Angel in black

16

Union Station’s courtyard, with its peaceful patio of trees, bushes, benches, and flagstones, provided a less frantic setting for farewells and welcomes than most big-city train stations. With sunset approaching, cool blue shadows touched the low-slung sprawl of red-tile-roofed white stucco buildings, overseen by a formidable clock tower.

I was surprisingly relaxed, and not at all tired, as I moved through the immense ticket room, with its tall, colored-mosaic ceiling, whistling a tuneless tune as I fell in with the flow of the hurrying crowd, passing through the soundproofed elegance of the waiting room with its leather chairs where bums slept and passengers waited. The cavelike, well-lighted passenger tunnel, with its eight ramps feeding sixteen tracks, echoed with footsteps, conversation, and the jolts and screeches of trains lurching in and out of the station. I stopped at the ramp where the Union Pacific had just come in, and saw Eliot Ness in the process of tipping a colored porter who was handing him a single buckled bag.

Eliot looked both older and smaller than I remembered. His freckled, Scandinavian boyishness was largely obscured in a pouchy, puffy face; he was in his mid-forties, but-I was a little shocked to see-looked more like his mid-fifties. Eliot’s gray suit was typically well tailored, with a gray-and-shades-of-blue-striped tie, and a snapbrim fedora of a darker gray, a trenchcoat folded over the arm.

Moving up the ramp, the aging Untouchable spotted me and smiled; but his gray eyes seemed troubled. He’d had a long train trip, which could take it out of anybody; still, I could tell this was more than that-something was wrong.

Me, I was jingling the change in my pocket and whistling my tuneless tune.

“You’re in a pleasant mood,” Eliot said, as we shook hands and I grinned at him.

“Yeah, I’ve had a productive day.”

The troubled gray eyes tightened. “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to spoil it for you. Can we take a moment, before you take me to the hotel? We need to talk privately.”

The best place to talk privately, of course, is in public. The station fronted Alameda Street and I guided Eliot a few steps west, to the Plaza, that beaten-down circular patch of grass, pigeons, and spreading magnolias where Los Angeles was born, with the neighboring shabby relics to prove it. To the east the curio stores and restaurants of old Chinatown lurked; to the north sprawled Olivera Street, where Peggy and I had explored the bazaarlike tourist-trap marketplace; to the west stood the adobe walls of the Old Mission Church, adorned with a marker of historic significance, as well as graffiti (“ KILROY WAS HERE!”); and at the south loomed the twenty-story white tower of City Hall, the present presenting its middle finger to the past.

We sat on a bench with pigeons scavenging at our feet-I had bought some popcorn and a cold bottle of Coke from a street vendor, and Eliot was sipping a paper cup of black coffee into which he’d poured something from a silver flask. Around us, on nearby benches, elderly Mexicans in food-stained shirts and well-worn dungarees sat staring blankly, as if wondering how their city had managed to fall into Anglo-Saxon hands; a few others had abandoned such empty speculation and were curled up and enjoying a siesta. A stone bench, circling the park, seemed the province of bums and winos. Dusk settled a cool, soothing hand on the indigents and on two old friends, about to share secrets.

“My dad would have been comfortable here,” I said.

Eliot blinked at that. “What?”

“Lot of the big labor demonstrations are held in this plaza. Pop would have been in his element.”

“Do you still carry his gun?”

“Yeah-the nine-millimeter. Well, not at the moment… It’s in my suitcase. I probably should be carrying it-this is turning into that kind of job.”

I told him about punching out Fat Ass Brown.

“Christ, they’re corrupt out here,” he said, shaking his head. “Worse than when I took over in Cleveland.”

“At least when the Chicago cops do want to solve a crime-as opposed to commit one-they can pull it off.”

“What about Harry Hansen?”

“The Hat’s a real detective.” I sipped my Coke; the bag of popcorn was propped between my thighs and I alternated eating a kernel or two, and pitching one for the birds to fight over. “Hansen’s one of the smart, honest ones, even if he is a glory hound.”

Eliot sighed. “I’m almost sorry to hear that he’s competent.”

“Why?”

He watched the pigeons pecking the popcorn I was pitching them. He sipped his coffee. Then he looked at the darkening sky for several long seconds, and finally at me, and said, “Nate… I have terrible news.”

“Personal or professional?”

“Both.” He shook his head. “This is something we have to keep to ourselves… something we have to do ourselves, work on in a… sub rosa manner.”

“Of course.”

“Nate, you’re the only one I can trust-”

“Eliot. Go on. Spill.”

He shrugged, gestured with both hands-no way to soften this blow: “Lloyd Watterson is in California.”

“Really.”

His brow clenched and the gray eyes were confused at my lack of reaction; nonetheless, he pressed on. “After we spoke on the phone, I figured I should check out Watterson’s status-personally. I went to the Sandusky Soldiers and Sailors Home, where Lloyd was in the psychopathic ward.”

“I wasn’t aware Lloyd was a veteran.”

“He wasn’t, but his father, Dr. Clifford Watterson, was. Anyway, I learned that because Lloyd was signed in as a patient voluntarily, he could be signed out the same way.”

I frowned. “That wasn’t part of the deal you cut.”

“Certainly wasn’t.” Finished with his coffee, he wadded up the paper cup and pitched it perfectly into a nearby trash receptacle. He turned to me and the gray eyes had hardened into steel. “Lloyd was to be committed, kept off the streets, completely out of circulation-and now I’ve learned that from August 1938, when he entered the mental hospital, until September 1944, he was signed out by his father eight times, for periods up to three weeks.”

“Jesus… What about after September ’44?”

He breathed in heavily, breathed out the same way. “His father died in August of that year. And then in September 1944, Lloyd signed himself out… and hasn’t been back since.”

Something wasn’t adding up. “What about those taunting postcards you received, postmarked Sandusky?”

Eliot helped himself to some of my popcorn, pitched it to the pigeons. “I did some good old-fashioned poking around-asked orderlies and patients about Lloyd. Turns out the Ohio Penitentiary Honor Farm shares certain facilities with the Soldiers and Sailors Home. Seems Lloyd struck up a friendship with a guy named Alex Koch, a convicted burglar.”

“Is this Koch still serving his sentence?”

“No. He’s been out for some time. I tracked him down to a rooming house in Cleveland. He was afraid, at first, when he saw me-and he wouldn’t cooperate unless I assured him he wouldn’t be considered an accomplice after the fact.”

“Accomplice to what?”

A wry little half-smile formed in the puffy face. “Sometime, in the course of their intimate friendship, Lloyd confessed to his friend Alex… bragged, it would seem… that he was indeed the Kingsbury Run butcher. Uh, as you may recall, Lloyd’s sexual preferences are… unusual.”

I shrugged. “His gate swings both ways. Plus, there’s that little fetish he has-most guys like to get a little head; they just don’t keep a spare one in the icebox.”

Eliot merely nodded. “I would call bisexuality combined with necrophilia a rather distinctive ‘fetish.’ And, although Alex did not specifically admit to this, I gathered that he and Lloyd were more than just friends. In any case, they did each other favors.”

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.”