I said, “I need you to tell Bob I have a possible lead in St. Louis on the kidnappers. It may be nothing, but there are promising aspects.”

“Can you be specific, Nate?”

“No. Just remind Bob what I told him about my ability to track down lowlife scum. Tell him this may be a long shot, but I’m going to play it out. I won’t do anything to endanger his boy. Tell him I’ll report in when or if I have anything.”

“All right. You’re sure this is wise?”

“Of course not.” What would have been wise was Letterman letting me grab M at the ransom drop, but that hadn’t happened. I referred to that only indirectly: “We’re past playing it safe being a good plan. Tell Bob I’ll be holding onto the loaner Caddy. In a day or two, I’ll return it and, with luck, have something to report.”

“Maybe you’ll be bringing Bobby back, too.”

Letterman had to know he was kidding himself.

“Yeah,” I said. “Go with that.”

* * *

They called Highway 40 the Main Street of America, and one reason might be that driving from Kansas City to St. Louis made you slow down for half a dozen bump-in-the-road Main Streets and a major one through Columbia. The trip took better than four hours, and though the slice of moon was even smaller tonight, the sky was clear, the traffic light and the sailing smooth, some of it four-lane. Fighting boredom, I tried the big car’s fancy radio but the result went a little too well with the farm country I was cruising through—I heard more fiddle playing than in a Hungarian restaurant.

Finally St. Louis showed itself, its light hovering as if promising a carnival. I followed 40 into the city through an industrial area, turning onto Nineteenth cutting through a nest of apartment buildings before factories and warehouses took over. Ace Cab Company, at 1835 Washington Avenue, shared its downtown intersection with an Esso Station, a Katz Drug and a busy White Castle. I parked on the street in front of a Swiss Chalet-style shopping arcade.

Ruling over a modest parking lot with two rows of varicolored and varied-make taxis, the dingy white-brick building’s mechanics in dingy white uniforms were at work under vehicles on lifts in the two-bay garage. On the far end, a picture window an-nounced the place in big red letters as, not surprisingly, ACE CAB COMPANY, with a couple of phone numbers not much smaller.

I pushed through a door that said, in the same red lettering, EMPLOYEES ONLY. At left, a blond male dispatcher in khaki hunkered over a microphone in front of a metal city map dotted by magnetic pins; at right, a henna-dyed looker in a white blouse, black slacks and a headset sat at a switchboard. Both were shouting numbers and locations.

Covering his mike, the dispatcher—a burly guy of maybe thirty who glared at me like I’d interrupted him in the middle of a song—said, “You Heller?”