wealthy, as you can see.”
“You’re doing all right. Better than most in these times, I’d say.”
“Now that I’ve answered your questions, Mr. Heller,” Marinelli said, folding his arms, “I would appreciate it if you would leave.”
“What about Bruno Richard Hauptmann? Was he in your church?”
“No. He never set foot there.”
“Still, Rev—I think the cops might be very interested in knowing that, back in ’32, your church on One Twenty- Seventh was a veritable hotbed of people associated with the Lindbergh case.”
Marineili shrugged. “They already know,” he said.
“What?”
“We were arrested in January 1934, Mr. Heller. On a fortune-telling charge. But we were questioned at length about the Lindbergh case, and we held nothing back. While we were indisposed, our lodgings were ransacked, an address book was stolen and so on. Typical police behavior.”
Sister Sarah was stone quiet, and motionless; eyes shut tight.
“What’s with her?” I said.
“You scared her,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She withdrew into the trance state.”
“Aw, baloney.”
“Mr. Heller, my wife is a genuine psychic.”
I got the nine millimeter out of my topcoat.
He stood and backed up, knocking over several chairs; she remained still as death.
“Izzy Fisch and Violet Sharpe and Ollie Whately,” I said, rising, “have a lot in common, don’t they? They’re all members of your church—and they’re all dead. Maybe we can have a little informal seance, and conjure ’em up.”
“What…what do you want from me, Heller? What do you want me to do?”
I inched forward, gun in hand. “Spill, you phony bastard. Spill it all or I’ll start spilling you…”
He was backing up; backing into the pulpit. “I don’t know anything!”
“Ugh,” someone said.
I turned and looked at Sarah.
She had begun to speak. “Who seeks Yellow Feather?”
“Aw, fuck,” I said, moving toward her. “I’m going to slap her silly…”
“No!” he said, moving forward. He touched my arm. “No. Whatever I am, Mr. Heller, Sarah is an innocent. And truly is genuinely psychic…”
“I can see a child,” she said, her voice a register lower than normal. “He is in a high place. There is a small house, low, with a high barn behind. The child is in the house. On the second floor. There is a bald-headed man, with pouches under his eyes. He is looking down at the child. There is a woman in the house, too. The house is on a hill.”
She shuddered, and her eyes popped open. It made me jump.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “Did I fall asleep?”
He went to her, touched her shoulder, gently. “You were in a trance, my dear.” He told her what she’d said.
“How can you see the baby,” I said, sarcasm hanging on my words like a week’s worth of wash, “when you already ‘predicted,’ accurately, its dead body on the heights over Hopewell?”
“She never said it was the Lindbergh baby’s body,” Marinelli said, his arm around his wife’s shoulder.
“First, she sees a dead baby in the heights, four years ago. And now she sees it alive, only now it’s a ‘child,’ not a baby, and it’s in some farmhouse?”
“It may not be the same child,” Marinelli said. “We can’t always know the meaning of what a medium says in a trance—interpretation is required, Mr. Heller. Will you put your gun away, please?”
He was standing there protecting his wife, who looked small and pitiful and, hell, I’d screwed her once upon a time, so maybe I owed them this one.
“All right,” I said. And I put the gun away. “Will you cooperate, if I need you to talk to somebody?”
“Certainly,” Marinelli said, summoning his dignity. “Who?”
“Governor Hoffinan of New Jersey,” I said.
He nodded solemnly.
I went to the door.
“Goodbye, Nate,” she said, quietly.
“So long, Sarah,” I said, shaking my head, and I went down to the sidewalk and stood there and shook my head some more and sighed. Evalyn, watching from the cafe across the street, came over and joined me.
“What did you find?”
