was a sixteenth of an inch thicker than the attic boards. Also, the nail holes weren’t deep enough to accommodate eightpenny nails that came from the attic floor.”
“That ladder,” Evalyn said bitterly, “was what Prosecutor Wilentz pledged to ‘hang around Hauptmann’s neck.’”
“And he did,” Hoffman said. “The question is, Mr. Heller, can you give us something as major as that ladder— only favorable, and not fabricated? Something that no one, no matter how biased, could deny?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have very long, do I?”
“The end of the month.” He shrugged. “Fourteen days.”
“Hell,” I said, with blatantly phony optimism, “maybe Ellis Parker is right, and the kid’s still alive. Maybe I can track the boy down and sit him right there on your desk, and he can have an ice-cream cone while you phone his folks.”
Hoffman smiled at that, but sadly.
“We’ve tried everything,” Evalyn said, shaking her head, sighing. “I even hired the top defense attorney in the country, but it didn’t work out.”
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Why, Sam Leibowitz, of course,” she said. “But the approach Sam took was disastrous.”
Sam Leibowitz!
“How so?” I asked.
Hoffman sighed. “He was convinced Hauptmann was guilty. The few times he visited Hauptmann, he tried to badger a confession out of him. Felt if he could convince Hauptmann to name his accomplices, then Hauptmann’s life would be spared.”
“And how did Hauptmann react?”
“With his usual quiet indignation,” Hoffman said. “He did not crack—and Leibowitz was off the case as quickly as he came on.”
“Don’t you know,” I asked Evalyn, “who Leibowitz is?”
“Certainly,” she said stiffly, defensively. “He’s the best damn trial attorney in the country.” Then studying me, she melted and said, “Why, Nathan? What do you mean?”
I looked at Hoffman. “You told me about Reilly. Now I’ll tell you about Leibowitz:
“He defended Al Capone?” Evalyn asked breathlessly.
“Yes. On a triple murder charge. And got him off.”
“I’m sure Sam Leibowitz…” Hoffman began.
But I said: “I’ll tell you one thing about this case, which I learned many years ago—you can’t be
The governor shrugged. “Where I did, I guess. With Hauptmann. See for yourself. Talk to Hauptmann.”
29
It was nightfall by the time I got around to visiting Bruno Richard Hauptmann. I’d spent the afternoon in an office at the Statehouse, going over the material on the case Governor Hoffman had gathered. Evalyn insisted upon coming along, though the governor had made arrangements only for me.
“Tell them I’m your secretary,” she said.
“Even Rockefeller doesn’t have a secretary that looks like you,” I said. “You’re going to have to stow all the ice in your purse.”
She did, only not all of it fit; she had to stuff some of the rocks in the glove compartment. I was driving her car, a black Packard Deluxe Eight convertible, its white top up in the rain. She’d driven from D.C., all by herself. She no longer employed a full-time chauffeur.
“Death row is no place for a lady,” I said.
“In my opinion,” she said, “it’s no place for a man, either.”
The state prison encompassed a full block between Federal and Cass Streets, its massive red stone walls decorated with serpents, rams, eagles and a few kneeling nudes, and studded with guard towers with quaint New England-style cupola roofs. The fortress was haloed in electric light, including opening-night-style moving beams, and loomed ominously against the black, rain-swept night.
“My Lord, what a sight!” Evalyn said.
“Damn near as big as your place on Massachusetts Avenue,” I commented, swinging around onto Third Street. We parked and crossed to the gate, Evalyn taking my arm, wobbling on her heels as we navigated puddle-filled potholes.
We were met at the gate by Warden Kimberling himself, a stocky figure in a black rain slicker, his oblong, fleshy face somber, his wire-frame glasses pearled with raindrops. A prison guard, also rain-slickered, the badge on his cap gleaming with moisture, gestured us along with a flashlight in one hand and a billy club in the other. As ushers go, he was an intimidating one. The rain was coming down hard enough to limit conversation to simple shouted introductions, and the warden and his man led us quickly across a courtyard to the chunky red-brick two-story building nearby that was, I soon realized, the death house.
We stepped into the dark room, and the beam of the guard’s flashlight lit on what at first looked like a ghost, but then, as bright overhead lights were switched on, became a chair. An electric chair, or to be exact,
