It’s 1961. Jack Kennedy’s just been elected president, and I’m Coca Cola’s newly minted VP for European Operations.
I check into the Hilton at seven in the evening, and I’m looking for something to do. I slept on the flight over and I’m full of energy and it’s April in Paris. I’d been to Paris several times before, the first in August 1944, when me, ten thousand other GIs, and De Gaulle’s 2nd Armored Division liberated the place. But one place I’d never been was the famous Harry’s New York Bar.
I tell a cabbie where I want to go and he rolls his eyes and makes some remark about Americans, but I give him a healthy tip anyway. Inside, I order a French 75-what else-and surveil the crowd. I don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe the ghost of Scott Fitzgerald or the spirit of Humphrey Bogart. It’s a Monday night and there isn’t much going on. I figure I’ll finish my drink and go back to the hotel, when an elderly man shambles up. He’s stooped and his suit, although of quality tailoring, looks to be several decades old, and it no longer fits him.
He looks me up and down with a shrewd and lively look, and then climbs up on the stool next to mine and orders a Manhattan.
“Are you American?” he says.
I nod.
“I could tell by the suit. Brooks Brothers?”
“Paul Stuart.”
His turn to nod.
“What line of work are you in?” he asks.
“I work for Coca Cola.”
“Is there much money in that sugar water?”
“We’re making payroll.”
A guy had set up at the piano and was noodling away at “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
“Paul Stuart,” the old man says. “You an Ivy League man?”
“Penn. The Wharton School.”
“Philly,” he says excitedly. “What do you know. I’m from Philly. I was a cop there for thirty years. A detective for my last twenty years.”
I take a sip of my drink.
“A cop from Philadelphia. You must’ve had some interesting experiences.”
“That’s for sure. Do you want to hear about a case I had?”
Not really, I think. But I have nothing better to do.
“Sure,” I say. “I love to hear a good story.”
The old man sits back in his chair, gets comfortable.
“This happened a few years before I retired,” he says. “A four-year-old boy was kidnapped. His family were wealthy socialites from the Main Line who were in town for some family gathering. My partner and I were called in to investigate the kidnapping.”
“I think I remember that-”
“It was kind of an imitation of the Lindbergh kidnapping. A copycat. This guy didn’t get away with it either.”
The old man is becoming more animated. The memories seem to energize him, although I get the feeling I’m not the first person he’s told this story to.
“The Malone kidnapping,” I say. ‘I remember that. There was some kind of mystery involved about-”
“Me and my partner, Ed, were assigned to investigate the crime. Ed and I were best pals, as well as partners. We did everything together. Knocking heads and taking names. I was his son’s godfather. He named his eldest son after me. Best pals, we were. Anyway, the Malone kid was abducted out of the back of the family Cadillac while the chauffeur was taking a smoke break. We suspected the chauffeur, of course, and sweated him pretty hard back at the station, but he didn’t give anybody up. The next day-”
“It was actually the gardener. He’d followed the Cadillac and knew the chauffeur would take lengthy smoke breaks and leave the kid alone. He-”
“Hang on, I’m getting there.” The old man sounds a little irritated.
“So, the next day we get a call. The ransom is fifty grand. To be paid in hundreds. He specified ordinary bills. The guy was smarter than Hauptman, the guy who kidnapped Lindbergh’s kid. We got the dough. Ed wrote down the serial numbers of the bills and put the list in his desk drawer.”
“Not gold certificates.”
“Right. Like I said, this guy was smarter than Hauptman. We’d been told by the guy to wait until it was after dark and then go to Fairmount Park. There was a bench about fifty feet from the west side of the river, and we were supposed to leave the envelope of cash under the bench and then walk away.”
He takes a long pull of his Manhattan. He seems to enjoy dragging the story out.
“I did like I was supposed to. Then Ed and I drove a few hundred yards to where we could see the bench through the trees. We waited for more than an hour. It was damned cold, and we couldn’t switch the engine on because somebody might have heard it. Then there was a sound of a motor.”
“It was just the two of you? No backup?”
“That’s right. We figured too much police presence would scare him off. Anyway, I hear this motor. I thought it was a car, but it didn’t sound right, and I couldn’t figure where it was coming from. Then I saw it. A boat! Of course, we figured he might do this, and we had a couple of police boats stationed north and south of the drop-off.”
I motion to the barmen for another drink. It seems like this story might take a while.
“He was too far away,” the old man says. “We couldn’t get to him before he’d be back in the boat, so we went parallel on West River Drive as he went south on the river. We needed to let the boats up ahead know he was coming, but the radios in police cars back then were strictly one-way. They could receive but not transmit. I dropped Ed off near a station where they could radio the boats and call for back-up.”
He took another slug of his Manhattan.
“He pulled over to the riverbank and got out of the boat. Up ahead, a Model T was parked by the side of the road. I got to the car before he did. He turned and started to run toward the boat. I shouted to him to stop but he didn’t, and I shot him.”
“You shot him?”
“By the time I got to him, he’d already stopped breathing. They found the body of the kid buried in the guy’s back yard. He’d probably been dead all along.”
“Why did you shoot him?”
“I didn’t want him to get away. In the dark, anything could happen.”
I pluck a Balkan Sobranie from my cigarette case and make an offer to the old man.
“Balkan Sobranie,” he says, taking one. “Am I right? Like the guy in the books.”
I nod and then blow a perfect smoke ring.
“That’s pretty good,” the guy says.
I lean forward and light his cigarette. He looks at the military insignia on the Ronson.
“You in the Army?” he asks.
“Fourth Infantry.”
“Not your first time in Paris.”
“What happened to the money?”
“The money?”
“The ransom money. The fifty grand.”
The old man shakes his head.
“Well, that was never found,” he says. “We spent all night searching the riverbank, the park, the boat. Even the car. It just disappeared.”
I take a puff on my cigarette. The pianist is drifting aimlessly through a version of “Fly Me to The Moon.”
The old man nods at the pianist. “He’s not very good, is he?”
“No, he’s not,” I say. “You were going to tell me about the disappearing money.”
“It disappeared. What can I say? I figure maybe the guy had a secret hiding place where he stashed it.”
“Where do you think he stashed it? He didn’t have much time to think about hiding it.”
“I figure he stuck it way down the hollow of a big oak tree. Way down. Where nobody could find it by accident.”
“Do you think the idea to put it in a tree was pre-planned or spur-of-the-moment.”
The old man remains silent.
“The bills ever show up?” I ask.
His eyes narrow.
“How do you mean?”
The hundred-dollar bills. Were they ever spent?”
“Unknown.”
“You had the serial numbers.”
The old man slaps himself in the forehead.
“That was the darndest thing,” he says. “The list disappeared.”
My hand jerks, knocking over my glass, which is almost empty. The barkeep mops up the small amount of liquid.
“The one in Ed’s desk just disappeared?”
“Ed was a bit of a rummy. You couldn’t really rely on him. I’m sorry to say that. He got the sack a few months later. He swore he didn’t know what happened to it. Swore he left it in his desk drawer. He must’ve searched that drawer a dozen times but never found it. He had a hard time getting another job. His wife left him. He shot himself about a year later.”
I feel something cold crawl up my spine.
“It must’ve been hard,” I say.
“Hard?”
“Waiting for your retirement to come.”
“It wasn’t that hard.”
The barman comes over.
“Mister Jones, your driver is here.”
The old man nods.
“Your driver?” I say.
“Seems that way. He’s a good man. Can’t keep him waiting.”
He takes out a thick roll of fifty-franc banknotes and tosses a couple on the bar.
“Drinks are on me,” he says.
[Image Credti : Photo by mari lezhava on Unsplash]
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Christopher Wilsher
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- The Old Man - June 20, 2025
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