Stolen Away

We looked toward where he gestured; the slanting windows of the large skylight that rose above a second-floor cell-block were getting pelted with rain, the sound echoing softly but distinctly through the corridor. One of the metal-frame windows of the skylight had been cracked open to let air in; the angle was such that no water was dripping down, but there was another problem: a sparrow had got caught between the windows and the wire-mesh-covered iron bars beneath. The bird was trapped in the cell-like area, fluttering its wings, trying aimlessly, frantically, to free itself, beating its tiny wings against the wire.

“Do something, Warden!” he said. Hauptmann was at least as agitated as the bird.

“All right, Richard,” Kimberling said, patting the air, “I’ll put a guard on that. Now calm yourself. You have a visitor.”

Kimberling and the guard immediately moved off, Kimberling pointing up at the skylight, where the bird fought futilely. Maybe he really was going to attend to it.

Meanwhile, Hauptmann was looking at me carefully, suspiciously, like I was a suspect in a lineup; his concern for the bird was replaced by a sudden hardness. “I know you.”

“Well,” I said, “we’ve never met, but…”

“You testify against me.”

“Not against you. I just testified.”

“You are Jafsie’s bodyguard pal.”

“Jafsie is not my pal. That I assure you.” I extended my hand. “My name is Heller. Nathan Heller. I’m a private detective. Governor Hoffman has hired me to assist in the investigation to find the truth about this crime you’re accused of.”

His lips formed a faint, wry smile. “‘Accused’ is a wrong word to use, Mr. Heller…but kind.”

“Why don’t you call me Nate?”

“All right.” He extended his hand through the bars. “My name is Richard. Some friends call me Dick. Why don’t you call me that?”

“All right, Dick,” I said.

The press and the prosecution liked to call him Bruno; it made a Teutonic beast of him.

The warden approached as we were shaking hands. He said to Hauptmann, “We’ll take care of that problem,” meaning the bird. He looked at me. “If you need anything, at least one guard will be here at all times.”

“Could you let me in there?” I asked. “I don’t like having these bars between us.”

Kimberling thought for a moment, then nodded, and nodded again, this time to the guard, who turned a key in the cell door and admitted me.

Then the door made its metallic whine and clanged shut behind me and the key turned gratingly and I was locked in with Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

“Won’t you please sit?” Hauptmann said, and he gestured to his cot. I sat and then so did he. Near the cot was a table stacked with newspapers, magazines, various books, among them the Bible and thick paper-covered transcripts of his trial; on the wall behind the cot were pasted various pictures of his wife and his young son. There was a sink and a toilet; it was not a small cell, although tiny compared to one I’d seen Capone in back at Cook County, some years ago.

“I should explain why I’ve been hired,” I said.

“I know why,” he said.

“Has Governor Hoffman mentioned me to you…?”

“No. But you were police official from Chicago who came to work on the kidnapping, in early days.”

“That’s right.”

“So you have knowledge of this case not just anyone have.”

“Well, that is right. You have a good memory.”

He nodded toward the trial transcripts. “I have time for reading. I know much about every witness who spoke for, and against me. I have ask about you. You were in some things involved that the newspapers wrote up. In Chicago.”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

“That is good advice, Nate. Do you think Chicago gangsters do this to me?”

That caught me off guard. “Dick—stranger things have happened.”

He smiled. “Strange things happen to me, often.” The sound of the bird fluttering caught his attention. “Excuse,” he said, and rose, and went to the bars and looked out and up. “They do nothing,” he said disgustedly, sitting back down.

“I’d like to hear your side of this, Dick. That’s why I’m here.”

Hauptmann sighed. “Why am I here? That is the question I ask myself. Why does the state do to me this? Why do they want my life for something somebody else have done?”

“The court found you guilty…”

“Lies! Lies!” Fire lit the blue-gray eyes, though the face remained strangely placid. “All lies. Would I kill a baby?” He nodded to his son’s picture; the kid looked to be about three years old. “I am a man! A father. And, I am union carpenter. Would I build that ladder?” He laughed; it echoed hollowly in the cell.

“I’ll tell you this much, Dick,” I said. “You were badly represented. That Reilly…”

“Reilly! Could a man do for one million dollars what Reilly have done to me for who-knows-why? Only once, for about five minutes, did he even speak to me about my case.”

“Dick, Reilly wasn’t your lawyer—he was Hearst’s lawyer.” And maybe Al Capone’s.