I smiled just a little. “But, Wes—like you said. Hall and Heady had been caught.”

His eyebrows went up. “Sure they had, but we still had to make the case. Greenap, the Special was called. We put the physical evidence together for the trial—the sheet the boy was wrapped in, photographs of the bloodstains in Heady’s house, bloodstains in the station wagon that matched the boy’s blood type, and bone fragments and lead fragments that were found confirming Bobby Greenlease was shot in that vehicle. And of course we handled the interrogations of the pair.”

“Getting what it took to put them in their side-by-side electric chairs shouldn’t have taken long.”

The waitress, delivering Grapp’s highball, widened her eyes, getting in on just the end of that.

“It didn’t,” he said. “Call it five days.” His sigh had frustration hanging on it like wet laundry on a line. “Five days, and then months and years of looking for that missing three hundred thousand. We were up to a hundred agents at that point. We kept Costello, Shoulders and Dolan under surveillance, hounded their friends and relatives too, tapped their phones, went over their finances, got their long-distance call records—anything and everything, before Mr. Ace Cab Company went up on an unrelated gun charge and Shoulders and Dolan went away for perjury.”

I frowned at him. “If you couldn’t prove those two cops were in on taking the bundle, how could the government make perjury stick?”

He sipped then smirked. “Because eight cops at Newstead Station said Shoulders and Dolan didn’t bring in the money… the half they did turn over…until an hour after hauling Hall in to be booked. Asked by a grand jury about that missing hour, Shoulders and Dolan both pled the Fifth.”

He took another taste of highball and I thought about what he’d just told me.

Then I said, “Something happened to that money the night they nabbed Carl and Bonnie. Something happened in that missing hour.”

“Clearly.”

I squinted at him like he’d gone out of focus. “And you minions of J. Edgar didn’t start looking for it until five days had flown. Didn’t anybody at the academy tell you G-men that the first few days of an investigation are the most important?”

His eyes flared and his voice turned defensive. “Jesus, Heller, we were busy! We had two murdering kidnappers to put away!”

“Two of the dumbest, sloppiest, smallest-time criminals who ever tried for the big time. Wouldn’t you agree? Couldn’t the Bureau have spared a few men from the hundred on the case to go after that money?”

He was shaking his head again. “At that point it was a St. Louis police matter. The suspects were two of their own, the heroic officers who’d brought in the perpetrators the world was looking for, and—”

“And bullshit.” I pointed a forefinger at him, thumb up, like I was aiming. “We’re talking ransom money from a kidnapping. A federal crime. You should have stepped in.”