Stolen Away

I thanked him sarcastically and he said “you’re welcome” the same way and we both hung up. Evalyn had listened to my half of the conversation, and seemed to have gotten the drift. She was wide-eyed and astounded, whereas I just felt beaten down.

She was holding her cup up for a colored maid to fill with coffee. “I can’t believe the government won’t follow up on these two Max fellows!”

“I can. You got red tape on the one hand, and the word of Gaston Means, who makes Baron Münchhausen look like Abraham Lincoln, on the other.”

“What now?”

I made another phone call. To Colonel Schwarzkopf at the Lindbergh estate. But I didn’t say a word about the two Maxes.

“I’ve had an anonymous tip,” I told him. “About Violet Sharpe.”

“Reliable?” Schwarzkopf asked skeptically.

“Very,” I said, realizing I must have been the first man in history to refer to Gaston Means as a “very reliable” source.

“She’s apparently the inside man on the kidnapping,” I said, “though she may have been an unwitting one.”

“I’ll put Inspector Welch on it.”

“All right, but tell that son of a bitch to use a little finesse, will you?”

Schwarzkopf said nothing in reply; neither one of us chose to fill the silence with anything, and just hung the hell up.

“One more call,” I said to Evalyn, who was still breathlessly listening. I got the long-distance operator again and caught Eliot Ness at his desk at the Transportation Building back home.

“What can you tell me,” I asked, “about Max Greenberg and Max Hassel?”

“Hassel’s real name is Mendel Gassel, Russian immigrant, career rumrunner who paid a big income-tax fine six or seven years ago,” Eliot said matter-of-factly. “Greenberg is a thug from St. Louis made good. Or bad, depending on how you look at it. They’re both dangerous, but Greenberg’s got the brains.”

“Anything else pertinent?”

“Usual stuff,” he said blandly. “Our Narcotics Unit indicted Greenberg for shipping two trunkfuls of heroin to Duluth, back in ’24 or ’25. They didn’t get a conviction. He beat several arson raps, assault raps, too. Then Big Maxie ran prostitutes out of a hotel he owned in New York somewhere, till bootlegging beckoned.”

“He sounds like quite the capitalist. You guys probably would get along great—you’re both Republicans.”

“You must be doing pretty good out there, if you can afford to insult me at long-distance rates.”

“It’s not my nickel. Look, why are Waxey Gordon and Dutch Schultz mixing it up? I thought they were allies.”

“Irving Wexler and Arthur Flegenheimer,” Eliot said archly, using their real names, “are both anticipating the relatively imminent unemployment of yours truly.”

“Huh?”

“They both know beer’s going to be legal, before long, and they’ve set their beady eyes on a big, legitimate market, meaning more customers than they can supply from their present breweries. Schultz has breweries in Yonkers and Manhattan, and Waxey has ’em in Patterson, Union City and Elizabeth. Each wants the other guy’s facilities, and territory.”

“So they’re shooting holes in each other’s gang.”

“Yes. Which is good.”

“Frank Wilson would agree. Why aren’t those breweries you mentioned shut down?”

Eliot laid the sarcasm on with a trowel. “Why, Nate—they’re making near beer there, didn’t you know that? Brewing ’round the clock—even though only a truck or two leaves each brewery each week.”

No doubt hundreds of gallons of real beer flowed via sewer pipes to hidden bottling and barreling plants.

“Eliot, who would Capone be friendlier with, Schultz or Gordon?”

There was a pause. “Funny you should ask. I honestly don’t know if Snorkey has any ties with Wexler, though I’d be surprised if he didn’t.” Then, with studied blandness, he added, “But Flegenheimer was up to the Cook County Jail, not so long ago, visiting Al.”

That made me sit up. “What?”

“Yeah. Lucky Luciano brought the Dutchman around. I understand there was quite a shouting match. Al was serving as mediator for some East-Coast squabble—jail officials let the boys use the execution chamber for their confab…Al sat in the hot squat, like a king on his throne.”

“Jesus.” Even for Chicago, this was beyond the pale.

“Well, Snorkey isn’t going to win his final appeal,” Eliot said edgily, “and he won’t find the federal pen so accommodating. Why are you asking these questions?”

“I have reason to believe Lindbergh’s kid was snatched by Greenberg and Hassel.”

“And you were wondering if it’s within the realm of possibility that Capone’s reach could extend to them?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

There was a brief crackly silence.

Then I said, “Okay. Only now I’m not sure what I should do about it.”

“Telling Irey and Wilson is your best shot.”

“Right. Well, thanks, Eliot.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Sure. You can apologize for getting me in this shit.”

He laughed, but said, “I do apologize. You’ve been out there a hell of a long time. Maybe it’s time to come home.”

“Soon,” I said, and thanked him and hung up,

So I had decided to talk to Greenberg and Hassel myself.