On the following Monday, I played chauffeur for Evalyn one last time. Midafternoon, I was tooling the powder-blue Lincoln up rutted Featherbed Lane to the whitewashed stone house where a child, not so long ago, had been stolen. Evalyn rode in front this time, and I wasn’t in the natty gray uniform with the black buttons. She was a little depressed and, frankly, so was I.
“Not a word to Colonel Lindbergh,” I cautioned, “about Hassel and Greenberg. I don’t want to go making any more accomplices-after-the-fact than I already have.”
She nodded. She looked with hooded-eyed interest at the bleak, weedy grounds of an estate that to her must have seemed modest indeed.
“Look at the hillside beyond the house,” she said, distractedly, searching out some beauty in the barrenness. “The white and pink dogwood against the dark cedars…lovely.”
The thought didn’t seem to cheer her up much. She wore a black fox stole and a smartly cut black suit with a white silk blouse and pearls, dark silk stockings, and a soup-dish black hat with no veil; she looked like a wealthy widow, in token mourning.
I pulled around by the garage, where a modest level of police activity continued; the weather today was almost warm, and the doors were up, and the handful of troopers dealing with mail and phone calls seemed to be moving at half-speed, in a sluggish, dreamlike state. Schwarzkopf didn’t seem to be around.
I ushered Evalyn from the Lincoln as if we were both approaching a graveside ceremony. Halfway to the side door, however, Lindy-wearing a dark-blue sweater over an open-collar shirt, his brown pants tucked into his midcalf leather boots-came out to greet and meet us halfway. He smiled at us, shyly friendly, but the dark circles under his eyes would rival a raccoon’s.
“Mrs. McLean, it’s an honor,” he said, warmly-in fact, his voice was at that moment as warm as I think I ever heard it. “I’m so pleased you’ve come.”
“The honor and the pleasure are mine,” she said, with dignity, extending a gloved hand rather regally, which he briefly took. “It was kind of you to suggest we meet.”
That seemed to embarrass him a little.
“Nate,” he said, acknowledging me with a nod and smile. And to us both, with a stiff gesture, said, “Let’s go inside.”
He took her by the arm, and I trailed after.
We moved through the servants’ sitting room; the desk Schwarzkopf had set up out there, making it an informal office, was empty. I asked Lindbergh where the state police colonel had gone, and was told Trenton-Schwarzkopf was spending less and less time here. In the kitchen, we found homely Elsie Whately chopping vegetables with a sharp knife, preparing to do her reverse magic on perfectly edible provisions; she portioned out one minimally civil nod for us all to share, as we passed through.
In the large living room, Anne Lindbergh-wearing a simple dark-blue frock with a lace collar, looking like a schoolgirl, albeit a five-month pregnant one-rose and moved toward Evalyn with a warm, wide smile and an arm extended for a handshake in a manner about as dainty as a longshoreman’s. The brown-and-white terrier, Wahgoosh, who’d been asleep on the couch, uncoiled like a cobra and began barking with his trademark hysteria.
Lindbergh spoke sharply to the mutt, silencing him, but Evalyn, still shaking hands with the grateful Anne, merely said, “I like dogs-please don’t scold him on my account.”
Hell, in Evalyn’s house, Wahgoosh would’ve been wearing the Star of India.
Anne was clasping Evalyn’s gloved hand, holding it with both of her bare ones as if it were something precious.
“You’ve done so much,” Anne said. “You’ve tried so hard.”
Evalyn swallowed. “And accomplished so little, I’m afraid.”
Anne’s smile was tight yet soft; her eyes were tired, but they sparkled-with tears, perhaps. “You’re a wonderful person, Mrs. McLean. I’m aware that you…lost your own little boy. And so, I do understand, and I do appreciate, all you’ve done. All you’ve tried to do.”
“You’re very kind.”
Anne released Evalyn’s hand, but stood very near her. What Lindbergh’s wife said next was spoken softly, and not meant for anyone’s ears but her guest’s. Detective that I am, I heard every word.
“I think,” Anne said, “analyzing it, that women take sadness…and conquer it…differently from men. Don’t you?”
Evalyn said nothing.
“Women take it willingly, with open arms. Men try to lose themselves, in effort. Would you care to walk with me? The dogwoods are blooming, and you can see the occasional wild cherry tree….”
They exited arm-in-arm, Anne playing gracious hostess and tour guide, and Lindy said to me, “Someone you should see.”
“Oh?”
He didn’t explain-just led the way.
In the library, with Breckinridge seated near the desk, Commodore John Hughes Curtis stood straight as a ship’s mast, hands locked behind him. His two previous companions-Reverend Dobson-Peacock and Admiral Burrage-were conspicuously absent. He remained an impressive, immaculately attired Southern gentleman, well over six foot, his hair iron-gray, features regular and tanned.
“Commodore,” Lindbergh said, “you remember Nate Heller, with the Chicago Police Department?”
“Yes,” Curtis said, with a big, affable smile, offering a bear’s-paw hand for me to shake. “The Capone mob expert.”
“That may be stretching it,” I said. “But none of us can deny that bootleggers seem to be all over this case.”
Curtis nodded, solemn now, and Slim said, settling himself behind the desk, “Since you saw him last, Nate, the Commodore has had much more contact with his group of bootleggers and rumrunners. Commodore, would you mind repeating your story for Detective Heller?”
“Not at all,” Curtis said, reasonably, and as I found a seat, he finally sat, too. Breckinridge and I had already exchanged small smiles and nods of greeting; the gray, loyal attorney and I had come to share a measure of respect and even friendship.
“Several weeks ago,” Curtis said, fixing his steady gaze on me, “I was approached again by ‘Sam’-that rumrunning, fleeting acquaintance of mine, whose ‘fishing smack’ I repaired once or twice….”
“I don’t remember you describing ‘Sam’ in much detail,” I said, noncommittally.
“Well, he’s a big, lumbering individual…usually wears flashy clothes, like some gangster in a moving picture. He’s decidedly Jewish in appearance, his English broken.”
Being half-Jew myself, I wondered how anybody’s appearance could be “decidedly Jewish,” but I decided to let it pass.
“At any rate,” Curtis continued, “he called me, several weeks ago, and asked if I could meet with him in Manhattan, the next day. With some urgency in his voice, he suggested we meet at a cafeteria near Forty-First Street, at one A.M. Sunday morning.”
Admiral Burrage had arranged for a Navy pilot to fly Curtis to New York, where he checked in at the Governor Clinton Hotel under an assumed name.
“I walked uptown, in the middle of the night, to the cafeteria. Only one side of the room was in use, porters already at work cleaning the other side for the early morning trade. Chairs were piled high, the floor was being swabbed.”
“Commodore,” I said. I was tiring of people who savored melodrama. “Could you get to the point?”
“Detective Heller, I found only one other customer in the cafeteria: Sam, who was sitting at the very last table eating a plate of wheat cakes with some relish.”
Pickle relish, maybe. God, these people.
“Sam claimed the boy was with a German nurse-that he himself had never seen the child. But that he could get her, the nurse, to write out a description for me to give the Colonel. I told him that that was okay, but that I wanted proof, personally, for my own satisfaction, that his crowd really stole the child.”
“And what,” I asked, “did Sam say to that?”
Curtis smiled. “He offered to take me to meet the rest of his gang-to which I immediately said, ‘Let’s go, then!’ But he made me wait two more days-and the night of the second day we met again. I was told to follow Sam’s vehicle through the Holland Tunnel…then to the Hudson-Manhattan train station in Newark. And that was where I came face-to-face with the four men who, if they’re to be believed, masterminded this kidnapping.”
Well, the melodrama of that did have some effect, even on me.
“They were waiting there, on the train platform. No one else was around; the lighting was minimal. One of the men I’d seen before, in the Norfolk shipyard, though this was the first I’d heard his name: George Olaf Larsen. He’s in his early forties, medium height, drab-colored hair combed straight back from his forehead. Sam always addresses him as ‘boss.’”
The second man, Curtis said, was introduced simply as Nils-a Scandinavian in his early thirties, blond, with a florid complexion. The third man was called Eric, another blond but in his mid-forties.
The fourth man was named John.
“He’s a handsome man,” Curtis said, “with the physique of a physical culturist. From his accent, I’d say he was either Norwegian or Dutch.”
I glanced significantly at Lindbergh and then at Breckinridge; Lindy flicked an eyebrow up, while Breckinridge maintained a lawyer’s poker face.
But we all knew the same thing: while a New York Times reporter had, last week, identified Professor Condon as “Jafsie,” and Jafsie as the Lindbergh ransom negotiator, the story of “Cemetery John” was not yet public knowledge.
All five of the gang had piled into Curtis’s car and headed for Larsen’s house in Cape May, at the southern tip of New Jersey.
“Along the way, John said, ‘Sam, he says you want some proof we do this job.’” Curtis was imitating the man’s Norwegian accent; it was pretty hammy. “‘Suppose I tell you exactly how we do it. One night, about one month before kidnapping, I go to some party with a girl friend of mine, a German trained nurse, at roadhouse outside Trenton.’”
The cadence reminded me a bit of the ransom notes Lindbergh and Condon had received.
“‘At roadhouse I meet a member of Lindbergh and Morrow household,’” Curtis continued, still mimicking “John.” Then he interrupted himself to say: “John didn’t say which servant. But he said he recruited this person-he wasn’t even specific about the gender-and promised ‘plenty good money for the trouble.’”
“My servants,” Lindy broke in, rather coldly, “are above suspicion.”
I bit my tongue; I wondered idly how Schwarzkopf and Inspector Welch were faring with the Means tip about Violet Sharpe-which Curtis seemed to be substantiating.
“I’m just telling you what I was told,” Curtis said, quietly defensive. “John’s story was interrupted by our arrival at the Cape May cottage. A woman named Hilda-identified as Larsen’s wife-met us and led us into a brightly lit dining room. We sat around a table, and John finished his story.”
The night of the kidnapping, Nils, Eric, the German nurse and John had driven a green Hudson sedan and parked three hundred feet or so away from Featherbed Lane. Sam had followed in another car, and parked farther away still, on a high spot near the main road, where he could signal if another car pulled into the lane. Nils and John, with a three-sectioned ladder, went to the nursery window. They climbed through the window, with a blanket, a rag and some chloroform. Because the ladder was so unsteady, they exited with their human parcel via the front door.
“The front door?” I asked.
“They knew the layout of the house,” Curtis explained. “They showed me a map, a huge floor plan, which judging from my two visits here would seem to tally. They knew how to lock the pantry door, to keep everyone in the kitchen and the servants’ quarters away from the front hall, if anybody heard anything. There was a key on a nail for them to use-the servant they bribed had told them where to find it.”
I looked at Slim.
“That key does exist,” Lindbergh admitted.
Curtis said, “They had a letter for Colonel Lindbergh, describing the child. I didn’t read it, but I saw it-it seemed to be sort of half-printed, half-written.”
The notes Lindbergh and Jafsie received did mingle printing with cursive, somewhat.
“I was of course ecstatic that they’d finally provided the proof of identification the Colonel sought. And I suggested that one of them accompany me, that very moment, here to Hopewell, to present the letter to Colonel Lindbergh.”
“But they refused,” I said.
“Quite the contrary,” Curtis said. “Larsen went with me. We drove through the night. At Trenton, the next morning, first thing, I attempted to call Colonel Lindbergh, and finally did get through to him, but was unable to arrange the meeting-the Colonel had a pressing engagement.”
I glanced at Lindbergh, finding it hard to believe that he’d decline a chance to meet with Curtis and someone who claimed to be one of the kidnappers.
Lindbergh shrugged. “That was the day you and I went out in the Lockheed-Vega, Nate.”
The second day of searching for the “boad” Nelly. No wonder Curtis and his possible kidnapper fell through the cracks.
“Larsen was pretty jumpy,” Curtis said. “He insisted I drive him back.”
“What about the letter,” I asked, “with the physical description of the kid?”
“He wouldn’t hand it over to me; he hung onto it.”
“Why in hell?”
“He was angry with Colonel Lindbergh, and suspicious.”
“Have you had any contact with Sam or John and company, since?”
He nodded. “Yes. There has been one subsequent meeting.”
After the papers had been filled with lists of serial numbers and speculative stories about “Jafsie,” Curtis was contacted by Sam for another meeting at the Newark train station. He found all of the self-proclaimed kidnappers but Larsen squeezed into Sam’s car, and was told to join them. He did, and was driven to a three-story house in the Scandinavian section of Newark. In a small, sloppy one-flat serving as a bedroom, dining room and sitting room, the men found chairs and Curtis asked John about Jafsie.
Curtis continued his impression of John’s accent. “He said, ‘Sure, I did the work with Condon. That was the idea all along-to chisel this Lindbergh through Condon, then turn the boy in through you. That’s why we were willing to let the kid go cheap to you.’ I told him I didn’t call twenty-five thousand dollars ‘cheap,’ but John said the Lindberghs were ‘rolling in dough.’”
Curtis asked for the letter, describing the boy, and John bragged that he’d torn it up-“Do you think we’re fool enough to keep something that hot around?”
“I was getting skeptical,” Curtis admitted. “So I demanded hard proof. They gave it to me.”
“Yeah?”
“They showed me some of the ransom money.”
I looked sharply at Lindbergh and Breckinridge.
“Fifteen hundred in fives, tens and twenties,” Curtis continued. “They gave me a list of the bills, in a newspaper clipping, and I checked several against it.” He took a breath and nodded, once. “These are the men who have the Colonel’s money, all right.”
Silence hung in the room like humidity.
Then Lindbergh, clearly sold, said, “I think we can proceed with depositing that twenty-five thousand and arranging the safe return of my son.”
Curtis sighed in relief “Thank God, Colonel. Of course, you know I’m at your service.”
Lindbergh rose. “I need a few moments, in private, with my attorney and my police consultant. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Curtis said, heartily, rising.
“I would like you to stay for supper, of course, and we’ll talk this evening.” Lindy reached his hand across the desk.
Curtis, beaming, shook Lindbergh’s hand, then did the same with Breckinridge and myself, as we stood briefly, politely, till he was out the door.
“What do you think, Nate?” Slim asked, sitting back down.
“Much of what he says does jibe with things that the man on the street couldn’t know.”
Breckinridge, who’d been quiet, said, “Much of it jibes with Condon.”
“And even with Gaston Means,” I said. “And Curtis-despite a flair for theater that rivals the Great Jafsie-seems a reliable go-between. Did you check up on his financial standing?”
I was asking Lindy, but Breckinridge answered. “His shipping firm has had its ups and downs, in these hard times. But he appears solvent. And his social standing is unquestioned.”
Lindbergh was nodding. “And his fellow go-betweens Dobson-Peacock and, of course, Admiral Burrage are unimpeachable.”
“Well, then,” I said, “play out the hand-but, of course, you’ll bring in Irey and Wilson.”
“What do you mean?” Lindbergh asked, as if the concept I’d suggested were arcane.
“Slim-if we’ve learned anything from Condon, not to mention Gaston Means, it’s that we can’t play by the rules in a game set up by cheaters. Curtis is running around with these ‘kidnappers’ like a freshman on a fraternity hazing. You need to have the authorities in on this-carefully, secretly, without Curtis’s knowledge-but in on it. He has to be shadowed, and when the ransom payment is made, you follow the fucker who gets the money to wherever he goes and…”
“No,” Lindbergh said, shaking his head vigorously. “Nate, no. We play it straight.”
I looked at him the way you look at a driver who signals right and turns left. “What do you mean, ‘straight’?”
“Curtis is honest, and reliable. I trust him. I think he can get Charlie back.”
“That isn’t the point!” I was on my feet now, leaning my hands on his desk. “If these are in fact the same sons of bitches who took that fifty grand from Condon, then they’ve already screwed you, once! And if they’re just some interloping extortionist gang, then you’re going to just throw more goddamn dough out the window.” I took my hands off his desk; I was shaking my head, frustrated, disgusted. “You can’t be serious, Slim-you have to have learned something from the Condon experience….”
His face was stone.
Breckinridge seemed sympathetic to my stance, or at least his expression said so, even if he didn’t.
I backed away from the desk. I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. Summoned a sense of calm and crawled inside. “Well, then, that’s it, Slim. This is where I get off.”
“I’d like you to stay.” His voice was earnest; his eyes were hurt. “We’re still dealing with bootleggers, rumrunners…we can’t rule out the Capone connection.”
“I don’t rule that out. But I can’t be party to this any longer. It just goes against my grain as a cop. All due respect.”
“If that’s how you feel…”
“It’s how I feel.”
He stood. “I do understand, Nate.” His words were cordial, but his tone was tense. “I…respect what you’re saying. But you know how I feel about getting my son back.”
“I know,” I said, trying to sound at least a little conciliatory. “My point is, you’ve been going about it all wrong.”
A frown grazed his face-nobody talked to him that way-but it was gone as he came out from around the desk. “Then, uh…you’ll be heading back for Chicago soon?”
“I’ll drive Mrs. McLean back to Washington, tonight. I’ll catch the train there, tomorrow.”
“Fine.” He dug in his pocket. “Here’s some expense money.” He peeled off five twenties.
I had a hunch I was supposed to feel insulted. Maybe I did feel a little insulted. But I put the money in my pocket.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’ll stay for supper?” he asked.
“Yes. And we’ll have to talk to Evalyn, about Means.”
“The Means information was a dead end?”
He didn’t know how dead.
“Slim, Means is a completely unreliable go-between. Don’t ask how I know, but any lines of communication he may have had with the kidnappers have been severed.”
He wondered about that, but I’d asked him not to ask how I knew, and he was goddamn good about playing by the rules some other asshole imposed on him.
“What I’d like you to do,” I said, “as a favor to me if nothing else, is encourage Mrs. McLean not to pursue Means as a go-between, any longer. To encourage her to have the son of a bitch arrested, which after all might uncover some worthwhile information. She’s inclined to do that herself already. But she needs to hear it from you.”
“That’s why you suggested I invite her here?” “Yes. That, and I think she deserved to meet you and your wife. To hear you thank her. I think she’s got that much coming, for her hundred grand, rich though she is.” Lindbergh, chagrined, nodded his agreement.
During dinner, amidst my social betters talking about politics and coming-out parties and yachts, I noticed something odd. We were having the usual dreadful English cooking, courtesy of Elsie Whately-mystery stew, tough bread, murky coffee and cardboard pie-and butler Ollie, Elsie’s better half, was serving us. But he seemed very ill at ease. The presence of either Curtis or Evalyn or the both of them seemed to get on his nerves. The table service, which Ollie had set, was missing the knives. Anne Lindbergh herself got up and provided them.
Why in hell would a servant trained in household duties since he was knee-high to a fetus forget so ordinary a piece of table service as a knife?
After dinner, Slim did indeed encourage Evalyn to cut Means loose, turn him in and do her best to get her money back.
It was perhaps eight-thirty when we walked out into a cool, overcast night, Evalyn and I followed by Slim and his pretty Anne, who held hands like young lovers. They looked like the perfect American couple they’d been, not so long ago, the circles under their eyes, the redness of those eyes, the lines worry was etching in their faces, smoothed by the night’s cool half-light.
That was my last image of them, their smiles slight and shining, like slices of the moon, Anne delicate and waving from the hip, her other hand resting gently on the rise of her tummy, where a new child grew, Slim raising a hand in goodbye, shy, modest, his stubbornness not showing.
As we drove away, the ruts of Featherbed Lane challenging even the Lincoln’s suspension, Evalyn seemed at peace; even happy.
“They’re wonderful people,” she said. “Wonderful.”
“They’re nice,” I agreed. “Damn shame.”
“So in love.”
“Definitely.”
We were moving through the dark woods, moonlight filtering through the trees, when Evalyn said, “Pull over. Pull off.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I did as I was told, the Lincoln’s wheels crunching leaves and twigs as we rolled to a stop. I shut the car off and looked at her; for a woman who’d had a big meal recently, she sure looked hungry. She was unbuttoning the white silk blouse, breathing heavily, her breasts heaving. The fox stole was curled up between us on the seat as if asleep, the black jacket of her suit draped over it like she’d covered it, to keep it warm.
“Fuck me,” she said.
I love it when rich women talk dirty.
Then we were in the backseat, her black dress hiked up, my trousers around my ankles, her silk stockings rubbing smoothly against my bare legs, the sounds of animals outside the car counterpoising the sounds of animals within.
Later, as I drove, she slept much of the time, cuddled up against me. She smelled good; her jasmine perfume was mingling with a natural muskiness from our coupling.
At one point, half-asleep, she said, “How would you like a full-time job?”
“Huh?”
“I really could use a sort of bodyguard, chauffeur, security chief…it would pay nicely, Nate.”
“Well, uh…”
“There’d be fringe benefits.”
“Gee, Evalyn.”
“Double your salary,” she said, and began to snore.
I thought about it all the way to Washington, D.C. Was she serious? After all, I had a career. Hell, I wasn’t some male concubine. I was a cop, I was a detective; not a kept man!
“Evalyn,” I said, the next morning, in her mammoth breakfast nook, drinking coffee from a china cup worth more than any single possession of mine, “I accept.”
“You accept what, Nate?”
“Your offer. I’d love to come to work for you.”
She smiled sadly; she looked older this morning-pretty, but every year her age. She wore a pink silk robe-not her dowdy plaid number. And the Hope diamond was around her neck; it winked mockingly at me. She was sipping tea.
“That, I’m afraid, was just wishful thinking on my part. I can’t have you around. You’re too dangerous.”
“Don’t judge me by the other day,” I said, nibbling buttery toast. “I hardly ever get in shoot-outs.”
“It’s not that.” She had a tiny, bittersweet half-smile. “Frightening as that was, I will treasure the memory. The fear will fade, the romance will sustain.”
“Evalyn, I’ll go back to Chicago if you tell me to.”
“Go back to Chicago, Nate.”
“Oh. Well. Sure.”
Her eyes glistened with regret. “Nate-my husband wants my children. And my children are the most important thing in my life. If Ned found out about us, about you and me, he could use it against me, and could have them. He could win them. And I can’t have that.” She shook her head, with a look of unmistakable finality. “We mustn’t see each other again.”
She reached across the table and touched my cheek.
“It’s been wonderful,” she said. “A real adventure. But it’s over.”
I got up and went over and gave her a kiss; a nice fat buttery smooch.
“Let me know if you ever need me,” I said.
Then I wiped off my face with a fancy napkin, went upstairs, got my bag, caught a cab and hopped a westbound train. The only thing this detective hoped to find, right now, was Chicago, Illinois.