“Yes. I believe it was Whately. I think Violet had lost her parents, and had hoped to contact them, through the spirit world. We helped her do that.”
“Did you. You and Sarah and old, what was that Injun’s name? Chief Yellow Feather?”
Sarah, eyes shut tight, twitched.
“As for Fisch,” Marinelli said, ignoring me, “he lived across the street and down, in a rooming house. He wandered in off the street one night, curious, and became interested in what we do.”
“And what is it you do, exactly? I’ve never been able to tell.”
“We are dedicated to the cause of spiritualism, Mr. Heller, whether you believe that or not. We’ve not gotten wealthy, as you can see.”
“You’re doing all right. Better than most in these times, I’d say.”
“Now that I’ve answered your questions, Mr. Heller,” Marinelli said, folding his arms, “I would appreciate it if you would leave.”
“What about Bruno Richard Hauptmann? Was he in your church?”
“No. He never set foot there.”
“Still, Rev-I think the cops might be very interested in knowing that, back in ’32, your church on One Twenty-Seventh was a veritable hotbed of people associated with the Lindbergh case.”
Marineili shrugged. “They already know,” he said.
“What?”
“We were arrested in January 1934, Mr. Heller. On a fortune-telling charge. But we were questioned at length about the Lindbergh case, and we held nothing back. While we were indisposed, our lodgings were ransacked, an address book was stolen and so on. Typical police behavior.”
Sister Sarah was stone quiet, and motionless; eyes shut tight.
“What’s with her?” I said.
“You scared her,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She withdrew into the trance state.”
“Aw, baloney.”
“Mr. Heller, my wife is a genuine psychic.”
I got the nine millimeter out of my topcoat.
He stood and backed up, knocking over several chairs; she remained still as death.
“Izzy Fisch and Violet Sharpe and Ollie Whately,” I said, rising, “have a lot in common, don’t they? They’re all members of your church-and they’re all dead. Maybe we can have a little informal seance, and conjure ’em up.”
“What…what do you want from me, Heller? What do you want me to do?”
I inched forward, gun in hand. “Spill, you phony bastard. Spill it all or I’ll start spilling you…”
He was backing up; backing into the pulpit. “I don’t know anything!”
“Ugh,” someone said.
I turned and looked at Sarah.
She had begun to speak. “Who seeks Yellow Feather?”
“Aw, fuck,” I said, moving toward her. “I’m going to slap her silly…”
“No!” he said, moving forward. He touched my arm. “No. Whatever I am, Mr. Heller, Sarah is an innocent. And truly is genuinely psychic…”
“I can see a child,” she said, her voice a register lower than normal. “He is in a high place. There is a small house, low, with a high barn behind. The child is in the house. On the second floor. There is a bald-headed man, with pouches under his eyes. He is looking down at the child. There is a woman in the house, too. The house is on a hill.”
She shuddered, and her eyes popped open. It made me jump.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “Did I fall asleep?”
He went to her, touched her shoulder, gently. “You were in a trance, my dear.” He told her what she’d said.
“How can you see the baby,” I said, sarcasm hanging on my words like a week’s worth of wash, “when you already ‘predicted,’ accurately, its dead body on the heights over Hopewell?”
“She never said it was the Lindbergh baby’s body,” Marinelli said, his arm around his wife’s shoulder.
“First, she sees a dead baby in the heights, four years ago. And now she sees it alive, only now it’s a ‘child,’ not a baby, and it’s in some farmhouse?”
“It may not be the same child,” Marinelli said. “We can’t always know the meaning of what a medium says in a trance-interpretation is required, Mr. Heller. Will you put your gun away, please?”
He was standing there protecting his wife, who looked small and pitiful and, hell, I’d screwed her once upon a time, so maybe I owed them this one.
“All right,” I said. And I put the gun away. “Will you cooperate, if I need you to talk to somebody?”
“Certainly,” Marinelli said, summoning his dignity. “Who?”
“Governor Hoffinan of New Jersey,” I said.
He nodded solemnly.
I went to the door.
“Goodbye, Nate,” she said, quietly.
“So long, Sarah,” I said, shaking my head, and I went down to the sidewalk and stood there and shook my head some more and sighed. Evalyn, watching from the cafe across the street, came over and joined me.
“What did you find?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” I said, “on the way.”
“On the way where?”
“We have one more stop this afternoon….”
The neat, trim two-story white clapboard in the Bronx was unchanged; so was the quiet residential street it was perched along. The lawn was brown, but evergreens hugged the porch.
I told Evalyn to stay in the car; she didn’t like it, but I made her understand.
“If there’s a witness,” I said, “this guy is liable not to say anything.”
The attractive dark-haired woman who answered the door did not recognize me at first.
“Yes?” she said, warily, the door only a third of the way open.
“Is Professor Condon in? Tell him an old friend’s dropped by.”
Her face had tightened. “Detective Heller,” she said.
“Hiya, Myra.”
The door shut suddenly-not quite a slam.
I glanced back at Evalyn, sitting in the Packard, and smiled and shrugged. She looked at me curiously, wondering if this interview was over before it began.
The door opened again and there he stood, in white shirtsleeves and vest and pocket watch, in all his walrus-mustached glory.
“Long time no see, Professor.”
“Detective Heller,” Dr. John F. Condon said stiffly. He extended his hand and I shook it; he squeezed to impress me with his strength, as usual. “I hope you’ve been well.”
“I’ve been okay. You’re nice and tan.”
“I have just returned from Panama.”
“So I hear. You took off, day before Hauptmann’s case came up before the Court of Pardons.”
He snorted. “That’s true. Though it is of no particular significance.”
“Isn’t it? Didn’t the Governor of New Jersey request that you stick around? And help clear up a few discrepancies in your various versions of various events?”
He raised his head. Looked down his nose at me with his vague watery blue eyes. “I had full permission of Attorney General Wilentz to depart on my holiday.”
“I’m sure you did.” I smiled blandly at him. “You might be wondering why I’m still interested in this case, after all these years.”
“Frankly, sir, I am.”
“Well, I’m working for Governor Hoffman now.”
He backed away, stepping into the entrance hall; I half expected him to hold up a cross, as if I were a vampire.
“Sir,” he said, pompously, “during my stay in Panama, I followed all reported developments in the Lindbergh case, and this man Hoffman seems bound and determined to maliciously impugn my character, my motives, my behavior.”
“Really,” I said.
He took a step forward and shook a fist in the air. “I would like to face this Governor Hoffman! I would like to nail these lies of his. I know he would have a good many men there, stronger than I-but even at my age, I can put up a good fight, Detective Heller! I can still handle myself.”
“Come along then. I’ll drive you there.”
His fist dissolved into loose fingers, which he used to wave me off. “Ah, I said I would like to. But my womenfolk wouldn’t allow it.”
“Then why don’t you ask me in, and I’ll put the Governor’s questions to you, myself.”
“Detective Heller, I’m afraid I must decline, though I am willing to answer the Governor’s questions.”