Stolen Away

“Mr. Heller,” Reilly said, a hand on his ample side, “as a police officer, did you make any effort to follow and protect Dr. Condon and the Colonel, that night?”

“No.”

Reilly smiled and looked tellingly at the jury. He’d made a point, however vaguely; but then he dismissed me!

I shuffled off to my chair, next to Lindbergh, who patted my arm supportively. My head was reeling. Shit, Reilly didn’t ask me about the stooped swarthy hanky-over-the-face guy I saw; or the Capone connection; or the spiritualists; or Means or Curtis or fucking anything. Some of it he may just not have known. But a good deal of it had gotten into police reports and the press, in the aftermath of the ransom scam and the Means and Curtis hoaxes.

The next witness was called: “Dr. John F. Condon.”

The great man had apparently just arrived, as he made a grand entrance from the back of the room.

Old Jafsie walked slowly, solemnly, to the witness chair, a tall, paunchy figure in circuit-preacher black with a crisp white hanky in a breast pocket and an old-fashioned gold watch chain draped across his breast.

Wilentz asked the witness for his age and place of residence, and Jafsie answered in a tremulous, yet booming voice, “I am seventy-four years of age, and a resident of the most beautiful borough in the world, the Bronx.”

I groaned, and Lindbergh flashed me a sideways glance.

Wilentz asked for more background, and Jafsie began a yawn-inducing tale of the story of his life; I was just dropping off to sleep, when Wilentz asked him how he and Colonel Lindbergh happened to meet a man at St. Raymond’s Cemetery on the night of April 2, 1932.

“And didn’t you have with you,” Wilentz pressed on, “a box of money?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you give that money in a box to someone that night?”

“I did, sir.”

“Who did you give that money to?”

“John.”

Wilentz turned significantly to the jury. “And who is John?”

Condon turned slightly in his chair to look toward the defendant. He pointed a finger like a gun at Hauptmann and said, so loud his voice rang in the room, “John is Bru-no…Rich-ard…Haupt-mann!”

The court was up for grabs, the woman I took to be Mrs. Hauptmann looking at her husband with grave concern, Hauptmann himself looking stunned, defense counsel Fisher gripping Hauptmann’s shoulder supportively, the gallery gasping and then jabbering, chairs scooting as news messengers scurried out.

I got up, too.

Lindbergh touched my arm and said, “Nate? You all right?”

“I’ve heard enough, Slim,” I said, not unkindly, and went out.

That night, in the Union Hotel, I sat and drank and watched chief defense attorney Reilly laugh it up with reporters, a bosomy blonde “secretary” on either arm, drinking his red face redder. The next morning Breckinridge drove me back to Grand Central Station, where I caught the Limited. Breckinridge and I hadn’t spoken much on the ride. A little small talk; the weather had turned foggy and wet—we talked about that.

At one point he did say, “Don’t judge Slim too harshly.”

It was a reasonable request, and I nodded, but I remember wondering if anybody on earth, besides Hauptmann’s wife Anna, would grant the accused that same simple plea.

Now, over a year later, riding the Limited east once again, snug in my upper berth, I wondered if maybe, finally, somebody had.

28

The Statehouse in Trenton, on this cold, rainy March morning (and on any other), was an ungainly affair squatting on a stretch of landscape between State Street and the Delaware River. The three-and-a-half-story wedding-cake structure seemed designed to confirm the rest of the nation’s suspicions that New Jersey was innately second-rate; entry was via a ponderous two-tier porch supported by midget granite columns.

I stalked the main corridor, shaking rain off my hat, my trenchcoat leaving a damp trail. As I walked I glanced at the stern faded portraits of early New Jersey patriots and statesmen, and got dirty looks in return. I moved through the cramped rotunda, festively decorated by musty, faded regimental flags from the Civil War, and found my way to the upper two floors, a gloomy maze where bureaucrats wandered aimlessly.

Somehow I managed to find the executive offices, where a male secretary took my coat and hat and showed me in to see Governor Hoffman.

The governor was on the phone, but he smiled broadly and gestured me to an overstuffed chair opposite his massive mahogany desk, which was stacked with documents and manila folders. He was a stocky, cheerful-looking man of perhaps forty, with a round, handsome face; his blue suit and blue-and-gray tie looked crisp and neat, and so did he.

Hoffman was the youngest governor in the states, and had been sworn into office the day the Hauptmann trial began; a career politician, he was a Republican who won in a year of Democratic landslide.

“I’m glad you’ve arrived safely,” he was saying, not to me, smiling at the phone. “Come right over. Yes, he’s just arrived.”