Stolen Away (15 page)

“What should I say?”

Condon covered his heart like a school kid pledging allegiance. “Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“Except for my pulling a gun on you,” I said.

“Right,” he said, and he was up and out.

“What about our friends Max and Milton?” Condon asked.

“They stay here,” I said. “And they’re not my fucking friends.”

The night was nobody’s friend. The sky was black and the city was gray. A cold wind blew leaves and rubbish and scraps of paper across the all-but-deserted streets of the most beautiful borough in the world.

As I got behind the wheel, and Condon slid his big frame into the rider’s seat, I said, “I’m a stranger to this part of the world, Professor—you’ll have to navigate.”

“I can do that ably,” he said cheerily. Then, turning suddenly somber, he said, “I trust, despite our differences, we can join forces in this just cause.”

“We’ll do fine, Professor. I’m just here to back you up.”

Placated, Condon folded his hands on his lap and I pulled away from the curb, heading west.

Eight solitary blocks later, he said, “Turn north on Jerome Avenue—just up ahead.”

I turned onto the all-but-deserted thoroughfare, gloomy and gray under the subdued glow of the street lights. Condon pointed out the last subway station on Jerome Avenue, and I slowed.

“There’s the hot-dog stand,” I said.

On the left side of the street was the sagging, deteriorating shack, a summertime operation that had missed a couple summers. The sad little booth was fronted by an equally sad, sagging porch. I pulled a U-turn and stopped before it.

“Allow me,” Condon said, and got out.

He climbed several steps to the porch, each step giving and groaning under his weight. In the middle of the porch was a big flat rock, which I could see Condon stoop to lift. He returned quickly, an envelope in hand.

We were almost directly under a street lamp. He tore the envelope open and read the note aloud to me: “‘Cross the street and follow the fence from the cemetery direction to Two Hundred Thirty-Third Street. I will meet you.’”

“How far is that, Professor?”

“About a mile. The fence mentioned is the one enclosing Woodlawn Cemetery to the north—Two Hundred Thirty-Third Street runs east-west and intersects Jerome Avenue about a mile north of this frankfurter stand. It forms the northern border of the cemetery.”

“Which means?”

“You’ll have to swing the car around again.”

I pulled another U-turn. We couldn’t have had less traffic if the world ended yesterday. On our one side was the rolling wooded acreage of a park, on the other a sprawling, iron-fenced cemetery.

“That’s Woodlawn,” Condon explained. “And that park is Van Cortlandt.”

“You’d be better off if that cab driver had driven you.”

“Perhaps, Detective Heller—but if pressed I’ll admit I like having you, and your gun, around.”

We kept going along Jerome, parallel to the cemetery, stopping about fifty feet short of the 233rd Street intersection. Ahead was a triangular plaza that was the entrance to Woodlawn Cemetery, with heavy iron gates, shut and undoubtedly locked.

I pulled over. “Go on up and stand by that gate.”

“You think that’s the location the kidnappers meant?”

“Yes. Go on. I’ll cover you.”

“I suppose that’s wise. They’ll not contact me unless I’m alone.”

“I’m here if you need me.”

He nodded and strode over to the plaza, looking around brazenly. Inconspicuous he was not.

But that was okay. We wanted the kidnappers to see him.

He paced. He dug the note out of his pocket and read and reread it—in an apparent attempt to signal any representative of the kidnap gang who might be watching. Nothing. He paced some more.

Ten minutes of this went by before he came marching back to the car. He got in.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. “There’s no one out there. Were we on time?”

“It’s nine-fifteen,” I said. “Maybe we’re early. It’s warmer in here. Sit for a few minutes.”

We sat. The wind out there did all the talking.

Then Condon said, “There’s someone!”

A short, swarthy man in a cap and with a handkerchief covering his face was walking toward us along Jerome Avenue.

Condon got out of the car, quickly. He walked toward the man. The man walked toward him.

And passed the professor by.

Condon turned and stood in the middle of the sidewalk, scratching his head, watching the guy walk away. The old man looked in my direction, shrugged, and headed back for the area by the iron gates, where he again began to pace.

At nine-thirty, I was getting restless. I was beginning to think nothing was going to happen—perhaps because I was along. I was also wondering where Wilson’s man was hiding himself; I assumed Wilson had put a man, or men, on Condon’s house, and that we’d been trailed here. But the shadow man must have been goddamn good. Because I felt alone. Just me, Condon, the night, the wind and half the corpses in the Bronx.

Condon, rocking on his heels, was standing, with his back to the iron gate.

And, now, like something in a haunted-house movie, a hand was extending itself through the iron gates toward the professor.

I sat forward, about to call out, but the professor began to pace again. He moved well away from the extending ghostlike hand, looking everywhere but in that direction.

And now the hand withdrew, only to return seconds later, with something white in it. The white thing began to flutter like a bird. A handkerchief, waving. Whoever it was, in the cemetery, was trying desperately to signal the professor, without calling out to him.

Finally Condon noticed it, and moved quickly to the gates, where he began to speak to somebody on the other side. I rolled my window down, and the window on the other side, as well, but I could hear nothing but the wind.

They spoke for perhaps two minutes, and then Condon abruptly backed away.

“No!” I heard him say.

I reached for my gun.

Then I saw a figure, a man in a dark topcoat and hat, climb up, over and down the gate and land almost at Condon’s feet. For a split second the two men faced each other, the one who’d jumped remaining in a catlike crouch.

“It’s too dangerous!” the man said, and began to run.

The guy, who was about a head shorter than Condon, ran across the street, diagonally—right in front of me, though I got no sort of look at him at all, his dark felt hat brim pulled down, obscuring his face.

A cemetery security guard had appeared at the gate—his presence, apparently, had spooked the man in the dark topcoat—and was shouting, “Hey! What’s going on?”

But Condon was ignoring that. The old boy was hoofing it across the street after the man. I had them both in sight. And I could have joined in the chase. But the professor was doing all right, at the moment. I stayed a spectator—for now.

The man ran north into the park; Condon followed, calling out to him: “Hey! Come back here! Don’t be a coward!”

The guy slowed, and turned, and waited for Condon. They were only a few hundred feet into the park. The cemetery security guard hadn’t even bothered to come out; he’d stayed inside to protect the dead. Condon and his companion were standing by a clump of trees near a small groundskeeper’s hut with a park bench in front of it.

Condon gestured to the bench and the guy thought about it, and sat. And then so did Condon.

They sat and they talked. For a long, long time.

I thought about getting out of the car and finding my way to those trees and bushes and eavesdropping. But the guy’s compatriots might be watching me, and I might queer the whole deal. And I could see both Condon and the man in the dark topcoat just fine. I could be there in seconds if trouble developed.

But it didn’t. They just sat and talked.

While I sat stewing, my gun in my lap, looking around for signs of anybody else, kidnappers, T-men, innocent bystanders, anybody. Tonight the Bronx was as dead as Woodlawn Cemetery.

Finally, after an eternity, they stood.

And shook hands.

The man in the dark topcoat turned away and walked north, disappearing into the wooded park. Condon watched him go, then walked slowly toward my car. He was smiling.

“That went well, I think,” he said, getting in.

“I’d have opened the car door for you,” I said, “but my hands are numb from the cold. You talked to that guy for over an hour.”

“There’s no longer any possibility of doubt,” he said. “We’re in touch with the right ones. Those who have the baby. It’s only a question of time, now.”

“And money. You’ll never know how close I came to following you. I should have grabbed that son of a bitch.”

“What good would that do? You’d spoil everything!”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m starting to think these bastards are playing us for suckers. That kid could be dead, you know.”

Condon blanched, but recovered, a silly grin peeking out under the walrus mustache. “No, no. Everything’s fine. The child’s being fed according to the diet.”

As we drove back to his home, an animated Condon told me about his meeting with the man, who gave his name as “John.” And then he told it to Breckinridge, and the next day to Lindbergh. I heard it three times, and each time it was a little different.

The man in the dark overcoat and dark soft felt hat had held the white handkerchief to his face as he spoke to the professor through the bars of the iron gate.

“Did you got it, the money?” the man had asked.

“No,” Condon said. “I can’t bring the money until I see the package.”

By “package” the professor meant the child, of course.

At this point the snap of a breaking twig had broken the gloom like a gunshot, startling both men.

“A cop!” the man said. “He’s with you!”

At this point the man had climbed the gate and, for a moment, sans handkerchief mask, faced Condon.

“You brought the cops!”

“No! I wouldn’t do that.”

“It’s too dangerous!”

I interrupted Condon’s story to ask him to describe the man.

“I only saw his face for a fleeting moment,” Condon said.

“Well, you sat and talked to him for an hour!”

“In the dark, with his hat pulled down and his coat collar up,” Condon pointed out. “But I would venture to say he was about five foot eight, aged thirty to thirty-five, weighing perhaps a hundred sixty pounds. Fair to chestnut hair.”

“You said he never took his hat off.”

“Yes, but that nonetheless is the coloration, judging by his sideburns, and the hair around his ears. He had almond-shaped eyes, like a Chinaman.”

“Any accent?”

“Yes. Pronounced his
t
’s as
d
’s, and his
c
’s as
g
’s.”

“German?”

“I would say Scandinavian.”

After their brief face-to-face confrontation, the man had run across the street (in front of me in the parked flivver) into the park, and Condon—after assuring the approaching security guard that there was nothing wrong—followed him there, both of them settling on the park bench near the hut.

Condon claimed he had scolded the man, telling him not to behave so rudely: “You are my guest!”

Following that berserk lesson in ransom etiquette, they sat in silence, which the “guest” broke. “It’s too dangerous. It would mean thirty years. Or I could burn. And I am only go-between.”

Condon hadn’t liked the sound of that. “What did you mean, you could ‘burn’?”

“I would burn if the baby is dead.”

“Dead! What are we doing here, if the child is dead!”

“The baby is not dead,” the man had said with reassuring matter-of-factness. “Would I burn if the baby is
not
dead?”

“I’m a teacher, sir, not a lawyer. Is the child well?”

“The baby is better than it was. We give more for him to eat than we heard in the paper from Mrs. Lindbergh. Tell her not to worry. Tell the Colonel not to worry, either. Baby is all right.”

“How do I know I am talking to the right man?”

“You got it, the letter with my singnature. Same singnature that was on my note in the crib.”

Here I interrupted Condon again to say: “But it wasn’t in the crib—it was on the windowsill.”

Condon gestured dismissively. “That small discrepancy is negligible, compared to the confirmation I
did
receive.”

Seated on the bench with his “guest,” Condon had removed from his pocket a small canvas pouch, opened it and extracted the safety pins he’d taken from the Lindbergh nursery.

“What are these?” Condon asked.

“Pins from the baby’s crib.”

I shook my head hearing this, as Condon said to me, “And thus I proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was indeed talking to the man who stood in the nursery and lifted that child from his crib!”

“Professor,” I said, “it doesn’t take a genius to identify safety pins as coming from a baby’s crib.”

“But these were identified as being from the
Lindbergh
baby’s crib!”

“Yeah, right. He might’ve guessed Baby Snooks, instead. Go on, go on.”

Condon had asked the man his name.

“John,” he’d said.

“My name is John, too. Where are you from, John?”

“Up farther than Boston.”

“What do you do, John?”

“I’m a sailor.”

“Bist du Deutsche?”

Condon’s question got only a puzzled look in return; the professor asked again, in English.

“Are you German?”

“No,” John said. “I’m Scandinavian.”

Condon then took time to explain to John that his (that is, John’s) mother, if she were still alive, would no doubt disapprove of these sordid activities. Then, because it was cold, Condon wasted even more time trying to convince his “guest”—who had a bad cough—to take his (that is, Condon’s) topcoat.

The baby, John told the professor, was on a boat (“boad,” he pronounced it). The boat was six hours away and could be identified by two white cloths on its masts. The ransom had been upped to seventy thousand because Lindbergh had disobeyed instructions and brought in the cops; besides, the kidnappers needed to put money aside in case they needed lawyers. The kidnap gang numbered six, two of whom were “womens.” John’s boss was “Number One,” a “smart man” who worked for the government. Number One would receive twenty grand of the seventy sought, and John and the other two men and the two nurses would each receive ten grand.