Stolen Away

people in the bootlegging business was dropping like flies out on the East Coast. Waxey Gordon and Dutch Schultz was going at it. Ever hear of a pair called Max Hassel and Max Greenberg?”

“I don’t believe so,” I said.

“They were so-called victims in that war. So were half a dozen of their associates, over a period of six months or so. Could Al, through the Waiter, been tying up some loose East-Coast ends? If bootleggers were recruited to snatch the kid, that would make sense.”

I could only nod.

Another sharp rapping made me squirm in my chair.

“’Cusa,” Nitti said. He went to the door, where Ricca was holding a glass of milk. Seeing Ricca like that, his face as white as the milk though considerably less wholesome, would have been amusing if it hadn’t been so frightening.

“Paul,” Nitti said with a smile, taking the milk, “thank you. Would you find my father-in-law, please, and tell him I’m ready for him.”

And Ricca, with an almost imperceptible disgruntled sigh, again disappeared. Nitti shut the door and turned to smile at me like a kindly priest.

“The Waiter is very disciplined,” he said, setting the milk on the desk. “And very loyal…to Al. In two, three years, Al will be out of stir. Meantime, I have the Waiter coming up under me, undermining my authority in little ways. Challenging me in board meetings…”

He trailed off, knowing that he should say no more on this subject. He went over and sipped the milk; set it back down.

But there were things I needed to know. “Frank, how does the Lindbergh case figure into any of this?”

He sat on the edge of the desk, at once casual and tightly coiled. “Couple ways, Nate.”

“Nate” again.

“If I knew the Waiter and Al did this thing,” he said, “it would be valuable knowledge. Something I would have over them.”

“Would you expect me to…cover up, or withhold evidence or information from the authorities?”

“If I asked you to,” he said, “wouldn’t you?”

I sighed. “I’d rather not take the job, then. I’m already getting a reputation for being connected. It’s not necessarily good for my business.”

He shrugged. “I might throw more work your way. Put you on a nice yearly retainer.”

“No offense, Frank, but I’m just enough of an ex-cop to want to keep some distance from your business.”

He gestured with both hands in a “fair enough” manner. “Then all I ask is that you tell me what you find out. Then it’s up to me to either use it, or contain it, best I can. I don’t expect you to do anything but, on the one hand, serve your client, Governor Who’s-It; and on the other, keep me informed.”

He slid off the desk. He dipped a hand into his pocket and withdrew a thick money clip; a fifty-dollar bill was on top. He unclipped the bills and counted out ten fifties.

“Five hundred as a retainer,” he said. “With a bonus, if you find something useful to me.”

“Okay, Frank,” I said. I took the money.

“Honest to God, kid,” he said, “I don’t know if Al was crazy enough to do this thing. But I know the Waiter is ruthless enough. He’s made a lot of people disappear in his time.”

I couldn’t hold the anger back. “Then why the hell did you have him, of all people, bring me here? Do you want him to figure out why you hired me? He’s obviously insulted at playing chauffeur to the likes of me…”

Nitti placed a fatherly hand on my shoulder and bestowed me a cool smile. “If you get close to something the Waiter’s involved in out east, he’s gonna know, anyway. He’s gonna know immediately.”

“Right!”

“So I had him bring you here. To send him a message.”

“What message is that?”

“Not to kill you, Nate.”

I just looked at him.

“I want Paul to know that you’re under my protection. He touches you, he answers to me. Capeesh?”

I swallowed and nodded.

There was another knock on the door.

“Ah,” Nitti said cheerfully. “There’s Paul with my father-in-law. Time for my checkup, and your ride home.”

27

My new client, Governor Hoffman-or to be more exact, the State of New Jersey-wired me enough for a Pullman sleeper compartment, but I bought an upper berth instead and made an extra twenty bucks and change on the deal. It was the Twentieth Century Limited, that fabled fancy streamliner, which would shoot me nonstop overnight to New York, where shortly after an onboard breakfast I’d grab a less sleek train and backtrack to Trenton.

Before retiring, however, I spent some time in the dining car-the prime rib was not as good as the roast beef at the Stockyard’s Inn, but the meal was on the State of New Jersey, so what the hell. Later I loitered in the lounge car, which was all chrome and mirrors and diffused lighting and, thankfully, liquor. It would have been nice to run into a beautiful lonely woman traveling alone; but I didn’t. I figured a couple Bacardi cocktails would help me get over it, or anyway sleep better; but they didn’t.

Even the lulling lurch of the Limited and the soothing blackness of the Pullman berth didn’t put me to sleep. My mind was moving faster than the train. Partly it was worry-thinking about Nitti and Ricca and where I might end up if Ricca deposed Nitti, at some point, like tomorrow.

But mostly I was carried back to a similar trip I’d taken on the taxpayers of New Jersey, not that much over a year before, in January of ’35. I’d gone the upper-berth route that time, too-meaning I’d bilked New Jersey a little better than forty bucks on train rides alone. And they paid for a night’s lodging-the Union Hotel in Flemington, where the trial was held-plus thirty-five bucks per diem, which added up.

A certain irony was not lost on me. Last year, the State of New Jersey had paid me, generously, to help put Hauptmann in the electric chair. This year, the State of New Jersey was treating me with like generosity to help keep Bruno from sitting down.

And the state had certainly spared no expense in the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, even when it came to shipping in a minor witness like me from Chicago. And why not? It had been one hell of a show-a regular Broadway production, even if it had been mounted in a one-horse town.

Flemington, sixty-some miles from New York, was a roost for chicken-and-egg farmers, a village of less than three thousand Lums and Abners in the rolling hills of Hunterdon County, home of the Lindbergh estate. The little county seat suddenly had a big trial in its lap, and by New Year’s Day had become host to sixty thousand “foreigners”-sightseers, reporters, telephone and telegraph technicians, swarming Main Street, clogging the roads all the way back to New York and Philadelphia.

The courthouse was a stately two-and-a-half-story whitewashed stucco affair with four big pillars out front and a small, modern jail building in back. In that smaller building resided the illegal alien Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Around Christmas some compassionate locals had sung him carols outside his barred window; lately, tourists had been repeating less cheery chants, among them “Burn the kraut!” and “Kill Hauptmann!”

Hauptmann, arrested in the Bronx, had been extradited to New Jersey because in New York the only crime he could be tried for was extortion: in Jersey, he could be tried for kidnapping and murder. Attorney General David Wilentz, by defining the kidnapping as a “burglary”-hadn’t the kidnapper broken and entered, and “stolen” the child away? — could in that convoluted fashion charge Hauptmann with murder. Burglary was a felony, and any killing during the commission of a felony, whether that death was accidental or intentional, was of course murder.