“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 pleaded 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.”
I drove—the most famous pilot in the world my passenger. We rode silently for a good long time. We approached the George Washington Bridge, its silver arc indistinct against the night, a parade of flickering lights moving across it over the Hudson. We joined that parade and when urban New Jersey faded into rural New Jersey, he began to speak.
“You think I’m foolish, don’t you, Nate?”
“I think you’re human. The problem is, most of the people you get advice from don’t.”
He was looking absently out the side window, into darkness. He was still wearing the amber glasses and cap; he wore them all the way home. “I’m anxious to have this over.”
“Don’t get too anxious.”
He looked at me. “Do you trust Condon?”
“Not particularly.”
“Do you think he’s an accomplice?”
“Maybe. Or a dupe.”
“Or exactly what he seems to be?”
“Which is what, Slim?”
“A good-hearted old patriot who wants to help out…” And he trailed off.
“Who wants to help out the ‘Lone Eagle’? Maybe. A bigger question is, are these extortionists the people who have your son?”
“You don’t think they are?”
“They could be operating off inside information from servants, or from Mickey Rosner. They don’t know anything I don’t know, for example. And what the hell do you know about me?”
“I know I trust you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t trust any fucking body.”
“I trust my own instincts.”
“And your instincts tell you that ‘John’ is one of the kidnappers?”
He shook his head from side to side, but it was not in a “no” gesture. “I’m not closing off any avenue I can go down to find my son. And this sleeping suit…”
“This sleeping suit is standard, issue, Slim. Store-bought, lacking in laundry marks, or any other identification. There are thousands, tens of thousands, like it.”
“I gave the newspapers a false description of the garment, remember?”
“I remember. So the extortionists could have got lucky, or they could have had inside information. Here’s another thought—doesn’t your son have his own bedroom at your wife’s mother’s house, at Englewood?”
“Why, yes,”
