Stolen Away

“Yes,” Curtis said, and saw me perk up, and then stopped me: “Only in the papers. I understand Gaston Means identified them as bootleggers involved in the kidnapping.”

“Did you see their pictures in the paper at the time?”

“Yes. And no, I’d never seen them before.”

“What about this guy?”

I showed him the picture of Fisch that Gerta Henkel, who was also in the picture, had given me.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. Who is it?”

“The infamous Isidor Fisch,” I said.

“You’re in the right place for a fish,” Curtis said, with his wry smile. “But not that one.”

“Commodore,” I said, rising, offering him my hand, “thank you.”

“I don’t know what I’ve said that could be helpful,” he said regretfully, taking my hand. “The Hauptmann case and mine are apparently unconnected.”

“Commodore,” Evalyn said, straightening her skirt as she rose, “they’re connected in this way: if we’re successful in clearing Richard Hauptmann, you may well be vindicated, too.”

“I appreciate that,” he said heartily. “But if you don’t mind, I’m going to continue my own efforts. If it takes the rest of my life, I’m going to clear my name through the courts.”

“I’m sure Hauptmann feels the same way,” I said. “Only the rest of his life is most likely a couple weeks.”

And we went out into the gray-blue world, where skiffs skimmed the water like ducks in a pond, and pointed the nose of the Packard north.

I had somebody to see at a nuthouse.

34

“Nathan Heller,” Gaston Means said, sitting up in bed, with his usual puckish smile, though his eyes had no twinkle, just a disturbed, disturbing glaze, and his dimples were lost in the hollows of his cheeks. He’d lost weight and his skin, which bore a yellowish cast from frequent gallstone attacks, had the loose look of oversize clothing. He wore a hospital nightgown, and was under the sheets and horsehair blankets of a bed in the prison ward in the Medical and Surgical Building of St. Elizabeth’s, a government mental hospital in Congress Heights, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. The window next to him had both bars and mesh, like the skylight near Hauptmann’s death-row cell.

Evalyn and I were standing next to his bed. Evalyn was wearing white, for a change, though the outfit was trimmed in black and her hat was white with black trim, too; she looked like a wealthy nurse.

“I never told you my name, Means,” I said.

“Ah, but you made an impression on me, Heller,” he said, and some twinkle almost cracked the glaze on the eyes. “Any man who puts a gun barrel in my mouth leaves his imprint on my psyche. Effective piece of psychology—I must compliment you.”

“Thanks.”

“I made a point to check up on you, yes indeedy. Like me, you’ve made your mark in the field of private investigation. You have certain acquaintances of influence in the underworld, as do I. You have, to put it mildly, quite a reputation, young man.”

“Coming from you,” I said, “I guess that’s a compliment.”

He looked at Evalyn warmly, placing a hand on his heart, as if about to be sworn on the witness stand, where he would of course lie his gallstones off.

“My dear Eleven,” he said, reverting to Evalyn’s long-ago code number, “you look charming. Are you lovely because you’re so rich, or are you rich because you’re so lovely? I’ll leave that question to the philosophers. At any rate, I want you to know that I harbor no ill feelings toward you.”

“You harbor no ill feelings toward me?” Evalyn said, eyes wide, her white-gloved hand touching her generous bosom.

“For testifying against me,” he said, seemingly astounded that she hadn’t known what he meant.

“You wouldn’t want to demonstrate your good will,” I said, “by telling us where Mrs. McLean’s one hundred thousand is, would you?”

He cocked his head and raised a lecturing finger. “That’s one hundred and four thousand,” he said. “And, no—that’s a point on which I’m rather fuzzy. I have a vague memory of stuffing the cash in a piece of pipe and throwing it into the Potomac. But from which pier exactly, I’m afraid it’s just not clear.”

“Right,” I said.

He began to cough; it did not seem feigned—it rattled the steel bed and his yellow face turned purple.

When the coughing subsided, and his color (such as it was) returned, Evalyn asked him, “How ill are you, Means?”

He straightened his bedclothing, summoned his dignity. “These gallstones are a damned nuisance, my dear. That’s not why I’ve come to St. Elizabeth’s, however. I’m here for serious psychiatric evaluation. I have had, on occasion, a tendency to fabricate, and to have difficulty differentiating illusion from reality.”

“No shit,” I said.

“Please, Heller,” Means said, flashing me a stern look. “There is a lady present.” He smiled at Evalyn like Friar Tuck. “All my troubles date to that fateful night of December eighth, 1911, when I fell from the upper berth of a Pullman car and struck my head.”

“Your first major insurance scam,” I said.

“Fourteen thousand dollars,” Means said, with a nostalgic sigh. “And fourteen thousand was money, then.”