When Johann Kirchmeyer entered the study half an hour later, his face was a study in puzzlement. “Mr. Rafferty, why are you not downstairs? The reporters are asking for you. They want to know how you achieved this miracle. But Michael told me you were here and wished to see me alone.”
Rafferty nodded as Kirchmeyer sat down in his favorite armchair. “Yes, there are some things you need to know, and the sooner the better. There is no way of sugarcoatin’ what I am about to tell you. I only ask that you hear me out, and then you can decide what is to be done.”
“Very well. I owe you that, at the least, for saving my son.”
“Ah, I fear I didn’t save the lad,” Rafferty said slowly. “’Twould be more accurate to say that I captured him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this, Mr. Kirchmeyer: Your son was not kidnapped and he is the criminal responsible for this whole sorry business.”
Kirchmeyer began to protest but Rafferty held up his hand. “Please, let me continue. Your son, I regret to tell you, staged his own abduction for the purpose of extortin’ money from you. For the past twenty-four hours, he’s been hidin’ out in an abandoned portion of your brewery caves. It was he who placed that ransom note on your front porch. He also wrote the second note and had it delivered here with the help of a confederate, whose name I have if you wish to know it.
“Now, as for why Michael acted as he did, I fear you will find his motive most troublin’. You were right in thinkin’ that he had run up debts in the gamblin’ den operated by Mr. Banion. But as it so happens, I know Red Banion well and I was able to confirm that your son had in fact been payin’ off what he owed, since Mr. Banion, being a cautious sort of fellow, would not extend Michael any great amount of credit. Trouble is, Michael had to get the money somewhere, and he got it at the brewery by stealin’ money and cookin’ the books, which he was in a position to do as your accountant.
“Unfortunately for him, he learned not long ago that his hand was about to be detected square in the middle of the cookie jar. As I understand it, you told him you were plan-nin’ an audit at the end of the fiscal year this month because of some irregularities you’d run across. That’s when Michael hit upon his desperate scheme. He’d pay back the money he owed, and maybe get a few thousand in spendin’ money as well, by extortin’ it from you. ’Twas certainly a brazen piece of work, I will say that for it.”
Kirchmeyer put his hand to his forehead and said, “No, I cannot believe Michael would ever be capable of such a thing.”
“Then you’d best take a look at this,” Rafferty replied, retrieving a folded sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his gaudy seersucker suit. “’Tis Michael’s confession, which I had him write out. I’m sure you will recognize that it is in his hand.”
Kirchmeyer took the paper and read it slowly. The more he read, the more blood seemed to drain from his face. By the time he was finished, he had the desperate, stricken look of a man who had just buried his child. “Michael,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Ach, my Michael, what have you done?”
Rafferty said, “I suppose you’ll be wonderin’ about the ransom. I have it. Michael was carryin’ it when I apprehended him outside the old cave entrance west of the brewery. I guessed that’s where he’d be sneakin’ out.”
“But how did he get his hands on it with all of those policemen watching?”
Rafferty smiled. “Ah, that was the true genius of his scheme. Michael had worked in the caves for a time and knew them well. I also recall that he had some experience as a surveyor, is that right?”
“Yes, he studied surveying, but what does that have to do with the caves?”
“Well, for Michael, it proved to be a handy skill. Because of his trainin’ as a surveyor, he was able to figure out that one of the old caves passes very close to the edge of the ravine on Lee Avenue. And that gave him a stroke of inspiration. He figured out that by diggin’ a short side tunnel no more than twenty feet long, he could punch a hole right into the floor of that shack. The sandstone down there is like hard sugar, as you well know, and a couple of men with a pick can cut through it easily. It probably took Michael and his confederate only a few nights to do the work. As they neared the ravine, they made the tunnel no bigger than a rabbit hole in hopes it wouldn’t be discovered. That’s why Michael was so insistent that the ransom money be put in a package of a certain size. He needed to be sure it would fit through the hole.”
“How did you find out about this tunnel?” Kirchmeyer asked.
“’Twas a bit of luck. You see, Michael used rocks and dirt to temporarily plug the hole, but he didn’t do quite a good enough job of it. When I came upon the shanty yesterday, I sat down on the bench while I was pokin’ through the fire pit. Lo and behold, I felt a cool, damp breeze—cave air—at my feet. And that’s when I had an idea that maybe, just maybe, somebody had come upon a foolproof way of gettin’ their hands on the ransom.”
“So you found the rabbit hole?”
“Well, I didn’t open it, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t want to scare away anybody who might be hidin’ out down there. But when the second ransom note arrived statin’ where the money was to be left, I knew I was right about a tunnel comin’ from the caves. The coppers never did figure it, since Michael did a better job of sealin’ the rabbit hole the second time around, after he’d got the money.”
Kirchmeyer said, “One thing is not clear to me. Did you suspect Michael from the very start?”
“No, I didn’t know for sure until I caught him skulkin’ out of the caves with the ransom money. He wasn’t happy to see me and I had to do some persuadin’ to keep him from tryin’ to run off. After that, it didn’t take long to wring the truth out of him. I can tell you he is mortified, though I’m inclined to think that the chief source of his unhappiness is that he got caught.”
Rafferty looked into Kirchmeyer’s tired, sad eyes and continued, “There is but one more thing for you to consider, sir, and it concerns the fate of your son. By all rights, he should be charged with his crime, not to mention the agony he put you and your wife through. Yet the fact is, you are the victim here and you must decide whether to prosecute the matter in the courts. What I’m sayin’ is that I will not hand Michael’s confession over to the police unless you ask me to.”
“And if I decide to tear up the confession, what will the police be told?”
“Leave that to me,” Rafferty said with a smile. “I have a fine Irish talent for embroidery. Besides, I believe I can convince Chief O’Connor to go along with whatever tale I have to offer, so long as he receives credit for findin’ your son and retrievin’ the ransom. He will be a regular hero by the time I’m through.”
“You would do that to spare our family the shame of Michael’s crime?”
“I would, but on one condition. The lad cannot be let off scot-free. You must see to it that he faces serious consequences for what he has done.”
Kirchmeyer nodded. “I understand, Mr. Rafferty, and I assure you there will be consequences. To be betrayed in such a cold and calculating manner by my own flesh and blood is a terrible thing. I don’t know that I will ever be able to forgive Michael.”
“It will be hard,” Rafferty acknowledged, “but perhaps one day, if Michael can prove himself worthy of forgiveness, you will be able to give it.”
“Yes, perhaps one day,” Kirchmeyer said as he stood up to shake Rafferty’s hand. Then he went downstairs to talk with his son.
Rafferty was as good as his word. When he talked to the reporters downstairs, he spun a lively yarn about how two unknown men—believed to be transients living in the shack—had snatched away Michael. The story was patently absurd, but Rafferty buttressed it with a glowing account of how Chief O’Connor and his men had allowed the ransom to be taken so that the kidnappers would think they had gotten away with their crime. Then, he said, he and the police had freed Michael and recovered the ransom yet the kidnappers had somehow escaped. The press was skeptical but Rafferty stuck to his story, and as there was no way to disprove it, the newspapers had no choice but to ratify it as the official version of events.
Johann Kirchmeyer was also true to his word. He banished his son from his home and business and wrote him out of his will. Soon thereafter, Michael left St. Paul for points unknown.
Five years later, in 1897, Johann Kirchmeyer died. His wife followed him to the grave a month later. With no heirs to take over the brewery, it soon foundered and was purchased at a rock-bottom price by an up-and-coming businessman named Jacob Schmidt, who eventually consolidated it into his large new brewery on West 7th Street. The old Kirchmeyer caves were then boarded up, and not long after that the brewery itself was demolished.
Michael Kirchmeyer never returned to St. Paul, not even for his parents’ funerals. He was not heard of again until May of 1898, when a brief story appeared in the
St. Paul Pioneer Press:
It has been learned that Michael Kirchmeyer, aged 30, formerly of St. Paul and the son of the late Johann Kirchmeyer, a well-known brewer in this city for many years, has died in the Klondike. Kirchmeyer was among seventy-three stampeders in search of gold who were buried by the great avalanche at Chilkoot Pass on April 3. His body in all likelihood will never be recovered, according to authorities on the scene.
Kirchmeyer will perhaps be best remembered in St. Paul as the victim of a kidnapping in 1892 in which his father was forced to pay a ransom of $10,000. Kirchmeyer was later found unharmed and the ransom was also recovered. No one has ever been arrested for the crime, believed to have been the work of railroad transients.
Thomas, who read the newspapers religiously, reported the news to Rafferty that morning as they prepared to open the saloon.
“Well, Wash, I guess it is the end then of the Kirchmeyer saga,” Rafferty said. “Let us mark the occasion with due ceremony.”
Beneath the bar, Rafferty—for reasons he could not readily explain—had saved a quart bottle of “Kirchy’s” beer from the last batch made before the brewery shut down. He uncapped the bottle and poured out two glasses of the dark lager.
“A toast,” he said, raising his glass, “to the brewer of a noble beer and to his wife and his son, all gone now. May the Kirchmeyers rest in peace, though I’m thinking that where Michael is goin’ might be a tad hotter than the Yukon.”
“Amen to that,” Thomas said. “Amen to that.”
I
should have known there was going to be trouble from the moment I discovered serious irregularities in Sam Vincent’s books, but in my line of work “trouble” usually means nothing more than a procedural slap on the wrist or a threatening letter from the I.R.S. I’ve known of accountants who have gotten into difficulty for committing actual crimes, such as embezzlement. But for those of us who follow the letter of the law, the profession provides long, quiet, solitary hours. And that’s precisely how I like it.
My ex-wife accused me of being “immune to passion.” She may have had a point, but when she subsequently digressed about her fervid need for “a real man,” it came to mind that she might have been missing the point about me. Maybe she always had. I possessed my share of passions, but they were quiet in nature: precision, detail, and the satisfaction of rows of numbers lined up and silently ringing with the celestial harmony of perfectly executed mathematics. And, besides, what exactly were these passions Barbara extolled from such heights of hauteur? Losing one’s temper over nothing? Abandoning control in the name of “love” or “romance”? How about making constant, capricious, carping demands on one’s spouse—now that was truly Barbara’s passion.
It’s not exactly that I prefer solitude but I can adjust to it easily. I arise, pour coffee out of my pre-programmed maker, eat a single low-carb breakfast bar (chocolate or zesty mango), then don the suit and tie I selected the previous night. I drive to my office in the Foshay Tower—not the trendiest Minneapolis address, but something about its humbleness in the face of its upstart high-rise rivals, like a quiet reserved type in the rough and tumble of a high school boy’s locker room, has always appealed to me. I like to think that its old-fashioned charm gives clients a sense of permanence, decorum, and tact that keeps them returning to me (and referring their friends).
Sam Vincent was one such referral—he came to me by way of Lucas Huston, an executive who lived on Lake of the Isles and who had retained me as his primary accountant for the last seventeen years. Lucas isn’t exactly a friend. He’s never invited me to his house, for instance, for one of the glittering holiday fundraisers that I see written up in the
Star- Tribune
with clockwork regularity. But he often lingers in my office for a cup of coffee and sometimes a cigar, if I offer him one and its quality meets with his approval. It was during one such visit that Lucas informed me that I might be getting a call from an unusual prospective client.
“His name’s Vincent,” Lucas told me, squinting through a cloud of purplish smoke that he exhaled across my desk in my direction. “He’s a building contractor. His company did some work on my house last summer, and he pestered me to find out who my accountant was until he got your name out of me.”
I nodded in my usual friendly manner, wondering why Lucas might have been reluctant to recommend me to someone.
“See, this is the thing,” Lucas went on. “The guy’s strange. Kind of a rough type. Makes a good living, I’m sure, but I didn’t know if you wanted to be associated with someone like that. Feel free to turn him down. It wouldn’t bother me at all.”
I fretted all that night about whether or not Lucas was telling the truth, and whether my turning down his contractor would indeed be something to which he wouldn’t take offense. In the process I rendered Sam Vincent, in my mind, into a slavering, drooling werewolf of a man, baying and clawing at my door with bone-sharpened claws.
Vincent showed up at my office the next day without calling ahead to make an appointment. He was no werewolf, but neither was he without certain fear-inspiring qualities. He was wearing a golf shirt, and its armbands strained against his considerable biceps. Under what I took to be a golf visor, his tanned face had frown lines where other people were wrinkled from smiling. His hair was so black that I figured he must have had it dyed. I wondered where vain rich men went to do such things—were there salons where intimidating building contractors were secretly buffed and pampered, their sun-damaged dermis lovingly tended to by smiling, silent young women?