She frowned defensively. “Well, she had! And Nate, I hadn’t even mentioned the apartment over the grocery store to her. But out of the blue, she said there was a rumor that, for a short time, a couple was caring for the Lindbergh baby, in that very apartment! That there was a house-to-house search of the neighborhood, in the early weeks or maybe even days after the kidnapping, and the couple took off. The house search made a big impression on her, and everybody in the neighborhood. She called it, ‘King Herod time.’”
“Why?”
Evalyn shrugged, smiled. “Seems the police were taking the diapers off every baby around, to check the sex.”
I tried to express my skepticism gently. “You know, Evalyn, I remember hearing about a New Haven search, because some of the construction workers who built Lindbergh’s house were from there, and were early suspects —so that could naturally give rise to a rumor like that. It doesn’t mean…”
“Nate, there’s something else. There was a name in Cayce’s notes. An Italian name, remember? The man who Cayce said was the leader of the kidnap gang.”
“Yes…”
“That name was Maglio, right? It must have been important—you underlined it in your notes, three times.”
“Yeah, uh, right.” Now I was getting an uncomfortable tingling.
“Well, we asked the old lady at the candy store, and a couple of other people as well, if they knew who owned or rented or lived in that shingled two-story house at Seventy-Three Chatham in ’32.”
“Yes? And?”
“Well, there were two apartments. The man living in the top apartment was named Maglio. Maglio, Nate! Can
My mouth was dry. I sipped the Bacardi. It didn’t help.
Paul Ricca, the Waiter, also known as Paul DeLucia, had frequently used the name Paul Maglio, particularly out east.
Of course, Evalyn didn’t even know who Paul Ricca was, and I wasn’t about to tell her. Nor was I about to call Frank Nitti back and say a soothsayer, four years ago, fingered the Waiter.
“How did I do?” she asked.
“You did well. That’s potentially interesting.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve got to find the right person to approach with this.”
“Someone needs to go to New Haven and really dig in, really investigate, right? Will it be us?”
“I think we need a bigger gun,” I said.
“I think your gun is big enough, Nate,” she said, and she was smiling in a whole other way now, putting her hand on me, crawling on top of me. We made love before the fireplace again, and she seemed to enjoy herself, but I was goddamn distracted.
I shared a bed with her that night, in a sumptuous bedroom, on silk sheets, and she slept contentedly, smiling through the night, while I sat up wide-eyed, untouched by sleep, putting the pieces together.
38
The Treasury Building was on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood; the White House was across the street. The many-pillared granite-and-sandstone structure loomed imposingly on this cold, rain-spitting Monday morning, an illusion of a perfect government, an American Athens. If the dollar were as sound as the Treasury Building looked, maybe I wouldn’t have to sleep in my office.
I went in the Fifteenth Street entrance, where amidst the bustle of bureaucrats I soon found the central office corridor, and the room number I was seeking. At the far end of a large, busy bullpen, Frank J. Wilson sat in a glassed-in office, burrowed in at a work-cluttered desk.
There was no secretary. I knocked and Wilson looked up and smiled indifferently and waved me in. He was sitting sideways, working at a typewriter on a stand. Like the army of accountants in the large room beyond, he worked in his suit and tie; the tie wasn’t even loosened.
Frank Wilson had changed only marginally since 1932—he wore wire-rim glasses, now, not black-rims, and his face was fleshier, his thinning hair grayer. I’d seen Wilson on several occasions since the early phase of the Lindbergh case. Just last year we’d bumped into each other in Louisiana. We’d grown guardedly friendly; warily respectful.
“Thanks for seeing me, Frank,” I said. I hung my raincoat and hat next to his on a coat tree.
“Nice to see you again, Heller,” he said. He hadn’t stopped typing yet. “Be with you in a moment.”
I found a chair.
The small office had several filing cabinets; on the wall behind him were framed photos of himself and various dignitaries, including President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau and Charles Lindbergh.
“Sorry,” he said, with a tight smile, as he turned and sat facing me at the desk; huge piles of manila case folders were on either side of the central blotter. “I’m hip deep in procedural recommendations.”
“Oh really,” I said, not terribly interested.
“There’s been a big influx of counterfeiting,” he said, “and Secretary Morgenthau has asked me to recommend methods of bringing it under control.”
“Isn’t that the job of the Secret Service?”
“Well, yes, but the Secretary has asked me, as a favor, to do a survey of the investigative and administrative
