Stolen Away

“My sister,” she said. “And all our friends—hundreds dollars here, thousands dollars there. But you know what? We thought he was rich—he always said he was worth thirty thousand, easy. But he had other friends, who thought he was poor! I heard that when he moved out of here, he told these other friends that he was evicted! That he had to sleep wherever he could, in Hooverville and on benches in Grand Central depot. That way he could beg off them.”

“What a weasel,” I said.

“I tell you how I figure out he is keeping one group of friends away from the other. When Izzy is going down to the steamship, to go to Germany, Erica and me decide to go down and say goodbye, to surprise him. We go aboard and see Izzy talking with four or five men, strangers to us, but you can tell they was friends with him. Izzy saw us and his face went white as sheet; he came over, angry, and said, ‘What the hell are you doing here, you girls?’ I say, ‘The hell with you, Izzy—we just want to surprise you, to say goodbye, you nasty little bastard!’ The nerve of him. He apologize, show us to his cabin, but then said he was busy and shooed us away fast as he could.”

“He was conning everybody,” I said. “Getting money from your circle by playing the big-shot investor, and milking others using the poor-mouth routine.”

“It worked,” Gerta said, shrugging. “But he was a strange one.”

“Strange, how?” Evalyn said.

“Well, I never see him with a woman. When I first meet him, I thought he was kind of…cute, in a way. Like a little boy. But, uh…he never seemed interested. Most men like me. I don’t mean to be bragging, but…”

“I believe you,” I said.

“And there was this crazy religion of his.”

“What, Judaism?”

“No!” She grinned. “Spooks and stuff.”

“Spooks and stuff?”

“What do they call it? Spiritualist.”

I sat up, knocking the table; coffee spilled. I apologized and said, “Tell me more about this.”

She shrugged. “He belonged to this little church. Not a church, really—just a storefront, all cleared out for benches and stuff. They do silly things over there, I hear.”

“Like what?”

“What do they call them—séances. Did you know Izzy Fisch knew this girl Violet Sharpe?”

Evalyn and I traded quick looks.

“The maid Violet Sharpe, who killed herself,” she continued, “and this older man, who was supposed to be a butler for the Lindberghs, they often come to that church. I think they were members.”

“One of the butlers was named Septimus Banks,” I said. My nerves were jumping, suddenly.

“I don’t think that’s the name.”

“Another was Oliver Whately.”

“That is the name.”

Evalyn set her coffee cup down clatteringly.

“This is important, Gerta!” I said. “Haven’t you ever told anybody this?”

She shrugged. “Nobody asked.” She lowered her head, embarrassed. “I didn’t want to get Richard in trouble.”

“In trouble?”

“If they knew his friend Fisch knew those Lindbergh people…well…Carl thought we should say nothing.”

“But this helps confirm Hauptmann’s claims about Fisch.”

She shook her head, sadly. “Nobody believed the ‘Fisch story.’ How could this help? It could only hurt.”

My head was reeling. “Where was this church?”

She drew back the curtain and pointed. “Just across the street.”

“Across the street?”

“Izzy always say it was very interesting. They call it the One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Street Spiritualist Church…Mr. Heller? Nate?”

I was standing; looking out the window. My heart was racing. “Is it still there?”

“I don’t think so. I think they move it…”

“Thank you, Gerta, you’ve been very kind.” I nodded to Evalyn, who got the point and got up. “We may be back…”

“I’m sure Carl would be glad to talk to you,” she said, following along after us. “If you need to talk to me, alone, Nate, I’m here all day by myself, most days…’less I’m helping Anna.”

At the door I took Gerta’ s hand and squeezed it and soon we were down on the sidewalk and Evalyn was saying, “What’s the rush? What’s going on?”

“I could kick myself,” I said. “How could I not make the connection?”

“What connection?”

I got in the trunk of the Packard and opened my suitcase and fumbled for my packet of field notes from ’32. 1 thumbed through the notebook pages quickly, like a jumbled card hand I was trying to make sense of.

“Here,” I said, my finger on the line. “The address is 164 East 127th. Damn! How could I not put this together.”

“Put what together?”

I got my nine millimeter out of my suitcase, slipped it in my topcoat pocket, shut the trunk back up.

“Come on,” I said. I cut diagonally across the street, getting honked at by a cabbie, to whom I displayed my middle finger, as Evalyn hustled along behind me, doing the best she could in her heels.

Then we were standing before a storefront; it was a shoe-repair shop. The number was 164.

“This used to be a spiritualist church,” I said, “run by a pair called Martin Marinelli and Sarah Sivella. They were the spiritualists who, a few days after the kidnapping, made some startling ‘predictions’ about the case.”

“Oh my. I think I remember you telling me this…”