Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“You knew Evie MacMillan in Chicago,” I said.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning nothing.”

“Meaning I knew her when I was still married.”

“Meaning nothing.”

“Nate, I’m sorry I’m not the Boy Scout you think I am.”

“Hey, so you’ve slept with girls before. I’ll learn to live with it.”

There was a stone fireplace, in which some logs were trying to decide whether to burn any more or not; we watched them trying.

“I love Evie, Nate. I’m going to marry her.”

“Congratulations.”

We could hear the lake out there; could smell it some, too.

“I’d like that bastard’s neck in my hands,” Eliot said.

“What?”

“That Butcher. That goddamn Butcher.”

“What made you think of him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Eliot, it’s been over three years since he first struck, and you still don’t have anything?”

“Nothing. A few months ago, last time he hit, we found some of the…body parts, bones and such…in a cardboard box in the Central Market area. There’s a Hooverville over there, or what used to be a Hooverville…it’s a shantytown, is more like it, genuine hobos as opposed to just good folks down on their luck. Most of the victims-before today-were either prostitutes or bums…and the bums from that shantytown were the Butcher’s meat. So to speak.”

The fire crackled.

Eliot continued: “I decided to make a clean sweep. I took twenty-five cops through there at one in the morning, and rousted out all the ’bo’s and took ’em down and fingerprinted and questioned all of ’em.”

“And it amounted to…?”

“It amounted to nothing. Except ridding Cleveland of that shantytown. I burned the place down that afternoon.”

“Comes in handy, having all those firemen working for you. But what about those poor bastards whose ‘city’ you burned down?”

Sensing my disapproval, he glanced at me and gave me what tried to be a warm smile, but was just a weary one. “Nate, I turned them over to the Relief department, for relocation and, I hope, rehabilitation. But most of them were bums who just hopped a freight out. And I did ’em a favor by taking them off the potential victims list.”

“And made room for Ginger Jensen.”

Eliot looked away.

“That wasn’t fair,” I said. “I’m sorry I said that, Eliot.”

“I know, Nate. I know.”

But I could tell he’d been thinking the same thing.

I had lunch the next day with Vivian in a little outdoor restaurant in the shadow of Terminal Tower. We were served lemonade and little ham and cheese and lettuce and tomato sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off the toasted bread. The detective in me wondered what became of the crusts.

“Thanks for having lunch with me,” Vivian said. She had on a pale orange dress; she sat crossing her brown pretty legs.

“My pleasure,” I said.

“Speaking of which…about last night…”

“We were both a little drunk. Forget it. Just don’t ask me to.”

She smiled as she nibbled her sandwich.

“I called and told Eliot something this morning,” she said, “and he just ignored me.”

“What was that?”

“That I have a possible lead on the Butcher murders.”

“I can’t imagine Eliot ignoring that…and it’s not like it’s just anybody approaching him-you did work for him…”

“Not lately. And he thinks I’m just…”

“Looking for an excuse to be around him?”

She nibbled at a little sandwich. Nodded.

“Did you resent him asking you to be with me as a blind date last night?”

“No,” she said.

“Did…last night have anything to do with wanting to ‘show’ Eliot?”

If she weren’t so sophisticated-or trying to be-she would’ve looked hurt; but her expression managed to get something else across: disappointment in me.

“Last night had to do with showing you ,” she said. “And…it had a little to do with Bacardi cocktails…”

“That it did. Tell me about your lead.”

“Eliot has been harping on the ‘professional’ way the bodies have been dismembered-he’s said again and again he sees a ‘surgical’ look to it.”

I nodded.

“So it occurred to me that a doctor-anyway, somebody who’d at least been in medical school for a time-would be a likely candidate for the Butcher.”

“Yes.”

“And medical school’s expensive, so, it stands to reason, the Butcher just might run in the same social circles as yours truly.”

“Say, you did work for Eliot.”

She liked that.

She continued: “I checked around with my society friends, and heard about a guy whose family has money-plenty of it. Name of Watterson.”

“Last name or first?”

“That’s the family name. Big in these parts.”

“Means nothing to me.”

“Well, Lloyd Watterson used to be a medical student. He’s a big man, very strong-the kind of strength it might take to do some of the things the Butcher has done. And he has a history of mental disturbances.”

“What kind of mental disturbances?”

“He’s been going to psychiatrist since he was a school kid.”

“Do you know this guy?”

“Just barely. But I’ve heard things about him.”

“Such as?”

“I hear he likes boys.”

Lloyd Watterson lived in a two-story white house at the end of a dead-end street, a Victorian-looking miniature mansion among other such houses, where expansive lawns and towering hedges separated the world from the wealthy who lived within.

This wasn’t the parental home, Vivian explained; Watterson lived here alone, apparently without servants. The grounds seemed well-tended, though, and there was nothing about this house that said anyone capable of mass murder might live here. No blood spattered on the white porch; no body parts scattered about the lawn.

It was mid-afternoon, and I was having second thoughts.

“I don’t even have a goddamn gun,” I said.

“I do,” she said, and showed me a little .25 automatic from her purse.

“Great. If he has a dog, maybe we can use that to scare it.”

“This’ll do the trick. Besides, a gun won’t even be necessary. You’re just here to talk.”

The game plan was for me to approach Watterson as a cop, flashing my private detective’s badge quickly enough to fool him (and that almost always worked), and question him, simply get a feel for whether or not he was a legitimate suspect, worthy of lobbying Eliot for action against. My say-so, Vivian felt, would be enough to get Eliot off the dime.

And helping Eliot bring the Butcher in would be a nice wedding present for my old friend; with his unstated but obvious political ambitions, the capture of the Kingsbury Run maniac would offset the damage his divorce had done him, in conservative, mostly Catholic Cleveland. He’d been the subject of near hero worship, in the press here (Eliot was always good at getting press-Frank Nitti used to refer to him as “Eliot Press”); but theongoing if sporadic slaughter of the Butcher was a major embarrassment for Cleveland’s fabled Safety Director.

So, leaving Vivian behind in the roadster (Watterson might recognize her), I walked up the curved sidewalk and went up on the porch and rang the bell. In the dark hardwood door there was opaque glass behind which I could barely make out movement, coming toward me.

The door opened, and a blond man about six-three with a baby-face and ice-blue eyes and shoulders that nearly filled the doorway looked out at me and grinned. A kid’s grin, on one side of his face. He wore a polo shirt and short white pants; he seemed about to say, “Tennis anyone?”

But he said nothing, as a matter of fact; he just appraised me with those ice-blue, somewhat vacant eyes. I now knew how it felt for a woman to be ogled-which is to say, not necessarily good.