The bronze Tiffany clock on the mantel in the dining room of the Condon home chimed seven times. In the adjacent room, the living room, the shades drawn, we sat: Condon, his wife, Breckinridge and me. Tonight the daughter was back in New Jersey, having had enough of this intrigue.
“My friend is a first-rate cabinetmaker,” Condon said, hands on his knees. Then he added, “A Bronx cabinetmaker,” as if that made all the difference.
“This ballot box you’re having duplicated,” I said, “how long will it take your Bronx cabinetmaker to do the job?”
“He promised delivery within four days,” Condon said, as if sharing something miraculous with us. “The cost will be three dollars-materials and workmanship included!”
“Well, that’s swell,” I said, “but suppose they ask for delivery of the dough sooner than that?”
Colonel Breckinridge said, “I hope to God they do. We’ll have the money together by Monday afternoon.”
“Perhaps I should call my cabinetmaker friend,” Condon said, thoughtfully, “and bid him hasten.”
“If they contact us tonight,” Breckinridge said to me, “it will be to arrange the money drop, correct?”
“Probably,” I said. “But you guys did run an ad saying ‘Money is ready’-and it isn’t.”
“But that was the specific language,” Condon said defensively, “the kidnappers required!”
“I know,” I said. “I was here. But you shouldn’t have run it before the money was ready.”
That shut Condon up; and Colonel Breckinridge sank into a gloomy silence.
I’d already had a confrontation with Lindbergh over this earlier, at Hopewell.
“I thought you had the money together,” I’d told him.
We were walking with the leashed Wahgoosh around the barren outskirts of the yard of the house; it was midmorning and windy and cold.
“Frankly, Nate,” he said, “I’m a little strapped for ready cash.”
“Well, hell, your credit’s good-wasn’t your father-in-law a partner at J. P. Morgan’s banking house?”
Lindbergh nodded. “My wife’s mother has offered me the money, but I refused it.”
“Slim! This is no goddamn time to stand on ceremony…”
He raised a hand. “I’ve been liquidating stocks. The ransom’s damn near raised.”
“These are stocks you bought before the crash, huh?”
“Yes.”
“What did they cost you?”
He took a moment or two to answer; without looking at me, he said, “Three hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Which you’re selling to raise seventy.”
He shrugged with his eyebrows. “Actually-fifty. I’m still working on the other twenty.”
The wind nipped at my face. “I had no idea…they really got you over a barrel, don’t they?”
“They do. I hope we can arrange for proof that I’m not being hoaxed…. Nate, I’ve kept you in the dark about it, and for the time being I still have to, but Condon isn’t the only party who can make a convincing case for being in touch with the kidnappers.”
“What?”
“I can’t say anymore right now. I’m looking into these other claims. In the meantime, Condon seems perhaps the most reliable option.”
My eyes rolled like marbles. “If Condon is the most reliable option, God help you with the others.”
He said nothing. We paused while Wahgoosh pissed.
I turned my face away from the March wind. “I heard Schwarzkopf say something about keeping Condon’s house under surveillance, and shadowing him to any ransom drop point.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m glad. There’s hope for Schwarzkopf yet.”
“Perhaps, but I’ve forbidden it.”
“You’ve what?”
“Colonel Schwarzkopf withdrew his proposal to stake out Condon’s house, when I objected.”
“On what goddamn grounds did you object?”
“That it might endanger the safe return of my son.”
What could I say to that? Other than it was fucking nuts. I could only hope Frank Wilson had taken my advice and put Condon under government surveillance. We walked. The dog crapped.
“You have to call Wilson in, Slim.”
“Pardon me?”
“Agent Wilson of the IRS. And his boss Irey. Especially his boss Irey.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got to record all the serial numbers of the ransom money, before you pay it out. Irey can help you with that, and he’s the guy who can track the money, once it’s started getting into circulation.”
Lindbergh shook his head, no. “I made a statement to the press that I wouldn’t pay the kidnappers in marked bills. I won’t break my word.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said. I shook my head, said, “That tears it,” turned and headed for the house. The wind pushed at my back, encouraging me.
“Heller!” Lindbergh called. “Where are you going?”
“Chicago,” I said, over my shoulder. “We got a more normal brand of insanity back there.”
“Wait. Wait!”
I stopped and he walked up beside me, the dog frisking at his heels.
“I’ll talk to Irey,” he said. “But no promises.”
“Okay.”
“I’d like you to stick around a while longer.”
“Why?”
“There are gangsters in this, obviously. They may be Capone people.”
“You’ve got Irey and Wilson on the case; they know Capone better than I do.”
“They’re not from Chicago. And they’re not street cops. They don’t know the breed of crook Capone uses, like you do. Nate, we need your expertise.”
I was flattered. I couldn’t help it. Lindy was behaving stupidly in many respects, but he was still Lindy. Saying no to him was like saying no to Uncle Sam.
“No,” I said.
His cheek twitched; his eyes were desperate. “Will you at least stay till we play out the Condon hand? Just that long?”
I sighed. “Sure. Why not. It beats chasing pickpockets around LaSalle Street Station.”
He offered me a hand to shake and I shook it. Wahgoosh growled at me.
The bronze Tiffany clock chimed seven-thirty just thirty seconds before the doorbell rang.
“This is it,” Breckinridge said, standing. His eyes were hard and tight.
“Perhaps I should answer it,” Condon said, standing. His eyes were soft and loose,
“There’s an idea,” I said.
Condon moved quickly for his size and age, and I was on his heels, Breckinridge on mine. The nine millimeter under my arm kept us all company.
The old professor threw open the door, like a ham actor in a bad play, and on his front porch were two spear-carriers in our little melodrama.
“Hiya, doc,” the older of the two men said. “We thought we’d drop around and find out what’s new on the case.”
“Yeah,” the younger, shorter, one asked. “Any word?”
It was Max Rosenhain the restaurateur, and Milton Gaglio the clothier, respectively, the professor’s two pals.
“Ah, my friends!” Condon said, spreading his arms. “How wonderful to see you. Please do step in.”
And step in they did, hats in hand, nervous smiles taking their faces upon seeing me. I shut the door, damn near slamming it.
“Gentlemen,” Colonel Breckinridge said, “we’re grateful to you for your concern, and interest, but…”
“But get the hell out of here,” I said.
“Mr. Heller!” Condon said. “I will not countenance your foul language and rude behavior in my house!”
“Shut up,” I said to him. To the other two, I said, “We’re waiting to hear from the kidnappers, you jack-offs. What do you think this is, a radio show?”
The two men swallowed and exchanged embarrassed glances.
Condon was glaring at me. “Really, Detective Heller. Your conduct is unconscionable.”
We were in the Bronx, so I gave him his city’s namesake cheer. Then I said to his dumb-ass pals, “If the kidnappers are watching this house, as I suspect they are, waiting for the right moment to make their move, then you two clowns may have just scared ’em off.”
“We didn’t mean any harm…” Gaglio began.
“We didn’t think…” Rosenhain said.
“Right,” I said, and the doorbell rang.
We stood there looking wild-eyed at each other, clustered as if in a football huddle, only there was no quarterback.
So I called the play. In a harsh whisper, I said, “Everybody but the professor, get into the living room. Go. Now. But quietly.”
To their credit, they did just that.
Condon looked at me, his eyes sharper than usual. I put my back to the wall, to the left of the door, and got the nine millimeter in hand; I nodded to him. He nodded back, swallowed, and opened the door.
“You Dr. Condon?”
Peering around the edge, I could see a man standing in the doorway: a little guy with round wire-rim glasses and a ferret face; he wore the cap and coat of a cabbie.
“I am Dr. Condon.”
“Here you go, pal.”
And the cabbie, if that’s what he was, handed an envelope to the professor; the envelope bore the bold, childlike block printing and numerals we’d seen before.
The apparent cabbie was still standing there, waiting for a tip, I guess.
With my left hand, I reached out and grabbed him by the lapel of his uniform and pulled him into the entryway and kicked the door shut. I shoved him up against the nearest wall, his back to me, and patted him down with one hand, keeping the nine millimeter in the other.
“Hey!” he said. “Hey! What’s the big idea?”
“You ain’t heeled,” I said. “That’s a start. Turn around and put your hands up. Colonel!”
Breckinridge came in, his eyes bugging a bit as he saw me holding the gun on the little cabbie.
“Usher our caller into the living room,” I said. “He seems clean.” To the cabbie, I said, “What’s your name?”
“Perrone,” he said, loudly, almost proudly. His voice was indignant, but his eyes were scared shitless.
“Put your hands down, Mr. Perrone, and behave yourself.”
Wordlessly, Breckinridge led the cabbie into the dining room.
Condon was standing there stupidly with the letter in his hands, looking at the thing as if afraid of it. I took the envelope from him, tore it open and read to myself.
Mr. Condon.
We trust you, but we will note come in your Haus it is to danger, even you cane not know if Police or secret servise is watching you follow this instunction. Take a car and drive to the last supway station from Jerome Ave line. 100 feet from the last station on the left seide is a empty frank-further-stand with a big open Porch around, you will find a notise in senter of the porch underneath a stone, this notise will tell you where to find us.
Here, in the right margin, the by-now familiar interlocking-circles signature appeared, and the note continued:
Act accordingly.
after? of a houer be
on the place, bring the mony with you.
“May I read that?” Condon asked, and I handed it to him. It was his mail, after all.
He read it over several times and looked at me with worry in his watery blue eyes. “Bring the money?”
“That’s what it says.”
We joined Breckinridge in the living room. Mrs. Condon had left the room and the cabbie was seated on the couch between Gaglio and Rosenhain. Breckinridge was pacing. He grabbed for the note like a starving man for a crust of bread.
“Bring the money!” he read. “Judas Priest! We haven’t got the damn money…”
“What do we do?” Condon asked desperately. “I assumed we would work out the details for the ransom exchange, but now…”
“What’s important now is to make contact,” I said. “Explain that the money really will be ready soon. Make the best of it.”
Condon was shaking his head; he seemed confused, disoriented.
Hell with him. I turned to the cabbie, bookended on the couch by Condon’s two cronies.
“What was your name again?” I asked him.
“Joe Perrone. Joseph.”
“Where did you get that letter?”
“Guy hailed me and handed it to me over on Gun Hill Road at Knox Place.”
“How far is that from here?”
“Don’t you know?” the cabbie asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not from here. I’m a tourist. With a gun.”
“It’s about a mile from here.”
“What did the guy say? What did he look like?”
The little cabbie shrugged. “He asked me if I knew where Decatur Avenue was, where twenty-nine seventy-four would be. I said sure, I know that neighborhood. Then he looked around, over this shoulder and that shoulder, and stuck his hand in his pocket and gave me this envelope and a buck.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. He was wearing a brown topcoat and a brown felt hat.”
“Any physical characteristics about the guy that were noticeable?”
“No. I didn’t pay any attention.”
“Nothing about the man that fixes itself in your mind?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t know him again if you saw him?”
“No. I was looking at the buck he gave me. George Washington, him I can identify. What’s this all about, anyway?”
Breckinridge chimed in. “I’m afraid we can’t tell you that just now, Mr. Perrone. Rest assured it’s most important.”
“Let me see your badge,” I said.
“Sure.” He unpinned it from his uniform coat.
I wrote the number down in my notebook. Then I wrote it down on a separate page which I tore out and handed to Gaglio.
“Make yourself useful,” I said. “Go out to that cab parked in front and check this number against the ID card in the backseat. Then write down the license plate number, too.”
Gaglio, glad to be of help, nodded, got up, took the sheet of paper and scurried out.
“What now?” Breckinridge asked.
“The professor keeps his appointment,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
“There were to be no police,” Condon said.
“I’m not a cop in New York State,” I said. “Just a patriotic concerned citizen.”
“With a gun,” the cabbie said.
“Right,” I said. “We’ll take my flivver.”
By “my flivver,” of course, I meant the one Lindy loaned me.
Gaglio came back in and said, “It checks out.”
“Good,” I said. I turned to Perrone. “You go on about your business. You may be hearing from the cops.”
“What should I say?”
Condon covered his heart like a school kid pledging allegiance. “Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“Except for my pulling a gun on you,” I said.
“Right,” he said, and he was up and out.
“What about our friends Max and Milton?” Condon asked.
“They stay here,” I said. “And they’re not my fucking friends.”
The night was nobody’s friend. The sky was black and the city was gray. A cold wind blew leaves and rubbish and scraps of paper across the all-but-deserted streets of the most beautiful borough in the world.
As I got behind the wheel, and Condon slid his big frame into the rider’s seat, I said, “I’m a stranger to this part of the world, Professor-you’ll have to navigate.”
“I can do that ably,” he said cheerily. Then, turning suddenly somber, he said, “I trust, despite our differences, we can join forces in this just cause.”
“We’ll do fine, Professor. I’m just here to back you up.”
Placated, Condon folded his hands on his lap and I pulled away from the curb, heading west.
Eight solitary blocks later, he said, “Turn north on Jerome Avenue-just up ahead.”
I turned onto the all-but-deserted thoroughfare, gloomy and gray under the subdued glow of the street lights. Condon pointed out the last subway station on Jerome Avenue, and I slowed.
“There’s the hot-dog stand,” I said.
On the left side of the street was the sagging, deteriorating shack, a summertime operation that had missed a couple summers. The sad little booth was fronted by an equally sad, sagging porch. I pulled a U-turn and stopped before it.
“Allow me,” Condon said, and got out.
He climbed several steps to the porch, each step giving and groaning under his weight. In the middle of the porch was a big flat rock, which I could see Condon stoop to lift. He returned quickly, an envelope in hand.
We were almost directly under a street lamp. He tore the envelope open and read the note aloud to me: “‘Cross the street and follow the fence from the cemetery direction to Two Hundred Thirty-Third Street. I will meet you.’”
“How far is that, Professor?”
“About a mile. The fence mentioned is the one enclosing Woodlawn Cemetery to the north-Two Hundred Thirty-Third Street runs east-west and intersects Jerome Avenue about a mile north of this frankfurter stand. It forms the northern border of the cemetery.”
“Which means?”
“You’ll have to swing the car around again.”
I pulled another U-turn. We couldn’t have had less traffic if the world ended yesterday. On our one side was the rolling wooded acreage of a park, on the other a sprawling, iron-fenced cemetery.
“That’s Woodlawn,” Condon explained. “And that park is Van Cortlandt.”
“You’d be better off if that cab driver had driven you.”
“Perhaps, Detective Heller-but if pressed I’ll admit I like having you, and your gun, around.”
We kept going along Jerome, parallel to the cemetery, stopping about fifty feet short of the 233rd Street intersection. Ahead was a triangular plaza that was the entrance to Woodlawn Cemetery, with heavy iron gates, shut and undoubtedly locked.
I pulled over. “Go on up and stand by that gate.”
“You think that’s the location the kidnappers meant?”
“Yes. Go on. I’ll cover you.”
“I suppose that’s wise. They’ll not contact me unless I’m alone.”
“I’m here if you need me.”
He nodded and strode over to the plaza, looking around brazenly. Inconspicuous he was not.
But that was okay. We wanted the kidnappers to see him.
He paced. He dug the note out of his pocket and read and reread it-in an apparent attempt to signal any representative of the kidnap gang who might be watching. Nothing. He paced some more.
Ten minutes of this went by before he came marching back to the car. He got in.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. “There’s no one out there. Were we on time?”
“It’s nine-fifteen,” I said. “Maybe we’re early. It’s warmer in here. Sit for a few minutes.”
We sat. The wind out there did all the talking.
Then Condon said, “There’s someone!”
A short, swarthy man in a cap and with a handkerchief covering his face was walking toward us along Jerome Avenue.
Condon got out of the car, quickly. He walked toward the man. The man walked toward him.
And passed the professor by.
Condon turned and stood in the middle of the sidewalk, scratching his head, watching the guy walk away. The old man looked in my direction, shrugged, and headed back for the area by the iron gates, where he again began to pace.
At nine-thirty, I was getting restless. I was beginning to think nothing was going to happen-perhaps because I was along. I was also wondering where Wilson’s man was hiding himself; I assumed Wilson had put a man, or men, on Condon’s house, and that we’d been trailed here. But the shadow man must have been goddamn good. Because I felt alone. Just me, Condon, the night, the wind and half the corpses in the Bronx.
Condon, rocking on his heels, was standing, with his back to the iron gate.
And, now, like something in a haunted-house movie, a hand was extending itself through the iron gates toward the professor.
I sat forward, about to call out, but the professor began to pace again. He moved well away from the extending ghostlike hand, looking everywhere but in that direction.
And now the hand withdrew, only to return seconds later, with something white in it. The white thing began to flutter like a bird. A handkerchief, waving. Whoever it was, in the cemetery, was trying desperately to signal the professor, without calling out to him.
Finally Condon noticed it, and moved quickly to the gates, where he began to speak to somebody on the other side. I rolled my window down, and the window on the other side, as well, but I could hear nothing but the wind.
They spoke for perhaps two minutes, and then Condon abruptly backed away.
“No!” I heard him say.
I reached for my gun.
Then I saw a figure, a man in a dark topcoat and hat, climb up, over and down the gate and land almost at Condon’s feet. For a split second the two men faced each other, the one who’d jumped remaining in a catlike crouch.
“It’s too dangerous!” the man said, and began to run.
The guy, who was about a head shorter than Condon, ran across the street, diagonally-right in front of me, though I got no sort of look at him at all, his dark felt hat brim pulled down, obscuring his face.
A cemetery security guard had appeared at the gate-his presence, apparently, had spooked the man in the dark topcoat-and was shouting, “Hey! What’s going on?”
But Condon was ignoring that. The old boy was hoofing it across the street after the man. I had them both in sight. And I could have joined in the chase. But the professor was doing all right, at the moment. I stayed a spectator-for now.
The man ran north into the park; Condon followed, calling out to him: “Hey! Come back here! Don’t be a coward!”
The guy slowed, and turned, and waited for Condon. They were only a few hundred feet into the park. The cemetery security guard hadn’t even bothered to come out; he’d stayed inside to protect the dead. Condon and his companion were standing by a clump of trees near a small groundskeeper’s hut with a park bench in front of it.
Condon gestured to the bench and the guy thought about it, and sat. And then so did Condon.
They sat and they talked. For a long, long time.
I thought about getting out of the car and finding my way to those trees and bushes and eavesdropping. But the guy’s compatriots might be watching me, and I might queer the whole deal. And I could see both Condon and the man in the dark topcoat just fine. I could be there in seconds if trouble developed.
But it didn’t. They just sat and talked.
While I sat stewing, my gun in my lap, looking around for signs of anybody else, kidnappers, T-men, innocent bystanders, anybody. Tonight the Bronx was as dead as Woodlawn Cemetery.
Finally, after an eternity, they stood.
And shook hands.
The man in the dark topcoat turned away and walked north, disappearing into the wooded park. Condon watched him go, then walked slowly toward my car. He was smiling.
“That went well, I think,” he said, getting in.
“I’d have opened the car door for you,” I said, “but my hands are numb from the cold. You talked to that guy for over an hour.”
“There’s no longer any possibility of doubt,” he said. “We’re in touch with the right ones. Those who have the baby. It’s only a question of time, now.”
“And money. You’ll never know how close I came to following you. I should have grabbed that son of a bitch.”
“What good would that do? You’d spoil everything!”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m starting to think these bastards are playing us for suckers. That kid could be dead, you know.”
Condon blanched, but recovered, a silly grin peeking out under the walrus mustache. “No, no. Everything’s fine. The child’s being fed according to the diet.”
As we drove back to his home, an animated Condon told me about his meeting with the man, who gave his name as “John.” And then he told it to Breckinridge, and the next day to Lindbergh. I heard it three times, and each time it was a little different.
The man in the dark overcoat and dark soft felt hat had held the white handkerchief to his face as he spoke to the professor through the bars of the iron gate.
“Did you got it, the money?” the man had asked.
“No,” Condon said. “I can’t bring the money until I see the package.”
By “package” the professor meant the child, of course.
At this point the snap of a breaking twig had broken the gloom like a gunshot, startling both men.
“A cop!” the man said. “He’s with you!”
At this point the man had climbed the gate and, for a moment, sans handkerchief mask, faced Condon.
“You brought the cops!”
“No! I wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s too dangerous!”
I interrupted Condon’s story to ask him to describe the man.
“I only saw his face for a fleeting moment,” Condon said.
“Well, you sat and talked to him for an hour!”
“In the dark, with his hat pulled down and his coat collar up,” Condon pointed out. “But I would venture to say he was about five foot eight, aged thirty to thirty-five, weighing perhaps a hundred sixty pounds. Fair to chestnut hair.”
“You said he never took his hat off.”
“Yes, but that nonetheless is the coloration, judging by his sideburns, and the hair around his ears. He had almond-shaped eyes, like a Chinaman.”
“Any accent?”
“Yes. Pronounced his t’s as d’s, and his c’s as g’s.”
“German?”
“I would say Scandinavian.”
After their brief face-to-face confrontation, the man had run across the street (in front of me in the parked flivver) into the park, and Condon-after assuring the approaching security guard that there was nothing wrong-followed him there, both of them settling on the park bench near the hut.
Condon claimed he had scolded the man, telling him not to behave so rudely: “You are my guest!”
Following that berserk lesson in ransom etiquette, they sat in silence, which the “guest” broke. “It’s too dangerous. It would mean thirty years. Or I could burn. And I am only go-between.”
Condon hadn’t liked the sound of that. “What did you mean, you could ‘burn’?”
“I would burn if the baby is dead.”
“Dead! What are we doing here, if the child is dead!”
“The baby is not dead,” the man had said with reassuring matter-of-factness. “Would I burn if the baby is not dead?”
“I’m a teacher, sir, not a lawyer. Is the child well?”
“The baby is better than it was. We give more for him to eat than we heard in the paper from Mrs. Lindbergh. Tell her not to worry. Tell the Colonel not to worry, either. Baby is all right.”
“How do I know I am talking to the right man?”
“You got it, the letter with my singnature. Same singnature that was on my note in the crib.”
Here I interrupted Condon again to say: “But it wasn’t in the crib-it was on the windowsill.”
Condon gestured dismissively. “That small discrepancy is negligible, compared to the confirmation I did receive.”
Seated on the bench with his “guest,” Condon had removed from his pocket a small canvas pouch, opened it and extracted the safety pins he’d taken from the Lindbergh nursery.
“What are these?” Condon asked.
“Pins from the baby’s crib.”
I shook my head hearing this, as Condon said to me, “And thus I proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was indeed talking to the man who stood in the nursery and lifted that child from his crib!”
“Professor,” I said, “it doesn’t take a genius to identify safety pins as coming from a baby’s crib.”
“But these were identified as being from the Lindbergh baby’s crib!”
“Yeah, right. He might’ve guessed Baby Snooks, instead. Go on, go on.”
Condon had asked the man his name.
“John,” he’d said.
“My name is John, too. Where are you from, John?”
“Up farther than Boston.”
“What do you do, John?”
“I’m a sailor.”
“Bist du Deutsche?”
Condon’s question got only a puzzled look in return; the professor asked again, in English.
“Are you German?”
“No,” John said. “I’m Scandinavian.”
Condon then took time to explain to John that his (that is, John’s) mother, if she were still alive, would no doubt disapprove of these sordid activities. Then, because it was cold, Condon wasted even more time trying to convince his “guest”-who had a bad cough-to take his (that is, Condon’s) topcoat.
The baby, John told the professor, was on a boat (“boad,” he pronounced it). The boat was six hours away and could be identified by two white cloths on its masts. The ransom had been upped to seventy thousand because Lindbergh had disobeyed instructions and brought in the cops; besides, the kidnappers needed to put money aside in case they needed lawyers. The kidnap gang numbered six, two of whom were “womens.” John’s boss was “Number One,” a “smart man” who worked for the government. Number One would receive twenty grand of the seventy sought, and John and the other two men and the two nurses would each receive ten grand.
“It seems to me that you are doing the most dangerous job,” Condon said, sympathetically.
“I know it.”
“You’re getting a mere ten thousand dollars. I don’t think you’re getting your fair share.”
“I know it.”
“Look, John-leave them. Come with me to my house. I will get you one thousand dollars from my savings and see if I can get you more money from Colonel Lindbergh. That way, you’ll be on the law’s side.”
John shook his head and said, “No-I can’t do that. The boss would smack me out. They’d drill me.”
“You’ll be caught, John! Think of your mother!”
“We won’t be caught. We plan too careful-we prepared a year for this.”
Condon then offered to exchange himself as a hostage for the child; and when John turned him down, Condon asked to at least be taken to the baby. Surely John didn’t expect that the Lindbergh forces would pay the money without first seeing the child.
“No!” John said. “Number One would drill us both, if I took you there. But I will send by ten o’clock Monday morning proof we have the boy.”
“Proof?”
“His sleeping suit.”
Then, Condon claimed, John spent several minutes assuring the doctor, who brought up the subject, that Red Johnson and Betty Gow were not involved in the kidnapping; that they were innocent.
“This,” Condon said to me, “should be a relief to the Lindberghs and the police as well.”
I didn’t respond. My thoughts didn’t exactly mirror the old goat’s: I found it suspicious as hell that Condon would ask John about Johnson and Gow, and ridiculous that a kidnapper would ‘heatedly’ stick up for these strangers…unless of course they weren’t strangers to him.
John, rising to go, had asked a final question. “You will put another ad in the Bronx Home News?”
“I will,” Condon said.
“Say ‘Money is ready,’” John said, walking backward, lifting a finger. “And this time, it better be.”
And he turned and slipped into darkness.
“You shook hands with him,” I said, “before he went off into the woods.”
“Yes,” Condon said, “but not as friends. Rather as negotiators who have come to a preliminary meeting of minds.”
Any meeting of minds with Dr. John F. Condon was a poorly attended affair.
But the professor was tickled with himself and his adventure-delighted that channels were open for continued negotiations that would lead to the boy’s safe return.
I was hoping Wilson’s men had followed us here, had been silently watching, and had shadowed “John” home.
Yet I couldn’t help feeling I’d fucked up, that I should have got out of the car to eavesdrop and either follow this bastard “John,” or just nab him and beat the life, or the truth, out of him.
Whichever came first.