Stolen Away (5 page)

That was still the fault of the coppers in charge; but I’d said enough on this subject.

“Look, Colonel. We can’t do anything about mistakes past. The early hours of this case were understandably a jumble.”

Of course, a good cop knows that the early hours of any major felony investigation are the most important, the time during which you allow
no
mistakes. But I didn’t say that, either.

“What we can do,” I said, “is not make any more of ’em. Mistakes, I mean.”

He nodded gravely. “Would you like to see the nursery?”

“First, I’d like to see the ladder they used. Is it still around?”

It ought to be in an evidence locker in Trenton, but with the command post here, I figured it was worth asking.

He nodded. “It’s in the garage. I’ll have the troopers bring it around. Excuse me for a few moments.”

Lindbergh loped off; he had a gangling gait, and seemed slightly stoop-shouldered—as if he were embarrassed to be so tall, or so famous. Or perhaps it was the weight of it all—from the kidnapping itself, to living out this tragedy in the center ring of a goddamn circus.

Despite the trampled ground, blurring any footprints, there still remained in the moist clay, near the side of the house, the indentations of the feet of the ladder. The indentations were below, but to the right of, the window of the study, which explained why Lindbergh might not have seen anybody going up a ladder outside his curtainless window.

Two troopers returned, Lindbergh leading them; each of the men carried a section of the thing, and “thing” more than “ladder” was the correct word: a ramshackle, makeshift affair that seemed composed of weathered, uneven lumber scraps. The rungs were spaced too widely apart for even a tall man to make easy use of it.

Lindbergh set his section down. “Put it together, would you, men?”

“Good God,” I said. “That thing’s a mess, isn’t it?”

“It’s ingenious in its way,” Lindbergh said. “Slopped together as it is, inexpert as the carpentry may be, it was designed so that each section fits inside another. One man
could
carry it, though it’s been kept separate like this, for examination.”

The troopers were inserting wooden dowels to connect the sections. The top rung of the bottom section had broken, apparently under a man’s weight.

I walked over and pointed to the broken pieces. “One of the kidnappers did that?”

Lindbergh nodded. “And I may have heard the bastard climbing either up or down. I heard what sounded like the slats of an orange crate breaking, around nine o’clock.”

“Were you in the study?”

“No—the living room, with Anne.”

“Did you check on the sounds?”

“No,” he said glumly. “I just said, ‘What was that?’ to Anne, and she said, ‘What was what?’ and we both went back to our reading. Shortly after that, she went upstairs to bed and I went into the study.”

So Lindbergh was probably in the study at least part of the time the kidnapping was taking place.

“Place that in the holes, would you?” he said to the troopers.

It took both of them to maneuver the clumsy, towering affair. They placed it carefully in the indentations in the ground and placed it against the side of the house, where it rose several feet above, and to the right of, the nursery window, stretching damn near to the roof.

“Well, it’s way off,” I said, craning my neck back. “Obviously.”

“I just wanted you to see that,” he said. “We figure the kidnappers miscalculated on the ladder.”

“They sure as hell didn’t have a carpenter on their team,” I said. “So, what? They must have just used the lower two sections.”

Lindbergh nodded. “The ladder was found over there…” He pointed about sixty feet to the southeast. “…with the two bottom sections connected.” Then he directed the troopers to haul the ladder down, remove the dowel and lift off the top section, and put the now two-sectioned ladder back up.

“It’s still way off,” I said.

Now the ladder was about three feet below the nursery window. And, again, to the right. You could see the places on the whitewashed fieldstone where the ladder had scraped; no doubt about it: only two sections of the ladder were used, and this was where it rested.

“Well, what do you make of it, then?” Lindbergh asked.

“I’m revising my opinion about this not necessarily being an inside job.”

Lindbergh’s frown was barely discernible, but it was there. “Why, Mr. Heller?”

“Somebody had to have handed your baby out to an accomplice on the ladder. That’s about the only way it figures…unless two people went up the ladder, one at a time. I doubt that thing would support two people at once.”

“Perhaps that’s why it broke,” he suggested.

“The weight of the child, added to whoever carried him down, probably did that.”

“Good God. If Charlie fell…”

I lifted a hand. “From that height, there’d have been the impression of whoever fell—and it would’ve probably been both of ’em, the child and the kidnapper. If…excuse me, Colonel…if the kidnapper dropped the child, but managed to retain his own footing on the ladder, there still would’ve been an impression in that wet ground.”

Which even the New Jersey cops couldn’t have missed.

“Perhaps a woman went up first,” Lindbergh said, studying it, hand on his chin. “We know a woman was standing around out here…”

“A woman’s touch might explain the baby staying quiet. I mean, the baby didn’t wake up crying, or someone would’ve heard him, I would imagine.”

“Yes. My wife was in the next room, separated only by a bath.” Impulsively, grabbing my arm, he said, “Come. Look the nursery over.”

We went up the uncarpeted stairs, and the upstairs was as clean, fresh-smelling and impersonal as below.

Lindbergh hesitated outside the nursery, and I went on in. He stayed in the doorway and watched me look around.

It was the warmest-looking room I’d seen here—and the most lived-in. Evergreen trees, a country church, and a man with a dog were gaily pictured on the light green wallpaper; between the two east windows was a fireplace with a mosaic of a fisherman, windmill, elephant and little boy with a hoop; on the mantel was an ornamental clock around which were gathered a porcelain rooster and two smaller porcelain birds. A kiddie car was parked near the hearth. Against the opposite wall was the child’s four-poster-style maple crib; nearby was a pink-and-green screen, on which farmyard animals frolicked.

“That’s where he takes his meals,” Lindbergh said from the doorway, pointing to a small maple table in the middle of the room. Specks of dried-up food still remained.

I was looking in the crib. “Are these the baby’s bedclothes?”

“Yes. Exactly as they were.”

The bedclothes—blankets and sheets—were barely disturbed; they were attached to the mattress with a pair of large safety pins. The impression of the child’s head was still on the damn pillow.

“Whoever did this lifted the child out without waking him,” I said. “Or, if the boy did wake, he wasn’t startled. A familiar face, a familiar touch?”

“Or,” Lindbergh said, almost defensively, “a woman’s touch. Perhaps a woman did go up the ladder first…”

“I’d buy that sooner,” I said, “if the rungs weren’t so damn far apart.”

I walked to the southeast window, the kidnappers’ window. It was recessed, window-seat deep. Below it, against the wall, was a low cedar chest. It was almost as wide as the wide sill itself. On top of the cedar chest was a black suitcase, on which sat a jointed wooden bunny on a small string.

“That chest houses Charlie’s personal fortune,” Lindbergh said, trying to sound cheerful. “His toys. He has plenty, I’m afraid.”

I smiled over my shoulder at him. “And when you get him back, you’re going to buy him another damn chestful, aren’t you?”

Lindbergh smiled shyly. “I intend to spoil Charlie rotten.”

“Good for you,” I said, kneeling at the chest. “Was this chest moved away from the window at all? Disturbed in any way?”

“No.”

“How about this suitcase?”

“No.”

“Any mud, any scuffs, on the suitcase, or the chest?”

“No.”

“Where was this toy rabbit found?”

“Right where you see it. Right where it usually was.”

I stood. “The house wall is a foot and a half thick, and the sill is almost as wide. Anybody entering through that window would have to span a distance of almost three feet to actually get in this room proper. Doing that without leaving mud, without moving the chest, without disturbing the suitcase or toy rabbit, and all without making a ruckus…very improbable.”

Lindbergh said nothing.

I opened the window and felt the rush of cold air. The shutters wouldn’t close. “Are the shutters on any of the other windows warped like this?”

“No.”

“They must have known about this,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to shut them.

“A chisel was found outside,” Lindbergh said, “which would indicate they thought they’d have to break in. They just got lucky, picking this window.”

“I don’t know what the chisel was for, other than maybe to make somebody assume what you just assumed. This window wasn’t pried open, was it?”

“No. It wasn’t locked; we lock the shutters, not the windows.”

“But this window is directly over the curtainless window of your study below. The French windows, on the other side of the room, over a side door, are what a kidnapper who didn’t know about the broken shutter would’ve come in through.”

Lindbergh said, “Now you’re sounding like Schwarzkopf.”

“Good,” I said. “Then he’s thinking like a cop.”

“You’ve changed your mind, then. You’re convinced this
is
an ‘inside job.’”

“I haven’t changed my mind,” I said. “I’m just keeping it open. The worst and most common investigator’s error is making a snap decision at the outset about who or what is behind a crime. I noticed some scientific studies and books and such in your library.”

“Yes.”

“Well, in science, if you start out with an answer you want to prove is correct, it screws your research up, right? Because you’re only looking for the evidence that proves your point.”

Lindbergh nodded.

I walked over to him. He was still in the doorway.

“You don’t want to think your servants could be involved, do you? You trust them. You like them.”

“I hired them,” he said.

And that, of course, was the nub: if a servant did it, then Lindy was, ultimately, responsible. And he couldn’t face that.

“In science,” I said, “the truth hurts sometimes. You wouldn’t want a doctor to lie to you, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I’m not going to lie to you. Nor am I going to kiss your ass. I’m going to level with you, and tell you how I see things.”

His face was deadpan for what seemed an eternity. I realized I may have crossed the line with Lindy; tomorrow at this time, I could be getting off the train back in Chicago. Which was fine, if the alternative was standing around making like a horse’s-ass yes-man.

But I wouldn’t have to, because Lindbergh smiled, big and natural.

“Do you mind if I call you ‘Nate’?”

“I’d be honored,” I said, and meant it. “Could I call you something besides ‘Colonel’? Every time I say that, eight heads turn.”

He laughed softly. He extended his hand to me, as if we hadn’t shaken before.

“My friends call me ‘Slim.’ I’d appreciate it if you called me that, at least when we’re more or less in private.”

We shook hands, loose and casual.

“Okay…Slim,” I said, trying it out. “I’ll be more formal when it seems appropriate.”

“Thanks.”

We headed back downstairs, where Schwarzkopf—looking like a hotel doorman in that fancy-ass uniform—met us halfway.

“Colonel,” he said, “agents Irey and Wilson are waiting to see you.”

Elmer Irey and Frank J. Wilson were waiting in Lindbergh’s study; neither had taken a seat. They stood there, hats in hand, both in black, like twin undertakers.

Irey and Wilson were the Ike and Mike of law enforcement—wearing different-color ties wasn’t enough to lessen the sameness. Both men were in their mid-forties and wore round-lensed black eyeglasses like Robert Woolsey of the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy team—a couple of solemn, long-faced, round-jawed, dark-haired, jug-eared feds as interchangeable as a pair of socks.

Irey was the boss; he was the chief of the Internal Revenue intelligence unit. Wilson—and if you had to tell them apart, Wilson was the balding one—was his chief agent.

The two men traded blank looks upon seeing me, but in that blankness was a wealth of contempt.

Then Irey stepped forward and, with a smile as thin as the ace of spades, offered his hand to Lindbergh, saying, “It’s a great honor meeting you, Colonel. I wish the circumstances were otherwise. This is Agent Wilson.”

Wilson stepped forward, shook hands with Lindbergh, saying, “An honor meeting you, Colonel.”

Lindbergh offered them chairs and, as Breckinridge had just hung up the phone, took his position behind the desk. Breckinridge stood behind him and to his left, like a field marshal. Schwarzkopf and I took chairs on the sidelines.

Irey, his hat in his lap, glanced around the study at what must have seemed to him an unnecessary crowd of observers.

“I think, Colonel,” Irey said, in a voice bread-and-butter bland, “that we might want some privacy.”

Lindbergh looked to his left, then to Irey and said, guilelessly, “The door is closed.”

Edgily, Wilson said, “Colonel, we really should speak to you confidentially.”

Lindbergh’s smile was a tad tired, “Gentlemen, I can’t tell you how pleased and grateful I am that you’ve taken your Sunday to make this trip. Your help, your counsel, is something we greatly need. But the men in this room are my closest advisers.”

Who, me?

“Colonel Breckinridge is my attorney and one of my closest friends,” he continued. “Colonel Schwarzkopf is in charge of the State Police in whose jurisdiction this matter lies.”

Irey said, “With all due respect to Colonel Schwarzkopf, there have already been numerous flaws in the methods employed by the state police.”

“Really?” Schwarzkopf said, icily. “Such as?”

“Your fingerprint man,” Irey said, turning to look at the frowning Schwarzkopf, “failed to find any latents on the ransom letter or envelope, the ladder, the chisel, the window, the crib or the boy’s toys.”

“It took an outsider,” Wilson chimed in, “to come in and take another try…and he found all sorts of prints, even after ruling out those of your own troopers. Thirty to forty on the ladder alone.”

“Have you sent those prints to Washington?” Irey asked Schwarzkopf. “The Bureau of Investigation has a vast collection of fingerprints of known criminals.”

“This is not a federal matter,” Schwarzkopf said stiffly.

Egos. A kid’s life at stake and they were playing at fucking egos.

“Colonel Schwarzkopf stays, gentlemen,” Lindbergh said. “You may disagree with his methods, but he is, after all, the man in charge.”

Said the man in charge.

Wilson said, flatly, “And what about Heller?”

These T-men knew me, a little, from Chicago. I’d been on the fringes of their Capone investigation. They’d been on the fringes of the Jake Lingle trial.

Lindbergh nodded at me and smiled tightly. “Detective Heller is our liaison man with the Chicago Police Department.”

Irey maintained his poker face; Wilson’s cement face cracked a smile.

“Colonel Lindbergh,” Wilson said, “the first thing we of the Intelligence Unit learned when we took on the Capone case was not to count on the Chicago police.”

Irey gave Wilson a quick, cutting glance. “What Agent Wilson means,” Irey said, “is that this case is not a Chicago matter.”

That wasn’t even close to what Wilson meant.

“It isn’t a federal matter, either,” Schwarzkopf insisted.

“Colonel Lindbergh,” I said, rising, “I’ll be glad to step outside.”

“No, Nate,” Lindbergh said, motioning me to sit back down. “Stay, please.”

And Irey and Wilson did double takes, hearing Lindbergh call me by my first name; and at that moment Eddie Cantor had nothing on Schwarzkopf, in the banjo-eyes department.

“Detective Heller,” Lindbergh said, “comes highly recommended by a colleague of yours.”

“Eliot Ness,” Wilson said, with just a hint of a smirk.

“Yes,” Lindbergh said.

“I believe Heller is a police contact of Eliot’s,” Irey said. “Isn’t that correct, Heller?”

“That’s correct, Elmer.”

Irey, who hadn’t looked at me when he spoke to me, now turned his head my way. His eyes were blue-steel and hard in his placid face. “Heller, you don’t know me well enough to use my first name.”

“My apologies, Mr. Irey. You might attach a ‘mister’ to
my
name, while you’re at it.”

Lindbergh smiled faintly, briefly.

Irey nodded. “Point well taken, Mr. Heller.” He turned his attention back to Lindbergh. “I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot, Colonel. While I don’t wish to be critical, I would be less than frank if I didn’t say I’m disturbed by the presence of questionable characters such as…” And I thought he’d insert my name here, but he didn’t. “…Morris ‘Mickey’ Rosner.”

“I can well understand that, Mr. Irey,” Lindbergh said. “But I hope you can understand, gentlemen, that I’m pursuing every avenue that presents itself, where the safe return of my son is concerned.”

Wilson sat forward; he turned his hat in his hand, slowly, like it was a steering wheel. “Colonel, according to newspaper accounts this morning, Rosner has engaged the services of two more underworld types…”

“Salvatore Spitale,” Irey said, reading from a small notebook, “and Irving Bitz.” He looked up from the notebook. “Proprietors of a speakeasy on Forty-First Street in New York.”

Lindbergh nodded. “And I’ve given all three of them expense money. Gentlemen, your disapproval is noted—and I thank you for expressing that disapproval in so restrained a fashion. Rest assured you’re not alone in your opinion.”

Schwarzkopf cleared his throat. “Colonel Lindbergh feels that by letting the underworld know we’ve appointed go-betweens from their ranks, we may facilitate negotiations with the kidnappers. Personally, I share your misgivings, Mr. Irey, Mr. Wilson…but I will accede to the wishes of the Colonel.”

There he went again, treating Lindbergh like his goddamn boss. At least Irey and Wilson knew that the coppers ought to be in charge.

“I’ve asked you to come up, Mr. Irey,” Lindbergh was saying, “because I feel I should talk to somebody in an official capacity about this Capone offer.”

Irey nodded somberly. “You’ll be hearing even more about it tomorrow. We understand Capone was interviewed this morning by Arthur Brisbane, who flew to Chicago for the privilege.”

The New York
Journal
’s Brisbane was Hearst’s most highly paid editor and columnist, a self-important double dome whose purple prose on the Capone offer would further inflame a Lindbergh-inflamed public.

“It’ll be in Brisbane’s syndicated column tomorrow morning,” Wilson said, “all over the country. Everybody and his duck will be telling you to take Scarface up on his proposition.”

Lindbergh leaned back in his chair and studied Irey and Wilson as if they were frost forming on his monoplane wings. “What do you gentlemen think?”

“We think it’s a bluff,” Wilson said confidently, sitting back. “We think you should disregard it.”

Irey, measuring his words, said, “I hate to say this, Colonel…but Capone doesn’t know who has the child. He is a desperate man trying to deal his way out of jail.”

“We know he thinks,” Wilson said, “or
says
he thinks, a former gang member of his did it.”

“Bob Conroy,” I said.

All heads turned my way.

“Is Detective Heller right?” Lindbergh asked, eyes tight. “Is this Conroy the one Capone claims took my son?”

Irey nodded, slowly; Wilson nodded, too, but two nods for every one of Irey’s.

Irey said, “Our preliminary investigation puts Conroy nearly one hundred and fifty miles from here, the night of the kidnapping.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Have you talked to Conroy yet?”

“No,” Irey said, not looking at me. “We have agents in New York who are investigating. Two alibi witnesses place Conroy in New Haven, Connecticut.”

“Well,” I said, “New Haven isn’t the moon. In a fast car, a hundred fifty miles is nothing, these days.”

“We intend,” Irey said, an edge of impatience in his voice, “to find Conroy, of course, and talk to him…but he didn’t do it.”

Lindbergh’s expression darkened. Then he said, “Should you make that assumption, going in? I’ve been told that the biggest mistake a detective can make is to form a snap decision early on about who or what is behind a crime.”

Both Irey and Wilson shifted in their seats; it was perfectly coordinated, like a couple of really good chorus girls. It made me smile.

“You’re right, Colonel,” Irey said to Lindbergh. “We’ll keep an open mind about Conroy—we’ll find him, and we’ll talk to him. We don’t see it as a major lead, however…because we don’t think Capone is sincere.”

“Colonel,” Wilson said, “Big Al just wants out of jail.”

Where you boys helped put him, and you’ll be goddamned if you’ll let the bastard out even if it is to help save a kid’s life.

Lindbergh cast his hollow gaze my way. “What do you think, Nate?”

“About Capone? It could be a hoax. But I don’t think we can rule out, at this early stage, the possibility that Capone may have engineered the kidnapping.”

“That’s absurd,” Wilson said.

But Irey said nothing.

I said, “You said it yourself: he’s a desperate man. He’s also a public figure—like Colonel Lindbergh. What better target could he choose than a man who, in a bizarre way, is one of the few people in this country on his own level? Besides, can you put
anything
past a man who can turn a tender holiday like St. Valentine’s Day into something forever grisly in the minds of the masses?”

“You think,” Lindbergh said to me, with a gaze so flatly penetrating it was unnerving, “that Capone may truly know where my boy is? Because he wants to ‘solve’ a crime he committed—or, that is, had committed for him?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “All to buy his cynical way into the public’s affections—and out of a jail cell. And it’s an opinion held by the federal agent instrumental in putting him away—Eliot Ness.”

In other words, screw you, Agents Irey and Wilson.

“Mr. Heller may be right,” Irey said, more gracious about it than I figured he’d be. “I think it’s a long shot, frankly…but I can’t in all honesty rule the possibility out.”

Even Wilson seemed willing to begrudge me my opinion. “I think we should find Bob Conroy and
make
him talk.” He paused ominously, then added, “But we don’t need to let Al Capone out of stir to accomplish that.”

“I hope,” Lindbergh said quietly, “that you will proceed with caution. It’s been my position from the very beginning that there must be no police interference…” He raised his hand and cut the air with it. “…no police activity of any kind that might interfere with my paying the ransom and reclaiming my boy.”

That ultimately wasn’t—or anyway shouldn’t have been—Lindbergh’s decision, of course, but Irey and Wilson let it go. I knew when it got down to brass tacks, Irey would act like a cop. Wilson, too.

“I wonder if we might see the kidnap note,” Irey said.

“Certainly,” Lindbergh said. He pulled open a desk drawer. The note, which ought to have been in an evidence envelope in Trenton, was handed to Irey. I moved in and looked over his shoulder as he read.

In pencil, in an uneven, shaky, possibly disguised hand, on cheap dimestore bond paper, the letter said the following:

The “singnature” was the faint impression of two blue quarter-size circles, their left edges the most distinct, creating the impression of two
c
’s, with a red nickel-size spot to the right of the second
c;
also three holes (“holds”) had been punched, one through the red spot, two others at left and right.

Schwarzkopf said, “Obviously, we haven’t released the content of the note to the press. Only by that signature can we know for sure that subsequent notes really are from the kidnappers.”

Then why was the fucking thing stuck in Lindbergh’s desk? Every servant in the house had access to it!

“I would suggest that you put this document under lock and key, immediately,” Irey said. He was speaking to Schwarzkopf, not Lindbergh, although he was in the process of returning the note to the latter. “Who have you shared this with?”

“No one,” Schwarzkopf said. “The New York Police have requested copies, but we’ve declined. So has J. Edgar Hoover. I feel this is a matter for the New Jersey State Police, and distributing this document frivolously, even to other law enforcement agencies, might have unfortunate results.”

That sounded halfway reasonable, but it boiled down to Schwarzkopf not wanting to share the spotlight, didn’t it?

“Of course, we have given a copy of it to Mr. Rosner,” Lindbergh said.

Irey and Wilson looked at each other. I rubbed my eyes.