Which he was, as it turned out.
“I’m sorry to drop by unannounced,” he said. For a man in his fifties, he had a youthful face; not that it wasn’t lined-but the nose, the eyes, the mouth, were boyish. “My wife and I are visiting her mom down here and…look, I’m Harlan Jensen.”
“Oh. Oh yeah.”
“I know you don’t want to see me, but we were in the area, and I knew you lived around here, and…”
“Come in, Mr. Jensen.”
“Thank you. Nice place you got here.”
“Thanks. Let’s sit here at the kitchen table.”
He sat and talked and told me his story; he had a lot of facts and rumors and suppositions to share. He was obviously quietly tortured by this quest of his.
“I found the daughter of the woman who approached me in the boatyard on my honeymoon,” he said. “The mother is dead, but the girl, the redhead, is alive and well. Her name is Mary.”
“How’d you find her?”
“Did you know that Edgar Cayce, the famous psychic, did a reading on the case?”
“No. Really.”
“Well, my wife and I followed his directions, and by doing a little interpretation, you know-phonetic sounds instead of literal readings-we found this building in New Haven, on Maltby Street, where I think I may have been kept.”
“Yeah?”
“I got the name of the tenant that had lived there in 1932, and it was a Margaret Kurtzel, and through the mother’s sister, managed to track the daughter down. She was in Middletown, Connecticut. She still is.”
“Really.”
He sighed. “She didn’t know much. Just that her mother was a nurse, back then, working for private individuals, not hospitals or anything. And that all her life, her mother had proclaimed Hauptmann’s innocence. She didn’t know if, in fact, her mother had cared for the Lindbergh child.”
“I see.”
“You know, I’ve been trying for years to get this thing settled. It’s driving me nuts. I used the Freedom of Information Act, to try to get the baby’s fingerprints, but they’re missing.”
“Hunh. There were plenty of ’em around, once.”
“Somebody at some point got rid of them. I’ve tried to approach Mrs. Lindbergh, but it’s no use. There are DNA tests, you know, that…”
“She and her husband decided many years ago that their boy was dead.”
He shook his head, wearily.
“What do you want from me, Mr. Jensen? I haven’t been a detective for a long time.”
“I just want to know what you know,” he said.
Shit. How could I tell this guy that if I’d just had the balls to go in the goddamn ladies’ room at LaSalle Street Station, back in ’32, his whole life might have been different? Whether he was Charles Lindbergh, Jr., or not, that was true.
He was looking at me carefully. “You know, I have a memory of a man who helped me. It may not be a memory-it doesn’t seem quite real.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Something a kid might think he remembered. It sounds silly. I seem to remember a gunfight in my bedroom. A man told me…a man told me to hide under my bed and not come out until he said, ‘Olly olly oxen free.’”
I felt my eyes getting damp.
He grinned at me; it was Slim’s grin. “Are you that man, Mr. Heller? Did you save my little ass?”
I didn’t say anything. I got up, went to the Mr. Coffee and got myself a cup. I asked him if he wanted any and he said sure-black.
“Let’s go in the living room,” I said, handing him his coffee, “and get comfy. It’s a long story.”
I OWE THEM ONE
Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and a few liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible-and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of my conflicting source material.
For the most part, events occur in this novel when they occurred in reality (an exception is the slaying of Max Hassel and Max Greenberg, which was shifted in time somewhat). Most of the characters in this novel are real and appear with their true names, and the occasional fictional characters have real-life counterparts (notably, Tim O’Neil and Harlan Jensen). The characters Martin Marinelli and Sister Sarah Sivella are composites, primarily suggested by one real-life husband-and-wife psychic team; however, the tryst between Heller and Sivella has no basis whatever in history. Inspector Welch is a composite character. Heller’s role as police liaison was suggested by the real-life roles of Chicago’s Pat Roche and Lt. William Cusack, both of whom went to Hopewell; and Governor Harold Hoffman (and Evalyn McLean) did hire a number of private investigators to work on the Hauptmann case.
Bob Conroy and his wife indeed died in a “double suicide,” after Conroy had been pointed out to the authorities as the probable kidnapper by the incarcerated Capone; but my speculation about the real role of the Conroys in the kidnapping is just that: speculation. The false alarm on Sheridan Road in the first chapter, however, is loosely based on fact.
Several hardworking people helped me research this book.
George Hagenauer, whose many contributions include developing an extensive time chart of events, spent hours in libraries gathering book and newspaper references, and on the phone discussing with me the ins and outs of this complicated and very strange case. He also went to Virginia Beach to do Edgar Cayce research, and toured the Indonesian Embassy (the former home of Evalyn McLean at 2020 Massachusetts Avenue) in Washington, D.C. George is a valued collaborator on the Heller “memoirs” and I appreciate his contribution as much as his friendship.
Lynn Myers, one of the nicest people I know, dug in and did research rivaling George’s. Against considerable odds, he rounded up the voluminous and invaluable Liberty magazine material that became the backbone of this novel. The interest of Liberty publisher, Bernarr MacFadden, in the Lindbergh case resulted in book-length multipart stories by Governor Harold Hoffman, John Condon, Paul Wendel, Evalyn Walsh McLean, Lt. James J. Finn and Lloyd Fisher, as well as individual articles by Edward J. Reilly, Fulton Oursler and Lou Wedemar. One of these articles, “Before the Body Was Found She Said the Lindbergh Baby Was Murdered,” by Frederick L. Collins, was the best source of information on the involvement of psychics (other than Cayce) in the case. All in all, the Liberty articles constitute over a thousand pages of coverage on the Lindbergh case. Lynn also dug out numerous individual articles on the case, as well as background on Hassel and Greenberg, Edgar Cayce and John Hughes Curtis. A big tip of the fedora to this methodical, obsessive researcher.
Mike Gold, a Chicago history buff with an eye for detail, provided a vivid impromptu telephone tour through LaSalle Street Station. Dominick Abel, my agent, provided some tough, valuable advice midway that helped shape this novel. My keen-eyed editor Coleen O’Shea deserves special thanks for her longtime interest in, and support of, Nate Heller and his coauthor; thanks also to editors Charles Michener (who, among much else, helped come up with a title) and Marjorie Braman.
Other tips of the fedora for support along the way go to my old high-school pal Jim Hoffmann (who provided a videotape of the 1976 TV docudrama, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case); Janiece Mull for Norfolk background material; Bob Randisi for New York reference material; loyal Heller fan William C. Wilson for assorted background details; and booksellers Patterson Smith and Ed Ebeling, for digging up rare vintage books, magazines and newspapers covering the case.
Mickey Spillane provided information about Elizabeth, New Jersey, and put me in contact with his friend Walter Milos, who did extensive research and legwork on the Elizabeth Carteret Hotel. Thank you, gentlemen.