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By midnight five agents had gathered at the Ritz Carlton. The Buchalters and “Miss Allen” were staying in Rooms 1519 and 1520, overlooking the ocean. When questioned, the hotel’s assistant manager told agents the party had reserved beach chairs for the weekend. The next morning several agents donned bathing suits and took seats on the beach behind the Buchalter party, which consisted of Buchalter and his wife, a young boy, and three other men “of Jewish extraction.” There was a second woman with them, but she wasn’t a blonde; in their report the agents described her as having “henna colored hair which she wore in a Greta Garbo fashion.” It was Mathias, her hair newly dyed.

Monday morning around eleven, after an uneventful weekend, the Buchalters checked out. Along with Mathias they stepped into a black Lincoln sedan outside the hotel. As the Lincoln pulled away, the New York agents were behind it, two agents driving in a Packard, another agent following in a chauffeur-driven limousine. They trailed the Buchalters north, toward Manhattan. When the FBI car overheated, only the chauffeured limo remained behind the Buchalters’ Lincoln as it headed into downtown Newark and stopped at the Robert Trent Hotel. A bellman unloaded several bags. The Buchalter family, Mathias, and an unidentified man stepped out of the car and walked inside.

After a few minutes the Buchalters emerged from the hotel and stepped into the Lincoln. There was no sign of Mathias. The agent inside the limousine had to make a split-second decision: follow the Lincoln, or follow Mathias. Assuming Mathias had checked in to the hotel, he chose the Lincoln, trailing it just far enough to be certain it was heading for the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan. At that point, the agent told his chauffeur to return to the Robert Trent. Reaching the hotel, he hurried inside to make sure Mathias had checked in. To his horror, she hadn’t. According to the assistant manager, she had loitered inside the lobby for twenty minutes, then left.

A half-dozen agents descended on the hotel and questioned bellmen, taxi drivers, and anyone else they could find. It was no use. Vi Mathias had vanished, and this time the FBI couldn’t find her.

Behind closed doors at the Urschel mansion, Gus Jones slowly drew from Charles Urschel every memory he could retrieve of his captors. Jones’s manner was soothing. Though Urschel insisted he had nothing to offer—he had been blindfolded—Jones asked him to proceed on the premise that when one sense is removed, remaining senses grow more acute. As the hours wore on, Urschel realized that Jones was right.

He remembered passing through an intense rainstorm about an hour after leaving Oklahoma City. He recalled stopping at a filling station where an attendant had made a remark about “broom corn,” a crop grown mostly in southern Oklahoma. He remembered the car crossing a long wooden bridge. Jones thought he knew the bridge. It crossed the Red River near Ardmore. It meant Urschel had been taken to Texas.

He was taken to a farm, he was certain. Roosters crowed. He could hear pigs squealing. He had been given water to drink in a battered tin cup. Well water, he guessed. He could hear the well’s pulley squeak. The water tasted strongly of minerals. When his blindfold loosened after several days, he was able to snatch glimpses of the shack where he was held. Jones made a sketch. Urschel nodded. It was close.

Jones pushed for more. An airplane passed overhead twice each day, Urschel remembered, in the mornings around nine and the afternoons at five or six. Jones’s interest grew. Airline schedules could be checked. Finally, Urschel remembered a terrific rainstorm the Saturday night before his release. He had asked his guard—a young man, he thought, not one of the kidnappers—whether it was a tornado. “No,” the man had replied. “But they have a lot of those down in Oklahoma.”

Jones smiled. “That was a plant,” he said. “You weren’t north of Oklahoma, you were south of it.” He leaned forward. “Now I want you