Stolen Away

“I’ve asked you to come up, Mr. Irey,” Lindbergh was saying, “because I feel I should talk to somebody in an official capacity about this Capone offer.”

Irey nodded somberly. “You’ll be hearing even more about it tomorrow. We understand Capone was interviewed this morning by Arthur Brisbane, who flew to Chicago for the privilege.”

The New York Journal’s Brisbane was Hearst’s most highly paid editor and columnist, a self-important double dome whose purple prose on the Capone offer would further inflame a Lindbergh-inflamed public.

“It’ll be in Brisbane’s syndicated column tomorrow morning,” Wilson said, “all over the country. Everybody and his duck will be telling you to take Scarface up on his proposition.”

Lindbergh leaned back in his chair and studied Irey and Wilson as if they were frost forming on his monoplane wings. “What do you gentlemen think?”

“We think it’s a bluff,” Wilson said confidently, sitting back. “We think you should disregard it.”

Irey, measuring his words, said, “I hate to say this, Colonel…but Capone doesn’t know who has the child. He is a desperate man trying to deal his way out of jail.”

“We know he thinks,” Wilson said, “or says he thinks, a former gang member of his did it.”

“Bob Conroy,” I said.

All heads turned my way.

“Is Detective Heller right?” Lindbergh asked, eyes tight. “Is this Conroy the one Capone claims took my son?”

Irey nodded, slowly; Wilson nodded, too, but two nods for every one of Irey’s.

Irey said, “Our preliminary investigation puts Conroy nearly one hundred and fifty miles from here, the night of the kidnapping.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Have you talked to Conroy yet?”

“No,” Irey said, not looking at me. “We have agents in New York who are investigating. Two alibi witnesses place Conroy in New Haven, Connecticut.”

“Well,” I said, “New Haven isn’t the moon. In a fast car, a hundred fifty miles is nothing, these days.”

“We intend,” Irey said, an edge of impatience in his voice, “to find Conroy, of course, and talk to him…but he didn’t do it.”

Lindbergh’s expression darkened. Then he said, “Should you make that assumption, going in? I’ve been told that the biggest mistake a detective can make is to form a snap decision early on about who or what is behind a crime.”

Both Irey and Wilson shifted in their seats; it was perfectly coordinated, like a couple of really good chorus girls. It made me smile.

“You’re right, Colonel,” Irey said to Lindbergh. “We’ll keep an open mind about Conroy—we’ll find him, and we’ll talk to him. We don’t see it as a major lead, however…because we don’t think Capone is sincere.”

“Colonel,” Wilson said, “Big Al just wants out of jail.”

Where you boys helped put him, and you’ll be goddamned if you’ll let the bastard out even if it is to help save a kid’s life.

Lindbergh cast his hollow gaze my way. “What do you think, Nate?”

“About Capone? It could be a hoax. But I don’t think we can rule out, at this early stage, the possibility that Capone may have engineered the kidnapping.”

“That’s absurd,” Wilson said.

But Irey said nothing.

I said, “You said it yourself: he’s a desperate man. He’s also a public figure—like Colonel Lindbergh. What better target could he choose than a man who, in a bizarre way, is one of the few people in this country on his own level? Besides, can you put anything past a man who can turn a tender holiday like St. Valentine’s Day into something forever grisly in the minds of the masses?”

“You think,” Lindbergh said to me, with a gaze so flatly penetrating it was unnerving, “that Capone may truly know where my boy is? Because he wants to ‘solve’ a crime he committed—or, that is, had committed for him?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “All to buy his cynical way into the public’s affections—and out of a jail cell. And it’s an opinion held by the federal agent instrumental in putting him away—Eliot Ness.”

In other words, screw you, Agents Irey and Wilson.

“Mr. Heller may be right,” Irey said, more gracious about it than I figured he’d be. “I think it’s a long shot, frankly…but I can’t in all honesty rule the possibility out.”

Even Wilson seemed willing to begrudge me my opinion. “I think we should find Bob Conroy and make him talk.” He paused ominously, then added, “But we don’t need to let Al Capone out of stir to accomplish that.”

“I hope,” Lindbergh said quietly, “that you will proceed with caution. It’s been my position from the very beginning that there must be no police interference…” He raised his hand and cut the air with it. “…no police activity of any kind that might interfere with my paying the ransom and reclaiming my boy.”

That ultimately wasn’t—or anyway shouldn’t have been—Lindbergh’s decision, of course, but Irey and Wilson let it go. I knew when it got down to brass tacks, Irey would act like a cop. Wilson, too.

“I wonder if we might see the kidnap note,” Irey said.