Stolen Away

He plucked a letter opener from the mess on his desk and cut the cord on the package; the paper came loose and revealed green bills on top. Then he plucked from the package a tag, which he handed toward Evalyn. She took it. Read it. Handed it to me.

It said:

GASTON B. MEANS

Property of Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean

“I put this on the package,” he said, taking back the tag, “for your protection. Should I meet my death in this endeavor, your money will be returned.”

I knew just eyeballing it that that package wasn’t big enough to hold one hundred grand in small currency; but I would have to tell her later. And was his desk drawer the “safe” he’d told me the money was locked away in?

“I’ll resume negotiations,” he said to her, “if you wish.”

“Do that,” she said curtly. “I’m leaving Far View and returning to 2020. Keep me informed—we’ll work out a new drop point. But if you’re not on the level, you’ll finish your days behind bars.”

She sounded as melodramatic as Means; but she wasn’t lying.

“Eleven,” he said somberly, “you saw that fine boy of mine downstairs, didn’t you? The very thought of him would prevent me from doing anything wrong—that boy’s my life, now.”

We left Means and his messy den and his neat house and fine boy and we sat in the powder-blue Lincoln, talking.

“You think he’s lying, don’t you, Nate?”

“I know he’s lying. The trouble is, with a con man like him, he’s probably building on some truth. He’s had a few kernels of inside information—the question is, where has he gotten it? How close is he to the actual kidnappers?”

Her mouth was a thin determined line. “I have to follow this out to its conclusion.”

“Why don’t you let me put the Treasury boys on this? Tracking this cellmate of his, the ‘Fox,’ if he exists, would be a snap.”

“No! No. That might spoil everything…the child might suffer…”

She sounded like Lindbergh now.

“These T-men are the boys who got Capone,” I said. “They can…”

“No. If you do, I’ll call Ogden and quash it, Nate, I really will.”

“Ogden?”

“Ogden Mills. Secretary of the Treasury Mills.”

Now she really sounded like Lindbergh.

“Okay, Evalyn. Okay. But I’m afraid this is where I get off. I’ll drive you back to Far View, but my advice to you is to turn Means over to the authorities. You might still get your money back, and some information about the kidnapping, to boot.”

“No,” she said, firmly.

I spoke through a strained smile. “You know what today is, Evalyn? April first. April Fool’s Day.”

“That’s cruel.”

“You said it yourself: it’s a cruel universe.”

“Promise me, Nate. Promise me you won’t interfere.”

“Evalyn—”

“Promise me. Promise!”

She touched my cheek; her eyes mingled hope and despair.

“All right,” I sighed. “All right.”

So I drove her back to Far View. We didn’t speak. We weren’t mad at each other, exactly. But we didn’t speak.

In the second-floor room, where Evalyn and I had sat waiting for ghosts the night before, I packed my clothes and my gun and left the room to the poltergeists. As I came down the stairs, Inga said I’d had a phone message while I was away and handed me a small folded piece of paper; I slipped it in my pocket without glancing at it, as Evalyn was approaching.

“Why don’t I drive you and Inga back to 2020?” I asked.

“I can drive myself,” Evalyn said, without rancor. “I don’t really need a chauffeur, you know. It’s just another of the empty luxuries in my life.”

“Evalyn—I know you mean well in this. But you’re in over your head.”

“It’s only money, Nate. If I can save that child…”

“Evalyn…” I looked around; we were in the kitchen, alone, waiting for Gus the caretaker to collect me and take me to the train. I gave her a long, lingering kiss.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

She touched my face again.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

As I went out to get in Gus’s pickup truck, she stood watching me from the back doorway, like another ghost in that damn haunted house.

In the pickup, I unfolded Inga’s message; it was from Breckinridge.

It said: “Jafsie has heard from John.”

20

I sat in a comfortable chair near a crackling fire emanating from a marble fireplace in an expensive, high-ceilinged library worthy of Evalyn Walsh McLean’s Massachusetts Avenue mansion; but I was not in Washington, D.C. I was in Manhattan, in a stately graystone townhouse just off Central Park on East 72nd, the New York residence of the late Senator Morrow, Lindy’s father-in-law.

Nearby, at a long mahogany conference table, sat Elmer Irey and Frank Wilson, the dour frick-and-frack IRS agents whose mutual round black-rimmed glasses and black suits and dark ties made them humorless mirror images. Wilson was the more clearly restless of the pair, drumming his fingers, searching his balding scalp for clues of hair. Irey was as immobile as the face on a coin. But both were worried.

So was I.

We were waiting.