The butler, Garboni, showed me to my room, so I could freshen up before supper. It seemed I was staying overnight.
“People may talk,” Mrs. McLean had said, as we exited the sun porch, taking my arm rather formally, as if she were attired in the latest Hattie Carnegie creation and not a housecoat, “but hell, let them. I hardly think with a staff of twenty, and sixty rooms, I need worry about you compromising what little remains of my virtue.”
“Like the white slaver said to the schoolgirl, you can trust me, Mrs. McLean.”
She smiled at that. “You’ll be staying in Vinson’s room. It’s been kept just the same, since his death.”
“You’ve put me in your son’s room?”
“No. My brother’s. My son’s room has been preserved, as well. It’s a luxury of a house this size. But I never allow anyone to sleep there.”
Brother Vinson’s room, my room, was on the third floor-and we, the butler and me, went by elevator. I tried to remember when I’d ever been in a private residence that had elevators before, and couldn’t. The hallway Garboni led me down was wide enough to accommodate an el train and still take passengers on from either side. Persian rugs underfoot, brocade wallpaper surrounding me, I gaped like a rube at oil paintings and watercolors that looked European and venerable in their elaborate gilt-edged frames, noting my slack-jawed expression in the mirror of dark-wood furniture that was polished past absurdity. I felt about as at home as an archbishop in a brothel; but like the archbishop, I could adjust.
Garboni opened the door to Vinson’s room-actually, it was a suite of rooms-and we entered a sitting room a little smaller than the deck of the Titanic. The butler dropped my traveling bag with a clunk.
“Take it easy, pal,” I said irritably. “There’s a gun in there.”
His eyes flared a little bit; that threw him. “Sorry, sir.”
“And here I was getting ready to give you a nickel tip.”
He took that at face value, or seemed to. “No gratuities are necessary, sir.”
“I’ll say. Scram.”
He scrammed; without a word, without even a nasty look. For a burly-looking wop, this bird was pretty easily spooked.
And so I was alone in Vinson’s digs. Sort of.
Just me and the stuffed alligator. And the two sets of armor. And the waist-high ivory elephant. And the six-foot bronze horse. I sat on a plush red couch with a half dozen red pillows, the sort of thing you might find yourself sitting on in a San Francisco whorehouse, and took in the goddamnedest, godawfulest assembly of mismatched junk I ever saw. A Navajo blanket covering a table; an oversize anchor clock on the wall; a portrait of a Madonna and Child; a Hindu bust; a combined bookcase and gun case; seven pieces of old armor on the wall and a shield, too; a carved bellows; several red throw rugs; a slinky-looking sofa that looked like something a Turkish harem girl might lounge on. Vinson might’ve been dead, but his bad taste lived on.
The bedroom itself was almost spartan in comparison-a bookcase filled with Horatio Alger, a cabinet with mirror, a single bed of rough rustic wood that seemed a relic or reminder or something of Colorado.
I used the bathroom-I had my own private one, no bigger than your average Chicago two-flat-and, as Mrs. McLean requested, freshened up. As I splashed water on my face, I wondered what to make of this-specifically, of her. She seemed silly but smart; self-absorbed but caring. A vain rich woman in a 98-cent housecoat.
I didn’t like her exactly-but she fascinated me. And she was attractive; probably ten or fifteen years older than me, but what the hell-older women try harder. Even wealthy ones. Especially wealthy ones.
The room had its own phone, which would allow me to check in with Lindbergh and Breckinridge at my convenience. On the other hand, I could be listened in on, so I’d edit whatever I said with Mrs. McLean in mind.
Freshened or not, I wore the same suit down to dinner-I only had two along; in fact, I only owned two-and, for fifteen minutes or so, sat alone under a cut crystal chandelier at a table for twenty-four, at which there were two place settings, directly opposite each other, midway. I was served a thin white wine that the thin black server, who was dressed far more formally than I, informed me was a Montrachet, as if I should have been impressed, which I wasn’t. He should have known better than to try to impress a guy who had a stuffed alligator in his room.
Mrs. McLean’s entrance, however, did impress. She had traded in the dowdy plaid robe for an embroidered gown, its delicate lacework dark red against a soft pink that at first seemed to be her flesh; but her flesh was whiter, creamier, as was attested to by the low cut of the gown, the white swell of her breasts, and they were indeed swell, providing a resting place for a string of perfect pearls so long it fell off the cliff of her breasts and dropped to her lap. There were worse places to fall from and to. She’d relieved Mike of the Hope diamond, which was around her own neck now, dangling just above the cleft of her bosom. In her hair was a feathered diamond tiara and her earrings were pearls that dwarfed the ballbearing-size ones of the necklace.
Her smile was amused and pleased. “I told you I could dazzle, if I chose.”
“You look great,” I said, lamely, getting up.
She gestured for me to sit and soon we were enjoying her chef’s filet of lemon sole (“with Marguery sauce”).
“Maurice,” she said, referring to her chef, “is the most priceless gem in this house.”
“I hope he doesn’t come with a curse.”
“No,” she said, smiling a little, more relaxed now despite her more formal attire, “just with the pedigree of the best cafes in Paris and London. He trained as a caterer. That’s the only sort of chef to go after.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I suppose tartar sauce is out of the question.”
She laughed; I was glad she was finally getting my jokes-too bad I hadn’t been joking.
“You know,” she said, reflecting a while later over Maurice’s “patented” parfait, “money is lovely to have and I do love having it-but it doesn’t really bring the big things of life. Friends, health, respect. And it’s apt to make one soft, selfish, self-indulgent.”
“You mean, while we’re eating parfaits in this palace, people are out there scrounging for scraps, living in shacks made out of tin cans and cardboard.”
She nodded, sadly, even as she tasted a bite of parfait. “If only I’d had the courage, years ago, to lead my own life…apart from Ned and his family and my parents and my family…I might by now have helped so many poor souls…. I might have done infinitely more good with my life.”
She licked ice cream from her lips as she shook her head regretfully.
“Well, you are trying to do some good,” I said. “For the Lindberghs and their boy.”
“Yes. In my small way. If you’re finished, Mr. Heller, we can move to the sitting room, and I’ll explain everything.”
I took her by the arm and we moved through that excessive, magnificent house through the Louis XV ballroom, not to the sun porch this time, but to a room nearly as large as the ballroom where plush comfortable furnishings crouched in the golden glow of a massive marble fireplace.
“I’ve had two glasses of wine already,” Mrs. McLean said, standing at a liquor cart about the size of a Maxwell Street pushcart, only mahogany and gold-inlaid. “That is my limit. But if you’d like more…”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, settling down into an oversize sofa opposite the glowing fire. This modest little drawing room was paneled in mahogany, had a twenty-foot ceiling, a massive pipe organ built into one wall, and a Persian rug smaller than Lake Michigan partially covering its parquet floor.
She sat next to me, pulled up an ottoman, kicked off her shoes and put her silk-stockinged feet up on it. A thick arch support tumbled out of her right shoe. She noticed me noticing that and tugged on my arm and pointed to her tiny feet; she wiggled the toes of her right foot.
“See,” she said. “Shorter. From that accident, years ago. I told you.”
“They look fine to me.”
“Mr. Heller, you’re a charming man.”
“Everybody says so. Why don’t you break your rule and let me get us a couple of drinks.”
Her smile was impish. “Why don’t I?”
I poured myself some Bacardi, no ice, and some sherry for her.
“Thank you, Mr. Heller,” she said, sipping hers.
“Why don’t you call me Nate?”
“Why don’t I? Why don’t you call me Evalyn?”
“Why don’t I. And why don’t you tell me all about Gaston Bullock Means.”
“All right.” Her lovely features were serene in the firelight; she was looking into the flames, held by them, as she spoke. “As I said, from the beginning I felt the Lindbergh kidnapping was an underworld job. But I could hardly offer myself as an intermediary-what self-respecting criminal would deal with a flighty society woman like Evalyn Walsh McLean! Besides-they say it takes a crook to catch a crook-and Gaston Bullock Means was the perfect crook for what I had in mind.”
“What made Means the ‘perfect crook’ for the job?”
She raised an eyebrow, sipped her sherry. “I knew he’d done a lot of dirty work for the Harding administration-he certainly knew his way around the capital, from the back alleys to the front parlors.”
“He did time, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “Until recently, he was in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, on prohibition charges, stemming from abuses when he was a Justice Department agent.”
“Taking bribes from bootleggers?”
“That’s right. Anyway, I first met him several years ago, when some friends of ours in the administration were reluctant to contact Means directly about some documents he’d pilfered. They seemed in mortal fear of the barrel-bellied blackguard. So I called him up, arranged a meeting and picked the papers up from him, myself-as a favor.”
Evalyn Walsh McLean seemed an unlikely bagman for the Ohio Gang; but there it was.
“At our meeting,” she said, with a self-satisfied smirk, “Means made some threatening remarks about several friends of Ned’s and mine-Andrew Mellon, Harry Daughtery-and I put him in his place.”
Andrew Mellon was then Secretary of the Treasury; Daughtery had been Harding’s Attorney General.
“How did you do that, Evalyn?”
She shrugged, but her nonchalance wasn’t convincing. “I told Means I’d always been curious to know what it would be like to meet a murderer. And now I knew.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He asked me what I meant by that, and I said, ‘I think you know,’ and he said, ‘Oh…Maude King.’ And then he paused-such an innocent-looking, dimpled, moon-faced miscreant-and said, ‘Accidents will happen.’”
I knew about Maude King-she was an eccentric, wealthy widow from Chicago, the kind the papers like to call a “madcap heiress,” and Gaston Means had wormed his way into her confidence by foiling some thugs who accosted her on a street corner in the Loop. He became her financial adviser, and bilked her out of an estimated $150,000, before taking her on a hunting trip in North Carolina, where Mrs. King was “accidentally” shot to death.
It seemed Means had taken the target pistol the two of them had been using and left it in the crotch of a tree while he wandered off for a drink of spring water. Somehow the gun had discharged in Means’s absence, and Mrs. King managed to get shot behind the left ear. The North Carolina jury acquitted Means; the Chicago press had not.
“Means has a history, obviously,” I said, “of taking advantage of attractive, wealthy women.”
Her smile was as many-faceted as the gleaming jewel that rode her gently moving bosom. “Attractive wealthy older women, don’t you mean?”
“Not really. I remember seeing photos of Maude King-she didn’t look any older than you. Which is to say, not old at all.”
“That’s diplomatic, Nate. But I’m at least ten years your senior….”
“The point is,” I said, “Means has fixed his sights on women with money before. Are you sure he didn’t seek you out?”
“Absolutely not. I called him. He came here, to my home.”
“When was this?”
“The fourth of March.”
Hell, that was several days before I even got involved in the case.
She pointed off vaguely to the rest of the house. “There’s a drawing room on this floor, with a balcony overlooking it. I met Means there, while my friend Elizabeth Poe, a reporter from the Post, hid above with a revolver.”
It was obvious from the sparkle in her eyes that she loved the intrigue.
“I asked him point-blank if he knew anything about the Lindbergh kidnapping. Without hesitation, he said, ‘It so happens that I do. Why?’ I might have asked, is it true blue is your favorite color?”
“Evalyn, a good con man never misses a beat. You toss him a curve, he’ll bat the ball out of the park.”
“Perhaps. At any rate, I told him of my concern, my sympathy, for the Lindberghs, and said I wanted to aid in effecting the boy’s return. Then I asked him what he knew about the kidnapping, warning that if there was any funny business, I’d see him sent to prison.”
She tried to sound stern and tough, but it was about as convincing as Means’s story about the pistol in the crotch of the tree.
“He said he didn’t blame me for being skeptical about him. He said he’d committed just about every kind of sin under the sun. But what he said next convinced me.”
“What was that?”
“He said, ‘I haven’t come forward to the police or press with what I know about the Lindbergh case because of the tissue of lies that my life has been so far.’ That phrase struck me: ‘tissue of lies.’”
“Con men always have a way with words, Evalyn.”
“He claimed he’d been in a New York speakeasy about ten days before, where he’d run into an old cellmate of his from Atlanta. The old friend asked Means, or so Means said, if he was interested in playing ransom negotiator in a big kidnapping that was going to be pulled around March first.”
“Did Means say his friend specifically mentioned Lindbergh?”
“Means said he’d been told only that it was a ‘big-time snatch.’ But Means turned down the opportunity, saying that ‘napping’ was one crime he wouldn’t touch.”
The fire crackled.
I sat sideways and looked right at her, getting her attention away from the flames. “So then when the Lindbergh kidnapping broke on the radio and in the papers, Means figured it must be the ‘big-time snatch’ his pal mentioned.”
She nodded; her eyes looked unblinkingly my way, the fire reflecting in them, the stone on her chest doing the same. “Means claimed he’d contacted several prominent men here in Washington, including Colonel Guggenheim, but hadn’t gotten anywhere. Means was viewed as the little boy crying wolf. I later ascertained from Colonel Guggenheim and a prominent local judge that this was quite true.”
I’d lost count of the colonels in this case, a long time ago.
“Means offered to get in touch with his old cellmate, and I urged him to do so. The next morning he told me he’d succeeded in contacting his old friend, and that the man was indeed the ‘head of the Lindbergh gang,’ and eager to open negotiations for the baby’s return. Then began the continuing succession of meetings, including several with Jerry Land present, working with Means as the intermediary with the kidnappers.”
Jerry Land was Admiral Emory S. Land, the Lindbergh relative who’d conveyed word of what Mrs. McLean and Means were up to, to Slim.
“Where do things stand now?” I asked her.
“Last Monday, I gave Means a big pasteboard carton filled with bills in denominations of five, ten and twenty dollars.”
“You gave that to him already?”
She nodded. “One hundred thousand dollars.”
I sighed. “Have you seen him since?”
“Oh yes. He lives over in Chevy Chase with his family. He has a wife and son, you know-the son is his motivation, he says. He says he hopes to atone for his past and make his boy proud.”
“Yeah, well, that’s touching. But that was days ago. Has he delivered the ransom to the ‘gang’? He obviously hasn’t delivered the baby to you.”
“It’s supposed to happen soon. I’m going to Far View tomorrow-that’s where the kidnappers have agreed to make delivery. Means is meeting me there.”
“Where and what is Far View?”
“My country home. In Maryland. I’ve made arrangements with a doctor friend of mine for anyone who might inquire, that for the next few days to a week, I’m at Union Memorial in Baltimore taking a rest cure.”
“There’s a lot of intrigue in this thing, isn’t there?”
She shook her head, laughed a little. “Yes there is. And Means insists on using code names and numbers…he was a double agent at one time, you know.”
“Yeah. He worked for the Germans just before the World War.”
“I’m Number Eleven. The baby is referred to, always, as ‘the book.’ Means himself is ‘Hogan.’ Admiral Land is Number Fourteen. And so on.”
“I need another drink.” I got myself one. “How about you, Evalyn?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Anybody who can hand Gaston Means a cardboard box with one hundred grand in it can risk a second glass of sherry.”
“Valid point,” she said, and took the sherry. “I’ve involved you, I’m afraid, in the intrigue.”
“Oh? How in hell?”
“Well, I knew Colonel Lindbergh wanted me to meet with you, but if Gaston Means, or the kidnappers, knew I was dealing with a policeman…even one so far off his beat…it might prove disastrous. I can trust my staff-they’ve all been with me for years. But if anyone, Gaston Means in particular, should ask them-you came here today to be interviewed for a position.”
“What position is that?”
“Chauffeur.”
I snorted a laugh, finished my Bacardi. “That’s rich. I couldn’t find my way across the street in this town. Well, I’d like to meet Means. And maybe it would be best if I did it undercover.”
“Undercover?”
I pointed to myself with a thumb. “Meet your new chauffeur. Who’s going to escort you to your country place-where I’ll size Means and his story up for myself.”
Her smile was almost demure. “That would be wonderful, Nate. You think…you think I’m a foolish old woman, don’t you?”
“You’re not old at all.”
“The fire’s dwindling. Would you put some wood on?”
“All right.”
When I returned to the couch, she was sitting with her legs tucked up under her, illuminated by the blaze I’d rekindled. I sat next to her and she moved closer.
“I haven’t been with a man since my husband and I separated,” she said.
I didn’t believe that, but I said, “A lovely girl like you?”
She was amused. “You think calling me a ‘girl’ is going to win me over?”
“You look like a girl to me.”
The amusement dropped like a mask; something was smoldering in her expression, and the fire had nothing to do with it. “Nate. Nate. Why don’t you just kiss me?”
“We just met. You don’t know anything about me, Evalyn.”
“You have a dry wit. You have a gun in your suitcase. You have nice eyes, a little cruel, but nice. Your hair looks red in the firelight. I know all that, and more.”
“More? What else do you know?”
“I know you have a gun in your pocket, too.”
“That isn’t a gun.”
“I know.”
I kissed her. Her mouth was wet and warm and tasted like sherry. Her tongue flicked my tongue.
“More,” she said.
I kissed her some more; it was nice and got nicer. Hot and got hotter. I slid my hand up the slope of her bosom-I felt the chill cut stone of the Hope diamond and pulled my hand away like I’d been burned. I drew the rest of me away, too, head reeling from rum and where I was.
“Let me get this off,” she said hastily. She removed the diamond necklace, and the pearls, too, and tossed them on an overstuffed chair nearby, as casually as if she’d slipped off her shoes. The diamond was catching the fire and flashing.
“Help me with this,” she said, reaching behind her, and I did, and soon the gown was around her tiny waist and her breasts, perfect, high, full, enormous, were basking in the golden glow of the fire. I put my hands on them. I put my mouth on them. Sucked the tips till they were hard.
“What about your servants?” I asked, gasping, my face half-buried in her treasure chest.
“They’ll only come when I ask them,” she said.
“Me too,” I said.