Stolen Away

A woman answered—the woman I’d seen in the photograph inserted in the letter to Bernice Rogers Conroy; she was in her early forties, wearing a crisp pink-and-white checked housedress with a white apron, on which she was drying her hands. She was dark blonde, apple-cheeked, and had blue eyes almost as lovely as the janitor’s back in the Sheridan six-flat.

“Can I help you, young man?” Her smile was pleasant, her tone sincere.

“Excuse me for bothering, but I’m having some car trouble. Is your husband home?”

“Why, yes. He’s out back. I can get him…?”

“Would you please? I’m sorry to be such a bother.”

“Step in, step in.”

I did. She went away, still wiping her hands on the apron; I heard the back door open. I slipped my hand in my raincoat pocket, gripped the nine millimeter. I put my back to the wall just inside the door, so that I could see the front door as well as where she’d gone into the kitchen. A stairway rose before me. The house was simple and wellkept, wood floors, floral wallpaper. The furnishings were not expensive, but they were relatively new; there was a spinet piano in the living room. In the midst of the depression, these people had been set up out here on the farm with nice, new things.

A scarecrow of a man in coveralls came in through the kitchen, his wife following dutifully behind him; he was wiping grease from his hands with a rag. In his mid-forties, he was bald with pouches under his eyes—like Sarah Sivella had said. His somewhat weathered face was that of the man I’d seen in the photo.

He extended his freshly cleaned hand and smiled. “I’m Carl Belliance. I understand you’ve got a little problem.”

“No,” I said, and I showed him the nine millimeter. “You’ve got the problem.”

His face tightened and I thought he was going to jump me but I caught his eyes and shook my head, no. He sighed, got off the balls of his feet, and went limp, arms dangling, head lowered. He backed up a pace. His wife had raised a hand to her mouth.

“What do you want, mister?” he said. “We got no money in the house.”

“Can it. I’m here for the boy.”

They glanced at each other; she seemed near tears. He shook his head, as if to say, It’s no use.

“I figured it would catch up with us someday,” Belliance said softly.

“Why? Who do you figure I am?”

He smiled with one side of his face and it wasn’t really a smile. “Does it matter? You’re either a cop, or you’re not a cop. And if you’re not a cop, somebody’s decided to take everything away from us.” His mouth tightened into something bitter. “We’ve done what we were told. We never made a peep. But I suppose it was hoping for too much just to live our damn lives in peace.”

“Who are you, Carl?”

His eyes twitched. “I’m nobody. I’m just a farmer.”

“Well, if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll tell you. You used to be a rumrunner for the Outfit. Repeal was on the way and you’d be out of work, soon. But you were a good man. Trustworthy. So somebody big—somebody named Capone maybe, or maybe somebody named Ricca—asked if you wanted to go straight. Go into farming. Drop out of that life.”

He looked at me blankly, but there was respect in his eyes. “You’re pretty good, mister. Are you a cop?”

“Of sorts. Let me guess something else, while I’m at it. You two are a childless couple. You’ve been married for maybe twenty years, maybe twenty-five, but there was never an off-spring. You wanted a family. With your background, adoption was tricky. But then, finally, like a miracle—somebody gave you a son.”

He took a small step back and slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulder; she pressed close to him, weeping quietly. “That’s right,” he said. “And we love our son, mister. And he loves us.”

“That’s just swell. You do know who the boy is?”

“Yes, we do. He’s Carl Belliance, Jr.”

“You got the ‘junior’ right, anyway.”

Madge Belliance, lip trembling, said, “We’ve never said that…never said that name. Never spoken it.”

I raised an eyebrow, the gun still trained carefully on them. “Charles Lindbergh, Jr., you mean? Where is he?”

“He’s at school,” she said. She was trying to summon some defiance, but it wasn’t playing.

“When does he get home?”

“You’re not going to hurt him…” she wondered, gripping her husband’s shirt; he patted her.

“Hell no, lady. I’m giving him back to his real parents. When does he get home?”

“It’s a long walk,” she said. She licked her lips. “In half an hour, maybe. We never did anything wrong, mister.”

“Ever hear of a guy named Hauptmann?”

“Yes,” Belliance said, and he raised his chin. “We hear he was a goddamn extortionist and is getting what he deserves.”

“Oh, is that what they told you? That’s a good one. You got a hired hand?”

“Not now,” he said. “Some of the year I do.”

I glanced quickly around the place. “You seem to be faring pretty well, here, despite hard times. What are you raising on this farm, besides a stolen kid? Berries? Corn? Never mind—I don’t really care. Here.”

With my left hand, I extended the roll of electrical tape toward Madge Belliance. She took it, with reluctance and confusion.