What kind of insurance man had access to cash that might be marked bills? This sounded a lot more like a kidnapper than an embezzler.
Barney was saying, “One of our Ace guys got our buddy Steve a hooker, who can be trusted or at least for a hooker can be, and at some point our guy got a glimpse at stacks and stacks of green in a footlocker.”
Not a duffel bag.
“Maybe,” Barney went on, “our insurance guy really is somebody in insurance or at a bank who’s helped himself, and is worried about serial numbers. In which case, Joe is not concerned.”
“Joe Costello.”
“Joe Costello, who owns the Ace Cab Company. He has no moral compunctions about washing money from a bank or insurance company, either. But a kidnapping would be immoral. Joe has kids. I got kids. Who doesn’t have kids?”
Also, a racketeer who got dirtied by a notorious in-the-headlines kidnapping would not be looked upon kindly by public officials who might otherwise turn a blind eye in return for a filled palm.
I was at a stage of my professional life where normally I would not want anything to do with embezzlers whether the take was insurance or bank money. Hell, I had clients in both lines of business. But this sounded like it might be the path to the Greenlease kidnappers — the kind of path I could follow more effectively than the by-the-book likes of Wes Grapp.
“Look, Nate,” Barney said. Usually loud, the union goon was almost whispering now. “Joe wants to bring you in. What exactly he has in mind, I don’t know. You sure you don’t know him? ’Cause it sure seems like he knows you.”
“What if this bundle is the kidnap ransom?”
He swiped the air with a sideways hand. “If Steve is the kidnapper, we finger the fucker. Call in the cops. We got plenty of ’em in our pocket.” He had something else in his pocket, too, and he shoved it toward me: an engraving in green of Grover Cleveland.
In other words, a thousand-dollar bill. With a business card attached: Joseph G. Costello, President, Ace Cab Company, Taylor Avenue and Forest Park Boulevard.
“That’s just to come to St. Louis and talk to Joe,” Barney said. “You don’t even have to tell the tax boys about it. That’s between you and your conscience.”
I got my wallet out and slid the bill in. Barney apparently didn’t know my conscience was packed away in my overnight bag.
“You got wheels?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You go on ahead and see Joe. I got business here. You may not see me in St. Louis.”
Was I supposed to be disappointed?
I got to my feet and put my wallet away. “Despite this wind-fall, Barney, I’ll let you get lunch. I don’t buy anybody three meals in one sitting.”
He tossed a fat hand. “Fair enough.”
The waitress was back and he asked her what kind of pie they had.
Chapter Four
The front desk traded me a roll of quarters for a ten-dollar bill and, just off the lobby, I selected a phone booth from a row and settled in. An operator gave me the numbers I needed and the first call I made was to the airline at the Kansas City Municipal Airport, cancelling my reservation for a flight back to Chicago.
The second call was a quick one to Lou Sapperstein at the A-1 telling him I might not be back for a few days. The third was to the Pittsburg, Missouri, Western Union office; I was told that the two gentlemen waiting for an important wire had gone back to their hotel, but that if it came in, a runner would take it over. The fourth was to Pittsburg’s Hotel Besse, where the hotel switchboard connected me to the room shared by William Letterman and Stewart O’Neill.
“I thought,” Letterman’s voice said, “you’d be on a plane by now back to Chicago.”
He and Greenlease were talking “on the hour,” so his knowing that was no surprise.
“I just cancelled that,” I said.
“We’ve had no word.”
“I gathered. How long are you going to wait for M to get in touch?”
“Another day at least.”
“That kid isn’t coming home, you know.”
“...I have to keep a good thought, Nate. What can I do for you?”
“I need to get word to Bob and I don’t dare call him. The feds will be listening in.”
“They’ve been listening in all along.”
I knew that. But they’d been sitting on their hands, so what good had it done? That they hadn’t traced M’s calls was damn near as criminal as the kidnapping itself. I didn’t blame Wes Grapp for that — complying with Greenlease’s wishes was a directive that came from the top.
I said, “I need you to tell Bob I have a possible lead in St. Louis on the kidnappers. It may be nothing, but there are promising aspects.”
“Can you be specific, Nate?”
“No. Just remind Bob what I told him about my ability to track down lowlife scum. Tell him this may be a long shot, but I’m going to play it out. I won’t do anything to endanger his boy. Tell him I’ll report in when or if I have anything.”
“All right. You’re sure this is wise?”
“Of course not.” What would have been wise was Letterman letting me grab M at the ransom drop, but that hadn’t happened. I referred to that only indirectly: “We’re past playing it safe being a good plan. Tell Bob I’ll be holding onto the loaner Caddy. In a day or two, I’ll return it and, with luck, have something to report.”
“Maybe you’ll be bringing Bobby back, too.”
Letterman had to know he was kidding himself.
“Yeah,” I said. “Go with that.”
They called Highway 40 the Main Street of America, and one reason might be that driving from Kansas City to St. Louis made you slow down for half a dozen bump-in-the-road Main Streets and a major one through Columbia. The trip took better than four hours, and though the slice of moon was even smaller tonight, the sky was clear, the traffic light and the sailing smooth, some of it four-lane. Fighting boredom, I tried the big car’s fancy radio but the result went a little too well with the farm country I was cruising through — I heard more fiddle playing than in a Hungarian restaurant.
Finally St. Louis showed itself, its light hovering as if promising a carnival. I followed 40 into the city through an industrial area, turning onto Nineteenth cutting through a nest of apartment buildings before factories and warehouses took over. Ace Cab Company, at 1835 Washington Avenue, shared its downtown intersection with an Esso Station, a Katz Drug and a busy White Castle. I parked on the street in front of a Swiss Chalet-style shopping arcade.
Ruling over a modest parking lot with two rows of varicolored and varied-make taxis, the dingy white-brick building’s mechanics in dingy white uniforms were at work under vehicles on lifts in the two-bay garage. On the far end, a picture window announced the place in big red letters as, not surprisingly, ACE CAB COMPANY, with a couple of phone numbers not much smaller.
I pushed through a door that said, in the same red lettering, EMPLOYEES ONLY. At left, a blond male dispatcher in khaki hunkered over a microphone in front of a metal city map dotted by magnetic pins; at right, a henna-dyed looker in a white blouse, black slacks and a headset sat at a switchboard. Both were shouting numbers and locations.
Covering his mike, the dispatcher — a burly guy of maybe thirty who glared at me like I’d interrupted him in the middle of a song — said, “You Heller?”
I resisted the impulse to say, “Me Jane,” and just nodded.
Half a dozen cabbies were seated in wooden schoolhouse chairs with their backs to the big window on the street, a rough-looking bunch who made the Bowery Boys look like actual boys. All but one wore matching caps with triangular ACE CAB patches but otherwise — like the cars in the lot — they were a mixed bunch, in jackets of leather, corduroy, gabardine, several in neckties, one in a bow tie. Their shirts ranged from white to pale blue to pale what-have-you. Two of the cabbies were colored; they were the only ones with white shirts.