Stolen Away

by Collins, Max Allan

  “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.

  “It seems to me that you are doing the most dangerous job,” Condon said, sympathetically.

  “I know it.”

  “You’re getting a mere ten thousand dollars. I don’t think you’re getting your fair share.”

  “I know it.”

  “Look, John—leave them. Come with me to my house. I will get you one thousand dollars from my savings and see if I can get you more money from Colonel Lindbergh. That way, you’ll be on the law’s side.”

  John shook his head and said, “No—I can’t do that. The boss would smack me out. They’d drill me.”

  “You’ll be caught, John! Think of your mother!”

  “We won’t be caught. We plan too careful—we prepared a year for this.”

  Condon then offered to exchange himself as a hostage for the child; and when John turned him down, Condon asked to at least be taken to the baby. Surely John didn’t expect that the Lindbergh forces would pay the money without first seeing the child.

  “No!” John said. “Number One would drill us both, if I took you there. But I will send by ten o’clock Monday morning proof we have the boy.”

  “Proof?”

  “His sleeping suit.”

  Then, Condon claimed, John spent several minutes assuring the doctor, who brought up the subject, that Red Johnson and Betty Gow were not involved in the kidnapping; that they were innocent.

  “This,” Condon said to me, “should be a relief to the Lindberghs and the police as well.”

  I didn’t respond. My thoughts didn’t exactly
mirror the old goat’s: I found it suspicious as hell that Condon would ask John about Johnson and Gow, and ridiculous that a kidnapper would ‘heatedly’ stick up for these strangers…unless of course they weren’t strangers to him.

  John, rising to go, had asked a final question. “You will put another ad in the Bronx Home News?”

  “I will,” Condon said.

  “Say ‘Money is ready,’” John said, walking backward, lifting a finger. “And this time, it better be.”

  And he turned and slipped into darkness.

  “You shook hands with him,” I said, “before he went off into the woods.”

  “Yes,” Condon said, “but not as friends. Rather as negotiators who have come to a preliminary meeting of minds.”

  Any meeting of minds with Dr. John F. Condon was a poorly attended affair.

  But the professor was tickled with himself and his adventure—delighted that channels were open for continued negotiations that would lead to the boy’s safe return.

  I was hoping Wilson’s men had followed us here, had been silently watching, and had shadowed “John” home.

  Yet I couldn’t help feeling I’d fucked up, that I should have got out of the car to eavesdrop and either follow this bastard “John,” or just nab him and beat the life, or the truth, out of him.

  Whichever came first.

  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 ple
aded 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.”