“Be specific.”
“Eighth floor.”
“Good. More names.”
“That’s all I know. I swear to God, that’s all.”
“Hassel and Greenberg are the kidnappers?”
“They engineered it. They didn’t do it themselves. They used their people. People who were selling beer to Colonel Lindbergh’s servants, and the Morrow house servants.”
“Was one of the servants in on it?”
He nodded. “Violet Sharpe—but they just used her. The little bitch didn’t know what she was doing.”
I slapped him. Hard. I slapped him again. Harder.
“What…what else do you want to know?” he asked, desperately.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just want to slap you around some, you fat fuck.”
His cheeks were red and burning and tear-streaked; he looked pitiful, on his knees, the world’s biggest altar boy, caught with his hand in the collection plate.
“If Hassel and Greenberg aren’t for real,” I said, “you’re going to take the lie-detector test again, Means—and you’re going to flunk.”
“They’re…they’re for real,” he said, thickly.
“If you say a word to them, or anyone, about our conversation, I’ll kill you. Understood?”
He nodded.
“Say it,” I said.
“If I say a word to anybody, you’ll kill me.”
“Do you believe me?”
He nodded; there was still red spittle on his face.
“Good. Are you really in contact with the kidnap gang?”
Without hesitation, he nodded.
“Is the boy alive?”
Without hesitation, he nodded.
“Do you know where he is?”
Now he hesitated, but he shook his head, no.
“Who is the fellow ‘the Fox’?”
He swallowed. “Norman Whitaker. A friend of mine. Old cellmate.”
“He’s not in on the kidnapping?”
“No. He’s with me.”
“What’s his function?”
Means shrugged. “Color.”
“Color. What about Evalyn’s dough?”
“I still have it.”
“You still have it.”
“I swear. I really have been trying to negotiate the return of that dear child.”
“Stop it or you’re going to get slapped some more. What’s the extra thirty-five grand for?”
He pressed his hands over his heart. “That was true, all of it…I
I smacked him along the side of the head with the nine millimeter; he tumbled over, heavily, like something inanimate, and the furniture around him jumped.
But he wasn’t out, and it hadn’t cut him; he’d be bruised, that was all.
“All right,” I said, kicking him in the ass. He was on his side. He looked up at me with round hollow eyes. There was something childlike in his expression. I gestured impatiently with the gun.
“Get up,” I said. “Go home. Talk to fucking no one. Wait for Evalyn to call.”
He got up, slowly. His face was soft, weak, but the eyes had turned hard and mean. If he was like a child, in his endless self-serving fabrications spun from fact and fancy, it was an evil, acquisitive child, the kind that steals another kid’s marbles, the kind that steps on anthills.
I’d gone to great lengths to prove to him I was dangerous; but despite his tears and cowardice, Means remained goddamn dangerous himself.
I gave him his hat and, sans slugs, his gun.
