My driver was a ruddy, blond, good-natured man of perhaps thirty named Willis Dixon, one of three patrolmen under the command of Hopewell Police Chief Harry Wolfe. Dixon wore a black leather jacket with a badge pinned on, a matching cap and khakis, with a black tie snugged crisply in place. A neat-looking uniform, for a local cop, but a distant second to the blue and pink costumes of the New Jersey State Police chorus boys.
“We been reduced to chauffeurin’ and other shit work,” Dixon had told me pleasantly, when he picked me up at precisely noon at the Princeton Cafe. I bought him lunch before we left, and heard all about how Colonel Schwarzkopf had frozen out Chief Wolfe and his staff-the first cops on the scene, after the kidnapping-from the inner circle of the investigation.
Right now we were rolling along a gravel road, cutting through the ominously lonely Sourland Hills countryside, snarled as it was with underbrush that thickened on either side into heavy, rugged, seemingly impenetrable woods.
“I’m going to pull over for a minute,” Dixon said. He had apple cheeks and a space between his front teeth, a moronic countenance that probably served him well as a cop; his eyes were dark and shrewd, and that’s what counted.
“Why’s that, Willis?”
We’d been on a first-name basis ever since I bought him lunch.
“It ain’t to take a leak,” he said, and grinned in his knowing dumb-ass way. “I think we’ll find something that just might interest you.” He pronounced it “inner rest,” which was precisely the kind of rest I could’ve used.
As he pulled over, I realized the undergrowth had been cleared up ahead, to make way for a sloping, landscaped lawn. We’d come upon the occasional farmhouse or shack, along the way; but nothing like this. Here, in the middle of this overgrown but desolate landscape, was what at first glance seemed a mansion: a gray three-story frame building with a white-pillared porch in front of which evergreens perched like obedient pets. A beautiful structure, really, of modern vintage, despite its modified Southern plantation motif.
We got out of the unmarked car and walked toward the big building, which on closer look resembled a hotel more than a private residence, but there were no signs to identify it as such or to attract business.
And it was obviously empty-though apparently such had not been the case for long. Several of its windows had been broken out, and it wore a general air of disrepair and neglect. Which was puzzling in itself: why a building of this size and worth would be abandoned made no sense at all. Had a bank foreclosed here, there’d have been at least minimal upkeep.
“Come around back,” Dixon said; he had dug a chaw of tobacco out of his jacket pocket and took a healthy bite.
Leaves and twigs under the thin frozen layer of snow crunched under our feet as we climbed the gently sloping ground, and circled around, to approach the rear of the building.
“Holy shit,” I said.
Dixon grinned at me, chewing his tobacco vigorously. “Pretty sight, ain’t it?”
The whole ass-end of the big building was blown out; two large barnlike double-doors, on the ground floor, had been torn away-one was missing entirely, another hung by a thread and a prayer. On the lower, built-up basement level, the wood walls between brick support posts had also been blown out. Lumber and refuse were piled behind the building to form a misshapen hill half as wide as the structure itself and a third as tall.
“Must have been one hell of an explosion,” I said.
“Must have been one hell of a still,” Dixon said. He spat tobacco juice.
“Is that what this place was? A moonshine distillery?”
“No! That was just a little part of the operation.”
I pushed my hat back, scratched my head; the cold air was nipping at me, and seemed as impatient as I was. “Well, it looks like a hotel. What was it, a roadhouse?”
“Kee-rect, Nate.” He smiled brownly. “Not your regulation roadhouse that dots the back roads of our beautiful land, from sea to shinin’ sea, the kind designed to pull in your tired businessmen or your thirsty pampered college kids. No sir. And it wasn’t for the Hopewell clientele, neither.”
“Willis-what the hell was this place?”
He beamed at me; a hick taking great pride in educating a city slicker. “A gangster hideaway, Nate. Where all the big shots outa New York and your other major metropolitan areas gathered to enjoy their own company in their own private whoopee parties.”
“Jesus. Including Chicago?”
He nodded. “I spotted Cook County plates ’round these parts many a time.”
“Why didn’t you ever bust this place? Oh. Sorry.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “No, no. It ain’t that. It’s not that I wouldn’t have taken a taste if it was offered me. But this is not our jurisdiction. It’s outside of city limits.”
“Whose jurisdiction is it? Oh. Sure-the state police.”
He nodded again. “Schwarzkopf’s little girls, is right.” He put his hands on his hips, spat an elegant brown stream into the pile of rubble. “Think of it, Nate. Some of the biggest wing-dings imaginable, with Broadway entertainers and whores so pretty they qualify as table food. Gamblin’ and orgies and it all took place right inside there, for the sole enjoyment of our nation’s mob chieftains.”
Capone would have been here. More than once. Just a few miles from the Lindbergh estate.
Dixon began to wander, hands on hips. “Can you picture it? How could a night of revelry pass by without those big shots making some passin’ reference to the famous Lindy and his family, so close by? I’ll lay you twenty to one that many a night they passed the time tossin’ around how much easy dough there was that could be had by grabbing that famous kid.”
“But they never went through with it,” I said, thinking aloud. “It just stayed idle speculation, fun after-dinner talk, because the estate was too close. Suspicion would point in their direction.”
“Right! But then this big old still blew to hell and back, and a guy was killed in the explosion, one of them that ran it, and the place was closed down.”
“So protecting the roadhouse was no longer necessary.”
“Right-o,” Dixon said. “And since there never was an arrest or raid or anything out here, what sort of trail was there for anybody to follow?”
“Somebody should’ve tried,” I said. The wind sighed, rustling the trees. “Somebody should be trying right now….”
A few minutes later, we were pulling into the Lindbergh estate. As we drove around by the command-post garage, Dixon said, “Well, I’ll be damned-look who it is!”
He pointed to a trio of men standing outside the garage, milling about with expressions of impatience. One of the men was older and clearly the leader, albeit an unlikely one: a short, round bald man in a rumpled brown topcoat, a straw fedora in one hand, with which he was slapping his thigh. White-mustached, lumpy-faced, he was smoking a corncob pipe and looked like a gentleman farmer, although not much of one-gentleman or farmer. His two associates were taller and younger, and better dressed, but not much; they looked like plainclothes cops, backwoods variety.
Dixon pulled in next to another of several cars parked in the outer cement apron and turned the engine off, but left his hands on the wheel. His expression seemed weirdly glazed.
“That’s the Old Fox himself,” he said.
“Old Fox?”
“Ellis Parker. Don’t tell me you never heard of him.”
I’d heard of him, all right. That fat, bald, rumpled, apparent nonentity was Ellis Parker, a.k.a. the Old Fox, a.k.a. the Cornfield Sherlock, a.k.a. the Small-Town Detective with the Worldwide Reputation. Parker was chief of detectives of some county or other in New Jersey-I didn’t remember where-but he was widely known as one of the nation’s top investigators, and frequently was brought in on cases in East Coast cities larger than his own tiny Mount Holly, wherever the hell that was.
I’d read of many of his cases; he was written up in magazines and in the papers, and there were books about him. How at Fort Dix he discovered who murdered a soldier by investigating the fellow soldier (one of a hundred-plus uniformed suspects) who had the best, most complete alibi; how he discovered that a soaking-wet corpse had been treated at a tannery to fool the medical examiner about time of death; how he tracked a homicidal mulatto with a sweet tooth by alerting every restaurant in his own and neighboring counties to be on the lookout for “a pudding-loving colored boy.”
“I suppose it was natural he’d show up around here,” I said. “This case could use a mind like his.”
“Twenty to one Schwarzkopf won’t agree with you,” Dixon said, sourly. He shook his head, admiringly. “I’ve had an application in over at Burlington County for over two years, now. There’s a hell of a waiting list, though.”
“You ever meet the old boy?”
“Sure! Burlington is the adjacent county.”
“Really. Why don’t you introduce me, then, Willis?”
A few moments later we’d ambled over to Parker, who nodded at Willis.
“Constable Dixon,” Parker said. He seemed to force a smile as he offered a hand, which Willis shook. “How the hell are you, son?” His voice was as rough-hewn as his appearance; his face was stubbled with white, his eyes were sleepy and blue and anything but piercing; his tie was food-stained and floated several inches below the notch of his collar. Sherlock Holmes posing as his own dim-witted Watson.
“Fine, Chief Parker. This is Nate Heller.”
Something in the eyes came to life. “The Chicago feller. The Capone theorist.”
I grinned and shook the hand he thrust forward. “Well, nobody ever accused me of being any kind of theorist before, Chief. Where did you hear my name?”
He sidled up close to me; he smelled like pipe tobacco-foul pipe tobacco. He slipped a fatherly arm around my shoulder. “I have my confidants in that horse’s ass Schwarzkopf’s camp.”
“Do tell.”
“I hear you’re the boy who has stood up to that asshole of creation, Welch.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“I hear you suggested that he kiss your behind.”
“Words to that effect.”
He laughed heartily-he apparently liked subtle humor-and patted me on the back. “Allow me to introduce my deputies.”
He did. I don’t remember their names.
“Maybe one of these days Constable Dixon here will come work for me,” Parker said, finally relinquishing my shoulder.
Dixon lit up like an electric bulb. “I’d like that, sir.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any pull with the Colonel, would you, son?”
“Schwarzkopf?” Dixon asked.
“Hell’s bells, no! Not that asshole. Lindbergh! We’ve been cooling our heels for two hours, waiting to see Lindy. Schwarzkopf’s giving me the goddamn runaround.”
I raised a hand. “Let me see what I can do.”
Parker’s lumpy face broke apart in a smile. “That’s goddamn white of you, son.”
I went inside, through the servants’ sitting room and then the kitchen, where I saw Betty Gow and Elsie and Ollie Whately in passing, as well as Welch and several of Schwarzkopf’s upper echelon lounging having coffee and sandwiches. The living room was empty, but for the little dog Wahgoosh, who barked at me as usual, and I growled back at him. Rosner wasn’t around, either, his chair outside the study empty but for yesterday’s folded-up racing form.
I knocked on the study door. “It’s Heller, Slim.”
“Come in, Nate,” Lindbergh said, and I did.
“I hear you stayed over in Princeton last night,” he said, looking up from some mail he’d been reading, material the troopers had culled from the hundreds of letters that had come in today.
“Yeah, I was able to, uh, get into that room a day early.”
He nodded noncommittally, only half-listening. “Henry went into the city, to his office, early this morning. He said he felt these spiritualist people were probably charlatans.”
“Yeah, probably,” I said, and sat down. “Where’s Rosner?”
“Pursuing some underworld leads in New York City, today.”
Cops and robbers, with the robber playing cop.
“Slim-there’s somebody outside you ought to give a few minutes to.”
“Who would that be?”
“Ellis Parker.”
Lindbergh nodded, blankly. I might have said Santa Claus or Joe Blow.
“Surely you’ve heard of him,” I said.
“Yes. He’s very well known.” He paused. He sighed. “If you think I should see him, I will.”
“Okay. Slim-are you holding up okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You getting any sleep? You took like hell.”
He smiled thinly. “It’s nice to have somebody around who isn’t afraid to tell me the truth. Yes, I am getting some sleep. Some.”
“Okay. I’m not your nursemaid or anything. But if you’re going to be the guy making the key decisions, you got to be on top of things.”
“I know.”
“Good. I’ll bring Parker around.”
Minutes later, I was ushering Parker in, and Lindbergh rose and the men exchanged greetings and admiration. Then everybody settled into their chairs, Parker leaning forward.
He had the foul-smelling corncob pipe going, held in one hand.
“Colonel Lindbergh, I’ve been a detective for over forty years. I’ve investigated twenty thousand cases, including over three hundred homicides. All but twelve of those homicide cases wound up in convictions.”
Lindbergh’s face was impassive; but his eyes tensed, just barely, at the mention of the word “homicide.”
Parker inserted the pipe in his tight mouth; he looked a little like Popeye the Sailor. “I’ve offered my services to Colonel Schwarzkopf, but have been rudely rebuffed-and as you may know I’m on the outs with Governor Moore. So coming aboard in an official capacity hasn’t been open to me. But I couldn’t sit idly by, just one county away, and not offer you my services. I’d like to be of help to you, sir.”
Lindbergh smiled politely. “That’s kind of you, Chief Parker. But I have to say I’m satisfied with the way Colonel Schwarzkopf is handling the matter.”
Parker grimaced. “No offense meant to you, Colonel, but that jackass has done every damn thing wrong, in this case, from A to Z. His failure to make a thorough search of the entire community within a wide radius of your estate is frankly, sir, shameful, inexcusable.”
Lindbergh said nothing.
“Ideally, I would like to head up the team of detectives in charge of the case-a mixture of my own boys and state troopers. But I’m available strictly as a consultant, if that’s your pleasure.”
Lindbergh said nothing. His eyes were like stones.
Parker shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Then Lindbergh spoke. His voice was as expressionless and unemotional as a telephone operator’s. “I have great respect for your achievements, Chief Parker. But I’ve already read and heard some of your opinions about this case, in the papers and on the radio. And I will have no truck with cheap shots, second-guessing and theorizing.”
“Colonel Lindbergh, my only concern is to offer my help in your time of…”
Lindbergh raised a hand in a stop motion. “I won’t have police officers from every which where tripping over themselves, seeking their own glory at the possible expense of my son’s life. Colonel Schwarzkopf and I have the situation in hand. Good day to you, sir.”
“Colonel Lindbergh…”
“Thank you for coming.”
Parker rose; his neck was red with anger, but he merely nodded to Lindbergh and went out.
I stayed behind.
“That guy is one of the most brilliant detectives alive,” I said. “And your boy Schwarzkopf is a goddamn department-store floorwalker!”
“Nate,” Lindbergh said tersely, his hands flat on his desk, “Ellis Parker is accustomed to getting the lion’s share of the limelight-he’s done remarkable work in the past, but he’s dazzled by his own publicity.”
“I’m sure he is jealous of Schwarzkopf,” I said with a shrug. “But a guy like that, who is a great detective by anybody’s yardstick, ought to be turned loose on a major crime like this-particularly when it’s in his own backyard, for Christ’s sake. It only makes sense!”
“No,” Lindbergh said.
I looked at him.
“Okay,” I said.
I went out. Lindy wanted to hear the truth from me, it seemed, but didn’t necessarily want to pay it any heed.
I caught up with Parker outside, just as he was about to climb into a Burlington County police car.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help,” I said. “I’d like to have had you involved.”
“Who says I’m not going to be?” he said, one foot on the running board. And he winked at me.
The dust of Parker’s Ford on the dirt lane hadn’t settled when Breckinridge’s familiar Dusenberg pulled in. The lawyer looked grayer than usual as he climbed down from his fancy car and came straight over to me. He took me by the arm, took me aside.
“Heller,” he said. “What did you do last night?”
“It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to say.”
“You spent the night with that medium, didn’t you?”
I shrugged. “Slim said I was the resident spook chaser. Who else are you going to get to lay a ghost?”
He grabbed me by one arm. Almost shook me. The unflappable Breckinridge was definitely flapped. “What did she have to say?”
Actually, she hadn’t said much at all. She’d moaned a good deal and even screamed a couple times. But I wasn’t about to share my memorable evening with Sister Sarah with Breckinridge. I’m just not that kind of guy.
Besides, what would a stuffed shirt like Breckinridge know about a night of wild passion with a woman whose pale flesh glowed in the half-light of a flickering candle, who let me ride her and who rode me, till I was raw and sweating and dead from exhaustion. Sister Sarah could make a ghost out of any man.
But we hadn’t talked. I knew no more about her from spending the night with her than I did after that seance. Including going through her purse and her suitcases and other personal belongings, after she went to sleep.
“Hey, pal,” I said indignantly, “I don’t kiss and tell, okay?”
“She said a letter would come today. To my office.”
“Yeah, so?”
“This came by mail, to my office,” he said grimly, “this morning.”
He took an envelope out of his pocket, hastily opened it and held the letter up for me to see.
Specifically, he showed me the signature: blue and red interlocking circles with three holes.