Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (13 page)

“You’re hoping the cops and reporters are going down the wrong road.”

“Hoping like hell—that’s my best shot at coming out of this cluster-fuck breathing air and not cyanide fumes. If the cops and reporters are looking for a sex maniac, when the killer is really some disgruntled ex-boy-friend or some gangland type Beth got misguidedly involved with—”

“Then you’ll see things that they won’t,” Lou said, something hopeful in his voice. “You’ll look at evidence, at clues, that they’re dismissing, when you’re seeing the significance.”

“Exactly. I have an in with both the
Examiner
and the lead
police detective . . . and if my take on this murder is on target and theirs isn’t . . . I might come out of this with my ass
and
business intact.”

“And maybe even your marriage.”

I gazed at Peggy, still on her side, snoring softly. “Maybe even that.”

Lou grunted. “. . . I guess this is my fault, really.”

“How do you figure that?”

“When you were mooning over bustin’ up with Peggy? I encouraged you to get back in the saddle again.”

“So to speak.”

“Next time I give you advice, take it from me: don’t.”

We signed off, and I placed another call, to a friend who was even closer to me than Lou, and just as close as I had once been to Barney—my other best friend in the world, actually. . . . Only I couldn’t risk coming clean with this guy. This guy was too straight an arrow for that. This guy was Eliot Ness.

I had known Eliot since we were both students at the University of Chicago in the late ’20s. When I was a cop and, later, a private detective, I had found Eliot to be my most reliable source within federal law-enforcement circles, back in the days when he and his Capone squad—the so-called Untouchables—had helped put Big Al away.

After Prohibition, Eliot had gone on to a well-publicized, highly regarded six-year stint as Cleveland’s (and the nation’s youngest) Public Safety Director, cleaning up one of America’s most corrupt police departments, busting the notorious Mayfield Road Gang’s numbers racket, and exposing numerous crooked unions. In several instances I had worked for Eliot in Cleveland, particularly during the period when the cops there couldn’t be trusted.

One of the cases I’d helped crack was that of the infamous Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run; from 1935 through 1938, the torso killer had killed at least thirteen men and women, mostly indigents, and possibly as many as seven or eight more. Officially, this case remained unsolved. But Eliot and I knew otherwise.

“This killing does sound as if it has some of the earmarks of
the Butcher,” the celebrated gangbuster said from his home in Cleveland. We had a long-distance connection as strong and clear as Eliot’s voice. “A number of the torso slayer’s victims
were
bisected at the waist.”

“And washed and drained of blood.”

“Yes, Nate . . . but our friend Lloyd also liked to collect heads, remember. That was his signature.”

The Butcher was Lloyd Watterson, a former medical student, the son of a well-to-do Cleveland physician. The prominence of the family had made it a political necessity to sweep the Butcher’s capture under the rug, and for Watterson himself to be committed to a Sandusky, Ohio, mental hospital.

“I realize Watterson almost always decapitated his victims,” I said, “but this girl’s face was mutilated in such a distinctive fashion—”

I could sense Eliot nodding. “Like an informer, a ‘squealer.’ ”

“My thinking, exactly. The killer obviously left the girl’s head attached because the slashing of her face was a part of a message he was sending.”

“A message to whom?”

“That’s the key question, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think Lloyd Watterson would vary from his signature, particularly when sending a message . . .
if
he were at large.”

“You’re probably right, Eliot. Still, with these striking parallels, I thought you should know about the murder. Since the Butcher case is officially open, and so few people actually know the score about Watterson, you could be getting a phone call from the LAPD, any time now. Harry the Hat specifically asked me to call you on this.”

“Nate, I haven’t been Public Safety Director of Cleveland for a long time.”

Eliot left the Public Safety post in March 1942, under a cloud, after he was in an icy-roads auto accident that involved drinking and even an accusation of hit-and-run on his part. It was mostly trumped up, by some of the crooked cops he’d been in the process of rooting out, but the scandal had damaged his otherwise Boy-Scout-flawless reputation.

During the war, Eliot had regained much of his good name by heading up the federal government’s Division of Social Protection, which was a fancy way of saying he’d been the nation’s top wartime vice cop, battling the spread of V.D. on military bases and near defense plants.

Currently, Eliot was chairman of the board of directors of the Diebold safe company, where he was apparently doing a good job, getting a glowing write-up in the current issue of
Fortune
.

“I know you’re a private citizen, now, Eliot, but you were
the
famous face on the Butcher investigation . . . and you may want to keep an eye on this ‘Werewolf Slaying,’ since there
are
parallels . . . and, considering the way the Butcher case was ultimately handled, well . . .”

“It was a cover-up, Nate—don’t sugarcoat it.”

“Just as long as Watterson is still having his jacket buttoned up for him, in the back, by valets in white, I’m satisfied.”

“I can assure you our man is still in a padded cell. I even get the occasional postcard from him.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, that’s one of Lloyd’s hobbies—taunting me with his threatening gibberish.”

“I would think they’d keep the lad away from sharp objects, including pencils.”

“It’s a mental hospital, Nate, not a prison.”

“All the more reason to check up on him, Eliot.”

“I will. . . . What’s wrong, Nate?”

“Wrong?”

“I sense something in your voice. I’m reading a . . . personal involvement in this thing.”

“I just happened to be with the reporter who stumbled onto the corpse, is all. . . . She was a pretty girl, Eliot, and some twisted bastard butchered her . . . It’s sickening.”

“I know. I know all too well. I was called to enough vacant lots and the like to view the Butcher’s handiwork. . . . I’ll make sure Lloyd is still inside, Nate. You’ll hear from me tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Don’t let this get to you. I had my share of sleepless nights myself, thanks to that fiend. We should have put his ass in jail.”

“We should have killed him.”

Eliot said nothing.

“Anyway—thanks, Eliot.”

When his voice returned, the tone had lightened. “You’re still willing to be my best man?”

“What? Oh, sure! When is the wedding, again?”

“January thirty-first, right here in Cleveland. Big church ceremony, the whole shooting match, family, friends. Can you and Peggy still make it?”

“We’ll be there with bells on. I can’t imagine anything keeping me from standing up for you.” Except maybe a jail cell.

“Betty and I are counting on the both of you. . . . Speaking of which, how’s married life treating you, so far?”

“So far, so good,” I said, leaving out a few details.

“Peggy’s a great gal.”

“So’s Betty. I know you two will be happy, Eliot.”

His laugh had a little embarrassment in it. “Well, you know what they say—third time’s a charm.”

This would indeed be marriage number three for Eliot. He was a hardworking, hard-drinking guy and was no doubt not terribly easy to be married to. Wife number one had been his secretary, during the Capone Chicago years, and that marriage had burned out during his tumultuous Public Safety run. I had thought his second marriage, to a terrific girl named Evie—a fashion designer up for the high-flying social life Eliot relished so—would have stuck. But nobody knows what’s really going on inside somebody else’s marriage.

Hanging up, I looked toward Peggy, who seemed, finally, to be stirring. I went in and kissed her neck and her ear and her face, gently rousing her.

“Where have you been?” she asked me, sleepily, violet eyes half-hooded.

“All your life? Or just today?”

“Today’s a start.”

I was seated on the edge of the bed, next to her. “Actually . . .
it was long and kind of unpleasant. I’ll fill you in, but I think we oughta grab supper, first.”

“Ooooo. . . . That unpleasant?”

“Oh yeah.”

Neither one of us was terribly hungry, so we just had sandwiches and iced tea at the Fountain Coffee Shop, which was tucked away under the Polo Lounge stairway. Dressed casually, in a snappy white blouse with brown-white-checked boyish slacks, Peggy chattered about the wonderful buys she’d found, at the after-Christmas sales. I politely listened and did not point out that bargain-hunting in Beverly Hills was a contradiction in terms.

Her hair was down, tonight, brushing her shoulders. All I could think of was how beautiful she was—and how much she and Beth Short looked alike.

Over a piece of strawberry cheesecake we shared off a single plate, Peg began to babble about how excited she was, tomorrow being her first day on the Bob Hope picture.

“I’ll be working with Dorothy Lamour, too,” she said. “And Peter Lorre. I’ll tell you a funny coincidence.”

Not finding coincidences all that funny today, I managed, “What?”

“It’s a private-eye spoof. Isn’t that a riot?”

“Four alarm,” I said.

As we walked hand-in-hand back to our bungalow, enjoying a cool breeze riffling the trees, she frowned up at me. “Here I’ve been babbling on and on about my fun day, and how I’m looking forward to tomorrow . . . and poor you, you’ve had such a long, hard day . . . How did you describe it?”

“Unpleasant,” I said.

“Unpleasant,” she nodded. “Tell me about it, darling.”

I waited until we’d made a fire—and had dragged pillows off the couch, to make a cozy nest for us, where we fell into each other’s arms—before I told her.

Told her what I could, that is: that I’d been with that reporter Fowley when the bisected body of a beautiful unidentified woman had been found, and that I would be working with the
Examiner
on the case.

She knew immediately what I was talking about. Even on Rodeo Drive, newsboys had been hawking the
Examiner
’s extra edition, and the case had been all over the radio, as well.

“I heard the grisly details in the car,” she said, sitting up. She was in panties and bra and looked like a bright-eyed girl at a slumber party; I was in T-shirt and boxers and socks, like a pervo pop peeking through a keyhole at his daughter’s girl friends at that same slumber party.

“You don’t seem, uh . . . bothered at all,” I said.

“Are you kidding? This is a big story! This is going to be the biggest thing since the H-bomb. And my husband’s in the middle of it!”

“I’m glad you’re pleased.”

“This is going to make our business, out here.”

“Our business?”

“Our business, your business! You’ll be the most famous detective in town, you big lug, if you take full advantage. Do you and Fred have a press agent?”

“Not really—that’s why we teamed up with the
Examiner
.”

“Well, you two may want to think about getting a press agent. God, this is exciting! What a wonderful break!”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, pretty thrilled myself.”

Her brow tensed and she raised a palm, like somebody was swearing her in at court. “Don’t get me wrong . . . I’m sorry for this poor girl. She was probably no different than me, just another beauty queen looking to make it in the movies or something. But she wasn’t lucky, like I was.”

“How do you mean?”

“She didn’t have you in her life.”

Then she kissed me. Long and hard, her tongue tangling with mine.

The fire cast a glowing, flickering pattern on her creamy-white flesh, as if someone were projecting a film onto her body. The dark bushiness of her pubic triangle teased through the white panties. She sat up and reached behind her and undid her bra; it slipped to her lap, where she brushed it away like a pesky insect.

Her breasts weren’t large—they were merely perfect, delicately
veined, pertly symmetrical, hard-nippled. I kissed them, I touched them, I helped her scoot out of the panties and she climbed on top of me, sat on me, riding me slowly, eyes half-lidded, smiling in that distracted way that precedes orgasm, until the smile finally blossomed, her eyes closing, hips accelerating. . . .

The sweetness of it lingered well after she was again in my arms, turning bitter only when she asked me once more if we couldn’t “wait” to have our first child. Things were going to be so perfect here, she assured me dreamily, with her landing her first film role, and me landing such an incredible, important case.

I held her face in my hands and I looked into those lovely violet eyes and I said, “We’re going back to Chicago, as soon as you’ve shot your little movie and I’ve solved my big case. We’re going home and we’re having our kid, and then we’ll decide where we’re going to live and work. . . . I promise you I will abide by your wishes on that score, Peg. If you want to come back here and be in the movies, well, I’ll work here, too, and we’ll hire a nanny or whatever the hell and we will have it all—yes, we will. But if you ever suggest aborting our child again, I will fucking kill you.”

With a yelp of fright, she bolted from my arms and ran naked to the bedroom, where she shut the door, though that didn’t keep me from hearing her crying in there, as I tried to sleep on the reassembled couch.

Dumb little bitch.

Stupid bastard.

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