Kidnapping could have brought a sentence of as little as five years. Wilentz and the world wanted a death sentence for Hauptmann.
From what I’d read in the papers, Hauptmann probably deserved it, though this “lone-wolf kidnapper” stuff never rang true to me. I said as much to Colonel Henry Breckinridge, who picked me up early that morning at Grand Central Station and with me made the incredibly slow journey (with snow-narrowed roads and impossible traffic, at times three miles an hour) to the Flemington courthouse.
“I can’t say I buy that theory, either,” Breckinridge said guardedly, studying the bumper of the buggy in front of him like a legal brief he was considering. “But my understanding is, Wilentz hasn’t the right sort of evidence to prove a conspiracy, so…”
“They’re targeting the guy they have,” I said, shrugging, “using what evidence they do have. Makes sense. Have you testified yet?”
“No. But I will. It’s early yet. This is only the fifth day.”
“I saw in the papers that Wilentz put the Lindberghs on the stand, first.”
“Yes.”
Breckinridge seemed vaguely troubled.
“Must’ve been hard on Anne,” I said.
He nodded gravely. “She stood up well. When the prosecutor handed her the little garments to identify…it was a tragic goddamn thing, Heller. Count yourself lucky you didn’t have to witness it.”
I nodded back noncommittally. “How did Slim do?”
“Fine.” He turned his eyes quickly away from the road. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” I said. “I understand he’s attending the trial, each day.”
“Yes, he is.”
“What, is he staying over at Englewood?”
“That’s correct. He and Anne both, though she hasn’t returned to court, and has sense enough not to.”
“Colonel, what’s bothering you?”
“Why, nothing.”
“What, you don’t think it’s unfair to the defendant, do you, for a martyred public figure like Lindy to be sitting in court? Where the jury can see him all the time?”
Breckinridge shook his head, no, but it wasn’t very convincing. He was Slim’s friend, but he was also a fair man, and a lawyer. And I knew, from what I’d read, that other aspects of Slim’s performance on the stand might bother Breckinridge, as well.
For one thing, Slim had denied using his political influence to have federal officers “lay off” certain aspects of the case; and for another, he had denied that he ever expressed the opinion that a “gang,” as opposed to a single-o like Hauptmann, had kidnapped his son.
These were minor lies, even mere shadings of the truth you might say; no big deal. However…
Lindbergh had also, on the stand, without hesitation, positively identified Hauptmann as the man in St. Raymond’s Cemetery. Strictly on the basis of recognizing his voice. He had, after all, heard “Cemetery John” shout, “Hey, Doctor!”
The notion that a man could positively identify another man by having heard him say two words, four years before, was thin enough. But I remembered what Slim had said, the very night of the ransom drop, when Elmer Irey asked him in the Morrow apartment in Manhattan, if he could identify Cemetery John by his voice.
“To say I could pick a man out by that voice,” he’d said, “I really couldn’t.”
Yet Breckinridge knew, and I knew, and Slim had to know, that the weight of Lucky Lindy providing “eyewitness identification” (make that ear-witness) would probably be all it would take to slam that German’s ass in the chair. This trial, I knew with little doubt, was already over.
Flemington, even choking with outsiders, was a village not without a Currier and Ives charm in this, its winter of fame: white wood-frame cottages with green shutters behind neat wooden fences, modest yards blanketed white, shade trees grayly skeletal, gaily decorated with ice; a modest downtown where the flat rooftops of two-and three-story brick buildings wore white mantles. In the streets, however, the snow had turned black and slushy, and on the sidewalks was hard-packed under thousands of imported trampling feet.
Breckinridge dropped me off, as his car crawled along Main Street, leaving me while he went off to some distant designated parking area. I waded through the humanity (make that “humanity”) where gawkers mingled with souvenir salesmen on the courthouse steps. Some pretty classy merchandise was being hawked-miniature kidnap ladders, ten cents each, in several sizes (one nifty little number you could pin on your shirt or lapel), autographed photos of Charles and Anne Lindbergh with shaky, suspicious signatures and little bagged clumps of the late baby’s hair, sold by a salesman who seemed to be prematurely balding in odd, patchy ways.
Newsreel cameramen, perched with their spidery contraptions atop cars, were churning at me; reporters attacked me like bees, some with notepads, others with microphones, asking me if I was anybody. I told them I wasn’t and pressed my way inside. I showed my color-coded pass to one of several New Jersey troopers at the door, hung up my topcoat and took my hat with me up the winding stairs. I came into a big, square, high-ceilinged courtroom, with pale yellow walls and a lot of humidity-misted windows; at right was the jury box, an American flag pinned to the wall behind it, and between the judge’s bench and the jury was a simple wooden chair for witnesses. Behind the judge’s bench, high up, beneath Grecian trim, was the county seal, depicting a stalk of golden corn.
Right now this spartan chamber was as noisy as a stadium before the big game. Hundreds of spectators were seated in churchlike pews and several hundred more were squeezed in on folding chairs, while the rear balcony was crammed with reporters, perhaps a hundred and fifty of the fifth estate’s finest, working at cramped, makeshift pine-board writing desks.
Among the spectators were celebrities: Clifton Webb, Jack Benny, Lynn Fontanne, and fat, effete Alexander Woollcott, who seemed svelte compared to rumpled, mustached Elsa Maxwell, that pear-shaped matron of cafe society, leading a pack of ladies in mink, bringing to mind that the mink is a member of the weasel family and that the female of that species is particularly bloodthirsty.
The crowded press box included familiar names and faces, as well: Walter Winchell, who in his syndicated column had long ago pronounced Hauptmann guilty; novelist Fannie Hurst; columnist Arthur Brisbane, who had given Capone so much publicity in the early days of the case; Damon Runyon; Adela Rogers St. Johns; and on and on….
I took all this in as another New Jersey State cop, acting as an usher, led me to a seat behind the prosecution’s bench; a small piece of paper was taped to the empty folding chair, saying HELLER. Next to my folding chair, in another, sat Slim Lindbergh. His baby face had aged, but he still looked boyish; he was dressed in a neat gray three-piece suit-without a ladder pinned to the lapel.
I nodded to him and smiled a little and he returned the nod and the smile; he didn’t stand, but as I sat, he offered a hand, which I shook.
“Good to see you again, Nate,” he said, over the din. “Sorry I’ve been such a stranger.”
“Hi, Slim. Why are you putting yourself through this? You’ve testified.”
“I have to be here,” he said solemnly.
He nodded toward the prosecution’s table; whether by that he meant they’d requested his presence, I couldn’t say.
David Wilentz, the Attorney General, who had decided to try this case himself-because of political aspirations, the cynical said, myself among them-turned to greet me with a Cheshire-cat smile and an outstretched hand. His grip was fist-firm and his dark, smart eyes locked onto me the same way.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, “thank you for coming. Sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk.”
“Glad to help,” I said, as he released my hand.
He was a small, dark, thin-faced man with a long, thin, sharp nose and glossy, slicked-back black hair; about forty, he looked a little like George Raft, only more intelligent and shiftier. He wore a dark-blue business suit, expensively tailored, with a slash of silk handkerchief in the breast pocket. This was a guy who would never go hungry.
“Just stick to the facts,” he said. “Don’t offer anything.”
I nodded. I’d spoken on the telephone, long-distance, to a prosecutor named Hauck, so they knew what to expect. Wilentz turned his back to me and began whispering among his fellow prosecutors.
From my seat I could see the defense table pretty well, and the person who commanded the most attention
