“That’s the four you’re owed,” Barney said and shoveled the syrupy bite in.

He meant four grand.

I tucked it away. “Thank Joe for me,” I said, rising. I’d finished my coffee and half of the doughnut. “But give him a message for me, would you, Barney?”

He swallowed. “Sure, Nate.”

“Tell him these better not have Greenlease serial numbers on them, or he’ll be back in business with his pal Brothers.”

* * *

I wasn’t there for any of the aftermath.

The same morning I breakfasted with Barney Baker, the FBI found Bobby’s body buried beneath the chrysanthemums in the backyard of Bonnie Heady’s blue-shuttered white bungalow in St. Joseph, Missouri.

I followed the rest in the press and on the TV news. Information came out about both Bonnie and Carl.

Bonnie had been married to a livestock merchant and dog breeder for twenty respectable years, during which time she had eleven abortions. Never really a fan of kids, Bonnie. Voted “Best Dressed Cowgirl” in 1951, she claimed to have been treated cruelly by her husband, but her post-divorce life had found her turning tricks (and to drink), despite having inherited a family farm and not really needing money. She had decided what she really needed was Carl Austin Hall.

Hall was the son of a respected lawyer and his mother had been daughter of a prominent judge. He got in trouble at military school, dropped out of college, paid for the occasional abortion, went into the Marines for two tours, was court-martialed for going AWOL and drinking on duty. Inherited two hundred thousand dollars, started up various businesses—music shop, two liquor stores, a crop-dusting operation—and went broke. He robbed eight taxi cabs on a spree that netted $33. He went to the Missouri State prison in Jefferson City on a five-year term, worked in the dispensary getting hooked on drugs, bragged to his fellow inmates that he’d commit a perfect crime: “I’ll be driving Cadillacs and you’ll be carrying a lunch bucket.” Paroled after a year and three months, he tried to sell cars (unsuccessfully), then sold insurance, and did make one sale.

To Bonnie Heady.

Bonnie and Carl were indicted by a federal grand jury in late October and went to trial on November 16, fifty days after they killed Bobby Greenlease. Took the jury just under an hour to find them guilty. At midnight, eighty-one days after the kidnapping, Heady and Hall sat side by side in the gas chamber as sodium cyanide powder was dropped into vats of sulfuric acid.

Carl died first, Bonnie two minutes later.

On Death Row, Carl had been no help about the missing half of the ransom money. He thought maybe he’d buried some of it, but couldn’t be sure—he’d been too drunk. The FBI targeted Lt. Shoulders and Patrolman Dolan, who were caught in lies and both did time on perjury raps, but no money was recovered. Various St. Louis racketeers, Joe Costello included, came under federal scrutiny. Rumor had it the money never left the Coral Court. Some spoke of a mysterious man on the fringes of things.