THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1932
VALLEY GREEN, NEW JERSEY
I turned off the radio and started worrying about Connie Halloran again. Then I decided I was being a sap.
I didn’t realize how she’d got under my skin. As I thought about it, for the first time, really, I remembered how little we actually spoke. At least, I didn’t say much, and she wasn’t a talker herself. For the most part, we screwed and walked and went to the movies. I thought it was great, and she hadn’t complained about any of it. She was fascinated by stuff we saw on the crowded crush of city sidewalks—the charging kids, the peddlers, the pushcarts, all the tired guys looking for something to do, and the guys who had work and tried to look like they were heading somewhere important.
And she loved the movies, most of them anyway. Sometimes she surprised me by not liking the ones I thought she would, but that was OK because it was fun when she got bored. We always sat in double seats in the balcony, my arm over her shoulder, tickling her hair or her ear. Sometimes she’d brush my hand away. But if she really didn’t like a movie, she’d slip off her coat to crawl over me. We could always go to the Chelsea of course, but there was something different in those dark seats where I could look up to see the gray smoky light playing over us. There was Connie on my lap, busy little hands working at the buttons of my shirt, and me tugging her blouse out of her skirt, carefully unbuttoning it from the bottom, one button after another, my hands rubbing across her soft stomach, fingers teasing at the edges of her brassiere, feeling her lips smiling against mine as she reached back to help me. I loved the smell of the stuff she put on her hair, the feel of it against my face. They don’t make movies like that anymore.
I always tipped the usher on our way in to make sure we weren’t disturbed. We never were.
Damn, where the hell was she?
I put on a black pinstripe single-breasted and a turtleneck sweater. It was too cold in that house for a shirt and tie. When I strapped on my watch, I was a little surprised to see the time: after midnight. I slipped my brass knucks into a pocket, notepad and pen into my coat, and bounced the little pistol in my hand. That’s when I saw the stamp on the side. I held the gun closer to the light and realized that Spence had bought the piece at Abercrombie & Fitch. Well, hell, I guess he could afford the best, and even if the Mauser wasn’t my first choice, it would do until I found something I was more familiar with. I slipped it into my coat pocket.
Then I picked up my everyday stick, checked the room one more time, and went out to find something to eat.
The stairs leading to the first floor were wide and easy. The servants’ stairs at the far end of the hall were narrow, dim, and steep. I held on to the railing with my right hand, and took them carefully one at a time, leading with my right leg, the cane held in my left hand: “Good foot goes to heaven, bad foot goes to hell.” That was the way Dr. Ricardo put it. “Stairs are easy if you do ’em right,” he’d said, “but your right knee will never work the way it used to. The muscles will become stronger and support you most of the time. If you twist or put too much weight on that bad knee, it’ll fold underneath you. So keep the cane on the same step with your right foot. When you have to support your weight on a bent knee, make sure it’s your left. And when you’re going upstairs, lead with your left, your good foot. Good foot goes to heaven, get it? Going downstairs is actually harder so you gotta be real careful. Bad foot goes to hell.”
The doctor may have been a hophead but he was also right. And so Fast Jimmy Quinn, who’d been the quickest kid in the city, was reduced to going down stairs one step at a time. Thinking of Ricardo brought back the bad times and made me angry for feeling sorry for myself. That was pointless, and I thought I was done with it.
The stairs ended at a hall with the walls painted white. I could see and smell a kitchen at one end, and it made my mouth water, I was so hungry. It was a wide, warm room with a big rectangular table and half a dozen chairs in the middle.
A wiry, gray-haired woman banged pots at a stove and muttered to herself. Next to her stood an open pantry, a tall refrigerator, and a set of shelves stacked high with boxes and jars of baby food. It looked like there were a dozen different kinds.
Oh Boy sat at the table, hands warming around a mug of creamy coffee. The duffer who’d been guarding the library had a bottle of dago red and a half full glass in front of him. What was his name? Mears. And the wiry woman had to be the cook.
She turned around and nailed me with a gimlet glare.
Oh Boy stood, scraping his chair back. “Mrs. Conway, this is the guy I was telling you about, my pal Jimmy.”
She sniffed. “The gunman.” I guessed she was suspicious of anyone who came to Valley Green from the wicked city.
But I make it a rule to always stay on good terms with the cook.
I walked around the table and extended my hand. “I suppose you’re right. I am a gunman, Mrs. Conway. That’s what Spence thinks he needs right now. But I’m not a gangster. I’m just here to help an old friend. Do you think I could get something to eat, a sandwich maybe, and a thimble of Mr. Mears’s wine?”
She sniffed again but I sensed a thaw. “Of course. Any guest in this house will have the full hospitality of the kitchen. Mears!” The old gent’s head snapped up. “Another glass, if you please. We’ve some mutton left over that will do nicely.”
The wine wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
She sliced and buttered two pieces of bread and warmed them on the oven while she carved slices from a roast on the counter. As she worked, a dark-haired girl came in through a second doorway, pushing a cart full of dirty dishes and leftovers of what looked to be the same mutton.
“Constance,” Oh Boy said, “this is my friend Jimmy Quinn.”
She had glossy black hair, skin that was about the color of Oh Boy’s light coffee, and a challenging look in her eyes. I couldn’t tell about the rest of her under that frumpy black maid’s dress.“Constance . . . ?” I held out my hand and she took it.
“Nix. And it’s Connie.”
Just what I needed, another Connie.
Mrs. Conway set down my sandwich and went around to the trays. One of them held a single pink rose in a narrow vase. She lifted the metal warmer lid from the plate and made a tsk-tsk cluck. “She barely touched her supper. Whatever is the matter with that girl?”
As she turned back to the sink, Oh Boy grabbed an untouched slice of devil’s food from the tray before Mears could get to it. I tucked into the sandwich, carefully keeping myself from bolting down the excellent eats. Even so, as I was finishing, Mrs. Conway sliced more bread and mutton and made a second.
She poured tea for herself and sat at the table. “You know they’re saying that gangsters from the city committed that unspeakable act on the poor little Lindbergh baby.” Her eyes widened. “Or maybe it was that Purple Gang from Detroit or even Scarface Al Capone himself, ordering it from jail.”
“I don’t know anything about the Purple Gang or Capone,” I told her, “but it wasn’t any of the mugs I know in New York.”
“And how can you be so sure of that . . . if you’re not a gangster?” Her tone was sharp. Connie Nix, the maid, followed the conversation closely.
“I used to be a bootlegger. Now I run a speak.” I saw the question in the younger woman’s eyes. “A speakeasy. It’s not a fancy nightclub or casino. It’s just a place where a guy can get a drink of good whiskey and feel comfortable bringing his girlfriend or his wife. Or even a girl can come in alone and nobody will say boo. A nice place.”
Mrs. Conway sniffed even more disapprovingly. A woman alone in a bar, the very idea!
“But I do know some of the guys you’re talking about, the guys you read about in the papers, ‘racketeers,’ ‘the underworld.’ And they wouldn’t do anything like that with a kid. They’ll bust each other and they’re not too careful about bystanders, adults who happen to be in the way. But they wouldn’t go after a baby. Bad for business.”
Everybody knew what happened to guys who hurt kids.“And even if they were gonna do something so stupid, they wouldn’t come way the hell out here to do it, pardon my language.”
“Is that so? Well, what do you think about this?” Mrs. Conway ruffled through a stack of newspapers.
“‘Racketeer Murdered in Union City,’” she read aloud. “And over in Boonton, two men arrested on ‘statutory charges,’ and we know what those are, caught with two underage girls in a bungalow at the lake. Stanley Pawlikowski and Joseph Scerbo—Polacks no doubt, or worse. At least they didn’t name the poor little girls who’d been led astray.”
“Those girls weren’t led too far astray,” said Connie Nix. “I read that story. They ran away from the North Jersey Training School. I don’t think they did anything they hadn’t done before.” She had a slight accent I couldn’t place.
Mrs. Conway paid no attention to her. “And look at this: not one but three, mind you, three fires of mysterious origin in Cedar Knolls. And here, another gangster, Izzy Presser, murdered in a car owned by a woman lawyer. Imagine that! A woman lawyer—but then they were both Jews.” She rummaged through more papers. “That sort of thing happens near any big city. But here? When I read this last week, a chill went straight up my spine, it did. Just look.”
She read aloud again: “‘Young Daughter Strangely Killed.’ That’s the headline.”
She looked around to make sure she had everyone’s attention. “‘Three-Year-Old Girl Caught on Branch of Tree, Virtually Hanged. The unusual facts connected with the death of three-year-old Patricia Thomas Holmes, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Holmes, a prominent New York broker who resides at his country estate in Peapack, became known today. The little girl died on Wednesday.
“‘According to the police, little Patricia, dressed from head to feet in a warm woolen suit, attempted to climb a tree. Her nurse, standing nearby, failed to notice the child’s actions. Suddenly a scream was heard as the horrified nurse saw the fearsome spectacle of the little girl hanging from a branch of the tree. A part of her suit had caught on the branch, tightening around her throat.
“‘The inert body was immediately taken into the house but efforts to resuscitate the child proved in vain. She died a few minutes later.’”
Mrs. Conway put down the paper and pointed at me like all of that had been my fault. “That’s the mad world we live in today. Don’t tell me a gangster from New York or Detroit might not come here to steal a child. We’ve been cursed ever since Miss Mandelina was taken from us.”
The silence stretched out uncomfortably. Finally I said, “OK, I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t know Miss Mandelina.”
Something moved at the edge of my vision. A cat, a thick-bodied brindle that had crept out of a wooden box against the wall, stretched and sat beside me, leaning against my leg. It stared with a hunter’s patience at the dark space beneath the stove. Mr. Mears poured more wine, keeping the bottle close this time.
Mrs. Conway busied herself with another cup of tea. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
Oh Boy said, “She was Flora’s sister.”
The cook sat and silenced him with a sharp look. “Miss Mandelina was Flora’s older sister, and you have never seen two girls more devoted to each other. When they were younger, the darlings were inseparable. For those little girls every day was a new adventure, both being so active and curious. You’d have thought they were boys, they were so full of energy, chasing each other from one end of the house to the other. And they were simply mad for horses from the day they could walk.”
The woman’s face fell, her tone darkened. “That was the problem. Horses. It’s five years ago this autumn that Miss Mandelina had her accident as she and Miss Flora were riding between here and East Hanover. We don’t know exactly what happened because no one saw it. I always suspected they were racing; it wouldn’t have been the first time. They were arguing with each other over racing at lunch. Miss Flora was ahead, I’d wager, when Miss Mandelina’s horse ran past her. Flora rode back and found Mandelina on the ground unconscious. She was an excellent rider but even excellent riders can fall. Miss Flora did the only thing she could, and dashed home for help.” She sniffed back a tear before she went on.
“We were so afraid that the child had broken her neck or her spine, and then thankful when we learned that wasn’t so. But she was unconscious for three days, and the whole house was on a virtual death watch. Doctors came from New York, discussing concussion, shock, and then coma. That poor child just wouldn’t come around. And even when she finally opened her eyes, she was never the same. For the first year or so, she was unusually quiet and still. And then she seemed to get better, more like her old self. But then she became . . . erratic. She laughed at the wrong things at the wrong time. Or she’d burst into tears for no reason. And then came the anger, the rages when the least little thing could set her off. And finally the wild stories. She accused her own father of nightly attacks in the most horrible way. And then she claimed that Mr. Evans tried to force himself on her.”
Oh Boy nodded. “Yeah, she said that Clark Gable, Babe Ruth, and Bing Crosby came into her room one night.”
“I loved those girls,” Mrs. Conway muttered into her teacup, so low that almost no one heard. “I loved them more than their own mother.”
“What happened to her?” Connie Nix asked.
“More doctors, the poor dear.” Mrs. Conway paused, on the verge of tears. “Dementia praecox, they said. Completely untreatable. Incurable, too.
“Dr. Cloninger worked with her more than any of the others did. He came here every day, trying different combinations of drugs, and finally took her to his sanatorium.”
Oh Boy shivered. “He gives me the creeps.”
He was interrupted by the chiming of a loud electric bell. I looked up at the source of the sound and noticed a grid of numbered squares sitting high on the wall. The light on the number three shone brightly.
No one moved until Mrs. Conway tapped the old man’s arm. Startled, he looked up from his wineglass. “Mr. Mears, it’s Mr. Spencer for you.” The old fellow stood, clearing his throat and pulling at his shirtfront before he shuffled out.
Mrs. Conway looked at the clock by the bell grid and frowned. “It’s late for the master to ring. Oliver, did he say anything about going out tonight?”
“Yeah,” Oh Boy said, and got up.
“Then you’d best see that the big car is ready.”
Another bell sounded and the number-two light came on, then a third bell with the number-one light.
“Aye, that’s it then.” Mrs. Conway stood up too. “Nix, see to Mrs. Spencer and the baby. You, gunman, make yourself useful. Check on the baby.”
The brindle cat stayed where it was.
Back in the library, Catherine Pennyweight was on the telephone. She said, “Yes . . . Fine . . . I’ll take care of it,” and hung up.
“There you are. Our pilot called about rough weather coming our way; he wants to leave as soon as possible.”
Ten minutes later Oh Boy brought the Duesenberg around and loaded Spence’s leather bags into the trunk. Flora, in a fur-trimmed jacket, fussed over the baby that Connie Nix carried. She wore a light coat over her uniform but didn’t seem to mind the cold night air. Spence and his mother-in-law were in deep conversation. I sat in front with Oh Boy.
We drove for twenty minutes along dark country roads. I thought we were going to Newark until we came out of the trees to an open, foggy field, with the road leading to a small collection of buildings and a runway lined with lights. Oh Boy steered past the first place to a tall hangar behind it. A large monoplane with three engines rolled out onto the tarmac. It had a shiny, squarish aluminum body beneath the wide wing. The nose pointed skyward but the belly was low, barely clearing the ground. Even idling, the sound of engines hammered the air. Three guys in Pennyweight Petroleum coveralls busied themselves around it. I stared in absolute wonderment. I’d never seen a plane that close on the ground before, and I had no idea they were so damn big. When I got out of the car, I could smell gasoline, exhaust fumes, and motor oil, and I felt the engines’ vibrations through the soles of my shoes.
A Cadillac with New York plates was parked nearby. Oh Boy opened the back doors and the trunk of the Duesenberg and carried Spence’s bags to an open door in the side of the plane. Two men, who had to be lawyers in their expensive overcoats, got out of the Caddy and huddled with Spence before they climbed aboard. Another chauffeur lugged their bags. Spence returned to his car to embrace Flora. He briefly took his son from Connie Nix and kissed him.
Then he grabbed my shoulder. “Keep my family safe, Jimmy. That’s all I ask.” He was yelling against the noise of the engines, and his voice sounded different. I saw that he blinked back tears before he turned and hurried to the plane.
The big plane lumbered into the darkness at the far end of the runway so slowly I couldn’t believe it would ever leave the ground. But then the throb of the engines became much louder, and we watched as the glittering silvery thing turned around and rumbled back down the runway. The tail lifted slowly and the plane floated up into the night.
I was about to get into the front seat of the Duesenberg again when Mrs. Pennyweight gestured for me to sit in the back. I took the jump seat beside a polished wooden cabinet, facing the three women and the little boy. Flora fished a cigarette out of her purse. For a moment she seemed to be waiting for me to offer a light. Then her mother pinched her arm and demanded, “Give.”
Flora winced, handed over a smoke, and they both fired up. Connie Nix shifted farther into the corner.
“Walter will be gone for at least five days, probably more. I believe that we’re safe enough during daylight in our home,” Mrs. Pennyweight told me.
“But at night . . .”
“Precisely.”
“I’m used to night work. Flora, can you handle a gun?”
Her eyes widened in alarm, and her mother shook her head.
“Miss Nix?”
She cut her eyes to Mrs. Pennyweight, who nodded.
“Yes, a rifle. I’m not as familiar with pistols.”
Mrs. Pennyweight said, “We have guns. Walter refurbished the shooting gallery.”
I almost smiled. Of course. Spence would.
Oh Boy stopped in front of the house. Flora and her mother got out first and Flora immediately let out a shriek so loud it hurt my ears. Connie Nix held the baby close and sat tight. I hustled out and saw what had Flora so upset. It was a ladder, a tall ladder leaning against the side of the house and reaching up to an open second-story window. A white curtain was fluttering through it. I guess I should have stayed there, but I told Oh Boy and Connie Nix to lock the doors, and then followed Mrs. Pennyweight into the house. Flora kept screaming.
The older woman detoured into the library for the Purdey. I went straight upstairs. On the second floor I turned away from the hallway that led to my room and gimped to the balcony that overlooked the main room. There were more rooms on the other side. I thought that the closed door straight ahead led to the room with the open window. I had the little Mauser in my mitt when I threw open the door. It was dark and something smelled god-awful bad. Mrs. Pennyweight shoved me aside and hit the light switch.
In that first second when the light came on, I saw all the blood and what I thought was a dead baby. Gorge rose in my throat and I fought it back. The room was a nursery with a bed and an open cabinet with stacks of diapers, blankets, baby clothes, and more cardboard boxes of the baby food I’d seen in the kitchen. There was a waist-high table next to the open window. Sticky blackish red blood had soaked through a white blanket on the table and pooled on the floor beneath it. It also covered a doll, a headless doll that was pinned to the table with a knife through its belly. Bloody handprints were smeared on the wall, the windowsill, and the gauzy curtain.
Even across the room, I could see that the knife was a cheap piece of work with a fake mother-of-pearl handle. It folded down to about five inches long, easy to hide and easy to throw away. Just about every cheap mug who couldn’t afford a piece carried something like it. At one time, so had I.
The doll and the blood and the slaughterhouse smell got to Mrs. Pennyweight the same way they got to me. I heard her sharp gasp when she saw it too. She recovered quickly and her expression settled into a hard, angry frown.
Sheriff Kittner and Deputy Parker showed up a few minutes after she called them. We were waiting outside. The sheriff looked like he’d been rousted from his bed or a barstool. He was boozy and bleary in a rumpled blue suit. Parker was still in his spiffy uniform. The sheriff wandered around with a flashlight at the foot of the ladder, pointing out things to Parker. Mrs. Pennyweight and I got bored watching them and went inside for a drink.
The lawmen found us in the library later.
The sheriff cleared his throat and held his hat in his hands as he made his report. By then he’d pulled himself together and tried to sound like he knew exactly what he was talking about. “I make out two sets of footprints outside. One of them goes out into the woods. The way I see it, they abandoned the ladder and took off when they saw your car approaching. They went down the service road around back to the driveway. There are fresh tire tracks there and we found something—a bloody steel pail.
“We talked to the staff. They were downstairs and didn’t hear anything. According to Mrs. Conway, the doll isn’t one of the boy’s toys, and Dietz says the ladder doesn’t belong here either.
“Now, you say that you were gone for an hour. Where were you—”
“That’s right, about an hour,” Catherine Pennyweight said before he could go on, and he knew not to ask where she’d been.
Deputy Parker took over, sounding embarrassed and unsure. “Mrs. Pennyweight, I’ve taken a look at the pail we found and I’m pretty sure it came from Bartham’s Butcher Shop. He uses it for slop.”
She gave him a sharp look.
“I hear talk in town,” he continued. “Some of the merchants are unhappy. Well, they’re more than unhappy, some of them, about payment. When they’ve had enough to drink, they talk about coming out here and getting what they’re owed. Have any of them bothered you?”
She stared hard at both of them, letting them stew for a long moment before she snapped back, “I will not hear this kind of talk in my own home. Yes, it is true that the household finances have been a bit disorganized since my husband’s death, but everyone knows that the Pennyweights pay their bills. We have been the best customers that many of these men have ever had and if they are displeased in any way, I will be happy to take my business elsewhere. But I refuse to believe that any of them would do something this vicious, particularly Mr. Bartham.”
The sheriff said, “We’ll see what the state police think.”
“No,” she interrupted. “I will not have them trampling around my property. That’s simply out of the question.”
“But Mrs. Pennyweight,” the sheriff protested, “we have to let them know about this. It’s part of the Lindbergh investigation, I’m certain.”
“No,” she repeated, more firmly. By then, she’d lost patience with the man. “There’s nothing more to be done here tonight. You may go now.”
They left.
So, what did it mean? The first moment when I’d seen that damn doll and thought it was a real baby still churned my stomach. I didn’t believe that the Lindbergh kidnappers had come out to Spence’s place to steal little Ethan. Maybe, I thought, the deputy was right and somebody had bloodied up the room and the doll to scare Mrs. Pennyweight. But if that were so, all he’d done was make her really mad. Seemed more likely to me that it was just a threat, a damn nasty threat that I had to take seriously. But who’d done it and why?
For the moment, I didn’t really care. I went downstairs to the kitchen, where I found Mr. Mears and asked him to take me around and show me all of the doors that gave access to the house.
Back up in the main room were the big double front doors. They were always kept locked unless visitors were expected. Smaller single doors off the conservatory and dining room opened onto porches and were always locked. Another set of wide double doors led to a ballroom. He opened them and I saw a wide, dim cold room with several sets of French doors on the far wall. The wind whistled through them, making the ballroom colder than the rest of the place.
He led me upstairs to the second floor. There was a porch off of Mrs. Pennyweight’s rooms but other than that, no outside doors. Mears had already closed and locked the shutters of the nursery and the empty guest rooms. Servants’ quarters were on the third floor. They had no outside access and small windows.
Downstairs in the kitchen, there was only one door. Oh Boy was sitting at the table. I asked him to show me the guns.
The gun room was at the far end of the basement, behind a wooden door thick enough to muffle the sound of gunshots. Like the kitchen, it had whitewashed walls. They were covered with mounted animal heads along with photographs, mostly of a smiling Mr. Pennyweight, his guns, and the dead trophies he’d shot with them. There were also pictures of a girl about twelve years old with a long, ruddy face. I guessed this was the older sister, Mandelina. She wore hunting clothes and posed with a deer or elk with a wide rack of antlers. She held a lever-action Winchester rifle, her father beaming proudly beside her. I studied the picture more closely. The resemblance to Flora was strong. But Mandelina seemed much more confident, almost cocky. You could tell that she was only a few years away from becoming a real looker.
Oh Boy took a key from a peg and unlocked the doors of a glass-fronted gun case. The racks inside held a collection of expensive shotguns and rifles. A second case held muzzle-loaders and older military pieces. Beside them was a workbench for cleaning the weapons and reloading ammunition.
Oh Boy opened a drawer and said, “Here’s the pistols.”
The drawer was lined with green felt, with spaces cut out for a dozen or so handguns. These were the familiar guns of my youth: Police Positive, Browning Hi-Power, and my own favorite, the Detective Special snub-nose .38. Another Mauser, the big broom-handle model, was in the center of the drawer. The largest cutout was empty. It was a simple angled shape meant for a Colt .45 automatic. I guessed that Spence had taken it on his trip.
I walked to the dark shooting range and hit one of two switches on the wall by the counter. Lights came down the narrow passageway. At the far end, a spotlight was aimed at a paper target already peppered with holes, suspended from an electric pulley-and-chain system. I snapped on the other switch. A motor whirred and the target glided back to me. I started counting the holes and stopped at thirty. There was a coffee can on the counter with a dozen or so .45 shell casings at the bottom. More littered the floor of the range. Spence had been practicing.“Oh Boy, what do you know about this trip?”
“Jeez, Walter’s been working on it for almost a year now. We’ve been going into the city to meet with the company lawyers two, three times a week. Sometimes Saturday, too. Leave first thing in the morning, don’t get back until after dark. Oh boy, do I hate those days. And the shysters have been coming out here, too. I talk to the other drivers, who say this is quite the big deal. I’ll be glad when it’s over, that’s for sure.”
I went back to the pistol drawer and found the cutout for the little Abercrombie & Fitch Mauser. Before I put it away, I offered it to Oh Boy.
He shook his head and frowned. “No, I don’t like guns no more. You know that.”
Some guys go a little nuts over guns. They’ve got to have the biggest, shiniest, loudest piece, wearing fancy shoulder holsters and such, making sure everybody sees what they’re carrying, particularly women. You’ve got to watch out for guys like that. Oh Boy was just the opposite. Had been for years and he hadn’t changed.
I took out the Detective Special. The compact weight was familiar but the grip felt different. It didn’t have any friction tape or rubber bands holding it together. I opened the cylinder. Five rounds with an empty chamber under the hammer. If I was going to be carrying a pistol again, I wanted it to be something I was comfortable with. Probably wouldn’t bring down an elk, but it didn’t clump up my coat pocket.
We locked the gun cases and turned off the lights. Oh Boy said, “It brings back some memories, don’t it?”