His bland face took on a desperate look, his voice a ragged whisper. “Nate…it still keeps me up at night.”

“What does?”

“Not every night, but…at least once a month, I find myself waiting for the damn sunrise.” He gripped my arm. “You were right, back then. I should have let you stay behind at that bridge. And let you grab that son of a bitch. And…”

Kill him.

“Second guessing at this point,” I said, “doesn’t do us a damn bit of good. And the boy was already in the ground. And that son of bitch has been dead almost as long.” I patted the hand on my arm, and it released. “Take a slug of something, next time, and you’ll sleep just fine. You were a great friend to Bob. You and your buddy O’Neill, who, hell, I never even met. I’m surprised you two aren’t still waiting in that goddamn hotel in Bum Fuck, Missouri.”

That made him laugh. I laughed a little, too.

His smile was wrinkled with age and regret, but at least it was a smile. “Good to see you, Nate.”

He knocked.

“Is that Nate Heller?” came a voice from within, loud but creaky, like wind coming through a broken shutter.

Greenlease answered the door, thanked his friend Letterman, who nodded and smiled at me and disappeared into the showroom with its wonderful display of space-age ridiculousness.

When he’d closed the door behind us in this rather small office, Greenlease did something that surprised me. It surprises me even telling it: he hugged me. Patted my back. He was a rock-ribbed self-made man, a good God-fearing man and I could see on a wall of photos (Kansas City celebrities, I assumed, which is of course an oxymoron) he was shaking the hand of a beaming President Eisenhower. I suddenly recalled that Ike’s brother had assembled the ransom money at Bob Greenlease’s behest.

When the embrace ended, he seemed perhaps a little embarrassed, then patted my shoulder and guided me not to a visitor’s chair opposite a big mahogany desk notable for its lack of clutter or really any work at all, but to a leather-upholstered sofa under a wall of framed color prints of current model Cadillacs. We sat there, turned slightly toward each other, old friends catching up.

Like his sales force, Greenlease wore a well-tailored suit, gray, and his tie was a silk shantung, striped red, black and gray. His glasses were black hornrims, heavy, masculine. He was working hard at projecting strength and competence. But he seemed so much older five years later—the oblong face longer, nose sharper, chin sharper, sudden harsh angles in a kind face. Age splotches, deep lines, liver spots, provided unwanted decoration.

Behind the big empty desk, a shelved wall of sales awards and local honors seemed there to taunt him with their ultimate meaninglessness. Only one shelf counted—the middle one, where family photos were lined up around a central smiling Bobby Greenlease and his papa.