Max Collins - Stolen Away

“That’s why I’m here, Colonel,” I said, with a serious smile.

Schwarzkopf was frowning again.

Lindbergh caught it.

“Colonel,” Lindbergh said, addressing the cop, not the lawyer, “I expect you to cooperate fully with Detective Heller. He’s come a long way to lend us a hand.”

“Yes, sir,” Schwarzkopf said dutifully, respectfully. The guy really did seem to view Lindbergh as his boss.

Lindbergh was out from behind the desk now; he gestured to the phone. “Henry, if you wouldn’t mind…”

“Gladly,” Breckinridge said, and rose and took Lindbergh’s position behind the desk. One of the most expensive lawyers in New York-in the country-was playing secretary for Lindy.

Schwarzkopf stepped between Lindbergh and me. “Would you like me to accompany you, Colonel?”

“That won’t be necessary, Colonel,” Lindbergh said.

If one more colonel showed up, I’d jump off the roof.

“I’d best join my men at the command post,” Schwarzkopf said, summoning his dignity. His footsteps were echoing across the living room as Lindbergh and I exited the study. That dark, dapper little guy was still sitting in the hall, reading his show-business paper. He stood up, upon seeing Lindbergh.

“Any news, Colonel?” the guy said, eager as a puppy (speaking of which, the dog had begun barking again, at Schwarzkopf).

“Red Johnson is in custody over in Hartford,” Lindbergh said.

“Hey, that’s swell.”

“Nathan Heller, this is Morris Rosner.”

“Hiya,” he said, grinning, extending his hand.

I took it, shook it.

“ Mickey Rosner?” I said.

“You heard of me?” he asked. It was damn near “hoid.”

“The speakeasy king, right?”

He straightened his tie, hitched his shoulders. “Well, I’m in the sports and entertainment field, yes.”

“There’s nothing sporting or entertaining about kidnapping,” I said.

Lindbergh cleared his throat.

“Mr. Rosner has made his services available as a go-between,” he said, “Since it’s the general consensus that the underworld is involved in this…”

“My lawyer is a partner in the Colonel’s office,” Rosner interrupted.

“In your office?” I said to Lindbergh.

“Not that Colonel,” Rosner said.

“Oh,” I said. “You mean Breckinridge.”

“No,” Lindbergh said. “Colonel Donovan.”

Which way to the roof?

“Colonel Donovan?” I asked Lindbergh.

He said, “William Donovan.”

“Wild Bill Donovan,” Rosner said to me, and from the tone of his voice he might as well have added “ya joik.”

While I was trying to sort out how you get from Wild Bill Donovan, currently running for governor of New York, to Broadway bootlegger Mickey Rosner, Lindbergh was explaining to the latter just who and what I was. “Mr. Heller is our liaison man with the Chicago Police.”

“The Chicago Police,” Rosner said, smirking. Then with a straight face, he said to me, “You think Capone’s offer is for real?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you ‘t’ink,’ Mickey?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Capone’s a king in his world. What he says generally goes. I think the Colonel should maybe pay attention to the Big Fellow.”

Mickey didn’t say which colonel he meant.

Lindbergh nodded to Rosner in dismissal, and the little bootlegger sat down and returned to his reading.

The dog had stopped barking, but resumed when he saw me. Lindbergh said, “Shush, Wahgoosh,” and the dog fell silent.

“What the hell is ‘Wahgoosh’?”

“The pooch’s name,” Lindbergh said, with that shy midwestern kid’s smile of his.

“Oh,” I said, as if that made sense.

“You’d have to ask Whately what it means. Wahgoosh was Oliver’s dog, but we’ve kind of adopted the little yapper.”

“Colonel,” I said, “do you really think it’s advisable to have the likes of Rosner around? That no-account bum could be in on the crime…”

“I know,” Lindbergh said, gently. “That’s one of the reasons why he is around.”

“Oh,” I said again.

Lindbergh opened the front door and led me outside into the chilly overcast afternoon; he nodded to the trooper on guard at the door. Lindy hadn’t bothered with a topcoat, so I didn’t say anything, but it was goddamn cold. I followed him across the yard to the left, back toward where his study would be.

We walked directly outside his study window, below the second-floor corner window, which faced southeast. He pointed up.

“That’s where they went in,” he said, meaning the kidnappers.

“Why isn’t this area roped off?” I said, looking at the ground, hands tucked under my arms. “Was it ever roped off?”

“No,” he said.

“Weren’t there footprints?”

There certainly were now. Hundreds of them. Grass might never grow on this ground.

Lindbergh nodded, breath smoking. “There was one substantial footprint-belonging, apparently, to a man. It seemed to be that of a moccasin, or a shoe with a sock or perhaps burlap around it. There were also the footprints of a woman.”

“A woman? So there were two of them, at least.”

“So it would seem.”

“Have the moulage impressions been sent to Washington?”

Lindbergh narrowed his eyes. “Moulage impressions?”

“Plaster casts of the footprints. Say what you want about J. Edgar’s boys, they have a hell of a lab. For one thing, they’ll tell you exactly what that man was wearing-moccasin or potato sack or glass slipper.”

“Colonel Schwarzkopf’s man took photographs, not plaster impressions. Was that a mistake?”

I sighed. “Is Bismarck a herring?”

Lindbergh shook his head wearily. “I know mistakes were made that night. It’s possible plaster casts weren’t taken simply because the reporters trampled this area before there could be.”

That was still the fault of the coppers in charge; but I’d said enough on this subject.

“Look, Colonel. We can’t do anything about mistakes past. The early hours of this case were understandably a jumble.”

Of course, a good cop knows that the early hours of any major felony investigation are the most important, the time during which you allow no mistakes. But I didn’t say that, either.

“What we can do,” I said, “is not make any more of ’em. Mistakes, I mean.”

He nodded gravely. “Would you like to see the nursery?”

“First, I’d like to see the ladder they used. Is it still around?”

It ought to be in an evidence locker in Trenton, but with the command post here, I figured it was worth asking.

He nodded. “It’s in the garage. I’ll have the troopers bring it around. Excuse me for a few moments.”

Lindbergh loped off; he had a gangling gait, and seemed slightly stoop-shouldered-as if he were embarrassed to be so tall, or so famous. Or perhaps it was the weight of it all-from the kidnapping itself, to living out this tragedy in the center ring of a goddamn circus.

Despite the trampled ground, blurring any footprints, there still remained in the moist clay, near the side of the house, the indentations of the feet of the ladder. The indentations were below, but to the right of, the window of the study, which explained why Lindbergh might not have seen anybody going up a ladder outside his curtainless window.

Two troopers returned, Lindbergh leading them; each of the men carried a section of the thing, and “thing” more than “ladder” was the correct word: a ramshackle, makeshift affair that seemed composed of weathered, uneven lumber scraps. The rungs were spaced too widely apart for even a tall man to make easy use of it.