FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1932
VALLEY GREEN, NEW JERSEY
After Dr. Cloninger’s ambulance took away the ex-Yale assholes, and Cameron and Flora had tottered upstairs, I tried to find Connie Nix. She wasn’t in the kitchen or anywhere downstairs, so I figured it was best to leave her alone. It was well after midnight anyway. I returned to the library and Ethan Pennyweight’s private reading room, where I got a clean glass and had a tot of brandy.
The ornate lamp cast a warm glow, and the chair sagged comfortably as I sat down to enjoy the drink. I could understand why even a rich guy like Spence’s father-in-law would want this little secret place. As I was studying one of his French picture books, a small movement in the shadows distracted me. It sounded like the rats I remembered at Mother Moon’s. I tilted the heavy glass lamp and the light revealed another part of the wall, a part that was made of sheet metal. I got up and gave it a tap. It made a hollow sound. A moment later I heard a vibration and then a grinding whir. I was looking at the outside of the dumbwaiter shaft that rose from the kitchen to the first floor and the family’s rooms upstairs. We had a larger one like it at the speak, to move stuff from the basement.
I returned to the good brandy, sharp and smooth at the same time, and wondered if Connie Halloran had moved into the Chelsea yet. Probably. Should I call to find out? Probably not. Wait till tomorrow, during the day. Should I call my speak to find out if she was working that night? No, they’d be busy. No sense bothering anybody. But that was an excuse too. I was afraid if I called, I’d find that she wasn’t there, and that Frenchy and Marie Therese didn’t know where she was.
And then Connie Nix’s face replaced Connie Halloran’s, and I remembered how she stood so close to me in that same little room just a few hours earlier. I finished the brandy and went upstairs.
The doors to all the bedrooms were closed. Still, I could hear drunken laughter coming from Flora’s room, and saw light under the door to Catherine Pennyweight’s suite. I knocked. She told me to come in.
Baby Ethan was kicking around in his crib. Mrs. Pennyweight was in her chair with a cup of tea. She was watching the baby intently.
“You going to keep the kid up here or do you want me to move him to the library?” I said by way of hello.
“He’ll stay with me tonight. Something’s not agreeing with him. Flora and Cameron probably got him too excited this afternoon.”
“OK, but you ought to know that I’m probably going to have to go back to the city soon. There are some things I need to take care of.”
“Yes, I understand you had some unpleasantness with a policeman. It will be fine, I’m sure.” She wasn’t really paying any attention to me. She didn’t care about anything but the kid.
As I left Mrs. Pennyweight’s room, Cameron Rivers swung open Flora’s door, and stood with one shoulder leaning on the frame. She wore a thin robe. The light reflected off the mirrored walls behind her was strong enough to reveal high, sharply pointed breasts, and a less focused pubic blur in the gap between her thighs. Her crooked leer was supposed to be sexy. Flora’s laughter rang out, “Oh, Cammy, stop that. You are simply too wicked for words.”
I tried not to smile as I walked toward the stairs. The woman blocked my way.
“You know, you were quite rude with Titus and Teddy. They were just having a little fun. We’re trying to cheer up dear Flora now that her husband has so callously abandoned her. Don’t you think a young woman like her needs friends to brighten her spirits?”
She leaned forward, fingered the edge of my lapel, and gave me a big-eyed look. Flora peeked around from behind her and giggled. I guess they thought I’d be embarrassed by standing so close to a half-naked woman as she caressed my chest. I returned the favor and gave her tit a friendly honk.
She squealed. Mrs. Pennyweight threw open her door and said sternly, “What’s going on out here?”
Flora and Cameron laughed harder and jumped back into her room. Mrs. Pennyweight gave me an angry stare.
It was quiet for the rest of the night. The trouble started just before dawn.
In the library, I heard faint noises from upstairs. Some movement, doors opening, quick footsteps. The house had thick walls, so at first I didn’t make anything of it, and then the sounds stopped. A minute or two later, a door slammed and I heard a woman’s loud scream from upstairs. It was a young woman, either Flora or Cameron. I grabbed my stick and was out in the big room when Flora yelled, “He’s gone! They’ve stolen little Ethan!”
She ran to the balcony railing and looked down, terrified and sobbing. “He’s gone, he’s gone. They’ve taken him!”
In that moment, I felt fear so pure and strong it cramped my stomach. Fuck, I’d failed. The goddamn bloody doll was for real. Spence had asked me to do this one thing, to protect his son, and I’d completely screwed it up, and there was nothing I’d ever be able to do to make it right. Ethan wasn’t my kid but I was responsible, and right then, maybe I understood a little of the horror that the Lindberghs were going through. But for me, it only lasted for that short terrifying moment.
Before I could even move toward the stairs, Mrs. Pennyweight appeared at the far end of the room. She came up from the basement by the servants’ stairs, moving fast, with something in her arms. I hoped like hell it was the kid and saw that it was.
She ignored her hysterical daughter and said sharply, “Quinn, come with me. This is an emergency,” as she hurried past me to the front door.
We got outside as Oh Boy was swinging the big Duesenberg around a Pierce-Arrow that had been left out front. Oh Boy skidded to a stop, jumped out in his shirtsleeves, and flung open the back door. We piled in and were thrown back when he stomped on the gas.
She had the kid wrapped tightly in a blanket, so at first all I could see of him was a pale blue face, so blue it was scary. His eyes were closed and he was coughing or hiccupping and his breath was shallow.
“He’s in distress,” she said as she pulled the blanket away and twisted around to face me on the seat with the baby kicking on her lap. “This has happened before but never this seriously. Here, take these.”
She unwrapped the blanket and gave me two corners to hold. Three crumpled empty boxes of the kid’s special food fell to the floor. She turned Ethan over on his stomach and put her hands around his ribs. She squeezed and released then pulled his arms up and repeated the motions over and over again, as if she was forcing him to breathe evenly.
The big car skidded into a hard left turn when we got to the gate and Oh Boy gave it more gas and laid on the horn. A Model A truck appeared in the headlights, dead ahead of us. Oh Boy never flinched. He kept the Duesy steady right down the middle of the blacktop. The truck veered away and slid off the road.
When I looked through the back window, it was reversing onto the road and turning to follow us. More headlights appeared behind us and another car weaved on screeching tires around the Ford. It looked like both of them were trying to keep up with us.
The .38 in my coat pocket thumped against my leg. Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t understand what was going on. Hell, right then all I felt was relief. The kid may have been sick but he hadn’t been snatched. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder where we were going.
Oh Boy swung into another hard left at a three-way intersection and we slid across the seat. Mrs. Pennyweight lost her rhythm with the breathing exercise and yelled, “Goddammit, Oliver, slow down! If you kill us, I’ll fire you!”
He paid no attention. Oh Boy was like that. He may have been too much of a worrywart, but once he got set on a task, he stuck with it. He slowed to make another left-hand turn and then sped up again. Looking through the back window, I got the impression of a big metal gate and trees on both sides. A little later, the front of a building filled the windshield and Oh Boy slowed. He followed a curved drive around it to a narrow road.
We lurched to a stop and Mrs. Pennyweight was out the car before it had settled on its springs. She and Oh Boy ran to a set of double doors, where two nurses in white were waiting to take the kid. They all hustled inside.
I turned off the engine and pocketed the keys. A nurse came running out, grabbed the crumpled food boxes from the backseat, and ran back into the building. Moments later, I heard the sound of another car, and the Pierce-Arrow that I’d seen earlier slid around the corner to a stop. Flora and Cameron in nightclothes and long coats tumbled out of the car and ran into the building. I found my stick.
Inside was a kind of admitting room with a counter at the back and corridors on either side. It had the nasty alcohol-medicine smell of a hospital. There was nobody behind the counter. I heard voices down one of the corridors and followed them to a crowded white treatment room with bright lights and a bed, where Cloninger and the nurses buzzed over little Ethan.
I couldn’t see him, of course, but through the babble I heard Mrs. Pennyweight say, “When you had him yesterday, did you feed him anything?”
Flora answered, her voice rising, “What are you talking about, he’s my son. We only gave him some . . . and then you steal him right out from under me and frighten me nearly to death. Even you can’t do that, Mother!”
Figuring that there was little chance anybody would try to kidnap the boy in that crowd, I wandered back outside and got my first good look at Cloninger’s acorn academy in the early light. A massive, new-looking four-story building with narrow windows rose up on one side. It reminded me of the Tombs back in the city but not nearly as big. The grounds were as carefully tended as a golf course and I could see five or six smaller older redbrick buildings nearby. I couldn’t tell what they were for. There was something cold and strange about the whole setup. It gave me the same creepy feeling I got when we first drove in through the dark woods. This was a place where bad things happened.
I was sitting in the Duesenberg when Oh Boy came out. He fumbled his makings from his shirt pocket, rolled a smoke, and explained.
Little Ethan had always been a sickly kid who sometimes couldn’t keep his food down and had spells where he had trouble breathing. At least, he did until Cloninger put together a special diet that eliminated meats and butter and other stuff that everybody else ate. Cloninger actually went to Europe and brought the stuff back. They’d been testing various combinations for months to figure out what worked for the kid. At first, Oh Boy said, they thought that Mrs. Conway had got the days mixed up and little Ethan had his Saturday menu on Friday, or something. Or it may have been that he ate something he wasn’t supposed to have when Flora was showing him off to Cameron Rivers.
That morning, as soon as Mrs. Pennyweight realized that he was having an attack of whatever it was, she called Cloninger. He said to get the kid right over and to bring the empty boxes from his dinner. She didn’t even think to say anything to Flora. She just called Oh Boy for the car and took the kid down to the kitchen to fetch the boxes. That’s about the time Flora checked her mother’s rooms, saw that her son wasn’t there, and started screaming. The thing that Mrs. Pennyweight had been doing in the car was a variation on the “Schaefer method” that Cloninger had taught her to use whenever things got really rough for the little booger.
Oh Boy was in the middle of explaining it all when Cloninger sidled up to us. Oh Boy shied away from him. “Our paths cross again, Mr. Quinn. Trouble seems to follow you. First, poor Mr. Evans, then the two unfortunate young men last night, and now this, not that you had anything to do with it. We have located the source of the youngster’s problems.”
“Yeah? And what was that?”
Cloninger didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Come, let me show you around my little establishment. There’s something I want you to see.”
Oh Boy took the opportunity to duck back into the Duesenberg. I went with Cloninger around to the other side of the big building, where a terrace faced the lake. On the other side of the water, a lot closer than I expected, was the Pennyweight house.
“You see,” he said, “we’re neighbors. It’s a two-mile drive by car but only a hundred meters or so across the water. You need not worry. Most of our patients simply drink too much and we help them with that. Some have more serious problems, but this is not a place for ‘homicidal maniacs’ or anything else you might have seen in movies.”
He pointed his cigarette at the other side of the terrace. “This way.”
I’ve got to admit he was right about one thing. Everything I knew about loony bins came from the pictures. I imagined drooling people in straightjackets and padded cells, and I worried that somebody would find a way to lock me up in there and it scared the hell out of me. All I wanted to do was get away.
Cloninger went down a couple of steps to a path that led to more buildings in a grove of evergreen trees. When we got closer, I saw that one of them had a steeple. He said it had been a private chapel for the previous owners or something like that, I don’t remember exactly. The important thing was the graveyard, anyway. He led the way past the older headstones to the newest and biggest, a polished slab flanked by two angry angels with swords in their hands. It read:
ETHAN PENNYWEIGHT
1861–1929
Beside it was a smaller simpler stone:
MANDELINA PENNYWEIGHT
1906–1931
Cloninger said, “Ethan was my benefactor, my partner, my friend, and finally my patient. He asked to be buried here. I know that your first loyalty is to your friend Walter. But you must understand that I have known the Pennyweight family for decades. I have seen to their medical needs for three generations, ever since I came to this country. I have no one left in Germany. They are my only family now and I will not allow them to be harmed in any way. I advise you to keep that in mind. But, of course, our interests are identical, are they not? And you and I are in agreement.”
I shrugged. “I suppose so.”
He smiled that thin, spooky smile. “Excellent. Let’s go back. Catherine and Flora must be ready to leave.”
As it turned out, we heard them before we saw them. Mrs. Pennyweight limped toward the car with the kid, who’d got his color back, while Flora followed beside her and screamed. Oh Boy held the car door open and watched helplessly.
“You’re saying this is my fault?” Flora yelled. “Just because I gave him two maraschinos, maybe three.” She stepped in front of her mother and screamed at her, “He loved them, he wanted more. I’ve never seen him like something so much and now you’re acting like it’s the end of the world.”
For a time, Mrs. Pennyweight didn’t react at all. For a time. Then she stared straight into her daughter’s eyes and spoke slowly. “You were drunk. I know you haven’t been as involved with Ethan’s diet as Mrs. Conway and I, but there’s no excuse for this. Don’t you understand? Those cherries are preserved in alcohol. Alcohol! You might as well have given him strychnine. You could have killed him, you stupid, stupid girl.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nobody cares about me. Nobody cares that I’m miserable. I’m not just a mother, I’m still me. . . .”
Her friend Cameron stood to one side and didn’t try to hide her bright enjoyment, until she saw that I’d noticed it. Then she looked concerned.
Flora went on, “First everyone was so sorry for poor Mandelina—”
Her mother slapped her cheek with a hard backhand, then got right up in her face. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
The slap brought tears to Flora’s eyes and she reacted by shoving her mother angrily. The older woman’s bad leg gave out on her and she fell, twisting to keep the boy from hitting the ground. He started bawling anyway. Flora didn’t care. Ignoring her son, she stood over her mother and screamed, “I’m nothing but a goddamned brood mare for you! Once I’d provided the male heir, nobody wants me around anymore. Well, to hell with you, to hell with him, to hell with all of you.”
She stalked back to the Pierce-Arrow. Cameron Rivers hurried after her and they drove away. Cloninger helped Mrs. Pennyweight to her feet and got her and little Ethan into the backseat of the Duesenberg. She brushed herself off and acted like absolutely nothing had happened. I sat up front with Oh Boy and figured the mother and daughter wouldn’t have gotten so mad at each other if there weren’t a lot of truth to what they’d said.
Mrs. Pennyweight and the male heir got out at the house. I rode with Oh Boy back to the garage. Like the main house, it was a tall building made of dark timbers and whitewashed walls. The place had been built as a carriage house. Stalls lined one wall, and you could still smell horses. But a concrete floor had been laid down, and riding gear had been replaced by car stuff. Dietz was bent over a motorcycle with a homemade sidecar that looked like it was meant for hauling tools. It was little more than a stout wooden box bolted to the bike with a big wheel on one side. The groundskeeper sat on a short three-legged stool, his .22 rifle against a wall, close at hand.
Oh Boy stopped in the back, right next to a sweet little green Ford coupe. There was virtually no mileage on the odometer and the interior was spotless. If I came into that garage to steal a car, I’d take the Ford over the Duesy any day. It was quicker, newer, and a hell of a lot easier to park.
Dietz was absorbed in cleaning a machine part from the motorcycle in a small can of gasoline. Smoke curled up from the briar clamped between his choppers. Without looking up, he said, “How’s little Ethan? We hear you had to take him to the sawbones.”
Oh Boy said he was OK and explained about Flora and the maraschino cherries. Dietz chuckled, set the can of gasoline on a shelf, and stood up. “Our Flora, she’s a pip, she is.” He tucked the rifle into the crook of his arm. “Let’s have breakfast. Mrs. Conway should have the coffee ready by now.”
He was right. In the kitchen, Connie Nix was fixing a tray with plates, silverware, and a flower. She shot me a quick look before turning away. Mears sat at his usual place at the end of the table nursing a large bowl of oatmeal, with a bottle of aquavit standing beside his coffee. Mrs. Conway’s radio was turned low.
She poured two mugs and said, “Dietz, wash your hands. You stink of gasoline.” He shuffled off obediently to sink and soap.
She put a mug on the table in front of me. “Mrs. Pennyweight said that little Ethan is going to be fine. I can’t imagine what Flora was thinking when she gave him . . .” She shook her head and stopped before she said something she shouldn’t in front of me. So she changed the topic.
“Before the commotion this morning, I understand we had more visitors last night. What happened in the ballroom?”
Dietz answered, “Those two overeducated bruisers Teddy Banks and Titus Bullard showed up again, and the woman, what’s-her-name, she stayed the night.”
My first sip of coffee was great. The thick-bodied brindle cat appeared from nowhere and pressed against my leg, still staring seriously at the space beneath the stove. When I scratched its neck, it bit me again.
The cook shook her head. “It’s not right for a married woman with a child to behave in such a manner, not with trash like them.”
Dietz sat down next to me. “Banks and Bullard are at Dr. Cloninger’s place. They required medical attention after they tangled with our gunman here.”
Connie Nix spoke up. “They ganged up on him. I think Mrs. Spencer and Miss Rivers knew it was going to happen.”
So she’d been watching.
“It wasn’t that serious. Sorry about the mess, it couldn’t be helped. Mrs. Conway, is that salami on the counter? Could you slice a bit into my eggs?” Anything to get them off of the topic of the assholes.
“Salami and eggs? What in the world? . . .”
“Breakfast of champions.”
Dietz said, “That sounds interesting. I’ll try ’em, too.” Minutes later, he was wolfing down a plate. Oh Boy had toast and jelly.
As we ate, the guy with the British accent, the same guy I’d heard on the radio that first night, started talking about the Lindbergh case. Mrs. Conway quickly turned up the volume.
“. . . and as we told you, police still deny any contact with the kidnappers. But many within the official investigation suggest otherwise.”
All activity in the kitchen came to a standstill. The men stopped eating, the women stopped working. All five of us focused on the news, curious about the Lindberghs. I realized the same thing was happening all over America—hell, all over the world. Everybody’s attention was on this one crime, this one small child, and it was something that had happened just down the road to two people who were as scared as I had been.
After we’d finished, I was still jazzed up so I walked with Oh Boy back to the garage. He asked what had happened in the ballroom.
“The two college men showed up, Titus and Teddy. You know ’em?”
He nodded.
“Sometime back, we threw ’em out of my place. They’re still pissed off, and they got a little rowdy. What’s the story with those two anyway? The big one, Titus, said that he was a friend of Chink Sherman.”
Oh Boy shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know nothing about that. I think they was at Spence’s wedding, that’s all. But since they got kicked out of Yale, something about gambling, we hadn’t seen ’em much. It ain’t right that Titus came here now, what with Walter being gone and everything.”
“You mean he’s sniffing around Flora.” Like Deputy Parker.
“It’s good you taught him a lesson. Walter’ll be pleased.”
I wondered if Oh Boy was right. Maybe Spence really wanted me to keep his wife in line, and not look after his son. “What the hell’s going on, Oh Boy? Two nights in a row, guys showed up and tried to poke me in the nose and somebody acts like they’re trying to take the kid. And there’s something else I gotta ask you. I’ve seen and heard a couple of cars, or maybe a car and a truck, both circling the house at night. I think you ran one of them off the road this morning. And late the other night, I swear I saw somebody watching the house from the woods near the lake.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “I dunno, I hadn’t seen nothing like that.”
“OK, what’s the story with Connie Nix?”
“She’s a pip, isn’t she, but kind of cold, too. She can remind you of Fanny Moon, huh? You know . . . serious. Sometimes she won’t give a fella the time of day but at other times she’ll be OK, even pretty nice.”
“How long has she been working here?”
“Let’s see . . .” Oh Boy scratched his head. “They hired her right before little Ethan was born. That would make it about a year, I guess.”
We reached the garage and he invited me in to see his place, up a flight of stairs at the back. Oh Boy went ahead while I took the steps more slowly. He was holding open a door by the time I got to the top. “Isn’t this swell? Look.”
He had a pine-paneled room with a sofa, a hooked rug, three lamps, a table, a fireplace, and a kitchen area with a hot plate, sink, and icebox. One corner was his bedroom with a mirror and a wardrobe where his clothes were heaped, and a bathroom with a high-backed tub. Oh Boy showed off his empire proudly, his chest puffed out like it was a suite at the Ritz. “Hot and cold running water and everything. I got it lots better than the house staff. I told Spence I couldn’t stay in one of those little attic rooms on the third floor, no sirree. Hotter’n hell in the summer, then you freeze your ass off in the winter. Hell, Dietz and me got a place around back, with a grill where we cook steaks and drink beer whenever we feel like it.”
“He lives here too?”
“Downstairs. He had a groundskeeper’s house out in the woods, but in the cold weather he stays here. I tell you this is a great place, Jimmy. I hope you decide to stay. Oh boy, wouldn’t it be great to have you with me and Spence again. I mean, after all the stuff we done together, did you ever think we’d wind up in a swell joint like this?”