15
Late the next afternoon, Lindbergh, Schwarzkopf and I met a black touring car that rolled to a stop near the garage command post. The car had Virginia license plates and a small American flag on its radio antenna. Three men stepped out.
The driver was a long, lean man in his late sixties wearing a well-tailored navy-blue suit under a tan camel- hair topcoat; his face was hawklike, with a trim gray mustache, his stone-gray hair parted neatly in the middle. In the backseat had been a stocky, balding fellow in black and his vague fifties, several chins rubbing his clerical collar, his eyes wide-set and buggy. Riding in front had been the most prepossessing of this singular trio, a big, tanned, muscular-looking man with a round, pleasant face under a jaunty bowler; he wore a gray topcoat over his dark suit, a red-white-and-blue tie peeking out from under.
Lindbergh greeted them, speaking to the thin, mustached hawk-faced man first. “Admiral Burrage,” he said. “Good of you to come.”
“Pleasure to see you again, Colonel,” he said, his smile somber. “Sorry the circumstances are such as they are. Is your mother well?”
“She is, thank you.”
“Good. Good.” Burrage introduced the clergyman as the Very Reverend Dobson-Peacock, and the tanned hail-fellow-well-met as Commodore John Hughes Curtis.
“This is Colonel Schwarzkopf of the New Jersey State Police,” Lindbergh said, gesturing to the impressively uniformed police official, and the men began shaking hands all round. “He’ll be sitting in with us. So will Detective Nathan Heller, of the Chicago Police Department.”
They looked at me curiously, as well they might, and Curtis said, with a pixie smile, “Have you wandered off your beat, son?”
“Not really,” I said, shaking the hand he offered. “From the first day of this affair there’ve been indications the Capone outfit may be involved. I’m here to check that angle out.”
Curtis nodded somberly. “That certainly doesn’t contradict what I’ve experienced, Detective Heller.”
“Just out of curiosity, Commodore,” I asked, “what are you commodore of?”
“The Norfolk Yacht Club.”
“Why don’t we all step inside,” Lindbergh said, gesturing toward the house. “We have much to discuss.”
In the study, Elsie Whately brought in a tray of tea and coffee, and we got settled around in chairs all cozy with our cups in hand, the fireplace going. Lindbergh, who was drinking milk, took his position behind the cluttered desk and said, “I’m sorry if there were problems getting in touch with me.”
Dobson-Peacock spoke up; his voice was as British-sounding as his name.
“Frankly, Colonel,” he said, not hiding his exasperation, “it’s been a frustrating experience, getting through. I left a message with a gentleman…” The word “gentleman” was invested with considerable sarcasm. “…who identified himself as your ‘secretary’-a Mr. Rosner. This was some
Lindbergh lifted one eyebrow, barely, and set it back down.
“I’m sorry, Reverend. But things have been harried here. It took me two days to return a call to the White House, last week.”
“Charles,” the admiral said gently, “I hope you know that I would go to the ends of the earth to help you get your boy back.”
“Thank you, Admiral.”
“Then forgive me for asking, but have we spoken recently?”
“Why, no. I received your letter, and had Colonel Breckinridge contact you…”
“Well, when I called here, I spoke with someone who identified himself as you but-clearly wasn’t.”
I’d played that game once myself, but wasn’t the guilty party this time.
Burrage was saying, with stiff formality, “At first I spoke with this fellow Rosner-who said, and I quote, ‘Oh, another admiral, huh?’ Soon I spoke to someone who identified himself as ‘Colonel Lindbergh,’ and met my information with utter indifference. I’m not convinced it wasn’t the same man.”
“Gentlemen,” Lindbergh said, his weariness apparent, his embarrassment, too, “I’m sorry you were inconvenienced, and treated disrespectfully…”
“Charles,” Burrage said, “no one is looking for an apology, good Lord, not at all. We merely want to make clear to you why it’s taken us so long to put this possibly vital information before you.”
“We would hate,” Dobson-Peacock said, teacup daintily in hand, “to be found negligent, when in fact we’ve made every reasonable effort to…”
Lindbergh raised a palm. “You’re here. The delay, whoever’s fault it may have been, is behind us. Commodore Curtis, I’d appreciate hearing your story.”
Curtis beamed. “I’m relieved to be here, at last, Colonel. So very relieved.” He swallowed, and began: “On the night of March ninth I was attending a meeting at the Norfolk Yacht Club. Every yachtsman in the club was there, it was urgent business-winter storms were raising hell with our piers and moorings. You know how it is.”
Lindbergh, hands folded before him prayerfully, nodded.
Curtis went on: “I was one of the last to leave the meeting. And I’d had a little to drink, frankly, but what happened in the parking lot sobered me up immediately.”
An old Hudson sedan had pulled alongside Curtis, actually blocking the path of his green Hudson, making him stop. At first he’d assumed it was one of his yachting friends, but then he recognized the driver as Sam, a rumrunner for whom Curtis had on several occasions arranged boat repairs.
“Sam jumped out of his car,” Curtis said, gesturing with both hands, his eyes intense, “and jumped onto my running board. He leaned in the window and said, ‘Don’t get sore, Mr. Curtis! I gotta talk to you.’”
Sam had slipped into the front seat and was “shaking like a leaf.” The normally “cool as a cucumber” rumrunner made Curtis promise he would not tell anyone what he was about to reveal. Curtis promised. Sam said he’d been sent to Curtis by the gang that stole the Lindbergh baby.
“He said they wanted him to contact me,” Curtis said, gesturing to himself, as if he couldn’t believe his own words, “to form a small, select committee of prominent Norfolk citizens who would act as intermediaries…to arrange the ransom payment and the return of the child.”
Curtis had asked, Why me? And why Norfolk, Virginia, of all places? Sam had answered the latter question by saying that the kidnappers feared a demand for a split, or a flat-out hijack, from Owney Madden’s New York mob; and as to the former, well, Curtis was known to be a “square John.” He’d repaired boats for rumrunners-like many a dockyard man along the coast-but was at the same time a pillar of society.
“I asked them why they didn’t deal with these appointed underworld go-betweens the papers were talking about,” Curtis said, “Spitale and Bitz. And Sam said the gang wrote them off as small-timers, a joke.”
I interrupted with a question. “How reliable is this guy, this ‘Sam’?”
Curtis shrugged. “I’ve never caught him in a lie or an attempted fraud. I’d say, for a man in a shady line of work, he’s a square-dealer. I’ve even put a good word in for him with the Coast Guard, occasionally.”
“What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know. He has a lot of aliases.”
Lindbergh said, “Can you get in touch with him?”
Curtis nodded. “Yes. But I feel I must protect Sam, at this juncture, to better protect your son. If anyone but me contacts him, it might be risky.”
“I agree,” Lindbergh said.
Here we go again: playing by the rules in a game set up by cheats.
“I told Sam, emphatically,” Curtis said, emphatically, “that under no circumstances would I ask you for any money, Colonel Lindbergh. Sam claimed that the gang understood this, and that they wanted the ransom deposited in a Norfolk bank and only paid
Lindbergh’s eyes narrowed.
“At any rate, that was what Sam said on the first meeting,” Curtis said. He almost whispered the next,
