Max Collins - Stolen Away

Cayce had mentioned a woman named “Belliance” as guarding the child. Son of a bitch, I was a believer. I couldn’t keep my goddamn hand from shaking, but I managed to read the letter.

Dear B.,

The boy is doing fine. He is over his cold. He and Carl are getting along famously. Carl will be a good daddy. No more boats and worry for us. This farm life is going to be a real nice change.

It’s sweet of you to ask about the boy. He is not hard to love. I can see how you got attached to him so quick. If you know what’s best, you ought to tear this up. The picture too, but I couldn’t not send one.

Madge

And there was a photo. A snapshot.

Cayce had been right again, in a roundabout way. I had found the child on “Scharten Street.” At least, this picture of a child.

A child perhaps twenty-one months old, a beautiful toddler in a little playsuit with suspenders over a T-shirt; he had light curly hair and a dimpled chin, and stood between, with his either hand held by, a thin-faced man in a cap and bib overalls, and an apple-cheeked woman in a calico print housedress; behind them seemed to be a farmhouse. The man and woman were smiling, the little boy was frowning, though he might have been squinting in the sun.

He was Charles Lindbergh, Jr.

And I was on my way to Three Oaks, Michigan.

I caught Lake Shore Drive and headed to the South Side, cutting through the industrial southeastern side of the city, till the steel mills of Chicago gave way to those of Gary, Indiana. Soon the sooty scent of free enterprise was replaced by the clear, fresh air of the country, and I guided my sporty ’32 Auburn along the shore road that curved around Lake Michigan, and before long sand dunes were rising around me like a mirage of the desert. I drove quickly, but I didn’t speed, pressing forward with the single-mindedness of a hungry animal. The village of New Buffalo, in southwestern Michigan, in the heart of a summer-camp and resort area, was known as the gateway to that state. It was in that village that I stopped at a hardware store and bought a hunting knife, a coil of rope and a wide roll of electrical tape. They also sold ammunition, but I’d brought some from home.

It wasn’t far to Three Oaks, another quaint village, where a gas-station attendant gave me directions to the Belliance farm. I turned right at the traffic light on North Elm Street and at a junction with a macadam road turned left; I passed Warren Woods, a vast acreage of virgin beech and maple, a state bird and game sanctuary. I made a left and a right, on gravel roads, passing through an area of orchards alternating with empty fields, and there it was.

Basking in afternoon sunshine, bucolic as a feed-store lithograph, the Belliance farm rested on a gentle slope, even some green amidst the grass-whether that was because spring was coming, or the lake was relatively close, I was too citified to know. The farmhouse was a small, white, two-story clapboard, with a large red barn behind and to one side. Sarah Sivella had seen such a place, last week, in that trance she’d fallen into at the Temple of Divine Power. I swung into the drive; it was gravel, but the earth that fell to ditches on either side had a reddish cast. Edgar Cayce had said there was “red dirt on the pavement” near the house where the child was kept. I was beginning to wonder if I should trade my nine millimeter in on a crystal ball.

For now, however, I’d stick to the nine millimeter, which I’d already slipped into the pocket of my raincoat. The wide roll of electrical tape was in the other pocket. And I had looped the coil of rope around my belt, and the hunting knife, in a leather sheath, was stuck through my belt as well; neither would show under the bulky, lined raincoat.

I was ready to call on the Belliance family.

Chickens scurrying noisily out of my way, I pulled the Auburn up around the side of the house, where the gravel near a fenced-in area was already accommodating a pickup truck, a late-model Chevy and a green, new-looking tractor. In addition to the recently painted, bright red barn, several other structures huddled, including a toolshed and a windmill.

The sun slid under a cloud and reminded me how cold it still was; but there was no snow on the frozen ground. I walked to the front porch and knocked. There was a swing; the breeze was making it sway, some.

A woman answered-the woman I’d seen in the photograph inserted in the letter to Bernice Rogers Conroy; she was in her early forties, wearing a crisp pink-and-white checked housedress with a white apron, on which she was drying her hands. She was dark blonde, apple-cheeked, and had blue eyes almost as lovely as the janitor’s back in the Sheridan six-flat.

“Can I help you, young man?” Her smile was pleasant, her tone sincere.

“Excuse me for bothering, but I’m having some car trouble. Is your husband home?”

“Why, yes. He’s out back. I can get him…?”

“Would you please? I’m sorry to be such a bother.”

“Step in, step in.”

I did. She went away, still wiping her hands on the apron; I heard the back door open. I slipped my hand in my raincoat pocket, gripped the nine millimeter. I put my back to the wall just inside the door, so that I could see the front door as well as where she’d gone into the kitchen. A stairway rose before me. The house was simple and wellkept, wood floors, floral wallpaper. The furnishings were not expensive, but they were relatively new; there was a spinet piano in the living room. In the midst of the depression, these people had been set up out here on the farm with nice, new things.

A scarecrow of a man in coveralls came in through the kitchen, his wife following dutifully behind him; he was wiping grease from his hands with a rag. In his mid-forties, he was bald with pouches under his eyes-like Sarah Sivella had said. His somewhat weathered face was that of the man I’d seen in the photo.

He extended his freshly cleaned hand and smiled. “I’m Carl Belliance. I understand you’ve got a little problem.”

“No,” I said, and I showed him the nine millimeter. “You’ve got the problem.”

His face tightened and I thought he was going to jump me but I caught his eyes and shook my head, no. He sighed, got off the balls of his feet, and went limp, arms dangling, head lowered. He backed up a pace. His wife had raised a hand to her mouth.

“What do you want, mister?” he said. “We got no money in the house.”

“Can it. I’m here for the boy.”

They glanced at each other; she seemed near tears. He shook his head, as if to say, It’s no use.

“I figured it would catch up with us someday,” Belliance said softly.

“Why? Who do you figure I am?”

He smiled with one side of his face and it wasn’t really a smile. “Does it matter? You’re either a cop, or you’re not a cop. And if you’re not a cop, somebody’s decided to take everything away from us.” His mouth tightened into something bitter. “We’ve done what we were told. We never made a peep. But I suppose it was hoping for too much just to live our damn lives in peace.”

“Who are you, Carl?”

His eyes twitched. “I’m nobody. I’m just a farmer.”

“Well, if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll tell you. You used to be a rumrunner for the Outfit. Repeal was on the way and you’d be out of work, soon. But you were a good man. Trustworthy. So somebody big-somebody named Capone maybe, or maybe somebody named Ricca-asked if you wanted to go straight. Go into farming. Drop out of that life.”

He looked at me blankly, but there was respect in his eyes. “You’re pretty good, mister. Are you a cop?”

“Of sorts. Let me guess something else, while I’m at it. You two are a childless couple. You’ve been married for maybe twenty years, maybe twenty-five, but there was never an off-spring. You wanted a family. With your background, adoption was tricky. But then, finally, like a miracle-somebody gave you a son.”