Stolen Away (7 page)

Now we were getting somewhere.

“This is Gladys Davis,” Mrs. Cayce said.

The blonde smiled at me and I smiled right back. She was carrying a steno pad, I noticed. So the clairvoyant had a dishy dame for a secretary. Now I was starting to feel at home.

“Miss Davis has been our secretary since 1923,” Mrs. Cayce explained. “Her older sister was in our Christian study group.”

Praise Jesus.

“What do we need to do?” Breckinridge asked Mrs. Cayce.

“Nothing, dear,” she said, touching the lawyer’s hand. “You and Mr. Heller just sit quietly and watch. It would help if you would use our initial moments of meditation to turn your own thoughts inward.”

That was me. I was one reflective son of a bitch.

Miss Davis settled her sweet frame into the schoolboy desk chair near the couch, where Cayce had stretched out, his hands on his forehead, palms up; what was he going to do, wiggle his fingers and pretend he was a bunny rabbit?

Gertrude Cayce took the chair near her husband’s head. He looked at her lovingly, and she looked at him the same way, and stroked his cheek lightly. It was a moment between them that seemed very real to me—suddenly the dishy secretary seemed just a secretary.

He closed his eyes, slowly moved his hands down from his forehead until his palms were flat against his stomach. He began breathing deeply, rhythmically.

Then the secretary and the wife bowed their heads and began to pray or meditate or something. This was our cue to turn our own thoughts inward, I supposed. Breckinridge looked at me blankly and I shrugged and he shrugged, and we looked toward the now apparently slumbering Cayce.

He sighed deeply. Then his breathing became light and soft, as if he were taking a quiet nap.

Mrs. Cayce repeated something, which Breckinridge and I could not hear, but took to be the hypnotic suggestion that would trigger the “reading.”

I got out my pencil and notebook; what the hell—I was here.

Cayce began to mumble. He seemed to be repeating his wife’s incantation.

Then he damn near shouted, and both Breckinridge and I jumped, a little, in our hardwood chairs. Tough on the tailbone.

“Can you give us the exact location of the missing child,” Mrs. Cayce asked him gently, “at the present hour—and can you describe the surest way to restore the child unharmed to his parents?”

“There are many channels through which contacting may be done,” he said, in a clear, normal voice. “These are the channels that are acquainted best with the nature of racketeering. These individuals are part new, partly
not
new to such rackets—see? That is, one who has been in the employ of such—the others, entirely new.”

In that gibberish, it struck me, was what might be a grain of truth: experienced racketeers working with somebody recruited from the inside at the Lindbergh house.

Mrs. Cayce tried again. “What means should be used to communicate with the kidnappers?”

“There are already many in motion. Someone who may make arrangements or agreements, for the release or return without injury to the baby, would be best.”

That was brilliant.

“Is it possible to get the names of these people?”

“The leader of authority of the group is Maglio.”

Maglio? I knew of a Maglio: Paul Maglio, sometimes known as Paul Ricca, one of Capone’s cronies! I wrote the name down. I underlined it three times.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Cayce,” I said, softly. Worried I might spoil things by interrupting.

But she only looked back with a gentle, Madonna-like smile. “Yes, Mr. Heller?”

“Would it be possible for me to ask Mr. Cayce a few questions?”

Without hesitation, she said, “Certainly,” and rose from the chair and gestured me toward it.

Hating myself for getting sucked into this swami’s act, I went to the chair and sat.

“Can you tell me about the kidnapping itself?” I asked. “How did it happen?”

“The baby was removed from the room, about eight-thirty
P.M
., carried by a man,” he said. “Another man was waiting below.”

I didn’t want to prompt him unduly, so I just said, “Below?”

Cayce nodded; his eyes remained closed. He looked peacefully asleep. “The child was lowered to the ground and taken to a car. Now we find there are changes in the manner of transportation….”

That did make sense, of course; changing cars made sense, But you didn’t have to be psychic to figure that one out.

“Another car is used,” he said. “They moved northward, toward Jersey City, through a tunnel and across New York City into Connecticut, into the region of Cordova.”

I was writing this stuff down; God knew why, but I was.

“On the east side of New Haven,” he said, “following a route along Adams Street, they took the child to a two-story shingled house, numbered Seventy-Three. Two tenths of a mile from the end of Adams Street is a brown house, formerly painted green, the third house from the corner. There is red dirt on the pavement. The child is in a house on Scharten Street.”

I felt like a fool, writing this prattle down, but part of me was caught up in it. Cayce, like any good faker, had a certain presence.

“Is the baby still at this address?”

“Yes.”

Breckinridge was standing, next to me, now. He said to Cayce, “Was Red Johnson involved?”

“Involved, as seen.”

“Was the nurse, Betty Gow, involved?”

“Not directly.”

“Who else?”

“A woman named Belliance.”

That name rang no bells with me.

I took over for Breckinridge. “Who guards the baby now?”

“The woman and two men who are now at home.”

“Where?”

“Follow my instructions,” he said testily, “and you will be led to the child.”

“I know New Haven well,” Breckinridge said. “I’ve never heard of Cordova. Can you tell us through what channels Scharten Street might be located?”

“By going to the street! If the name’s on it, that’s a right good mark!”

Breckinridge looked at me with wide eyes and I shrugged.

“Follow my instructions and you will find the child. We are through.”

“Where…” Breckinridge began, but Mrs. Cayce gently moved between him and Cayce. She was shaking her head, no, raising a palm to us both, in a stop motion.

She bent forward over her husband and murmured something, to bring him out of it.

A few moments later, Cayce drew a long, deep breath and his eyes popped open. He sat up. He yawned, stretching his arms.

“Did you get everything down?” he asked his secretary.

Miss Davis bobbled her pretty blonde head.

He stood. With utter certainty, he said to Breckinridge, “Follow what you heard—whatever it was I said—and you’ll get that child back.”

Dazed, Breckinridge said, “Well…thank you. We’ll follow up on everything we heard here, today.”

Cayce beamed, patted Breckinridge on the shoulder. “Splendid. My secretary will send you a carbon of the transcription. Do let me know how it comes out. We like to follow up on these things.”

He might have been talking about some kid’s cough he prescribed a poultice for.

“What do we owe you, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge said.

Here it comes, I thought. Here it finally comes.

“We normally charge twenty dollars for a reading,” he said. “I wish it weren’t necessary to charge at all.”

Twenty bucks? That was chicken feed for a racket like this.

“But in this case,” Cayce said somberly, “I will make an exception.”

Ah! Now comes the sting—he knows he’s dealing with dough—Lindbergh and Breckinridge and Anne Lindbergh’s wealthy family, the Morrows….

“Pay me nothing,” he said. “And please, as to the press…”

That
was it, then—he wanted the publicity.

He waggled a finger, like a schoolteacher. “Not a word to them. I don’t want the notoriety. I don’t want to be involved in criminal cases again. Much too unpleasant.”

I felt like I’d been whacked by a psychic two-by-four. With a mystic nail in it.

Mrs. Cayce served us supper in her cozy kitchen, before we left; it was pot roast and potatoes and carrots, much like the meal at the Lindberghs—only the meat was tender and the side dishes delicious, in the best country manner.

“Some day you gentlemen will have to have life readings,” Cayce said, helping himself to a heaping portion of mashed potatoes. “Would you be interested in who and what you were in a former life?”

“Reincarnation, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge smiled. “I thought you were a Christian.”

“There is nothing in the Bible to refute reincarnation,” he said. “Although I can do a reading on Mr. Heller without going to sleep.”

“Oh, really?” I said, lifting a fork of food. “What was I in my previous life?”

“An idealist,” he said, blue-gray eyes sparkling. “All cynics were idealists, once. More pot roast, Mr. Heller?”

In the Dusenberg, I asked Breckinridge what he’d made of all that.

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he admitted. “And you?”

“I’ll be damned if I know, either. I won’t say I’m convinced, but I will say I want to track everything he gave us.”

“A street map of New Haven would be a start. We might be able to get one of those at a gas station, on the way back.”

“Good idea. You know, the first of the two Italian names he mentioned—Maglio—is the name of one of Capone’s top lieutenants.”

Breckinridge gave me a sharp look. “Interesting. And he indicated Red Johnson was involved.”

Betty Gow’s sailor.

“Aren’t we supposed to get a shot at questioning that guy?” I asked.

Breckinridge nodded. “Tomorrow.”

“Do you think he’s a good suspect?”

“Colonel Lindbergh doesn’t like to think his servants might be involved, even indirectly…but after what the Hartford police found in Johnson’s car, I’d say he’s an excellent suspect.”

“What did they find in his car?”

Breckinridge turned his attention from the road to show me a raised eyebrow.

“An empty milk bottle,” he said.

It was almost ten o’clock, the next morning, when I stumbled downstairs. The little fox terrier looked up from its perch on the living room couch and began barking hysterically at me. Next to the mutt was Anne Lindbergh, wearing a prim blue sweater-suit, sitting across from her mother, Mrs. Dwight Morrow; the latter was doing needlepoint, the former reading a small leather-bound book.

They began to get up and I asked them please not to.

Mrs. Morrow was a small woman in her late ffties, with her daughter’s delicate features; she wore a blue dress with white lace trim and pearls and a crucifix. Her hair was more brown than gray, though I would imagine it would be getting grayer as the days progressed.

“Wahgoosh!” Anne said sharply. “Be still.”

The dog stopped barking, but he continued to growl and give me his best evil eye.

“I understand you and Henry drove down to Virginia yesterday,” Anne said, smiling, “and back again.” She gestured for me to sit next to her on the couch and I did. Wahgoosh expressed snarling displeasure.

“That sounds like quite an outing for a single day,” Mrs. Morrow said.

“We didn’t get back till the middle of the night,” I admitted. “How worthwhile a trip it was, I couldn’t say.”

“You spoke to a clairvoyant, I understand,” Anne said.

Mrs. Morrow shook her head, barely, as if thinking,
What next?,
and returned her attention to her needlepoint.

“Yes,” I said. “A sincere gentleman, I believe.”

“Not a faker, like so many of them.”

“No. But he gave us some specific information, including street names that we tried to check, on various maps, without any success.”

“I see,” Anne said, with a patient smile.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“Ben Jonson.”

“Oh.”

“The poet.”

“Right.”

She read aloud: “‘Although it fall and die that night, it was the plant of flower and light. In small proportions we just beauties see; and in short measures, life may perfect be.’” She looked up at me with shimmering blue eyes and a crinkly brave smile. “I like that line…‘It was the plant of flower and light.’”

Jesus. Had she written off her kid as dead already?

“That’s a nice poem,” I said. “Tell me something…”

“Certainly.”

That fucking dog was still growling at me.

“Why do you think your dog was quiet that night?”

“Wahgoosh? He was in the opposite wing of the house. When he’s not on the sofa, here, where we really shouldn’t let him be…or sleeping on the floor in the nursery near Charlie…he has a little bed in the servants’ sitting room. Whately first brought him into the house, you know, and we sort of adopted the little fellow. He couldn’t have heard anything through the howling wind, all that distance.”

“You know…and excuse me for raising this, Mrs. Lindbergh…but there are those who suspect one of your three servants might be involved.”

She shook her head. “No. Betty and the others, we trust implicitly.”

“That’s not always a good way to trust.”

“Pardon?”

“Implicitly.” I turned to Anne’s mother. “Mrs. Morrow, how big a staff do you have at your estate?”

The older woman looked up from her needlepoint. “Twenty-nine. But I assure you, Mr. Heller, they’re all trustworthy.”

“I’m sure they are, Mrs. Morrow. But how many of them knew, or could have known, about the change of plans for Anne and her husband and son, to stay over an extra day or two here?”

Mrs. Morrow lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug, not missing a stitch. “Most of them. Perhaps all of them.”

I thought about that.

“You know, Mr. Heller,” Anne said, reflectively, “there was something else odd about that evening. The evening that Charlie was stolen away, I mean….”

“What was that, Mrs. Lindbergh?”

Her eyes tightened. “My husband was supposed to give a speech that night, to the alumni at New York University. But he’s been so overworked lately, he mixed up the dates. He drove home, instead.”

“You mean, he wasn’t supposed to be here that evening?”

“No.”

I leaned forward. “You realize that only someone within this household—or possibly the Morrow household—could have known that.”

“Yes. But that assumes the kidnappers knew. That this wasn’t all just a matter of…chance. Blind, dumb chance. That’s…that’s what I have so much difficulty accepting.”

Behind us a voice said, “Everything in life is chance, dear.”

It was Lindbergh. He was wearing a corduroy jacket over a sweater and open-collar shirt; his pants were tucked into leather boots that rose midcalf. He looked like a college boy—a hung-over college boy, that is. His face was haggard as hell.

He came up behind his wife, behind the couch, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. She reached up and touched the hand, but did not look back at him.

“You can guard against the high percentage of chance,” he said, “but not against chance itself.”

She nodded wisely. She’d heard him say it before.

I said, “You’re right, Colonel. But don’t go writing off everything you don’t understand as happenstance. In my business we learn to look at coincidence with a jaundiced eye.”

He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he’d paid any attention. He said, “Have you had any breakfast, Nate?”

“No, sir.”

“Let’s round you something up. I’d like a word with you.”

We excused ourselves to the ladies. He walked briskly and I followed along, till he came to a sudden stop in the foyer, beyond earshot of his wife and mother-in-law.

“This fellow Red Johnson is being brought around today,” he said.

“Yes.”

“He isn’t technically under arrest, you know. The Hartford police have turned him over to the custody of the state police, here. He’ll be held in Newark.”

“Well, that’s good.”

He put his hands in his pockets, rocked gently on his feet. “This is going to be hard on Miss Gow, if this beau of hers was using her for information.”

I thought,
Yeah, and so fucking what?

But I said, sympathetically, “Yes, I know.”

“You know, she was badly embarrassed when the papers were full of that Scotty Gow nonsense.”

The first several days after the kidnapping, the press and the cops of several cities had latched onto the notion that one Scotty Gow, a Purple Gang member in Detroit, was the brother of Betty Gow. Miss Gow had worked in Detroit, and Lindbergh’s mother lived in Detroit, so everybody put two and two together and came up with three hundred and five.

“He wasn’t her brother,” I said.

“Of course not. Understand, I’m in general pleased with Colonel Schwarzkopf’s handling of this situation, but this persistent, sometimes boorish questioning of my staff does not please me.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

“I’d appreciate it, Nate, if you would do two things for me.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t pester my servants with questions—don’t be part of this inquisition. And let me know if you see Schwarzkopf or his chief bully, Inspector Welch, overstepping the line.”

“Sure. But, Slim…there
is
reason to suspect an insider was involved. The cops are just doing their job.”

“It’s silly,” he said impatiently. “This thing was obviously the work of seasoned professional criminals. This is the underworld’s doing, not my damn household staff!”

“The underworld could have recruited somebody from your…”

“Perhaps they recruited Red Johnson. But that’s as far as I can see it going. I’m going to keep out of the way of the police when they interrogate him, so be my eyes and ears, if you would.”

“Fine,” I said, surprised that he’d bow out of the Johnson questioning. “Is something else up?”

Then he headed into the kitchen, talking as he went.

“I’ll be tied up most of the afternoon with an in-law of mine,” he said. “There’s a possibility the kidnappers have tried to make contact with us through an outside party.”

“Really?”

“I can’t say any more, at this point, and please don’t mention what I just said to anyone.”

I nodded.

Then we were in the kitchen; Elsie Whately was slicing a cucumber on a wooden counter using a wide, thick knife. She smiled wanly at Lindbergh, who asked her to fix me some eggs and toast.

“How do you like them?” he asked me. He was getting a pitcher of orange juice out of the Frigidaire.

“Scramble the eggs and keep the toast light, if you would,” I told her.

Her mouth flinched in surly acknowledgment, and she left the cucumber half-sliced and went to work on my breakfast.

Lindbergh had poured us both full glasses of orange juice. He brought the pitcher to the table.

I sipped my juice, and he gulped his.

“You seem optimistic today,” I said.

“I am. It’s foolish to be any way at all—better to just take every day and move through it in a straight line. Win out over it.”

“I feel the same way,” I said. “Only I usually settle for breaking even.”

“By the way, I haven’t had any luck freeing up a hotel room for you. The reporters have everything locked up at Gebhart’s. And that’s the only hotel in Hopewell. I may be able to get you something at Princeton. It’s only ten miles from here, and I’ve a secondhand car for you, that the servants had been using for grocery shopping and such, before we went under siege. Now we’re having everything brought in.”

“Well, a car—that’s swell. I hope I prove worth all this trouble.”

“What kind of per diem are you on, Nate?”

“Four bucks a day.”

“Food?”

“And lodging.”

“I thought something like that might be the case.” He lowered his voice so the cook couldn’t hear. “I hope this won’t offend you…but I’d like you to accept fifty dollars a week from me, as long as you’re here, to help defray the expenses you’re going to have.”

I grinned. “You got it backwards, Slim. Chicago cops take offense when you
don’t
offer ’em money.”

He grinned back. “Okay,” he said. “Colonel Breckinridge will give you an envelope, each Friday.”

“Well, thanks. I hope I won’t have to collect many of those from you.”

Lindbergh poured himself another glass of orange juice. “Was your trip to see the fortune-teller worth the time?”

“I’m not sure.”

“That’s what Henry said.”

“I want to have a couple things checked out by the feds. Do you have a number where Agent Wilson can be reached in New York?”

“Yes,” Lindbergh said, and fished out a small black book; he gave me the number and I wrote it down in my notebook.

Then Lindbergh polished off his orange juice and, with a little wave and a shy smile, left me to my breakfast, served up by the sullen Elsie Whately. The eggs were dry and the toast was dark. Just as I was finishing up, Betty Gow came in to get herself a cup of coffee.

She looked very pretty, as usual, wearing a dark green dress with tiny white polka dots and a white collar; she was neat as a pin—neater. She glanced at me nervously, and, coffee cup in hand, was moving back toward the servants’ sitting room when I called out to her.

“Join me for a moment, won’t you, Miss Gow?”

She hesitated, and a flinch of a smile crossed her face; then she haltingly approached me and sat down.

“Say, Elsie,” I said, friendly as an election-year politician, “could I talk you out of a cup of that stuff?”

“Yes sir,” she said, unenthusiastically.

“Cream and sugar, Elsie?” Betty asked.

Elsie nodded curtly.

“How are you bearing up under all this, Miss Gow?” I asked.

“It’s a bit of a trial, isn’t it, Mr. Heller?”

“I wish you’d call me Nate.”

“All right.”

But she didn’t suggest I call her Betty.

Elsie brought me my coffee, and Betty the cream and sugar. Normally I drank mine black, but I stirred some sugar in, and cream, too. We’d both had Elsie’s coffee before.

“I understand your friend Red Johnson is dropping by today,” I said.

“I don’t think ‘dropping by’ is exactly how I’d put it.”

“He hasn’t been arrested.”

“No. But he’s in custody.” She added more sugar, stirred, looked into the muddy liquid.

“I hope you don’t mind talking, a little.”

Her smile was tight and pretty and sarcastic. “Do I have a choice?”

“Well, sure. You’re free, white and twenty-one…barely. And Colonel Lindbergh has asked me to help look into this.” Of course, he’d have me on the next train out of here if he knew I was ignoring his request to leave the help alone.

“It was my understanding,” she said, “that the Colonel only wants to get his son back. That pursuing those responsible is not his inclination, at this point.”

“I think that’s right. But I’m a cop, Miss Gow. I’d like to try to understand what happened that night.”

She sipped her coffee; her eyes looked right past me, cold, unblinking, and a bit bloodshot.

“You talked to Red Johnson on the telephone, didn’t you?” I asked. “The night of the kidnapping?”

She nodded. “He called me about eight-thirty. I tried to call Henry on the telephone at Englewood, before I left for Hopewell, but I couldn’t reach him—he wasn’t at his boardinghouse. So I left word for him to call me, in the evening, at Hopewell.”

“And he did.”

“Yes. We’d intended seeing each other that evening, but when he called, I told him how it happened that I wasn’t at the Morrow house. I told him…told him the baby had a cold.”

“How long had you known Johnson? When did you meet him?”

“I met him last summer. He had a job as a deckhand on the
Reynard
, the Lamont yacht.”

“Lamont yacht?”

“Thomas W. Lamont. He and the late Mr. Morrow were partners in J. P. Morgan and Company. The banking house? Last summer, last August to be exact, the yacht was anchored off North Haven, Maine, where the Morrows have a summer home. I was there with Mrs. Lindbergh and the baby. Henry used to play cards with the Morrow chauffeurs. One of them introduced us and we hit it off. Then, in the off-season, the
Reynard
was moored in the Hudson, near the Palisades. Which allowed us to continue seeing each other.”