Leo Brothers was looking at me over his partner’s shoulder. That was why I was here: my host didn’t know my relationship with the Outfit had been largely reluctant and had mostly faded away when my patron, Frank Nitti, died ten years ago. But to Joe Costello I was still just another crooked cop. Ex-cop, at that.

“But I want nothing to do with kidnapping,” Costello said. “Particularly not a child. I’m a fucking father, five times over! If it’s just garden-variety dirty money, we’ll wash it. But if this Strand pulled the Greenlease snatch, then we turn him in and get credit from the cops and all of St. Louis for doing a public service.”

And maybe, I thought, if this is M, I could find out if that kid was alive and, if so, where he’s being held.

Or was I kidding myself now?

“Either way,” Costello said, “there’s another four grand in it for you, Nate.”

Looked like I was getting my five thousand after all. “How do you propose we go about this, Joe?”

He flipped a hand. “We’ll have Johnny Hagan introduce you as a mobbed-up PI from Chicago who has to approve laundering the insurance cash.”

A knock came at the door. “Joe—it’s me!”

Costello gave me a conspiratorial smile, whispering, “That’s Lt. Lou Shoulders. Rugged copper, handy with a pistol—three kills on duty.… Come in, Lou!”

A big bucket-headed guy in a baggy black suit burst in like an undertaker late for the embalming. Maybe fifty-five, he had features as baggy as the suit, his Vitalis-heavy hair black, white at the temples, eyebrows bushy.

“Nate Heller, this is Lt. Louis Shoulders.”

Shoulders, who lived up to his name, was a little taller than me and I had no urge to look up at him, so I stood and we shook hands in a half-hearted, perfunctory way.

“My contact at the PD, and now yours,” Costello said. “Lou and me been pals for years. We both started out driving cabs. You run into trouble, he’s your man.”

“Mr. Heller,” Shoulders said amiably, dark eyes cold, “here’s my card. Home number on the back. Joe here’s explained the situation. I’ll be right behind you.”

If he racked up his fourth on-duty kill, I’d prefer it was the other way around.

CHAPTER FIVE

My headlights careened off the golden glazed ceramic-brick walls and glass-block windows of the array of Streamline Moderne bungalows that lurked on a slight slope among towering pin oaks like invaders from another planet getting ready to make their move.

I pulled the Caddy into the motor court drive at 7755 Watson Road in the St. Louis suburb of Marlborough, following Johnny Hagan in his ’49 Chevy taxicab. Each of over thirty two-unit, brown-trimmed, round-cornered structures on the winding drive through the well-manicured several acres had a room on either side of paired white-door garages providing unusual privacy for motel guests.

The pink-and-black neon sign told much of the story—

Coral Court

MOTEL