Averting my gaze, she sent dragon smoke out her nostrils, her red-touched lips thin and tight around the cigarette. “I admit no such thing.”
I grinned at her, my smoke mingling with hers. “I didn’t say you admitted it-just that you realized it. Funny, isn’t it?”
The big brown eyes in the oval face regarded me coldly. “What is?”
I shrugged. “How a person can be right and wrong at the same time. I think I can make this whole sorry affair go away, if you just answer a few questions.”
Now the eyes narrowed. “Who are you, Mr. Heller?”
“The best thing that’s happened to you in a long time.”
She thought about that. Then she exhaled smoke, lowering her gaze, and said, “Ask your questions.”
“How long has ‘Floyd’ worked for you?”
Still not looking at me, she said, “Not long. Late November, I believe.”
“How did you come to hire him?”
“He had good references, at least in terms of our extralegal trade.”
“He’d worked in other abortion mills, you mean.”
A tiny sneer formed on the thin lips. “That’s an ugly term.”
“For a lovely business. Where had he worked?”
“San Diego. San Francisco. Here in L.A. He’s very knowledgeable, medically speaking; he has skilled hands.”
“As of now, better make that ‘hand.’ ” That got a sharp look out of her, and when her eyes met mine, I said, “Tell me about Elizabeth Short.”
The smooth brow tried not to wrinkle, and did not succeed. “What about her?”
“She came here to your clinic-why?”
A sigh of smoke. “Dr. Dailey was from the same part of New England where the Short woman grew up. She needed an operation.”
“She had vaginal atresia.”
That got her attention. “How did you know that?”
“The way this works,” I said, giving her as nasty a smile as I could muster, “is I ask the questions. Was it the kind of operation Dr. Dailey could still handle?”
“I… I thought he could.”
“What was Dailey doing here today, Dr. Winter? He wasn’t assisting you.”
She was smoking more nervously, now. “I… I keep my eye on him, now.”
“You mean, since he killed Elizabeth Short.”
The words hit her like a physical blow, but she did her best not to show it. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Really it is-you just don’t know it. Ever hear of a guy named Arnold Wilson?”
“Common name… but I don’t think so.”
“He’s six-four, badly pockmarked, pronounced limp.”
Now the thin lips worked up a patronizing smirk. “What-no eyepatch? No parrot?”
“I’ll do the jokes, lady. Do you know him?”
“No.”
Actually, that figured. I had an idea Arnold Wilson had kept his relationship to, and with, Lloyd Watterson strictly between the boys.
“Tell me about Dr. Dailey. Tell me about how badly he’s been slipping, lately.”
She plucked tobacco off the tip of her tongue. “He’s… I told you before. He suffers from cerebral arteriosclerosis… resulting in senile dementia.”
“So when his patient, Elizabeth Short, turned up dead in that vacant lot, a block from where the doctor lives… or used to live, before heeding your siren call… you figured he’d tried to do that operation by himself, and botched it, and halved that girl for easy transport, and then absentmindedly dumped her close to home. Something like that?”
She folded her arms over the shelf of her breasts-the genie was pissed off again. “You must be insane.”
“I must be-everybody seems to think so, today. Or maybe you figured the doc was trying, in his demented way, to get back at his wife.”
Something close to tenderness crept into her hard-edged voice. “Dr. Dailey is a gentle soul… He’d never do such a thing…”
“In his right mind, you mean?”
She said nothing.
“Listen, Maria-he wouldn’t do it in his wrong mind, either. You’ve been scammed.”
Now she looked at me-startled. “What?”
“Lloyd… I mean, ‘Floyd’… convinced you that he came in here, one night, and discovered what Dr. Dailey had done, right?”
“How… what…?”
“Work with me on this. I’m here to help. Tell me, Doctor. Maria-tell me.”
She shook her head, heaved a big sigh of smoke. “He… Floyd said he came in on the… grisly aftermath. He said he helped Wallace cart the body out… even admitted helping to cut her in half. Said he’d tried to make it look like a… sex crime… to help throw off the police. But Floyd was too new in the office to know that where Wallace suggested the body be disposed of was near his own home.”
I laughed, and she flinched.
I said, “I figured you’d been led to believe some line of horse hockey like that. It’s not true, Dr. Winter. Floyd is Lloyd, by the way, Lloyd Watterson… Lloyd butchered that girl… Your gifted assistant abortionist is a former mental patient known to have committed at least thirteen torso murders back in Ohio.”
“You must be joking…”
“Yeah, I’m joking. This has been a lighthearted afternoon all the way ’round.”
She was weaving in the chair. “My God… can it… is it… true?”
“It can, it is-true.” I gestured toward the door with cigarette in hand. “My friend out there is a former Ohio police official who is helping Lloyd’s well-connected family see that he’s returned to a mental institution, and committed for life.”
Hope leapt into the dark eyes. “And if that happened…”
“That’s right, Maria-then the LAPD would not be involved, nor would the papers. You and Dr. Dailey would be untouched by this scandal.”
Now her eyes no longer avoided mine-rather, searched them. “What do you need from me?”
“I need you to get that fingerless son of a bitch ready to travel by train.”
“When?”
“The sooner the better.”
Her eyes tightened. She stabbed her cigarette out in a jade-green tray. “Done,” she said, rising.
In the hallway, I found Eliot standing outside the operating room, just as Dr. Winter was heading in. I caught a glimpse of Lloyd seated on the abortion table, looking pale, in shock or sedated or both, his right hand bundled in gauze and adhesive, with four side-by-side spots of blood leaching through where his fingers used to be.
“Looks like Lloyd’ll never play the piano again,” I said to Eliot.
“They’ve got him pretty well patched up,” he said. “Since when do you smoke?”
“Only when I get nostalgic for Jap bayonets. Look, Dr. Winter’s going to cooperate with us-Lloyd’ll be ready to travel.”
“When?”
“Soon. Very soon.”
“Today?”
“Now. I’ll help you haul him to the train station, but I have loose ends to attend, so you’ll have to make the trip alone. Shouldn’t be a problem-Lloyd’ll be pumped so full of morphine, he should be nice and cooperative… I’ll see you in a few weeks-at the wedding.”
Eliot smiled, shook his head, as if he were amazed, for some reason. “Thank you, Nate.”
“For what? Not killing that bastard?”
“Yes. And if they ever let Lloyd out of that asylum?”
“Yeah?”
“When we take him out into the desert,” Eliot said, a hand on my shoulder, “I will bring the shovel.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell my friend Eliot Ness that the real reason I hadn’t killed Watterson was that Lloyd’s friend Arnold Wilson had wanted me to.
23
The bright lights of Hollywood Boulevard took on a shimmering radiance, neon burning in the coolness of dusk, the hard, unpleasant edges of an ugly one-industry town blurred into blemish-free beauty. Like an aging screen queen with a great makeup artist, a gauze-draped key light, and a Vaseline-smeared camera lens, Hollywood didn’t look half bad.
The little neighborhood around the corner from Grauman’s Chinese also benefited from twilight’s gentle touch, seeming even more idyllic, with its pastel stucco bungalows, nicely trimmed lawns, and scattering of palms and pepper trees, with flower gardens whose blossoms glowed vividly in the gathering darkness, lights struggling not to go out.