Stolen Away (30 page)

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.