Stolen Away

“That would be my pleasure.”

“But I have something else I’d like you to do, first.”

“Oh?”

“Would you take a trip to Washington, D.C., for me? I want you to meet this Mrs. McLean.”

“The society dame who’s hired Gaston Means to play private eye?”

“That’s right. Apparently Mrs. McLean has put together one hundred thousand dollars in fives, tens and twenties to give Means to give the kidnappers. I’d like you to find out if she’s spending her money wisely.”

16

Washington, D.C., was as cold and gray as its granite memorials; what I’d heard about our nation’s capital and cherry blossoms in the springtime remained a rumor. I’d taken the train from Princeton, arrived at Union Station and let a taxi carry me out into the bleak wintry afternoon. No point in trying to maneuver a car around these streets myself; I’d had a look at a D.C. map back at Hopewell and knew it was hopeless: wheels within wheels with stray spokes flung here and there.

As the taxi drew away from the train station plaza, a modest little collection of fountains and monuments and statues overseen by the Capitol dome, I straightened my tie and pulled up my socks, thinking about the million-some bucks I was about to call on.

Million-dollar destination or not, it was just a fifty-cent ride, including tip, down Massachusetts Avenue to Dupont Circle. My cabbie, a redheaded kid who looked Irish but had a Southern accent, pointed the sights out to me lethargically as we crawled through traffic as thick as any in Chicago or New York. I was less interested in the Government Printing Office or the row of red-brick buildings “built for Stephen Douglas back in the 1850s” than the stream of pretty young female office workers getting off work, pouring out of the various government buildings like coeds heading for the big game. Here and there tattered unshaven guys selling apples or just looking for some buddy to spare them a dime leaned in the shadows of massive, unheeding buildings they probably helped pay for, back when they were making a living. Soon those buildings briefly gave way to colored tenements, until poverty again slipped into the shadow of limestone and white marble. After about the sixth statue of some distinguished dead guy—a Civil War hero or Daniel Webster or whoever—I informed the cabbie, “The commentary won’t buy you a bigger tip. Do I look like a big spender?”

Actually, I almost did. I was manicured, cleaned, pressed, pomaded, perfectly presentable from my topcoat to my toenails. I had clean underwear on and everything. Lindbergh had slipped me fifty extra bucks for expenses, and asked me to pack my bag so I could stay as long or short as this took.

The cabbie drew up in front of a building slightly smaller than Chicago’s City Hall. I knew there had to be some mistake.

“This isn’t it,” I said, half out of the cab, half in.

“Sure it is,” he drawled. “2020 Massachusetts.”

“But I’m supposed to be dropped off at a residence. This is a damn embassy or something.”

The building before me was a four-story brick building that looked regal in a vaguely Italian way, its walls curving, black latticework and white columns dressing the many windows; but despite the gingerbread, the joint seemed institutional, somehow, a cross between a villa and a public school—a big public school.

“Who are you callin’ on?”

“Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean.”

“That’s where Mrs. McLean lives, all right,” he said. “You figure her for a bungalow, bud?”

The black iron-spike fence was unlocked. Detective that I am, I found my way up a winding walk through an evergreen-landscaped yard to an elaborate inset pillared front porch, sort of a portico that got punched in. Massive dark-wood-and-cut-glass doors were framed by smooth, round, green-veined marble columns. Wearing clean underwear suddenly seemed less than impressive.

The butler who answered the doorbell certainly wasn’t impressed with me, clean underwear or not. He was tall, beefy, pale, cueball-bald and perhaps fifty, with a lumpy blank face and contempt-filled eyes.

I didn’t wait to be asked in. I was used to servants who didn’t like me, and brushed by him, saying, “Nathan Heller. Mrs. McLean is expecting me.”

That display of cockiness got knocked right out of me as I moved into a reception area you could’ve dropped my residential hotel on Dearborn in and still done plenty of receiving.

“Your coat, sir,” the butler said. “And your baggage?” Clipped British tones, but this bloke was no Brit.

I climbed out of the coat, handed it and the traveling bag to him, trying not to scrape my jaw on the floor as I took everything in. The reception hall rose four stories to a vast, stained-glass window that bathed the rich dark-wood room in golden dappled light. An impossibly wide staircase rose under the golden window to a landing where two marble classical statues did a frozen dance; on their either side, a stairway rose to promenade galleries on successive floors.