“Two…three times, I think.”
“When were you there last?”
“Maybe two weeks ago.”
“Know the layout of the place pretty well, do you?”
“I guess I do.”
“Ever been in the nursery?”
“No, never.”
“Ever been on the second floor?”
“Yah.”
“Where on the second floor?”
“In Betty’s room. That where she can have visitor after working hours.”
“Where’s that from the nursery?”
“Next to it, I think.”
Johnson was answering the questions as fast as Welch could fire them; the sailor was holding up under it.
Welch let go of the sailor’s shirt and turned to Schwarzkopf and said, quietly, “Clear this shack out—leave me alone with him, and I’ll get you the truth.”
Schwarzkopf nodded; that seemed to sound good to him.
“Colonel,” I said, “Inspector…let’s step outside a second, fellas, what say.”
We stood outside the shack; nearby were the stone walls of the front gate, beyond which reporters milled like ants in search of a picnic. They were dying to know what was going on in our glorified outhouse.
“Why beat a confession out of him at this point?” I asked. “First of all, he’s a sailor and probably pretty tough— it would be hard to get him to confess to anything, without hurting him to where it would show.”
Welch bristled. “Are you telling us how to do our job?”
“God forbid. I’m convinced when it comes to beating worthless confessions out of innocent suspects, you’re the guy to call.”
“Fuck you, Heller.”
“Take a number, Welch. Colonel, why don’t you check up on Red’s alibi, before your inspector starts wearing out rubber hoses on Johnson’s thick Swedish skull.”
“He’s Norwegian,” Schwarzkopf said. But he was thinking. “If those facts check out—the cost of the long- distance call, the movies he says were playing, the ice-cream parlor, the doctor prescribing milk—we may have an innocent man on our hands.”
“I know,” I said. “And it’s a pity—when he talks, he sounds just like those goddamn ransom notes.”
8
The Old Princeton Inn was on Nassau Street, the main thoroughfare of the college town the ancient four-story brick hotel was named after. Even at 9:00 P.M., well past business hours, the shops screamed their orange-and- black allegiance to the Princeton Tigers. This old village seemed cheerfully dependent on its young benefactors.
But this was a week night, a school night, and the streets were as empty as a phys-ed major’s mind; it was as if the looming Gothic university buildings were taking names of any collegian not home studying. The deserted street, the orange and black that dominated every storefront, conspired with the bitter March wind and a moonless, starless night to make me as uneasy as a homeowner on Halloween—and a homeowner who didn’t spring for candy treats, at that.
I was, after all, on my way to a seance.
“I’m sorry to ask you to do this,” Lindbergh had said, earlier that afternoon, sitting behind his desk in his study, “but it seems to be the only way I can get you a hotel room.”
“That’s okay,” I’d said. “But I’m starting to feel like the resident spook chaser around here.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve decided to have you do,” he said. He pointed at me forcefully. “You’re going to be my chief investigator into all things that go bump in the night.”
I sat up. “Huh? What?”
He and Breckinridge began to laugh, which was a welcome sound, even if it was at my expense. Slim had a prep-school sense of humor that, I’d been told, manifested itself in practical jokes. He had on at least two occasions hidden the baby from Anne and Betty Gow, just to get ’em both going; the night of the kidnapping, the initial reaction of both Anne and the nurse had been to think it another of Slim’s gags.
“Nate,” Lindbergh said, “you know very well that you’re our resident Chicago underworld expert. Not a spook chaser.”
“That’s a relief to hear.”
“But under the circumstances we have to hear this couple out.”
It seemed a self-proclaimed spiritualist named Martin Marinelli and his wife, who called herself Sister Sarah, had been staying at the Old Princeton Inn for days, now. Marinelli had phoned the Lindbergh estate frequently, and sent letters and telegrams, claiming to have “good news” and “important information” about the kidnapping. The troopers monitoring calls and letters in the garage command post had deflected all of this, writing Marinelli and his wife off—rightly, no doubt—as cranks.
