by Paul Siluch
“See, by weighting events and outcomes by impact, he thinks he can make a change and predict the outcome. He has thousands of variables in play. I just don’t know what they all mean.”
“Like?”
Chloe pointed to a name in red that appeared twice on the page. “Like who is Roosevelt?”
Maureen sighed. “The President of the United States? You don’t know that?”
“Hey, geek, I study time. I don’t give a crap about what happens as it unwinds. In Akako’s new timestream this Roosevelt guy isn’t important.”
“Akako came back and killed Roosevelt?”
Chloe pointed at a variable. “No, Roosevelt’s here, he just isn’t heavily weighted anymore. Like someone dialed him down to a simmer.”
“Like he didn’t become president,” Maureen said.
“Maybe, because all the juice he holds in our timeline goes to this guy instead.” Chloe pointed to the name Lindbergh.
“Charles Lindbergh,” Robbie said. “He was America’s hero about now.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Maureen said. “Ever since he soloed across the Atlantic, the newspapers hound him like he’s Angelina Jolie.”
Robbie and Chloe looked at her in confusion.
“Oh, uh, like he’s the king of England or something,” Maureen explained.
“Is he revered enough to become president?”
“The economy is in the toilet,” Maureen said. “Hoover is about as popular as a skin rash, even among most Republicans. But he’s unopposed in the primaries. Roosevelt is picking up momentum already and Republicans see the writing on the wall. America wants a savior. Lindbergh could be it. His father was a Minnesota congressman, after all.”
“He’d never do it,” Robbie said. “He’s too reclusive. In a year or so, he even moves to England. Chloe, can you pinpoint Akako’s pivot point in the timestream?”
“March 1st, 1932.”
“That’s today,” Maureen said.
“Of course,” Robbie said. “That’s the day Lindbergh’s son is kidnapped and killed.”
“Oh, my God,” Maureen said. “You’re right. I’d forgotten that was about to happen.”
Robbie turned to Chloe.
“A guy named Bruno Richard Hauptman kidnapped Lindbergh’s one-year-old son for ransom. Somehow the boy died after the abduction, perhaps accidentally. They found the boy’s decomposed body months later and eventually arrested Hauptman. After the trial of the century, he was convicted. Lindberg turns ultra-recluse after that. He’d never run for president after that, but if it never happened…”
“Wait,” Maureen said. “Why does Akako care if Lindbergh gets to be president?”
Chloe flipped back and forth between the timestream calculations. “Big timestream shift. He estimates the probability of the U.S. entering World War II before 1946 at ten percent.”
“Lindbergh was a staunch isolationist,” Robbie said. “If he has a second term through 1942, there’s no support for the Allies. A passive United States is no threat to Japan. There is no Pearl Harbor, just measured Asian expansion. Without American intervention, Russia falls to Germany. Totalitarianism rules most of the world.”
“And why is that better?” Maureen said.
Chloe rifled back to the end of the new timestream. “In addition to his Japanese ancestors probably being better off, his global economic projections are off the charts. Totalitarianism is efficient. He thinks that, at least economically, the world will be a better place.”
“Yeah, freedom is totally overrated,” Maureen said.
“He’ll head for Hauptman,” Robbie said. “So should we.”
“And how do we find him in this era without locator chips and passive monitoring?” Chloe said.
“We do it the old-fashioned way,” Maureen said. “The way I do everything.”
She opened a drawer and pulled out a burly paperback book several inches thick. She dropped it on the table with a thud.
“Oh, yes!” Robbie said with a laugh. “A phone book! We’ll find his house and stake it out.”
Maureen found the address: 1279 East 222nd Street in the Bronx. “I’ve got a car. We need to be prepared. If Akako has come this far, he’ll do what it takes.”
Maureen rolled open an end table drawer. She pulled out a snub-nose .38 pistol. Robbie looked aghast.
“You have a gun?”
“History skips over this,” Maureen said, “but everyone has a gun. When gangs started using machine guns in the streets, no one felt safe. And rightly so. Akako will have no problem getting his hands on one.”
Robbie gave the gun a leery look.
“By 2054, firearms are about as common as buggy whips,” he said. “I’d be more likely to shoot myself than Akako. Have you ever fired it?”
“Well, no,” Maureen said.
“Great, more variables to screw up the timestream,” Chloe said. “Who knows who the two of you would end up shooting? More external chance means less chance of success.”
Maureen slipped the gun back into the drawer. “Then let’s head for the Bronx.”
“Not you, sister,” Chloe said. “That’s not part of your timeline. You stay here and save scraps of garbage for the future like you are supposed to. We’re outside the timestream. We need to take care of this.”
Anger flashed in Maureen’s green eyes.
“I’m afraid that makes sense,” Robbie said. “We should take it from here. And your car, of course.”
“You drive cars in 2054?”
“No, we fly around in jet packs,” Chloe deadpanned.
“Yes, we have cars,” Robbie said.
“With clutches?”
“With what?”
“You may need a lesson.”
Chloe stood and gave her dress a frustrated yank.
“She hates that dress,” Robbie said to Maureen. “Maybe you could loan her something more comfortable?”
“No way!” both women said in unison. Robbie raised his hands in surrender.
♦♦♦
After a few trips around the block, Robbie was acquainted with Maureen’s Chevy’s three forward gears. The relationship was far from intimate and included a great deal of teeth gnashing, both by the transmission and by Maureen. They returned to her house.
“Have you thought through what you are planning to do?” Maureen asked.
“We have to stop Akako and keep the timestream straight.”
“Yes, but to do it, you are letting a kidnapper brutally murder a child. There’s a moral case for Akako’s actions.”
Robbie hadn’t thought about it that way. He stared out the window at the passing traffic.
“But the Allies lose the war,” he said. “Millions more die. Populations are enslaved. It’s the right call. It restores the future as it is meant to be.”
“I agree,” Maureen said. “Just checking. It sounds great in the abstract, but at some point you may be looking into that baby’s eyes and have to let him go to his death. You need to think about that moment well before you finally experience it. Otherwise, you will hesitate. Then you will fail. And I don’t want to find out what happens to me if Akako changes the future I was supposed to be born into.”
Kane had told Robbie he did not fit the shifter profile, the profile that sent more detached observers like Maureen back in time. Could he keep his perspective when the decision got hard? Robbie tried to pull this weed of second-guessing from his mind. But it had already taken root.
♦♦♦
An hour and one neck-snapping ride later, Robbie and Chloe sat in the front seat of Maureen’s black sedan down the street from number 1279, an unassuming white two-story house with a newer detached garage. Dusk had arrived. The lights were on. The rural area still boasted dirt roads and it was hard for Robbie to imagine it as the paved urban center in the future.
“This is your plan?” Chloe said. “Sit in a tin can all night and wait?”
“Akako needs to interact with Hauptman to k
eep him from kidnapping the boy,” Robbie said. “Akako can’t just warn Lindbergh or he may get as paranoid and reclusive as he did anyway. Akako will either show up here or we’ll follow Hauptman and stop Akako when does show up.”
“You don’t even know if Hauptman is in there.”
“That’s his car in the driveway. A dark blue 1930 Dodge four-door. It was a big part of the prosecution’s circumstantial case. Eyewitnesses saw his car around the Lindbergh estate the night of the kidnapping.”
“Looks just like our car to me,” Chloe said. “And couldn’t old Bruno have walked somewhere earlier? Or gotten a ride?”
Robbie’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t seen Hauptman. He hadn’t seen anyone, in fact. He popped open the car door.
“I’ll see if he’s there.”
Chloe grabbed his arm. “Are you nuts? You’re going to go interact with the timestream’s pivot point? Do you know what kind of a footprint that might leave?”
“I’ll just check from outside of the house. Look in a window. No one will know I was there.”
“You Stack Rats have no clue how fragile this all is,” Chloe said. “Except Akako, of course. Stupid bastard.”
Robbie left the car and crossed the road in a crouching sprint. He slipped around the darkened rear of the house. He turned the corner and stopped cold. A homemade ladder rested against the side of the house.
It wasn’t a ladder, it was the ladder. The one found broken at the Lindberg estate. The one with the telltale rung traced back to the rafters of Hauptman’s garage. Hauptman always denied it was his, but here it was in its incriminating glory. Of course the prosecution claimed he’d custom built it for the crime, but whether he did or not was probably immaterial.
Robbie moved up the far side of the house. Only the parlor in the front was lit. He peered in over the ledge.
Hauptman sat at a cheap table, bent over a piece of paper with a pencil. He was copying a story from a newspaper next to him.
Hauptman! Right there. Everyone he’d seen had been inhabitants of the 1930’s, but in an anonymous way, like actors filling roles on some elaborate Hollywood set. But this was the real Hauptman, an actual person he had thoroughly studied, whose pictures he had seen a multitude of times. The man was smaller than he’d expected. But with his pointed nose and recessed eyes, he had an evil air to him photographs did not convey. It was no wonder the jury would convict.
Headlights flashed down the road. Robbie dropped and crawled to the front of the house. He looked out in time to see Chloe’s head duck below the Chevy’s dashboard. A car pulled up into the driveway. A following Model A pickup stopped in the street.
The car was a four-door, canvas-topped Cadillac phaeton, half again as long as the Dodge it parked next to. A wide, white-walled spare glowed from the mount on the front fender and the car sparkled from hood ornament to rear bumper. A car with this much chrome had no business on Bronx dirt roads.
A man in a black, double-breasted suit and snap brim fedora exited the rear of the car. He buttoned his jacket to conceal a shoulder-holstered pistol. A diamond-encrusted horseshoe stick pin gleamed in his red tie. When he mounted the porch, he paused and waved the driver of the truck forward. The man got out and sprinted up the driveway. Robbie retreated into the shadow of the house.
“Damn it.” Robbie whispered to himself. Chloe was right. What the hell was he doing out here?
The gangster knocked on the door and Hauptman let them in. Robbie risked a peek in through the window’s corner.
“Bruno, you finish the work for us?”
“Ya,” Hauptman said. His German accent was thick as pumpernickel bread. “But I am carpenter. Dis copying of stories I am no gud at.” He handed the man the sheets of paper he had transcribed at the table.
“That ain’t your concern, palley” the man said.
The hoodlum’s accent was not native New York, more flat, Midwestern. He pressed a roll of cash into Hauptman’s hand.
“We’ll ring you when it’s time for your part. You just wait for our call.”
From the front of the house came the clang of wood on metal. Robbie snuck a glance around the corner. Hauptman’s ladder was in the bed of the Model A.
“I’m juz messenger, ya? No guns?” Hauptman said to the hoodlum.
“What’s a matter?” the hoodlum said. “War service with the Kaiser make you yellow about guns?” He gave Hauptman’s cheek a condescending pinch. “You’ll pick up a bag from a man, and hand it to us. Easy as pie. A week later, you’ll be wearing a gold hat, if you know what I mean.”
The gangster turned and walked out.
“One of the boys is coming by tonight to take you to a joint for a few drinks,” he said from the porch. “Don’t tell the missus.”
The hoodlum returned to the rear of the Cadillac. The car left the driveway and the pickup followed it back into the city.
Hauptman doused the parlor light and a rear bedroom light winked on. Robbie threw caution to the wind and bolted straight for the Chevy. He pulled open the driver’s door and Chloe popped up like a jack in the box.
“What the hell was all that?” she said.
“It was Hauptman proving he wasn’t guilty of kidnapping,” Robbie said. “At least not as a participant. He’s heading out for a night on the town. Akako already knew that somehow.”
Chloe gave the notebook an exasperated slap against the dashboard. “Maybe it’s in here somewhere. I could probably tell you if I had more time with it.”
“Well, whoever has that ladder is going to kidnap Lindbergh’s son.”
“We don’t know where the ladder’s going.”
“But we know where it’ll end up. Between eight and ten tonight it will be used at the Lindbergh estate. Given the caliber of the men who took it, Akako will know not to risk going after them where they are all together. He’ll intercept them at the estate.”
“And I suppose we’ll be there, too,” Chloe said. “Major footprint.”
♦♦♦
The drive to New Jersey took forever compared 2054’s mass transit and autonomous freeways. Rain squalls and pathetic windshield wipers made the drive a chore. It was pushing eight p.m. as they passed the last few miles to Hopewell, the Lindberg estate.
“So Lindbergh paid the ransom but no one returned his son?” Chloe said.
“Right. The kidnapper said the boy was on a boat named Nellie, but no boat was ever found. A truck driver stumbled upon a badly decomposed body months later, just miles from the Lindbergh estate. The autopsy was riddled with holes and guesswork but Lindbergh identified the body as his son.”
“So if Hauptman wasn’t guilty,” Chloe said, “how did he get convicted?”
“Circumstantial evidence,” Robbie said. “It was his ladder at the house. Witnesses saw his car at the scene. He had ransom money hidden in his garage, but less than a third of it. There were ransom notes in his handwriting. He was identified as the bagman who took the ransom money at the drop off.”
“Sounds guilty.”
“But apparently not.”
“He did pick up the ransom money.”
“And maybe that was all. He may not have known the boy was dead. The kidnappers may not have even meant to kill the boy. He was only eight months old and the marginal autopsy performed said he died of head trauma. For an infant, that wouldn’t take much.”
“So who’s behind the kidnapping?”
“Lindbergh always though it was a Chicago gang. He may have been right after all.”
They turned into the Lindbergh driveway at eight fifteen. The gate yawned wide open.
“Damn it,” Robbie said. “We’re late.”
Rain pounded the ground as he gunned the engine. The Chevy bounced over driveway ruts on its spindly, narrow tires and Robbie’s head grazed the roof. The wipers shed a sheet of water from the windshield and revealed the lawn that stretched out to the side of the Lindbergh home. The ladder was already propped up against a second story window. One man stea
died the base. Another was halfway up. From the far wood line, a third, stouter figure came on at a run. Akako.
“If that idiot so much as contacts those kidnappers…” Chloe said.
Robbie jammed on the brakes. Chloe braced herself against the dash. The Chevy skidded to a stop on the rain-soaked lawn. They leapt from the car and ran to intercept Akako.
Robbie slipped and slid in the wet grass. Waves of rain obscured and then revealed Akako as he closed the distance. From the small of his back, Akako drew a gun, a big .45, twice the size of the gun they had left at Maureen’s.
“No!” Robbie shouted.
The .45’s muzzle flashed. The rain muffled the report. The man at the base of the ladder spun like a top and dropped to the ground. The second man froze mid-descent. He cradled a bundle in his arms.
Three sharp pops sounded just behind Robbie. Bullets buzzed by his ear like a flight of hornets. Akako’s arms flew up and he fell forward. He hit the soaked ground with a splash and lay still.
Robbie whirled. Chloe stood, both hands on Maureen’s .38 in a combat stance.
“I said a gun in the hands of you two idiots would screw up the timestream,” she said. “Not in mine.”
The rain paused. Robbie scooped up Akako’s .45 from the ground. He and Chloe met the kidnapper at the base of the ladder. It was the hood who visited Hauptman. He raised one hand with an envelope in it. In the other he held the Lindbergh child.
“You two just waded in over your heads,” he said. “Ain’t no time to be heroes.”
“Then we’re in luck,” Chloe said.
Robbie pulled the envelope from the man’s hand.
“What’s that?” Chloe said.
The envelope was addressed to Colonel Lindbergh. In Hauptman’s handwriting. Hauptman hadn’t written…but, he’d provided samples for forgers to copy. So he could be set up as the patsy. With no alibi he’d admit to.
“The ransom note they’ll find on the windowsill,” Robbie said.
“Damn it!”
Chloe ripped it from Robbie’s hand and picked her way up the rain-slicked ladder.
Robbie put his gun to the hoodlum’s head, a range where he could not miss. He pulled the crook’s pistol from its shoulder holster and threw it aside.
