purposes, that was good.
“Sure I remember Mrs. Rogers,” he rasped. He was younger than thirty and older than time, a stooped lunger with four days of stubble, a sweated-out gray T-shirt and baggy blue pants with suspenders. He had a chipmunk overbite yellow as piss, no chin and eyes that were as clear and blue as a summer sky.
“She sure had a good build,” I said, and grinned.
“She sure did! She got in trouble, though.” He narrowed his inexplicably beautiful blue eyes and leaned forward, to get confidential; his breath smelled of Sen-Sen. “There was a shooting upstairs, back in ’32. She was involved in a kidnapping, I heard. But she got off.”
“Did she stick around after that?”
“A while, is all. A month, maybe. Then one night, all of a sudden, no notice or nothing, she lit out. Took her clothes, but she left the furniture. It wasn’t a furnished flat, neither.”
I imagined some of that furniture was in this very room. “Did she leave anything else behind, besides furniture? Personal effects? Like letters, for example?”
He coughed for a while; I waited. Then he said, “No, sir. But I remember, a week or so after she left, a letter did come for her. She didn’t leave no forwarding address. Sometimes people do that, you know. Move on without no forwarding address.”
“What do you do with their mail, then? Return it to the post office?”
He shook his head, no. “I keep it in a box. In case they should ever come for it.”
“I’d like to see that letter.”
“Mister, no offense, but that badge you showed me—it was a private badge, wasn’t it?”
“Right. Would you like to see some more identification?”
And I showed him a five-dollar bill.
“That’s very official-looking,” he said, taking it, grinning wolfishly, sticking it into a deep pocket. “You stay here.”
He opened a door and I caught a glimpse of the basement laundry room and storage bins for each apartment. The door stood open, but I couldn’t see him. I could hear him, rustling in there, ratlike.
He soon returned, baring his yellow overbite. He was holding a cigar box in one hand, like a church usher with a collection plate. In the other hand was a letter, which had been opened, but then so had several dozen more in the cigar box.
I reached for the letter.
He pulled it back; his mouth was tight and pouty. “I want more ‘identification.’ I could get in trouble with the landlord for this kind of thing.”
“I already gave you five bucks, pal.” I grinned at him again, but it wasn’t at all friendly. “And your landlord isn’t going to give you the kind of trouble
“No,” he said, shaking his head, coughing some more. “I mean it. I’m taking a big risk, even talking to somebody like you. Mr. Ricca has strict rules.”
That stopped me.
“Mr. Ricca? That’s the landlord’s name?”
“Owns the building,” he said with a somber nod. “And I hear he’s connected.”
I’d heard that, too.
I gave him another five dollars.
I didn’t look at the letter until I was sitting in my car. My hands were trembling as I fished out the single page; I’m not ashamed to say so.
It was from a woman named Madge. No last name, but the envelope had a return address: M. Belliance, Three Oaks, Michigan, a rural route.
Cayce had mentioned a woman named “Belliance” as guarding the child. Son of a bitch, I was a believer. I couldn’t keep my goddamn hand from shaking, but I managed to read the letter.
Dear B.,
The boy is doing fine. He is over his cold. He and Carl are getting along famously. Carl will be a good daddy. No more boats and worry for us. This farm life is going to be a real nice change.
It’s sweet of you to ask about the boy. He is not hard to love. I can see how you got attached to him so quick. If you know what’s best, you ought to tear this up. The picture too, but I couldn’t not send one.
Madge
And there was a photo. A snapshot.
Cayce had been right again, in a roundabout way. I had found the child on “Scharten Street.” At least, this picture of a child.
A child perhaps twenty-one months old, a beautiful toddler in a little playsuit with suspenders over a T-shirt; he had light curly hair and a dimpled chin, and stood between, with his either hand held by, a thin-faced man in a cap and bib overalls, and an apple-cheeked woman in a calico print housedress; behind them seemed to be a farmhouse. The man and woman were smiling, the little boy was frowning, though he might have been squinting in the sun.
He was Charles Lindbergh, Jr.
