Stolen Away

26

It was a little after nine o’clock on a morning that, judging by what I could see past my scenic view of the el, was overcast and unpromising. Friday the thirteenth-not that I put much stock in luck, bad or good or otherwise. Looking back, though, I’d have to say that this particular day lived up to its reputation.

When the phone rang on my desk, however, right next to my crossed feet in their argyle socks with holes that only showed when my shoes were off, which they were, I was blissfully unaware of anything except the sports section of the Trib and the paper cup of coffee I’d brought up from the deli downstairs.

I damn near spilled the coffee and about knocked the phone off the desk with my feet. That misshapen black object didn’t ring that often. I had a large office, but it was just the one big room, which I also lived in, on the fourth and final floor of a building at Van Buren and Plymouth that additionally housed a palm reader, an abortionist and two or three shysters, among other agents of free enterprise, with a flophouse next door. Most of my business, these days, was established-primarily retail credit checks for the suburban financial institutions who were the backbone of my bankbook. There was also the occasional divorce job, but for some psychological reason, those were almost always walk-ins: some sad man, or woman, but usually man, would stumble in red-eyed, feeling guilty as Cain, and hire me to confirm his or her worst fears. With photos.

I slipped my feet into my shoes-wouldn’t do to greet business in my socks, even over the phone-and said, “A-1 Detective Agency, Nathan Heller speaking.”

Before I’d even gotten those words out, I realized the static in my ear was announcing that rarity of rarities: a long-distance call.

“Mr. Heller,” a female voice said, operator-efficient, “can you hold the line? We have a call for you from the governor.”

“The governor?” I sat up and straightened my tie. I had no respect for any politician, but I didn’t get calls like this often. Make that, ever.

“Hold please,” she said again.

And I listened to the scratchy sound of taxpayers’ money drifting carelessly away. What the hell would Governor Homer want with me?

“Mr. Heller,” a reassuring baritone voice intoned; even over the crackly wire, it was an impressive voice. “This is Governor Hoffman.”

I’d heard him right, but nonetheless, stupidly, I said, “Governor Homer?”

“No,” he said, with the faintest edge of irritation. “Hoffman. I’m calling from Trenton.”

“Oh! Governor Hoffman.”

I wasn’t speaking to the governor of Illinois; I was speaking to the Governor of New Jersey. I recognized his name not because I was politically astute, but because I’d seen it in the papers recently.

“As you may know, Mr. Heller, an inordinate amount of my time and energy, over the past several months, has been wrapped up in the Lindbergh case. Or, to be precise, the Hauptmann case.”

“Yes, sir.”

Governor Hoffman was the center of a controversy that extended well beyond New Jersey state lines. The convicted kidnapper-actually, convicted murderer-found responsible for the Lindbergh crime had been taken under the governor’s wing, so to speak. A month or so back, Hoffman had granted Bruno Hauptmann a thirty-day reprieve.

‘The prisoner’s reprieve ran out several days ago,” Hoffman said; his voice conveyed both sadness and frustration. “And I’m not going to issue another one.”

“I see,” I said, not seeing at all.

“The new date for execution has been set for March thirtieth. I intend to see that the time we have remaining is well used.”

“Uh…how so, Governor?”

“I’ve had several independent investigators working on this case, for several months, and I don’t intend to stop my efforts. In fact, with your help, I intend to step up those efforts.”

“My help?”

“You’ve come highly recommended, Mr. Heller.”

“Surely you haven’t run out of investigators out on the East Coast, Governor Hoffman. Unless there’s something that needs doing on the Chicago end…”

“You’re one of the few people alive aware that there is a Chicago ‘end’ to this case. And I’m well aware of your role in the early days of the investigation. You witnessed a lot. You came into contact with Curtis, Means, Jafsie, Marinelli and his common-law wife Sarah Sivella, and so many others. You’re the ideal person to conduct this eleventh-hour inquiry.”

Eleventh-hour inquiry!

“Governor…if I may be frank?”

“Certainly.”

“The Lindbergh case was one of the most frustrating, convoluted, hopeless affairs I ever came in contact with. I’ve considered myself damn lucky to be out of that stew.”

There was a crackly pause on the line.

Then the baritone voice returned, stern now: “There is a good chance, Mr. Heller, that Bruno Richard Hauptmann is innocent. And it is a damn-near certainty that he was not the lone kidnapper.”

“Maybe so…but from what I read, he probably was involved. Could be he’ll still talk, when all his legal parachutes have folded up. And finger the rest of his mob.”

The words came quickly now: “Mr. Heller, come to Trenton. Allow me to make my case. You’re under no obligation. I’ll wire you the money for your train tickets. You can settle your affairs in Chicago and travel on Sunday. We’ll meet in my office first thing Monday morning.”

“Governor, the Lindbergh case is the last thing I want to get involved with.”

“I can offer you a retainer of one thousand dollars against your standard fee. Which is?”

“Uh, twenty-five dollars a day,” I said, doubling it and then some, “and expenses.”

“Done,” the governor said.

“Done,” I said, and shrugged.

We both hung up.

I put my feet back up on the desk, loosened my tie, and said to nobody, “Isn’t this the damnedest turn of events?”

After spending the rest of the morning doing credit checks by phone, I treated myself to the finnan haddie at Binyon’s around the corner, heading down around eleven-thirty to beat the luncheon crowd. That was where I ran into Hal Davis of the News.

“Hey, Heller,” Davis said, cheerfully. “Eating regular and everything.” He was a small man with a big head and bright eyes; he looked about thirty, though he’d never see forty again. “Who died and left you money?”

“I got a client.”

“That is news,” Davis said. He took off his fedora and joined me, even though he was on his way out, raincoat over his arm. “Buy me a cup of coffee?”

“Yeah,” I said, “if you’ll buy me a beer, after.”

“Sure.” He waved a waiter over. Binyon’s was all dark paneling, wooden booths and businessmen. “So-what do you hear from your pal Nitti?”

I grimaced; the sweet taste of the fish went sour. “Davis, I told you a hundred million fucking times. I am not connected.”

Davis smirked. “Yeah, yeah. Everybody knows Frank Nitti likes you, Nate. You done him favors.”

“I’m an ex-cop,” I sighed. “I know some Outfit guys. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Ever since you testified in Nitti’s favor that time…”

“Drop it, Hal.”

“Okay, okay! What do you hear from Barney?”

He meant Barney Ross, the boxer, welterweight champ in fact, who was a friend of mine since we were kids together on the West Side, and who incidentally was my landlord. We discussed Barney’s flourishing boxing career-he had just KO’ed Lou Halper in Philly in eight-and half an hour later we were in the Shamrock, the bar next to the Dill Pickle. Barney used to own the place, and boxing and other sporting-world pics still decorated the dingy walls.

Davis must have smelled a story, because he bought me a total of four beers. And on the fourth, something in the back of my mind clicked-or maybe snapped-and I decided to let him in on my new client. The thought of the publicity, and what it might do for my business, suddenly sounded as good as the hardboiled egg I was eating.

“Governor Hoffman, huh,” Davis said, his eyes glittering. “You don’t really think that kraut Hauptmann is innocent, do you?”

“Watch your language,” I said. “I’m of German heritage myself.”

“You’re awful sensitive today, for a half-mick, half-hebe.”

“The kraut probably isn’t innocent,” I admitted, “but I’m gonna keep an open mind. Besides, anybody who thinks that clown pulled the kidnapping and the ransom scam, all by his lonesome, is playin’ with the squirrels.”

Davis drank that in and then his face crinkled with amusement. “You know what I heard?”

“No. Illuminate me.”

“You know how one of the big pieces of evidence against Hauptmann was they found that old coot’s phone number written on a wall inside his closet?”

Jafsie’s phone number had indeed been found in that manner at Hauptmann’s apartment.

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“So I hear a reporter on the New York Daily News, Tim O’Neil, wrote that.”

“What do you mean, wrote it?”

Davis grinned, shrugged. “After they took Hauptmann away, the cops confiscated his apartment, and gave the press free and easy access. It was a slow news day, so O’Neil writes old Jafsie’s number on the closet-trim and calls the inspector on duty over and says, look what I found. Bingo! Front page of the Daily News that night. Is that sweet or what?”

“Would you do that for a story?”

“Hey, if the guy’s fuckin’ guilty, what’s the difference?”

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “But it just shows how from day one everybody’s been awful goddamn anxious to slap that poor bastard in the chair. Yet nobody seems to give a damn about his accomplices.”

“That’s ’cause this story needs an ending, Heller,” Davis said, matter-of-factly. “America’s had its fill of this one. Even Lindy flew the coop.”

Charles and Anne Lindbergh had taken their young, press-besieged son Jon to Great Britain late last year, in self-imposed exile.

“The New Jersey cops and prosecutors,” Davis said, “would rather let Hauptmann go to the chair and take the names of his accomplices with him, than let him miss out on a punishment he so richly deserves. And a lot of people in this country agree.”

The little reporter, who’d had only two beers, took his leave with a nod of his fedora and a wink of one tiny eye, and I knew he was going to write me up for the late edition. I wasn’t drunk, after all. But I might’ve been a hair less than sober, and as I wandered back up the three flights of stairs to my office, I began to wonder if being tied to what the public might perceive as an effort to clear Hauptmann could really do anything at all positive for my less-than-flourishing one-man business.

I set up a couple of credit-check appointments in Evanston for Saturday afternoon, and called a couple of people I regularly do work for to tell them I’d be out of town for two or three weeks. Nobody seemed put out, and somewhere approaching midafternoon, I pulled the Murphy bed down and flopped out in my shirt and trousers for a nap. The four beers had taken their toll.

A sharp rapping at the door woke me; I came instantly awake, sitting up as if by spring action, surprised a little that the room was so dark, that the world beyond my window was lit only by neon. The day had slipped away. Evening or not, I had serious morning mouth, and as the rapping continued, I crawled off the bed, shouting, “Just a minute, will ya!” and eased the bed up inside its wardrobelike cabinet.

I went into the john, rinsed out my mouth, pissed like a son of a bitch, straightened my tie but didn’t bother with my coat. It was a little late for a client, after all. Whoever it was could take me as I was or leave me.

I cracked the door and saw a slender, white-haired, pockmarked individual who looked a little bit like a LaSalle Street broker and a little bit like the angel of death.

“Yes?” I said, timidly, as if I didn’t recognize him, but I did.

“Mr. Heller,” Paul Ricca said politely. He was a man of forty who looked older than time. “Could I step in.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, certainly, Mr. Ricca.”

Everything he said had a slight accent: “Could-a I step-a in.” But faint. He was as soft-spoken as a funeral director.

Paul “the Waiter” Ricca had high cheekbones and dark black eyebrows over placid dark eyes; his mouth wasn’t much wider than his nose and his nose wasn’t all that wide, for an Italian. He wore an exquisitely tailored sky-blue double-breasted topcoat under which a dark-blue silk tie was neatly knotted; his navy homburg probably cost more than my couch.

“Frank would like to see you,” he said.

“Me?” I said.

The faintest hint of irritation was in his nod, and in his words: “Get your coat.”

I got-a my coat.

Paul the Waiter Ricca, a.k.a. Paul DeLucia, a.k.a. Paul Maglio, was Frank Nitti’s second-in-command. Nitti, of course, took over the Chicago Outfit when Capone was sent up; and Ricca, word had it, was Capone’s choice to keep an eye on Nitti. The story was that Ricca, when he was a teenager in Sicily, had killed a man in a family feud, and that he served two years and on the day he got out shot and killed the witness who ID’ed him. He’d fled to America and, after working as a theater usher and waiter in New York, wound up one of Snorkey’s top enforcers. Capone had even been best man at Ricca’s wedding.

“Mr. Ricca,” I said, my hat in my hand, “would I be out of line asking what this is about?”

“Yes,” he said. He gestured to the door. I opened it for him and he went out first. They called him the Waiter, but he waited on, or for, nobody.

I wished I had my gun, though if the Outfit had my number, there really was no way out of it. I followed Ricca down the stairs of my nearly seedy building; in his fancy clothes, he seemed very out of place. Actually, he seemed out of place in many respects. Why was he alone? Where were the two requisite goombahs with metal lumps under their armpits? Ricca was high up-second-in-command, according to some-so why in hell was he playing gopher for Nitti?

A black Lincoln limo was waiting. And no one was behind the wheel. Ricca really had come alone.

I stood awkwardly at the curb by the car; the neons and street lights of Van Buren reflected off its shiny roof. A wino approached us, asking for a handout; Ricca froze him with a look. Then the bum stumbled away looking for a more sympathetic mark.

Above us the el rumbled by. I raised my voice above it: “Where do you want me?”

His blank expression somehow conveyed contempt; he didn’t want me at all. But he said, “In the front. I’m not your goddamn chauffeur.”

But that is exactly what he was-which might mean somebody was insulting him by giving him such a lowly task. And if there was anywhere I did not want to be, it was in the middle of some Outfit political gesture.

I didn’t speak to Ricca as he drove me. My mind continued whirring, wondering why in hell we were alone; there wasn’t even a fucking driver! Ricca had, once upon a time, been a driver, however, and the ride was as smooth as it was surprising. I expected to be taken to the Capri Restaurant, or the Bismarck Hotel or maybe the Congress, all frequent sites for Nitti holding court. Instead we took Monroe over to the near West Side.

To Jefferson Park Hospital, where Nitti’s father-in-law, Dr. Gaetano Ronga, was chief of surgery.

Was Nitti sick? I’d been summoned here before, by two lesser Outfit lights than Ricca, in December of ’32, in the aftermath of an assassination attempt on Nitti at an office in the LaSalle-Wacker Building by two cops who’d been Mayor Cermak’s personal hitmen. Those cops had dragged me along when they went to hit Nitti, without telling me that that was on the agenda, and I’d double-crossed them eventually, by telling the truth on the witness stand. By backing Nitti’s story. Which was why Nitti felt he owed me one, and why news-guys like Davis and certain cops like Captain John Stege considered me to be in Nitti’s pocket.

My first meeting with Nitti-not counting the few minutes in the LaSalle-Wacker when Cermak’s two cops had shot Nitti full of holes-had been in this same hospital, in Nitti’s private room, where he was surprising Cermak, Cermak’s killer cops and probably God Himself by surviving multiple close-range bullet wounds to the neck and back. Nitti was a hard man to kill. Cermak had proved less hard, when Nitti’s one-man suicide squad, Giuseppe Zangara, hit His Honor out in Miami. But that’s another story.

We were on the third floor. It was after visiting hours and the corridor was dark; what little light there was reflected off the shining waxed hardwood floor. An occasional nurse or doctor drifted by, faceless in the dimness. Ricca was walking quickly, his steps echoing, and sick people in their white beds and dark rooms glimpsed at left and right made a sort of morbid, moving and occasionally moaning tapestry. I kept up with Ricca, but stayed behind him, following like a kid being led to the principal’s office by a strict and pissed-off teacher.

Then we went around a comer and moved away from hospital rooms into what seemed to be an administrative area. At a door marked Dr. Gaetano Ronga, Ricca knocked; his lips were pursed with quiet annoyance.

“Yes?” said a confident male voice from within.

“It’s Paul,” he said. “Your package is here.”

“Send him in,” the voice said.

And Ricca, for once, did wait on me: he opened the door. The look on his face was glazed and quietly contemptuous. I went on by him, into the room, and the door shut behind me. Ricca had not followed.

In a medium-size office, filled with dark wood filing cabinets, its walls hung with diplomas, family pictures and prints of flying fowl, behind a big desk on which various manila folders were neatly arranged, sat Frank Nitti.

“Nate Heller,” Nitti said, with a generous gesture of one hand and a smile, but not getting up, “sit down. Nice to see you again. Thanks for comin’ around.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Nitti,” I said, finding a hardwood chair and sitting across from him.

“You know better than that,” he said, mock-scoldingly. “It’s ‘Frank’ and it’s ‘Nate.’ Right?”

“Right,” I said. We were old friends, after all; ask anybody.

Nitti was a small, well-groomed man in his early fifties, damn near handsome, his face flecked with scar tissue here and there, his lower lip particularly. His hair was slicked back, dark with a little gray, and very neat; he was a former barber and fussy about his appearance. He seemed uncharacteristically casual in dress tonight, a white shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled up.

“I hope you’re well, Frank,” I said.

“Just in for a checkup. Ever since Cermak’s sons of bitches pumped that lead in me, I gotta come in all the time and get this and that checked.” He shrugged dismissively, but I’d heard about his bleeding ulcers and back problems. “I take these physicals at night. It’s more private that way. So. How’s business, Heller?”

“Not bad. Little divorce work. Some retail credit accounts.”

“I see in the paper you picked up a client out east.”

I figured that was it. Davis’s story about me working for Governor Hoffman on the Lindbergh case was undoubtedly all over the evening edition of the News.

“Yeah,” I said. “Hell of a thing. Governor of New Jersey, no less.”

“You worked the Lindbergh case as a cop, didn’t you? Back in ’32?”

“I was the Chicago police liaison, yes. I was just on the fringes. No big deal.”

“That was when Al said he could get Little Lindy back. Right?”

“Uh, right, Frank.” Where the hell was this going?

Nitti folded his hands; he looked strangely thoughtful. “I’d like you to do a job for me, while you’re out there.”

“A job?”

He shrugged. “Nothing hard. Just, if you turn anything up that would be of interest to me, I want you to let me know.”

“Of interest to you…?”

He looked at me pointedly. “Heller, don’t make me spell it out.”

I wasn’t “Nate” anymore, I noticed.

“Okay,” I said tentatively. “But I’m not quite following you.”

He lifted a hand and one finger of that hand. “If this thing comes back to Chicago…if it comes back to the Outfit…I want to be the first to know.”

I shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Frank, maybe I better call Governor Hoffman and just back out of this thing. I don’t want to be put in a position where I’m working at cross-purposes for two clients.”

Nitti stood and I damn near jumped. He walked past me to the door and opened it. Ricca was waiting out there, across the hail, a sentry in a tailored topcoat.

“Paul,” he said, gently. “See if you can find me a glass of milk.”

Ricca nodded and disappeared and Nitti shut the door.

He began to pace, saying, “You know, I was the first of the boys to take a tax-rap fall. They got me before they got Al, you know.”

I nodded.

“I hadn’t been outside so very long, when they put Al away. While I was gone, Al moved the Waiter up in my place-temporarily of course.”

I said nothing.

He stopped pacing, stood before me. He was not a big man; and he was slender. But his presence was towering. He said, “A1 and the Waiter always been tight. They got tighter when I was away. I feel they could be…reckless, at times. One thing you know about me, Heller, is I don’t like attracting the heat. If something has to be done, then you do it in such a way it don’t come back to your doorstep.”

What Nitti was talking about was his disagreement with Capone over such PR catastrophes as the shooting of reporter Jake Lingle and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Not that Nitti was nonviolent. But Nitti was a master manipulator, a cunning impresario of events. When he took Cermak out, it looked political; when he got rid of John Dillinger, it was the feds who took the rap. Just last month, “Machine-Gun” Jack McGurn-longtime Outfit guy who’d reportedly gone disloyal-was gunned down in a bowling alley, on St. Valentine’s Day. The hitters left a comic valentine on the corpse, leading the cops and press to assume that this was some long-overdue revenge upon McGurn by remnants of the old Bugs Moran gang for McGurn’s role in the famed Clark Street massacre seven years before. To me the slaying had Nitti’s chess-master fingerprints all over it.

“I think Al and the Waiter may have done this Lindbergh thing,” he said. Shrugged. ‘That is, had it done, through their East-Coast contacts. Ricca spent as much time out there as he did Chicago, in those days; he was Al’s contact with Luciano and Gordon and Schultz and the rest.”

I didn’t know if I liked hearing Nitti talk this openly. But I didn’t seem to have any other choice than to listen.

“If Al did this-had this done-to try and buy himself out of stir, I want to know.”

“Wouldn’t you have been…consulted?”

“Jesus, Heller! Are you kidding? You think I’d let them pull a crazy fucking stunt like that? It would’ve been from Capone’s lips to Ricca’s ear. I don’t know for sure that they did it, understand. It’s rumor. It’s just…what you say, supposition, on my part.”

“Capone always claimed a former employee of his, name of Bob Conroy, pulled the job.”

“Conroy was Al’s man. No former about it.”

“I don’t think the feds ever found Conroy.”

Nitti winced with amusement. “Oh sure, they did. Frank Wilson himself, workin’ with that New York dick Finn, turned Conroy up, in August of ’32.”

“Really? I never heard about it.”

Nitti shrugged. “Didn’t make the papers out here. Nobody picked up on the Chicago angle. Conroy was found in a rundown back-room apartment he’d been hiding out in on West Hundred and Fourth in New York. Him and his pretty blonde wife. Double suicide, they called it.”

“Jesus.”

“There was a beer war that broke out, right about the time the body of the Lindbergh kid turned up. A lot of people in the bootlegging business was dropping like flies out on the East Coast. Waxey Gordon and Dutch Schultz was going at it. Ever hear of a pair called Max Hassel and Max Greenberg?”

“I don’t believe so,” I said.

“They were so-called victims in that war. So were half a dozen of their associates, over a period of six months or so. Could Al, through the Waiter, been tying up some loose East-Coast ends? If bootleggers were recruited to snatch the kid, that would make sense.”

I could only nod.

Another sharp rapping made me squirm in my chair.

“’Cusa,” Nitti said. He went to the door, where Ricca was holding a glass of milk. Seeing Ricca like that, his face as white as the milk though considerably less wholesome, would have been amusing if it hadn’t been so frightening.

“Paul,” Nitti said with a smile, taking the milk, “thank you. Would you find my father-in-law, please, and tell him I’m ready for him.”

And Ricca, with an almost imperceptible disgruntled sigh, again disappeared. Nitti shut the door and turned to smile at me like a kindly priest.

“The Waiter is very disciplined,” he said, setting the milk on the desk. “And very loyal…to Al. In two, three years, Al will be out of stir. Meantime, I have the Waiter coming up under me, undermining my authority in little ways. Challenging me in board meetings…”

He trailed off, knowing that he should say no more on this subject. He went over and sipped the milk; set it back down.

But there were things I needed to know. “Frank, how does the Lindbergh case figure into any of this?”

He sat on the edge of the desk, at once casual and tightly coiled. “Couple ways, Nate.”

“Nate” again.

“If I knew the Waiter and Al did this thing,” he said, “it would be valuable knowledge. Something I would have over them.”

“Would you expect me to…cover up, or withhold evidence or information from the authorities?”

“If I asked you to,” he said, “wouldn’t you?”

I sighed. “I’d rather not take the job, then. I’m already getting a reputation for being connected. It’s not necessarily good for my business.”

He shrugged. “I might throw more work your way. Put you on a nice yearly retainer.”

“No offense, Frank, but I’m just enough of an ex-cop to want to keep some distance from your business.”

He gestured with both hands in a “fair enough” manner. “Then all I ask is that you tell me what you find out. Then it’s up to me to either use it, or contain it, best I can. I don’t expect you to do anything but, on the one hand, serve your client, Governor Who’s-It; and on the other, keep me informed.”

He slid off the desk. He dipped a hand into his pocket and withdrew a thick money clip; a fifty-dollar bill was on top. He unclipped the bills and counted out ten fifties.

“Five hundred as a retainer,” he said. “With a bonus, if you find something useful to me.”

“Okay, Frank,” I said. I took the money.

“Honest to God, kid,” he said, “I don’t know if Al was crazy enough to do this thing. But I know the Waiter is ruthless enough. He’s made a lot of people disappear in his time.”

I couldn’t hold the anger back. “Then why the hell did you have him, of all people, bring me here? Do you want him to figure out why you hired me? He’s obviously insulted at playing chauffeur to the likes of me…”

Nitti placed a fatherly hand on my shoulder and bestowed me a cool smile. “If you get close to something the Waiter’s involved in out east, he’s gonna know, anyway. He’s gonna know immediately.”

“Right!”

“So I had him bring you here. To send him a message.”

“What message is that?”

“Not to kill you, Nate.”

I just looked at him.

“I want Paul to know that you’re under my protection. He touches you, he answers to me. Capeesh?”

I swallowed and nodded.

There was another knock on the door.

“Ah,” Nitti said cheerfully. “There’s Paul with my father-in-law. Time for my checkup, and your ride home.”