"I wouldn't call her the leader. She wasn't exactly a criminal mastermind; she just liked to watch over her boys."
"And all four of her sons were part of the gang?"
"No. They were all criminals, but they were a family, not a gang. By the time Fred and I hooked up with Ma, after being paroled in 1931, Lloyd was serving time in Leavenworth for robbing a post office, and Herman was already dead."
"How did he die?"
"He killed himself back in 1927. There was a shootout with police after a robbery, and he killed a copper. Rather than risk going to jail, he shot himself."
"What about Doc? Where was he when you teamed up with Fred?"
"He was in jail, too, but he was released the following year."
"At which time he joined the gang. Right?"
"Yup. There were others from time to time, depending on what job we pulled. There was Ma's boyfriend, Arthur Dunlop. Fred and I had to take care of him, though."
"Take care of him?"
"We killed him."
"Why?"
"He was a real pain in the ass. But that's not why we killed him. He drank, you see. And when he got drunk, he talked. We couldn't trust him. I'm sure he was the one who tipped off the police in Missouri and almost got us all arrested. Plus, he liked to beat up on Ma after he had a few. So, I put a bullet in his head. End of problem."
Melanie was horrified by Gilbert's casual attitude toward murder. How could someone be so nonchalant about shooting a member of his own gang? If this man was, indeed, Spooky Gus Spurling, then he was a psychopath.
"You're upset," he observed.
"I'm fine," she lied, wanting to get the interview over with as quickly as possible. "Who else was in your gang?"
"I don't know if I can remember them all. Let's see. There was Jelly Nash, Fred Goetz, Eddie Green, Jess Doyle, Earl Christman, Curly Davis, Fred Hunter, Russ Gibson, Bill Harrison and a few others whose names I can't recall."
For the next two hours, the old man described the various "jobs" the gang had committed. They ran the gamut of felonies from burglaries to bank robberies to kidnapping. In the wake of their crimes, they often left behind dead law enforcement officers and occasionally innocent bystanders. Yet this man seemed to be unaffected by the death and bloodshed.
"All right," the journalist said after listening to him describe the kidnapping of William Hamm Jr. of the Hamm's Brewery family. "Let's wrap this up. After all, I'm writing a magazine article, not a book."
"Would you like to take a short break?" Gilbert asked. "I can get you a cup of coffee or something to eat."
It appeared as though her host wanted her to stay. Was he simply a lonely old man eager for company? Was that what the whole charade was all about? Did he make up the story about being Spooky Gus Spurling just to get attention?
"No, thank you. I just want to hear what eventually happened to the Barkers."
"Well, you know Herman killed himself back in 1927. Lloyd spent twenty-five years in Leavenworth. He was released in 1938 and served in the Army during World War II as a cook. In 1949, he was living in Denver, Colorado, and managing a restaurant—or maybe it was a grocery store. I'm not sure. Anyway, he gave up a life of crime and went straight. He even got married. That was his downfall. One day, his wife blasted his head off with a twenty-gauge shotgun."
"Why?"
"She was crazy. After killing Lloyd, they sent her to the looney bin."
It seemed a shame to Melanie that the only one of Ma Barker's boys who tried to lead a law-abiding life was murdered.
"What about Fred and Doc?" she asked, flipping to a clean page in her notebook.
"January 16, 1935," he announced.
"What happened on that day?"
"We were hiding out in a house on Lake Weir in Florida. FBI agents found a map on Doc when they arrested him the week before, so they knew the location of the gang's hideout. Before the sun came up that morning, they surrounded the house, hoping to take us all in. They didn't know that everyone except for Fred and Ma had left three days earlier. The agents demanded they surrender. Instead, Fred opened fire on them. I heard tell the gun battle went on for close to four hours. Finally, the feds sent someone into the house. Ma and Fred's bodies were found in one of the upstairs bedrooms."
For the first time since beginning his narrative, the old man became emotional. He turned his head toward the window as though he were looking into the past rather than at the shops along Saint Ann Street.
"Fred was the only real friend I ever had," he declared mournfully. "He was like a brother to me. And Ma ... It was as though I had taken Herman's place as her fourth son."
If this guy is lying, Melanie thought, he's doing a damned good job!
"That leaves Arthur, or Doc, as the only living Barker boy," she said.
"In a family of black sheep, Doc was the blackest," Gilbert laughed. "He was the most violent and ruthless of the brothers. Doc was little more than a brutal thug. He got bored staying in Florida, so he went up to Chicago. Big mistake! That was where he was arrested. To make a long story short, both me and him wound up in Alcatraz. I spent twenty-six years there—longer than any other prisoner in the place. Certainly longer than Capone! Did you know he was released after only four and a half years there?"
"No, I didn't. But I'm not here to talk about Al Capone. Let's get back to Doc."
"Three years after entering Alcatraz, he and four other inmates sawed through their cell bars and tried to escape. They made it over the walls and all the way to the beach. The guards caught them trying to make a raft from pieces of wood and torn shirts and fired on them. Doc died from his wounds in the prison hospital."
It's almost over, she thought, getting a fresh pen from her handbag. Only a few more questions and I can get the hell out of here!
"Is there anything you want to say about your years in Alcatraz or the time after you were paroled?"
"When I escaped from the reformatory," he began.
"That's going back to when you were nineteen?"
"Actually, I was twenty by the time I escaped. As I said before, I was on the lam for about a year. During that time, I met a girl. Darla was her name."
"What a coincidence! Darla was my grandmother's name."
"God! She was pretty! If I wasn't captured and sent back to prison, I might have married her, and my life may have turned out differently. But who knows?"
"Did you ever see her again?"
"Once. After I got my parole in '31. She was married to a barber and had two kids. Although both had the barber's last name, the oldest one was mine."
"So, you're a father!" the journalist said with surprise.
"Yup. I had a son, Calvin."
Calvin?
Melanie stopped writing. Her body was tense. She wanted to run but could not move her legs.
"When I got out of Alcatraz," Gilbert continued, "before they deported me to Canada, I tried to look him up. All I was able to learn was that he moved to New York after the war."
Something in the old man's voice changed. Melanie lifted her head, and her eyes went from her notebook to his face.
"I hired a private eye to track him down. Turns out my boy went to school and became an engineer."
No! her brain screamed. Please don't say anymore!
"He got married and had a kid: a little girl."
Melanie closed her eyes and wished it were possible to close her ears. Instinctively, she knew what was coming. Her father's name was Calvin. He lived in New York, and he was an engineer.
There might be more than one engineer in New York named Calvin, but how many had mothers named Darla?
"That means I had a granddaughter."
He's lying. He's not Spooky Gus Spurling. He's just a crackpot. He was never a member of the Barker Gang. When Nathan assigned me to conduct this interview, Gilbert must have looked into my family. That's it! He knows all about me and is playing some kind of sick game. He can't possibly be ....
"Her name is Melanie. Melanie Bassett."
... my grandfather!
"No!" she cried.
"Yes. You're my granddaughter."
His eyes seemed to peer into her soul with an almost demonic intensity. She could easily understand why he was given the nickname "Spooky." Even at his advanced age, his piercing stare and demeanor were frightening.
"The magazine article ...," she uttered.
"Was a ruse to get you here. I knew you worked for American Eagle. It was easy to convince your editor to send you here."
Any doubts she previously had as to the old man's identity were gone. She believed his story. He was Spooky Gus Spurling, her grandfather. She knew it, but if she had anything to say about it, no one else ever would.
With a face as emotionless as that of a cigar store wooden Indian, she closed her notebook and put it and her pen back into her handbag. Then she got up from the chair and walked to the front door.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
Melanie didn't reply. She didn't even turn around.
"Wait!" Gus yelled out the open window. "Come back. There's so much I want to ...."
Although he called to her for help as he felt the agonizing pain in his chest, the journalist turned a deaf ear to his entreaties.
With any luck, he'll be dead soon, she thought, feeling no guilt at her own callousness.
Despite the lateness of the hour, she gathered her belongings from the White Stag Inn and asked Hedwig Topham for her bill.
"You're leaving already?" the proprietor inquired. "But you just got here this morning."
"I know, but I must get back to New York right away. It's a family emergency."
* * *
"Back so soon? I thought you were going to stay in England a few days and do some sightseeing," Nathan Keppler said when Melanie showed up at the office that Monday morning.
"You know me," she joked. "I'm a workaholic."
"Did you write that article?"
"No. The man is a raving lunatic! He not only believes he's Spooky Gus Spurling, but he thinks he's Julius Caesar reincarnated. Let me tell you, if you print his story in our magazine, no one will believe it."
"I think we ought to run with it anyway," the editor argued. "But leave out the part about Julius Caesar."
"Are you forgetting that the real Gus Spurling is probably still alive? They sell our magazine in Canada. What if he learns about the article and decides to sue us?"
Nathan frowned. The last thing he wanted was a lawsuit. Not only would it be costly, but it might damage the reputation of the magazine as well.
"I got an idea," Melanie said, hoping to convince him to kill the story. "Hoyt is working on an article about the Chicago Fire. Why don't I write a companion piece on the 1666 Great Fire of London? That way, we can always claim my trip as a legitimate business expense. After all, the IRS isn't going to know what research I did when I was in England."
"You're right. Why risk a lawsuit? As long as we can deduct your travel expenses come tax time, we've got nothing to lose."
As Melanie left the editor's office, she called to him over her shoulder, "I'll be back in a little while."
"Where are you going?"
"To the library to learn what I can about the fire."
Before heading to the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue, she ripped the pages out of her notebook, tore them into shreds and threw them in the trash.
No one, least of my gentle, loving father, is ever going to learn that he and I are related to that monster!
Two days later, the man known as Gilbert Spivey passed away in a hospital in Salisbury. He died alone, surrounded by strangers, after his attempts to reconnect with his only living family members met with failure. Had she known of his death, his granddaughter would not have mourned. On the contrary, she would have been glad to hear the news.
Yet for the remainder of her life, at least once a week. Melanie Bassett dreamed about those piercing, demonic eyes and wondered if, without the advantages she had in her early life, she could have grown up to become a monster like her grandfather. Although she would never admit to herself, she knew that deep down she was not much different than Spooky Gus Spurling.
Although Spooky Gus Spurling is a fictional character, he is based on Creepy Alvin Karpis, a member of the notorious Barker-Karpis Gang.
So many people have died over the years trying to escape from Alcatraz. They should have asked Salem for help. He can find his way out of any tight spot, including a coffee cup!
