Stolen Away (44 page)

The Treasury Building was on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood; the White House was across the street. The many-pillared granite-and-sandstone structure loomed imposingly on this cold, rain-spitting Monday morning, an illusion of a perfect government, an American Athens. If the dollar were as sound as the Treasury Building looked, maybe I wouldn’t have to sleep in my office.

I went in the Fifteenth Street entrance, where amidst the bustle of bureaucrats I soon found the central office corridor, and the room number I was seeking. At the far end of a large, busy bullpen, Frank J. Wilson sat in a glassed-in office, burrowed in at a work-cluttered desk.

There was no secretary. I knocked and Wilson looked up and smiled indifferently and waved me in. He was sitting sideways, working at a typewriter on a stand. Like the army of accountants in the large room beyond, he worked in his suit and tie; the tie wasn’t even loosened.

Frank Wilson had changed only marginally since 1932—he wore wire-rim glasses, now, not black-rims, and his face was fleshier, his thinning hair grayer. I’d seen Wilson on several occasions since the early phase of the Lindbergh case. Just last year we’d bumped into each other in Louisiana. We’d grown guardedly friendly; warily respectful.

“Thanks for seeing me, Frank,” I said. I hung my raincoat and hat next to his on a coat tree.

“Nice to see you again, Heller,” he said. He hadn’t stopped typing yet. “Be with you in a moment.”

I found a chair.

The small office had several filing cabinets; on the wall behind him were framed photos of himself and various dignitaries, including President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau and Charles Lindbergh.

“Sorry,” he said, with a tight smile, as he turned and sat facing me at the desk; huge piles of manila case folders were on either side of the central blotter. “I’m hip deep in procedural recommendations.”

“Oh really,” I said, not terribly interested.

“There’s been a big influx of counterfeiting,” he said, “and Secretary Morgenthau has asked me to recommend methods of bringing it under control.”

“Isn’t that the job of the Secret Service?”

“Well, yes, but the Secretary has asked me, as a favor, to do a survey of the investigative and administrative procedures of the Service.” He said this casually, but I knew he was bragging.

“That’s why your office isn’t in the wing with the Intelligence Unit, anymore.”

“Right. Temporary quarters, these. You see, Moran is going to retire soon, so some changes are going to be made, obviously. I’m just doing a little advance work.”

William H. Moran was the longtime head of the Secret Service; this was Wilson’s way of telling me he was being groomed for the job.

“Well, gee, Frank, it sounds like things are going well for you, busy as you are.”

“Yes. Not too busy to see you, of course. You say you have new information about the Lindbergh case?” He smiled doubtfully. “At this late date, Heller? If it was anybody but you, I’d have dismissed it as a crank call.”

“I didn’t know who else to turn to—you and Irey are the only real possibilities, and Irey’s up so high in the government now, I don’t know if I could get to him.”

His brow was knit, the eyes behind the wire-frames were tight. “Nate, I know you well enough to know you’re not in this out of altruism. No offense, but surely there’s a client in the woodpile.”

“There is. I’m working for Governor Harold Hoffman.”

He bristled. Shifting in his chair, his mouth a thin line, he said, “I’m disappointed to hear that, Nate. Hoffman is a publicity hound; he’s exploiting the Lindbergh case, using it as a political football.”

“Frank, no offense to you, either—but that’s bullshit. I don’t see how being on Hauptmann’s side would be politically advantageous to anybody.”

“Hoffman’s got his eye on the Republican nomination for Vice President,” Wilson said, squinting. “If he could embarrass the Democrats in his state, if he could crack the Lindbergh case, well…”

“If he could crack the Lindbergh case,” I said, “I’d think you’d approve.”

“Damn it, Heller, the case
was
cracked!”

“Then I may be wasting my time, here, Frank, not to mention yours. Perhaps you don’t care to hear about what I’ve uncovered….”

He grimaced, impatient—whether with me or himself, I can’t say. Then he smiled politely and said, “Nonsense. If you’ve come up with something new, I want to know about it.”

“I thought so. After all, you were never a big proponent of the ‘lone wolf’ theory.”

“No. But I
am
of the theory that Hauptmann’ll spill his guts before he goes to the chair. Only, as long as bleeding hearts like Hoffman keep the case open, and keep his false hopes up, Bruno’s not about to finger his accomplices.”

“Well, maybe we can find those ‘accomplices’ without his help. But Frank—my opinion is, Hauptmann’s a minor figure in the case at best, and probably a flat-out patsy.”

Wilson sighed. He shook his head wearily. “Out of respect to you, Nate, I’ll hear you out.”

“All right. Now in some instances, I can’t tell you how I’ve been made privy to information. You’ll have to view at least some of what I’m going to tell you the way you’d view a tip from a good informant.”

He accepted that with a nod.

“What I’d like to present is my scenario for how the kidnapping and the extortion may have happened. This isn’t the only way it could have played. There are several variant ways you could interpret the things I’ve learned; but I think I’ve put the puzzle together. I spent the weekend going over old field notes, working it out.”

He had to smile. “Nate Heller devotes his weekend to solving the case that has mystified the world for over four years. That was damn white of you.”

I grinned. “Okay—I deserve that. Anyway, my explanation, or theory if you will, is a hell of a lot more likely than the one Wilentz got Hauptmann convicted on.”

Wilson nodded again. “One thing I’ll grant you—it always bothered me that Wilentz in his opening statement to the jury said he was going to prove the child died dropping to the ground, fracturing its skull, when the ladder rung broke. Then in his closing argument, Wilentz stated flatly that Hauptmann bludgeoned the boy in his crib, with the chisel. Wilentz is lucky that blunder didn’t get the conviction overturned.”

“Especially,” I said, “since neither version of the child’s death is supported by any evidence. No impression of the child’s body in the soft ground below, from falling; and no blood or other matter splattered in the crib, from a bludgeoning.”

Wilson was nodding again, which made me feel better.

I began by telling him about Paul Wendel. He had never heard of Wendel, and wrote the name down on a notepad. I, of course, didn’t mention that Wendel was in Ellis Parker’s illegal custody—just that Parker was investigating Wendel.

“Paul Wendel concocts this plan to kidnap the baby,” I said, “and sells Capone on it. It’s too dangerous and loony a plan for Capone to share with Frank Nitti, who is comparatively conservative in such matters; and it’s unlikely something this wild would interest Luciano, Madden or any of the others.”

“Dutch Schultz might have been that crazy,” Wilson said.

I had to restrain myself from telling him that Nitti had said the same thing.

“But that’s a case in point,” I said. “Not so long ago, Schultz had his own crazy idea—kill Tom Dewey. And we both know how that wound up.”

When Dutch Schultz wanted to hit Dewey the star prosecutor, it was vetoed by Luciano, Meyer Lansky and the boys; when Schultz bridled, he got lead poisoning in a Newark restaurant.

“Now I’m not sure whether Capone or Wendel approaches them,” I said, “but Max Hassel and Max Greenberg are recruited to engineer the snatch. Why would they go along with such a thing? Probably because they, and possibly their boss Waxey Gordon, want to curry Capone’s favor. A beer war seems to be abrewing, shall we say, and the more powerful elements on the East Coast—Luciano, Schultz and so on—are in a position to crush the Hassel and Greenberg operation. It doesn’t hurt them to do a favor for Capone, and make some money at the same time. Besides, Hassel and Greenberg won’t get their hands dirty—they can dispatch some of their minor bootlegger, rumrunner minions to take the risks and provide the insulation.”

Wilson was listening intently.

“Let me interrupt myself to ask you a question, Frank—who was Capone’s most frequent contact on the East Coast in ’32?”

“Well, Frankie Yale was dead by this point,” Wilson said, thoughtfully. “Our intelligence back then indicated that the guy doing the Outfit’s courier work, and the general Capone contact man with East-Coast mobsters, was Ricca. Paul Ricca—the Waiter.”

“Right on the money, Mr. Wilson,” I said, with a smile. “Ricca is unfailingly loyal to Capone. If Capone wanted to launch something that Frank Nitti and Jake Guzik and the rest of the Outfit hierarchy would reject—and after debacles like the Jake Lingle murder and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, these business-oriented types are hardly likely to embrace kidnapping the goddamn Lindbergh baby—who would Capone go to? Who was ruthless enough, and loyal enough?”

“Ricca, of course,” Wilson said. Nodding. Going along with me for the ride.

I drove on. “I think Ricca may have enlisted Gaston Means to be the intermediary between the underworld and the upperworld. Con man, ex-government agent, Means was clever and connected with everybody from bootleggers to congressmen to high society.”

“Why the hell would Capone resort to unreliable rabble like this Wendel character and, of all people, Gaston Means?”

I gave him the same explanation I’d given Nitti: they were smart, savvy crooks, who were probably smart enough not to cross Capone, and who would make perfect fall guys. They could call out Capone’s name in court and everybody would just laugh.

“Means didn’t contact Evalyn McLean at first, you know,” I said. “He contacted Colonel M. Robert Guggenheim, and a prominent judge—this was in the earliest days of the case. He seems likely to have been truly attempting to become the intermediary, at the bidding of Capone. He’s a hell of a lot more likely go-between than Jafsie Condon!”

Wilson smiled.

“Now as for the kidnapping itself, disbarred lawyer Wendel—as I mentioned—has a client named Isidor Fisch. Fisch is a con man, fence and probable dope-smuggler…”

“Nate, pardon me, but we checked Fisch a hundred different ways. He was a harmless Jewish boy suffering from tuberculosis.”

“Frank, maybe you should’ve checked one hundred and one ways.” It was time to get tough. “I know you had a man in that spiritualist church of Marinelli’s…”

“One of the best undercover agents in the Unit. Pat O’Rourke.”

“I know O’Rourke, and he is a good man. But this time he didn’t do a good job. Are you aware that Fisch lived across the street from that spiritualist church?”

“Certainly,” he said, and shrugged dismissively.

That surprised me. “You did? Didn’t you find that significant?”

“Not particularly,” he said. “Fisch didn’t even meet Hauptmann until two years after the kidnapping. Just one of the many coincidental red herrings we were always running into on the case.”

I hardly knew how to respond to that brilliant piece of deductive thinking.

“Frank, you’re operating from the premise that Hauptmann is guilty,” I said, trying to maintain control, and stay reasonable. “Assuming that Hauptmann may
not
be guilty, then his not having met Fisch until two years after the crime speaks only of Hauptmann’s
innocence
.”

He made a small dismissive wave. “Well, for the sake of argument…but I can’t accept your characterizing Pat O’Rourke’s undercover work as anything but exceptional.”

“Oh, really? Then did you know Isidor Fisch was a
member
of that spiritualist church?”

His face remained impassive, but his eyes flickered.

“So was Oliver Whately. So was Violet Sharpe.”

He sat forward. “Are you certain?”

“I have witnesses who say so. And if you send some of these famous Washington G-men or T-men into the field checking, I think you’ll come up with a lot more witnesses. Can I continue my scenario?”

He nodded; his expression was grave.

“Paul Wendel uses his client Fisch to arrange for Violet and Ollie to help, in various ways. I think Violet’s a dupe, actually, providing inside information possibly through a boyfriend, while Ollie is, on the other hand, an active participant in the scheme. He is, in fact, the prime inside accomplice. The night of the kidnapping, he probably handed the baby either down the ladder or out the front door to one of Hassel and Greenberg’s cronies. There’s a possibility these bootleggers have a connection to the servants that can be traced, even at this late date, because I understand deliveries of beer and booze were made to Whately and others.”

Wilson wore a faint humorless smirk. “I suppose Whately’s role explains why the dog didn’t bark.”

“Oh, yes and then some—you see, Whately looked after Wahgoosh. He in fact brought the dog into the household, raised it, trained it. There’s no way around it, Frank, it has to be said…”

“Oh, Heller, please don’t.”

I shrugged and smiled. “The butler did it.”

“You had to say it.”

“I was born to say it. Frank, the child was spirited away by these bootleggers, Hassel and Greenberg’s boys, and possibly along for the ride was a Capone representative.”

“Surely not Ricca.”

“No. But I have a hunch this is where Bob Conroy was positioned; he’d been on the outs with Capone, and maybe was willing to do almost anything to get back into the boss’s good graces…setting himself up, unwittingly of course, to be Capone’s fall guy.”

“Conroy is the guy that Capone was offering up, all right,” Wilson admitted. “Go on.”

“The first note, planted in the nursery, was written by Wendel; his background, incidentally, is German, although he’s apparently at least second-generation. The note was not really for ransom purposes, but merely to lead Lindbergh and the authorities into thinking the kidnapping was for real.”