Stolen Away

Next came several witnesses, including a Forest Service technologist, who Wilentz attempted to use to introduce evidence about the kidnap ladder. But Reilly and his associate Pope managed to block it; the ladder had been “altered” and passed between various “hands of people not identified by the prosecution.”

Following this came a familiar face, though I confess I didn’t recognize him at first. The ferret-faced cab driver, Perrone, who had delivered the envelope to Jafsie’s house the night of the first cemetery rendezvous, made an eyewitness ID of Hauptmann as the man who gave him the envelope. He got off the stand and placed a hand on Hauptmann’s shoulder and said, “This is the man.”

Hauptmann curled a lip and said, “You’re a liar.”

Reilly went after Perrone with a sledgehammer. He bullied the cab driver about being on relief; tested his memory about other passengers he’d had the same night; implied he’d been bought and coached by the prosecution. The tactic backfired: the courtroom hated Reilly by the time the badgering was over.

Then it was my turn. I was questioned by Wilentz about driving Condon to Woodlawn Cemetery for the first of the two “Cemetery John” encounters. I told of what I’d seen, which included the guy jumping off the cemetery gate and running into Van Cortlandt Park, Condon following him to a bench by the shack where they sat and talked. Told all of it.

Almost all of it. There was one question, a rather key question, I wasn’t asked by the slick Wilentz.

“Buy you lunch, Nate?” Slim asked, and I said sure, as we exited the courtroom for the noon break; we both had to damn near shout, because the courtroom was still buzzing.

“Union Hotel dining room okay?” Lindy asked, breath smoking in the chill air, as we pushed through a crowd that was cheering and clapping at the sight of the Lone Eagle; newsreel cameras churned and reporters called out questions—none of it registering on Slim, who carried around with him his own quiet at the center of the storm.

“Hotel dining room’s swell,” I said. “Where is it?”

“Right there,” he said, nodding across the way. “That’s where you’re staying.”

We moved through the car-choked street; onlookers called out to Lindy who at times bestowed them a tight glazed smile, and very occasionally a nod. He seemed oblivious to the grisly goods being hawked, the little ladders and such; but he couldn’t have been.

The Union Hotel was a lumbering red-brick affair with ugly gingerbread work detailing a sprawling porch over which lurked double-deck balconies. Out front a chalk sandwich board listed the fare in the dining room: Lamp Chops Jafsie, Baked Beans Wilentz, Lindbergh Sundaes, among others.

The dining room was bustling, but a few tables were reserved for celebrities like Slim and the prosecution and defense teams. Colonel Breckinridge, who hadn’t made it into the courtroom, was waiting for us at an isolated table off to one side.

As we sat down, Breckinridge asked Lindbergh how the trial was going today, and he said, “Fine.”

I said, “Reilly strikes me as the prosecution’s biggest asset.”

“How so?” Breckinridge asked.

“Well, that swallowtail coat and spats getup isn’t exactly endearing him to that down-home jury. Or his loud, bullying style. He’s about as subtle as John Barrymore half-in-the-bag.”

A waiter handed us menus and Lindbergh examined his with unblinking eyes, his expression not unlike the one the defendant had been wearing in court.

The middle-aged, potbellied waiter, though busy, stood attentively by while we read the menu and ordered at leisure; Lindbergh wasn’t just any customer, after all.

“What are the ‘Hauptmann Fries’?” I asked him.

“German fried potatoes,” he said blandly.

Lindbergh ordered vegetable soup and a hard roll; Breckinridge had the Lamb Chops Jafsie; and I had the Gow Goulash (named for Betty, the nurse, who’d come from Scotland to testify a few days before).

While we waited for our lunches, I said, “I notice Wilentz didn’t ask me about that suspicious guy I saw walk by Jafsie and me, at the cemetery.”

“Oh?” Breckinridge said.

Lindy said nothing.

“Must not fit his no-conspiracy thesis,” I said. “Slim, did he ask you about the guy you saw?”

“What guy?” Slim asked.

“The guy you saw on your cemetery jaunt. Could’ve been the same guy I saw on mine.”

Lindbergh shrugged.

“Come on, Slim—it probably was the guy I saw. Walked by with a stoop, covering his face with a hanky, swarthy fella?”

“Just some bystander,” he said.

“Oh, it’s just a coincidence, we both saw, on our two separate trips, at our two separate cemeteries, a stooped-over wop covering his face with a hanky, while he walked by checking us out? Slim. Please.”

Lindbergh said, rather tightly, “Let Wilentz do his job.”

I sat forward; silverware clinked. “Why didn’t Wilentz ask me anything about my real role in the case? There was nothing about Capone, or Marinelli and Sivella mentioning the name ‘Jafsie’ before Condon was on the scene, or Curtis or Means or…”