“He’s back with Slim…?”
“Slim?”
“Lindbergh!”
Nitti laughed, shortly. “Hell, no. He’s with his family.”
“The Belliances, you mean.”
“That’s not their name, now.”
“Where are they?”
“That’s something you can’t know, Nate. Something you can’t ever know.”
“Frank. I can’t let Hauptmann fry. He’s a fucking patsy, and I can stop it, now, all I gotta do is sit that kid on the Governor’s desk, and…”
“Don’t get yourself worked up. You’ll start bleeding or something.”
“I got to get out of here, I got to stop them, if I don’t…”
“Hauptmann’s dead.”
“Exactly!”
“No. I mean: Hauptmann’s dead.”
“What? He’s…what?”
“Executed couple nights ago,” Nitti said, matter-of-factly. “By the State of New Jersey.”
“What the fuck day is this?”
“Monday.”
“What
“April sixth.”
“Jesus. Jesus.”
“You were hurt bad, Nate. We brought you back here, but you lost a lot of blood.”
“Fuck! You want me to believe I was in a coma or something. Bullshit, Frank. You kept me doped up! You kept me out of commission, out of the game.”
“This is a hospital, Nate. Don’t say foolish things.”
“Hell. You run this fucking place.”
He shrugged. “What’s the difference? You’re alive, and Hauptmann isn’t. I’d suggest you go along about your business.”
“They…must’ve given him a few days’ reprieve. He was supposed to go at the end of March.”
Nitti was nodding. “Yeah. Right at the last minute, that hick detective Ellis Parker had Wendel arrested for confessing; it even went before a grand jury. They had to give Hauptmann a temporary stay.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Wilentz and Wendel got together and repudiated the confession. Wendel told tales of getting the shit beat out of him in basements and so on. Ellis Parker and a bunch of his boys are under arrest, now.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised. Goddamn!”
“Easy, now. Take it easy.”
“What about the Lindbergh kid?”
“They found that baby dead a long time ago.”
I tried to sit up but couldn’t. “You expect me to keep quiet about…”
“Yes.”
Rage and frustration bubbled in me; if I hadn’t been so goddamn weak, so fucking tired, I might have screamed or even grabbed the little bastard. But all I could manage was, “Or I’m fish food, Frank?”
He stood; he patted my arm, like a father soothing an infant. “Be a good boy, Nate. You think I let Hauptmann die? I didn’t let him die. Your pal Lindbergh did. You think that phony son of a bitch deserves his son? The only thing I’d like about that kid turning up is the embarrassment that phony flyboy would suffer. Any time anybody suggests to him his son might still be alive, he bites their goddamn head off. That boy is with a family who loves him. He’ll have a good home, a good upbringing, out of the public eye. What’s wrong with that?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. The image of the little boy clinging to Carl Belliance, saying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” popped into my brain. The little boy loved the father he had, the father he knew. Would it be such a wonderful thing to yank him away from that? Hadn’t once been enough?
But the thought passed as quickly as it came. “That’s a bunch of bullshit, Frank, and you damn well know it.”
“You go looking for that boy, Nate, and you probably are going to have a dead kid on your conscience.”
“Why…what…?”
His lip curled ever so slightly; it was almost a sneer. “You think Paul and Al are gonna let this come out? You
