Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Nonsense,” she said. “Who are these speculators?”

“Women, mostly,” he said. “Harridans running West Side beer parlors and roominghouses. They exchange information, but they aren’t exactly an organized ring or anything, which makes our work difficult. I’m siccing Nate here on the worst offender, the closest thing there is to a ringleader-a woman we’ve confirmed is holding fifty policies on various ‘risks.’”

Ev frowned. “How do these women get their victims to go along with them? I mean, aren’t the insured’s signatures required on the policies?”

“There’s been some forgery going on,” Eliot said. “But mostly these poor bastards are willingly trading their signatures for free booze.”

Ev twitched a non-smile above the rim of her martini glass. “Life in slum areas breeds such tragedy.”

The subject changed to local politics-I’d heard rumors of Eliot running for mayor, which he unconvincingly pooh-thed-and, a few drinks later, Eliot spotted some reporter friends of his, Clayton Fritchey and Sam Wild, and excused himself to go over and speak to them.

“If I’m not being out of line,” I said to Mrs. Ness, “Eliot’s hitting the sauce pretty hard himself. Hope you don’t have any extra policies out on him.”

She managed a wry little smile. “I do my best to keep up with him, but it’s difficult. Ironic, isn’t it? The nation’s most famous Prohibition agent, with a drinking problem.”

“ Is it a problem?”

“Eliot doesn’t think so. He says he just has to relax. It’s a stressful job.”

“It is at that. But, Ev-I’ve been around Eliot during ‘stressful’ times before…like when the entire Capone gang was gunning for him. And he never put it away like that, then.”

She was studied the olive in her martini. “You were part of that case, weren’t you?”

“What case? Capone?”

“No-the Butcher.”

I nodded. I’d been part of the capture of the lunatic responsible for those brutal slayings of vagrants; and was one of the handful who knew that Eliot had been forced to make a deal with his influential political backers to allow the son of a bitch-who had a society pedigree-to avoid arrest, and instead be voluntarily committed to a madhouse.

“It bothers him, huh?” I said, and grunted a laugh. “Mr. Squeaky Clean, the ‘Untouchable’ Eliot Ness having to cut a deal like that.”

“I think so,” she admitted. “He never says. You know how quiet he can be.”

“Well, I think he should grow up. For Christ sake, for somebody from Chicago, somebody who’s seen every kind of crime and corruption, he can be as naive as a schoolgirl.”

“An alcoholic schoolgirl,” Ev said with a smirk, and a martini sip.

“…You want me to talk to him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…. I think this case, these poor homeless men being victimized again, got memories stirred up.”

“Of the Butcher case, you mean.”

“Yes…and Nate, we’ve been getting postcards from that crazy man.”

“What crazy man? Capone?”

“No! The Butcher…threatening postcards postmarked the town where that asylum is.”

“Is there any chance Watterson can get out?”

Lloyd Watterson: the Butcher.

“Eliot says no,” Ev said. “He’s been assured of that.”

“Well, these killings aren’t the work of a madman. This is murder for profit, plain and simple. Good old-fashioned garden variety evil.”

“Help him clear this up, amp;8221; she said, and an edge of desperation was in her voice. “I think it would…might…make a difference.”

Then Eliot was back, and sat down with a fresh martini in hand.

“I hope I didn’t miss anything good,” he said.

My room was small but seemed larger due to the sparseness of the furnishings, metallic, institutional-gray clothes cabinet, a chair and a metal cot. A bare bulb bulged from the wall near the door, as if it had blossomed from the faded, fraying floral-print wallpaper. The wooden floor had a greasy, grimy look.

Katie was saying, “Hope it will do.”

“You still haven’t said what my duties are.”

“I’ll think of something. Now, if you need anything, I’m down the hall. Let me show you….”

I followed her to a doorway at the end of the narrow gloomy hallway. She unlocked the door with a key extracted from between her massive breasts, and ushered me into another world.

The livingroom of her apartment held a showroom-like suite of walnut furniture with carved arms, feet and base rails, the chairs and davenport sporting matching green mohair cushions, assembled on a green and blue wall-to-wall Axminster carpet. Pale yellow wallpaper with gold and pink highlights created a tapestry effect, while floral satin damask draperies dressed up the windows, venetian blinds keeping out prying eyes. Surprisingly tasteful, the room didn’t look very lived in.

“Posh digs,” I said, genuinely impressed.

“Came into some money recently. Spruced the joint up a little…. Now, if you need me after hours, be sure to knock good and loud.” She swayed over to a doorless doorway and nodded for me to come to her. “I’m a heavy sleeper.”

The bedroom was similarly decked out with new furnishings-a walnut-veener double bed, dresser and nightstand and three-mirror vanity with modern lines and zebrawood design panels-against ladylike pink-and-white floral wallpaper. The vanity top was neatly arranged with perfumes and face powder and the like, their combined scents lending the room a feminine bouquet. Framed prints of airbrushed flowers hung here and there, a large one over the bed, where sheets and blankets were neatly folded back below lush overstuffed feather pillows, as if by a maid.

“I had this room re-done, too,” she said. “My late husband, rest his soul, was a slob.”

Indeed it was hard to imagine a man sharing this room with her. There was a daintiness that didn’t match up with its inhabitant. The only sign that anybody lived here were the movie magazines on the bedstand in the glow of the only light, a creamy glazed pottery-base lamp whose gold parchment shade gave the room a glow.

The only person more out of place in this tidy, feminine suite than me, in my tattered secondhand store suit, was my blowsy hostess in her polka-dot peasant blouse and flowing dark skirt. She was excited and proud, showing off her fancy living quarters, bobbing up and down like an eager kid; it was cute and a little sickening.

Or maybe that was the cheap beer. I wasn’t drunk but I’d had three glasses of it.

“You okay, Bill?” she asked.

“Demon meatloaf,” I said.

“Sit, sit.”

And I was sitting on the edge of the bed. She stood before me, looming over me, frightening and oddly comely, with her massive bosom spilling from the blouse, her red-rouged mouth, her half-lidded long-lashed green eyes, mother/goddess/whore.

“It’s been lonely, Bill,” she said, “without my man.”

“Suh…sorry for your loss.”

“I could use a man around here, Bill.”

“Try to help.”

“It could be sweet for you.”

She tugged the peasant blouse down over the full, round, white-powdered melons that were her bosom, and pulled my head between them. Their suffocation was pleasant, even heady, and I was wondering whether I’d lost count of those beers when I fished in my trousers for my wallet for the lambskin.

I wasn’t that far gone.

I had never been with a woman as overweight as Kathleen O’Meara before, and I don’t believe I ever was again; many a man might dismiss her as fat. But the sheer womanliness of her was overwhelming; there was so much of her, and she smelled so good, particularly for a saloonkeeper, her skin so smooth, her breasts and behind as firm as they were large and round, that the three nights I spent in her bed remain bittersweet memories. I didn’t love her, obviously, nor did she me-we were using each other, in our various nasty ways.