God Save the Child

4

The rain had stopped when I left Susan Silverman and headed back for the Bartletts’ house. I wanted to see what they could tell me about their son’s social circle. If there was a group like that around, it would be a fair bet he’d go to it. Smithfield didn’t look like the spot for a commune. But then, I wasn’t quite sure what a spot for a commune looked like.

When I pulled into the Bartlett driveway, the chief’s car was there again along with three others. One was a cream-colored Thunderbird with a black vinyl roof. One was a blue Ford station wagon with SMITHFIELD POLICE lettered in black on the sides and the emergency number 494-1212 across the back. The third was a two-tone powder-blue and dark blue Massachusetts State Police cruiser. A state cop with a uniform that matched the cruiser and a gray campaign hat was leaning against it with his arms folded. The short-sleeved blue shirt was pressed with military creases; the black shoes were spit-shined. The campaign hat was tipped forward over the bridge of his nose like a Parris Island DI’s. He had a big-handled Magnum .357 on a shiny black belt. He looked at me with no expression on his tanned and healthy face as I got out of my car.

“May I have your name, sir?” he said.

“Spenser,” I said. “I’m working for the Bartletts. What’s going on?”

“Do you have any identification, please,” he said.

I fumbled under my sport coat for my wallet, and as I brought it out, the Magnum .357 was suddenly right up against my neck, and the cop said very seriously, “Put both hands on the top of the car, you sonova bitch.” I put my hands, the wallet still clutched in the left one, on the top of my car and leaned.

“What’s the matter,” I said. “Don’t you like my name?”

With his left hand he reached under my jacket and took my gun from the holster.

“Not bad,” I said. “You must have gotten just a flash of it when I took out my wallet.”

“Now the wallet,” he said.

I handed it to him without ceasing to lean on the car.

“I’ve got a license for that gun,” I said.

“So I see,” he said. The gun barrel still pressed under my left ear. “Got a private cop license too. Stay right where you are.” He backed two steps to the cruiser and, reaching through the window, honked the horn twice. The Magnum stared stolidly at my stomach.

A Smithfield cop came to the back steps. “Hey, Paul, ask Mr. Bartlett if he knows this guy,” the state cop said. Paul disappeared and returned in a minute with Bartlett. Bartlett said, “He’s okay. He’s a private detective. I hired him to find Kevin. He’s okay. Let him come in.”

The state cop put the gun away with a nice neat movement, gave me back my own gun, and nodded me toward the house. I went in.

We were in the kitchen again. Margery Bartlett, her face streaked and teary, Bartlett, Trask, the Smithfield cop, and two men I didn’t know.

Margery Bartlett said, “Kevin’s been kidnapped.”

Her husband said, “We got a ransom note today.”

One of the men I didn’t know said, “I’m Earl Maguire, Spenser,” and put out his hand. “I’m Rog’s attorney. And this is Lieutenant Healy of the State Police. I think you know Chief Trask.” I nodded.

Maguire was small. His grip was hard when he took my hand, and he shook it vigorously. He was dark-skinned with longish black hair carefully layered with a razor cut. Six bucks easy, I thought, for that kind of haircut. I bet the barber wore a black silk coat. He was wearing a form-fitting pale blue denim suit with black stitching along the lapels, blunt-toed, thick-soled black shoes with two-inch heels, a black shirt, and a pale blue figured tie. It must have been his T-Bird outside. BC Law School. Not Harvard, maybe BU, but most likely BC.

“Where’d you go to school?” I said.

“BC,” he said. “Why?”

Ah, Spenser, you can do it all, kid. “No reason,” I said. “Just wondered.”

Healy I knew of. He was chief investigator for the Essex County DA’s office. There were at least two first-run racketeers I knew who stayed out of Essex County because they didn’t want any truck with him.

Healy said, “Didn’t you work for the Suffolk County DA once?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Didn’t they fire you for hot-dogging?”

“I like to call it inner-directed behavior,” I said.

“I’ll bet you do,” Healy said.

He was a medium tall man, maybe 5'10", slim, with very square shoulders. His gray hair was cut in a close crew cut, the sideburns trimmed at the top of the ears. The skin on his face looked tight, finely veined on the cheekbones, and his close-shaved cheeks had the faint bluish tinge of heavy beard. He had on a tan seersucker suit and a white shirt and a brown and yellow striped tie. A short-crowned, snap-brimmed straw hat with a flowery hatband lay on the table before him. His hands were folded perfectly still in his lap as he sat with his chair tilted back slightly. He wore a plain gold wedding ring on his left hand.

“What’s hot-dogging?” Marge Bartlett said.

“He’s not too good about regulations,” Healy answered.

Margery Bartlett said, “Can you get my child back, Mr. Spenser?” She was leaning forward, biting down on her lower lip with her upper teeth. Her eyes were wide and fixed on me. Her right hand was open on her breast, approximately above her heart. There were tears on her cheeks. Donna Reed in Ransom, MGM, 1956. “I don’t care about the money; I just want my baby back.”

Trask leaned over and patted her hand.

“Don’t worry, Marge, we’ll get him back for you. You got my word on it.” John Wayne, The Searchers, Warner Bros. 1956.

I looked at Healy. He was carefully examining the backs of his hands, his lips pursed, whistling silently to himself. The Smithfield cop named Paul was looking closely at the copper switchplate on the wall by the back door.

“What have you got?” I asked Healy.

He handed me a sheet of paper inside a transparent plastic folder. It was a ransom note in the form of a comic strip. The figures were hand-drawn with a red ballpoint pen and showed some skill, like competent graffiti, say. They featured a voluptuous woman in a miniskirt seated on a barstool, leaning on the bar, speaking in voice balloons. “We have your son,” she said in the first panel, “and if you don’t give us $50,000 you’ll never see him again.” In the second panel she was taking a drink and saying nothing. In the third panel she said, “Follow the instructions on the next page exactly or it’s all over.” In the next panel she was lighting a cigarette. In the fifth panel she was full face to the reader and saying, “Be careful.” In the sixth and last panel she had turned back to the bar and only her back was visible. I handed it back to Healy. He gave me the second page, similarly enclosed in clear plastic. It was typewritten, single-spaced, by someone who was inexpert at typing.

“Why the hell did they draw the picture?” Roger Bartlett said. “Why did they have to draw pictures? That don’t make any sense.”

“Take it easy, Rog,” Earl Maguire said.

I started to read the typewritten sheet.

“Way to conceal their identity,” said Trask. “That’s why they’re drawing pictures. Right, Healy?”

“Too early to say,” Healy said.

It was hot and moist in the kitchen. Outside, the rain had started again. I read the instructions.

I gave the paper back to Healy and raised my eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Healy said. “I know.”

“Know what? What do you mean by that?” Marge Bartlett said.

“It’s an odd note and an odd set of instructions,” I said. “Can you get the fifty?”

Bartlett nodded. “Murray Raymond, down the bank, will gimme the dough. I can put the business up as collateral. I already talked to him, and he’s getting me the money from Boston.”

“What’s funny about the instructions?” Marge Bartlett said. “Why do I have to be there?”

Healy answered her “I don’t know why you have to be there except what they said, maybe to keep some kid from finding the bag and taking it home. The instructions are complicated in the wrong ways. For instance, they obviously want the bag to be where they can grab it on the move, but why there? And why no instructions about the kinds of money and the denominations of the bills? Why give us two days lead time like that to set up a stake?”

“But they needed to give Rog time to get the money,” Trask said.

“Yeah, but they didn’t need to tell us where they were going to pick it up,” I said.

“Right,” Healy said. “A call five minutes beforehand would have done that, and left us nothing to do but sit around and wonder.”

“And why the mail?” I said.

“What’s wrong with the mail?” Roger Bartlett said.

“That’s one reason they had to give you lead time,” Healy said. “They can’t be sure when you’ll get the letter, so they have to give themselves away several days ahead.”

“What do you mean a stake?” Marge Bartlett asked.

“That’s the stakeout,” Trask answered. “We conceal ourselves in the adjacent area so’s to be in a position to apprehend the kidnappers when they come for the ransom.”

“Apprehend,” Healy said, and whistled admiringly.

I said, “Adjacent isn’t bad either, Lieutenant.”

“What’s wrong with you guys?” Trask said.

“You talk terrific,” I said, “but I’m not sure you want to apprehend the culprits in the adjacent area. Maybe you might want to place them under close surveillance until they lead you to the victim. You know?”

“I don’t want anything like that,” Margery Bartlett said. And she shook her head. “I want nothing like that at all. They might get mad if they saw you. And they said — about his head — I couldn’t stand that.”

“I don’t want that either,” Roger Bartlett said. “I mean, it’s only money, you know. I want to do what they say, and when it’s over then you can catch them. I mean, it’s only money, you know?”

Trask put his hand on Margery Bartlett’s again. “We’ll do just as you ask, Marge, just as you ask.”

Healy shook his head. “A mistake,” he said. “Your odds are better on getting the kid back if you let us in on it.”

Margery Bartlett looked at me. “What does he mean?”

I took a deep breath. “He means that your best chance to get Kevin back okay is to have us find him. He means they might take the ransom and kill him anyway, or they might not. There’s no way to tell. The statistics are slightly in favor of the cops. More kidnap victims survive the kidnapping when rescued by the police than when turned loose by the kidnappers. Not many more; I’d say it’s about fifty-five percent to forty-five percent.”

Healy said, “Maybe a little closer. But what else have you got?”

Roger Bartlett said, “I don’t want him hurt.”

Margery Bartlett put her face down in her hands and began to wail.

Her husband put one arm around her shoulder She shrugged it away and cried louder. “Marge,” he said. “Jesus, Marge, we gotta do something. Spenser. what should we do?” Tears formed in his eyes and began to slide down his face.

I said, “We’ll stake it out.”

“But...”

“We’ll stake it out,” I said again. “We’ll be cool about it. We got two days to set it up.”

Trask said, “Now just hold on, Spenser. This is my town, and I decide whether or not we do any surveillance.”

Healy let the front legs of his chair down slowly to the floor, put his folded hands on the tabletop, leaned forward slightly, and with no inflection in his voice said, “George, please keep your trap shut until we are finished talking.” Trask flushed. He opened his mouth and closed it. He looked hard at Healy for a minute, and then his eyes shifted away.

“Now,” Healy continued. “George, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go down to the town hall and get some maps of that area from the surveyor’s office and bring them back. And together we will go over them.” He turned toward the Smithfield patrolman named Paul. “Marsh, I want you to take these two items into Ten-ten Commonwealth and have the crime lab go over them. You know people in there?”

Paul said, “Yessir, I been in there before.”

Healy handed him the two envelopes. Paul started to leave, looked uncertainly at Trask, then at Healy. Healy nodded. Paul left, holding the two envelopes under his raincoat. Trask sat looking at his knuckles. The muscles at his jaw hinge were clenched. There was a tic in his left eyelid.

“The maps, George,” Healy said. Their eyes locked again, briefly. Then Trask got up, put on a yellow slicker, and went out. He slammed the door. In the kitchen it was quiet except for Margery Bartlett’s sobbing. Her husband stood about three feet from her, his arms hanging straight down as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

Earl Maguire said, “We’d better get a doctor over here. He can give her something. Who’s your doctor, Rog? I’ll call him for you.”

“It’s there by the phone,” Bartlett said. “Croft, Doctor Croft. Have him come over. Tell him what happened. Tell him she needs something. That’s a good idea. Tell him to come over and give her something.”

Healy stood up, took off his coat, hung it over the back of his chair, loosened his tie, and sat back down. He nodded toward the chair Trask had left. “Sit down, Spenser,” he said. “We got some work to do.”