“Nothing, if they’re so inclined,” Rafferty agreed. “And you have received no further word from the kidnappers, is that right?”
“Nothing. All I can do is wait and hope that you might be able to find my son.”
Rafferty stood up. “That is a tall order, Mr. Kirchmeyer, a tall order. But I will do what I can. In the meantime, let me know as soon as you hear again from the kidnappers.”
“I will, and I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Rafferty.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Rafferty said, patting Kirchmeyer on the shoulder before leaving.
O’Connor was striding up the front steps as Rafferty walked out on the porch. A dark scowl spread over the chief’s splotched, unpleasant face and he stopped, blocking Rafferty’s path. The two men might have been twins. Both were well over six feet, barrel-chested, large-bellied, surprisingly light on their feet, and invariably well-armed. Neither was a man to be trifled with under any circumstances.
“I’ll have no tricks from you,” O’Connor said without preamble, as he fixed his poisonous green eyes on Rafferty. “You’ll not be interfering in this business. Is that understood?”
“And good afternoon to you,” Rafferty replied, staring back at the chief. “I’m here at Mr. Kirchmeyer’s invitation, John. Apparently the police of this city do not have his full confidence. Imagine that.”
The provocation was deliberate—Rafferty considered O’Connor to be nothing more than a thug with a badge—but also risky. O’Connor had beaten down many a man who crossed him and struck fear in countless others. Rafferty, however, was not among them.
“By God, I could arrest you right now,” O’Connor said, moving toward Rafferty.
Rafferty stood his ground until the two men were eyeball to eyeball. “You could try,” Rafferty replied, “though I’d not give good odds on your chances. Now, if there are no further pleasantries to be exchanged, I think I’ll take a little walk.”
“You do that,” O’Connor said, glaring at Rafferty as he swung around him. “And don’t come back.”
Rafferty strolled over to 7th Street, where he found a drugstore at the corner of Randolph Avenue. There was a telephone inside and after favoring the store’s proprietor with a silver dollar, Rafferty placed a call to Thomas at the saloon.
“Listen, Wash,” he said when he heard Thomas’s familiar voice, “I’ve got a job for you. I want you to track down Red Banion for me. Tell him he’s a suspect in this Kirchmeyer business. Ask him how much the lad owes him and see what he says. And remind Red that he owes me a favor.”
Thomas laughed. “Several favors, Shad. He’d probably be fertilizing the soil in Calvary today if you hadn’t gotten him out of that mess with the Chicago boys.”
The “mess” involved certain transactions with a Chicago gaming syndicate led by the notorious “Iron Pipe” McGinnis, so named after the weapon he favored for breaking the knee- caps, or in some cases the skull, of any gambler who failed to pay his debts.
Thomas said, “So you think Red snatched the kid to get his dad to cough up a debt?”
“Could be,” Rafferty said. “Let me know what you find out. I’ll call back later.”
Rafferty left the drugstore after buying a couple of the cheap cigars he liked to smoke and headed back down Osceola Street toward the Kirchmeyer mansion. But he didn’t go all the way there. Instead, he turned east on Lee Avenue, following the route Michael Kirchmeyer would have taken on his way to the brewery.
At Drake Street the “Omaha” shops, as everyone called them, came into view. The shops consisted of a series of low brick structures, including a roundhouse. Men in overalls were working on cars or moving locomotives in and out of the roundhouse on the north end of the property. Across Drake from the shops was a foundry, its wide doors open to dissipate the heat. A group of men inside were pouring molten iron into a sand mold. Other men were working in a small yard outside the foundry, loading finished goods onto drays. Teamsters with their wagons clattered along Drake, carrying supplies to the rail shops. Rafferty was struck by the amount of activity and the openness of the area. With potential eyes everywhere, it would hardly have been a good place to kidnap someone in broad daylight.
Farther down Lee, however, toward the river, the landscape abruptly changed. The street entered a long steep ravine, well-wooded, and followed it down to the river, where the brewery stood at the base of a low cliff. This rather secluded portion of the street, Rafferty concluded, would have been an ideal spot for the kidnappers to snatch young Kirchmeyer without being seen.
