Stolen Away

14

The sleeping suit, which “John” had promised would be in Condon’s hands by ten o’clock Monday morning, did not arrive until Wednesday’s mail.

The days between were both tedious and tense, though the weather had turned pleasant. Overnight winter had transformed itself into spring, which wasn’t entirely good news, as it heralded a new, worse-than-ever tourist assault on the Lindbergh estate. The New Jersey State cops were in their element, for a change, finally doing what they were qualified to do: direct traffic. Schwarzkopf’s boys in their spiffy uniforms manfully warded off the sightseers, although-somewhat ironically, considering whose estate it was-the interlopers who could not be curtailed were the airplane pilots who, at $2.50 a ticket, were flying over the house and grounds all the sunny day long, to the delight of their rubbernecking passengers and the annoyance of all us on the ground.

On Tuesday, two weeks since the kidnapping, Colonel Schwarzkopf held a press conference about, among other things, Henry “Red” Johnson; seemed the sailor had been deemed innocent of any wrongdoing in the Lindbergh case, but was in federal custody awaiting deportation for entering the country illegally. What Schwarzkopf didn’t tell the newshounds-because he didn’t know it-was that I’d suggested to Frank Wilson of the IRS that Johnson’s deportation proceed at a snail’s pace, in case later on Johnson turned out not to be quite so “innocent.”

Wilson continued to be cooperative with me, and I with him, but he had confirmed my suspicion, the night of the cemetery rendezvous with “John”: nobody had trailed Condon and me, and nobody had, accordingly, been able to tail and trail John home.

“The orders come straight from the top,” Wilson told me. “Lindbergh and Mills are pals, you know.”

Wilson meant Ogden Mills, Secretary of the Treasury.

“That’s insane,” I said.

“We’ve been told to lay off,” Wilson told me gloomily. “No stakeout on Condon, no interference in any way in how Colonel Lindbergh wants the case handled.”

Hamstrung as they were, Wilson and the IRS agents were continuing their own investigation, including the ongoing search for Capone’s man Bob Conroy; but Jafsie, John and the whole sorry crew were getting a free ride.

Around ten-thirty Wednesday morning at his house in the beautiful borough of the Bronx, Professor Condon received a pliant oblong brown-paper package, obviously the sleeping suit, though the old boy didn’t open the bundle. Instead he called Breckinridge, at the attorney’s office, to arrange for Lindbergh himself to come do the honors. Condon said he had his reasons for this, and one of them was obviously a desire to have Lucky Lindy as a houseguest.

But it was well after dark before Lindbergh and I were able to sneak away from the estate. The place was still crawling with reporters and sightseers. I drove the flivver, and Lindy crouched in back, wearing a cap and large-lensed amber glasses and a flannel shirt and well-worn, faded denim pants; it was a cool night, but he wore no topcoat-he looked like a delivery boy. He had the baby face for it.

We arrived at Condon’s Bronx bungalow a little after 1:00 A.M. The professor answered the door and, for a moment, didn’t know who Lindbergh was, till the amber glasses were removed. Not that Slim’s disguise was impenetrable: I figured Condon gave himself the same puzzled expression every morning in the mirror.

“I have something for you,” Condon told Lindbergh archly, as we followed him through the hallway and into the living room, where Colonel Breckinridge-still Condon’s houseguest-waited.

The brown-paper bundle was on the grand piano, on the paisley shawl.

“Are you quite sure,” Condon said, touching Lindbergh’s arm, “that you wish-that you can bear-to inspect the contents of this package?”

Lindbergh said nothing; he just reached for the package and began to carefully unwrap it, like a fussy woman undoing a Christmas present, wanting to save the colorful paper for next year. A note had been enclosed, which he set aside. He lifted out a small woolen garment-a gray sleeping suit. A red label in the back collar identified it as a Dr. Denton’s, size two.

Lindbergh looked at it curiously. He sniffed it. “I think it’s been laundered,” he said.

“Let me have a look,” I said.

He handed it to me hesitantly, as if the slack suit were the child itself.

“It could’ve been washed,” I said, taking it, examining it. “Or it could be new. Whoever sent it might’ve had to go out and buy it.”

Lindbergh’s face squeezed in on itself. “How would they know what to buy? The description we gave the papers was purposely misleading.”

That was true: the press had been told, and printed, that the sleeping suit was a “fine, white balbriggan” that buttoned in front with a backflap. This one buttoned in back, and was gray, with a breast pocket.

“Somebody who worked around your kid would know,” I said.

He grimaced irritably and said, “I’m convinced this is the sleeping suit.”

“Well, then. You’re convinced. Better have a look at the note.”

He did. We all did. It was signed with the by-now-familiar interlocking-circles signature. It said:

Dear Sir: Ouer man fails to collect the mony. There are no more confidential conference after the meeting from March 12. Those arrangements to hazardous for us. We will note allow ouer man to confer in a way like before. Circumstance will note allow us to make a transfare like you wish. It is impossibly for us. Wy should we move the baby and face danger to take another person to the plase is entirely out of question. It seems you are afraid if we are the right party and if the boy is alright. Well you have ouer singnature. It is always the same as the first one specialy these three hohls

It continued on the reverse:

Now we will send you the sleepingsuit from the baby besides it means 3 $ extra expenses because we have to pay another one. Pleace tell Mrs. Lindbergh note to worry the baby is well. We only have to give him more food as the diet says.

You are willing to pay the 70000 note 50000 $ without seeing the baby first or note, let us know about that in the New York-american. We can’t do it other ways, because we don’t like to give up ouer safty plase or to move the baby.

If you are willing to accept this deal put these in the paper.

I accept mony is ready ouer program is: after eight houers we have the mony receivd we will notify you where to find the baby. If thers is any trapp, you will be responsible whatwill follows.

“What does this mean,” Breckinridge asked, taking the note. “This business of ‘Circumstance will not allow us to make a transfer like you wish.’”

“I pleaded with him,” Condon said, “that I might be taken to the place where the child was being kept, to ascertain the boy’s health and safety.”

“If he won’t let us see the child before the money is paid,” Lindbergh said glumly, “we’ll pay it anyway.”

“Well, after all,” Condon said, cheerfully, “this fellow has kept his word with us throughout. And we’ve kept our word with him.”

“Yes,” Lindbergh said, eyes at once haunted and bright. “There’s no reason to think they won’t deliver my son as soon as they get their money.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing short of a couple of straitjackets that would straighten this pair out on this subject.

“We’d best draft our response to the kidnappers,” Condon said, putting a grandfatherly hand on his famous guest’s shoulder. “For the newspaper ad.”

We sat in the living room and Condon, Breckinridge and Lindbergh hashed it out. I didn’t contribute. I was thinking about Chicago, now that the snow would be thawing.

“We can’t let negotiations drag on too long,” Lindbergh was saying. “If the kidnappers get impatient, or the newspapers get wind of this, my son could pay with his life.”

“Sir,” Condon said, “I think it’s important for us to at least try to see the baby before the money is paid.”

I almost fell off the couch: the old boy had said something that actually made sense.

“No,” Lindbergh said. “We’re in no position to make demands. It’s their game: we play by their rules. Run the ad they want.”

A little after three in the morning, Condon’s pretty, sullen daughter Myra entered and offered us a light meal in the dining room. I didn’t know why she was here, and I didn’t ask. But she was marginally friendlier this time around, probably because of the famous presence of Colonel Lindbergh; and her chicken-salad sandwiches and lemonade were fine. Half an hour later we began to leave, and Lindbergh paused at the grand piano in the living room, where on the paisley shawl the unwrapped brown-paper package had been set.

Lindbergh reached for the package, quickly, impatiently, and handed it to me, like it was something hot.

“We’d better get back,” he said to me, “and show this to Anne.”

I drove-the most famous pilot in the world my passenger. We rode silently for a good long time. We approached the George Washington Bridge, its silver arc indistinct against the night, a parade of flickering lights moving across it over the Hudson. We joined that parade and when urban New Jersey faded into rural New Jersey, he began to speak.

“You think I’m foolish, don’t you, Nate?”

“I think you’re human. The problem is, most of the people you get advice from don’t.”

He was looking absently out the side window, into darkness. He was still wearing the amber glasses and cap; he wore them all the way home. “I’m anxious to have this over.”

“Don’t get too anxious.”

He looked at me. “Do you trust Condon?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you think he’s an accomplice?”

“Maybe. Or a dupe.”

“Or exactly what he seems to be?”

“Which is what, Slim?”

“A good-hearted old patriot who wants to help out…” And he trailed off.

“Who wants to help out the ‘Lone Eagle’? Maybe. A bigger question is, are these extortionists the people who have your son?”

“You don’t think they are?”

“They could be operating off inside information from servants, or from Mickey Rosner. They don’t know anything I don’t know, for example. And what the hell do you know about me?”

“I know I trust you.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t trust any fucking body.”

“I trust my own instincts.”

“And your instincts tell you that ‘John’ is one of the kidnappers?”

He shook his head from side to side, but it was not in a “no” gesture. “I’m not closing off any avenue I can go down to find my son. And this sleeping suit…”

“This sleeping suit is standard, issue, Slim. Store-bought, lacking in laundry marks, or any other identification. There are thousands, tens of thousands, like it.”

“I gave the newspapers a false description of the garment, remember?”

“I remember. So the extortionists could have got lucky, or they could have had inside information. Here’s another thought-doesn’t your son have his own bedroom at your wife’s mother’s house, at Englewood?”

“Why, yes,”

“How many of these sleepers, how many sleepers just like this one, are there in a drawer in that Englewood nursery?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe we have an exact inventory for such things.”

“Right. And how many servants do they have in that joint? Around thirty-any one of whom could have provided a description, or plucked a sleeping suit from a drawer. That would explain why it took several days for Cemetery John and crew to deliver those pj’s. And why it’s freshly laundered.”

He didn’t say anything.

“For that matter, Condon himself could’ve taken a sleeper from your son’s drawer.”

“Are you serious?”

“He could’ve, just like I could’ve. We both slept in that room. I caught Condon going through your kid’s toy box, remember?”

He said nothing; he was frowning.

I shook my head and drove. We were driving through farm country, now, that might well have been Illinois. I wished it were.

“Anne will know,” he said.

“What?”

“If it’s Charlie’s sleeping suit. Anne will know.”

I knew enough not to respond to that one.

We drove in silence again. I mulled a few things over that I didn’t share with him. How phony the German phrasing of the notes seemed to me, particularly in light of the Sicilian phrase-statti citto-in the phone call to Condon, and Condon’s own discovery of the Black Hand meaning of the “singnature” on the notes. This latest note again contained a suspicious number of correctly spelled, difficult words, among the misspelled smaller ones. And John in the cemetery used gangland phrases-“The boss would smack me out,” “drill us both.” I supposed a Scandinavian immigrant could have picked up such talk. But somehow it just didn’t ring true.

“The other day,” I said, breaking the silence as the black sky began turning gray, “you indicated there were other ‘parties,’ besides the professor, who might be in contact with the kidnappers. You wouldn’t want to let me in on any of that, would you?”

He didn’t hesitate in his response. “Actually, you should know. It involves your specialty: gangsters. It’s one of the reasons why I asked you to stick around.”

It seemed there was a socially prominent individual in Norfolk, Virginia, a certain Commodore John Hughes Curtis, who’d been approached by a bootlegger who claimed to be one of a gang of six who kidnapped Lindbergh’s son.

“Curtis is the president of one of the largest ship-building companies in the South,” Lindbergh said. “He has impeccable credentials-Admiral Burrage called me, in fact, to arrange a meeting between Curtis and myself.”

Now, added to the endless list of colonels, were an admiral and a commodore.

“Admiral Burrage,” Lindbergh explained almost defensively, reading my cynical expression no doubt, “was in command of the cruiser Memphis, the ship that brought me back from Paris.”

Back from his legendary solo transatlantic flight to Paris, he meant.

“Besides,” he said, “the Very Reverend H. Dobson-Peacock has vouched for Curtis, as well.”

Now we had a Reverend on the list. A Very Reverend.

“Who is this Peacock, anyway?”

“Reverend Dobson-Peacock is an old friend of the Morrow family. The Reverend was in charge of a church in Mexico City.”

The late Dwight Morrow had been Ambassador to Mexico; it was during that period that Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh met, wooed and fell in love.

“I’ve agreed to meet tomorrow afternoon with the Admiral, the Reverend and the Commodore,” he said. It sounded like a nursery rhyme. “I’d like you to sit in.”

I turned onto the rutted dirt road that was Featherbed Lane. Dawn was starting to sneak through the thickets on either side of us, like another nosy sightseer.

Suddenly, Lindbergh burst out with something as if both eager and embarrassed to say it. “Did you ever hear of a man named Gaston Bullock Means?”

I snorted a laugh. “Are you kidding? Sure I’ve heard of him. Biggest con man who ever lived, in a couple senses of the word ‘biggest.’ Chicago is one of that fat bastard’s favorite sucker ponds.”

There was a faint defensiveness in Lindbergh’s soft response: “My understanding is that he’s a former Justice Department operative.”

“Yeah-he worked for Bums, before J. Edgar Hoover cleaned house. Hoover’s an ass, but he’s not a crook like Bums and his boys. Gaston Means was the Ohio Gang’s bagman, during the Harding administration. What in hell are you asking me about that son of a bitch for?”

Lindbergh was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Means also claims to be in touch with the kidnap gang.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“I had a call from Admiral Land…”

Another admiral!

“…who’s a relative of mine. My mother’s cousin. Anyway, Admiral Land was approached by Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, the Washington society woman.”

“The Hope diamond dame?”

“That’s the one. She lost her own son a few years ago-whether it relates to the Hope diamond curse is anybody’s guess-but at any rate, she’s sympathetic to Anne and my situation. Means is in her employ.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know exactly. He’s done some private detective work for her before. But through her he passed along two pieces of information that make me think we shouldn’t rule him out.”

“Which are?”

“He says the kidnappers have raised their ransom demand from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. That ties in, at least roughly, with the notes we’ve received, from Cemetery John and his gang.”

“And the other?”

Lindbergh seemed hesitant to share that. But finally, as we were drawing up to the closed, locked gate, he said, “He told Mrs. McLean the description in the papers of the sleeping suit was a false clue.” Lindbergh pointed to, but did not touch, the loosely wrapped brown-paper package next to him. “And he described the sleeping suit Charlie was really wearing.”

“A lot of that going around,” I said, “wouldn’t you say?”

He frowned, but not in anger. Frustration.

It was light out by the time we reached the house. Anne Lindbergh, in a thin blue robe, met us at the door to the servants’ sitting room; her face was pale, bare of makeup, her hair drawn back tightly. She looked haggard but hopeful.

I was carrying the package. Lindbergh nodded to me and I handed it to her.

She drew out the sleeping suit and held it in her hands out away from her, like something both precious and terrible. Then she clasped the package to her bosom, the paper crackling, one arm of the garment slinging itself over her shoulder.

Her eyes were glittering and her smile was a tragic fucking thing.

“It’s his,” she said. “It’s Charlie’s.”

“It’s a good sign,” he told her, with a deathly smile. “It means the kidnappers can be trusted. It means negotiations are finally, truly, fruitfully, in full sway.”

She hugged the brown paper and the Dr. Denton and said, again, “It’s Charlie’s. It’s his.”

And after that, there was never any doubt of it.

Slim wouldn’t allow any.