Stolen Away

then faded when he saw his get-outa-jail plan go south. He’s not going to…excuse me for even bringing this up…but he’s not going to murder your boy and have a capital rap hanging over him.”

“So where would that leave Charlie?”

“Well, maybe with the people Capone contracted to do the kidnapping. Some bootleg bunch really might have the boy. They might be playing out the ransom hand, too.”

“In that case,” Lindbergh said, perking up, “maybe the real gang is trying to contact me…through Commodore Curtis, or even Means!”

I swigged the beer. “Anything’s possible in this crazy enterprise.”

He nodded, raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’ve been in contact with Commodore Curtis. And he says he’s in contact with his bootlegger friend, ‘Sam.’”

“You want me to check Curtis out? Not to mention Sam.”

He shook his head curtly. “No. I’ll follow that lead myself. All I’d like from you is to get a bead on this son-of- a-bitch Means. What about Mrs. McLean?”

“I’ve been calling her home. She’s away on a trip somewhere-due back late tonight or early tomorrow. The butler wouldn’t say, of course, but my hunch is Means has her chasing her tail.”

“I feel terrible about her hundred thousand dollars.”

“How do you feel about your fifty?”

He smiled a little, like a mischievous kid. “Worse than I do about her hundred thousand. Would you go down and see her?”

So here I was again, in Washington, D.C., in the pleasant if quirky company of Evalyn Walsh McLean.

“I know I look like hell,” she said, sitting up. She lit herself a cigarette from a gold box on a nearby glass- and-mahogany coffee table; she used a matching gold decorative lighter. Exhaling smoke grandly, she said, “Forgive the robe. Even though I was expecting you-and you know how pleased I am to see you again-I just couldn’t make myself spruce up, somehow. Nate, I’ve been through the mill.”

“What mill, exactly?” I sipped a Bacardi I’d made myself. “Where have you been, Evalyn?”

Her smile was self-mockingly thin. “To hell and Texas, and various purgatories between. After Far View was deemed inappropriate by the ‘kidnap gang’-as I’m sure you’ll recall, darling-Means arranged for a new ‘drop point,’ at Aiken.”

“Aiken?”

“It’s not a condition, dear. It’s a town in South Carolina. I have a place down there-it’s where my son Ned is in school. Means told me the gang was willing to attempt a delivery of the ‘book’ there, so I went down with Inga and, not wanting my son to walk in on this Gaston Means-directed tragicomedy, rented a little cottage. Means came down and had a look around, seemed to approve of the setup, said he’d let the gang know I was there. The next morning he reappeared, and informed me dramatically that one of the kidnappers wanted to meet with me-that very afternoon!”

I had gotten up and gone to the liquor cart and was pouring her some sherry. “Face-to-face with one of the kidnappers, huh?”

She arched an eyebrow ironically. “Not just any kidnapper-the mastermind himself: the ‘Fox.’ At two o’clock that afternoon, a car stopped in front of the cottage-Means walked in, all smiles, followed by a stranger right out of Little Caesar.”

I gave her the sherry. “How so?”

She painted an image in the air. “He was tall, thin, wore his hat low over his forehead, wore an expensive- looking camel-hair overcoat. He kept that coat on all the while-hands jammed in his pockets, as if he had a gun in either pocket. But he spoke well-he seemed to be an individual of some polish and education.” Her face looked angular and lovely in the fire’s shadowy flickering. “The Fox said he wanted to look through the place, make sure there were no hidden microphones. Means and Inga stayed in the living room, while I showed our guest around. He looked in closets, under beds, wiping off everything he touched with a handkerchief. Odd.”

“What made that odd?”

“He was wearing thick gray suede gloves at that time.”

“Oh.”

She inhaled smoke; let it out. “After he’d searched the house, the Fox asked if he might have a look around the grounds; I consented, sent him off alone. When he returned, he told Means that he was satisfied I was playing it straight with the gang. Then the Fox turned to me and said that within forty-eight hours, the ‘book’ would be handed over to me, personally, on a side street not far from the cottage.”

“Yet somehow it never happened.”

She smiled ruefully. “The arrangements were typically Means-baroque. Four automobiles would be waiting, two on one side of the street, two on the other, the child would be handed over in the middle, with machine guns trained on me from every car.”

I had to smile. “Means does like his melodrama.”

“I do wish you’d been there, Nate. I wish you’d stayed with me through all this.”

“So do I. I would’ve grabbed that goddamn Fox and skinned him. Then we’d be somewhere.”

She nodded, putting out one cigarette, getting another going. “Well, the Fox may have spoken like an educated man, but he was as big a scoundrel as Means. Before he left, the blackguard made a veiled threat about my children, should I ‘cross’ him. Then he left, and Means left with him.”

“And what happened, to prevent the ‘drop’ from taking place, machine guns and all?”

“Means arrived the next day, and said it was all off. Things were in an awful mess, he said. The gang members were quarreling amongst themselves. Lindbergh had apparently paid ‘fifty grand’ through that other negotiator…”

I sat up. “What? What’s this?”

She raised both eyebrows in casual surprise. “Didn’t I ever mention that? Means said, oh, weeks ago, that Lindbergh was working through another negotiator, when of course Gaston Means was the only appropriate negotiator….”

Jesus. Had Means known about Jafsie, weeks ago? And had he known about the ransom payment in St. Raymond’s Cemetery, before the papers guessed it?

Her expression sharpened, now, in response to my reaction. “From, what I’m seeing in the press,” she said, “about lists of marked bills, that much of his story is true, isn’t it? There was a ransom payment, through another negotiator?”

I nodded.

“Means claims the gang was arguing about whether to turn the baby over to Lindbergh, through this other negotiator, or to me, through Means. Making matters worse, they were squabbling over how exactly to divide the spoils.”

“Where was the baby supposed to be, at this point? Aiken?”

“Not specifically. The boy could have been brought there, easily enough, Means said. He said the child was now being kept on a boat, at sea.”

“A boat? At sea?”

“Yes. Means claimed a fast launch was keeping the kidnappers informed as to what was going on, on land. He felt the boat was in the vicinity of Norfolk. Nate-what’s wrong? You’re white as a ghost.”

I was shaking my head. “Means knows too much. He knows about things he should have no way of knowing.”

Was there really a “boad Nelly”? Was Commodore Curtis, of Norfolk, really in touch with the kidnap gang, via the rumrunner “Sam”?

“All I know,” she said, “is that Means told me that the Aiken delivery was off-that the child was being taken by water and land to a point near Juarez, Mexico.”

“Mexico?” My head was reeling.

“He said the gang felt safer out of the country. They felt if they were ever caught, that they’d be torn limb from limb.”

“That much is the truth, anyway.” I gulped down the rest of the Bacardi. I could’ve used another, but I didn’t