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 procedures of the Service.” He said this casually, but I knew he was bragging.
“That’s why your office isn’t in the wing with the Intelligence Unit, anymore.”
“Right. Temporary quarters, these. You see, Moran is going to retire soon, so some changes are going to be made, obviously. I’m just doing a little advance work.”
William H. Moran was the longtime head of the Secret Service; this was Wilson’s way of telling me he was being groomed for the job.
“Well, gee, Frank, it sounds like things are going well for you, busy as you are.”
“Yes. Not too busy to see you, of course. You say you have new information about the Lindbergh case?” He smiled doubtfully. “At this late date, Heller? If it was anybody but you, I’d have dismissed it as a crank call.”
“I didn’t know who else to turn to-you and Irey are the only real possibilities, and Irey’s up so high in the government now, I don’t know if I could get to him.”
His brow was knit, the eyes behind the wire-frames were tight. “Nate, I know you well enough to know you’re not in this out of altruism. No offense, but surely there’s a client in the woodpile.”
“There is. I’m working for Governor Harold Hoffman.”
He bristled. Shifting in his chair, his mouth a thin line, he said, “I’m disappointed to hear that, Nate. Hoffman is a publicity hound; he’s exploiting the Lindbergh case, using it as a political football.”
“Frank, no offense to you, either-but that’s bullshit. I don’t see how being on Hauptmann’s side would be politically advantageous to anybody.”
“Hoffman’s got his eye on the Republican nomination for Vice President,” Wilson said, squinting. “If he could embarrass the Democrats in his state, if he could crack the Lindbergh case, well…”
“If he could crack the Lindbergh case,” I said, “I’d think you’d approve.”
“Damn it, Heller, the case
“Then I may be wasting my time, here, Frank, not to mention yours. Perhaps you don’t care to hear about what I’ve uncovered….”
He grimaced, impatient-whether with me or himself, I can’t say. Then he smiled politely and said, “Nonsense. If you’ve come up with something new, I want to know about it.”
“I thought so. After all, you were never a big proponent of the ‘lone wolf’ theory.”
“No. But I
“Well, maybe we can find those ‘accomplices’ without his help. But Frank-my opinion is, Hauptmann’s a minor figure in the case at best, and probably a flat-out patsy.”
Wilson sighed. He shook his head wearily. “Out of respect to you, Nate, I’ll hear you out.”
“All right. Now in some instances, I can’t tell you how I’ve been made privy to information. You’ll have to view at least some of what I’m going to tell you the way you’d view a tip from a good informant.”
He accepted that with a nod.
“What I’d like to present is my scenario for how the kidnapping and the extortion may have happened. This isn’t the only way it could have played. There are several variant ways you could interpret the things I’ve learned; but I think I’ve put the puzzle together. I spent the weekend going over old field notes, working it out.”
He had to smile. “Nate Heller devotes his weekend to solving the case that has mystified the world for over four years. That was damn white of you.”
I grinned. “Okay-I deserve that. Anyway, my explanation, or theory if you will, is a hell of a lot more likely than the one Wilentz got Hauptmann convicted on.”
Wilson nodded again. “One thing I’ll grant you-it always bothered me that Wilentz in his opening statement to the jury said he was going to prove the child died dropping to the ground, fracturing its skull, when the ladder rung broke. Then in his closing argument, Wilentz stated flatly that Hauptmann bludgeoned the boy in his crib, with the chisel. Wilentz is lucky that blunder didn’t get the conviction overturned.”
“Especially,” I said, “since neither version of the child’s death is supported by any evidence. No impression of the child’s body in the soft ground below, from falling; and no blood or other matter splattered in the crib, from a bludgeoning.”
Wilson was nodding again, which made me feel better.
I began by telling him about Paul Wendel. He had never heard of Wendel, and wrote the name down on a notepad. I, of course, didn’t mention that Wendel was in Ellis Parker’s illegal custody-just that Parker was investigating Wendel.
