Mickey Rosner, snazzy in a three-piece black suit with white pinstripes and a flourish of white silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, was holding court. His dark face, average in every way but for his large, flattened nose, was cracked in a smile; the little bastard was beaming like a new father handing out cigars. He was seated at a table for four in a speakeasy in the back of the Cadillac Restaurant on East Forty-First Street in Manhattan. With him were his two cronies, Irving Bitz and Salvatore Spitale, proprietors of the speak, which was suitably dark, smoky and crowded. Most of the crowd was reporters, which made sense, because the joint was right behind the New York Daily News building.
Spitale was perhaps forty, dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-complected, with a round face that didn’t match his slender frame, and a suit just as expensive as Rosner’s. His partner Bitz was a smaller, fatter version of Spitale only with a cheaper suit, jug ears and dumb, hooded eyes.
The three men were conducting an informal press conference; reporters juggling notebooks and beer mugs were tossing the trio of hoods questions, but not too hard: underhand softball pitches.
“Mickey,” one reporter said, “you interviewed a prisoner at the Tombs last night, for Colonel Lindbergh. What did you learn?”
“Not at liberty to say, fellas,” Rosner said, and he bit off the end of a fat Havana.
“What about the rumors you’re holding secret talks with a top underworld figure, who’s currently in prison?”
Rosner shook his head no, lit up his cigar, waved the match out.
Another reporter said, “Come on-weren’t Spitale and Bitz in Chicago a few days ago?”
“Yeah, Salvy,” another said, turning his attention to Spitale. “How ’bout it?”
“No comment,” Spitale said, and grinned at Rosner and then at Bitz.
“Mickey,” another newsman said, “how in hell did you end up Lindy’s rep? You’re still facing a grand larceny charge on that stock-kiting scam from last October.”
Rosner’s smile disappeared and he gestured with the fiery end of the cigar. “I’m a respectable businessman, gents. You know that-I deal in real estate.”
There were some muffled laughs and some laughs that weren’t so muffled.
“Mickey,” said a reporter, a disembodied voice out of the swirling smoke, “why are we here? I mean, we appreciate the free suds-but you haven’t given us jack shit.”
Rosner grinned again. “Maybe you ain’t asked the right questions.”
There were mutterings and moans, mostly good-natured, from the well-lubricated press contingent.
Another reporter tried a question-for Spitale, this time. “Hey, Salvy-what’s this about the cops dropping a couple bootlegging beefs against you guys? Did Lindy pull some strings?”
Spitale laughed. “I won’t dignify that with a response.”
“Well, tell us about your role in the Lindbergh case, then.”
He splayed a hand to his chest. “It’s this way, boys-I was asked to use my influence in getting the kid back. If professionals have got a hold of him, they know where to get in touch with me in five minutes, day or night, rain or shine. Right, Irv?”
Bitz nodded dutifully.
Then Spitale continued: “But I’m not a cop, see? Get it straight-I’m no cop; I don’t go snooping around.”
“You almost sound sorry you got involved.”
He shrugged facially. “I am kinda sorry I got mixed up in this thing, yeah. You guys are printing pictures of my kids and my family, and my policy of keepin’ out of the papers has been knocked for a loop. Can’t you fellas cover something else-like the Shanghai War, or wherever?”
“Have you found any trace of the baby, Salvy?”
“Well, to be honest, I have not. In fact, I’m a little discouraged.”
Rosner cut in. “I have better news to report, fellas.”
The reporters glanced around at each other, their expressions saying, About damn time.
“The baby is alive and well,” Rosner said, flicking ash off his cigar onto the floor. “I give you my personal assurance that the baby is about to be returned to his folks.”
Even Spitale and Bitz seemed surprised by that.
The reporters began hurling questions at Rosner, hardballs this time, but he held up a hand in a stop gesture; the hand glittered with diamond rings.
“What I’m saying don’t represent my opinion,” he said, “but what I actually know.”
“Are you negotiating the return of the baby?”
“If I was, saying so would put those efforts at risk, right? So let’s cut this off right here, okay? Thank you, fellas.”
He rose and pushed through the reporters, leaving a confused Spitale and Bitz to field the rest of the questions. Rosner was heading toward the men’s room; nobody bothered following him.
Except me.
I’d driven into Manhattan midmorning, to check in with IRS man Frank Wilson and to meet with Breckinridge after work. The plan was to spend the evening with the attorney and the eccentric Dr. Condon at the latter’s Bronx bungalow, waiting to see if the ad that ran today (“Money is ready-Jafsie”) got a response.
Among a handful of other things I wanted to do while I was in New York City was check out Spitale and Bitz’s speakeasy; I’d stopped in for the free lunch, heard the scuttlebutt about the “press conference” and hung around nursing beers for two hours waiting for Rosner and company to show.
Now Mickey was standing at the urinal. He and I had the small room to ourselves; I hook-and-eye latched the door, waited for him to finish, and as he turned, buttoning up, he sneered.
“What the hell are you doing here, Heller?”
“What do you think, Mickey? Checking up on you.”
He started to brush past me. “Stay out of my way.”
I took him by the arm. “You didn’t wash your hands, Mickey. Stick around a second, and wash your hands.”
He jerked loose of my grasp. “I’ll wash my hands of you, flatfoot.”
But I was blocking the way. “Tell me, Mickey. What was that bullshit about being sure the kid was safe? That he’d be returned any second now?”
He straightened his suitcoat, tried to summon some dignity. “Just tossin’ the newshounds a bone.”
“Are you, or any of your people, negotiating with Capone?”
“Maybe.”
I unbuttoned my coat, put my hands on my hips, letting him get a look at the nine millimeter under my shoulder. “That’s not much of an answer, Mickey.”
“Fuck you. You don’t know who you’re messing with. You can wake up dead, messing with me.”
I grabbed him by his tailored lapels. “Don’t get tough with me, you greasy little fucker. You’re going to spill, or drown.”
“Drown?”
“Guess how.”
Rosner licked his lips, and said, “I don’t know a goddamn thing, goddamnit! Now, back off, Heller-or I’ll tell Lindy you been shovin’ me around.”
I let him go, roughly.
“Why don’t you do that?” I said. “And I’ll tell him why.”
I let him pass. He never did wash his hands.
I’d met with Wilson earlier; the T-man had had little to report on his end: no news on Capone’s missing man Bob Conroy; Agent O’Rourke had infiltrated the Marinelli/Sivella spiritualist church, but had nothing yet to report.
I’d filled the agent in about Condon, and he was furious Lindbergh hadn’t brought him in on it.
“Maybe you ought to shadow the professor,” I said. “He may be tied in with those spiritualists-unless you think Sister Sarah really did pull the name ‘Jafsie’ out of the spirit world.”
“The Bronx and Harlem are next-door neighbors,” Wilson said, reflectively. “You don’t need a Ouija board to get from one to the other.”
“If Lindbergh finds out I tipped you, I’ll be persona non grata. So keep it under your hat.”
Condon lived in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, just west of Webster Avenue, in a neat, modest two-story white clapboard on quiet, tree-fined Decatur Avenue. Shrubbery hugged the house and the well-tended lawn was brushed with snow.
It was a little before six o’clock when I found myself on Condon’s front porch, knocking on a door inset with stained glass. Darkness had already settled upon the Bronx-the most beautiful borough in the world! — and the night air was nippy. I was just about to knock again when the door was answered by a dark-haired, dark-eyed attractive woman in her mid-twenties; her eyes were tense as she asked me who I was.
“Detective Heller,” I said, not bothering to mention what police department I was attached to. “I’m expected.”
She nodded tiredly and opened the door.
As inconspicuously as possible, I traced the trim lines of her figure in the brown dress with white collar. “And you are?” I asked.
She smiled with quiet irony. “Married, for one thing. Dr. Condon’s daughter, Myra, for another. And disgusted with this whole affair, for one more.”
“Well, we have the latter in common anyway,” I said, handing her my hat and coat, which she didn’t seem particularly inclined to receive. We were in an entryway that faced the second-floor staircase. She listlessly led me through a nicely but not lavishly furnished parlor so old-fashioned the doilies had doilies. Then she summoned me into an adjoining living room where a grand piano was covered by a paisley shawl like somebody’s grandmother; sitting on the brocade davenport were the professor and a pleasant-looking, plump woman in her late sixties wearing a floral print dress and a concerned expression.
Condon was patting her hand and saying, “There, there, Myra…nothing to worry about.”
“I thought you were Myra,” I whispered to my reluctant hostess.
“That’s my mother,” she said, blandly. “I was named after her.”
“Oh,” I said.
She sat on the couch next to her parents and crossed her nice legs but made sure I didn’t see much.
“Good afternoon, Detective,” Condon said, hollowly.
“Good afternoon, Professor,” I said. “Good afternoon, ma’am. Don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
Condon uncharacteristically skipped the formalities. “Mrs. Condon had a phone call earlier today.”
I pulled up a chair; it looked like something Marie Antoinette might have sat on, eating cake. “Tell me about it, please,” I said to Mrs. Condon.
“Someone called on the telephone for my husband,” she said, in a warm alto, the faintest vibrato of nervousness coloring it, “around noon.”
“Man or woman?” I asked.
“It was a man. I told him that my husband was giving a lecture and would be home between six and seven. He said he would call again about seven this evening.” She looked at the professor, who had a sick-cow expression. “He said you were to stay in and wait for his call, dear.”
Condon’s expression turned shrewd and he said, “And what was his name?”
“Why, dear,” she said, “he didn’t give it.”
No shit.
“That ‘money is ready’ ad of yours appeared in the morning edition,” I said. “That’s pretty quick action.”
Condon’s eyes tightened in attempted thought. “You think this phone call, then, was a message from the kidnapper in response to the ad?”
I sighed. “Gee, Professor. It just might be.”
Any irony I allowed to show in my voice was lost on Dr. and Mrs. Condon, but Myra the Younger smirked at me mirthlessly.
“Dad,” the daughter said, sitting forward, “I’d like to see that baby returned as much as anybody. But don’t you think you should withdraw, graciously, and just let somebody else take your place as intermediary?”
He raised his chin. Where was Dempsey when you needed him. “I’ve sworn to see this thing through to the bitter end.”
“But, Dad-you’re not a young man. This is dangerous for you…”
“We can’t think of that,” he said. “When the time comes that a respectable man cannot walk out of the door of his own home merely because he is attempting to assist one of the greatest heroes of all time, well, then…then I do not care to live a day longer.”
Was he trying to cheer me up?
“Are you all right, Mrs. Condon?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you. I didn’t get your name, young man…?”
“My name’s Nathan Heller. I’m a police officer from Chicago. I appreciate your hospitality.”
“Actually,” she said, a hand to her generous chest, “I’ve been a bit shaken up. Luckily Myra stayed over, and fixed a nice supper. Plenty for everyone.”
I turned to Myra. “You don’t live here?”
“No,” she said, and smiled at me tightly, the sort of smile that contradicts itself.
“It is typical of little Myra,” Condon said, “that though she thoroughly opposes my determination to enter this case, she made arrangements to be here with me, in the Bronx, to absorb some of my routine duties.”
“Such as?” I asked her.
“Father received several hundred letters today,” she said, “in response to that letter to the editor he wrote to the News. It’s been like that every day since it appeared.”
“You should save those letters,” I said, “and give them to the cops.”
“Colonel Schwarzkopf, you mean?” Condon asked.
“That would be better than nothing,” I said. “But this is New York. You got cops in this state, too, you know.”
There was a knock at the door; Condon’s daughter rose languidly to answer it, and moments later she was ushering Colonel Breckinridge into the living room.
I filled him in, quickly, about the telephone call Mrs. Condon had received earlier.
“It’s almost six-thirty now,” Breckinridge said. “No call yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Why don’t we eat?”
“Sir!” Condon said, sitting up straight. “How can you think of food, when a child’s life hangs in the balance?”
“Well, if we eat,” I said, “it won’t tip the scale, one way or the other. Or, we can all sit around jumpy as cats in a rainstorm.”
We ate. The dining room was behind the living room, and Myra-a sour hostess but a sweet cook-served up a pot roast with oven-browned potatoes, carrots and onions.
“Colonel,” Condon said, working on his second helping of everything, baby in the balance or not, “as you may recall, I mentioned that the distinctive red-and-blue-circle signature of the kidnappers reminded me of a Sicilian Mafia sign.”
“Yes,” Breckinridge said tentatively. He was picking at his food.
“Well, I replicated the symbol and began showing it around Fordham today.”
“You what?” I said.
He sipped his drink-a big wholesome glass of milk-and repeated his sentence word for word.
I just shook my head. His daughter Myra glared at me.
Proud of himself, a forkful of food poised in midair, Condon said, “Mind you, I’ve said nothing to anyone of my trip to Hopewell the other night. But I’ve been determined to learn, if possible, the meaning of that mysterious symbol.”
“Professor,” Breckinridge said, his face whiter than Condon’s cow juice, “that really may not have been wise.”
Condon didn’t seem to hear; his eyes and smile were glazed and inwardly directed. “I sketched it on a piece of paper, that symbol, and carried it with me these last two days. I’ve been showing it to everyone I meet, asking them about it.”
“Swell idea,” I said.
“Finally,” he said, raising a significant forefinger, “this afternoon I found someone who recognized it-a Sicilian friend of mine.”
Breckinridge touched a napkin to his lips and pushed his plate of mostly uneaten food away.
“As a result,” Condon said, “I’m convinced our kidnappers are of Italian origin. My Sicilian friend confirmed my suspicion, explaining that the symbol was that of a secret criminal organization in the old country-the symbol is the trilgamba, or ‘three legs.’”
“Three legs?” Breckinridge asked.
“My Sicilian friend explained that two legs were fine, but ‘when a third leg walks, beware.’”
“Let me write that down,” I said.
“Its symbolic meaning,” Condon continued, “is that if a third leg, a stranger, enters into the province of the secret society, the Mafia, that intruder can expect a stiletto through the heart.”
His daughter Myra, cutting her meat, dropped her own knife clatteringly. “Daddy,” she said. “Please don’t do this. Please withdraw from this silly dangerous escapade.”
Colonel Breckinridge looked at the young woman with mournful eyes. “Please don’t ask that, miss. Your father may be the only honest person on earth actually in contact with the kidnappers.”
“Excuse me,” Myra said stiffly, “I think I’ll pass on dessert,” and hurled her napkin to the table and got up and went out through the front parlor; her footsteps on the hall stairs, several rooms away, conveyed her annoyance.
After apple pie, Breckinridge stepped out onto the porch for a smoke-the professor allowed no tobacco of any kind in his “domicile”-leaving Mr. and Mrs. Condon to keep watch by Mr. Bell’s invention, which was on a stand in the hallway outside the living room.
“Can you believe that man?” Breckinridge said bitterly, puffing greedily on a cigarette. “Showing that signature around the Bronx! To some ‘Sicilian friend’!”
“He’s a dunce, all right,” I said. “Unless he’s very clever.”
“Clever?”
I nodded, tapped my temple with one finger. “Something clicked in this hat rack I call a head, while he was babbling about that Mafia sign. When I first talked to him on the phone, back at Hopewell, Condon told me that the letter to him was signed with ‘the mark of the Mafia.’”
“Yes. I remember. So?”
“He went to great lengths to assure me that he hadn’t opened the interior envelope, the one addressed to Slim.”
“Right.”
“I even heard him rip it open, over the phone.”
“Yes. I recall.”
“Well, the note to Slim was signed with the ‘mark of the Mafia,’ all right-but the note to Condon was unsigned.”
Breckinridge thought about that. “But how could the professor know about the signature before he opened the letter…?”
“Exactly. Of course, he may have already opened that inner letter, and just ripped some other piece of paper for the benefit of my ears. But either way…”
“Yes. Worth noting, Heller. Worth noting. And there’s something I might tell you.”
“Well, hell, go ahead.”
Breckinridge drew on the cigarette, exhaled a wreath of smoke. “Last night Condon was, as usual, running off at the mouth. He was talking about his daughter, Myra, how she’d been a teacher before her marriage. And then he got into a spiel about how ‘the love of teaching runs strongly’ in his family. That Mrs. Condon had been a ‘splendid schoolteacher herself,’ that he and she had first met when they were teaching at the same public school.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Heller, they taught at Old Public School Number Thirty-Eight, in Harlem.”
That hit me like a sack of nickels. “Harlem! As in Sarah Sivella and Martin Marinelli, Harlem?”
“Exactly.” He pitched his cigarette into a small bank of snow on the lawn. “Shall we go in?”
But before we could, an eager Mrs. Condon appeared in the doorway and said, “The phone is ringing, gentlemen…my husband is about to answer it.”
We moved quickly through the house and saw Condon pick up the phone in the midst of a ring.
“Who is it, please?” he said formally; he stood with chin high, light-blue eyes about as alert as a Chinese opium addict’s.
After a beat, he said, “Yes, I got your letter.”
I stood close to him and bent the receiver away from his ear, so that I could hear, too. Condon gave me a reproving look but didn’t fight me.
“I saw your ad,” a crisp, clear voice said, “in the New York American.’”
“Yes? Where are you calling from?”
Brilliant question! Fucking brilliant!
“Westchester,” the voice said.
Condon’s brow knit as he tried to think of something else incisive to ask.
“Dr. Condon, do you write sometimes pieces for the papers?”
That seemed to take the professor aback. After a moment, he said, “Why yes-I sometimes write articles for the papers.”
A pause was followed by the voice speaking in a dim, muffled tone to someone standing by: “He says sometimes he writes pieces for the papers.”
The voice returned, strong and clear and a bit guttural. “Stay in every night this week. Stay at home from six to twelve. You will receive a note with instructions. Act accordingly or all will be off.”
“I shall stay in,” Condon said, putting his hand on his heart.
“Statti citto!”
Another voice on the phone had said the latter, cutting in.
Almost half a silent minute crawled by. Then the crisp, guttural voice said, “All right. You will hear from us.”
Condon blinked at the click of the phone, then said, self-importantly, and pointlessly, “They have severed the connection.”
He severed his own connection-that is, he hung up-and I said to Breckinridge, “Could you hear all that?”
“Yes,” Breckinridge said. “What was that foreign phrase?”
“Statti citto,” I said. “It means, ‘shut up,’ in Sicilian. My guess is they were using a public phone, and someone was walking by.”
“I think,” Condon said, thinking deeply, “he may have been deceiving us when he said he was calling from Westchester.”
“No, really?” I said archly. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”
“We’ll have to get the money together quickly,” Breckinridge said, distractedly, pacing in the small area.
“The kidnappers’ last letter was quite specific as to the dimensions of the money box,” Condon said. “Might I offer to have such a box built, tomorrow?”
Breckinridge looked at me and I shrugged.
Condon went on, raising a lecturing forefinger. “Upstairs, in my study, I have the ballot box of the Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York in eighteen hundred and twenty.”
Whoop-de-doo.
“It has a lid, two hinges and a casement lock. The box I shall have constructed will duplicate that ancient ballot box.”
“What’s the point?” I asked.
Condon’s apple cheeks were a pair of pink balls in his ludicrous smiling face. “I’ll specify that it is to be of five-ply veneer. We’ll use different types of wood in its construction. Maple, pine, tulipwood…and a couple of other varieties. Five different in all.”
“Which will make the box easy to identify,” I said.
Breckinridge looked at me, curiously.
“It’s not a bad idea,” I said, surprising us all.
“Doctor,” Breckinridge said, putting a hand on the old boy’s shoulder. “I’m not unaware of the sacrifice you’re making. I’m aware that members of your family don’t look favorably upon your participation in this case. But some day, I hope, you’ll in some way be rewarded for what you’re doing.”
“I do not expect a small reward for anything I might do,” Condon said, with the usual pomp and circumstance. “Perhaps the reward I intend to ask for is too large.”
I didn’t for one second think Condon was going to ask for dough, though. He was either too square a john or too crooked a one to do that.
He didn’t disappoint me.
“I ask only,” he said, “that when that little baby is recovered, I be the one to place him back in his mother’s arms.”
Breckinridge bought it, apparently; he shook Condon’s hand and said, warmly, “You’ll deserve that. And I’ll see to it that you get what you deserve, Doctor.”
My feelings exactly.