Stolen Away (50 page)

“Oh. Oh yeah.”

“I know you don’t want to see me, but we were in the area, and I knew you lived around here, and…”

“Come in, Mr. Jensen.”

“Thank you. Nice place you got here.”

“Thanks. Let’s sit here at the kitchen table.”

He sat and talked and told me his story; he had a lot of facts and rumors and suppositions to share. He was obviously quietly tortured by this quest of his.

“I found the daughter of the woman who approached me in the boatyard on my honeymoon,” he said. “The mother is dead, but the girl, the redhead, is alive and well. Her name is Mary.”

“How’d you find her?”

“Did you know that Edgar Cayce, the famous psychic, did a reading on the case?”

“No. Really.”

“Well, my wife and I followed his directions, and by doing a little interpretation, you know—phonetic sounds instead of literal readings—we found this building in New Haven, on Maltby Street, where I think I may have been kept.”

“Yeah?”

“I got the name of the tenant that had lived there in 1932, and it was a Margaret Kurtzel, and through the mother’s sister, managed to track the daughter down. She was in Middletown, Connecticut. She still is.”

“Really.”

He sighed. “She didn’t know much. Just that her mother was a nurse, back then, working for private individuals, not hospitals or anything. And that all her life, her mother had proclaimed Hauptmann’s innocence. She didn’t know if, in fact, her mother had cared for the Lindbergh child.”

“I see.”

“You know, I’ve been trying for years to get this thing settled. It’s driving me nuts. I used the Freedom of Information Act, to try to get the baby’s fingerprints, but they’re missing.”

“Hunh. There were plenty of ’em around, once.”

“Somebody at some point got rid of them. I’ve tried to approach Mrs. Lindbergh, but it’s no use. There are DNA tests, you know, that…”

“She and her husband decided many years ago that their boy was dead.”

He shook his head, wearily.

“What do you want from me, Mr. Jensen? I haven’t been a detective for a long time.”

“I just want to know what you know,” he said.

Shit. How could I tell this guy that if I’d just had the balls to go in the goddamn ladies’ room at LaSalle Street Station, back in ’32, his whole life might have been different? Whether he was Charles Lindbergh, Jr., or not, that was true.

He was looking at me carefully. “You know, I have a memory of a man who helped me. It may not be a memory—it doesn’t seem quite real.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Something a kid might
think
he remembered. It sounds silly. I seem to remember a gunfight in my bedroom. A man told me…a man told me to hide under my bed and not come out until he said, ‘Olly olly oxen free.’”

I felt my eyes getting damp.

He grinned at me; it was Slim’s grin. “Are you that man, Mr. Heller? Did you save my little ass?”

I didn’t say anything. I got up, went to the Mr. Coffee and got myself a cup. I asked him if he wanted any and he said sure—black.

“Let’s go in the living room,” I said, handing him his coffee, “and get comfy. It’s a long story.”

Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and a few liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible—and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of my conflicting source material.

For the most part, events occur in this novel when they occurred in reality (an exception is the slaying of Max Hassel and Max Greenberg, which was shifted in time somewhat). Most of the characters in this novel are real and appear with their true names, and the occasional fictional characters have real-life counterparts (notably, Tim O’Neil and Harlan Jensen). The characters Martin Marinelli and Sister Sarah Sivella are composites, primarily suggested by one real-life husband-and-wife psychic team; however, the tryst between Heller and Sivella has no basis whatever in history. Inspector Welch is a composite character. Heller’s role as police liaison was suggested by the real-life roles of Chicago’s Pat Roche and Lt. William Cusack, both of whom went to Hopewell; and Governor Harold Hoffman (and Evalyn McLean) did hire a number of private investigators to work on the Hauptmann case.

Bob Conroy and his wife indeed died in a “double suicide,” after Conroy had been pointed out to the authorities as the probable kidnapper by the incarcerated Capone; but my speculation about the real role of the Conroys in the kidnapping is just that: speculation. The false alarm on Sheridan Road in the first chapter, however, is loosely based on fact.

Several hardworking people helped me research this book.

George Hagenauer, whose many contributions include developing an extensive time chart of events, spent hours in libraries gathering book and newspaper references, and on the phone discussing with me the ins and outs of this complicated and very strange case. He also went to Virginia Beach to do Edgar Cayce research, and toured the Indonesian Embassy (the former home of Evalyn McLean at 2020 Massachusetts Avenue) in Washington, D.C. George is a valued collaborator on the Heller “memoirs” and I appreciate his contribution as much as his friendship.

Lynn Myers, one of the nicest people I know, dug in and did research rivaling George’s. Against considerable odds, he rounded up the voluminous and invaluable
Liberty
magazine material that became the backbone of this novel. The interest of
Liberty
publisher, Bernarr MacFadden, in the Lindbergh case resulted in book-length multipart stories by Governor Harold Hoffman, John Condon, Paul Wendel, Evalyn Walsh McLean, Lt. James J. Finn and Lloyd Fisher, as well as individual articles by Edward J. Reilly, Fulton Oursler and Lou Wedemar. One of these articles, “Before the Body Was Found She Said the Lindbergh Baby Was Murdered,” by Frederick L. Collins, was the best source of information on the involvement of psychics (other than Cayce) in the case. All in all, the
Liberty
articles constitute over a thousand pages of coverage on the Lindbergh case. Lynn also dug out numerous individual articles on the case, as well as background on Hassel and Greenberg, Edgar Cayce and John Hughes Curtis. A big tip of the fedora to this methodical, obsessive researcher.

Mike Gold, a Chicago history buff with an eye for detail, provided a vivid impromptu telephone tour through LaSalle Street Station. Dominick Abel, my agent, provided some tough, valuable advice midway that helped shape this novel. My keen-eyed editor Coleen O’Shea deserves special thanks for her longtime interest in, and support of, Nate Heller and his coauthor; thanks also to editors Charles Michener (who, among much else, helped come up with a title) and Marjorie Braman.

Other tips of the fedora for support along the way go to my old high-school pal Jim Hoffmann (who provided a videotape of the 1976 TV docudrama,
The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case
); Janiece Mull for Norfolk background material; Bob Randisi for New York reference material; loyal Heller fan William C. Wilson for assorted background details; and booksellers Patterson Smith and Ed Ebeling, for digging up rare vintage books, magazines and newspapers covering the case.

Mickey Spillane provided information about Elizabeth, New Jersey, and put me in contact with his friend Walter Milos, who did extensive research and legwork on the Elizabeth Carteret Hotel. Thank you, gentlemen.

While all were useful, none of the books contemporary to the Lindbergh case proved entirely reliable:
Jafsie Tells All!
(1936), by Dr. John F. Condon, is predictably pompous and often at odds with Condon’s courtroom testimony;
The Hand of Hauptmann
(1937), by J. Vreeland Haring, is a biased account by one of the prosecution’s many handwriting experts, although one who never testified;
The Great Lindbergh Hullabaloo
(1932), by Laura Vitray, is an odd exercise in unintentional whimsy by a former Hearst reporter who apparently felt the kidnapping was a hoax; and
The Lindbergh Crime
(1935), by Sidney Whipple, is a United Press reporter’s pro-prosecution account. Whipple, though occasionally wildly inaccurate, does present the most detailed contemporary book-length account; and his later
The Trial of Bruno Hauptmann
(1937) presents a valuable edited version of the court transcript.

The latter-day nonfiction accounts are also a mixed bag; each has its merits, but each also has its limitations.

The most coherent, straightforward and readable narrative is the admirably researched
The Lindbergh Case
(1987) by Jim Fisher; unfortunately, ex-FBI agent Fisher is almost laughably pro-law enforcement, and in interviews has referred to the New Jersey State Police as mounting an “inspired” investigation. Also, Fisher tends to either omit any pro-Hauptmann evidence or relegate it to a footnote.

The most literate Lindbergh account is
The Airman and the Carpenter
(1985), by celebrated British crime historian Ludovic Kennedy; but Kennedy’s logical, convincing defense of Hauptmann has a rather narrow focus—John H. Curtis and Paul Wendel are barely mentioned, and Gaston Means and Evalyn McLean appear not at all.

The groundbreaking
Scapegoat
(1976) by
New York Post
reporter Anthony Scaduto was an especially important resource for this novel; but Scaduto concentrates on the Ellis Parker/Paul Wendel aspect of the case, with Curtis getting rather short shrift and Gaston Means (and Mrs. McLean) absent but for one brief mention. On the other hand, his coverage of Isidor Fisch is extensive and impressive. Scaduto jumps around considerably; readers looking for a nonfiction balance probably need to read Fisher and Kennedy and Scaduto.

The first major account of the case was George Waller’s bestseller
Kidnap
(1961), a readable if conventional and occasionally inaccurate pro-prosecution depiction. Annoyingly, the nearly 600-page nonfiction novel does not have an index.

An extremely important source was journalist Theon Wright’s
In Search of the Lindbergh Baby
(1981), which is the only one of these books that pulls in all the disparate elements of this convoluted case, and attempts to make sense of them. Like
Scapegoat,
however, Wright’s book is scattershot, and is best appreciated by readers already familiar with the basic facts.

My candidate for the best nonfiction look at the Lindbergh case is “Everybody Wanted in the Act,” a lengthy article by crime reporter Alan Hynd, published in
True
(March 1949); it has been reprinted several times in various anthologies, including
Violence in the Night
(1955) and
A Treasury of
True (1956). Hynd covered the case for
True Detective Mysteries
and was the coauthor of Evalyn Walsh McLean’s
Liberty
magazine serial, “Why I Am Still Investigating the Lindbergh Case” (1938). His cynical reporter’s-eye view—neither pro-prosecution nor pro-Hauptmann—is refreshing; he was also one of the first to voice doubt about the identity of the small corpse found in the woods of the Sourland Mountains. My account of the ghostly doings at Far View derives from this article, and from Hynd’s coauthored piece with Mrs. McLean.

The portrait of Evalyn Walsh McLean herein is drawn from the
Liberty
magazine serial mentioned above, and Mrs. McLean’s autobiography
Father Struck It Rich
(1936, cowritten with Boyden Sparkes). Also helpful was
Blue Mystery: The Story of the Hope Diamond
(1976), by Susanne Steinem Patch. The romance between Evalyn and Nate Heller is, of course, fictional, and I know of no parallel to it in Mrs. McLean’s life.

The portrait of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was drawn largely from their own writings:
We
(1927),
The Spirit of St. Louis
(1953), and
Autobiography of Values
(1977) by Charles; and
Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead
(1973) by Anne. Also beneficial were
Lindbergh: A Biography
(1976), Leonard Mosley; and
The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh
(1968), Walter S. Ross.

Helpful in depicting Ellis Parker were
The Cunning Mulatto and Other Cases of Ellis Parker, American Detective
(1935), Fletcher Pratt, and a 1938
Liberty
magazine series, “Whatever Happened to Ellis Parker?” by Fred Allhoff. Helpful in depicting Gaston Means was
Spectacular Rogue: Gaston B. Means
(1963), by Edwin P. Hoyt, and “Gaston Means, King of Swindlers,” a three-part serial in
Startling Detective Adventures
(1933) by Judson Wyatt.

Frank J. Wilson is the subject of two books, both of which were useful in determining the role of the federal government in the Lindbergh case:
Special Agent: A Quarter Century with the Treasury Department and the Secret Service
(1956) by Wilson himself with Beth Day, and
The Man Who Got Capone
(1976), by Frank Spiering. Similarly useful were
The Tax Dodgers
(1948), a memoir by Elmer L. Irey with William J. Slocum;
Secret File
(1969) by Hank Messick, a thorough study of the IRS Intelligence Division with Messick’s usual unsubstantiated, gratuitous smearing of Eliot Ness;
Treasury Agent—The Inside Story
(1958) by Andrew Tully, which explores the Capone, Lindbergh and Waxey Gordon cases; and
Where My Shadow Falls
(1949), a memoir by FBI man Leon Turrou, who calls into doubt the reliability of Jafsie Condon as an eyewitness.

The portrayal of Edgar Cayce is based on material in
Edgar Cayce—Mystery Man of Miracles
(1956) by Joseph Millard; also consulted were
My Life with Edgar Cayce
(1970), David E. Kahn as told to Will Oursler,
The Psychic Detectives
(1984), Colin Wilson, and
A Prophet in His Own Country—The Story of the Young Edgar Cayce
(1974), Jess Steam. Cayce’s involvement in the Lindbergh case is drawn from the aforementioned Theon Wright book and
The Outer Limits of Edgar Cayce’s Power
(1971), by Edgar Evans Cayce and Hugh Lynn Cayce, as well as photocopies of transcripts of his actual psychic “readings” and related correspondence. (Although I report only one, Cayce did several readings on the Lindbergh case.)

The story of the fictional character Harlan Jensen’s search for his identity is patterned upon that of Harold Olson, as reported in Wright and Scaduto, including Mr. Olson’s latter-day tracing of the route Edgar Cayce described.

Hundreds of newspaper articles (from the
Tribune
,
Daily News
,
Herald-American
and other Chicago papers, as well as the
New York Times
and the
Virginia Pilot
and the
Ledger Star)
served as source material for
Stolen Away.
A number of “true detective” magazines of the day proved helpful, including
Daring Detective
,
Startling Detective Adventures
and
True Detective Mysteries.
Among magazine articles that proved useful were “Did They
Really
Solve the Lindbergh Case?” by Craig Thompson,
Saturday Evening Post
, March 8, 1952; “The Baby Is Found…Dead!” by Allan Keller,
American History Illustrated
, May 1975; “The Story of the Century” by David Davidson,
American Heritage
, February 1976; and “Did the Evidence Fit the Crime?” by Tom Zito,
Life
, March 1982.

I am also indebted to the anonymous authors of the Federal Writers Project guides on the states of Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Michigan and Virginia, as well as the massive volume on Washington, D.C.; all of these appeared in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

A number of books dealing with organized crime were helpful:
The Don
(1977), William Brashler;
Captive City
(1969), Ovid Demaris;
Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone
(1971), John Kobler;
Roemer: Man Against the Mob
(1989), William F. Roemer, Jr.;
The Mobs and the Mafia
(1972), Hank Messick and Burt Goldblatt;
The Legacy of Al Capone
(1975), George Murray;
Barbarians in Our Midst
(1952), Virgil W. Peterson;
Encyclopedia of American Crime
(1982), Carl Sifakis;
The Mafia Encyclopedia
(1987), Carl Sifakis;
Syndicate City
(1954), Alson J. Smith; and
Murder, Inc.
(1951), Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder.