his daughter and son stayed behind in Trenton-he’d sneak home and visit ’em from time to time, when the coast was clear.”
“It wasn’t like there was a big manhunt out for him.”
“Not at all. He just had warrants on him for this bad paper he passed. Anyway, after the kidnapping, I made a statement to the press and the radio that if the kidnapper would just come forward and talk to me, I would do all in my power to see that he was not punished. All I wanted to do was get that baby back safe.”
“Figuring with your reputation, it might just draw the kidnapper out.”
“Such was my thinking, yes. Hell, pretty soon I had bags of mail, phone calls from here to hell and back. My secretary would screen these calls. She’d only have me listen in on the more promising ones. And one of these calls was from Wendel-trying to disguise his voice.”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“Positive. I know Paul Wendel’s voice, for Christ’s sake; heard it for forty-some years. He calls disguising his voice, and even my secretary recognizes it, so she puts him on the line with me, and he’s saying he knows who has the baby, and he’d like to come in and talk to me about it. I pretended not to recognize who it was, and invited him in.”
“Did he come?”
“Yup. But he didn’t even mention having called. Just announced that he’d had contact with the people who had the Lindbergh baby, and how he wanted to work with me to get that baby back. I told him, why, go ahead; see what you can do. But nothing come of it.”
“Sounds like he was just a blowhard. Maybe trying to pressure you into getting those bad-check warrants pulled off his back.”
“I would’ve thought so, too, but I kept remembering something Wendel had said to me, not long before the kidnapping. He was sitting in this office, in that very chair you’re sitting in, having coffee…oh, do you want some coffee, Nathan?”
“No, that’s okay. I’d rather have the rest of the story…black.”
“Right. Anyway, he said, ‘You know, Ellis, I’m getting damned tired of trying to save some money, a five- dollar bill here, a ten-dollar bill there. I want some real money.’ So I asked him, ‘What do you consider “real” money, Paul?’ And Wendel says, ‘I want to make fifty thousand dollars at one time. Fifty thousand, fifty thousand.’ He kept going on about it.”
“And when you heard about the fifty-thousand-dollar ransom, then you suspected Wendel?”
“When I put it together with his story about having ‘friends’ who had the baby, you bet I did.”
I sighed. “You’ve been reading your own press clippings, Ellis. That’s the thinnest piece of deduction I’ve heard this side of the radio.”
He didn’t like that. He shook the pipe at me. “My instincts have never done me wrong, not in over forty years in this game, you young pup.”
“Really? Well, I’ve been a detective since, what, ’31? And this is the first time I’ve been called a ‘young pup.’”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about! And you don’t know Paul Wendel! Remember, he thought the world had mistreated him.” He hunched his shoulders, gesturing with both hands. “This man is a psychotic, a very brilliant man with a criminal twist to his mind. The world was always against him. So what does he decide to do? Strike at the world’s biggest hero. Kidnap the baby of this international hero, this Lucky Lindy. And that way, he could be more famous than Lindy, and yet anonymous at the same time. In his mind, he’d know he was better than Lindbergh; in his mind, he was a bigger hero.”
“If he did this, why would he come to you with this cock-and-bull story about ‘friends’ of his who had the baby? You’re a cop, and a famous one. That’s inviting hell in a handbasket….”
He threw up his hands. “It’s the key, Nathan! Wendel did something that he believes
“And he was acquainted with you, the ‘barnyard Sherlock Holmes,’ a world-famous detective, who could appreciate his accomplishment.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. And if this is all you have, I don’t think you have much of a suspect at all.”
He snorted. “You think that’s all I have? When my instincts kick in, that’s when I start digging. On this and on any case. So I began investigating my dear old friend. Would you like to hear some of what I discovered?”
“Why not.” The day was shot to hell, anyway.
“For openers, in the weeks before the kidnapping, Wendel was frequenting a candy store in Hopewell, for sweets and cigarettes; I have a deposition to that effect from the female proprietor.”
“Next you’ll tell me Hochmuth and Whited saw him in Hopewell, too.”
“Nathan, this woman does not have cataracts, and she does not live in a hillbilly shack. Here’s another little fact you may enjoy…Wendel’s sister lives in back of St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.”
I blinked. “What?”
“His sister.” He was grinning, but his eyes were dead serious. “St. Raymond’s is where this lying fool Condon paid off the fifty thousand-and Wendel would not have had far to go to hide out afterwards, would he?”
This, too, I wrote down. I was getting interested.
“I’m jumping around a bit, Nathan-hope you can follow me. Now, when Wendel was still a practicing attorney in Trenton, he got one of his clients off on a narcotics rap. You know what that client’s name was, Nathan?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Ellis?”
“Why, sure, Nathan. It was Isidor Fisch.”
I just looked at him; I had about as much to say at that moment as the skeleton.
“With their lawyer-client relationship,” Parker said casually, “I figure maybe Wendel turned the fifty thousand in marked ransom bills over to Fisch, who some people say was a ‘hot-money’ fence.”
I was sitting forward. “Ellis, this may be important. You have my apologies for doubting you.”
“Well, thank you, young man.” He relit the corncob pipe, shook the match out. “Now I’ll tell you about Paul Wendel and Al Capone.”
He was showing off, but it was working. I felt like I’d been poleaxed.
“Al Capone?” I asked. Because it was clear that he wouldn’t continue until I did ask.
He nodded smugly. “Paul Wendel tried to work a confidence game on Al Capone some years ago, around 1929 or ’30. I have an affidavit to that effect from a Frank Cristano, who has had some contact with underworld figures, from time to time. To make a long story short, Wendel convinced both Cristano and Capone that he could turn common tar into alcohol for four cents a gallon. At some point, however, the scam unraveled and Capone said if Wendel-who had come to visit Capone at the Lexington Hotel in your fair city-ever darkened his door again he’d get taken for what I believe you Chicago boys refer to as a ‘ride.’”
“I don’t think that term is unknown on the East Coast, either, Ellis.”
“What’s really interesting, Nathan, is that Wendel approached Cristano again, in early 1932-with a scheme to get Al Capone out of his income-tax troubles by kidnapping-and then arranging for Capone to be a hero by returning-the Lindbergh baby.”
There it was.
I said, “Did this Cristano say he delivered the message?”
“No. He threw Paul Wendel out on his ass. But don’t you suppose Wendel found a way to get that message to Capone?”
I nodded. “So maybe you do have a hell of a suspect in Wendel.”
“I think so.”
“But there isn’t much time to develop any of this. You have him under surveillance, I suppose?”
“Why, Nathan,” Ellis Parker said innocently, removing the corncob pipe. “I have him under wraps over at the local insane asylum. Care to meet him?”
