I leaned up and said to the cabbie, “I’ll handle this.”
I got out and said, “Nathan Heller. They’re expecting me at the Greenlease home.”
“Special Agent Wesley Grapp,” he said, stepping away from the cab, holding up ID with his left hand and offering his right with the slightest of smiles. His grip was firm but not showy. “You’re on our list.”
I gave him about half a grin. “I’ve been on the FBI’s list a long time.”
That got a chuckle out of him. “Yes, I’ve seen the file. It’s thicker than Forever Amber and about as juicy. What did you do to get on the Chief’s bad side? It’s not included.”
The Chief, of course, was J. Edgar Hoover.
“Oh,” I said casually, “a long time ago I told him to go fuck himself.”
This chuckle came from somewhere deep. “That’ll do it. Call me Wes.”
“And I’m Nate. So you’ve set up a checkpoint.”
“We have. We’ll take you from here.”
My overnight bag was in the trunk and the cabbie got it out for me. I gave him a sawbuck and made a friend for life.
Grapp walked me around the corner to his ride, a dark blue Ford Crestliner. I tossed the bag in front where a younger agent in suit and fedora sat behind the wheel — slender in horn-rimmed glasses — and Grapp and I got in back.
I said, “I guess you know Bob Greenlease called me in personally. You have no objection?”
“None. I’m all for it, actually.”
That surprised me; the FBI didn’t usually welcome private detectives to the party. “Why’s that?”
“We’ve been pretty well frozen out of this so far. Helping as much as we’re allowed. Mr. Greenlease has kept us pretty much at arm’s length. The guy’s got a lot of clout. He’s working strictly through the K.C. chief of police.”
Greenlease, a major stockholder in General Motors, was one of the wealthiest men in the Midwest. A self-made man from farming stock, he’d started out around the turn of the century making handmade cars and running a repair garage, then landed a franchise to sell Cadillacs; now he was the largest distributor of Caddies in the Southwest. His founding dealership, the Greenlease Motor Car Company, was where I first met him in 1937, when I was brought in to deal with auto parts pilfering by employees. And since just after the war, the A-1 had arranged security for the Annual Chicago Automobile Show, of which Greenlease was always a big part.
“Of course FBI policy in kidnapping cases,” Grapp was saying, “means doing nothing that might jeopardize the victim’s safe return. And Mr. Greenlease insists on no surveillance of any ransom drop... or at least he has so far.”
“So far?”
“Well, Mr. Heller... Nate... he’s called you in. Might mean a change of tactics.”
“Yeah, but it’s taken almost a week.” I’d half expected a call; the case had made the papers and even CBS-TV by way of Edward R. Murrow’s fifteen-minute national evening news. But that had amounted to little more than descriptions of the boy and the fake aunt. And expressions of ongoing sympathy for the parents.
“We don’t have a man on the inside,” Grapp said. “So your cooperation could prove key.”
“What have you been able to do?”
He offered me a smoke and I declined. He lit up and said, “With Kansas and Missouri butting up against each other, chances are good this thing has crossed state lines, which’ll give us jurisdiction. Already we’ve been able to intercept Greenlease’s mail at the K.C. Post Office and record incoming phone calls.”
“So there’s been contact. Were you able to trace the calls?”
He sighed smoke. “We probably could have, and possibly closed in on the people responsible, but the family’s wish was that we do nothing that might hinder the boy’s return.”
I frowned, shook my hand. “That’s crazy.”
“I agree. Perhaps you can reason with Mr. Greenlease. After all, he’s taken a big step, bringing you in... considering your reputation.”
“Somehow I don’t think you mean to flatter me.”
A thick eyebrow went up. “Nate. Mr. Heller. You’re well-known for your underworld connections. And you’ve been in a number of well-publicized situations where you have, let’s say, taken matters effectively into hand.”
“Gee whiz, thanks. But let me remind you, Wes, Special Agent Grapp, that J. Edgar Hoover assures us that there is no such thing as organized crime.”
The young agent at the wheel frowned at me in the rearview mirror, but Grapp only smiled a little.
He gestured with the cigarette-in-hand. “Nate, let’s just say anything you can do to help this situation would be appreciated. Whoever did this goddamn thing must be aware that, even if state lines haven’t been crossed, the kidnapping law in Missouri means a death sentence.”
“Understood. Since there’s effectively been a press blackout, what can you tell me? What don’t I know?”
The FBI man’s laugh was raspy and wry. “You have been spared experiencing one of the most sadistic, heartless series of letters and messages and phone calls any of us has ever seen. Six ransom notes, over a dozen phone calls. One wild goose chase after another.” His eyes, a dark brown and almost black, narrowed. “We do know they have the boy, or at least had him — a medal he’d worn to school that day was sent along with the second note.”
“When you say ‘they’...?”
“It’s at least two people. The woman who picked the boy up at school, and a man who’s been making the phone calls. He insists Bobby’s still alive. Talks about him being a handful and mentions a pet the child misses, how homesick he is. But, uh... they aren’t the smartest pair, these two.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, they were lucky they snagged the kid at all. The nun who answered the door was new, very young, an import from France who spoke little English, and if the mother superior — away on an errand — had been there to go to the door that morning? That damn woman would never have pulled off her impersonation.”
“Think so, huh?”
He nodded curtly. “When the nun offered to show her the way to the chapel, to pray for her sick sibling? The dumbo dame said, ‘No thanks, I’m not a Catholic.’ Any other nun in that facility would’ve known that Mrs. Greenlease was a Catholic, meaning her sister would be, too!”
I let some air out. “That makes the woman a dope. But maybe the guy’s got more on the ball.”
“You think so, Heller? His first ransom note? He got the address wrong.”
They drove me down Verona Road, past a trio of cars with press cards in the rear windows; a TV camera truck was pulled over there, too. A female reporter was using a phone in a box strapped to a tree, a little stool next to it for her purse and whatnot. United Press International had installed the phone, Grapp said.
The press had a good view of the house from there. Of course, “house” didn’t cover it. An imposing two-story multi-gabled structure with slate roofs and a cream-and-brown fieldstone facade awaited us when we pulled in the half-circle drive; it was almost a castle and not quite a church, and wide enough to be a hotel.
The FBI dropped me off and I toted my overnight bag to the gabled entrance. I must have been watched from a window, because the door opened after I’d barely rung the bell. In his mid-thirties, my host was of average height and weight with a squared-off head and a rounded jaw, his forehead so high it was like his features had slipped down too far on his oval face. His hair was dark and short, his eyes dark and bloodshot, his dark suit and tie unusual for a Sunday afternoon, unless an evening church service was in the mix. Yet somehow he still seemed disheveled.