Stolen Away

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! And you don’t know Paul Wendel! Remember, he thought the world had mistreated him.” He hunched his shoulders, gesturing with both hands. “This man is a psychotic, a very brilliant man with a criminal twist to his mind. The world was always against him. So what does he decide to do? Strike at the world’s biggest hero. Kidnap the baby of this international hero, this Lucky Lindy. And that way, he could be more famous than Lindy, and yet anonymous at the same time. In his mind, he’d know he was better than Lindbergh; in his mind, he was a bigger hero.”

“If he did this, why would he come to you with this cock-and-bull story about ‘friends’ of his who had the baby? You’re a cop, and a famous one. That’s inviting hell in a handbasket….”

He threw up his hands. “It’s the key, Nathan! Wendel did something that he believes proves he is bigger than Lindbergh. But he couldn’t be a ‘hero,’ and not let somebody know! He can’t be the man who planned and executed the crime of the century and then remain silent about it.”

“And he was acquainted with you, the ‘barnyard Sherlock Holmes,’ a world-famous detective, who could appreciate his accomplishment.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. And if this is all you have, I don’t think you have much of a suspect at all.”

He snorted. “You think that’s all I have? When my instincts kick in, that’s when I start digging. On this and on any case. So I began investigating my dear old friend. Would you like to hear some of what I discovered?”

“Why not.” The day was shot to hell, anyway.

“For openers, in the weeks before the kidnapping, Wendel was frequenting a candy store in Hopewell, for sweets and cigarettes; I have a deposition to that effect from the female proprietor.”

“Next you’ll tell me Hochmuth and Whited saw him in Hopewell, too.”

“Nathan, this woman does not have cataracts, and she does not live in a hillbilly shack. Here’s another little fact you may enjoy…Wendel’s sister lives in back of St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.”

I blinked. “What?”

“His sister.” He was grinning, but his eyes were dead serious. “St. Raymond’s is where this lying fool Condon paid off the fifty thousand—and Wendel would not have had far to go to hide out afterwards, would he?”

This, too, I wrote down. I was getting interested.

“I’m jumping around a bit, Nathan—hope you can follow me. Now, when Wendel was still a practicing attorney in Trenton, he got one of his clients off on a narcotics rap. You know what that client’s name was, Nathan?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Ellis?”

“Why, sure, Nathan. It was Isidor Fisch.”

I just looked at him; I had about as much to say at that moment as the skeleton.

“With their lawyer-client relationship,” Parker said casually, “I figure maybe Wendel turned the fifty thousand in marked ransom bills over to Fisch, who some people say was a ‘hot-money’ fence.”

I was sitting forward. “Ellis, this may be important. You have my apologies for doubting you.”

“Well, thank you, young man.” He relit the corncob pipe, shook the match out. “Now I’ll tell you about Paul Wendel and Al Capone.”

He was showing off, but it was working. I felt like I’d been poleaxed.

“Al Capone?” I asked. Because it was clear that he wouldn’t continue until I did ask.

He nodded smugly. “Paul Wendel tried to work a confidence game on Al Capone some years ago, around 1929 or ’30. I have an affidavit to that effect from a Frank Cristano, who has had some contact with underworld figures, from time to time. To make a long story short, Wendel convinced both Cristano and Capone that he could turn common tar into alcohol for four cents a gallon. At some point, however, the scam unraveled and Capone said if Wendel—who had come to visit Capone at the Lexington Hotel in your fair city—ever darkened his door again he’d get taken for what I believe you Chicago boys refer to as a ‘ride.’”

“I don’t think that term is unknown on the East Coast, either, Ellis.”

“What’s really interesting, Nathan, is that Wendel approached Cristano again, in early 1932—with a scheme to get Al Capone out of his income-tax troubles by kidnapping—and then arranging for Capone to be a hero by returning—the Lindbergh baby.”

There it was.

I said, “Did this Cristano say he delivered the message?”

“No. He threw Paul Wendel out on his ass. But don’t you suppose Wendel found a way to get that message to Capone?”

I nodded. “So maybe you do have a hell of a suspect in Wendel.”

“I think so.”

“But there isn’t much time to develop any of this. You have him under surveillance, I suppose?”

“Why, Nathan,” Ellis Parker said innocently, removing the corncob pipe. “I have him under wraps over at the local insane asylum. Care to meet him?”

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