World, Chase Me Down

Winner of the 2018 Nebraska Book Award for Fiction

A rousing, suspenseful debut novel—True Grit meets Catch Me If You Can—based on the forgotten true story of a Robin Hood of the American frontier who pulls off the first successful kidnapping for ransom in U.S. history

“A kidnapper with a social-justice mission” (Time), Pat Crowe was once the most wanted man in America. World, Chase Me Down resurrects him, telling the electrifying story of the first great crime of the last century: how in 1900 the out-of-work former butcher kidnapped the teenage son of Omaha’s wealthiest meatpacking tycoon for a ransom of $25,000 in gold, and then burgled, safe-cracked, and bond-jumped his way across the country and beyond, inciting a manhunt that was dubbed “the thrill of the nation” and a showdown in the court of public opinion between the haves and have-nots—all the while plotting a return to the woman he never stopped loving. As if channeling Mark Twain and Charles Portis, Andrew Hilleman has given us a character who is bawdy and soulful, grizzled, salty, and hard-drinking, and with a voice as unforgettable as that of Lucy Marsden in Alan Gurganus’s Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All—an antihero you can’t help rooting for. | “Thrilling . . . A fun read . . . It’s action the whole time, much like a Louis L’Amour Western . . . with wry humor throughout.” —Outside

“Violent, funny, and unpredictable, with taut, authentic first-person prose and cinematic scope, World, Chase Me Down is a Western that begs to see itself on film. . . . As outlaw tales go, [it] ranks alongside the likes of Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and Billy the Kid.” —Interview

“An exciting adventure tale told with style and humor. It’s a campfire tall-tale with an antihero protagonist as interesting as he is despicable. . . . [A] fine debut novel.” —Mystery Scene

“Electrifying.” —USA Today’s The Gleaner

“A fast-paced and darkly funny adventure yarn [with] an antihero of eloquence and humanity, remorseful over his mistakes yet unable to stop making new ones. He’s the kind of character (and this is the kind of book) that could make a great movie.” —Omaha World-Herald

“The national manhunt became known as ‘the thrill of the nation,’ and Hilleman brings it to gritty life.” —The Sacramento Bee

“A rollicking great read that careens between funny and poignant, intimate and epic, action-packed and romantic. And like the best historical fiction, its themes are as contemporary as breaking news.” —Michael Punke, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Revenant

“I envy you, reader, because you’re in for at least two treats. First, World, Chase Me Down is a rollicking, elegiac page-turner that depicts a time and place I’ve not seen before in fiction and that stars a one-of-a-kind antihero you’ll keep thinking about days and weeks later. Second, you get to be among the first to experience the debut of a great new talent in Andrew Hilleman. So: Buy and enjoy this novel right now.” —Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of Turn of the Century and Heyday

“A riotous and righteous read—part poetry, part penny dreadful—World, Chase Me Down grips you with an originality that will keep you rooted to your chair.” —Craig Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mysteries

“World, Chase Me Down brings a patch of history forward, depicting a wide range of humans living and laughing, making mistakes and trying to do right—or sort of right. The vigor of the writing puts the story on the page with memorable bursts of power and subversive wit.” —Daniel Woodrell, New York Times bestselling author of Winter’s Bone

“The kidnapping that was called ‘the crime of the century’ in the early 1900s later became just a footnote in Omaha history, but Andrew Hilleman has again given it fascination and life in this elegant, meditative, beautifully written novel.” —Ron Hansen, bestselling author of The Kid and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“Andrew Hilleman is a fine stylist with a great sense of fun and an impressive grasp of popular culture in the early twentieth century.” —Mary Doria Russell, bestselling author of Doc and Epitaph

“A brilliant mix of pulp and balladry, narrated by an adventurous, philosophical, lovelorn outlaw, World, Chase Me Down reminds me of my favorite portraits of criminal lives—Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me and Ron Hansen’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford—and proves Andrew Hilleman to be as good a writer as any there is.” —Timothy Schaffert, author of The Swan Gondola

“A first-class page-turner, layered with ambition, greed, promises made and broken, and the powerful bond of friendship. The writing is pitch-perfect, the dialogue pops, the flashes of humor are just right, and the courtroom scenes are not to be missed. Best of all is the sophisticated portrait of the kidnapper, a complicated and unforgettable character. Bravo.” —Ann Weisgarber, author of The Personal History of Rachel DuPree and The Promise

“Supremely compelling. Gleaming with dark beauty in every line and gritty truth in its portraits of both haves and have-nots, World, Chase Me Down is that rare thing: a novel paced like a blazing page-turner and crafted like a finely woven tapestry. Brilliant on all counts.” —Elizabeth Rosner, author of Electric City, Blue Nude, and The Speed of Light

“A thunderous debut: a raucous gallivant through the wild heartland of our American myth, an indictment of big beef money, and a portrait of the twentieth century’s first great outlaw. This book will raise laughs from your belly and stab the wild meat of your heart. It sounds the barbaric yawp of a great new voice in American fiction.” —Taylor Brown, author of Fallen Land

“A riveting read that brings a turn-of-the-century crime into shivering reality. Pat Crowe, butcher turned kidnapper, is a fascinating combination of high hopes and dark desires.” —Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise and The River Wife

“The crime at the heart of this novel reverberates from dirty back streets to the halls of power. Once World, Chase Me Down grabs you, it won’t let go.” —Brent Spencer, author of Rattlesnake Daddy

“Unforgettable: a raucous and engaging story told by a voice so convincing you’ll think the author must be channeling his turn-of-the-20th-century antihero, with all his imagination, boldness, wry humor, and natural eloquence. Rich historical details bring the sights, sounds, and smells of rough-and-tumble meat-packing Omaha to life in this suspenseful and surprising novel.” —Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia and The Turk and My Mother

“Lively . . . A raucous example of narrative invention. Pat makes for an enthusiastic narrator, and he ends his story on a surprising note that affirms man’s infinite capacity for resilience in the face of life’s harsh vicissitudes.” —Publishers Weekly

“This one’s a winner. . . . Crowe’s remembrances of his five wild years on the run are especially fun. . . . The attention to historical detail is illuminating throughout. . . . The supporting cast is pleasingly despicable. . . . [An] action-packed debut.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Riveting . . . Colorful, real-life American outlaw Pat Crowe, the most wanted man in America at the turn of the century, is masterfully resurrected in [this] epic, action-packed Western. . . . The author’s version of events is so thrilling that the reader immediately becomes engrossed in Crowe’s dramatic tale and looks forward to each extraordinary chapter of his life. Gory, violent and occasionally shocking, Hilleman’s novel is also darkly comic, moving and extremely entertaining. A standout work of fiction.” —Lancashire Post

“Fabulous.” —Book Riot’s All the Books! podcast | Andrew Hilleman was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1982. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English at Creighton University, in Omaha, and his M.F.A. in fiction from Northern Michigan University. He has been published by The Fiddlehead and was a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award. He lives in Omaha with his wife and their daughter. | ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2017 Andrew Hilleman

All Things Long Past

In the history of all things, good stories one day become old storiesand then cease to be told at all, and I suppose mine is no different. Forthe past twenty years I’ve been puzzling my way back to humanity,but all I’ll be remembered for, if I’m remembered in the first place, isperhaps the foulest of all crimes: the kidnapping of a child. The apo-gee of a life nourished by lawlessness. When I was furthest from theaubade.

Oh, there’s a litany of other transgressions.

For a short while, I was the most wanted man in America. Thiswas around the turn of the century. Thirty years past and more now.After my final arrest, I drew a bigger crowd at a Nebraska train sta-tion than President Roosevelt when he made a campaign stop in thesame town during his bid for reelection. A few scattered folks stilltalk about me like legend. I relished it all. Even the fake stories thenewspapers trumped up about my escapades.

When I was young I believed that my tale would be threaded onparchment that never frayed and etched in tablets that would nevererode and inked upon the presses from the wharves of New York tothe goldfields of California. My role in it all would be auditioned foron stages the world over. I could hear the thunderclap of ovationlike a madman certain of his own future and creation’s reaction toit. I could see it all floating like glow bugs in a fortune-teller’s globe.But, let me say this: the world is not a skirt to be lifted. There’s noredemption for the devil. I have returned to the teaching of mychildhood. I have suffered, have been hungry and homeless andcold and for want of anyone to share with me a kind word sincethose days now long since passed. It’s been mighty rough trotting,but I will not repine.

I’ve robbed banks and stolen diamonds, nearly killed three policeofficers in a Cicero gunfight, escaped a burning building and a prairiefire, and even looted the entire town of Shinbone, New Mexico, after

2 • Andrew Hilleman

me and my old pal Billy Cavanaugh locked up the village marshal inhis own jail.

Poor goddamn Billy. Had I never stepped in to break up that fightin the stockyards all those years ago, the stupid kid, fortuned by hisown stupidity, probably would’ve made a life out of things much lon-ger and brighter than what he came to finally afford.

I laugh at that memory still.
How gorgeous it is to be sad.
Yet he is here still, even if he is only here to me. Love and

money and happiness—they are dead sea fruits. All have had theirown short running meters in my life. But the idea of friendshipoperating on that same arrhythmia is too depressing a thought tocontain. Let me say this: I have found no happiness in evil. I willnot paint roses on the life of an outlaw. Here there is only truth with-out imagination.

What is over for me now was over long ago. It’s the second-to-lastday of October, nineteen and thirty-nine. Either my sixty-eighthbirthday or my seventieth. I’m not certain which. My hair’s gonewhite with the snow of age, my livery hands are spotted like troutskin, my clothes stink worse than old breechclout. Ragged light ofnew day. The world turns like she always has. A tonnage of starsaround a half moon yet to vanish, and steam rising from sewer gratesall along the flagstone of Farnam Street.

I lurch out of my squalid flophouse into the awful darkness ofmorning. My staggering walk is like that of a clubfoot gimp for I’mnear ruin and emptied of all heart and I expect no pity for thesethings. It’s a mammoth struggle to button my shirtfront. Lamplightsflicker yet in the early gloss. The street is empty, sunken between lop-sided buildings like the floor of a canyon. I tamp my pipe. Only a fewleavings in my tobacco pouch. A loud noise startles me like gunshot.In an alley across the street a young boy chucks crab apples against abrick wall. Thud, thud, thud. Like a pitcher warming his arm in a bullpen. I curse the tramp child and struggle against my cane. A spumeof low cloud like mist in evenfall. My big spurs jangle as loudly as if Iwere wearing chain mail. Silly to wear spurs at my age.

Silly to be anything now.
It’s my morning ritual: a short walk to the lagoon at Hanscom

World, Chase Me Down • 3

Park to feed the pigeons as the sky fills with color. I scatter seed andcandy. Twenty birds gather at my feet. Spearhead cloud cover. Acornsfallen from their cups. Dogwoods limp in cracking sun. Cattailslong in the orange mud. An omen of first snow in the dawn.

I halloo the pigeons. Give them hallowed names.
“Hullo there, Billy,” I say to one.
“Hullo there, Hattie,” I say to another.
“Hullo there, Matilda,” I say to the smallest of the roost.
The birds give no response. They bob their heads and peck the

seeds and take counsel with one another in their own cooing lan-guage around my worn boots. I speak to them like they are people.I mumble to myself. Lose spittle down my last clean shirtfront.

They’re speechless to reply.
I can see them all yet.
There is Billy in our very own little butcher shop. Both of us not

much past thirty. crowe and cavanaugh, butchers, the storefrontsign read in cursive script. Our long end of a dream. Days spent skin-ning carcasses and rolling sausages out of a grinder. How often I findmyself lost inside those memories. Even the banal acts of scrubbingtile walls and mopping up wastewater are a fantastic caprice whenremembered from a great distance.

There, too, is Hattie. Her startling yellow hair piled up in wavesunder a leghorn hat. Her lipstick as messy as if applied in a fun housemirror after a long night of necking. She bore a rare beauty oftenseen in women painted on cigar boxes but hardly in everyday life.Her china blue eyes as big as hailstones. Break your heart quickerthan a plate dropped on the floor, those eyes could. Her throatylaugh that shook the china in your hutch. The nightgowns she woreas thin as mist to bed every night. A complexion the color of moon-stone.

I will never be shed of that woman.

There she is under a cluster of noisy apple trees, leaves rustlingas loudly as wrapping paper, blotches of sunlight turning her yel-low hair pink. A thunderbolt flash and she appears naked in ourbedroom during an electrical storm. A skunk stripe of moonlighton her back as she turns and beckons me to bed while rain slashesthe window.

4 • Andrew Hilleman

How she still affects me now from such a great distance is a spe-cial kind of madness I cannot parcel. The moon is not tanned by thesun, after all. Still, there she is, a spectral visitor, clear in my mindbut forever gone. Nothing left here but the empty.

It occurs to me now that I have created legendary days of her inmy own memory. I’ve never seen her under any goddamn appletrees or made love to her during a thunderstorm with moonlight onher skin or any of the other cruel and haunting images conjured upin retrospect. My remembrance of her is invented out of the samecotton as perfectly shaped clouds in a child’s artwork. Such thingsnever existed nor ever will. The contemplation of her love for meand raising our daughter Matilda together in a pink house witha quiet but substantial life was as grossly paradisal as the notionof Eden.

It had been that way all along. All things of any beauty are lostbefore they are gained, and they stay lost forever after, and the gain-ing of them in the first place is just a temporary figment, and that’sjust the natural way of the world, and not a damn fool ignorant toall around him or a genius aware of too much for his own good canremedy their way out of that.

Here I am now. Here I sit among the birds. An old man galledof crotch from poor bathing and thin as fish line from poor diet whoquivers yet against the capsizing of the world. My right leg jerks inspasm and the pigeons scatter in fright.

“No,” I call to them. “Don’t go. Come back, friends. Come onback now.”

“It’s just my leg quaking,” I say.
Just my heart, going.
I am still here. There is a twinkle left yet.
I wipe my mouth with a cloth and stuff the cloth back in my

pocket and scatter more seed for the birds. Most of them do notreturn. You’ve never known me, never had the capacity to know me,and I don’t know any of you except by your markings, but I verymuch love you still, and my love is an obsession despite all that hasmade it absent. I cackle and spit again. My paper sack empty of feed.I sit on the bench by the park lagoon for a few more minutes and

World, Chase Me Down • 5

accidentally fall asleep. A policeman comes by and pokes me withthe end of his baton.

“Hey there, old timer, no sleeping in the park.”I snap awake, dazed.
“Best get now,” the officer adds.
“I’m Pat Crowe,” I say.

“You’re loitering is what you are,” the officer tells me and con-tinues his beat.

The day browns in color and falls in temperature. Sun streakedand freezing both. Autumn given way to new winter in two hours.Wind empties trees. Shadows lasso, and hearthstones glow in thegrowing dark like the eyes of rodents. Ten more degrees plummet,then twenty. Flurries settle on stoop pumpkins. Day passes intoevening.

I stagger home. What I now call home.

I totter about my flophouse room. A miasma of dust and velvet.The curtains dark as liver and mossy with age. A bloodstain from aprevious tenant the size of a throw rug on the wood floor, scrubbedto a faint pink square. I reheat leftover coffee and fry wholemealwith fatback in a spider pan. A medicine show crackles on my tuberadio. I peel away my socks. What effort it takes. The cotton crunchywith ice. My toes nearly black from frost and neglect and poor cir-culation. I fill a deep pot with water boiled on the cookstove for myfeet. My toes come alive again in the boiling pan.

Outside my window, the world.
Omaha, Nebraska.
A glittering sedan sputters in the season’s first snow. A Chevy

Master with four doors that hiccups and stalls and sputters like aninvention still in the throes of imagination. I peer out into the slantedsnow. An elderly Negro woman is shitting into an old tin can betweena narrow crevasse of clapboards.

I laugh and say aloud to myself, “Good for you, old girl.”

It’s high time for a gill of brandy. My hands quake on the glasslike it was a heirloom long lost and now returned. I stoke the pitifulfire in my cookstove with the few chips left in the scuttle and watchthe snow accumulate on my window. Rising from my cane rocker

6 • Andrew Hilleman

is a considerable effort and I plod about the room as if I were shuf-fling my feet over ice.

A whole day come and gone. Nothing more I can manage thanto survive it. My pocket watch clicks against a glass of water on thenightstand. I hang my mothy suit on a wickerwork chair and swal-low two barbiturates the size of small toes as per my doctor’s ordersfollowing my stroke this past Christmas. The pills are strong enoughto put a dog to sleep and I must cut them into thirds. They have apleasant effect in small doses. My hands shake as I climb into bed. Inold age, it’s harder and harder to fall asleep in a timely fashion. Ioften sit up for hours before I’m relaxed enough to close my eyes.

I don’t want this world to vanish. There’s nothing left for me init, and still I cling. As I listen to the ticking of my windup alarmclock, my mind wanders from one thought to the next. On someoccasions, I can still see that Cudahy boy squirming in his chair,bound by horse hobbles and his face covered in an old baby shirt,smoking cigarette after cigarette under his makeshift blindfold.Young Edward Junior. He was an alright skate if there ever was analright skate on this grim planet. A truly brave soul. And yet hewhimpered and cried at night, begged us to return him to his motherand father. I can hear those pleas still. Let me say this right off thebat: I am a guilty man. Make no mistake. I kidnapped that youngman and held him for ransom and got away with it scot-free for fivelong years before my spirit completely broke and I returned to Omahafor my just desserts.

At this late hour of life, I am glad of one lasting sliver of redemp-tion: Edward Junior’s fate was not the same as the young CharleyRoss that inspired my crime in the first and, in later years, the Lind-bergh baby whose abduction was, in turn, modeled after my fouldeed. I can imagine no greater horror. A delivery truck driver dis-covered the toddler’s corpse on the side of the road: the tiny skullfractured by a massive blow, the body half-burnt and bearing themarks of animal bites. I pray the infant was chewed on after hispassing and not before, and that is perhaps the most macabre prayerever sent up through the grapevine. For so long my life was noth-ing but darkness, and I’ve been battling my way back to the lightever since.

World, Chase Me Down • 7

And still.
Some evil cannot be sewn up.
What progress I’ve made I cannot discern. It is said in Genesis

that God divided the light and the darkness and gave them differ-ent names. Yet, in these dwindling hours that still remain for me,in looking back on a life divided as severely as night is from the day,I wonder if there is any difference between them at all.

Snow clicks against my window pane. A guttered candle floatsin a pool of wax atop my cold radiator. The panther paces inside mychest. My mind full of history. Despite the fact that I’m so close tothe end, my thoughts are not of the darkness near to come but ofthe advent of darkness long ago.

zz

BOOK ONE

The Crimeof the Century

I

On the eighteenth day of December in that first year of thecentury, when the old earth was nearing her darkest calendar day,Billy Cavanaugh and I parked our horse and buggy at the cornerhouse on Dewey Avenue. Billy held the reins to our ragged silverpony. I ignited a calabash pipe with two matches after the buggyjolted to a stop, thumbing the bowl to get the tobacco rolling. Billyfit on a pair of cloth gloves and stared up at the darkening slab ofsky, a low rind of winter sun in the west. The last whiskers of day-light. There was no wind. A light snow fell as gently as dust sweptoff a rooftop.

Neither of us said a word to the other as we sat parked along thecurbstone. The hour approached seven. I jumped down from thebuggy and fed our pony an apple from my trouser pocket. I scannedthe street: a brick neighborhood avenue—void of traffic—that waslined on both sides by opulent mansions, the types with cupolas anddouble chimneys and crawling ivy. A scarf of river fog blew overfrom the Missouri. A lamplighter made his rounds, igniting gasstreet lights with a long wand. Coming around to the other side ofthe buggy, I elongated a spyglass and focused its sight at the man-sion on the corner. The estate, a twenty-two room Victorian sur-rounded by a gable fence, sat on a half acre of land and was home toEdward Cudahy and family. I glassed the young man inside theroom, sixteen-year-old Eddie Junior. He was knocking around ballson a baize-covered snooker table.

After a moment of studying the youngster, I collapsed the spy-glass and returned to my seat on the buggy, crossing my arms acrossmy chest.

“What’s he doing?” Billy asked.“Playing billiards against himself.”“Against hisself?”
“Nine ball by the looks of it.”

12 • Andrew Hilleman

Our pony shivered in the cold. Twenty more minutes passedand the snow fell harder: fuzzy and diagonal. Night arrived in full.A new moon hung over the trees, low and fat. Billy socked a wadof leaf tobacco the size of a walnut in his lower lip and collected hisspit in an old pineapple can. Spitting on the street came with a ten-dollar fine, which was twice the amount of money either one of ushad in the wide world. I pulled the large storm collar of my overcoataround my neck.

Halfway past the hour, a police officer in a bell hat and wool tunicapproached from the opposite side of the street, doing whirligigs withhis nightstick as he walked his beat. Billy and I both offered a friendlynod as the officer passed.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the officer said.I doffed my bowler. “Good and cold.”
“You fellers have business on this street?”“What else?” Billy said.

“Forgive him, officer,” I said. “He’s Florida born, and the wintermakes him somewhat choleric.”

Billy sneered and spit into his old can. “I’m merry in all weathers.”“Yes,” I said. “Ordinarily as kindly as a Texas cyclone, this one.”“Don’t go to upsetting me, now.”
The officer asked, “What are you twos doing on this block?”“Waiting on a fare,” I answered.

The officer craned his neck to get a look at the handle of a revolverbulging from a shoulder holster inside my coat. “You got a permit forthat roscoe?”

I eased myself off the buggy and stood in front of the patrolman.I pulled open the left side of my overcoat to reveal a fake badge pinnedto my suit lapel. “I’m Detective Dobbs of Sarpy County. My less cor-dial partner here who gets grumpy past his suppertime is DetectiveSaunders. We’re scouting a young man who escaped from reformschool yesterday and robbed his poor auntie of five hundred dollarsthis morning. She’s one Mildred Finnegan, resident of 3710 SouthDewey,” I said and pointed at the house next door to the Cudahymansion. “Which is that one right there.”

The officer considered the house. “You boys are good ways outfrom Sarpy County.”

World, Chase Me Down • 13

I flipped open my timepiece. “Three and one-quarter miles tobe exact.”

Billy began, “The longer this mule sticks around—”

“Quite right,” I interrupted him. “If our young runaway wouldhappen by and see us conversing with a uniformed lawman, it mightjust may scare him off.”

“It common practice in Sarpy County to send out two detec-tives to retrieve a juvenile escaped from reformatory school?” the offi-cer asked.

Billy and I exchanged a look.
“What precinct in Sarpy are you boys from?”
I furrowed my brow. “What’s your name, officer? I’d like to

have it in case I have to report to my captain that a third-shift beatboy of the okey-doke variety spoiled our opportunity to apprehendour suspect.”

“My name is Donald Marsh. And you can report me to Presi-dent McKinley if you want. I’m doing my duty, and I asked you aquestion.”

“South Sixteenth Street Precinct,” I responded harshly. “Now, Ican appreciate you doing your duty, but I’m going to ask you thisonce to be on your way out of respect for our surveillance. Surelyyou have other routes on your beat that are in need of your attention.But if I have to ask again, you’ll be stripped of your badge and fold-ing sheets in a Chink laundry before the week’s out.”

The officer backed away. “You Sarpy boys are a real pair ofsweethearts.”

“And a merry Christmas to you and yours on the Douglas side,”Billy said.

“Detective Dobbs, was it?” the officer asked me.
I tipped my hat in a parting gesture. “That’s right.”
“Detective Saunders,” the officer said to Billy as a farewell. “Happy

hunting, gentlemen.”
We watched the officer leave. He walked briskly to the corner

of Dewey and turned left, heading south. He’d been whistling atune when he came down the street, but was silent during his exit.No longer was he twirling his baton.

Billy paid heed to the difference. “Man left with a purpose.”

14 • Andrew Hilleman

I climbed back onto our woeful buggy.

“Suppose he heads to the nearest call box and dials up centralstation to check on those names you gave him?”

“Suppose he does,” I said and opened my spyglass again to examinethe Cudahy mansion. Eddie Junior was no longer in the parlor. “He’llfind out that Detective Dobbs and Saunders are real fellers. Came intoour shop a couple times for chops.”

Billy chuckled without amusement. “You and your split tongue.How many times have you lied to me and I’ve not known it?”

“If I ever lied to you, you’d know it good and well by the sixthsyllable.”

“If he doesn’t come out soon, we best pull it in for the night,”Billy said and nodded toward the Cudahy residence. “Come backtomorrow or the day after.”

I collapsed the spyglass. “He’s coming out now.”

The front door of the mansion opened and exiting the housewas Eddie Junior, carrying a bundle of books bound in a belt strap.Tall and pale and thin-shouldered, he wore a knitted cap andknickerbockers. Following him down the drive was the family pet,a spotted collie with a bobbed tail like that of a lion. He closed thefront gate behind him, calling out for his dog to stay close as it waswithout a leash. Billy shrugged a cape of monkey fur around hisshoulders and bent his head low, leaking more tobacco juice intohis can. I jumped down to my feet again and watched the youngman from behind the buggy.

Eddie Junior stopped three houses down: a three-story, Geor-gian Colonial affair with sash windows five across on the top floorand a wraparound porch. He rasped at the door and was greeted bya woman in a gingham apron who invited him inside immediately.His collie waited on the porch, pacing.

I ran a pocket comb through my beard. “Get the rig ready.When he comes back out, we’ll scoop him up on his