Stolen Away

traced shipments of this lumber to thirty cities. If they sell this wood in Koehler’s neighborhood in Koehler’s town, does that make Koehler the kidnapper?”

“I wonder where he was March first, 1932,” I said. “But you’re right: once the cops get a suspect, the evidence can be made to fit.”

“And if they have evidence that does not fit,” he said, “this evidence, it disappears. When I was arrested, they took among many things, my shoes. What for I at first could not imagine; but then I think: they have a footprint!”

“They do,” I said. “‘Cemetery John’ left one at St. Raymond’s.”

“Then why did they not produce the plaster model that was made?” With bitter sarcasm, he said, “Perhaps they hold this damning evidence back, out of pity for me.”

Reilly should have demanded that plaster cast be produced; but then Reilly should have done a lot of things.

“Did you know they took my fingerprints not once, but again and again? Also the sides of my hands, the hollow parts of the hands. Then at the trial, when my counsel asks about fingerprints, Wilentz says, ‘There are no fingerprints.’”

“There were plenty on the ladder,” I said. “That’s what they were checking against.”

“And found not mine! In the nursery there were no fingerprints at all. Not of the parents, not of the child’s nurse or the other servants. They say I wear gloves. Did the parents, then, when they go to the room to take joy in their child, and all the servants, also wear gloves?”

“It does sound like somebody wiped the room down.” Somebody in the house. Somebody after the fact.

“They found a chisel near the ladder. They compare it to my carpenter’s tools. My tools are a Stanley set; the one they found is a Bucks Brothers chisel. They told the jury, ‘This is Hauptmann’s chisel,’ and the jury believed them.”

“But they didn’t believe your eyewitnesses, did they?”

“My eyewitnesses were good, but then Reilly hired more witnesses, bad witnesses! They were killing me! Crazy people from asylums, people with criminal records…and Wilentz makes of them fools. Because of that, the good people, the witnesses who tell the truth for me, they are not believed. The five people who saw me in New York in the bakery with Annie at the time of the crime, good people, are made out to look like liars. One of these, Manley, an old gentleman, arose from a sickbed and he swore that on the night of March first, 1932, he saw me at nine o’clock in his bakery.”

I snorted a laugh. “Yet old ‘Cataracts’ Hochmuth and that movie cashier and the taxi driver, questionable eyewitnesses at best, were believed.”

“Why, Nate? Why?”

“Well…you mentioned witnesses with criminal records. You do have a criminal record yourself, Dick.”

“Yes, in Germany-after the war. Never in America.” He placed a hand on his chest, fingers splayed. “I come home from the war in rags, sick with hunger. So, too, I find my mother and my brothers and sisters starving. I did steal an overcoat and I stole food. I was just a boy. These things are wrong, yes, but many times by many people were they done in my country after that war. And I have never once injured a human being.”

“You broke and entered through a second-story window, once. And you held up two women wheeling baby carriages-with a gun. Add those two crimes up, and…”

“There were no babies in those carriages! In Germany, at that time, they use those buggies as shopping carts. You know what I stole? Nine bread rolls and some food ration cards. No babies did I frighten.”

“And the second-story job?”

He shrugged. “It was the mayor’s office, as much a prank as a robbery. I stole a silver pocket watch and a few hundred marks. I’m not proud of this-I knew I was doing wrong. I quieted my conscience with, ‘Oh well, others do it, too.’”

Reilly should’ve brought this stuff out at the trial; Wilentz killed Hauptmann with the baby-buggy stickup- which shouldn’t have even been the hell admissible!

“I understand all this, Dick,” I said, “but you have to understand how it worked against you. Just being a German works against you, frankly. And hell-you were a machine gunner in the war-which makes you a killer.”

He sneered a little, and his response was justifiably sarcastic: “Oh-so no American machine gunners were in the war?”

I shook my head. “When the killing’s on your side, it doesn’t count-particularly when you win. And I don’t think your popularity’s been helped by these Nazi bund-type rallies, either, raising money for your defense fund.”

The sarcasm evaporated. “What choice have I? The state confiscated our funds, Annie and me. Are you a Jewish man, Nate?”

“My father was. I’m not very religious.”

“I am.” He smiled nervously. “Religious, I mean. Do you hate me for being German? Do you think I think I am the ‘master race’? Do you think I would hate a Jewish man?”

Wilentz, maybe.

“I’m an American,” I said, “whose forefathers came from Germany. Why should I hate you, or make such assumptions?”

Rather shyly, he touched my shoulder. “Mr. Heller-why weren’t you on the jury?”

“Dick,” I said, “you don’t have to convince me that a lot of the evidence was tampered with or invented. You don’t have to tell me that Hochmuth was blind, or that that movie cashier who said she remembered you was full of shit. I used to be a cop. I know all about that stuff.”

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell me about Isidor Fisch.” I smiled gently. “Your Jewish friend.”

He laughed soundlessly. “The ‘Fisch story,’ they call it.”

“Everybody did say it smelled.”

“It sounds bad. But it’s true.”

“Tell me. Take your time.”

He drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “I meet Isidor Fisch at Hunter’s Island in Pelham Park. Annie and I and our friends go there many weekends in the winter and summer both. We have enjoyed a wonderful outdoor life there, boating, swimming, fishing…” A small private smile appeared, and a distant look came to his eyes. “…cooking over a fire, playing music and singing…Annie bought me field glasses. I loved to watch the birds.” That brought him back to reality. He got up from the cot and moved quickly to the bars and looked out.

“It’s still caught,” he said, shaking his head. “They give up. Damn. A free thing like that should never be in there.”

“Richard,” I said. “Dick. Tell me about Izzy Fisch.”

He shuffled back over and sat on the cot. He said, “Fisch I meet three, four times at Hunter’s Island. Once he mentions that he is interested in the stock market, like me. But he tells me he is in the fur business, and that there is good money in it. He knows of what he is talking, was a furrier in the old country. I buy some stocks and bonds for him, he bought some furs for me…I start with five hundred dollars I give him to buy furs, and keep reinvesting, until I finally have seven thousand dollars in furs.”

“Where were all these furs being stored?”

“In the fur district in New York, Fisch said, but we never got around to going to where they were in a warehouse. Fisch was sickly, had a bad cough.”

So did Jafsie’s Cemetery John, I recalled.

“One day he said he was going to Germany to visit his parents. He asked me to keep four hundred sealskins at my home, while he was gone. Later on, he asks me when he goes to Germany if he can leave with me some of his belongings, and he brought to my house two satchels, a big one and a small one.”

“What about the money?”

Hauptmann motioned for me to be patient. “The Saturday before Isidor left for Germany, my wife and I give for him a farewell party. He brought along under his arm a cardboard box, wrapped up with string, and asks me to put it in a closet for him and keep it until he comes back. I thought maybe in the box were some things he forgot to