Kron met Grace and said he would see what he could do in terms of investigating the Hungarians. He had a scar and wore wool suits set in dark plaid. After a few weeks on the job, Kron’s successes had gotten him noticed. He was contacted by a man named Michael Tandlisch, who owned a restaurant on Fifth Street. Tandlisch gave Kron a long smile and told him that there was three hundred dollars for him if he could procure some court files. Kron looked puzzled. Tandlisch told Kron to meet his man, Stanley Bagg, at the Astor Hotel. Kron, five foot four and unassumingly quiet, nodded. They set the date for April 6.
When Kron walked into the Astor, he sat down and smoothed out the white tablecloth with his hands. His eyes searched the corners of the room with the barest possible movement. Bagg walked in, sat down, and proceeded to offer Kron five hundred dollars (he had raised the total) if he would give him the names of witnesses in a few cases currently before the federal grand jury. Kron knew he meant the Schwartz peonage case and that Bagg and his partner intended to bully the witnesses in order to keep their business operational. Five hundred dollars was an enormous amount of money for a private detective working for the government.
Across town, Tandlisch was at another restaurant when two federal agents moved in to arrest him. One waited outside while the other circled through the back. Tandlisch spotted him and made a mad dash through the front open window. He landed in the arms of the other agent on the street. Back at the Astor, Julius J. Kron motioned with his head and two officers stood up from nearby tables and placed Bagg under arrest.
When Kron was hired, there was some debate about his background and history. He was a bit of a rough character for government work. But when he got that first offer from Tandlisch, he went immediately to the Secret Service and set up the sting, refusing a bribe that would have made most people weak. Grace liked that, so she kept him on. She knew that there would be plenty of work for both of them. She had heard secret rumors of an even worse place down south somewhere. If only she could find it.
6
Army of the Vanished
March 1917
While Fourth Branch detectives looking for Ruth Cruger tracked down long-shot leads and busted down doors as far away as New Jersey, the detectives who first caught the case, Lagarenne and McGee, were still making time in the neighborhood of Cocchi’s store. While standing outside the motorcycle shop, Lagarenne looked up to see STUDIO PORTRAITS lettered on the window on the second floor of the building on the opposite side of the street. After trudging to the top of the stairs and rapping on the door, they were greeted by Frank Lee, a dapper bohemian with long hair and a goatee. Lee told the detectives that he was a photographer and artist. He primarily took photos for magazines, he said. The detectives wondered if he took pictures of girls. They asked if he had seen Ruth Cruger.
“I saw a young man walking eastward on 127th Street,” Lee said, “keeping pace with a taxicab which was going slowly near the curb beside her. He beckoned to her and she walked toward him. He motioned toward the cab, and she hung back for a moment, but then entered.” The detectives looked at each other. This was the first corroboration of Henry Rubien’s cab story. Lee didn’t have any photos, which was their next, obvious question.
“I saw a girl who was under twenty years old,” Lee admitted, smiling. “A red-hot looking baby doll.” She was “smartly dressed in a long, dark coat, carrying a small package in her hands.” He paused. “Just as she reached the corner a taxi stopped and a young fellow—maybe twenty or so—got out and tipped his hat. She looked around quickly, like she was afraid someone would see her, and then got into the cab. The fellow got in again and then the cab went north on Manhattan.” Lee said that man looked rather pale.
“I don’t miss much,” Lee said. “Mostly I’m just looking and pretending to work.” He looked down at the floor. “Business isn’t so good.”
The detectives asked the photographer to describe the pale man. “The man was about thirty years old,” Lee told them. “Above middle height, and good-looking, with a round face. He was well dressed. His overcoat and hat were dark.” The detectives listened very carefully.
Meanwhile, John T. Dooling, the district attorney, was questioning people in the relative comfort of his office. He talked to Rosalind Ware, Ruth’s classmate at Wadleigh, who was escorted to his office by her mother. Rosalind and Ruth were best friends and used to walk home together after school.
“Ruth told me everything,” Rosalind said.
Dooling had also brought in Miss Shelley, who worked the telephone board at the Crugers’ apartment building. Miss Shelley testified that Ruth had called Rosalind only two hours before she disappeared. Rosalind said this was not true. Her mother agreed.
Looking at the handwritten phone records, Dooling saw two calls made in quick succession. The first call was indeed to Rosalind Ware’s home between 1:07 and 1:09 in the afternoon. The second call was from 1:10 to 1:11 to the Kappa Sigma fraternity house in the Bronx. According to her sister, Ruth had left the apartment at 1:30.
When Rosalind left, her mother tarried, and passed Dooling a list of four names: Many, Butler, Deroka, and Ward. They were all college boys, she said, hurrying out the door. Dooling knew that interviewing these boys might be hard on the Cruger family, since it could bring up private troubles. Some of these boys belonged to socially prominent families. But Dooling didn’t care. He felt that things were starting to tighten. When detectives got to the fraternity house, a student named Harold Buse said that he remembered the call. Ruth had wanted to talk to a boy named Seymour Many. He wasn’t in, so Ruth hung up.
“Ruth was a mighty fine girl,” said Harold. “I am sure she has not run off with any one. She came here to dances often, and was popular. She always appeared here with Seymour.” The detectives looked for Seymour Many, but he was busy all day at a sports contest at Madison Square Garden. He was captain of the track team.
The next morning, Dooling arrived at his office early to find that someone was already waiting for him. The young man—athletic but stocky—couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. He said that his name was Seymour Many and that he was a student at NYU. He was from Mount Vernon, Ruth Cruger’s old neighborhood, and had been a good friend of hers for a long time.
They sat down in the office. Seymour told Dooling that he had taken Ruth—“Miss Cruger,” as he called her—to the Wadleigh High School alumni dance on January 2. They also went ice-skating together quite frequently. Even though Ruth had moved to Harlem, they kept in touch by writing letters. “We were confidential friends,” Seymour said. When Dooling asked if he could see the letters, Seymour said that he had thrown them all out.
“I always destroyed them,” he said, “like I did with all letters from girls.” Seymour looked away for a moment. He said that he was probably the last person in the world to talk to Ruth on the phone before she disappeared.