Cold Morning (12 page)

He sighed. “I'll see what I can do. But no good will come of this.”

“I don't suppose it will. Nothing about our sojourn in Flemington can possibly have a happy ending.”

He nodded to the entrance. “Look what the cat allowed in.”

Joshua Flagg had walked in, but he dragged a foot. A white bandage covered one eyebrow. There was a bright purple welt under a swollen eye.

“I know Hearst employees bring out the worst in folks but this?”

Aleck snickered. “It's a delightful story. Edna, you obviously missed it.”

“Tell me.”

We watched Joshua Flagg spot us, deliberate approaching, then deciding to slink out the door, so hasty a move he careened into a customer, who cursed him. Aleck relished gossip, so he cleared his throat, glanced around him, and spoke loudly. “I heard it from one of our drivers, you know, Marcus, the good-looking one you can't seem to take your eyes off.”

I cut in. “For God's sake, Aleck.”

He adjusted his eyeglasses, and his small eyes seemed enlarged now, unblinking. With that round plump face and those circular thick glasses he was a caricaturist's ultimate dream: the cherubic owl. “Anyway”—he stretched out the word—“Marcus told me Joshua was loitering around the depot where the drivers bide their time waiting for famous folks like us to snap our fingers. Anyway, Marcus said Joshua wandered in, nosy as hell, and started asking questions of old Willie, our other favorite driver. The one you ignore.”

“And you admit to finding an annoying chatterbox.”

“Words last. Beauty fades.”

“So does my patience, Aleck.”

“Anyway, I gather he demanded Willie tell him where he'd driven folks, in particular, us.”

“Us!” I exclaimed.

“Exactly. Actually,
you
. He seemed inordinately curious about
your
habits, my dear. I don't know why he didn't ask me. I've seen all your bad habits.” Aleck flicked ashes from a cigarette into a tray. “I'm always ready to tell the world about Edna Ferber's social lapses.”

I bit my lip. “Just what is he up to?”

“A spy, I'm sure. Old Willie, despite his slippage into senility and excessive verbiage, turns out to be a wiry sort, filled with gusto and verve. Like one of your unrealistic oil riggers in
Cimarron
. When Joshua asked one question too many, Willie punched him in the face and knocked him against the wall.” He smiled. “Hence the injured bird we just spotted looking for a nest.”

“I may start to appreciate Willie,” I said. “But I wonder what's going on. You and I are not the subjects of any story line.”

“Maybe something's going on that we don't see.”

“That thought scares me, Aleck.”

“Don't expect me to protect you from that scamp, Ferb. My weapons are words, not fists.”

“If he forces me to parse a sentence at gunpoint, I'll dial your number.”

***

The next morning Colonel Lindbergh took the stand again. Ten a.m., promptly. His wife wasn't with him today.

David Wilentz had him recount the reddish clay marks discovered in the nursery. The footprint outside the window. A man's footprint that the police neglected to measure. The homemade ladder. Letters to Dr. Condon, “Jafsie.” The arrival of the baby's sleeping garment in the mail. Riveted, the spectators were waiting for the moment when Lindbergh heard the voice of the kidnapper.

Yes, the drive to St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx, waiting in the car while Dr. Condon went by himself to deal with the man who called himself John. Cemetery John. The payment of the fifty-thousand-dollar ransom.

As he sat some three hundred yards away in the car, windows rolled up, Lindbergh heard a thick guttural German voice call out.

“I heard what was clearly a voice calling from the cemetery, to the best of my belief calling Dr. Condon.”

Wilentz paused. “What were the words?”

“In a foreign accent. ‘Hey, Doctor.'”

“Since that time have you heard the same voice?”

“Yes, I have.”

Another dramatic pause.

“Whose voice was it, Colonel, that you heard calling, ‘Hey, Doctor'?”

“It was Hauptmann's voice,” Lindbergh emphasized.

Turning his head, he stared into Bruno's face.

Bruno's body jerked in his seat. The guards on either side of him stiffened.

I looked toward Aleck, who sat enthralled, mouth open. Two and a half years after the kidnapping, I considered, and Lindbergh insisted he'd recognize that voice anywhere. Two words, yelled from a distance in a dark night graveyard.

The room was silent, hypnotized. Glances swept from Lindbergh to a stoic Bruno, eyes locked on his accuser.

The empty hole of time that followed his pronouncement seemed endless and yet a flash of a second.

Looking at the unmoving Bruno Hauptmann, I understood to my marrow that he would die in the electric chair.

Chapter Thirteen

Willie drove me into Manhattan late the next afternoon. I'd scheduled a meeting early that evening with Ernie Miller, set in motion by someone at the
Times
who knew someone who knew someone else. Ernie Miller, a little rattled at the invitation, agreed to meet me at an Italian bakery on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. He was also promised a crisp twenty-dollar bill, that, my editor informed me, was my own responsibility.

Willie was unusually silent as he cruised along, which surprised me.

“Willie,” I began, “I understand you had a little scuffle with Joshua Flagg.”

He twisted his head around, a thin smile on his face. “Word spreads, no?”

“Your fellow driver Marcus told Aleck Woollcott.”

“Ain't my proudest moment, I tell you.”

“Sounds wonderful to me. I think that reporter—or whatever he is—is of questionable morals.”

He rubbed the side of his nose and debated what to tell me. “Don't know about that, ma'am, but I do know I don't like no folks nosing around and demanding attention.”

I waited a heartbeat. “I hear that he was curious about where you drive us—in particular, me.”

The car slowed and Willie bent his head over the steering wheel. “For a quiet guy, that Marcus yammers up a storm.”

“Well, it
does
concern me, Willie, wouldn't you say?”

A long pause. “Guess so. I never got to ask him the
why
of his question because my temper got the best o' me.”

I leaned forward and tapped the back of the driver's seat. “What do you think, though? Why the question?”

Willie glanced back at me. “Hey, we drivers got a job to do. I think he believes you are onto a story that
he
wants to know about. And he got the idea”—he said
idear
—“that the drivers is like them—poor folks ready to spill the beans on our customers.”

“But all the reporters are here for the same story, no? The trial of Hauptmann for kidnapping and murder.”

He cut me off, his words rushed. “He asked me if I drove you to Englewood.”

“Next Day Hill? The Morrow estate?”

He nodded. “I told him no, but he said something about that gal what killed herself.”

I sat up. “What?”

“Dunno. Just that name, thrown out like that.” He snickered. “Then we got into it.”

I banged one fist into the palm of my hand. Violet Sharp. Joshua Flagg was pursuing—or monitoring—the same story I was. Hence his pursuit of Annabel and now her roommate, Peggy Crispen.

Willie was mumbling about something.

“What?” I said into his neck. Under his chauffeur's cap his drab grayish hair looked unwashed, scruffy.

“All this is stuff and nonsense when everyone should be planning the execution of that scoundrel Bruno.”

“I know, I know—you're convinced he's guilty. We've heard you before.”

His head swung around and the car drifted to the right. “And you ain't sure?”

“That's why we are having a trial, Willie.”

“All show, ma'am. If I had my way, he'd been strung from an oak tree in the center of town. And then a party thrown afterwards.”

“Well, perhaps then we should be thankful you're not the sheriff in town.”

He glanced into the rearview mirror. I made eye contact: anger there, stoniness.

Well, I told myself, I discovered a way to curb Willie's garrulous tongue, although I probably created yet another soul who'd like to wring my slight and powdered neck. With the three strands of real pearls.

“We are allowed to disagree, Willie.” I spoke into the silence.

“That's your opinion.” His words were clipped, final. His grip tightened on the steering wheel as we sailed into Manhattan.

***

At my Park Avenue apartment I checked in with my housekeeper, who was surprised to see me traipsing in, rushing around. I checked my mail, drank a cup of coffee, and was thankful my mother was out shopping. She'd frowned on my taking the assignment in Flemington—“You're a novelist, Edna, not a tabloid scribbler. And that trial, that evil German killer—evil, evil, evil.”

“It's for the
New York Times
,” I'd told her.

“No matter. Sometimes they like to sink down into the mud and wallow around, that paper.”

“The
Times
?”

“Wake up, Edna.”

After my coffee I caught a checkered cab up to the Bronx. The driver balked at the destination, but I'd rapped impatiently on the glass barrier between us, and he became appropriately docile. I'd sent a moody Willie back to Flemington, although he informed me he had to deliver some reporters from the newspaper back down to the town. “Willie's gadabout service,” he summed up.

I'd be staying overnight in the city, but Marcus Wood would collect me at six in the morning for the trek back to Flemington, arriving in time for the trial.

At seven at night, the streets dark and shadowy under bright streetlights, a wispy fog of sleet swirling in the air, I stepped out onto a busy sidewalk. Arthur Avenue, the roustabout heart of Little Italy in the upper borough. Despite the painful cold and growing threat of heavy nighttime snow, people pushed carts through the cluttered sidewalks, an organ grinder stood outside a small café and sang a Neapolitan ditty. As I strolled by, he extended an arm, thrusting a tin cup at me. I ignored him. “O Solo Mio” was never a favorite of mine. There was a price to be paid for offending my eardrums. Had he had a trained monkey, I might have offered a pittance. After all, the poor creature needed to be fed.

Ernie Miller had chosen the rendezvous, a corner eatery he favored called Mamma Lucia's. He knew people there, he'd told the editor at the
Times
. Home territory.

“Sounds suspect,” Aleck had told me. “You know, Edna dear, there are still persistent rumors that the Mafia and the crime bosses stole that baby. Kidnapping is a favorite pursuit of the mob. The snatch racket. Irving Bitz and Salvatore Spitale and all that sorry crowd. Lindbergh even invited Mickey Rosner, a notorious
capo
, to Hopewell, thinking the underworld would get his baby back. Or so the rumor goes. Lord, Lindy gave Mickey a copy of the first ransom note, which doubtless allowed every extortionist to jump into the game.”

“I don't think the Mafia is going to rub me out, Aleck.”

“I know. They've refused the thousands and thousands of lira I've tossed their way.”

“And Ernie Miller doesn't sound like he's a native of Palermo.”

“Really? Ernesto Millerini? I knew him as a lad, playing stick ball on Mulberry Street.” Aleck laughed until spittle seeped from the corner of his mouth. I waved him away.

Now Ernie Miller was waiting for me at a back table, and he didn't look happy. As I walked in, he stood, waited until I looked around and caught his eye, and he waved me over.

“Mr. Miller?” I approached the table.

He nodded. “I don't know why you wanna talk to me.”

“I talk to a lot of people. I'm a reporter.”

He had a raspy whine to his voice. “But I don't know nothing. I told the cops everything. You know, I met Violet Sharp one time, really, I mean, I met her walking and then, well, we went to the speakeasy. One time, almost three years ago, and now I gotta be on the front page of the newspapers.” He mopped a brow with a large handkerchief and slipped back into his chair.

“Thank you, Mr. Miller. I know you had nothing to do with…”

He spat out, “Damn right. Nothing about a kidnapping. But people—they look at me now and point me out.” His lips trembled. “My life will never be the same.”

“Yes, it will,” I assured him. “Once this is over and you've had your say, you'll get back to your life of…”

“Of what? I'm a bus driver from Closter, New Jersey. A simple guy.”

He bunched up his face. He was a tall, willowy man with sloping shoulders, a shock of fair hair cut in a tight military style. A freckled, pale face, long and bony. Dressed in a misshapen wool sweater, faded blue and green, some threads loose at the collar, he stared at me with hard, gray eyes that reminded me of a child's playground marbles. Rough hands, weathered, a scar across the back of his right wrist, which he fingered nervously. Then, reaching into the pocket of a worn gray overcoat he'd slung over the back of the booth, he took out a pack of Old Gold cigarettes and tapped one out, lit it, and closed his eyes dreamily, relaxing.

“Mr. Miller?”

His eyes popped open. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

A wistful smile. “About the way fate hands you a rotten hand.”

I pursed my lips together. “Tell that to Bruno Richard Hauptmann.”

The wrong words to say, doubtless—he froze, looked away, checked to see whether diners at a nearby table heard me.

“For Christ's sake, Miss Ferber. You do know how to make a man jump.”

“Yes, I pride myself on that talent.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

I reached into my purse and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. “For your troubles.”

He grabbed the bill and tucked it into the cellophane of the pack of cigarettes, though his fingers lingered on the paper, tapping the money. “A man has to get by, you know.” A nervous smile. “Charlie Chan smokes Old Gold, you know. I seen the ads on the billboards.”

“Nice to know.”

“Ain't it, though?” Again, he tapped the money. “This damned Depression and all. Roosevelt says…”

A waitress came to take or orders: spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and wine. Miller smiled as I ordered for both of us.

“I‘d like to ask you a couple questions.”

He drew his lips into a thin line. “Yeah, I assumed that.”

“Tell me about Violet Sharp.”

A heavy sigh. “I told it all already.”

“Again, please. Humor me.”

He looked over my shoulder. “Well, you musta read about what I told the cops. I mean, I went to them when I read about it. They were surprised.”

“Tell me.”

“I was driving one day and I thought I recognized this girl, so I stopped. We thought we knew each other, but she…like, gave me her number. And I called her. I liked her. You know, that highfalutin English accent, real charming. And she was a flirt, that girl. I mean, she worked for prim and proper folks, but she liked her good times. So I called her up and suggested we go to the movies or to a speakeasy back then when you couldn't—like, drink.”

“Of course, that's why she first lied to the police—or forgot. She said she went to the movies, not the speakeasy.”

“Well, Mrs. Morrow is old-fashioned.”

“And Violet wasn't?”

He grinned. “She was a little flirtatious. I mean, she'd wink at guys walking by.”

“She got hysterical when the police questioned her.”

“Yeah, I read all about that. They interrogated me and my friends. The four of us went out. Catharine Minners and Elmer Johnson. Easygoing friends. We had a good time, the four of us. She acted like she liked me. But she liked to talk—she told outlandish stories to us.”

“About what?”

“Oh, about how rich people act, phony-like. She liked to put on airs.”

“Why?”

“I read that when the cops finished talking to her and let her go, she winked at a secretary sitting there. The police caught that.”

“Yes, I read that. But that could have been nervousness or, I don't know, she thought, well, this is finally over with.”

He got serious, leaned in. “But she wouldn't have anything to do with kidnapping. That was the night it happened. She was with me and my friends from eight till we dropped her off at the Morrows' at eleven. Even Mrs. Morrow told the police that Violet served dinner up till eight and she saw her return at eleven. She wasn't in, you know, Hopewell or anything.”

“That doesn't mean she wasn't involved in the kidnapping.”

He started. “Why?”

“Well, Mr. Miller, she knew that the Lindberghs had decided to stay one more night in Hopewell and not return to Englewood—that the boy was sick. Anne Lindbergh called the house and reached Violet that morning, asking that Betty Gow be driven to Hopewell to help out. Violet
knew
that. Perhaps she called someone.”

“Like Hauptmann, the German guy?”

“Someone. Someone had to know the Lindberghs had changed their plans.”

A spurt of anger. “Violet was not that sort of girl.”

“You don't know that. You only met her once.”

“I was gonna call her again but, well, the kidnapping sort of changed the way things are. Especially for her.”

“Were you surprised at her suicide?”

He nodded vigorously. “God, yeah. I mean, she was filled with life, talked of going back to England with a pocket full of savings. She'd been squirreling cash away. She had plans.”

“Do you think the police scared her?”

He deliberated a long time. “They terrorized her, them cops. They pushed her, threatened, went after her over and over. They probably accused her. I mean, she just got out of the hospital having her tonsils out or something. She was weak, nervous. God, the kidnapping must have thrown everybody off. And then to have them cops down your throat like that. She was the sweetest thing.”

I agreed. “A sad story, that ending.”

“Tell me about it. Damn cops.”

“But her name is going to come up now at the trial.”

“Yeah, the defense is gonna say it was an inside job.”

I waited a heartbeat. “Maybe it was.”

His voice rose sharply. “But not by her. Maybe some other servant. The nurse, Betty Gow. What about that chauffeur, that guy named Ellerson, who drove Betty to Hopewell? Everyone seen him around the Fort Lee speakeasy—the Sha-Toe—where the gamblers hang out, lots of bucks thrown around.” He stopped talking as the waitress placed food on the table. Miller poured wine into a goblet, then broke off a crust of thick bread, munched on it.