Stolen Away

I looked at Hoffman. “You told me about Reilly. Now I’ll tell you about Leibowitz: he’s a mob attorney, too. Anyway, he made his mark defending guys like ‘Mad Dog’ Coll and a certain well-known Chicago figure with a scarred face.”

“He defended Al Capone?” Evalyn asked breathlessly.

“Yes. On a triple murder charge. And got him off.”

“I’m sure Sam Leibowitz…” Hoffman began.

But I said: “I’ll tell you one thing about this case, which I learned many years ago—you can’t be sure about anything. Now. Where do I start?”

The governor shrugged. “Where I did, I guess. With Hauptmann. See for yourself. Talk to Hauptmann.”

29

It was nightfall by the time I got around to visiting Bruno Richard Hauptmann. I’d spent the afternoon in an office at the Statehouse, going over the material on the case Governor Hoffman had gathered. Evalyn insisted upon coming along, though the governor had made arrangements only for me.

“Tell them I’m your secretary,” she said.

“Even Rockefeller doesn’t have a secretary that looks like you,” I said. “You’re going to have to stow all the ice in your purse.”

She did, only not all of it fit; she had to stuff some of the rocks in the glove compartment. I was driving her car, a black Packard Deluxe Eight convertible, its white top up in the rain. She’d driven from D.C., all by herself. She no longer employed a full-time chauffeur.

“Death row is no place for a lady,” I said.

“In my opinion,” she said, “it’s no place for a man, either.”

The state prison encompassed a full block between Federal and Cass Streets, its massive red stone walls decorated with serpents, rams, eagles and a few kneeling nudes, and studded with guard towers with quaint New England-style cupola roofs. The fortress was haloed in electric light, including opening-night-style moving beams, and loomed ominously against the black, rain-swept night.

“My Lord, what a sight!” Evalyn said.

“Damn near as big as your place on Massachusetts Avenue,” I commented, swinging around onto Third Street. We parked and crossed to the gate, Evalyn taking my arm, wobbling on her heels as we navigated puddle-filled potholes.

We were met at the gate by Warden Kimberling himself, a stocky figure in a black rain slicker, his oblong, fleshy face somber, his wire-frame glasses pearled with raindrops. A prison guard, also rain-slickered, the badge on his cap gleaming with moisture, gestured us along with a flashlight in one hand and a billy club in the other. As ushers go, he was an intimidating one. The rain was coming down hard enough to limit conversation to simple shouted introductions, and the warden and his man led us quickly across a courtyard to the chunky red-brick two-story building nearby that was, I soon realized, the death house.

We stepped into the dark room, and the beam of the guard’s flashlight lit on what at first looked like a ghost, but then, as bright overhead lights were switched on, became a chair. An electric chair, or to be exact, the electric chair. The room was surprisingly small, with smudgy whitewashed brick walls and three rows of straight-back folding chairs that faced the sheet-covered hot seat, like a meeting in a little union hall. Only if I were the guest speaker, I wouldn’t sit down after my talk.

“I’m not authorized to allow your secretary to accompany you,” Kimberling said. “But the prisoner’s cell is just across the way. If we leave the door ajar, she can hear your conversation, and take notes or whatever.”

I helped Evalyn out of her fur-collared velvet coat, which was as drenched as a well-used bath towel, and draped it and my raincoat over several of the folding chairs. I left my hat on the seat of one, and got out my notebook and a pencil and led the somewhat shell-shocked Evalyn Walsh McLean to a little wooden bench between the door and the sheeted electric chair.

“I don’t suppose you know speedwriting,” I said, softly.

She managed to crinkle a little smile. “No, but I have a lovely hand.”

“You have a lovely everything,” I said, and she liked hearing that, even after all these years. “But be careful who you show your handwriting specimens to…they might pin the ransom notes on you.”

Warden Kimberling ordered the guard to open the steel grillwork door, and led me through. A few paces and we were standing before the bars of a cell marked “9.” The only occupied cell on this floor.

Hauptmann, wearing a blue-gray open-neck shirt and dark-blue trousers, was on his feet, hands clutching the bars like a guy on death row in a bad movie; he was clearly worked up, his pale triangular face contorted, his eyes haunted. This was not the cool customer I’d been hearing so much about.

“Warden,” he said, his voice tight with desperation, the pitch surprisingly high, “you must do something.”

“Richard,” Kimberling said, not unkindly, “you have a visitor…”

Hauptmann hadn’t even looked at me yet. He stretched an arm out beyond the bars, pointing, pointing up.

“Look,” he said. “Look!”