Stolen Away

20

I sat in a comfortable chair near a crackling fire emanating from a marble fireplace in an expensive, high-ceilinged library worthy of Evalyn Walsh McLean’s Massachusetts Avenue mansion; but I was not in Washington, D.C. I was in Manhattan, in a stately graystone townhouse just off Central Park on East 72nd, the New York residence of the late Senator Morrow, Lindy’s father-in-law.

Nearby, at a long mahogany conference table, sat Elmer Irey and Frank Wilson, the dour frick-and-frack IRS agents whose mutual round black-rimmed glasses and black suits and dark ties made them humorless mirror images. Wilson was the more clearly restless of the pair, drumming his fingers, searching his balding scalp for clues of hair. Irey was as immobile as the face on a coin. But both were worried.

So was I.

We were waiting.

I’d been with Lindbergh and Breckinridge at Professor Condon’s bungalow all afternoon; Irey and Wilson had stayed away, in case the house was being watched. Final preparations were made at Condon’s, including stuffing the two cord-and-brown-paper-wrapped packages of cash-one containing fifty thousand dollars in the various denominations specified by the kidnappers, and the other containing the additional twenty thousand-into Dr. Condon’s duplicate antique ballot box, an oblong wooden affair with brass hinges and clasps. Work of a first-rate Bronx cabinetmaker or not, it didn’t hold up under the bulk of the bills: one side split. The twenty-grand packet had to be carried separately, and the box wrapped with cord.

We were responding to the note that had arrived with Jafsie’s April Fool’s Day mail, while I was away; it read:

Dear Sir: have the money ready by Saturday

evening, we will inform you where

and how to deliver it. have the money

in one bundle we want you to put

it in on a sertain place. Ther is

no fear that somebody els will

tacke it, we watch everything

closely. Please lett us know if

you are agree and ready for action

by Saturday evening.-if yes-

put in the paper

Yes everything O.K.

Is a very simble delivery but we

find out very sun if there is any trapp. after 8 houers

you gett the adr, from

the boy, on the place

you finde two ladies, they are innocence.

The message was signed with the familiar symbol.

“If the ransom drop comes off tomorrow night,” I’d told Slim, “I’ll go with the professor.”

We were sitting in Condon’s living room, sipping tea served by the professor’s shell-shocked wife; the pretty, pretty unfriendly daughter was lurking, too, worried about her father. Right now she was helping her papa and Breckinridge with the ransom package. The ad-saying “YES. EVERYTHING O.K. JAFSIE.”-had appeared in the morning New York American.

“I don’t want you going along, Nate,” Lindbergh said. “They might recognize you from last time. They might know, by now, you’re a cop.”

“You can’t let the professor handle this by himself.”

“I won’t. I’ll go myself.”

“Is that smart? You’re a prime kidnap target yourself.”

“In that case, you can do me a favor, then.”

“Yes?”

He shrugged. “I knew Anne would be disturbed if she happened to see me leave the house with a gun.”

“I guess she might at that.”

“So I didn’t bring one. Can I borrow your nine millimeter?”

“Why, sure.”

“And shoulder holster?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Hell, Slim. I’m honored. It’ll almost be like being there.”

He sipped his tea. He smiled slyly at me, his eyes narrow and shrewd. “Tell me, Nate. Did you work on Irey? And Wilson?”

“What do you mean?”

He nodded sideways toward the other room. “Those bills in there. That money. Wilson spent the morning recording all the serial numbers at J. P. Morgan and Company.”

I grinned. “Well, that’s swell. It really is. You won’t be sorry.”

He shook his head, sipped more tea. “I guess it took over a dozen clerks to help get the job done. Five-thousand-some items of currency, with no two numbers in sequence.”

“Don’t look at me, Slim-I didn’t put the pressure on Irey. He’s capable all by himself of figuring out that recording those bills is the thing to do. But what made you change your mind?”

Lindbergh’s mouth twitched. “Irey,” he said, and then added, admiringly: “He’s a hard-nosed bastard.”

I didn’t push him, and Slim didn’t elaborate further, but that evening, as I waited with the two IRS agents in the Morrows’ vast library, I asked Irey how he’d convinced Lindbergh.

“He gave me some noble malarkey,” Irey said, “about wanting to keep his promises to the kidnappers, to encourage them to keep their promises to him.”

“Slim doesn’t know much about crooks, I’m afraid.”

“When it comes to being a detective,” Irey said, “Lindbergh makes a damn fine airmail-pilot. At any rate, I told him that unless he allowed us to record the serial numbers of the bills, the Treasury Department would play no part in the case.”

“But what about his pull with your boss?”

Irey’s smile was as thin as a stiletto blade. “Even the Secretary of the Treasury knows that his department damn well better not compound a felony. Which is what we’d have been guilty of, if we allowed those bills to go out unrecorded.”

“And that sold Slim.”

“Not immediately,” Irey said, with a shake of his head. “We withdrew-from his home and from the case-and didn’t hear from him till this morning.”

“He must have checked with Secretary Mills, after all.”

“Maybe. But it didn’t do him any good. He gave us the go-ahead.”

“Mills?”

“Lindbergh. And that second packet, the one with twenty thousand in it, is strictly gold certificates.”

“Gold certificates?”

“Yes. Fifty-dollar ones. Four hundred of them. Those will be child’s play for bank tellers to spot.”

“Nice thinking, Elmer.”

“Thank you, Mr. Heller-but the gold-certificate notion was Frank’s work. The smaller-denomination bills are mostly gold certificates, as well.”

I nodded and smiled at Wilson, who nodded and smiled back at me. We were one big happy family-three cops sitting in a posh townhouse library, while an eccentric professor and a stunt flyer were off in the night somewhere with seventy grand to turn over to some self-proclaimed kidnappers.

Earlier that afternoon, when Lindbergh and I had spoken about the marked bills, I’d attempted to make another point, with considerably less success.

“Why don’t you,” I’d suggested, “let Irey and maybe the New York cops follow you to wherever the ransom drop is, then pull in undercover men to throw a net over the area?”

He shook his head sternly, no. “That’s out of the question. That would be much too dangerous….”

“No it wouldn’t. You’d have cops acting as cabbies, drunks, truck drivers, washerwomen, priests…undercover cops do that kind of thing all the time, and well.”

“The kidnappers wouldn’t be that easily fooled, Nate. They’ll go into this thing suspicious as hell.”

“Slim, it’s not suspicious to be passed on the street by a milk wagon or a bunch of college whoopee boys…it’s natural to have people on the streets, even at night, especially at night, when this ransom drop will probably come off.”

But he wouldn’t hear of it.

Later Irey confirmed that he’d made a similar plea to Lindbergh to no avail; and in this case, the word from above was to stay out of Lindy’s way.

So those of us who were thinking like cops were one for two-and batting.500 in the Lindbergh game was a goddamn good average.

I’d been at Condon’s most of the day and into the evening, when the doorbell rang around a quarter to eight; the daughter, Myra, answered the door and a cabbie-she described him as young, thin, dark-handed her an envelope and scurried back to his cab and was gone before any of us could stop him or even get his license number.

Lindbergh tore open the envelope, read the note, with Condon and Breckinridge looking on.

When I made a move to look at it, Slim’s boyish face was cold; he shook his head, no.

“You’re not part of this, Nate,” he said. “We’ll take the professor’s car. You drive into mid-Manhattan and join the IRS boys. And wait.”

I sighed, irritably. “You don’t usually order me around, Slim. I’m not sure I like it much.”

He lifted a hand, as if about to place it on my shoulder, then saw from my expression that it wouldn’t be appreciated.

He said, “I know you don’t approve of how I’m going about this. But you’re just a consultant-you’re not really part of the police, here. I don’t want you knowing where we’re going…” He was clutching the note, wadding it a bit. “…and I don’t want you following us.”

“What good would it do me? You’ve got my gun.”

He smiled shyly, embarrassed, and went ahead and put the hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Promise me, Nate.”

People kept asking me to make promises I didn’t feel like keeping. But I nodded anyway.

“Thank you.” He looked at Breckinridge. “Would you stay here, with the professor’s family, Henry?”

Breckinridge nodded in his sad, dignified way.

Condon’s daughter brought her father his coat and hat and helped him into them, telling him to be careful. The professor, bug-eyed, red-faced, calm as a walrus in heat, said, “Allow me to handle the parcel,” and grabbed up the cord-wound, split-apart, jam-packed ballot box, as well as the separate package with the twenty grand in gold notes.

That was fine with Lindbergh, who viewed the money with disinterest and even disdain, and the two men hurried out to the Ford coupe and, Lindbergh behind the wheel, Jafsie with the loot on his lap, disappeared down the street and turned south.

Now it was almost midnight; four hours later, in the Morrow library, and no sign of Lindbergh or the professor.

“They could be dead in a ditch somewhere,” I suggested.

“If they are,” Wilson said, “it won’t be our fault.”

“Tell that to the press,” Irey said glumy.

“Success, gentlemen!”

The booming, overly well-modulated voice belonged to none other than Professor John F. Condon, who entered the chamber with his arms outspread as if looking for someone to embrace. I wasn’t volunteering.

Lindbergh and Breckinridge came in on the professor’s heels; all three men were still in their topcoats and hats, except for Slim who was hatless to begin with. Two Morrow butlers hurried after the men, who had burst into the apartment without any of the usual amenities, and began collecting coats and hats.

“We delivered the ransom,” Lindbergh said, digging in his jacket pocket, “and we have been given directions.” He smiled, and the smile mingled joy with desperation. “We can find Charlie if we follow this.”

He placed a small note on the conference table, and we all gathered round. It said:

the boy is on Boad Nelly it is a small Boad 28 feet long, two person are on the Boat. The are innosent you will find the Boad between Horseneck Beach and gay Head near Elizabeth Island.

It lacked the usual circles, and holes signature, but the handwriting was as before.

“I’ve already called for an amphibian,” Lindbergh said, eyes bright as glowing coals, “and as soon as it’s light, we’ll take off.”

“Sit down, gentlemen, please,” Irey said, gesturing to the table, looking first at Lindy, the professor and Breckinridge, but at myself and Wilson, too. We all gathered around the table, and sat.

Lindbergh and Condon told the story, the former doing most of the talking, but the latter taking over at the points when center stage of the melodrama became his.

The note the cabbie had delivered directed them to follow Tremont Avenue east until they reached 3225, a nursery, J. A. Bergen Greenhouse and Florist. There they would find a table outside the florist shop entrance, and underneath the table would be a letter covered by a stone. The letter directed them to cross the street, walk to the next corner and follow Whittemore Avenue to the south. They were to bring the money. Condon was to come alone. He would be met.

“As we approached Whittemore Avenue,” Condon said, leaning forward, his eyes rheumy but intense, “I realized that these wily kidnappers were duplicating their precautions from the previous meeting.”

“Why is that?” Irey asked.

Wilson was taking notes.

“Whittemore Avenue,” Lindbergh said, “is a dirt road running parallel to St. Raymond’s Cemetery.”

Another graveyard.

The professor raised a finger in the air like a Bible-beating preacher making a point about heaven, or hell. “For the second time,” he said, “our meeting was on a Saturday night. And for the second time, our rendezvous took place…” He looked at each of us significantly; his expression, in the orange reflection of the nearby fireplace, was that of a senile scoutmaster telling a singularly unscary ghost story around a campfire. “…in the city of the dead.”

And me without any marshmallows to roast.

“As I told the Colonel,” Condon confided, winking at Irey, who acknowledged the wink not at all, “I have heard that Italian gangsters frequently frequent graveyards….”

Frequently frequent? What was this clown a professor of, anyway? Redundancy?

“And our pair of cemetery conferences,” Condon continued, “would tend to confirm my belief that the gang is a mixture of Mafia members and the Scandinavian, ‘John.’”

Lindbergh, thankfully, picked up the story at that point.

Condon had stood outside the car, reading the note by flashlight, hoping to attract the attention of any lookout that the kidnap gang might have posted. A man in a brown suit approached, brim of his brown felt hat pulled down; he walked with a decided stoop. When he passed the car, he covered the bottom half of his face with a handkerchief, eyeballing the two men.

When the apparent lookout was out of sight, Lindbergh began to climb out of the coupe, but Condon stopped him: the note had said that the professor must come alone.

But Jafsie was less of a stickler about the note’s other directions: he left both the ballot box and the separate packet of money behind, telling Lindy, “I want to talk to John first.” And he had walked east, not south, on Whittemore-“This enabled me to look behind most of the tombstones and bushes that fronted the avenue.”

Peering into the “eerie semidarkness” of the cemetery, however, Condon saw nothing but shadows.

When he had walked past the cemetery gates, Condon turned and walked slowly back; he called out to Lindbergh, “There seems to be no one here, Colonel.”

A voice called, then, from behind a tombstone: “Hey, Doctor!”

A figure rose specterlike from behind a gravestone.

“Hey, Doctor-over here!”

Both Condon and Lindbergh heard the voice, which they described as “guttural.”

Condon moved toward the tombstone, but the figure moved away, and the professor followed him into the cemetery, where, after zigzagging among the graves, the figure crouched behind a hedge.

“I said to him, ‘What are you doing crouched down there-stand up if you want to talk to me!’” Condon was gesturing theatrically; Lindbergh didn’t seem to mind, but Wilson looked up from his note-taking to roll his eyes at me, discreetly. Condon was saying, “He asked me if I remembered him from that other Saturday night, at Woodlawn Cemetery. I said I did. He asked, ‘Have you got it, the money?’ And I said, no, I didn’t bring any money. That it was up in the car.”

Cemetery John had then asked if Colonel Lindbergh was armed, and the professor had said no (“I lied,” he said, proud of himself), and then John demanded his money.

“I refused” Condon told us. “I said, ‘Not until you give me a receipt!’”

“A receipt?” I said. “You asked the kidnapper for a receipt?”

“It was a business transaction of sorts,” Condon said, stiffly, defensively. “I was well within my rights to demand a written receipt, paying over such a sum.”

Irey looked stunned; Wilson, frozen in his note-taking, had the expression of a man examining shit on his shoe.

“Further, I demanded a note specifying where the baby is-and that, gentlemen, is the very note.” He pointed to the small note, which still lay on the table, like a cocktail napkin.

“Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “but where’s your receipt?”

The professor ignored that. He went on to say that John had said he would have to go and get a note ready; he’d be gone a few minutes, during which time Jafsie could go to the car and come back with the seventy thousand dollars.

“And here,” Condon said, regally, “was my masterstroke-I talked him out of twenty thousand dollars.”

“You what?” Irey said; his eyes popped behind the black-rimmed lenses.

Condon beamed, in his apple-cheecked way, saying, “I told him, ‘John, Colonel Lindbergh is not so rich. These are depression times-he couldn’t raise that extra twenty thousand. But I can walk up to that auto right now and get you fifty.’”

Wilson was slumped over his notebook, covering his eyes with one hand. Irey’s face remained stony, but red was rising out of his neck like a metal poker getting hotter. Slim, who seemed to sense a major blunder had been pulled, was shifting uneasily in his chair.

Condon didn’t read any of this; he was wrapped up in his own wonderfulness. “And John said, ‘All right-I suppose if we can’t get seventy, we take fifty.’”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Irey said.

“Why, yes. I’ve saved Colonel Lindbergh twenty thousand dollars.”

“I could shoot your head off,” Irey said.

Condon blinked; his expression was as innocent as it was stupid. “Have I done something wrong?”

“The little package you left behind,” I said, “was full of fifty-dollar gold certificates. Big bills-easy to trace. The largest bills in the ballot box were twenties-not near as conspicuous.”

Condon thought that over. Then, summoning his dignity, he said, “I would do it again if I had the chance-I would save Colonel Lindbergh every possible penny.” And he smiled at Lindy, who smiled back, wanly.

Approximately fifteen minutes after Condon had headed back to the car for the money, while Cemetery John headed wherever for some notepaper and a pencil(!), the two men met again at the same spot in “the city of the dead.” Condon passed John the ballot box of money, and John passed the professor a sealed envelope, instructing him not to open it for six hours. John, looked at the money, pronounced it satisfactory; Condon pledged to John that if this were a “double cross” he, Condon, would pursue the gang to the ends of the earth, if necessary!

That must have scared shit out of him.

“While the professor was in the cemetery,” Lindbergh told us, Wilson taking notes fast and furious, “that same fellow in the brown suit we’d seen before came running down the other side of the street, from the direction of Whittemore. He covered his face again, with his handkerchief, as he passed by the car-and blew his nose so loudly that it could’ve been heard a block away.”

“Did you see his face?” Irey asked.

“Not directly,” Lindbergh said. “He ran to a spot some distance away, but I saw him drop the handkerchief-like a signal of some kind.”

“Colonel, you heard Cemetery John’s voice,” Wilson said, looking up from his note-taking. “Could you identify him by it, do you think?”

Without hesitation Slim shook his head, no. “Oh, I remember the voice clearly enough. But to say I could pick a man out by that voice…I really couldn’t.”

“Well, I could,” Condon said, slapping his hand on the table. “My hearing and night vision are excellent. I can describe him to a T…a hatchet-faced individual with almond-shaped eyes….”

“Get a sketch artist over here,” Irey told Wilson, who nodded, pocketed his notebook and went out. Irey began questioning Condon about various details; Slim got up and moved around and sat next to me.

“Nate,” he said, “are you going with us?”

“To search for the Boat Nelly? Sure, if you want me to.”

“I want you to. Maybe you should grab a nap on a couch. It’s after one A.M., now. We’ll be leaving at dawn.”

“Okay,” I said, yawning, stretching as I pushed away from the table. I got up. “You know, one thing surprises me.”

“Oh?” Lindbergh said.

“Yeah.” I grinned. “The way you been playing fair, playing by the rules, I’m halfway surprised you didn’t wait six hours, like you were told, before you opened that envelope.”

“Oh, I was going to,” Slim said. “But Dr. Condon talked me out of it.”