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child. Of course, Capone had publicly offered to help locate the child, should the government choose to release him from prison in Chicago. The authorities scoffed at that. And three, that Lindbergh himself was at the heart of some nefarious dealing because on the night of the kidnapping he was supposed to be in Manhattan addressing the New York University dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. Instead, he drove back to New Jersey, unexpectedly, forgetting his obligation, in time to be witness to the empty cradle upstairs.
    â€œA maligning of a true American hero,” Aleck intoned on air. Darius Poor agreed. “Lunacy in the land.”
    Of course, that broadcast brought out the loonies and the naysayers and the speculators and—and, well, enter Mavis Jones onto the scene, psychic and hearer of phantom Germanic voices in the wilderness of her scattered mind.
    â€œYour fault…” I repeated to Aleck. “You cracked open the door of the asylum.”
    Aleck smiled wanly. “I got a good dinner out of the evening.”
    â€œWhat do you think?” I asked Willie, who, I noticed, had been paying attention to our conversation.
    â€œMa’am, as I say, I keep my mouth shut.”
    â€œYes…”
    But he kept talking. “But it seems to me this is only the beginning of the circus.”
    ***
    That night I sat on the edge of my bed, the radio on, listening to Walter Winchell’s radio broadcast. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea…” A clatter of telegraph keys— tap tap tap . That signature opening, followed by his staccato voice. Stops and starts, a broken rhythm that gave you a sense of immediacy. Hot off the press, Winchell sitting in your living room inside the Zenith console radio.
    In my lap lay a copy of the day’s New York Daily Mirror , the tabloid rag Winchell wrote for.
    Early that day I’d seen the man strutting into the hotel lobby, grabbing the sleeve of the undersheriff, Barry Barrowcliff, as he handed him a note. He threw a sidelong glance at another reporter from the Hearst syndicate and frowned at the Hearst darling, Adela Rogers St. Johns, who was signing an autograph with a flourish. A gaggle of fawners hovered nearby, laughing loudly. At one point Joshua Flagg skirted by him, and Winchell called out to him—”Sir, a minute of your time”—but Flagg kept moving. Winchell leaned on the reception counter, a casual pose as he began a loud screed about his belief that David Wilentz would exact a confession from Bruno Hauptmann on the stand.
    So now I listened to Winchell’s summation of the day’s events of the trial, a rat-a-tat-tat delivery that soon waxed eloquent as he rhapsodized about Anne Lindbergh’s testimony, a bathetic encomium to her strength and beauty and resolve. A catch in his throat, he paused so that America could weep with him.
    My Lord, I upbraided myself—I am so cynical. What is there about Winchell that so rankled?
    He ended with a commentary about the prosecutor David Wilentz, “an advocate for justice,” and Edward Reilly, chief defense lawyer, a venerable old jurist, described as a “lackey in the employ of the underbelly of man’s reason. Bruno’s henchman.”
    A man with a turn of phrase, that Winchell boy.
    I waited as he spoke of little Flemington, of the “hominess” of the old village, of the venerable Union Hotel with its old-fashioned balconies and Victorian gingerbread trim, or the general store that still held a pickle barrel, the life of the average citizen. I waited. Not a single mention of the murder of Annabel Biggs, waitress at the Union Hotel Café. Not a word. I waited—that poor woman ignored and forgotten so soon. The golden god Lindbergh and demonic monster Hauptmann, the only antagonists in the Greek drama that was playing out against a Jersey backdrop.
    I switched off the broadcast, annoyed by his ticker-tape