“Easy for them,” he muttered.

“Easy for them is right. They’re making big money off the public’s little sins—pinball machines, gambling halls, slot machines, bookie parlors, union racketeering. Of course, there’s also loansharking, handbooks, prostitution, and some people traffic in narcotics…but nobody’s perfect. Kidnapping is something out of the Lindbergh past, the kind of ill-advised, out-of-date venture that in the ’30s got Ma Barker and her boys riddled with lead and made J. Edgar a household word. And these Outfit bigwigs, like Accardo and Humphreys, and field lieutenants like Wortman and Vitale, they see themselves as good old-fashioned American businessmen, standard bearers of capitalism, and all of them are working toward the day they’ll be wholly legit. More or less.”

“What do you want from me, Heller?”

“I want the name of the other man who was there that night.”

“What night?”

I slammed a fist on the desk and the nine mil jumped; so did Costello. “What night do you fucking think? Some big shot with Outfit ties who connected you to the Southmoor Bank and suggested how to avoid attracting the attention of the top dogs by using second-tier Outfit players, who didn’t have the luxury of being moral about blood money—the big man who said he’d buy the laundered money, when it finally made it through the wash.”

He thought about that, but not for long. “I think you already know that name.”

“I think I do,” I said, and spoke it.

He just nodded. “So then we don’t have other business to discuss, do we, Nate?”

It had gone from “Nate” to “Heller” and was back to “Nate” again.

“Really, just one other little thing.”

He clearly had no idea. “What?”

I leaned into the desk, the nine mil very nearby. “Johnny Hagan wasn’t with you in your rec room when you and Shoulders counted the money that night…or maybe the end buyer actually counted the money, but…anyway, Johnny wasn’t there. Yet he’s still on your payroll. Why?”

He shrugged that off. “I don’t pay him all that much.”

“Oh, I know. Mostly he’s just afraid. Doesn’t want to die. Who does?”

“What’s your point?”

I used an ashtray on the desk to dispose of the butt and lit up a fresh Chesterfield. “Just that I think Johnny knows something… and I think maybe Sandy learned about that something from him…which would change everything. Everything.”

He recoiled but then recovered: “I doubt that. We’re done, Heller. You should leave before Howie wakes up.”

“If he wakes up. I hit him pretty hard. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Here’s the thing—you played a much bigger role in all this than anyone knows, even though you were at the center of the Case of the Missing Ransom Money from that very first night. Only, really, this all began long before that.”

“That makes no sense, Heller.”

“Sure it does, Joe. Because Carl Hall came to you, months ahead of time, with a plan to take down the biggest ransom in history. He had an insider’s knowledge of the Greenlease family because he was friends with Bobby’s older brother, Paul, who Carl knew at military school. Carl may have oversold it to you… I don’t think Paul and Carl remained close or anything, Carl was just a guy who could get the cadets booze and maybe reefers and, who knows, even girls…but the kind of payday Carl was talking about was worth considering. Greenlease was maybe the richest man in the Midwest. The plan was to kidnap the daughter, who was eleven. She’d be easy to handle. Maybe you backed Carl in what looked like a potentially big, easy score, plowing a little money into the scheme. But for sure you told him to come to you with the money, after the snatch came off. You could get it laundered for him.”