Stolen Away

“That’s him. There’s a story I haven’t confirmed yet that Wendel approached Capone with the kidnap plan. At the moment, some hick cops have got Wendel under lock-and-key and armed guard, out in the boonies, squeezing worthless confessions out of him like popping pimples.”

There was urgency in his voice; whether this news made him happy, angry, worried or what, I could not read. “Is this going to come back to Al? Or the Waiter?”

“Ricca’s name has not come up,” I said. “Wendel, and the inimitable Gaston Means, who I also talked to, are bad witnesses. They are both such fucking liars and con men that if they do tell the truth, no one will be able to tell. Both of ’em are being held in the nuthouse, by the way. Well, two different nuthouses.”

“Their testimony would be worthless?”

“Unless somebody checked out their stories, and came up with better witnesses. And time is goddamn short for that; Hauptmann sits down in a couple weeks, you know. How well do you know Gaston Means?”

“Know of him, is all.”

“It occurs to me that enlisting the likes of Wendel and Means, unreliable as they are, would be a stroke of genius on somebody’s part—whether Capone or Ricca.”

“How the hell do you figure that?”

“Well, even lunatics like Wendel and Means know enough not to cross Capone, or Ricca. Means likes his skin too much, and Wendel had an instructive close call with Capone back around ’30. Yet in their way, these guys are savvy crooks, with connections in the underworld and elsewhere. They also both got more balls than sense. So they could get the job done. But suppose the kidnapping goes awry? Capone and Ricca had to know this thing was risky at best, that it might just blow up in everybody’s face.”

“I wouldn’t trust screwballs like Wendel or Means with the garbage.”

“Ah, but Frank, that’s the beauty part. Even if Means or Wendel decide to talk, were dumb enough to finger Capone and Ricca—who would believe them? With their records, with their individual eccentricities, they make the perfect fall guys.”

There was a pause; I let him think. Then he said: “So what’s going to happen?”

“I’m working to try to clear Hauptmann. That’s what Governor Hoffman’s paying me to do. I’m finding a lot out, but so far I don’t see any of it doing any good.”

“You don’t see this coming back to Chicago. You don’t see this landing in the Outfit’s lap.”

“No. Not yet, anyway.” The hell of it was, I didn’t know whether Nitti wanted it to, or not.

“Okay,” Nitti said. “Okay. Appreciate you checkin’ in, Nate. You’re a good boy.”

The phone clicked dead.

I hung up.

“Who were you talking to, Nate?”

I turned in the chair and saw Evalyn standing in the doorway of the study. How long she’d been there, I didn’t know. She looked a trifle confused. She was wearing flowing wide-legged black slacks and a black cashmere sweater with pearls; and looked sporty and stylish, but a tad frazzled. It had been a long day for her, too.

I stood, smiled, approached her; put my hands on her tiny waist. “Contact of mine in Chicago,” I said. “Bouncing a few ideas back and forth.”

“Oh,” she said, vaguely troubled. Then that look transformed itself into a girlish smile. “Nate, I have exciting news. The New Haven trip was a success!”

“Huh?” I’d damn near forgotten that was what she’d been up to today: trying to follow the “lead” of the long-ago Edgar Cayce reading. This would be rich.

“You’re going to be proud of me. I don’t even want to freshen up. Let’s go in the other room and talk.”

Once again that fireplace was aglow, in a room otherwise dim, and she led me before it, where she curled up catlike on the Oriental carpet to bask in the warmth of the fire. It painted her a lush orange. I stood over her and suggested I get us some drinks from the nearby liquor cart; she agreed, requesting champagne (“To celebrate”), studying the fire, smiling enigmatically, looking at once as sophisticated as a Vogue cover girl and as naive as a Girl Scout wishing she had a wienie to roast.

She sipped her wine and, sitting Indian-style next to her, I sipped my Bacardi.

She said, “Was your day eventful?”

I had already decided not to tell her about Wendel’s captivity; it could only get her in trouble. I gave her a brief rundown of what Parker had told me about his suspect, and left it at that.

“Do you think this Wendel fellow might be the kidnapper, or at least involved in the kidnapping somehow?”

“It’s possible. But Parker’s pursuing that angle. We have to look elsewhere. Now, Evalyn, I know you’re dying to tell me what you’ve discovered. And I,” I lied, “am dying to hear all about it.”

She sat up, striking a more serious posture: “In your notes, Nate, you wrote that Edgar Cayce spoke of a house in a ‘mill section’ on the east side of New Haven. In the region of ‘Cordova,’ he said.”

“Only there is no Cordova.”