I sat slumped in a chair, a simple metal folding chair, and my hands were free; I ran one of them up over my face and felt the stubble of beard and ran my fingers into my scalp and massaged. My Florsheimed feet were roped to the legs of the chair; another rope looped my midsection, tying me to the chair. I was in the pants of my garbardine suit and in my white shirt, my suitcoat gone, my tie gone. And needless to say, the nine-millimeter and .38 I’d stuffed in my waistband were long gone.
The glare of the overhead lamp made it hard to focus, but gradually I achieved a sense of where I was. Beyond the cone of light I sat within was a vast, cool darkness, but a certain amount of light—moonlight and perhaps electrical light—came from high distant windows. The smell of gasoline and oil and wing dope wafted through the drafty structure. Gradually, dark bulky shapes within the darkness made themselves known, like beasts crouching in jungle night shadows.
A melodramatic response, perhaps, to being held captive in an airplane hangar, but justifiable. I had knocked the shit out of a couple of Miller’s cronies and now Miller had me—or someone Miller had turned me over to had me—and the only reason I had any hope of getting out of this alive was that I wasn’t dead yet.
Footsteps echoed in the cavernous room, footsteps in the darkness, hollow clops punctuated by gun-cock clicks.
Then I could make out the outline of him, moving out from between the large shapes that were parked aircraft, and finally he stepped just inside my circle of harsh light.
“Forgive the precautions,” William Miller said in that mellow balm of baritone.
Again his lanky frame was draped in a dark undertaker’s suit, navy with a red-and-white-striped tie. It was hard to see where his gray hair began and the grayish flesh left off. He stood with folded arms, his full lips pursed in an amused smile, but his eyes dark and cold under the black ridges of eyebrow.
“Stand a little closer,” I said. “I can’t hear you.”
He waved a scolding finger my way. “Don’t make me sorry I didn’t bind your hands, as well. You did quite a thorough job on Smith and Jones.”
“Are they military intelligence? Or am I contradicting myself?” My tongue felt thick and my head throbbed with a headache almost as blinding as the glare of the overhead lamp. But I was damned if I’d let him sense that.
Now his hands had moved to his hips. “Are you aware that the FBI has a file on you?”
“I’d be flattered if I gave a damn,” I said. “Is that who they were?”
He chuckled. “I understand you once spoke to Director Hoover ‘disrespectfully.’”
“I told him to go fuck himself.”
The dark unblinking eyes had fastened on me, appraisingly. “You also prevented him from being kidnapped by the Karpis and Barker gang. And I understand, from Elmer Irey, that you were helpful last year, in the ongoing IRS investigation of the late unlamented Huey Long’s confederates in Louisiana.”
“If this is a testimonial dinner,” I said, “go ahead and roll out the cake with the stripper in it.”
He began to pace, slowly, measured steps, not nervous, in an arc that traced the edge of my circle of light. “I also gather that you’re a friend of Eliot Ness, that you aided him on various matters when he was with the Justice Department and, later, the Alcohol and Tax Unit.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular Junior G-man. You can untie me now.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said ambiguously. “You’re also a known confidant of the criminal element in Chicago. You left the police department under a cloud, and you’ve had frequent dealings with members of the Capone mob.”
“So which is it? Am I a public-minded citizen, or a lowlife crook?”
His mouth smiled faintly but there was no smile in his eyes, at all. “That’s up to you…. You mind if I make myself comfortable?”
“Please. Come sit on my lap if you want.”
Miller chuckled again. “I like your sense of humor. Very droll.”
That was a new word for it.
He stepped outside the circle into the darkness, but my eyes were accustomed enough to that darkness that I could make out his movement. He took something from somewhere and came walking back. Another metal folding chair. He placed it at the edge of the pool of light and sat. Crossed his legs. Folded his arms. Smiled meaninglessly.
“You see, we’re aware that you’re considering going to the press with what you’ve learned,” he said. “I mention these various aspects of your life and career to show why we feel you might be willing to cooperate with your government…”
It was out in the open now.
“…and, if you decline to help, to remind you how easily we might discredit you and anything you came up with.”
I laughed once but it was loud enough to echo. “So all you wanted was to talk this over with me? Is that what your friends ‘Smith and Jones’ were doing in my cabin? Looking for me? Under my bed? In my suitcase and dresser drawers?”
“Actually, we were looking for this….” And he withdrew from his side suitcoat pocket my little notebook; he held it up as if it were an item on auction. “…and anything else pertinent, any other notes or documents you might have assembled.”
Then he tossed it to me.
I caught it, and thumbed through. All the pages relating to Amy were missing.
“Everyone you’ve spoken to, we’ll be speaking to,” Miller said.
