Stolen Away (40 page)

Curtis had asked Lindbergh, “What’s this all about, my being arrested for ‘obstructing justice’?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Lindbergh had said. “I do know that a phone number you said you called in Freeport, Long Island, did not check out.”

“What number?”

“Five-six-three-oh.”

“I said, five-six-
four
-oh. Colonel, I’ve been asking from the start that I be given the opportunity to consult my notes! I’ve been up day and night for practically the last ten days, and I can’t recall numbers like that—I’m not sure I could if I
were
rested!”

Lindbergh nodded, went into the house, didn’t come back.

“I wandered, and waited. Sat on the running board of Colonel Lindbergh’s car, feeling pretty goddamn low and dejected. Then something happened that should have been a warning flag, but I didn’t recognize it as such: Inspector Welch came by and was nice to me. It was hard to accept, this kindness from so cruel a man, but I grasped it, like a life jacket. He asked if I’d care to play a game of checkers. I said I’d like that. We played and he talked about what a great weight I must have on my mind.”

“And you admitted lying about seeing the ransom money,” I said.

“Yes,” Curtis said, nodded, lips tight across his teeth. “He trotted me inside and had me admit that to the Colonel. I did, and Lindbergh gave me a cold look, a look to kill that I will never forget. He nodded to Welch, who dragged me out of there. I was taken to Schwarzkopf’s office, where I made a statement adding this new fact. Then I was taken into the basement of the Lindbergh home, and the beatings began.”

They started at 10:00 in the evening, the beatings; ended at 4:30
A.M
., when the final, most complete of the several statements he signed, he signed. Then he was left tied up in the dank basement laundry room. He was not yet under arrest, or even formally accused of any wrongdoing.

“The next morning, unshaven, in filthy clothes,” he said, lips trembling, “I was dragged into Colonel Lindbergh’s library. A court of arraignment was waiting—the justice of the peace was there, so was Breckinridge, Lindbergh, Wilson and Prosecutor Hauck. I was charged with obstructing justice and taken away to jail. I stayed there until the trial. I couldn’t afford the bail. My wife came and brought me a change of clothes.”

Evalyn believed him. The tears in her eyes said so.

I believed him, too. I knew all about cops beating confessions out of suspects—having been both a cop and a suspect, at various times.

But what was more important, I believed he’d been telling the truth all along: I didn’t know who exactly Sam, Hilda, Nils and the rest were…nor whether they were in on the kidnapping, or just interloping extortionists.

But I was convinced they existed.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Evalyn asked earnestly. “Why weren’t Admiral Burrage and Reverend Dobson-Peacock accused and brought to trial?”

“Admiral Burrage never had any direct contact with the gang,” Curtis said. He had calmed himself, but it was a surface calm, only. “Also, the Admiral’s friendship with Colonel Lindbergh protected him. His only public comment, incidentally, has been ‘no comment’—and he has never responded to my calls or letters.”

“What about Dobson-Peacock?” I asked.

“The Reverend refused to come to New Jersey for questioning,” Curtis said, “which was undoubtedly wise. His public stance was that I’d put one over on him—though he did have some contact with the kidnappers.”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“I hope you’re prepared to travel, Mr. Heller,” Curtis said. He smiled but there was nothing happy about it. “Like Colonel Lindbergh, the Reverend resides in England, now.”

Evalyn and I exchanged looks of quiet frustration.

“What else can I tell you?” Curtis asked.

“What about the allegations,” Evalyn asked, gently, “that all this was a hoax you concocted to sell your story to the newspapers?”

“I did have a deal with the
Herald-Tribune,
” he said forth-rightly. “But it was contingent upon the recovery of the child. No money exchanged hands.”

It was time to take another tack.

“Did you ever hear of Max Greenberg,” I asked, “or Max Hassel?”

“Yes,” Curtis said, and saw me perk up, and then stopped me: “Only in the papers. I understand Gaston Means identified them as bootleggers involved in the kidnapping.”

“Did you see their pictures in the paper at the time?”

“Yes. And no, I’d never seen them before.”

“What about this guy?”

I showed him the picture of Fisch that Gerta Henkel, who was also in the picture, had given me.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. Who is it?”

“The infamous Isidor Fisch,” I said.

“You’re in the right place for a fish,” Curtis said, with his wry smile. “But not that one.”

“Commodore,” I said, rising, offering him my hand, “thank you.”

“I don’t know what I’ve said that could be helpful,” he said regretfully, taking my hand. “The Hauptmann case and mine are apparently unconnected.”

“Commodore,” Evalyn said, straightening her skirt as she rose, “they’re connected in this way: if we’re successful in clearing Richard Hauptmann, you may well be vindicated, too.”

“I appreciate that,” he said heartily. “But if you don’t mind, I’m going to continue my own efforts. If it takes the rest of my life, I’m going to clear my name through the courts.”

“I’m sure Hauptmann feels the same way,” I said. “Only the rest of his life is most likely a couple weeks.”

And we went out into the gray-blue world, where skiffs skimmed the water like ducks in a pond, and pointed the nose of the Packard north.

I had somebody to see at a nuthouse.

“Nathan Heller,” Gaston Means said, sitting up in bed, with his usual puckish smile, though his eyes had no twinkle, just a disturbed, disturbing glaze, and his dimples were lost in the hollows of his cheeks. He’d lost weight and his skin, which bore a yellowish cast from frequent gallstone attacks, had the loose look of oversize clothing. He wore a hospital nightgown, and was under the sheets and horsehair blankets of a bed in the prison ward in the Medical and Surgical Building of St. Elizabeth’s, a government mental hospital in Congress Heights, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. The window next to him had both bars and mesh, like the skylight near Hauptmann’s death-row cell.

Evalyn and I were standing next to his bed. Evalyn was wearing white, for a change, though the outfit was trimmed in black and her hat was white with black trim, too; she looked like a wealthy nurse.

“I never told you my name, Means,” I said.

“Ah, but you made an impression on me, Heller,” he said, and some twinkle almost cracked the glaze on the eyes. “Any man who puts a gun barrel in my mouth leaves his imprint on my psyche. Effective piece of psychology—I must compliment you.”

“Thanks.”

“I made a point to check up on you, yes indeedy. Like me, you’ve made your mark in the field of private investigation. You have certain acquaintances of influence in the underworld, as do I. You have, to put it mildly, quite a reputation, young man.”

“Coming from you,” I said, “I guess that’s a compliment.”

He looked at Evalyn warmly, placing a hand on his heart, as if about to be sworn on the witness stand, where he would of course lie his gallstones off.

“My dear Eleven,” he said, reverting to Evalyn’s long-ago code number, “you look charming. Are you lovely because you’re so rich, or are you rich because you’re so lovely? I’ll leave that question to the philosophers. At any rate, I want you to know that I harbor no ill feelings toward you.”

“You harbor no ill feelings toward
me
?” Evalyn said, eyes wide, her white-gloved hand touching her generous bosom.

“For testifying against me,” he said, seemingly astounded that she hadn’t known what he meant.

“You wouldn’t want to demonstrate your good will,” I said, “by telling us where Mrs. McLean’s one hundred thousand is, would you?”

He cocked his head and raised a lecturing finger. “That’s one hundred and four thousand,” he said. “And, no—that’s a point on which I’m rather fuzzy. I have a vague memory of stuffing the cash in a piece of pipe and throwing it into the Potomac. But from which pier exactly, I’m afraid it’s just not clear.”

“Right,” I said.

He began to cough; it did not seem feigned—it rattled the steel bed and his yellow face turned purple.

When the coughing subsided, and his color (such as it was) returned, Evalyn asked him, “How ill are you, Means?”

He straightened his bedclothing, summoned his dignity. “These gallstones are a damned nuisance, my dear. That’s not why I’ve come to St. Elizabeth’s, however. I’m here for serious psychiatric evaluation. I have had, on occasion, a tendency to fabricate, and to have difficulty differentiating illusion from reality.”

“No shit,” I said.

“Please, Heller,” Means said, flashing me a stern look. “There is a lady present.” He smiled at Evalyn like Friar Tuck. “All my troubles date to that fateful night of December eighth, 1911, when I fell from the upper berth of a Pullman car and struck my head.”

“Your first major insurance scam,” I said.

“Fourteen thousand dollars,” Means said, with a nostalgic sigh. “And fourteen thousand was
money
, then.”

A doctor interrupted us to read Means’s charts, and we stood to one side and waited; a not unattractive nurse brought him some pills and a cup of water and he smiled at her and called her “my dear” and harmlessly flirted.

When they’d gone, he said to us, “I’m suffering from high blood pressure of the brain, you see. It’s a direct result of that fall from the Pullman berth. It made me develop this fantastic imagination, which has gotten me into so much trouble. I’ve never profited a dime from any of my bootlegging or blackmail schemes, because I’ve always returned the money…except in your case, Eleven, because I simply can’t remember where it is.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” I said.

“Oh?” he said. Interested. “And why are you here, Heller?”

“I’m working for Governor Hoffman.”

He lit up like a Halloween pumpkin; the dimples in the hollows of the cheeks asserted themselves. “Splendid! I’ve sent numerous letters to Governor Hoffman. I’m delighted that he’s decided to help me in my mission.”

Evalyn blinked. “Your ‘mission’?”

Means nodded solemnly; he folded his hands prayerlike on what remained of his once formidable belly. “I have decided to dedicate all of my efforts to aid that poor, so unfairly maligned soul, Bruno Hauptmann.”

I sat on the edge of his bed. “No kidding. Your sense of justice is offended, is it?”

“It most certainly is. I’ve written not only to Governor Hoffman but Prosecutor Wilentz and Colonel Lindbergh, in England, and many other of the principals in the case. I’m doing my level best, in the midst of my illnesses, to help secure a stay of execution for Mr. Hauptmann.”

“You’re quite a guy, Means. Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he said, with a simple shrug, “
I
masterminded the Lindbergh kidnapping.”

Neither Evalyn nor I reacted.

That disappointed him; he seemed almost hurt. “Did you understand me? I said,
I
am the man. Hauptmann does not deserve the blame, nor for that matter the credit, for this elaborate crime. A simple ignorant carpenter. Ludicrous. The crime of the century was masterminded by the criminal mind of the century: Gaston Bullock Means!”

“That’s not what you told us a few years ago,” I reminded him.

He waggled a finger in the air. “Ah, but I was lying then, at least in part. Why do the two of you take this admission of mine so lightly? This is the most important confession ever made in the history of American jurisprudence.”

“Means,” I said, “I told you I was working for Hoffman. He showed the several of your letters. I know about your claims to have ‘masterminded’ this thing. So does Evalyn—
that
is why we’re here.”

“Oh. Then I suppose you’re hoping to fill in some of the details.”

“You might say that. You claim you built the ladder yourself?”

“Absolutely, in my garage at home at Chevy Chase. Hauptmann would have done a more professional job of it; he’s a carpenter, after all. The ladder, by the way, was used only to look in the window and see if the child was in the room, not to bring him out—the child was handed out the front door to operatives of mine by the butler. That’s why the ladder was found discarded seventy-some feet away.”

“What about Max Greenberg and Max Hassel? I thought
they
were the ‘masterminds.’”

“They worked for me. I had my connections with all of those rumrunners and bootleggers. The gang that Curtis came into contact with, they worked for me, too. It was my show from the start.”

Evalyn moved nearer the bed. “In one letter to Governor Hoffman, you claimed you’d been hired by relatives of Mrs. Lindbergh, to take the child.”

“Ah, yes—because the boy was retarded. And I was aided by Greenberg and Hassel, and that pair on the inside, Violet Sharpe and Ollie Whately.”

“Are you saying that’s
true
?” Evalyn asked.

“Which part?” he asked innocently.

“Which part
isn’t
true?” I asked.

“The part about the retarded baby. It’s a rumor I heard once, and liked the sound of.”

I wondered if they had an extra bed open in this mental ward.

“Your friends Greenberg and Hassel,” I said, “somebody murdered them, you know.”

He nodded slowly, gravely. “Life can be so unkind.”

“Death, too,” I said. “Funny thing: they were murdered shortly after you gave me their names. After you fingered ’em as the real kidnappers.”

“Coincidence has a long arm.”

“Maybe you do, too, Means. Or people you’re allied with.”

“Means,” Evalyn said harshly, “is that baby still alive?”

His smile was angelic. “Let me first say that the body of the baby found in New Jersey was a ‘plant’—not the Lindbergh baby at all.”

“Why was that done?” I asked.

“To bring certain things to a halt,” he said. “For example, bootlegging activities in the Sourlands hills had been much disrupted. Too many troopers, too much activity, too much company. With the discovery of the child, things could go back to normal. Business as usual.”

“Is that baby still alive?” Evalyn repeated.

“My dear,” he said, “to my knowledge he is. I took that child to Mexico and left him there, unharmed. As God is my witness.”

I got off the edge of the bed, in case lightning struck the fucker.

“Where is the child now?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said, with an elaborate shrug. “I do know that the boy is in safe hands. As long as he lives, there are powerful people who can never be threatened with a murder charge.”

“No one believes you, Means,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“About being the mastermind of the Lindbergh kidnapping. You’re the wolf who cried little boy.”

He laughed silently. “Well put, Heller. Well put. And what do
you
think?”

“I think you may be telling the truth, for once in your life, or at least more truth than usual. Whether you really want to be believed or not is a question I couldn’t begin to answer. What truly goes on in the twisted corridors of your brain is anybody’s guess.”

He was nodding, smiling his puckish smile.

“If I were Al Capone,” I said, and his smile disappeared momentarily, as if the very name gave him pause, “I might choose you as the perfect middleman…a man with connections among bootlegging circles, political circles, high society—you’re ideal, except of course for being completely untrustworthy.”

“Ah,” Means said, tickling the air with a forefinger, “but if I were
afraid
of my employer…”

“If it were Capone, or an East-Coast equivalent like Luciano or Schultz, you’d play straighter than usual. To guard your fat ass.”

“Heller, that’s unkind. Language of that sort in front of Mrs. McLean is really uncalled for.”

“You go to hell, sir,” she said to him.

He was crestfallen. “I may have wronged you, my dear, but surely such hostility is not called for, between old friends.”

“For one hundred grand,” I said, “she’s earned the right.”

“One hundred and four,” he reminded me.

I shook my head, smiled. “You really have no shame, do you, Means?”

“These things are beyond my control,” he said somberly. “My imagination is a by-product of mental disease. That, my friends, is why I lobbied to be brought to St. E’s.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do,” I said, “with avoiding hard time at Leavenworth?”

“It’s more pleasant here, I admit,” he said brightly. Then he made his face serious: “You see, it’s my hope to have a brain operation, so that afterward, when I’ve been made a fit member of society, I can be paroled.”

Gaston Means was pulling his final, biggest con: fooling himself that he would ever get out from behind bars—although the glaze on his eyes suggested his mark might not be buying the scam, either.

“Tell me one thing, Means,” I said. “Level with me on just one thing: it’s not even important, in the great scheme of events. It’s just something I’d like to know.”

“Heller—we’ve been friends for so many years. Would I deny you such a small favor?”

“Back in ’32 when Evalyn and I and her maid Inga were camped out at her country place, Far View, did you come back at night, and sneak around, pulling the sheets off beds and walking around in the closed-off upstairs, just generally doing your best to spook us?”

“Ah—Far View,” Means said wistfully. “They say it’s haunted, you know. Some things go bump in the night, did they?”

“I think you know they did.”

He loved this. “So many years later, that brush with the supernatural has stuck with you, has it, Heller? A hard-nosed, clear-eyed realist of a lad like yourself?”

“You’re not going to level with me, are you, Means?”

“Heller, you’re the kind of man who would make love to a woman with the lights on.” He turned apologetically to Evalyn. “Please pardon the near crudity, Eleven.” He looked at me again, with an expression both scolding and amused. “Don’t you know there are some things in life that are better left a mystery?”

“So long, Means,” I sighed.

Evalyn said nothing to him.

“Thank you for stopping by, my friends,” he said cheerily. “And Eleven—if it comes to me which pier I tossed your money off of, I will contact you at once.”

We left him sitting up in bed with his pixie puss frozen in a silly smile, looking vaguely mournful, like Tweedledum had Tweedledee died.

Friendship, the McLean estate behind a high wall on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., was smaller than the White House. A bit. Her place at 2020 Massachusetts Avenue, which at the time was the largest private residence I’d ever been in, could’ve been a porch, here.

“It used to be a monastery,” she said, as I navigated the driveway through lavishly landscaped grounds. “Can’t you just imagine those brown-robed monks, tending all the gardens and bushes? Like dozens of mute obedient gardeners.”

“Help like that is hard to find,” I said.

It was dusk and overcast and cold, and the huge house—dating to the early nineteenth century, but restored and remodeled into a modern-looking, sprawling, only vaguely colonial structure—loomed before me indistinctly, miragelike. I swung the Packard around by the big French fountain in front and, with her permission, parked it there.

I’d gotten used to being around Evalyn, who for all her melodrama and archness was a pretty down-to-earth gal; we’d even stopped for supper at a diner along the way where she ate with literal and figurative relish a greasy hamburger and greasier french-fried potatoes. But I hadn’t forgotten I was keeping company with a dame who ate with heads of state and entertained Washington society at her estate—an estate, I had discovered, complete with private golf course, greenhouse and duck pond.