Missing Amanda Page 5

  Braddock reached out for a photograph in a silver frame. He handed it across the chess table and Monk looked at a young girl. The photo had been professionally taken in a studio. She had blond hair and a tight-lipped smile that suggested braces.

  “How old is she?” Monk asked. His throat was dry and felt constricted. His heart began the throb in his chest.

  “Amanda will be eight in February.” Braddock seemed to deflate, like a tire letting out air. He suddenly looked his age, nearly sixty rather than the late forties he attempted.

  “Tell me,” said Monk. His own daughter, Corrie, was seven, he thought.

  Braddock said, “She was living at home, but attending a private school where she stayed during the week. A chauffeur was to have brought her back on Friday. When he didn’t arrive, I called the school which informed me that Amanda had been picked up. They said they recognized Bennett, her regular driver. At midnight I received a message, delivered to the front gate.” He held up a hand, “No, I didn’t find out who sent it. It said that they had taken Amanda and would return her for a price.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “In my position? Was that possible?”

  “May I see the letter?”

  “Certainly.” Braddock went to a desk. He handed over a folded piece of paper with typed instructions. ‘We have your daughter. Don’t call anyone. Stay out of the meeting and she won’t get hurt.’

  Monk looked up. “Meeting?”

  “A get together of business associates were planning a meeting. A conference, if you will.”

  “Like mob guys?”

  “In your words, I suppose. We are... were... planning a conference that would have made substantial adjustments in the way business is conducted. Obviously, someone wants things to remain the same.”

  “Uh-huh.” Monk stared at the picture. Amanda Braddock. He pictured Corrie and wondered if she looked like this girl in the photo. He hadn’t seen her in five years. A sense of despair and desolation struck him savagely and made him close his eyes while he rode it out. How could anyone take an innocent young girl? He imagined what Duke Braddock must have felt and when he looked up he saw Braddock watching him, his expression sympathetic.

  “You understand,” he said quietly. Milt and Malcolm were forgotten as two fathers contemplated the love of young daughters. “You have to help me, Mr. Monkton.” After a long pause, he strangled out the word, “Please.”

  “What can I do? I run a book store.”

  “Not you; your friend Lou Fleener.”

  “Oh. Oh, God.” Monk had told Lou to stay away from Braddock. How smug he’d been, so full of righteousness. He thought of Amanda, alone and undoubtedly terrified. “What can we do?” He’d get Lou to help. Of course he would. Fierce determination filled him, blessedly carrying away the desperate hurt. What if it was Corrie?

  “You have to move fast,” said Braddock.

  “I will... Ben. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “Thank you.” Braddock reached out and cupped Monk’s hands in his own.

  Two hours later Duke Braddock sat back in his red leather chair and laughed. The idiot had bought it. He allowed himself a last cigar to end the day. What a fool, he thought.

  “Ben?”

  The voice, so faint in the large room, surprised him.

  “Adele.” His expression turned from smugness to distaste in a moment. His wife. She hovered at the doorway, caught by his instruction to never- ever—enter this room. The sight of her, trembling on the threshold, more a presence than an actual person, filled him with disgust. How could he have married this ghost?

  “Well?” Talking to her made him crane his neck uncomfortably. “Come in or get out.”

  She came in. Timidly, sliding forward as if gliding rather than walking, Adele Braddock approached her husband like a small worm approaching a large bird. “I saw the light on,” she said.

  Even her voice bothered him. Going from triumph to Adele made Braddock more annoyed than usual. “So?”

  Her hands twisted and her posture was penitent, as if she’d done something wrong or was something wrong. Which, in Braddock’s eyes, she probably was.

  “Is the television broken again?” he asked.

  “No, it’s... off the air.” She always spoke with pauses, as if giving herself room to run. She was dressed in a shapeless housecoat. He had brought her expensive evening clothes in an attempt to improve her but she refused them all. She would wear what he told her to wear, but only when he told her. Afterwards she returned to her slovenly ways.

  “Go to bed,” Braddock said impatiently.

  “All right,” she said docilely. “I just—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She turned to leave, paused at the door and added softly, “the picture.”

  “What?”

  She pointed at the frame. “Who is that?”

  Braddock suddenly laughed, letting it come out in a gasp. “That,” he said, “is your daughter.”

  Adele had backed up to the doorway, but paused there, looking slightly more confused than frightened. “I don’t understand. We don’t have a daughter.”

  “That’s right.” He held up the silver frame and watched it glitter like stars in the light of the fireplace. “No daughter at all.” He laughed again and added, “Get out.”

  Chapter 7

  Two Cops...Three Stooges

  The squad room smelled of smoke, disinfectant and despair. Worn wood floors, scratched trim, frosted glass, battered desks piled with arrest reports, felonious looking people everywhere, cops and crooks both, and all of it slightly askew, as if it was sinking beneath the load.

  Cassidy, still in her smudged gray skirt, raised the level considerably, but it remained a garbage scow of a building, as depressing as a morgue.

  ‘Cops,’ thought Cassidy in disgust. Out loud she said, “Please; you’ve gotta help me.”

  That usually got them. A batted eyelash, a little shoulder, the poor helpless look and men fell all over themselves to assist. Except cops.

  Like these two detectives who were eyeing her with obvious cynicism. They were both cute in that sweaty sort of macho way, though they both had wedding rings and she wouldn’t go with a cop anyway and she was here about Lou, but still...

  “Your boyfriend was grabbed,” one of them—the one in the white shirt—said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Cassidy explained, again. Didn’t they listen?

  “Right. You just met him,” said the one in the blue jacket. It was eleven at night, the squad room was an oven and this guy still had on his jacket. Cassidy was sweating through her light blouse and her bra was showing. With the brick dust and the smear on her skirt and her wild story, she didn’t wonder that the cops had an attitude.

  “Where’d you meet him again?” asked white shirt.

  “At the Aragon. I went there to get a drink.”

  “The Aragon huh,” said white shirt with the first show of interest. “Isn’t Teddy Nedderling’s Swinging Sounds playing this week? I heard they were swell.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said blue jacket. “They got a chick singer, don’t they?’

  “Dee Malone.”

  Blue jacket snapped his fingers. “That’s it! I wouldn’t mind taking the wife over there.” He turned back to Cassidy. “Are they playing through Saturday? I’m on nights until then.”

  “Guys.” Cassidy stared in disbelief. It was like going to the three stooges for help. “My friend got snatched, right?”

  “Right. Sorry.” Blue jacket looked all business now but white shirt was scribbling. He muttered, “Teddy Nedderling’s,” under his breath. “Swinging Sounds.” He put the pen down as if his job was done.

  Which it certainly was not. “Six guys in cheap suits and a gun jumped out at us from the doorway and they beat up Lou and took him away in a big car.”

  “Must have been a hell of a car if it held seven guys.”

  “Big guys, she says,” white shirt
said. “A hell of a car.”

  “Funny,” said Cassidy. Cops. “Are you going to help?”

  “Okay, okay. Just having a little fun. What’s this boyfriend’s name?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. His name’s Lou...uh” Aw hell. She had it, his name. It was Free...something. Free Fee Flea Roach no, that was all wrong.

  “You don’t know his last name?” Clearly white shirt disapproved.

  “You just met him and you were going off with him? To where?”

  “His office. He wanted to show me his office.”

  She cringed at how that sounded.

  “You always run off to a guy’s office first thing?”

  White shirt’s expression said nice girls don’t do that. “A guy you don’t even know his name?”

  “Wait. He’s a private eye, I remember that. Don’t you guys have lists or something?”

  “If he’s licensed,” said blue jacket. “In Chicago, not the suburbs. Even then, with manpower shortages, it’d take a week to check.”

  “And he’s only been gone, what? An hour?”

  “But he was grabbed,” Cassidy protested.

  “By who?” asked white shirt.

  “Forget it,” Cassidy said. She felt bad. Poor Lou...whatever. Her friend and protector had been carted off by six armed thugs, and she’d probably never see him again. She remembered his firm hand when they danced and how he’d pushed her away from harm like some knight and she wished she could take back her doubts.

  She got up and stumbled from the station.

  She left as the detective in the blue jacket said, “Whadaya think? Wanna double date?”

  *

  When Lou Fleener answered the phone with a cheery “Lou Fleener—Private Eye, How can I –?” Monk interrupted by saying, “I just talked to Duke Braddock,” as Lou said, “I just turned down Duke Braddock –”

  Monk said, “What?” as Lou said, “What?” and they both stared at their respective receivers, confused, briefly, into silence. Finally, Lou said, “You go first.”

  So, Monk, in a flurry of words, explained how he’d been grabbed by Braddock’s guys and taken to the gangster’s house and told about his daughter being kidnapped and said, “We’ve got to help her, Lou; right away. We’ve got to help her.”

  Lou said, “uh-huh,” paused for thought and added, “I’ll be right over.”

  He hung up as Monk said, “You turned down who?”

  It took twenty minutes to drive from his office to Monk’s bookstore, fifteen if he was in a hurry. Lou made it in less than twelve, thanks to a lax attitude on traffic laws and good luck with the lights. By the time he got there, Monk had already dealt out a hundred games of solitaire and smoked three Camels. His hair was tangled and unwashed, his eyes darted over every bookshelf and magazine rack and he both paced and played cards with the energy of the demented.

  Walking into the store under the jangle of the bell Lou’s first words were, “Put the red Jack on the black Queen.”

  Monk stopped and stared. Lou got to the counter and said, “You know why you should always take a deck of cards when you go camping?”

  “Why?”

  “Cause if you get lost you can sit down and play solitaire. Sooner or later someone’s gonna come along and say...”

  “... put the red Jack on the black Queen. Funny.”

  “Where’ve you been all night?”

  “Like I said, I had a meeting with Duke Braddock. He wants me to find his missing daughter.”

  Lou looked astounded. “You said no, of course!”

  “Well...”

  “You didn’t say yes?”

  “Well...”

  “Because I was at Braddock’s last night. He and half the muscle in Chicago took me there and asked me to—”

  “What?” Monk demanded. The cards were clutched in his hand, forgotten and his smoke was dangerously close to burning his fingers.

  “Actually, I don’t know. I said no before he could explain and left.”

  “He didn’t tell you about Amanda?”

  “I didn’t give him a lot of chances to tell me anything.”

  “Lou, what did you do?”

  “You ever see a little tin can thing on a handle, you’re supposed to pick up ashes in a fireplace?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “At Braddock’s. He’s got a fireplace.”

  “Right. I saw that.”

  “Well, there was this pot on a wooden stick.” Lou smiled at the memory. “It was just the right thing at the right time.”

  “You hit them with it.”

  “Yeah, I did. I left before they got mad.”

  “Well, they didn’t get mad, Lou; they got me.”

  Monk suddenly dropped his cigarette and sucked at his fingers. “They came,” he said, past this obstacle, “this morning. Pulled a gun on me and I went to Braddock’s and he told me about his daughter, who’s been taken by somebody and I agreed we’d help him.” Monk’s voice rose as he talked. “She’s eight years old, Lou. She’s out there someplace, probably scared to death and we’ve got to move fast if we’re going to find her.”

  “Hold it.” Lou held up a hand. “This is about Corrie, isn’t it?”

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “I think it is. What happened to ‘Lou; you can’t work for Duke Braddock?’”

  “I don’t care.” Monk had no intention of thinking about his motives. His emotions were raw and he couldn’t get the thought of the young girl out of his mind. If her face in the picture morphed into the imagined features of his own daughter, he didn’t notice. “I’m going to find her. Are you going to help me?”

  “I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.” Lou had never seen Monk like this. Normally he was as reserved and emotional as an iceberg. Lou understood this was about the lost daughter. He’d been there when Inez had lied her way through an uncontested divorce and a very contested custody fight. Monk had been stripped of money, his daughter and, for a long, long time, his will to live. Though it had been five years, Monk hadn’t ever really recovered. Lou sometimes wondered if he ever would.

  And now this. “Of course, I’ll help. But what are we supposed to do that Braddock, with all his illegal resources can’t do?”

  “Ben explained that. He said she was undoubtedly taken by a rival gang to spoil this conference they’re working on. He said if we confronted them, one at a time, we’d be able to tell who took her. Then he could swoop in and get her back.”

  “Ben?” Lou said.

  “Braddock. His name’s Ben.”

  “You call him by his first name? A gangster? Like he’s your buddy? Monk, this is screwed up.”

  “Ben, Braddock; who cares what I call him?”

  Monk began to shout. “We’re wasting time.”

  Lou said patiently, “Monk; do you have any idea how bad this man is?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course, it does. Prostitution, drugs, beatings, arson. There’s been talk of murder but no witnesses ever testified.” Lou tried to look serious, achieved myopic through his black glasses. “No witnesses, Monk. Think about it.”

  “I know more about him than you do,” Monk said hotly. “He came from Jersey, the DeSalva mob. They say he was a lieutenant for Sammy the ‘Eel’ Scarfino.”

  Lou snorted.

  “That’s funny?” Monk asked.

  “The ‘eel’? Who names these people?”

  “Well, in this case it was the Tribune. At one of his trials someone said he slipped out of all charges and a reporter called him slippery as—”

  “- an eel, right. Monk, let the police deal with this.”

  “Braddock’s a crook, like you said. How hard are the cops gonna try?”

  “The Feds?”

  “Please.” Monk made a little wave of dismissal. “Do you know what the success rate for the FBI is? 46%, that’s what. A lousy 46%.” Monk stared off at some demon of his own, bellow
ed, “God damn it, Lou. She’s eight years old.”

  “Okay, okay.” Lou held up his hands in surrender.

  “But just remember whose idea this is.”

  “Yeah, right,” Monk said impatiently. “Let’s get to work.”

  “Where do we start?”

  Monk looked as if he’d sucked a lemon. “With research, of course. Honestly, don’t you ever pay attention?”

  “I know research. I meant, where do we start researching?”

  Eyes wide in annoyed disbelief, Monk gestured widely all around. “Here?” he said with sarcasm. “In a bookstore, maybe? Jeez.” He got up and wandered away muttering. Lou sat down on the rickety stool and smiled. Monk was so easy.

  Monk returned in about a half an hour with an armload of books and magazines, dropping one as he neared.

  Lou picked it up. ‘Time,’ September of ‘55.

  Inside an article on the new Chicago gangsters, see page 46. He thumbed through and read it, not learning anything new and turned back to Monk who was deep in his own study.

  “Listen to this,” he read. ‘The Chicago underworld has seen many changes since Al ‘Scarface’ Capone went to the Federal pen for tax evasion. Eliot Ness disbanded his famous ‘Untouchables’ and moved to Cleveland. Chicago settled into a decade of relative peace before the war and came out with a reputation for production rather than corruption.’

  “Cute,” Lou said.

  Monk shrugged. “I didn’t write it.” He continued reading. ‘Capone himself died of syphilis after a spell at Alcatraz. But is crime really dead in the Windy City?

  ‘Not really. There are four distinct groups still around. Sure, the body count has gone down since the hey-day of Dion O’Bannion and Frank Nitti, but there seems to be no end in sight to the ongoing problem of Chicago and the gangsters.’

  “Swell. What’s that tell us?”

  “Beats me. But now we know that there are four gangs.”

  “Which is three more than we knew before,” Lou said. “Braddock’s the first...”

  “Right.”

  “Who are the others?”

  Monk looked at his pile of magazines. “I have no idea.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Monk drummed his fingers on the cover of ‘Life’ Magazine which featured a picture of the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Some people were talking him up for president, which didn’t seem to make sense since he was a Catholic. Who’d ever elect a Catholic? Vice president Richard Nixon was going to be president.