I walked him in there, hand never leaving his shoulder.
“Okay,” I said gently, “why exactly did you call me?”
He was next to me on the couch, sitting slumped, staring downward, legs apart, hands clasped. He was a big man — not fat: big.
He shrugged. “I knew you worked on the Lindbergh case.”
Yeah, and hadn’t that worked out swell.
“I was a cop, then,” I said. “I was the liaison between the Chicago PD and the New Jersey authorities. And that was a long time ago.”
“Well, Ken mentioned it once.”
“Did you call Ken before you called me? Did he suggest you call me?”
Ken was the attorney who was our mutual friend and business associate.
“No. Nate... to be quite frank with you, I called because, well... you’re supposed to be connected.”
I sighed. “I’ve had dealings with the Outfit from time to time, but I’m no gangster, Bob, and even if I was...”
“I didn’t mean that! If you were a gangster, do you think I would have called you?”
“I’m not understanding this, Bob.”
His wife, Norma, entered the room tentatively; she was a pretty, petite woman in a floral-print dress that was like a darker version of the wallpaper in her little girl’s room. Her pleasant features were distorted; there was a wildness in her face. She hadn’t cried yet. She was too upset.
I stood. If I’d ever felt more awkward, I couldn’t remember when.
“Is everything all right, Bob? Is this your detective friend?”
“Yes. This is Nate Heller.”
She came to me and gave me a skull-like smile. “Thank for you coming. Oh, thank you so much for coming. Can you help us?”
“Yes,” I said. It was the only thing I could say.
Relief filled her chest and filtered up through her face; but her eyes remained wild.
“Please go sit with Jane,” Bob said, patting her arm. He looked at me as if an explanation were necessary. “Jane and her little sister are so very close. She and JoAnn are only two years apart.”
I nodded, and the wife went hurriedly away, as if rushing to make sure Jane were still there.
We sat back down.
“I know you’ve had dealings with the mob,” Keenan said. “The problem is... so I have I. Or actually, the problem is, I haven’t.”
“Pardon?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I only moved here six months ago. I’d been second-in-command in the New York office. In Albany.”
“Of the OPA, you mean?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I guess I don’t have to tell you the pressures a person in my position is under. We’re in charge of everything from building and industrial materials to meat to gasoline to... well. Anyway. I didn’t play ball with the mobsters out there. There were threats against me, against my family, but I didn’t take their money. I asked for a transfer. I was sent here.”
Chicago? That was a hell of a place to hide from mobsters.
He read the thought in my face.
“I know,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “but I wasn’t given a choice in the matter. Oddly, none of that type of people have contacted me here. But then, things are winding down... rationing’s all but a thing of the past.” He laughed mirthlessly. “That’s the irony. The sad goddamn irony.”
“What is?”
He was shaking his head. “The announcement will be made later this week: the OPA is out of business. They’re shutting us down. I’m moving over to a Department of Agriculture position.”
“I see.” I let out another sigh; it was that kind of situation. “So, because the note said not to notify the authorities, and because you’ve had threats from gangsters before, you called me in.”
I had my hands on my knees; he placed his hand over my nearest one, and squeezed. It was an earnest gesture, and embarrassed hell out of me.
“You’ve got to help us,” he said.
“I will. I will. I’ll be glad to serve as an intermediary, and I’ll be glad to advise you and do whatever you think will be useful.”
“Thank God,” he said.
“But first we call the cops.”
“What...?”
“Are you a gambling man, Bob?”
“Well, yes, I suppose, in a small way, but not with my daughter’s life, for God’s sake!”
“I know what the odds are in a case like this. In a case like this, children are recovered unharmed more frequently when the police and FBI are brought in.”
“But the note said...”
“How old is JoAnn?”
“She’s six.”
“That’s old enough for her to be able to describe her kidnappers. That’s old enough for her to pick them out of a lineup.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Bob.” And now I reached over and clasped his hand. He looked at me with haunted, watery eyes. “Kidnapping’s a federal offense, Bob. It’s a capital crime.”
He swallowed. “Then they’ll probably kill her, won’t they? If she isn’t dead already.”
“Your chances are better with the authorities in on it. We’ll work it from both ends: negotiate with the kidnappers, even as the cops are beating the bushes trying to find the bastards. And JoAnn.”
“If she’s not already dead,” he said.
I just looked at him. Then I nodded.
He began to weep.
I patted his back, gently. There there. There there.
3
The first cop to arrive was Detective Kruger from Summerdale District station; he was a stocky man in a rumpled suit with an equally rumpled face. His was the naturally mournful countenance of a hound. He looked a little more mournful than usual as he glanced around the child’s bedroom.
Keenan was tagging along, pointing things out. “That window,” he said, “I only had it open maybe five inches, last night, to let in the breeze. But now it’s wide open.”
Kruger nodded, taking it all in.
“And the bed-clothes — JoAnn would never fold them back neatly like that.”
Kruger looked at Keenan with eyes that were sharp in the folds of his face. “You heard nothin’ unusual last night?”
Keenan flinched, almost as if embarrassed. “Well... my wife did.”
“Could I speak to her?”
“Not just yet. Not just yet.”
“Bob,” I said, prompting him, trying not to intrude on Kruger but wanting to be of help, “what did Norma hear?”
“She heard the neighbor’s dog barking — sometime after midnight. She sat up in bed, wide awake, thought she heard JoAnn’s voice. Went to JoAnn’s door, listened, didn’t hear anything... and went back to bed.”
Kruger nodded somberly.
“Please don’t ask her about it,” Keenan said. “She’s blaming herself.”
We all knew that was foolish of her; but we all also knew there was nothing to done about it.
The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory team arrived, as did the photographer attached to Homicide, and soon the place was swarming with suits and ties. Kruger, who I knew a little, which was why I’d asked for him specifically when I called the Summerdale station, buttonholed me.
“Look, Heller,” he said pleasantly, brushing something off the shoulder of my suit coat. “I know you’re a good man, but there’s people on the force who think you smell.”
A long time ago, I had testified against a couple of crooked cops — crooked even by Chicago standards. By my standards, even. But cops, like crooks, weren’t supposed to rat each other out; and even fifteen years later that put me on a lot of shit lists.
“I’ll try to stay downwind,” I said.
“Good idea. When the feds show, they’re not going to relish havin’ a private eye on the scene, either.”