I soon received the results of the criminal records and credit checks. At first blush, there wasn’t much in them. Haupmann’s criminal history was limited to parking tickets near the Embassy and the occasional traffic ticket. He had twice pled guilty to a defective muffler beef. That was probably a moving violation that a lawyer had plea-bargained down to a charge with a higher fine but no points. Which meant that the insurance companies wouldn’t raise his rates.
Haupmann married Mary Pulaski when he was working for Chemical Bank in New York in 1971. Their eldest daughter, Kimberley, was born ten months later. Brian followed in `74 and Melissa in `78. Mary had a moving violation for failure to yield the right of way in 1983, nothing else. Kim was a senior at Yale, Brian was a freshman at Tufts. Kim had more credit card debt than she should have, but nothing that could be considered to be outrageous. There was no criminal history on the children, but then again, I didn’t have access to juvie records.
Haupmann had worked for a few other banks, mostly in New York and then in D.C. Seven years ago, he went to work for the Norwegians as a financial analyst. He must have done some public relations work or something, because he had taken the time to register as a foreign agent under the Logan Act. Hardly anyone bothered to do that; so either Hauptmann or the Norwegians were sticklers when it came to following the law.
Hauptmann’s stepfather was pretty much a solid citizen. Andrew Johnson had been born in 1921; he dropped out of college after the war started to become a Marine fighter pilot. He left as a major after the war, but he stayed in the reserves as he finished getting an engineering degree from Ohio State. Johnson went to work for Ford until he was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. That second round of combat flying resulted in a medical retirement as a bird colonel. There was a note that his first wife had died of cancer in 1947 without having had a child.
He went back to work for Ford, he retired in 1986, then was elected to the school board, where he served until he died of a heart attack three years ago, still married to Solveig.
There was nothing substantive about his mother. She had been in the League of Women Voters in the ‘70s. Other than that, she was almost invisible until she died of a massive stroke a little over a year after her husband had died. Solveig never had a child after her son by the German. Whether she didn’t want any more children or if she and Andrew had tried was not of record.
There was also no mention of whether Andrew had sought to adopt Peter. Given that Peter had been about sixteen when his mother remarried, my suspicion was that Peter had probably loathed his stepfather for a very long time.
The financials showed that Hauptmann’s family was a little stretched, what with two kids in Ivy league schools, but they weren’t in trouble. The Haupmanns had re-financed their house to cash in on equity, more than likely to meet college costs. They had two cars. No surprise, the cars were Volvos. One was five years old, the other nine years old. I’d bet that he drove a sedan and she drove a station wagon. They owned some rental properties in Manhattan that made a little more than the carrying costs. Haupmann probably considered them long-term retirement investments and, given the track record of real estate in Manhattan, he was probably right.
There was nothing unusual in their tax returns. Those are normally hard to get, but he had to provide the Embassy with a copy of his return each year. Hauger had thoughtfully sent the last five years’ worth to me. Haupmann had some investment income from his previous work in banking. Mrs. Haupmann reported income, there was a W-2 form for her from a credit union. In the signature lines of their tax returns, Haupmann had listed his job as a “financial analyst, Mrs. Haupmann listed her occupation as “secretary”.
Nothing jumped out at me from the papers. I didn’t expect that anything would. Hauger didn’t strike me as being a stupid man. If whatever had tripped his warning trigger was obvious, he would have found it.
I called Hauger’s office and spoke to him. I asked him if the Embassy had security logs of when Haupmann came and went. He said only for visitors, not for staff. He seemed a little shocked that I’d even think that they’d have a need to keep close tabs on their people. I thanked him and hung up. Cripes, if I had suspicions about someone and I was him, the first thing I’d do would be to keep track of his movements. On the other hand, employees talk and the fact that he was being watched, if even a little, would get spread around.
I took out a pad of paper, one of the yellow-lined ones that lawyers love, and made some notes. Basically, I had nothing. Most of the time, there is some loose corner or a threat that can be pulled on. There were about as many loose threads in Haupmann’s life as there were on a billiard ball. Sometimes, the way to generate something to run down was to try spooking the target and seeing what he does. But that would have violated the prime directive from my client.
On a normal case, what I would have done is reported what I had to the client and then let them decide if they wanted me to continue the investigation. No point in doing that here, for I had no doubt that Hauger already knew what I had found out.
I drove over to Haupmann’s neighborhood on a scouting run. The neighborhood dated back to around to the Twenties, when appliances began replacing servants for the professional classes. The houses were smaller than those of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. There was an alley that ran down the middle of each block of houses. The street side of the houses showed only the houses and the front yards. There were no driveways; the garages were in their back yards that faced onto the alleyways. Garbage cans stood next to many of the garage doors. The garbage trucks came down the alleys to pick up the trash. Back in the day, milkmen probably delivered to boxes in the alleys.
That trip gave me a path to take. I went back to the office, called the town’s department of public works and eventually found someone who knew the trash pickup schedule. I told the lady that I was house-sitting for friends and that they hadn’t told me the trash day.
Which was why, on the following Tuesday. I was driving slowly down the alley at three in the morning. I’d be screwed if the Haupmann family was one of those which put out their trash thirty minutes before the truck came by. I stopped and looked in their cans, they had put their garbage out. I grabbed just one bag, put it in the trunk of my car, and drove off. There were three other bags in the cans. This time, I was less interested in what was in the bag than the bag itself. I later stopped by a grocery store and bought four boxes of the identical type of trash bags.
My plan was to do a switch on Haupmann’s trash each week. In the business, it’s called a “trash cover”. It’s even legal, the courts have ruled that trash set out for pickup is deemed to be abandoned property, which is why the police can search your trash without a warrant. Still, the big trick was not to get caught. Not because I was worried about getting pinched by the cops, but because the goal was not to be detected by the target.
I went home and set up a pair of sawhorses in the garage. A sheet of plywood went on top of the sawhorses, which, in turn, I covered with a sheet of plastic. I pulled on a set of coveralls, donned a pair of rubber gloves and looked through the trash. There was nothing remarkable in the trash. There were a few boxes from a Chinese takeout, lots of Kleenex, dental floss and grungy paper towers. There were six cans of Fancy Feast and a bag of grey dirt that apparently was used cat litter.
I rebagged the stuff up and wadded up the plastic sheet. I had gotten garbage juice on my coveralls. I made a mental note to get some of the disposable impermeable coveralls used by house painters and serial killers. Hell, I might as well get some goggles and a face mask, for only the Almighty knew what I’d find the next time.
My garage smelt of garbage. Ah, the glamorous life of a private detective.
