When I saw yesterday's Wall Street Journal book review on "Finding Judge Crater" by Stephen J. Riegel I thought maybe the Journal was way behind reviewing a book I read years ago about the good judge's disappearance. No, it is another book.
The 2010 book I read was titled "The Man Who Never Returned" by Peter Quinn. It is not referred to in the yesterday's review. Mr. Quinn's book is labelled a novel, in which the author recreates the case and offers a plausible ending for the long missing jurist. Apparently, Mr. Riegel also offers a plausible ending for what misfortune may have befallen the judge as well, for surely he was met with a Jimmy Hoffa ending. We just don't know what is was. Cement? Dismemberment? Burial?
I'm hardly old enough to remember the judge's disappearance, but I do remember all the jokes that floated around in the '60s and '70's on late night television when Johnny Carson would occasionally openly wonder where is Judge Crater? "Judge, get in tough with your answering service," etc.
Peter Quinn imagines a private eye who catches the bug to try and find out about the judge as the 25th anniversary of his disappearances approaches. It is 1955, and Fintan Dunne meets a director who tells him:
"In another 25 years, Crater will be little noted and not long remembered by the legion born amid our current idyll of purposeless prosperity and moral vacuity. In fifty years he'll best be a footnote to a footnote in the history of our time. But now, as we approach the silver anniversary of his disappearance. he lives in public memory, a touchstone and reference point. If the mystery of his disappearance is solved, the masses will be immediately entertained by the sheer showmanship of it. Most important, how many will gain a sense of the past being put to rest and turn their gaze to possibilities still ahead."
How wrong that fictional director was. Because here it is 2022 and someone has written another book about the judge's disappearance, using a different literary narrative to tell the tale, but to tell it anyway.
For those who aren't old enough to know anything about Judge Crater the simple backstory is that he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court in New York by Governor Franklin Roosevelt, met two diner companions in the theater district, got in a cab that at the time was not a yellow cab, and was never seen from again.
It was the era of Tammy Hall in New York City, that vastly corrupt Democratic club that was responsible for so much graft and kickbacks in New York City. Judgeships were for sale, and it is believed Judge Crater was no exception to ingratiating himself with cash in the clubhouse to be appointed a judge.
Apparently the good judge was acting quite nervous on the day he disappeared. He cut short his vacation in Maine with his wife, telling her he had to return to the city to "straighten out a few people," came to his office, cleaned it out, emptied his safe deposit box, and had his law clerk cash two checks for him totaling $85,000 in today's currency.
His Honor was a Broadway playboy, much like the mayor of the time Jimmy Walker. There were always investigations into graft by the Tammany Hall machine by the New York DA, and 1930 was no exception.
Theories abounded. The best one might be that Roosevelt had the judge offed because he was going to attract some serious legal scrutiny and it might blow back on Roosevelt. Who knows?
But here we are, with another book on New York lore that started on a hot August 6, 1930 evening when someone got into a cab and never returned.
I might even buy the book and learn what possible ending Mr. Riegel has envisioned for His Honor. It is completely unlikely we will ever truly know.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment