Of course that wasn’t what made this clipping noteworthy: it was the other story, the sidebar. A Pontiac with Indiana license plates stopped at a filling station near Aurora, Illinois, later that same afternoon. Two men and two women were in the car. The men seemed to be Candy Walker and Homer Van Meter; police sketches of them were reproduced, as well as of the “unidentified molls” who’d been with them.
Petersen stood and pointed at one of the molls pictured. From an inside coat pocket he produced a snapshot of himself and a pretty teenage girl with blond bobbed hair, a farmhouse glimpsed behind them. He had his arm around her and was smiling—a real smile, not a crease—and she had a glazed smile, behind which unhappiness clearly lurked. Still, these were happier times (at least for him).
And, of course, the girl in the snapshot closely resembled the police sketch of one of the women seen with Candy Walker and Homer Van Meter.
“Mr. Petersen, this police sketch resembles your daughter, but she’s a pretty woman, a young woman, and a lot of pretty young women look pretty much like this….”
“It’s her,” he said, flatly. “Now let me show you something else.”
This guy had something in every pocket; he reached into his right suitcoat pocket and produced another clipping. He spread it before me.
“This was in this morning’s paper,” he said. “I read it and went and got on the train—I knew I’d waited long enough. Maybe too long.”
I’d already seen this: a story from this morning’s
The St. Paul police had shot about fifty bullets into Homer Van Meter yesterday. Not surprisingly, it killed him.
Petersen, trembling, sat back down.
“I’ve been reading the papers,” he said, “reading the blood in the headlines. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker…John Dillinger…now Van Meter…the outlaws, they’re all going to die like that, aren’t they? In hails of bullets?”
I shrugged. “More or less.”
“I’m afraid for my daughter, Mr. Heller.”
“I don’t blame you.”
He sat forward; earnestness engulfed his face. “Retrieve her for me.”
“What?”
“Get her back for me.” He pointed to the Van Meter clipping. “Before she meets a similar fate.” He sat back, as if to say, I rest my case.
I looked at this gaunt Midwestern ghost sitting holding onto the ebony armrests on the chrome tubes of my silly goddamn chair, and I wanted to laugh. Or cry.
Instead I simply said, “Mr. Petersen, surely you understand what you’re asking is, well…a tall order. Maybe an impossible one.”
He said nothing, just leaned forward, with anticipation. Waiting for me to say yes. Or even no. Something.
His daughter would go to jail, upon capture—if she was lucky. She could just as easily die—go down “in a hail of bullets,” as he had said. But since she was just another faceless moll (but for one police artist’s sketch), a name that hadn’t got into the papers as yet, it was vaguely possible it wasn’t too late, that she
“Okay, Mr. Petersen,” I said. “I tell you what. I’ll snoop around a bit. Walker used to live in Chicago, so maybe through some of his old contacts I can find out if your daughter’s still with him. If so, maybe I can get a message to her that her father would welcome her home, with open arms.”
He shook his head no. “That wouldn’t be enough. You have to
“How can I promise to bring her back, if she doesn’t want to come? Be reasonable, Mr. Petersen. After all, that’d be kidnapping….”
“Is it kidnapping to return a daughter to her father?”
He had me there.
And knew it. He stood and dug in another pocket; right pants pocket this time. He took out a thick fold of bills, money-clipped. Counted out five hundred dollars in twenties.
I watched this, amazed. With probably about the same look he’d given my modern chair, coming in.
I picked the stack of money up in one hand; it felt heavy.
“Mr. Petersen—why five hundred dollars?”
He got oddly formal again: “Because you will take risks. You will need to go among the wolves.”
He had a point; it would be dangerous to go around asking questions about the girlfriend of a wanted man, a public enemy. But five hundred dollars was five hundred dollars.
“What do you expect for your money, Mr. Petersen?”
“I want you to look for Louise, Mr. Heller.”
“For—for how long?”
“For five hundred dollars’ worth.”
“At ten bucks a day, that’s a long time.”
“Find her, and you can keep what you don’t use. If you use it up, call me…” He reached in his left pants pocket and removed a slip of paper with his name and phone number and address written on it, and gave it to me. “…I will probably authorize you to continue.”
Petersen picked his hat up off my desk.
“And,” he said, putting on the hat, “there’s a thousand more if you deliver her to me.”
