Stolen Away

She nodded. She had a coy, little smile; cat that ate the canary.

A tall, skinny bespectacled guy about thirty with pleasant, angular features, wearing a lumpy fedora and a rumpled raincoat under which a blue bow tie peeked, came strolling in. He was blond with a wispy mustache and a smirk.

“You’re Mrs. McLean?” he said, grinning, taking off the hat.

“That’s right,” she said, extending a gloved hand. “Thank you for coming, Mr. O’Neil.”

“O’Neil?” I said.

She nodded, smiling at me. “I took the liberty of asking Mr. O’Neil to stop by. Called him this morning from the hotel. I told him we had an exclusive for him on the Hauptmann case.”

“You’re Tim O’Neil, with the Daily News?” I asked.

“That’s right,” he said, and he extended his hand.

I decked him.

He sat on the kitchen floor, rubbing his jaw, arms and legs pointing every which way, eyes as confused as a drowning kitten’s. “What the hell was that for?”

I leaned over him; both my hands were fists. “That was for faking that fucking phone number. In the closet in the other room?”

His face went slack, his eyes filled with fear and something else. What? Remorse?

“Oh Christ,” he said. “Who are you?”

“The guy who’s going to beat the ever-loving crap out of you, if you don’t ’fess up.”

On his ass, he scuttled back into a corner between kitchen cabinets and stove, like the world’s tallest, skinniest rat. “Listen…I don’t want any trouble…this isn’t gonna pay off for anybody…”

I went over and grabbed him by his raincoat and hauled him off the floor and started slapping him around; his glasses flew off. Evalyn was watching, doing a nervous little jump every time I slapped him. But she liked it.

“Stop!” he said. “Stop!”

I stopped. I was starting to get embarrassed. The guy wasn’t fighting back at all.

“Stop,” he said.

He was crying.

“Jesus,” I said, softly. I let go of him.

He sat on the floor and cried.

“I didn’t hit him that hard,” I said to Evalyn.

She also seemed embarrassed. “I don’t think you did…I think it’s something else.”

I got down on my haunches and said, “You want to talk, Tim?”

Now all three of us were embarrassed.

“Fuck,” he said, wiping tears and snot off his face with big flat hands. Then said to Evalyn, “Excuse the language, ma’am.”

I gave him my handkerchief. He wiped off his face, blew his nose. Awkwardly, he started to hand the hanky back to me.

“It’s yours now,” I said, and helped him to his feet. Evalyn handed him his glasses; they hadn’t broken.

“You…you’re right,” he said, slipping on the specs. “You didn’t hit me that hard. What’s your name, anyway?”

“My name is Heller. I’m a detective from Chicago.”

“What are the Chicago cops doing in this, at this late date?”

“I’m private. Working for Governor Hoffman, and Mrs. McLean, here. You did write Jafsie’s number on the wainscoting, didn’t you?”

He nodded. Sighed heavily. “I got myself a real nice front-page scoop out of it. Got myself a big fat byline. But I never dreamed it would be one of the key goddamn pieces of evidence they used to nail that poor son of a bitch.”

“I never met a reporter with a conscience before.”

“I never knew I had a conscience, till you started slapping me around.”

“So it bothers you.”

“More than I even knew, apparently. I’m sorry. Blubbering like a baby like that…it’s really humiliating…”

“Will you come forward?”

“No,” he said.

“No!” Evalyn said, dumbfounded. The blood, and the sympathy, drained out of her face. She clutched my arm. “Give him the Chicago lie-detector test, Nate!”

“Huh?” O’Neil said. His eyes were large and scared.

“Easy, Evalyn,” I said. “I’m not so young and reckless, anymore.”

Besides, my gun was in my suitcase.

I put a firm hand on O’Neil’s shoulder; he was taller than me, by perhaps three inches, but I outweighed him twenty-five pounds. “You want to run that by me again?”

“I’m not coming forward. I can’t.” He held out his open palms like a beggar. “Precisely ’cause it did get into the trial, as evidence. I might go to jail. I could lose my job. I would be in very deep shit.”

“You are in very deep shit,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You can beat on me…incidentally, I’m prepared to fight you back, now…but it’s not going to change things. You’ll be the one in jail, for assault. And I’d sue Mrs. McLean out of some of that money she obviously has to burn.”

He was right. There really wasn’t much I could do.

“But if you’re investigating Bruno’s case,” he said, “trying to cheat the executioner out of his fun, at the last minute…I can be of help.”

“Oh?”

He nodded vigorously. His face was haggard, dark circles under the eyes. “Check the record. I’ve dug up any number of stories, since the Jafsie phone-number scam, bolstering Hauptmann’s position.”

“You mean you’ve been working to clear him?”