Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Page 23

  I had a swig of Coke. “Like Lloyd having sex with Alex without hacking him to death, you mean?”

  “There’s that. But it would also seem that Lloyd could perfectly mimic his father’s signature and would forge prescriptions for barbiturates for Koch, in return for his pal coming back on visiting days to smuggle liquor in to Lloyd. Since Dr. Watterson’s death, of course, that came to a stop. Still—and this is why I suspect a deeper bond between Alex and Lloyd—over the last several years, Alex has received occasional envelopes from Lloyd containing unmailed postcards—”

  I snapped my fingers. “Postcards with those razzing messages to you. Lloyd had Alex mail them to you, from Ohio!”

  Eliot smiled ruefully, tossed a kernel of popcorn to the pigeons. “Not only Ohio—Alex would drive to Sandusky to mail them, to get just the right postmark.”

  “Did Alex tell you where Lloyd sent them from?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “California. Specifically, Los Angeles.” He shook his head. “And as if that weren’t disturbing enough, I made a chilling discovery. You see, I went down to the Cleveland P.D. and was up all night, combing through the three-thousand-some pages of the Torso file with Detective Merlo. You remember him? Martin Merlo?”

  “Sure—he was obsessed with the Butcher case. Last I heard, he was still on it.”

  “He still is, although he was officially removed from the investigation, years ago. Of course, Merlo was never part of the small circle of men who knew about Watterson, and he kept insisting that the Butcher was still striking—not in Cleveland, but around the country. . . . Remember that murder in New Castle, Pennsylvania, that we thought might have been Watterson’s work?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding, “but you ascertained Lloyd was still institutionalized.”

  “Correct—before I knew his daddy was signing him in and out of that padded suite.” He sighed. “Merlo volunteered to make this trip, but I offered my services, at my own expense, and of course Detective Hansen specifically requested me . . . so the police chief took me up on it.”

  “With all your responsibilities at Diebold, Eliot, how did you spring yourself loose for this?”

  He shrugged. “I get three weeks of vacation.”

  “Some vacation.”

  “As I started to say, I found something very disturbing in the Torso file—”

  “I’d kinda think there’d be a lot of disturbing things in the Torso file.”

  “Well, this one really sent alarm bells ringing. Back around 1939, Chief Matowitz and I got a letter postmarked Los Angeles from somebody claiming to be the Butcher. I dismissed it at the time, knowing—or thinking, that is—that Watterson was out of commission, tucked away inside rubber walls. And I’d forgotten it entirely, till I ran across the thing the other night—that letter said the Butcher’s next torso would be found on Century Boulevard between Western and Crenshaw.”

  I was frowning again. “That’s not precisely the vacant lot where Elizabeth Short’s body was found . . . but it’s goddamn close.”

  “Yes. Close enough to chill me to the bone, let me tell you. Los Angeles may have been one of Lloyd’s visiting spots when he was getting Papa to sign him out, periodically . . . and California would seem to have been his permanent place of residence since around October 1944.”

  I wondered when, exactly, that bathtub slaying had taken place—that socialite friend of Beth Short’s, that “Bauerdorf girl” Aggie Underwood had mentioned at lunch.

  “And now, obviously,” I said, “you’re thinking Lloyd may have killed Elizabeth Short.”

  “I am. And I’m hoping the two of us can find that maniac before the police do.”

  That confused me. “Why before the police?”

  Around us, the Mexicans stared and snoozed, and bums slumbered; the shadows had gathered into night, and the lights of Olivera Street winked at us. Somewhere over there, a cafe musician was singing a Spanish song, “Ay yi yi yi,” clear but strangely distant.

  Eliot didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, “I’ll have to spend some time with the LAPD, doing my best to convince them the Butcher didn’t kill the Dahlia . . . the difference in M.O. should make that simple enough.”

  “Why was there a difference in M.O., if Watterson did the murder?”

  He didn’t answer that, either. “I have a lead—not much of one, but a lead. This Koch character told me that Watterson has taken a job as a male nurse for some shady doctor out here.”

  “No kidding.”

  Eliot nodded. “Koch claimed not to know what doctor, or to have any address on Watterson. You know, Koch may not be the first time Lloyd paired up with an accomplice of sorts.”

  “Really? I always figured he was a loner.”

  “In the original investigation, we theorized it may have been necessary for the Butcher to recruit help—have a sort of apprentice—to help carry out the murders and dispose of the various body parts. We even had a suspect, a young homosexual who worked in the butcher shop of a St. Clair Avenue grocery . . . but it never panned out.”

  “If Koch is that kind of accomplice, and not just a jailhouse sweetheart, his information might be suspect . . . or he might have warned Lloyd by phone.”

  “No—you see, I still have friends at the Cleveland P.D. They booked Koch on vagrancy—he’s being shuttled around from stationhouse to stationhouse, and should be off the streets till the middle of next week, at least. In the meantime, I’ll to try to worm a list of known abortionists out of Detective Hansen, which I will then turn over to you, so you can go looking for Lloyd.”

  I tried the first question again. “Why aren’t we working directly with the police on this, Eliot? Why are we keeping this investigation to ourselves?”

  He gazed at me with hooded eyes. “Nate . . . if this came out . . . that I was party to this . . . that in 1938 I had the Mad Butcher in my hands and allowed myself to be fooled in this way . . . that the Short girl, and God knows how many others, died because of it. . . .”

  He sat so slumped that his arms rested on his thighs, like a man trying not to puke. Then he touched a hand to his eyes. Jesus, was he weeping?

  “Eliot . . . you couldn’t have known . . .”

  He shook his head. “No excuse. No excuse. And . . . Nate, what I’m going to ask you to help me do is unconscionable . . . but I just have no choice.”

  “No problem. We’ll kill the son of a bitch and bury him in the desert.” I shrugged. “Cutting his head off would be a nice touch.”

  He laughed at that, as if I’d been joking, then said, “No . . . that’s not what I mean. It’s . . . really, it’s worse than that. I am desperately out of my element at Diebold, Nate—I need to get back into public life.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, Eliot Ness straightened himself, looked right at me. “Remember, years ago, when my boss Harold Burton stepped down as mayor, to run for congress? And I was asked to run in his place?”

  “Yeah—you turned it down. You were satisfied with your job as public safety director.”

  “Declining that opportunity was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

  Burton had been succeeded by an opposition-party mayor who did not stand behind Ness as safety director, who in fact had forced Eliot from office after the unfortunate hit-and-run incident.

  “Well,” Eliot said, “I’ve been given a second chance—I’ve been approached to run for mayor of Cleveland, in the fall. Republican ticket.”

  Now it made sense: if this came out—the Butcher, the Dahlia—Eliot would be finished, politically—finished as any kind of public figure.

  “I’ve spoken to Watterson’s uncle,” Eliot said.

  “Congressman Watterson. I doubt you’ll get his endorsement in your campaign.”

  Lewis M. Watterson, Lloyd’s uncle, was a powerhouse in Cleveland’s democratic party. Ironically, he had been Eliot’s enemy in Cleveland, during the years Ness was public safety director, characterizing
the Untouchable as being obsessed with rooting out even the most insignificant police corruption even as an “insane killer” was “stalking the streets of Cleveland.”

  This was, of course, before the congressman learned that his nephew was that insane killer—and before the congressman became part of that very small circle who knew that Lloyd Watterson had been committed to a mental hospital.

  “I frankly asked the congressman what he thought I should do,” Eliot said. “He pointed out what the scandal would do to all of our careers—his, mine, former Mayor Burton’s . . .”

  Who was a United States senator, now.

  “. . . and Congressman Watterson requested that I bring Lloyd back to him, and said he would go with me, personally, to make sure Lloyd was committed—permanently—to an asylum in Dayton.”

  “No more outpatient status.”

  “Locked up, key thrown away.”

  “I still like my idea better.”

  “You’ll help me, then?”

  “I’ll help you. I can’t promise I’ll go along with the congressman’s wishes.”

  The gray eyes studied me; Eliot shook his head. “Nate, your attitude . . . you’re always kind of flip, but I don’t get it—I tell you the Mad Butcher is at large—right here in California—and you barely bat an eyelash.”

  “Oh,” I said, and took one last swig of Coke. “That’s because he’s tied up and locked in my office closet.”

  17

  I drove Eliot over to the Bradbury Building, which was maybe eight blocks south of Union Station, and I filled him in—filled him in on everything. Fedora in his lap, the familiar comma of brown (graying) hair straying down his forehead, he sat quietly, taking it all in, occasionally lifting an eyebrow. Soon I was parking in the alley, near the service entrance. The building was locked up—no night man in the lobby, no book to sign—but I had a key to the tenants’ door in back.

  “You have a murder motive,” Eliot said, his voice and our footsteps echoing through the brick-and-glass-and-iron cathedral, “and you were unlucky enough to stumble onto the corpse. . . . That’s the kind of coincidence juries hang you over.”

  “Not in this state,” I said cheerfully. “Here, it’s the gas chamber.”

  We headed up the steep, wide iron stairway, with its heavy railings and ornate grillwork—the elevators were shut down, no attendants on duty, and self-service was discouraged. Only about a third of the streetlamp-like light fixtures were on, glowing globes in the ghostly stillness. As we climbed, I glanced around, looking for lights behind the frosted glass of office doors, seeing if anyone else was here after hours—not likely, on a Friday night.

  “While we’re talking coincidences,” I said, pausing on a landing, “how about Lloyd Watterson turning up in Dr. Dailey’s employ—in the same building as the A-1, yet?”

  Eliot waved that off. “A good criminal lawyer can get rid of that—the A-1 and Dailey being in the same building is only natural, what with their referral system. And who else is Lloyd Watterson going to work for, but some shady character involved in abortion or other illegal medical practices?”

  “So if I beat the murder rap,” I said, starting back up the stairs, voice reverberating hollowly, “I face abortion charges? Sort of a consolation prize.”

  “You’re just lucky Lloyd didn’t recognize you.”

  Actually, Lloyd Watterson had only seen me once, almost ten years ago—granted it had been a memorable meeting, him coming in on me as I was sneaking around his house near Kingsbury Run, that modest bungalow in the basement of which Watterson had kept his so-called “murder lab.” Decapitating living humans was messy, after all, what with the jugular vein spurting blood: privacy was needed to dispatch victims and tidy up after.

  Lloyd’s basement—painted a blinding hospital-white, open beams, block walls, concrete floor, white enamel examination table, white medical storage cabinets, counter arrayed with vials and tubes and beakers, including a jug ominously marked FORMALDEHYDE—was where he had tied me up, before coming at me with a cleaver that he had assured me was not used for butchery, for but amputation. Lloyd, you see, preferred the term “Mad Doctor of Kingsbury Run” to the less dignified, vaguely insulting “Mad Butcher.”

  I had insulted Lloyd more directly, kicking him in the balls—he had neglected to tie my legs to the chair—at about which time an associate of Eliot’s, who’d been waiting outside, had the sense to barge in with a gun and make the capture.

  “How did you manage to get Lloyd into your office closet?” Eliot asked, pausing to catch his breath on a landing, moonlight spilling down on us from the greenhouse-like skylight. My old friend—who had always been an avid tennis and handball player and jujitsu enthusiast—had a slightly paunchy, out-of-shape look that surprised me.

  “Nothing too dramatic,” I said. “I waited for him to leave the doctor’s office—luckily, it was just late enough that no one else was around—stepped behind him, put a gun in his back, and walked him inside.”

  We started climbing again.

  Eliot, somewhat winded, said, “I thought your nine-millimeter was in your suitcase.”

  “It is.” On the next landing, I reached my hand in my sportcoat pocket and lifted the .38 snub-nose by the grip. “The A-1 is a full-service detective agency—Fred has a small arsenal in his bottom desk drawer.”

  “Fred know about about this?”

  I was still glancing around, checking for any unwanted after-hours company in the surrounding offices. “No—he’d already gone home for the day, when I hauled in my guest.”

  “It’s kidnapping, you know.”

  We were on the fifth floor now, just a few feet away from the A-1 door. Shadows cast by the ornate elevator spread across the polished tile floor and rust-brick wall like a spider’s web.

  “That’s right, Eliot—and you’re aiding and abetting.”

  He thought about that, momentarily, then shrugged. “Returning a mental patient to a concerned relative—that doesn’t seem like much of a crime.”

  “Eliot, I abducted the son of a bitch at gunpoint.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “How are you planning to get him back to Ohio with you?”

  His reply was matter-of-fact. “On the train.”

  “On the train. And how will you get him on the train?”

  “When I explain his options, Lloyd will do it voluntarily.”

  I shook my head. “This is no Boy Scout expedition, Eliot. You’re in my world, now—where bad people sometimes just go away. Do you understand?”

  Here in the open corridor, our voices echoed less; but my words hung in the air, just the same.

  Finally he said, “That’s one of the options.”

  As we approached the office, a muffled thumping seemed to be coming from behind the wood-and-frosted-glass door.

  Working the key in the lock, I said, “Sounds like my guest is trying to order up some room service.”

  The thumping escalated into banging as I ushered Eliot into the barely illuminated outer office, not turning on the light. The noise clearly emanated from the secretarial supply closet, the door of which pulsed with each whump, almost as if the closet were breathing.

  When I opened the door of the supply closet, a seated Lloyd Watterson—his ice-blue eyes wide and wild above the makeshift gag of sticky brown mailing tape—was scooting back on the casters of the walnut stenographic chair into which he was tied, rearing back like a bull about to charge a matador.

  I’d cuffed his hands behind him and looped the cuffs through a rung of the chair, into which I’d tied him with heavy brown wrapping twine. Though I’d lashed his ankles together and looped the thick twine around the back of the chair, he’d been able to get enough traction with his feet to take a few hopeless runs against the heavy closet door.

  Veins standing out on his forehead, cords taut in his neck, the blond, broad-shouldered, almost-handsome Watterson—a blizzard of a man in his male-nurse white pants and white shirt and white tennis oxfords with whit
e socks, the heavy brown twine cocooning around him—had the expression of a kid caught masturbating.

  “Oh, do you want out of there, Lloyd?” I asked obsequiously. “Sure thing.”

  I grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him forward—the chair on its casters followed—and then pitched him careening across the office, where he crashed into the secretary’s desk, whacking his back against its edge, and came to a stop. The chair, with him in it, almost toppled, wobbling on its rollers.

  Watterson was trying to talk or cry out or protest or something, under the packing-tape gag.

  “Oh, do you want to be heard, Lloyd?” I asked. “We can make that happen.”

  As if his face were a package I was trying to unwrap, I twisted the tape around his head, the final pass of the sticky stuff making itself known to Lloyd, who yowled at the hair-pulling, flesh-searing exercise.

  “Kinda like taking off a bandage,” I said sympathetically. “Fast is better.”

  I wheeled him around to face me. I had not turned on the lights in the office, and Eliot was just a figure in the shadowy darkness.

  “Recognize me yet, Lloyd?” I asked.

  The ice-blue eyes narrowed. He shook his head. His voice was oddly soft, gentle. “You . . . you were in Dr. Dailey’s office . . . today.”

  “Think back, Lloyd . . . Notice I’m not calling you ‘Floyd.’ That’s a hint. Here’s another: the last time you saw me, you had me in this position.”

  The eyes widened again, but the rest of his boyish face tightened. “Wait a minute . . . wait a minute . . . I do know you. . . .”

  “Hit the lights, would you?” I said to Eliot. “Just to the left of where we came in?”

  The overhead light snapped on, flooding the office with illumination, and the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run saw Eliot Ness moving toward him.