Stolen Away (37 page)

“That’s right,” he said, and he extended his hand.

I decked him.

He sat on the kitchen floor, rubbing his jaw, arms and legs pointing every which way, eyes as confused as a drowning kitten’s. “What the hell was that for?”

I leaned over him; both my hands were fists. “That was for faking that fucking phone number. In the closet in the other room?”

His face went slack, his eyes filled with fear and something else. What? Remorse?

“Oh Christ,” he said. “Who are you?”

“The guy who’s going to beat the ever-loving crap out of you, if you don’t ’fess up.”

On his ass, he scuttled back into a corner between kitchen cabinets and stove, like the world’s tallest, skinniest rat. “Listen…I don’t want any trouble…this isn’t gonna pay off for anybody…”

I went over and grabbed him by his raincoat and hauled him off the floor and started slapping him around; his glasses flew off. Evalyn was watching, doing a nervous little jump every time I slapped him. But she liked it.

“Stop!” he said. “Stop!”

I stopped. I was starting to get embarrassed. The guy wasn’t fighting back at all.

“Stop,” he said.

He was crying.

“Jesus,” I said, softly. I let go of him.

He sat on the floor and cried.

“I didn’t hit him that hard,” I said to Evalyn.

She also seemed embarrassed. “I don’t think you did…I think it’s something else.”

I got down on my haunches and said, “You want to talk, Tim?”

Now all three of us were embarrassed.

“Fuck,” he said, wiping tears and snot off his face with big flat hands. Then said to Evalyn, “Excuse the language, ma’am.”

I gave him my handkerchief. He wiped off his face, blew his nose. Awkwardly, he started to hand the hanky back to me.

“It’s yours now,” I said, and helped him to his feet. Evalyn handed him his glasses; they hadn’t broken.

“You…you’re right,” he said, slipping on the specs. “You didn’t hit me that hard. What’s your name, anyway?”

“My name is Heller. I’m a detective from Chicago.”

“What are the Chicago cops doing in this, at this late date?”

“I’m private. Working for Governor Hoffman, and Mrs. McLean, here. You did write Jafsie’s number on the wainscoting, didn’t you?”

He nodded. Sighed heavily. “I got myself a real nice front-page scoop out of it. Got myself a big fat byline. But I never dreamed it would be one of the key goddamn pieces of evidence they used to nail that poor son of a bitch.”

“I never met a reporter with a conscience before.”

“I never knew I had a conscience, till you started slapping me around.”

“So it bothers you.”

“More than I even knew, apparently. I’m sorry. Blubbering like a baby like that…it’s really humiliating…”

“Will you come forward?”

“No,” he said.

“No!” Evalyn said, dumbfounded. The blood, and the sympathy, drained out of her face. She clutched my arm. “Give him the Chicago lie-detector test, Nate!”

“Huh?” O’Neil said. His eyes were large and scared.

“Easy, Evalyn,” I said. “I’m not so young and reckless, anymore.”

Besides, my gun was in my suitcase.

I put a firm hand on O’Neil’s shoulder; he was taller than me, by perhaps three inches, but I outweighed him twenty-five pounds. “You want to run that by me again?”

“I’m not coming forward. I can’t.” He held out his open palms like a beggar. “Precisely ’cause it did get into the trial, as evidence. I might go to jail. I could lose my job. I would be in very deep shit.”

“You are in very deep shit,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You can beat on me…incidentally, I’m prepared to fight you back, now…but it’s not going to change things. You’ll be the one in jail, for assault. And I’d sue Mrs. McLean out of some of that money she obviously has to burn.”

He was right. There really wasn’t much I could do.

“But if you’re investigating Bruno’s case,” he said, “trying to cheat the executioner out of his fun, at the last minute…I can be of help.”

“Oh?”

He nodded vigorously. His face was haggard, dark circles under the eyes. “Check the record. I’ve dug up any number of stories, since the Jafsie phone-number scam, bolstering Hauptmann’s position.”

“You mean you’ve been working to clear him?”

“Not exactly. I’m a reporter, and I do my job…but I’m working that angle, yeah.” He pointed a thumb at his chest. “I’m the guy who tracked down the employment agency records that showed Hauptmann was at work at the Majestic Apartments on March first, 1932, just like he said he was…when the cops conveniently lost the time sheets for that week.”

“You are trying to balance the books, aren’t you, Tim? What can you give me?”

“How about the real lowdown on Izzy Fisch?” he asked, with a wicked little smile, like a jeweler about to show Evalyn a really big rock.

She and I exchanged significant glances.

“What have you got, Tim?” I asked.

“Plenty. See, I’ve got a big story on Fisch in the works. Real in-depth. But none of what I’ve got is public knowledge yet—for example, I know that the cops have ledger books and letters they confiscated from this apartment, that tend to back up the so-called Fisch story—none of which was used at the trial. I know lab tests back up Hauptmann’s claim that the money he had was water-soaked. And I know that Fisch was a confidence man who borrowed money from friends to invest in nonexistent businesses. I can tell you, based upon dozens of instances I’ve tracked, that Isidor Fisch never once repaid a loan.”

“So he was a small-time con artist. But was he a large-scale crook?”

O’Neil shook his head, made a clicking sound in his cheek. “That I don’t know. Could he have been in on the kidnapping? Sure. Masterminded it? I dunno. I know this: the rooming house he lived in was right smack in the middle of the Italian mob’s stomping grounds.”

“Luciano territory?”

“And how.” He seemed amused as he asked: “Does a Chicago boy like you know what Luciano’s best-paying racket is, since Repeal?”

I nodded. “Dope.”

“Give the man a cigar. And here Izzy Fisch is, importing furs and making trips to Europe. Think he might have been importing more than just sealskins? And I was able to connect Fisch to at least one Luciano hoodlum, a guy named Charley DeGrasie, who’s dead now, unfortunately. That was when the story started getting a little warm, and I backed off.”

I was taking notes, by this time. “Is that all you have on Fisch, then?”

“Not hardly. I talked to a guy named Arthur Trost. He’s a paint contractor. He said he knew Fisch since the summer of ’31, that he used to run into Fisch at a billiard parlor in Yorkville—German section of Manhattan. Around the time of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Fisch stopped frequenting the place.”

“So?”

“So in the summer of ’32, a painter pal of Trost’s asks him if he wanted to buy some hot money for fifty cents on the dollar from a friend of his. Trost told the guy he’d have to meet the person doing the selling, and got escorted to that very same billiard parlor, where who should be waiting but Isidor Fisch. Trost told his pal that he already knew Fisch and that Fisch already owed him money and that he wouldn’t believe Fisch if he was calling for help from the window of a burning building.”

“So Trost never actually saw this ‘hot money.’”

“No. But it connects Fisch to dealing in hot cash, doesn’t it? Considering the timing, very likely Lindbergh cash. I also talked to a guy named Gustave Mancke, who runs an ice-cream parlor in New Rochelle. He and his wife Sophie swear that for an eight-week period in January and February of ’32, right up to the Sunday before the kidnapping, Izzy Fisch ate in their shop every Sunday evening.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a revelation.”

“It does when you consider Mancke claims Fisch would always meet with the same two people.”

“Oh? And who did he meet with?”

“Violet Sharpe,” he said, “and Ollie Whately.”

We had lunch on Italian Harlem’s market street—First Avenue—in a modest place called Guido’s where we had spaghetti and espresso. From our window seat we could see the crowded sidewalk where housewives bickered with vendors over greens, olives, cheeses, clams, whatever; it was an Italian version of Maxwell Street, a barrel of work gloves here, a bin of bread there, anything you needed, from pomegranates to underwear.

“I always think of Harlem as Negro,” Evalyn admitted, as we began dessert, each of us working on a gaudy pastry.

“East Harlem isn’t,” I said, cutting the dick-shaped sweet with a knife. “Lucky Luciano operates out of this part of town. Lucky and the boys noticed a long time ago there was money to be made in Negro Harlem.”

“Money?”

“Sure. Most of the big nightclubs in Harlem have Italian owners, or anyway mob guys like Owney Madden—you’ve heard of the Cotton Club, Evalyn? And a couple years ago, Luciano made his move on the colored numbers racket, from here.”

“This apartment house we’re going to,” she said, “seems to be mostly Germans.”

“Not surprising.”

“In an Italian neighborhood?”

“German immigrants can enter on a level the Italians have to work their way up to,” I said. “Don’t forget, wops are about as dark as white people get.”

My remark seemed to disturb her. “Do you mean that, Nate?”

“What do you mean, do I mean that?”

“You don’t strike me as a bigoted person.”

“Hey, I’m half Jew. I’d be in the same boat, if I hadn’t been dealt my mother’s physical traits. Don’t let’s go high-hat on me, Evalyn—most of your servants are colored, while none of the guests at your Washington soirees are…unless it’s the King of Zanzibar or something.”

“Sometimes I don’t know when you’re kidding.”

“That’s easy—when it sounds like I’m kidding, I’m not. When it sounds like I’m not kidding, I am.” I checked my watch. “I think we’ve killed enough time—we can visit Mrs. Henkel, now.”

We’d called ahead to see Gerta Henkel, friend of both Richard and Anna Hauptmann, and she’d said to come over in the early afternoon; she and her husband Carl lived in Kohl’s rooming house at 149 East 127th, where Isidor Fisch had also lived. So had several other good friends of the Hauptmanns, from the clique of German immigrants who made merry at Hunter’s Island.

I pulled the Packard into the Warner-Quinlan filling station at the corner of East 127th and Lexington, a large modem station with a service garage and billboards trumpeting itself on either side.

“Do you know what this place is?” I asked Evalyn.

“It’s a gas station, Nate. Don’t they have these in Chicago?”

“It’s
the
gas station: the one where Hauptmann passed the gold certificate that got him caught. And just three doors down from here is Fisch’s apartment house.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Does that mean anything?”

“I don’t know.”

I got out of the Packard and, as he was filling the tank, asked the attendant if the manager was here.

“Walter?” the mustached, geeky attendant asked. “Sure. You want I should get him?”

“Please.”

Walter Lyle, the filling-station manager, came out rubbing grease off his hands with a rag. He was a somewhat stocky, pleasant-looking guy in his late thirties; he wore a cap and a coin-changer.

“Help you?” he asked with a neutral smile.

“My name’s Heller,” I said, and I flashed him my badge. “Doing one final follow-up investigation on the Hauptmann case.”

He smiled. You could see in his eyes that this was a big deal in his life; he hadn’t got tired yet of people asking him about how he helped nab Hauptmann.

“Always glad to help, Officer,” he said.

I hadn’t said I was a cop, of course, but there was no law saying I had to correct him.

“We understand,” I said, “that Hauptmann had some friends in the neighborhood.”

“Still does—some of ’em live just down the block.”

“Did you know that at the time?”

That seemed to confuse him. “What do you mean?”

“Was Hauptmann a regular customer? Stands to reason he might’ve stopped in here before, since he had friends just down the street.”

“He wasn’t a regular customer, no. I might’ve seen him around.”

“Might’ve?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think it was his first time in. I think that blue sedan of his had rolled in here now and then. First time he passed a gold certificate, though.”

That in itself was interesting.

“How about this guy Isidor Fisch?”

‘That’s the ‘Fisch story’ fella, right? I guess he did live around here.”

“Just a few doors down the street.”

“Maybe so, but I didn’t know him. He was poor as a church mouse, I hear, so stands to reason he wouldn’t even
have
a car.”

“That’s probably right,” I said. “Well, thank you.”

“Any time, Officer. You didn’t want to go over how I come to notice the gold certificate? We’d been told to be careful of counterfeits, so…”

“No, that’s okay, Mr. Lyle.”

“Oh. Well, fine.” He couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Good afternoon to you, Officer.”

The brownstone down the block was a five-story walk-up; this was a fairly busy thoroughfare, and many of the buildings had a bottom-floor storefront, but not this one. It had obviously been an apartment house at one time, but as the neighborhood had begun to slide got converted to a rooming house, large apartments turned into modest one-and two-room suites.

Gerta Henkel was an apple-cheeked strudel in a cream-colored sweater that showed off her finer points. Around her pale neck she wore some cheap pearls, which she toyed with as she met us at the door. Her eyes were small and dark and wide-set, and her mouth was generous if rather thin-lipped. She smiled frequently. She offered me her hand, at the door of the little flat, and her grasp was warm and soft.

“Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Henkel.”

We stepped inside and she closed the door.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, “anything I can do to help Richard, I will.”

Her accent touched certain words—“anyt’ing”—in an appealing way.

“This is Evalyn McLean,” I said, introducing the two women, who gave each other cold appraisals. They instinctively did not like each other, not uncommon between two women who are attractive in differing ways, but shook hands and smiled in a bad approximation of cordiality.

She led us to a little table near a gauzily curtained window overlooking the street. Her hips were sheathed in a black skirt and she walked with a sway as compelling as the swing of a hypnotist’s watch.

“I’ll get coffee,” she said. “Cream or sugar, anyone?”

“Black is fine,” I said, and Evalyn asked for cream.

Evalyn whispered to me, “Do you think Hauptmann…you know?”

What she meant was, did Hauptmann have an affair with Gerta, as Prosecutor Wilentz had done his best to imply at the trial.

“If he didn’t,” I said, “he’s nuts.”

She made a face and boxed my arm.

Gerta returned with a tray of small brimming coffee cups and some tiny, crunchy sugar cookies.

“I’d like to speak to your husband, too, Mrs. Henke.”

“He be gone till six, at least,” she said. “Working a job in the Bronx.”

Henkel was a house painter. Seemed like many of Hauptmann’s friends were in the construction trades.

“That man Wilentz,” Gerta said, nibbling a cookie with tiny white teeth, “tried to make Richard and me look bad. There was nothing bad between us, Mr. Heller. Richard was always a gentleman.”

“You met at Hunter’s Island?”

“Yes. We all go there for good time.”

“But wasn’t Mrs. Hauptmann away, when you met Dick?”

“I guess. But Anna and me become good friends. We are real good friends. I spend much time with her. I have spend time with her in Trenton; we stay at a hotel, so she can be near Richard, sometimes.”

“Gerta…may I call you Gerta?”

“Sure. Can I call you by your first name?”

Evalyn drank her coffee; it had cream in it, but her expression was black.

“Yes, please—call me Nate.”

“You look Irish, Nate—but your name is German, isn’t it?”

“My people came from Halle.”

“I grew up in Leipzig. Went to school there with Fisch. That’s who you want to know about, right?”

“Yes. He lived in this building?”

“He had one furnished room—thirteen dollars a week; on this same floor. He moved from here, though, in the spring of ’33, to a bigger place, in Yorkville, near the brokerage office where he and Richard would go.”

When she said “though,” it sounded like “dough.”

“Before Fisch moved, Richard would meet him, here, at your place?”

“Yes. This is what give Wilentz ideas about Richard and me.” She made a face; what a cutie—I couldn’t blame Wilentz for any ideas he might have about her. “Richard would stop and have coffee with me, when he come to pick up Fisch. But we were not alone together. Fisch was here, or Carl, or sometimes my sister.”

“Gerta, frankly, it doesn’t matter to me either way, about you and Dick.”

That made her eyes spark. She smiled. “Really?” she asked, and she nibbled a cookie.

“What kind of fellow,” Evalyn said tightly, getting us back on track, “was this Isidor Fisch?”

She shrugged; her breasts under the pale creamy sweater had a life of their own. “He was a liar. A sneaky little shrimp. The only thing he ever told the truth about was he really was sick. He got very run-down. He said his lungs were bad ’cause of years he spent in Frigidaire rooms dressing fur pelts.”

“You never liked him?” I asked.

“He got on my nerves. He always get me nervous, pacing up and down on the floor and looking out this window to see if Richard come or not. He would go away with Richard, but sometimes Richard didn’t come, and he go away alone. I say, ‘Where you go, Izzy, working or what?’ He say he go down to the stock market.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of him, would you?”

“I do,” she said. “A snapshot from Hunter’s Island. You can take it. I don’t look so good in it, though.”

“That’s all right,” Evalyn said, and smiled sweetly.

Gerta got up and I watched the cheeks of her ass moving like pistons under the black skirt as she made her way across the tiny, tidy living room and Evalyn kicked me in the shins under the table.

“Do you believe her?” Evalyn whispered.

“About the affair?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t matter. If every man who wanted to sleep with Gerta was a kidnapper, no baby in this country would be safe.”

Soon Gerta was back, and the picture of Fisch revealed a dark-haired, acned, jug-eared, smirky Jew in his twenties; bow tie and tweed sportcoat. Even in a still photo he looked like a cocky little smart-ass. In the photo, Gerta, cute as a button but not as cute as in real life, sat behind him and leaned forward, her hands on his shoulders.

Evalyn was looking at the picture. “You seem friendly enough with him here.”

“He was fun, at first. His English was the best of us all. Had a swell line of bull. But even back in the old country, as teenager, he was in the black market. And here, with his schemes, he took fifteen hundred from my Carl’s mother for this pie company that never was, and another almost three thousand from her for invest in furs.”

“That’s a lot of dough,” I said.

“People’s life saving,” she said bitterly. “And my mother, he get from her four thousand.”

It sounded like “t’ousand.”

“And he got some from Erica, too,” she said, “how much, I don’t know.”

“Erica?” Evalyn asked.

“My sister,” she said. “And all our friends—hundreds dollars here, thousands dollars there. But you know what? We thought he was rich—he always said he was worth thirty thousand, easy. But he had other friends, who thought he was poor! I heard that when he moved out of here, he told these other friends that he was evicted! That he had to sleep wherever he could, in Hooverville and on benches in Grand Central depot. That way he could beg off them.”

“What a weasel,” I said.

“I tell you how I figure out he is keeping one group of friends away from the other. When Izzy is going down to the steamship, to go to Germany, Erica and me decide to go down and say goodbye, to surprise him. We go aboard and see Izzy talking with four or five men, strangers to us, but you can tell they was friends with him. Izzy saw us and his face went white as sheet; he came over, angry, and said, ‘What the hell are you doing here, you girls?’ I say, ‘The hell with you, Izzy—we just want to surprise you, to say goodbye, you nasty little bastard!’ The nerve of him. He apologize, show us to his cabin, but then said he was busy and shooed us away fast as he could.”

“He was conning everybody,” I said. “Getting money from your circle by playing the big-shot investor, and milking others using the poor-mouth routine.”

“It worked,” Gerta said, shrugging. “But he was a strange one.”

“Strange, how?” Evalyn said.

“Well, I never see him with a woman. When I first meet him, I thought he was kind of…cute, in a way. Like a little boy. But, uh…he never seemed interested. Most men like me. I don’t mean to be bragging, but…”

“I believe you,” I said.

“And there was this crazy religion of his.”

“What, Judaism?”

“No!” She grinned. “Spooks and stuff.”

“Spooks and stuff?”

“What do they call it? Spiritualist.”

I sat up, knocking the table; coffee spilled. I apologized and said, “Tell me more about this.”

She shrugged. “He belonged to this little church. Not a church, really—just a storefront, all cleared out for benches and stuff. They do silly things over there, I hear.”

“Like what?”

“What do they call them—séances. Did you know Izzy Fisch knew this girl Violet Sharpe?”

Evalyn and I traded quick looks.

“The maid Violet Sharpe, who killed herself,” she continued, “and this older man, who was supposed to be a butler for the Lindberghs, they often come to that church. I think they were members.”

“One of the butlers was named Septimus Banks,” I said. My nerves were jumping, suddenly.

“I don’t think that’s the name.”