I had a regular criminal mastermind here.

“You see, I come from a wealthy family, but I had a bad run of luck with some businesses, legit ones that chewed up my inheritance. In stir, I got to thinking about the rich kids I grew up around…and a kidnapping seemed like a safe, easy way to get rich again. If only…if only I hadn’t got mixed up with that crazy bastard.”

“What crazy bastard, Steve?”

“Tom Marsh.”

Marsh? M?

He sighed, shook his head. “He was just somebody I ran into in the Netherlands Hotel bar, in Kansas City. We hit if off right away—talked the same language. You know, words and expressions only ex-cons use. He had charm and he was tough. But he had bad qualities I didn’t pick up on.”

“Such as?”

“Well, he was low-class. Had tattoos on his arms and chest. And he was a perverted son of a bitch. You think I woulda snatched a kid if I knew I’d thrown in with a short eyes?”

The flesh on my arms goose-pimpled and the hair on the back of my neck bristled.

“Short eyes” was prison slang for child molester.

“And,” Steve continued, “Marsh has been looking after the Greenlease boy ever since Bonnie picked him up at that school. In a nice quiet house in a nice quiet neighborhood, never mind where. Marsh swears he’s leaving the kid alone—that he knows if he touches him, in that way, it could sink the whole damn deal. But how can I trust a goddamn kiddie-diddling drug addict?”

Good point. “He still has the boy?”

Steve nodded. “He was supposed to deliver the kid to a hotel in Pittsburg, Missouri. But he hasn’t yet. He thinks we can squeeze another round of money out of Greenlease. Greedy, grasping prick! When I found that out, I grabbed the money, and Bonnie and me took off.”

“Then it’s Marsh you’ve been on the lookout for,” I said, nodding toward the blinds.

“Yes! Yes.” He sat forward, the dull eyes getting some real life in them now. “I want to do the deal with your Outfit boys, score some real money for me and Bonnie, and you, of course…then I’ll call the cops and tell them where to find Marsh and the boy.”

“If he hasn’t killed him.”

Steve waved that off. “Oh, no, the boy is fine. Marsh is nuts but not stupid. Then Bonnie and me will lie low in an apartment till the cops take Marsh in and the boy back to Mommy and Daddy.” He slapped his knees. “So. Everything hunky-dory now?”

Yeah. Fucking swell. Bobby Greenlease’s babysitter was a drug-addicted pedophile. Steve and Bonnie were drunk and on the lam. What could go wrong?

And yet the kid seemed to be alive. I’d been ready to write Bobby off in this thing. Now here was a ray of hope in this nightmare tragicomedy.

A car motor outside announced itself. Steve went to the window and peeked out. “Johnny’s back! Help me take the luggage down and load it in the Plymouth.”