another thought-doesn’t your son have his own bedroom at your wife’s mother’s house, at Englewood?”
“Why, yes,”
“How many of these sleepers, how many sleepers just like this one, are there in a drawer in that Englewood nursery?”
“I don’t know. I don’t believe we have an exact inventory for such things.”
“Right. And how many servants do they have in that joint? Around thirty-any one of whom could have provided a description, or plucked a sleeping suit from a drawer. That would explain why it took several days for Cemetery John and crew to deliver those pj’s. And why it’s freshly laundered.”
He didn’t say anything.
“For that matter, Condon himself could’ve taken a sleeper from your son’s drawer.”
“Are you serious?”
“He could’ve, just like I could’ve. We both slept in that room. I caught Condon going through your kid’s toy box, remember?”
He said nothing; he was frowning.
I shook my head and drove. We were driving through farm country, now, that might well have been Illinois. I wished it were.
“Anne will know,” he said.
“What?”
“If it’s Charlie’s sleeping suit. Anne will know.”
I knew enough not to respond to that one.
We drove in silence again. I mulled a few things over that I didn’t share with him. How phony the German phrasing of the notes seemed to me, particularly in light of the Sicilian phrase-
“The other day,” I said, breaking the silence as the black sky began turning gray, “you indicated there were other ‘parties,’ besides the professor, who might be in contact with the kidnappers. You wouldn’t want to let me in on any of that, would you?”
He didn’t hesitate in his response. “Actually, you should know. It involves your specialty: gangsters. It’s one of the reasons why I asked you to stick around.”
It seemed there was a socially prominent individual in Norfolk, Virginia, a certain Commodore John Hughes Curtis, who’d been approached by a bootlegger who claimed to be one of a gang of six who kidnapped Lindbergh’s son.
“Curtis is the president of one of the largest ship-building companies in the South,” Lindbergh said. “He has impeccable credentials-Admiral Burrage called me, in fact, to arrange a meeting between Curtis and myself.”
Now, added to the endless list of colonels, were an admiral and a commodore.
“Admiral Burrage,” Lindbergh explained almost defensively, reading my cynical expression no doubt, “was in command of the cruiser
Back from his legendary solo transatlantic flight to Paris, he meant.
“Besides,” he said, “the Very Reverend H. Dobson-Peacock has vouched for Curtis, as well.”
Now we had a Reverend on the list. A Very Reverend.
“Who is this Peacock, anyway?”
“Reverend Dobson-Peacock is an old friend of the Morrow family. The Reverend was in charge of a church in Mexico City.”
The late Dwight Morrow had been Ambassador to Mexico; it was during that period that Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh met, wooed and fell in love.
“I’ve agreed to meet tomorrow afternoon with the Admiral, the Reverend and the Commodore,” he said. It sounded like a nursery rhyme. “I’d like you to sit in.”
I turned onto the rutted dirt road that was Featherbed Lane. Dawn was starting to sneak through the thickets on either side of us, like another nosy sightseer.
Suddenly, Lindbergh burst out with something as if both eager and embarrassed to say it. “Did you ever hear of a man named Gaston Bullock Means?”
I snorted a laugh. “Are you kidding? Sure I’ve heard of him. Biggest con man who ever lived, in a couple senses of the word ‘biggest.’ Chicago is one of that fat bastard’s favorite sucker ponds.”
There was a faint defensiveness in Lindbergh’s soft response: “My understanding is that he’s a former Justice Department operative.”
“Yeah-he worked for Bums, before J. Edgar Hoover cleaned house. Hoover’s an ass, but he’s not a crook like Bums and his boys. Gaston Means was the Ohio Gang’s bagman, during the Harding administration. What in hell are you asking me about that son of a bitch for?”
Lindbergh was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Means also claims to be in touch with the kidnap gang.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“I had a call from Admiral Land…”
Another admiral!
“…who’s a relative of mine. My mother’s cousin. Anyway, Admiral Land was approached by Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, the Washington society woman.”
“The Hope diamond dame?”
“That’s the one. She lost her own son a few years ago-whether it relates to the Hope diamond curse is anybody’s guess-but at any rate, she’s sympathetic to Anne and my situation. Means is in her employ.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly. He’s done some private detective work for her before. But through her he passed along two pieces of information that make me think we shouldn’t rule him out.”
“Which are?”
“He says the kidnappers have raised their ransom demand from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. That ties in, at least roughly, with the notes we’ve received, from Cemetery John and his gang.”
“And the other?”
Lindbergh seemed hesitant to share that. But finally, as we were drawing up to the closed, locked gate, he said, “He told Mrs. McLean the description in the papers of the sleeping suit was a false clue.” Lindbergh pointed to, but did not touch, the loosely wrapped brown-paper package next to him. “And he described the sleeping suit Charlie was really wearing.”
“A lot of that going around,” I said, “wouldn’t you say?”
He frowned, but not in anger. Frustration.
It was light out by the time we reached the house. Anne Lindbergh, in a thin blue robe, met us at the door to the servants’ sitting room; her face was pale, bare of makeup, her hair drawn back tightly. She looked haggard but hopeful.
I was carrying the package. Lindbergh nodded to me and I handed it to her.
She drew out the sleeping suit and held it in her hands out away from her, like something both precious and terrible. Then she clasped the package to her bosom, the paper crackling, one arm of the garment slinging itself over her shoulder.
Her eyes were glittering and her smile was a tragic fucking thing.
“It’s his,” she said. “It’s Charlie’s.”
“It’s a good sign,” he told her, with a deathly smile. “It means the kidnappers can be trusted. It means negotiations are finally, truly, fruitfully, in full sway.”
She hugged the brown paper and the Dr. Denton and said, again, “It’s Charlie’s. It’s his.”
And after that, there was never any doubt of it.
Slim wouldn’t allow any.
