With Billie (41 page)

The questioner then checked on her date and place of birth, both of which she had answered incorrectly and she apologised for the muddle. When asked about her 1947 arrest, for which she received a sentence of a year and a day,
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she explained, ‘No, I wasn’t really arrested. They were sort of like you people; they were very nice to me.’ She then said something more about her arrest, but whatever it was remains a mystery since it was marked ‘off the record’ in the transcript of the interview.

When Billie was asked about her ‘purpose’ in leaving the United States, she replied, ‘I went there [to Europe] to sing, to do concerts.’

Billie was then asked about her arrest with Louis McKay in 1956. She replied rather enigmatically, ‘There wasn’t anything to it; it was all wrong.’

At the end of this statement, Billie was asked if she has anything to add, ‘any comments or statements’ that she would like to ‘insert in the record at this time’. Her reply was eloquent.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there’s a lot I would like to add, but it would take a book. I’d have to write a book …
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It just seems that a little thing like this I didn’t know about, and nobody cared enough about me – my agents, and I’ve got managers for this and that – to tell me about it. And I have been trying my best to be a good girl, and a little thing like this. I have to come down here and go through all this. That’s all I can say. It’s terrible, that’s all. Once you get in trouble for narcotics, it’s the end. I think it’s the worst thing
that could ever happen to anybody in the wide world. That’s all I’ve got to add.’

Billie had to wait for six weeks before her case was heard and she was terrified at the prospect of another prison sentence. She stopped eating and lost so much weight that a doctor was called in to see her. She drank more heavily than ever and when William Dufty remonstrated with her, she replied, ‘If you had the Government breathing on you, you’d be drinking too.’

The US Attorney was finally ready to see her on 12 February. She was represented by Florynce Kennedy’s partner Donald Wilkes and after a lot of wrangling the case was dropped. William Dufty said that once the case was dropped, ‘She came home like a different woman. That night, she told us, she slept like a baby.’

However, it was obvious to everyone who saw her that Billie’s health was deteriorating. A doctor friend, Terkild Vinding, described going with his wife to visit her in the sparsely furnished basement apartment where she lived alone with only her white Chihuahua for company.
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This must have been in the middle of May. He said that when they arrived Billie was obviously glad to see them. She played the
Lady in Satin
album and gave them a copy, which she dedicated in her sprawling handwriting ‘for my Doc and best friend from Billie Lady Day Holiday’. Vinding said she was in bad physical shape, her legs swollen from oedema ‘due to liver cirrhosis to a degree I had never seen before’. He told her that she must go to hospital immediately and offered to drive her there himself, but she refused.

On 30 May, just a few days after this meeting, Billie collapsed while her friend Frankie Freedom was with her. He called a doctor and she was taken to the private Knickerbocker Hospital and registered under the name of Mrs Eleanora McKay. But when an orderly smelt her breath and saw the old needle scars on her arms, the hospital insisted she be moved to a public hospital. She was taken to the
Metropolitan Hospital. At first she was in a public ward, but once her identity became known and journalists began to turn up seeking an interview or a photograph, she was moved to a private one. For ten days everything went well; Billie was putting on weight and was full of plans for the future. But then a certain nurse Figueroa – Billie was sure she was a policewoman in disguise – reported the discovery of some suspicious white powder and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was informed.
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Two detectives arrived and questioned her in her bed. They told her that unless she admitted possession and disclosed her supplier, they would take her to the Women’s House of Detention, regardless of what that might do to her state of health. They removed her record player, her records, the radio and her comic books. She was officially arrested and refused bail, and three policewomen kept a twenty-four hour guard at the door of her room. Visitors were not allowed in unless they had a written permit from the 23rd Precinct, allowing access to Arrest Number 1660.

William Dufty and others made complaints. But even after a writ of habeas corpus had been obtained and signed, which should have got rid of the police presence, the police guard stayed. Apparently the District Attorney had plans to transfer Billie to Bellevue Prison Ward and this was only deferred by a legal request that she appear first before a Grand Jury as soon as she was fit enough to do so.

The legal manoeuvrings were complicated. But again it seems important to include some of the statements that were made when Donald Wilkes fought the case in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, on behalf of Eleanor McKay, against the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, on 16 June 1959.

Mr Lang, on behalf of the Police Commissioner, said that: ‘Far from attempting to deprive petitioner of any constitutional or statutory rights, I think the police department has been extremely solicitous of the conditions of this petitioner … We would have had her arraigned this morning if not for the fact the hospital authorities thought it would be detrimental to her health. We do not feel in view of the defendant’s critical condition, although she does have a prior criminal record, that she will flee the jurisdiction or run away from the charge.’

Wilkes, on behalf of his client, tried to suggest that her treatment had been a little severe in the circumstances: ‘Your Honour, I must say that the interrogation of a witness, who is classified by the hospital as terminal, by three detectives, hardly appears to be an act of solicitude for her welfare.’

Mr Lang saw no reason to accept this criticism and insisted that Billie had been treated in the proper manner. ‘If, your Honour, this drug which is slowly killing, I believe, this defendant, if the detectives had prevented her from jumping off a bridge, they would be considered great heroes. In effect, they’re doing the same thing by taking this heroin away from her and why they should be vilified by doing their duty, I do not know, your Honour.’

As a result of this hearing Billie was granted ‘an adjournment of writ for a period of time’ and was placed ‘in the custody of her counsel … with the assurance that she will not leave’.
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The medical authorities at the Metropolitan Hospital were directed to inform the District Attorney when the condition of the petitioner Eleanor McKay would ‘permit of an arraignment at the hospital’ and she was to be ‘subject to an additional criminal charge if her parole is violated’. Before the case was concluded, Mr Lang wanted to be reassured that the criminal charges against the defendant were still pending.

On 21 June two more detectives arrived at the hospital and Billie was given what Donald Wilkes described as ‘a bit of a going over’. They took ‘mugshots’ of her and fingerprinted her. As Wilkes said later, ‘This was done while she was still in her hospital bed and without permission, knowledge or consent … She was refused bail, denied a hearing and held incommunicado.’

The date for Billie’s appearance before a Grand Jury had been set for 26 June, but it was delayed until she was considered well enough to appear. Donald Wilkes felt that the whole episode following Billie’s arrest was ‘rank and redolent … a very, very shabby performance on the part of the State of New York’.

On 11 July 1959, Billie’s heart began to falter and in the early hours of 17 July she died. Everyone agreed that she had been getting better, but then something snapped in her. She made jokes about it being the ‘same old Keystone Kops routine’, but the threat of imprisonment then facing her must have contributed more to her sudden decline in hospital than the cirrhosis of the liver, kidney failure and other medical complications that appeared on her death certificate. William Dufty had written a couple of pieces about her while she was in hospital, using such headlines as ‘How dope changed my life’. As soon as she was dead he was ready with five new articles for the
New York Post
, in which he made such statements as ‘The collision between her and heroin was fore-ordained. It had to happen.’ He also included some useful promotion for
Lady Sings the Blues.

Several years later, Dufty claimed that ‘Billie’s death changed my life’. By this he seemed to mean he was genuinely sad to lose her, but it was also a tacit acknowledgement that by linking his name inextricably with hers, his financial future was transformed.
Lady Sings the Blues
has proved to be a classic in the confessional autobiography mode and it has never been out of print in all the years since its publication.