At the bar in the Oglethorpe Club, Sonny Clarke put it more bluntly: “You know what they’re saying about Jim Williams, don’t you? They’re saying he shot the best piece of ass in Savannah!”
The entire city was captivated by the sensational shooting, and for weeks afterward curious Savannahians drove their cars into Monterey Square and circled around and around. Dog-eared copies of the September/October 1976 issue of Architectural Digest, the one with the feature on Mercer House, were passed from hand to hand. People who had never been inside the house came to know it as if they lived there. They could tell you that Danny Hansford had died midway between an oil painting attributed to the nephew of Thomas Gainsborough and a gold-encrusted desk that had been owned by Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. They could recite, with malicious glee, the now-ironic concluding sentence of the article: “The charm of the city and its way of life have found expression in [Williams’s] careful and loving restoration of Mercer House—a house once ravaged by war and neglect but now a center of harmony and quiet living.”
There was one major imponderable in the case against Jim Williams: Spencer Lawton, the new district attorney. Lawton was too new at the job to be predictable. Also, he owed a debt of gratitude to Lee Adler, whose support and beneficence had helped put him in office—and whose long-running feud with Jim Williams was well known. Lee Adler was uniquely positioned to influence the course of events, if he chose to do so. He could, in private conversation, encourage Lawton to prosecute Williams. Or, as seemed less likely, he could urge lenience. To people who were bold enough to ask if he was pressuring Lawton in any way, Adler stoutly replied, “Spencer Lawton is his own man.”
For more than a month after the shooting, Lawton kept a remarkably low profile. His name was never mentioned in press coverage of the case. All public statements from his office were made by his chief assistant. A preliminary hearing was set for June 17, at which time Lawton would decide whether or not to seek an indictment.
Five days before the hearing was to take place, Lawton went before the Chatham County grand jury and presented his evidence in secret session. The grand jury acted quickly. It indicted Williams for first-degree murder—premeditated and with malice aforethought. The severity of the charge raised a few eyebrows. If there was to be an indictment at all, involuntary manslaughter had seemed a more likely charge than murder, given what was known of the case. Lawton would not discuss the evidence publicly except to say that the lab tests had been only partially completed. Jim Williams would have to stand trial.
A few days after the indictment, Danny Hansford’s mother sued Williams for $10,003,500. She charged that he had killed Danny in an “execution style” shooting. The $3,500 was for funeral expenses.
Even now, Williams maintained an air of unruffled calm. His trial was not scheduled to begin until January, more than six months away. He asked the court for permission to go back to Europe on another buying trip, and permission was granted. When he returned, he kept to his old routines. He had his hair cut by Jimmy Taglioli on Abercorn Street, he shopped at Smith’s market, he ate dinner at Elizabeth on 37th. He was not even slightly remorseful. He had no reason to be, he thought. As he had told the Gazette, “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Chapter 13
CHECKS AND BALANCES
“Sometimes I think you Yankees only come down here to stir up trouble,” said Joe Odom. “I mean, look at Jim Williams. A model citizen. Minds his own business. One success after another. Then you come along, and the next thing we know he’s killed somebody. I mean, really!”
It was three in the morning. Joe was moving out of the house on Liberty Street exactly six months after having moved in. The unsuspecting real estate agent, Simon Stokes, was due back from England the next day, and Joe intended to restore the house to the condition in which Mr. Stokes had left it: locked and empty. Joe had found another house to move into on Lafayette Square. And now, in the dead of night, he dumped a last armload of clothes into the van parked out front.
“All right,” he said. “So now we have a murder in a big mansion. Goddamn! Well, let’s see where that puts us. We’ve got a weirdo bug specialist slinking around town with a bottle of deadly poison. We’ve got a nigger drag queen, an old man who walks an imaginary dog, and now a faggot murder case. My friend, you are getting me and Mandy into one hell of a movie.”
Joe went back inside to search for telltale signs that he had been living there for six months. In the past half year, the supposedly unoccupied house had played host to a maelstrom of humanity. Over a thousand tourists had traipsed through, peering into every nook and cranny and pausing to have a buffet lunch before leaving. At the same time, the never-ending parade of Joe’s friends flowed in and out, with Jerry the hairdresser operating an all-but-full-time beauty salon in the kitchen. These diverse activities merged and mingled, sometimes with comical results. More than a few elderly ladies who came to the house for lunch got back on the tour bus with their hair completely restyled, and nearly everyone emerged clutching handbills advertising Sweet Georgia Brown’s.
As always, new faces joined the cast of characters in Joe’s entourage. Some hung on for a week or a month, others longer. As adroit as he was at gathering a crowd around him, Joe was utterly unable to cast anyone out. That task fell to an inner circle of friends who took it upon themselves to weed out unsavory hangers-on, with or without Joe’s knowledge. In recent months, the primary target of this group had been a well-dressed man who had arrived in Savannah purporting to be a Palm Beach millionaire. In actual fact, he was a small-time entrepreneur who had opened a whorehouse on the road to Tybee. Before anyone knew it, he was quietly soliciting business from the men in the tour groups at Joe’s. The inner circle called on a retired policeman, Sarge Bolton, to get rid of him. One glimpse of the revolver in Sarge’s shoulder holster, and the man was gone.
Joe’s friends had nothing against whorehouses, but they were worried that this one might complicate matters for Joe, who was just now coming under the scrutiny of the authorities because of the bad checks he had written before the opening of Sweet Georgia Brown’s. The checks had begun to arrive at the prosecutor’s office on the average of one a week: the carpenter’s check, the electrician’s check, the plumber’s check, the check for the antique merry-go-round horse on top of the bar. When the total reached $18,000, two sheriff’s deputies came to Sweet Georgia Brown’s and served Joe with a summons. He was directed to appear for a hearing in court. Depending on the outcome of the hearing, he might or might not be indicted for writing worthless checks—a felony punishable by one to five years in prison.
On the day of the hearing, Joe strolled calmly into the courtroom twenty minutes late. Before taking his seat, he ambled over to the bench where the plaintiffs were sitting and greeted each of them.
“Howdy, George,” he said to the carpenter.
The carpenter managed a wan smile. “Hey, Joe,” he said.
Joe moved on to the electrician, the plumber, the general contractor, the man from the linen supply, and on down the line. “Howdy … Afternoon … Hello …” He spoke without a hint of sarcasm or irony. His voice was cheerful. His eyes were bright, his smile broad and easy. It was almost as if he were greeting patrons at Sweet Georgia Brown’s. Joe’s affability contrasted with the discomfiture of the men on the bench. Their embarrassed, almost sheepish expressions made them seem more like the accused than the aggrieved—as if by being there they had been caught in an act of disloyalty against their genial friend. They smiled meekly and mumbled hellos. At the end of the row, Joe came to a tiny, sparrowlike man with silver hair and bushy black eyebrows. It was an antiques dealer from Charleston who had sold him the merry-go-round horse and other pieces of furniture. Joe brightened.
“Why, Mr. Russell!” he said. “What a surprise! I didn’t know you were coming.”
Mr. Russell shifted nervously in his seat. “Believe me, Joe, I would rather not have come. I really hate this, but you know. I … uh …?
??
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Joe. “I can’t say I blame you. It’s just that if I’d known you were coming I’d have asked you to bring that pair of sconces I liked so much.”
“Oh, did you?” the man said. “I mean, did I … I mean, did we … uh.” Mr. Russell blinked, as if trying to clear his head. “Oh, now I remember,” he said. “We did talk about those sconces, didn’t we. You’re right. I’d forgotten all about that. Well … uh. Now that you mention it, Joe, I guess I could have brought them with me—”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” said Joe. “We can discuss it later.” He walked over and took his seat alone at the defense table.
The hearing judge gaveled the room to order.
“Mr. Odom, are you being represented by counsel?”
“Your Honor,” said Joe, “as a member in good standing of the state bar of Georgia, I’ll be representing myself.”
The judge nodded. “Well then, let’s proceed.”
An assistant prosecutor read off the list of Joe’s bad checks. Then one by one the plaintiffs took the stand and described the work they had done or the goods they had supplied and how, no matter how often they tried to cash Joe’s checks, they always bounced. When Mr. Russell took the stand, the prosecutor and the judge conferred at the bench for several minutes, riffling through papers. The judge then rapped his gavel and informed Mr. Russell that in filing his complaint he had not followed the proper procedure; therefore his claim would be disallowed, at least for the time being. This would reduce the bad-check charges against Joe by the sum of $4,200. A red-faced Mr. Russell came down from the stand and took his seat.
“Your Honor,” said Joe, “with your permission, I’d like to have a word with Mr. Russell.”
“No objection,” the judge replied.
Joe motioned for the antiques dealer to come over and sit next to him. He took the man’s file and spread the papers on the table. Then, while the courtroom looked on, Joe read through the papers, speaking to Mr. Russell in a quiet, confidential tone. After a few minutes, he looked up at the judge.
“Your Honor,” he said, “if you will allow me, I think we can remedy this situation in twenty minutes or so, and once we’ve done that you can reinstate Mr. Russell’s claim against me.”
The judge looked warily at Joe, uncertain whether he was merely having a laugh at the court’s expense, or whether he might actually be slipping a fast one by him.
“The court appreciates your offer,” the judge said, “but I doubt there’s any precedent for a defendant acting as counsel for the plaintiff. One could worry that counsel might place his own best interests ahead of those of his client, if you see my point.”
“I do, Your Honor,” said Joe, “but in this case it’s really just a matter of filling out forms. This gentleman has come all the way from Charleston to claim money that’s rightfully his, and it doesn’t seem fair to turn him away just because he messed up on some minor clerical procedure.”
“True,” said the judge. “Well, all right. Go ahead.”
“One more thing, Your Honor,” said Joe. “I would like to add for the record that I am doing this on a pro bono basis …”
“Good of you,” said the judge.
“… forgoing my normal legal fee of forty-two hundred dollars.” In the laughter that followed, Joe turned toward Mandy and me and winked.
The hearing went into recess while Joe rewrote Mr. Russell’s claim against him. When he was finished, Mr. Russell’s $4,200 was added back onto the total, and Joe took the stand. He told the court that he had written the checks in the expectation that the developers of City Market, where Sweet Georgia Brown’s was located, would come through with several thousand dollars they owed him, but they had not. Therefore the checks were unintentional overdrafts. The judge and the prosecutor appeared to doubt Joe’s explanation, but they agreed to drop the charges if he made good on the entire $18,000 in one month’s time. Failing that, he would almost certainly be indicted. The judge, the prosecutor, and the plaintiffs all expressed the hope that Joe would settle the matter before it came to that.
And he did. But it was not through the cash flow of Sweet Georgia Brown’s. Joe was saved this time by a loan of $18,000 from a rich young couple, who had recently moved to Savannah and had fallen under the spell of Joe Odom and Sweet Georgia Brown’s.
Joe’s good luck extended to the matter of finding new quarters to live in before Simon Stokes returned. At the last moment, he had arranged to occupy the spacious and elegant parlor floor of the Hamilton-Turner House a few blocks away on Lafayette Square. The landlord was an old friend who lived in Natchez and knew all about Joe’s bus tours and the tourist lunches and Joe’s entourage and Jerry the hairdresser. All of that was fine with him.
Joe finished his sweep of the Liberty Street house, removing the last traces of his occupancy. Then he came back outside to sit on the front steps and have a cigarette. He had to admit things were not so bad after all. His bad checks had been made good. He was about to move into a beautiful old mansion. The prosecutor was off his back, and there was nothing for him to do now but smoke his cigarette and wait for Mandy to do one final load of laundry. When she was finished, he would disconnect the electricity and the telephone, turn off the water, lock the front door, and move on.
It was daybreak when Joe went to bed in his new house. He slept until early evening. Then he rose and went to Sweet Georgia Brown’s, where the first person through the door was Mr. Russell, the antiques dealer from Charleston. He was carrying the sconces—ornate brass fixtures with tall hurricane lamps. Joe put them up on either side of the big mirror over the bar and lit the candles. The light danced and flickered.
“Will you take a check for them?” he asked.
“Why certainly,” said Mr. Russell.
“I’d be much obliged,” said Joe, “if you’d … uh … hold on to it until the first of the month.”
“I’d be happy to,” Mr. Russell said.
Joe turned to go back to the piano and found himself looking into the grinning face of the real estate agent, Simon Stokes.
“I’m back!” Mr. Stokes proclaimed. “If you still want that house on Liberty Street, you can have it. I saved it for you the whole time I was gone.”
“I know you did,” said Joe, “and I appreciate it more than I can say.”
Chapter 14
THE PARTY OF THE YEAR
Engraved invitations to Jim Williams’s black-tie Christmas party began arriving in the mailboxes of Savannah’s better homes the first week in December. They were received with surprise and consternation, for it had been assumed that under the circumstances Williams would not be giving any party at all this year. Faced with the invitations, Savannah’s social set grappled with the realization that the crowning social event of the winter season was going to take place at the scene of a notorious shooting and that barely a month later the host would go on trial for murder. What to do? Savannah was a place of manners and decorum, first and foremost. It had been the birthplace, after all, of Ward McAllister, that self-appointed social arbiter of late-nineteenth-century America. It was Ward McAllister who had compiled the list of New York’s elite “Four Hundred” in 1892. This son of Savannah had codified the rules of conduct for ladies and gentlemen. The lively debate already raging over Williams’s guilt or innocence shifted focus, moving to the question of whether it was proper for him to give his Christmas party and whether (since he was indeed going to give it) it was proper to attend. This year, instead of asking, “Have you been invited?” people wanted to know “Are you going to accept?”
Millicent Mooreland had counseled Williams not to give his party. “It wouldn’t be the thing to do, Jim,” she told him, and she thought she had talked him out of it until her invitation arrived. For Mrs. Mooreland, the party posed an agonizing dilemma. After many sleepless nights, she decided not to go.
Williams refused to acknowledge that his party might be a manifestation of poor taste. He
and his lawyers, he said, had decided that not to have the party would be an admission of guilt. Therefore, he was going to have it. He would, however, skip the all-male party the night after. “The only person who’s really going to miss that one,” Williams said, “will be Leopold Adler. He won’t be able to get out his binoculars and spy on it.”
Williams was convinced that Lee Adler had prodded the district attorney into charging him with murder instead of a lesser crime, while outwardly pretending to be concerned for him. Two days after the shooting, Emma Adler had written Williams a note expressing her sorrow and offering to help in any way possible. She had signed the note “Fondly, Emma.”
“The use of the word ‘fondly,’” said Williams, “proves the letter was an exercise in insincerity. Emma Adler is no more fond of me than I am of her, and we both know it.” Williams did not invite the Adlers to this year’s party.
As in years past, Williams set about making elaborate preparations well in advance. His assistants went out and gathered three truckloads of fresh palmetto fronds, cedar boughs, and magnolia leaves, and spent a full week decorating the seven fireplaces and six chandeliers in Mercer House. On the day of the party, Lucille Wright arrived with roasts of ham, turkey, and beef; gallons of shrimp and oysters; tureens of dips and sauces; and quantities of cakes, brownies, and pies. She arranged the bountiful repast on silver platters and placed them around a mound of pink and white camellias in the center of the dining-room table. A sixty-foot garland of flame-throated orchids hung in swags along the spiral stairway. The scent of cedar and pine accented the air.