Stolen Away

“He practiced pharmacy at one time. But when he was in that business he perpetrated a holdup against himself to collect the insurance money. He was saving up for night classes. Studying law.”

“Law?”

Parker nodded, grinned around the corncob pipe. “So before you know it, he become a lawyer. And as a young lawyer, he embezzled clients’ funds and was convicted and went to the pokey. Yours truly, as a friend of his old Bible-beating daddy, helped him get a parole. I tried to get him reinstated with the Bar Association but I didn’t pull ’er off.”

I studied Wendel’s battered face. “And you think this guy is the Lindbergh kidnapper?”

“I know he is. The man has a brilliant mind—studied medicine for a while, too, you know. Medicine, the law, the ministry, pharmacy—that’s Paul Wendel.”

“It sounds like you’re…friends.”

“We are, or we were, before he committed this crime. Smartest man I ever met, Paul Wendel, but a failure in so many ways, and bitter about it. He felt that all the things he’d tried to accomplish came to nothing, that nothing good had ever happened to him; that he never got a break.”

“Was this self-pity occasional, like when he was in his cups, or…”

“It was constant. He’d say, The world has always mistreated me, Ellis, but one day I’ll do something that will make the world sit up and take notice.’”

“And you think he finally did.”

Parker’s mouth was tight, but his eyes smiled, as he nodded. “Not long before the kidnapping, Paul was getting himself into trouble writing bad checks. There were warrants out for him in New Jersey. He came to me and asked if I could help, and I said I would try, but in the meantime he should go away someplace.”

“When was this, exactly?”

“Several months before the kidnapping. He began living in New York, in various cheap hotels, but his wife and his daughter and son stayed behind in Trenton—he’d sneak home and visit ’em from time to time, when the coast was clear.”

“It wasn’t like there was a big manhunt out for him.”

“Not at all. He just had warrants on him for this bad paper he passed. Anyway, after the kidnapping, I made a statement to the press and the radio that if the kidnapper would just come forward and talk to me, I would do all in my power to see that he was not punished. All I wanted to do was get that baby back safe.”

“Figuring with your reputation, it might just draw the kidnapper out.”

“Such was my thinking, yes. Hell, pretty soon I had bags of mail, phone calls from here to hell and back. My secretary would screen these calls. She’d only have me listen in on the more promising ones. And one of these calls was from Wendel—trying to disguise his voice.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“Positive. I know Paul Wendel’s voice, for Christ’s sake; heard it for forty-some years. He calls disguising his voice, and even my secretary recognizes it, so she puts him on the line with me, and he’s saying he knows who has the baby, and he’d like to come in and talk to me about it. I pretended not to recognize who it was, and invited him in.”

“Did he come?”

“Yup. But he didn’t even mention having called. Just announced that he’d had contact with the people who had the Lindbergh baby, and how he wanted to work with me to get that baby back. I told him, why, go ahead; see what you can do. But nothing come of it.”

“Sounds like he was just a blowhard. Maybe trying to pressure you into getting those bad-check warrants pulled off his back.”

“I would’ve thought so, too, but I kept remembering something Wendel had said to me, not long before the kidnapping. He was sitting in this office, in that very chair you’re sitting in, having coffee…oh, do you want some coffee, Nathan?”

“No, that’s okay. I’d rather have the rest of the story…black.”

“Right. Anyway, he said, ‘You know, Ellis, I’m getting damned tired of trying to save some money, a five-dollar bill here, a ten-dollar bill there. I want some real money.’ So I asked him, ‘What do you consider “real” money, Paul?’ And Wendel says, ‘I want to make fifty thousand dollars at one time. Fifty thousand, fifty thousand.’ He kept going on about it.”

“And when you heard about the fifty-thousand-dollar ransom, then you suspected Wendel?”

“When I put it together with his story about having ‘friends’ who had the baby, you bet I did.”

I sighed. “You’ve been reading your own press clippings, Ellis. That’s the thinnest piece of deduction I’ve heard this side of the radio.”

He didn’t like that. He shook the pipe at me. “My instincts have never done me wrong, not in over forty years in this game, you young pup.”

“Really? Well, I’ve been a detective since, what, ’31? And this is the first time I’ve been called a ‘young pup.’”