instead the Lindbergh boy, “we should try to find him.”
“You want those notes? I’ll get those notes. Will that make you feel better, baby?”
She nodded.
I went up and got the notes.
When I came down she was standing in the black pool that was the discarded lounging pajamas; she wore nothing but the high-heel black slippers. The orange glow of the fire made her body look like something in a painting. A very sensual painting by an artist who wasn’t fey, if you get my drift.
She must’ve been in her mid-forties by now, but she had the body of a woman ten years younger, slender, smooth, the large breasts drooping a bit but so lovely, and waiting to be lifted.
“Come here, big boy,” she said. She held her arms out gently. “Come to mama.”
I fucked her on the Oriental carpet with my trousers down around my ankles; her stark naked, me half- dressed, there was something very nasty about it, and at the same time sweet. She made a lot of noise. I made some myself.
Then I was a puddle of flesh on her pajamas, half-unconscious, as tired as if I’d run a mile, while she was sitting, nude as a grape, in her overstuffed chair, lighting up a cigarette as she read the Cayce field notes in the firelight.
After a while, I started to put my clothes back on. She looked up from her reading and said, very businesslike, “Don’t get dressed. What’s the point? Why don’t you take the rest of your things off.”
“You mean, just sit here naked on the floor…”
“The servants have retired to their quarters. We won’t be disturbed. Now get your clothes off.” She returned to her reading.
I must’ve slept a little.
Then, having rolled over on my back, I looked up and she was standing over me. The exaggeration of the angle made her figure look more naked than naked, like looking at a living statue representing everything that made a man want a woman; I wanted to worship her and dominate her and be dominated and worshiped all at once. She smiled down at me over enormous breasts, her shape sharply outlined, the fireplace at her back. My dick stood to attention and she sat on me, easing herself down on me, with a subtle, shimmering motion.
This time we made love; fucking was part of it, but this time was far less urgent, far more sweet, and not at all nasty, churning to a slow, gradual, mutual release that lasted forever but not near long enough.
“Should I have used something?” I panted, after a while, as we lay entangled in each other’s nakedness.
“I’m not menopausal just yet, Nathan Heller.”
“Then maybe I should’ve used something.”
“Nate, if you made a baby tonight, he’s a rich little bastard. So don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t,” I said, and smiled. “Is that bodyguard, chauffeur, security chief-type job still open?”
Her smile crinkled her chin. “It’s not fair to ask me right now.”
“If it’s still open, I accept.”
“Can I get back to you on that?”
“Sure.”
I put my pants on and she put her pajamas on and I had another cocktail and she had another glass of wine and sat in my lap in one of the big overstuffed chairs while we drank.
“Those notes,” she said.
“Hmmm?” I said.
“Those field notes about Edgar Cayce. I think we should go to New Haven. I think we should look for ourselves. Follow his clues.”
“They’re not clues, they’re ramblings, delusional goddamn bullshit.”
“Cayce is not a charlatan. He’s the genuine article.”
“There’s no such thing, baby, and besides, the feds checked it out, and found nothing.”
“How much confidence do you have in the ‘feds’?”
“Well…”
She had a point. Irey had sent a man to infiltrate the Marinelli church, way back when, and that undercover ace had either not come up with the Fisch/Whately/Sharpe/Jafsie connection, or had suppressed it.
“Let’s go take a look,” she said.
I shook my head, no. “I have to go see Ellis Parker tomorrow. That’s a genuine lead. Hoffman says Parker has a real suspect.”
“It would only take a day.”
“Hauptmann doesn’t have very many of those. Besides, I looked at a New Haven map myself, back then. Those streets aren’t there. There’s no Adams Street, no Scharten Street. The section called, what?”
“Cordova.”
“There’s no Cordova section in New Haven.”
She shrugged, tossed her head. “Maybe some of these street names are inexact. Maybe they’re phonetic. Maybe they’re phonetic and a bit off, and some interpretation is required.”
“What did you say?”
She shrugged. “Maybe some interpretation is required.”
What had Marinelli said to me the other day? When I was asking his wife why she’d seen a dead baby on a hillside, in one vision, and then a child on a farm, in another?
“I tell you what, Evalyn,” I said, stroking her smooth back. “If you want to check out this ‘lead’-this stale, improbable lead-you can. You’ve got more than one car?”
“Certainly,” she said, as if everyone did.
“Got someone you can take with you? Some big lug who can share the driving and look out for you? That butler, Garboni, can he handle himself?”
“Why, yes.”
I touched her arm. “Then check it out yourself. Take my field notes. It shouldn’t take more than a day, as you’ve said. Give it a try. And we’ll meet back here either Friday night or Saturday, whenever we’re both done.”
She was smiling. I don’t remember seeing her happier.
“Thank you, Nathan. What can I ever do to repay you?”
I sipped my Bacardi. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
35
Mount Holly, New Jersey, was a sleepy little village at the base of the holly-covered hill from which it took its name. Despite some modern stores, the effect was of a place where time had frozen toward the middle of the previous century; along the broad, tree-lined streets were the simple square two-and three-story brick homes erected by the village’s early Quaker residents-solid-wood shutters and wrought-iron fences and rails. On this cheerless, chill March afternoon, the smell of smoke from old-fashioned wood-burning stoves singed the air.
I parked the Packard on Main Street right in front of the old courthouse where Ellis Parker had kept his office for over forty years. The courthouse was a two-story yellow-brick structure with green shutters, white trim and a stately bell tower-wearing the date it was built like a badge: 1796. Moving across a patterned brick sidewalk over a small flat lawn to the front door-a vast oak slab with a colonial lantern nearby and the coat of arms of New Jersey in granite just above it-I felt I’d taken a left turn into another era.
Parker was in the second-floor rear office, in back of a bustling reception area where his deputies and his secretary had desks. The secretary, a dark-haired, bespectacled matronly woman, ushered me into Parker’s presence.
The Old Fox, sitting in a swivel chair at a cluttered desk, was in shirtsleeves and suspenders, a food-flecked tie loose around his unbuttoned collar. He was as I remembered him: paunchy, bald, what little remained of his hair white, his mustache and eyebrows salt-and-pepper. His eyes were wide-set and drowsy. He was puffing a corncob
