“Actually,” Ness said, reconsidering a bit, or pretending to, “I’d prefer you didn’t meet him. I just want you along to listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“Snorkey says he can get the Lindbergh kid back.”

I sighed, shook my head. “It’s just a scam, Eliot. Besides, none of it has anything to do with me.”

He put his hands behind his neck, elbows flaring out. “Nate-you’re the resident kidnapping expert around this town right now.”

I gave him a Bronx cheer. “Why, ’cause I stumbled onto getting some bootlegger’s kid back for him? We couldn’t even make the charges stick against that Rogers dame!”

He shrugged with his eyebrows. “How were you to know Hymie Goldberg would claim the woman was acting as his intermediary?”

“Yeah, right-his intermediary. That’s why her brother Eddie shot it out with a cop.”

Eliot shrugged again, shoulders this time. “Why do you think these snatch-racket gangs prey on their own kind, so often? Their victims are primarily borderline characters like themselves-bootleggers and gamblers and the like. Who know their fellow underworld denizens would never seek help from the cops at the outset, and won’t rat them out at the finish line.”

Eliot was the only guy I knew who might actually use the word “denizens” in a sentence, let alone one that also included the phrase “rat them out.”

“But these days,” he continued, “most major gamblers and bootleggers and panderers don’t go anywhere without bodyguards. So the snatch-racket boys are looking to greener pastures, monetarily speaking.”

“Like the Lindberghs.”

Eliot nodded. “We’re already seeing a pattern of industrialists and bankers and businessmen being hit. Remember the Parker case in California? That little girl was dead and dismembered before the ransom was even collected.” He sighed, shook his head. “With prohibition winding down, kidnapping could be the next big racket.”