Dying in the Post-War World

2

The house — mansion, really — had been once belonged to a guy named Murphy who invented the bed of the same name, one of which I had slept in many a night, back when my office and my apartment were one and the same. But the rectangular cream-color brick building, wearing its jaunty green hat of a roof, had long ago been turned into a two-family dwelling.

Nonetheless, it was an impressive residence, with a sloping lawn and a twin-pillared entrance, just a block from the lake on the far North Side. And the Keenan family had a whole floor to themselves, the first, with seven spacious rooms. Bob Keenan was doing all right, with his OPA position.

Only right now he wasn’t doing so good.

He met me at the front door; in shirtsleeves, no tie, his fleshy face long and pale, eyes wide with worry. He was around forty, but something, this morning, had added an immediate extra ten years.

“Thank you, Nate,” he said, grasping my hand eagerly, “thank you for coming.”

“Sure, Bob,” I said.

He ushered me through the nicely but not lavishly furnished apartment like a guy with the flu showing a plumber where the busted toilet was.

“Look in here,” he said, and he held his palm out. I entered what was clearly a child’s room, a little girl’s room. Pink floral wallpaper, a graceful tiny wooden bed, slippers on the rug nearby, sheer feminine curtains, a toy chest on which various dolls sat like sweetly obedient children.

I shrugged. “What...?”

“This is JoAnn’s room,” he said, as if that explained it.

“Your little girl?”

He nodded. “The younger of my two girls. Jane’s with her mother in the kitchen.”

The bed was unmade; the window was open. Lake wind whispered in.

“Where’s JoAnn, Bob?” I asked.

“Gone,” he said. He swallowed thickly. “Look at this.”

He walked to the window; pointed to a scrap of paper on the floor. I walked there, knelt. I did not pick up the greasy scrap of foolscap. I didn’t have to, to read the crudely printed words there:

I stood and sucked in some air; hands on hips, I looked into Bob Keenan’s wide, red, desperate eyes and said, “You haven’t called the cops?”

“No. Or the FBI. I called you.”

Sounding more irritable than I meant to, I said, “For Christ’s sake, why?”

“The note said no police. I needed help. I may need an intermediary. I sure as hell need somebody who knows his way around this kind of thing.”

I gestured with open, raised palms, like a mime making a wall. “Don’t touch anything. Have you touched anything?”

“No. Not even the note.”

“Good. Good.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Now, just take it easy, Bob. Let’s go sit in the living room.”

I walked him in there, hand never leaving his shoulder.

“Okay,” I said gently, “why exactly did you call me?”

He was next to me on the couch, sitting slumped, staring downward, legs apart, hands clasped. He was a big man — not fat: big.

He shrugged. “I knew you worked on the Lindbergh case.”

Yeah, and hadn’t that worked out swell.

“I was a cop, then,” I said. “I was the liaison between the Chicago PD and the New Jersey authorities. And that was a long time ago.”

“Well, Ken mentioned it once.”

“Did you call Ken before you called me? Did he suggest you call me?”

Ken was the attorney who was our mutual friend and business associate.

“No. Nate... to be quite frank with you, I called because, well... you’re supposed to be connected.”

I sighed. “I’ve had dealings with the Outfit from time to time, but I’m no gangster, Bob, and even if I was...”

“I didn’t mean that! If you were a gangster, do you think I would have called you?”

“I’m not understanding this, Bob.”

His wife, Norma, entered the room tentatively; she was a pretty, petite woman in a floral-print dress that was like a darker version of the wallpaper in her little girl’s room. Her pleasant features were distorted; there was a wildness in her face. She hadn’t cried yet. She was too upset.

I stood. If I’d ever felt more awkward, I couldn’t remember when.

“Is everything all right, Bob? Is this your detective friend?”

“Yes. This is Nate Heller.”

She came to me and gave me a skull-like smile. “Thank for you coming. Oh, thank you so much for coming. Can you help us?”

“Yes,” I said. It was the only thing I could say.

Relief filled her chest and filtered up through her face; but her eyes remained wild.

“Please go sit with Jane,” Bob said, patting her arm. He looked at me as if an explanation were necessary. “Jane and her little sister are so very close. She and JoAnn are only two years apart.”

I nodded, and the wife went hurriedly away, as if rushing to make sure Jane were still there.

We sat back down.

“I know you’ve had dealings with the mob,” Keenan said. “The problem is... so I have I. Or actually, the problem is, I haven’t.”

“Pardon?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I only moved here six months ago. I’d been second-in-command in the New York office. In Albany.”

“Of the OPA, you mean?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I guess I don’t have to tell you the pressures a person in my position is under. We’re in charge of everything from building and industrial materials to meat to gasoline to... well. Anyway. I didn’t play ball with the mobsters out there. There were threats against me, against my family, but I didn’t take their money. I asked for a transfer. I was sent here.”

Chicago? That was a hell of a place to hide from mobsters.

He read the thought in my face.

“I know,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “but I wasn’t given a choice in the matter. Oddly, none of that type of people have contacted me here. But then, things are winding down... rationing’s all but a thing of the past.” He laughed mirthlessly. “That’s the irony. The sad goddamn irony.”

“What is?”

He was shaking his head. “The announcement will be made later this week: the OPA is out of business. They’re shutting us down. I’m moving over to a Department of Agriculture position.”

“I see.” I let out another sigh; it was that kind of situation. “So, because the note said not to notify the authorities, and because you’ve had threats from gangsters before, you called me in.”

I had my hands on my knees; he placed his hand over my nearest one, and squeezed. It was an earnest gesture, and embarrassed hell out of me.

“You’ve got to help us,” he said.

“I will. I will. I’ll be glad to serve as an intermediary, and I’ll be glad to advise you and do whatever you think will be useful.”

“Thank God,” he said.

“But first we call the cops.”

“What...?”

“Are you a gambling man, Bob?”

“Well, yes, I suppose, in a small way, but not with my daughter’s life, for God’s sake!”

“I know what the odds are in a case like this. In a case like this, children are recovered unharmed more frequently when the police and FBI are brought in.”

“But the note said...”

“How old is JoAnn?”

“She’s six.”

“That’s old enough for her to be able to describe her kidnappers. That’s old enough for her to pick them out of a lineup.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Bob.” And now I reached over and clasped his hand. He looked at me with haunted, watery eyes. “Kidnapping’s a federal offense, Bob. It’s a capital crime.”

He swallowed. “Then they’ll probably kill her, won’t they? If she isn’t dead already.”

“Your chances are better with the authorities in on it. We’ll work it from both ends: negotiate with the kidnappers, even as the cops are beating the bushes trying to find the bastards. And JoAnn.”

“If she’s not already dead,” he said.

I just looked at him. Then I nodded.

He began to weep.

I patted his back, gently. There there. There there.