“Paul Wendel concocts this plan to kidnap the baby,” I said, “and sells Capone on it. It’s too dangerous and loony a plan for Capone to share with Frank Nitti, who is comparatively conservative in such matters; and it’s unlikely something this wild would interest Luciano, Madden or any of the others.”
“Dutch Schultz might have been that crazy,” Wilson said.
I had to restrain myself from telling him that Nitti had said the same thing.
“But that’s a case in point,” I said. “Not so long ago, Schultz had his own crazy idea-kill Tom Dewey. And we both know how that wound up.”
When Dutch Schultz wanted to hit Dewey the star prosecutor, it was vetoed by Luciano, Meyer Lansky and the boys; when Schultz bridled, he got lead poisoning in a Newark restaurant.
“Now I’m not sure whether Capone or Wendel approaches them,” I said, “but Max Hassel and Max Greenberg are recruited to engineer the snatch. Why would they go along with such a thing? Probably because they, and possibly their boss Waxey Gordon, want to curry Capone’s favor. A beer war seems to be abrewing, shall we say, and the more powerful elements on the East Coast-Luciano, Schultz and so on-are in a position to crush the Hassel and Greenberg operation. It doesn’t hurt them to do a favor for Capone, and make some money at the same time. Besides, Hassel and Greenberg won’t get their hands dirty-they can dispatch some of their minor bootlegger, rumrunner minions to take the risks and provide the insulation.”
Wilson was listening intently.
“Let me interrupt myself to ask you a question, Frank-who was Capone’s most frequent contact on the East Coast in ’32?”
“Well, Frankie Yale was dead by this point,” Wilson said, thoughtfully. “Our intelligence back then indicated that the guy doing the Outfit’s courier work, and the general Capone contact man with East-Coast mobsters, was Ricca. Paul Ricca-the Waiter.”
“Right on the money, Mr. Wilson,” I said, with a smile. “Ricca is unfailingly loyal to Capone. If Capone wanted to launch something that Frank Nitti and Jake Guzik and the rest of the Outfit hierarchy would reject-and after debacles like the Jake Lingle murder and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, these business-oriented types are hardly likely to embrace kidnapping the goddamn Lindbergh baby-who would Capone go to? Who was ruthless enough, and loyal enough?”
“Ricca, of course,” Wilson said. Nodding. Going along with me for the ride.
I drove on. “I think Ricca may have enlisted Gaston Means to be the intermediary between the underworld and the upperworld. Con man, ex-government agent, Means was clever and connected with everybody from bootleggers to congressmen to high society.”
“Why the hell would Capone resort to unreliable rabble like this Wendel character and, of all people, Gaston Means?”
I gave him the same explanation I’d given Nitti: they were smart, savvy crooks, who were probably smart enough not to cross Capone, and who would make perfect fall guys. They could call out Capone’s name in court and everybody would just laugh.
“Means didn’t contact Evalyn McLean at first, you know,” I said. “He contacted Colonel M. Robert Guggenheim, and a prominent judge-this was in the earliest days of the case. He seems likely to have been truly attempting to become the intermediary, at the bidding of Capone. He’s a hell of a lot more likely go-between than Jafsie Condon!”
Wilson smiled.
“Now as for the kidnapping itself, disbarred lawyer Wendel-as I mentioned-has a client named Isidor Fisch. Fisch is a con man, fence and probable dope-smuggler…”
“Nate, pardon me, but we checked Fisch a hundred different ways. He was a harmless Jewish boy suffering from tuberculosis.”
“Frank, maybe you should’ve checked one hundred and one ways.” It was time to get tough. “I know you had a man in that spiritualist church of Marinelli’s…”
“One of the best undercover agents in the Unit. Pat O’Rourke.”
“I know O’Rourke, and he is a good man. But this time he didn’t do a good job. Are you aware that Fisch lived across the street from that spiritualist church?”
“Certainly,” he said, and shrugged dismissively.
That surprised me. “You did? Didn’t you find that significant?”
“Not particularly,” he said. “Fisch didn’t even meet Hauptmann until two years after the kidnapping. Just one of the many coincidental red herrings we were always running into on the case.”
I hardly knew how to respond to that brilliant piece of deductive thinking.
“Frank, you’re operating from the premise that Hauptmann is guilty,” I said, trying to maintain control, and stay reasonable. “Assuming that Hauptmann may
He made a small dismissive wave. “Well, for the sake of argument…but I can’t accept your characterizing Pat O’Rourke’s undercover work as anything but exceptional.”
“Oh, really? Then did you know Isidor Fisch was a
His face remained impassive, but his eyes flickered.
“So was Oliver Whately. So was Violet Sharpe.”
He sat forward. “Are you certain?”
“I have witnesses who say so. And if you send some of these famous Washington G-men or T-men into the field checking, I think you’ll come up with a lot more witnesses. Can I continue my scenario?”
He nodded; his expression was grave.
“Paul Wendel uses his client Fisch to arrange for Violet and Ollie to help, in various ways. I think Violet’s a dupe, actually, providing inside information possibly through a boyfriend, while Ollie is, on the other hand, an active participant in the scheme. He is, in fact, the prime inside accomplice. The night of the kidnapping, he probably handed the baby either down the ladder or out the front door to one of Hassel and Greenberg’s cronies. There’s a possibility these bootleggers have a connection to the servants that can be traced, even at this late date, because I understand deliveries of beer and booze were made to Whately and others.”
Wilson wore a faint humorless smirk. “I suppose Whately’s role explains why the dog didn’t bark.”
“Oh, yes and then some-you see, Whately looked after Wahgoosh. He in fact brought the dog into the household, raised it, trained it. There’s no way around it, Frank, it has to be said…”
“Oh, Heller, please don’t.”
I shrugged and smiled. “The butler did it.”
“You had to say it.”
“I was born to say it. Frank, the child was spirited away by these bootleggers, Hassel and Greenberg’s boys, and possibly along for the ride was a Capone representative.”
“Surely not Ricca.”
“No. But I have a hunch this is where Bob Conroy was positioned; he’d been on the outs with Capone, and maybe was willing to do almost anything to get back into the boss’s good graces…setting himself up, unwittingly of course, to be Capone’s fall guy.”
“Conroy is the guy that Capone was offering up, all right,” Wilson admitted. “Go on.”
“The first note, planted in the nursery, was written by Wendel; his background, incidentally, is German, although he’s apparently at least second-generation. The note was not really for ransom purposes, but merely to lead Lindbergh and the authorities into thinking the kidnapping was for real.”
“So that Capone could ride in on his white horse,” Wilson said, playing along, “and give us the kidnapper- Conroy-and the kid back.”
“And get his freedom. Right. Meanwhile, this weasel Fisch tries to interlope; he knows nobody’s really going after any ransom, so decides it’s his for the asking. He sends a second note, patterning it on the original.”
Wilson’s expression was openly skeptical. “How would he have access to that?”
“About three different ways, Frank. He may have been there when Wendel wrote the first note, and sneaked out a copy or an earlier draft. He may have gotten it through underworld circles-Rosner and Spitale were circulating a copy, remember? Or a tracing could have come from Violet Sharpe or Whately-the note was just stuck in Slim’s desk drawer, where the servants had easy access. Remember?”
