The fifteen-story Hotel President in the Power and Light District—Kansas City’s business and entertainment section—was unquestionably elegant, even if it was best known for a mysterious murder that happened in Room 1046 in 1935. Nobody asked me to solve it then and I wasn’t interested in doing so now.
But Bob Greenlease had always known how to treat the help. The lobby—quiet on a Sunday afternoon but for my echoing footsteps—put any Chicago hotel to shame, what with the golden two-story columns, chandeliers, marble floors, wrought-iron second-floor balcony, green palms and over-stuffed furnishings.
My room on the eighth floor was larger than need be, but who was complaining? The hotel had been around since the late twenties, but a recent remodel had led to modern, spindly furnishings, abstract wall art, and a red coverlet to make up for gray walls and curtains; there was even a small TV by the mirror on the dresser opposite the bed.
I unpacked my bag and retrieved the second suit I’d brought along—a gray twill woolen number from Richard Bennett in the Loop, cut to conceal a holstered accessory. I hung the Botany 500 in the closet and the tailored suit on the hook inside the bathroom door and took a shower, providing steam for the suit to hang out and for me to loosen up. The meeting with Greenlease had left me tight as a drum.
Speaking of which, the hotel’s Drum Room—a big circular restaurant with a snare-shaped red-and-yellow bar at its center—was my destination for an early supper. Sunday was the only night they didn’t offer live music—everybody from Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman to Glenn Miller and Dean Martin had played here. Right now, at six o’clock, one of a handful of diners, I had to settle for mellow Muzak.
I had the filet medium rare, hash browns, buttered lima beans and salad, and a rum and Coke. But I only ate half of everything and limited myself to the one drink. I would be working tonight and even now I was in the tailored Richard Bennett with the nine millimeter under my arm. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone over the photostats of the ransom notes before I came down to eat.
You’d have lost your appetite, too.
If do exactly as we say an try no tricks, advised the first missive in what looked to be a feminine hand, your boy will be back safe withen 24 hrs after we check money. The second said, Don’t try to stop us on pick-up or boy dies you will hear from us later. More notes followed, with instructions like: Tie a white rag on your radio aerial. Proceed north on highway No. 169 past the junction with highway No. 69 about there miles where you will come to Henry’s place. And: Go west to first rd heading south across from lum reek farm sign. None of this gibberish had panned out, of course. Phone call instructions had been even worse.
These were people who thought stealing a six-year-old boy was a good way to get ahead—stupid people who’d spent almost a week botching their ransom delivery instructions. When I asked myself if this boy could still be alive, the food I’d eaten roiled in my belly like storm clouds.
Back in my hotel room I put a long-distance call in to my ex-wife in Beverly Hills. Peggy was married to a film director who’d had his ups and downs, currently up. We maintained a truce for Sam’s sake, but she not surprisingly never seemed glad to hear from me when I phoned.
“Sam’s at a pool party at the Lewises,” she said.
He and Jerry’s son Gary were longtime pals, longtime for six-year-olds anyway.
“And you’re not with him?”
“I think he’ll be safe with a dozen other kids and more than enough parents. What did you want with him?”
“Just to see how he’s doing. I’m his father, or did that slip your mind?”
A tense truce, admittedly.
“Well,” Peg said, “he’s fine. You’ll see him soon enough.”
I got him during his Christmas vacation. He was in the first grade.
“Would you tell him…”
“What?”
Tell him his daddy loves him.
“Nothing,” I said.
* * *
At seven on this chilly but not quite cold night, I left the loaner Caddy in the driveway outside the four-car garage and walked around to the front door, where I was let in by a tall, white-haired, bald-on-top Sunday school teacher type in a tie under a sweater vest. Somewhat hunch-shouldered, probably nearly as old as Greenlease, he introduced himself as Will Letterman from the Tulsa branch. I had missed Stew O’Neill, the local Greenlease Motors crony who’d been released to spend the evening with his family.
Anyway, that was the story. The real reason for O’Neill’s night off, I figured, was my arrival on the scene. For a lot of good reasons—including staying close to his wife and not making a second kidnap target out of himself—Greenlease would likely maintain his executive position here and send his people to make the ransom drop. In this case, that was Letterman and me.
A colored maid in her twenties, shy with a friendly smile but a beleaguered demeanor, collected my hat and Burberry—working in a place under siege was not an easy job. Within moments the missing boy’s father—no dressing gown now, rather shirt sleeves and tie—joined us in the expansive entryway and took me aside. No sign of the clinging young daughter now, or the adopted son.
Greenlease’s smile was a ghastly thing. “Nate, if you have the opportunity to…do something, I know you will. But I must insist you honor Will’s lead, if this ransom drop finally happens tonight. He’ll be representing me.”
“No offense, Bob, but then…why bring me in?”
“Because these people are unpredictable and matters could get out of hand. That’s where I’m counting on you—the unexpected. You’re going to be compensated, of course.”
“I didn’t ask for—”
He pressed something that crinkled into my hand. “If this isn’t sufficient, let me know. And your expenses’ll be on top of it, of course.”
Then he started down the hall and Letterman trailed after him. I’m human—before I fell in line, I had a glimpse at the check before tucking it away. Five thousand dollars with “Retainer” in the memo line. Well, sure—we would do things his way.
Our little party wound up in a rectangular study with a wall of leather-bound books at right and at left a mural of hunting dogs and their shotgun-wielding masters heading after game in the trees. Leaded windows behind a big mahogany desk at the far end looked out at real trees and leaded-window double doors adjacent surveyed a dark night not helped much by a crescent moon over which clouds drifted like the black smoke of a distant fire.
Down by the mural a well-stocked liquor cart awaited with a leather-cushioned chair arranged in front of a low-slung coffee table with a matching sofa running along the wall under the hunters and dogs and trees. The coffee table had two phones on it, one on a wire from nearby, the other stretched on its cord from another room.
Greenlease poured himself some bourbon while both Letterman and I declined. Our host gestured to the chair and I took it, while Letterman sat on the couch, the twin phones in front of us. Behind me Greenlease began pacing; he might have been walking guard duty.
“I’ve already told Will,” Greenlease said, his words coming in a rush that undermined his controlled businessman manner, “that you’ll be handling the call when it comes in.”
“Mr. Heller…” Letterman began.
I said, “Please, Will. Nate.”
Letterman leaned forward. His features seemed to be hanging off his already long face; his eyes were light blue peering from slitted pouches. “Nate. I’ve told Bob I think putting you on the phone is a mistake. I have a pretty good rapport going with this ‘M’ character. He’s talked to Stew, as well, and a couple of times to Virginia.”
“Where is Mrs. Greenlease?”
Pausing his pacing, her husband said, “Still sedated. Our family doctor has been quite good about all this. Ginny was upset earlier today, after taking that call. Paul is at her bedside. This…ordeal simply has to stop, Nate.” Some rage broke through the calm: “Has to stop.”
I caught Greenlease’s eyes and nodded to the couch. He sighed and went over to join his associate; but he took the glass of bourbon along.
“I’m just afraid,” Letterman said, “a new voice might raise a warning bell with our ‘friend.’”
I said, “Will may be right.”
Greenlease’s palms came up. “Who the hell knows at this point? But you may be able to get more out of this son of a bitch than we have, Nate. You can size him from your perspective and experience. May be able to get him to, hell, clarify these jumbled instructions he keeps giving us.”
I frowned. “Is it a stall, you think?”
Letterman said, “I don’t take it that way. He seems…I hate to say this, but I’d swear this M has been drunk every time I’ve talked to him.”
“And you’re convinced this isn’t an impostor?”
Greenlease said, “He knows about the Jerusalem Cross Bobby was wearing—the medal with ribbons on it that was sent back with the second letter. Which we kept from the press.” His eyes went to his crony. “Will, Nate is an old hand at this. He’s dealt with this kind of thing before.”
The damn Lindbergh case again. Didn’t anybody remember how badly that had gone, right down to frying the wrong man?
“And I’ve told Nate,” Greenlease continued, “that if we’re able to make the exchange tonight, your word goes. You can overrule him, Will.…Right, Nate?”
Not to be crass, but the five-grand check in my pocket said yes, and so did I.
I asked, “Are the feds or police in on this?”
Greenlease shook his head. “No. I’ve requested the call not be traced. They’re not to follow us on the drop. I don’t want to come this far and have it compromised. The important thing is Bobby making it home safe and sound.”
I didn’t look at Letterman—I was afraid we’d both give away our doubt that the boy’s safety remained an issue. But Bobby could still be alive. He could. Right?
The call was due at eight, which was coming up soon. I asked a few questions and heard some detailed stories from Letterman about the insanely frustrating runaround they’d been getting. Eight came and went. I allowed myself a rum and Coke. Green-lease had a second bourbon. Letterman continued to abstain, his eyes on those phones. We’d agreed that he and I would pick up on the count of three, and Greenlease would join him on the couch to listen in.
At 8:28, the phones rang. Frankly, we all jumped a little—the watched pot had seemed like it would never fucking boil. I counted to three silently with Letterman’s eyes on me, and picked up. Greenlease had already made his way over to the couch beside his associate, who held the receiver sideways so both could listen. Hand covering the mouthpiece.
I held the receiver to my ear. Silence.
I said, “Is this ‘M’?”
“…Speaking.”
“Let’s get this thing over with.”
“I don’t recognize your voice.”
“There are several of us who work for Mr. Greenlease helping him out. You and I haven’t spoken before.”
“If you’re police—”
“I’m not police. By the way, did the boy answer those questions his mother gave you this morning?”
That was my way of making him think I’d been part of this for a while.
“No, I, uh…I couldn’t.…We couldn’t get anything out of him.”
The voice was tenor and thick, unsure and slurring. As Letterman said, almost certainly drunk. And his words had been less than encouraging.
I said, “You couldn’t get anything from him?”
“He wouldn’t talk.”
“Are we going to see the boy tonight?”
“No, you can’t, because they want to check the money. Anyway, the kid is raising so much hell they don’t want to have to deal with him on the pickup. You’ll get him back tomorrow, in Pittsburg, Kansas.”
The caller, I’d been told, had been portraying himself as an intermediary—hence, “they.” As for Pittsburg, Kansas, that was a new wrinkle—I would learn later that it was a town of twenty thousand, one hundred miles south near the Oklahoma border.
I asked, “Is that the straight goods?”
“It’s gospel.”
“And somebody will contact us there?”
“Someone will contact you. By telegram.”
“Where do we wait?”
“The telegraph office.”
“Listen, I want that kid tonight. No waiting till morning.”
The two men on the couch were frowning at me—they probably thought I was playing it too tough. But I could read this guy. He was soft if you weren’t six.
“You’ll get him tomorrow,” the slurry voice said, “but first I’ll call you tonight at Valentine 9279. At 11:30 P.M. exactly.”
Letterman was writing that down on a pad.
I said, “Valentine 9279? Where is that?”
“Phone booth in a hotel.”
“Here in town?”
“Yes.”
“Kansas City? Where in Kansas City?”
“Near the LaSalle Hotel.”
“In the LaSalle Hotel?”
“Near it. The Something-shire Hotel. Right across from the LaSalle.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? And we’ll get instructions for the drop then?”
“Yes.”
“Is this another drive in the country? This crap about climbing trees and crawling around on the ground looking for the right rock is getting old. Let’s deal man-to-man. Middle of Main Street. Anywhere.”
More frowns.
“I would like that too, but I don’t have anything to say about it.”
“I thought you were running the show.”
“I’m just ‘M’—the middleman. But I’ll see to it things go perfectly tonight—no mix-ups. And you’ll be contacted about the boy in Pittsburg, Kansas, in the morning.”
A click announced the end of the call.
* * *
The hotel across from the LaSalle was the Berkshire. Linwood Boulevard at 11:15 P.M. on a Sunday night in downtown Kansas City was underpopulated to say the least and traffic was minimal; tall buildings bore so few lighted windows the effect was black dominos with only occasional white dots.
We pulled in at the entry’s drop-off area. Letterman was at the wheel in topcoat and fedora, I was riding with my Burberry unbelted, and the passenger in back was a zippered olive-colored canvas duffel bag with $600,000 dollars of cash stacked within.
This, at least, Greenlease had allowed to be the handiwork of the FBI—the duffel bag had been marked in some undisclosed manner for easy identification. $400,000 was in twenties, $200,000 was in tens, as requested by M days before my arrival (this duffel had gone on several wild goose chases already, due to the incompetent directions of the kidnappers). Seventy employees of President Eisenhower’s brother Arthur at Commerce Trust had recorded the serial numbers, all forty-thousand bills were photographed, and FBI agent West Grapp had pressed his thumb print to the wrapper of each packet of bills.
The bag of money weighed eighty-five pounds.
This represented the biggest kidnap ransom to date in the United States. Maybe the world, but nobody had seemed to have checked on that. And my presence here was in part connected to that money.
While we’d waited the couple of hours between the last call and the next one, Bob Greenlease in his study had said, “Nate, with no police or FBI tailing us, the possibility some interloper might be watching can’t be discounted.”
The press hadn’t been told the exact amount of the ransom, but it was generally known to be a substantial sum—rumor had it a little low ($500,000) but that was high enough.
“We’ll park the car right in front of the hotel,” I said, “where it’s well-lighted. I’ll stay with the money and Will can take M’s next call. A Kansas City boy like Will can do better with the instructions than I would.”
“I haven’t done great so far,” Letterman said glumly.
“You’ll do fine. But I’m the one who needs to guard that money.” I opened my suitcoat and shared the holstered Browning with them. “There’s the possibility that M or others he’s working with are waiting to snatch this from us right then and there.”
Particularly if the boy is already dead—a thought I did not share with Greenlease, though I could sense Letterman was thinking along similar lines.
No doorman was on duty at the Berkshire but the entry with canopy was, as expected, well-lighted. Letterman went in at 11:20. With the motor running, I stayed behind in the loaner Caddy, sliding over behind the wheel, sitting there with my nine mil in my lap like a getaway man waiting for the bank robbery to wrap up. Twenty minutes or so later, Letterman came quickly out. I unlocked the driver’s-side door and slid back into the passenger seat.
Greenlease’s man got behind the wheel and into gear and swung out. He filled me in as we went.
“Our 11:30 call came in at 11:31,” Letterman said. “The longest minute of my life.”
“Tell me about it.” I holstered the nine mil. “Get anywhere?”
“I think so. We’re to head east on Highway 40 until it intersects with County Highway Road 10E—which used to be called Lee’s Summit Road. Turn right at something called Stephenson’s Restaurant and go for about a mile to a covered wooden bridge. There we throw the bag out on the left side of the road at the north end of the bridge. M told me they wouldn’t be far behind us.”
“This is an area you know?”
“Well enough. The restaurant doesn’t ring a bell, but I think I’ve been over that bridge before.”
“How did he sound?”
“Drunk.”
It wasn’t much of a drive—southeast of the city about five miles from Swope Park into a rural area where the only hitch was the dark night making us miss the junction of 40 and 10E; we had to backtrack and try again—no sign of anyone following, at least not yet. This time we turned south on the county road and soon came to a covered wooden bridge. Midnight now… midnight on a lonely country road.…
I told Letterman to pull over.
He did, then nodded toward the bridge. “Should I leave the headlights on?”
“No. It’d just make a target of me.”
He shut off the beams and the bridge’s mouth turned black and unwelcoming. I got the nine millimeter out again and slipped from the car into the night.
I entered the sheltered structure slowly, cautiously, wood groaning under my feet, sparse moonlight filtering in between slats, my back to a creaky wall, edging along like I was expecting the Headless Horseman at any moment. But no ghost on horseback came charging and no one was lying in wait—there was really nowhere to do that. I went all the way to the north end and stayed low, gun ready, as I came out. I looked around the low brush on either side of the road, going down the slope on both sides to the narrow gurgling stream.
Nobody.
I climbed back up. There were trees on both sides but anyone who emerged would have shown himself even under that stingy slice of moon.
I returned to the car and got in. “No sign of a soul,” I said. “Not L, M, N or P. But go slow.”
We rumbled through the rickety bridge and then pulled off to the left as we exited the north end. From the back seat I yanked out the duffel and then the two of us, like gangsters in fedoras and topcoats dragging a dead body, lugged the eighty-five pounds of money—thirty pounds heavier than Bobby Greenlease—to the underbrush just past the north end of the bridge, concealing the duffel just a little, not wanting to attract anyone’s attention but M’s.
“All right,” I said. “Now you head back.”
He blinked at me. “You mean we head back.”
“No. I’m waiting for these bastards.” I lifted the nine mil and lowered it, to make a point.
He shook his head—really shook it. “No. We’re not taking that kind of chance.”
“I’m not asking you to. Don’t worry about me getting back, Will. They’ll have a car.”
He pointed to the Caddy, which sat purring. “Get in, Heller. You heard what Bob said. This is my call.”
I thought about my options. What could I do, slug him? He was twenty years older than me, and if I knocked him out, who’d drive the car back? It might even kill him, and that only complicated matters.
Well, shit.
We headed back to the Greenlease place.
* * *
We were again in the study with the dogs and hunters looking on from their mural. Back in our same seats with the two phones staring at us and us staring at them. Letterman didn’t mention our little confrontation to Greenlease and neither did I. We drank a while. I was on my second rum and Coke since our return and Greenlease was behind me, pacing again, but more like trudging now, bourbon sloshing in his glass, when the phones came alive, their doubled ring alarmingly loud.
I’d been appointed phone man again. After the third ring, as arranged, Greenlease was back on the couch next to Letterman, who picked up as I did.
As before, silence.
“You there, M?” I asked.
“Speaking.”
“Everything all right with the money?”
The response came in a rush of words: “We haven’t had time to count it yet. But I’m sure it’s all there. Rest assured the kid will be back with his mother as promised within twenty-four hours.”
M didn’t sound drunk to me now—more like high.…
“How long are we going to have to wait down there before we pick him up?”
By “down there” I meant Pittsburg, Kansas.
M said, “You’ll hear in the morning and be told where and when.”
“Definitely.”
“He’s alive and well?”
“Yeah, and as full of piss and vinegar as any kid I’ve ever seen.”
This seemed to try a little too hard to make the boy sound… alive. “I can quote you on that, can I?”
“You can quote me.”
The phone clicked dead.
I hung up. I looked at Greenlease. I looked at Letterman.
“Well,” Letterman said to me, poised to stand, “you and I need to head to Pittsburg.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Greenlease frowned at me. “No?”
I said to Letterman, “Collect your pal, what’s his name? Stew O’Neill? He’s had enough time with his family. You two go down to Kansas and have an adventure. You don’t need me for that.”
Besides, it sounded like a dodge to me. Another snipe hunt.
I rose. “I’ll stick around on this end a while in case I’m needed, if you like, Bob. Should our buddy M throw us a curve.”
“Well,” Letterman said, vaguely offended, “I’m going to head out as soon as I can round up Stew.”
“Do that,” I said. “I’m going back to my hotel, gentlemen—I’m beat. See you in the morning, Bob. Good luck, Will.”
I almost returned Greenlease’s check, but something told me I might still earn it.