They stood silently for a while.
Then Curry blurted: "I believe there are evil people in the world."
"Do tell," Merlo said, watching the morgue boys climb the incline with wicker baskets in hand. They might have been carrying their laundry.
"We'll have a new mayor soon," said Curry. "Things may change."
"Don't hold your breath," Merlo said, "unless it's just to keep the smell of the Run out of your nostrils."
In less than three months, the new mayor would appoint Eliot Ness safety director of the city of Cleveland, and the young former T-man would indeed begin cleaning up Cleveland's corrupt department. And both Curry and Merlo would benefit.
But right now, detectives Curry and Merlo were wrapped in the darkness of the night and the Run and the evil that man was so obviously capable of; and the only light in this night was from the steel mills.
Not far away, standing in the darkness of the backyard of a run-down rooming house, a big almost-handsome blond man in a red and black plaid shirt was watching the two detectives and smiling.
ONE
CHAPTER 2
Searchlights stroked the night sky in alternating shades of red, white, and blue; a blimp glided into their cross fire, hovering above modernistic buildings poised along the lakefront, like the set of some fantastic science-fiction film. Moving beams of light rose from behind the lagoon theater and fanned out, painting the dark clouds with an aurora borealis.
On this cool if humid Saturday evening, wide-eyed visitors wandered a world that seemed quite apart from both Cleveland and the depression that racked it. Just two blocks from Public Square, citizens fleeing reality were greeted by seven seventy-foot pylons whose flat surfaces were rendered red, white, and blue by lighting. Beyond, for fifty cents admission, one could stroll, or take an open-air bus or grab a rickshaw to ride upon, freshly paved lanes through the immaculately landscaped gardens of the sprawling one hundred and fifty acres of the Great Lakes Exposition. Divided by its terrain into an upper and lower level, the expo's gifts to Clevelanders on the occasion of the city's hundredth birthday included starkly modern exhibition halls, where one might experience, via dioramas, models, and wall-size photographs, "The Romance of Iron and Steel"; an "International Village," where sidewalk cafes and shops sold authentic foods, drinks, and curios from forty countries; and a vast midway, where Spook Street, the "Strange as It Seems" museum, and the Midget Circus vied for attention.
It all seemed overly familiar to one patron this muggy evening, and not just because this was the expo's second year. Eliot Ness was a Chicago boy, and the Great Lakes Exposition was, he knew all too well, a rehashing of the even larger Century of Progress back home, in '33 and '34.
Many of the exhibits were the same, and even those that were new to the expo shared the severe, futuristic building designs that marked the World's Fair, though the pastel lighting effects there were replaced by brighter colors here. The Firestone Building again had its "Singing Fountains," colorful cascades of illuminated water with continuous classical music. Even Sally Rand was booked in-at the Streets of the World, a pale imitation of the Chicago fair's Streets of Paris where the famed fan dancer had first feathered her nest.
Not that Ness looked down upon this project. He was a city official, after all-safety director, in charge of both the police and fire departments-and as such, considered the expo a fine idea. It brought in much-needed jobs, even if only for a limited time, pumped in plenty of cash from expo-goers, and provided good publicity for a city too often dismissed as dull.
He had found Cleveland anything but dull. As a prohibition agent in Chicago, first as a Justice Department man and then moving over to Treasury, he'd waged a successful war against the likes of Al Capone and Frank Nitti. Later he'd battled moonshiners as a "revenooer" in the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Cleveland should have been restful by comparison, but what he found in this "dull" city were enough crooked cops, corrupt politicians, and prevailing gangsters to make a Chicago boy feel right at home.
Which was how the World's Fair-like expo should have made him feel, as well, but it didn't. It seemed a ghost town version of the Century of Progress-perhaps because tonight's attendance was so meager. Way down from last year's huge crowds. Well, the Fourth of July was around the corner, he thought; that should be a record-breaking day.
Ness walked the paved midway, passing the "Pantheon de la Guerre," a war exhibit that had been at the fair, heading for "The Front Page," a concession that was new to this expo. Most expo-goers were dressed in casual summer clothes, but Ness wore a gray and black tie and a slash of white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his expensively tailored gray lightweight suit. He was a six-footer and slim, his features boyish, his expression shy, his gray eyes calm.
You would not guess, looking at him, that he was physically powerful, but he was. Despite a certain collegiate look, he had not earned his physique on a playing field, but in the Pullman plant on Chicago's South Side where he worked as a young man. Daily workouts on a handball court and jujitsu training kept him fit now. He didn't smoke. He did drink. Too much, at times, he knew.
He had gone hatless tonight-his only nod to the balmy evening-and as he hesitated before the tent of "The Front Page," he brushed a comma of brown hair back to its temporary place while he studied several sandwich board signs that bore mock newspaper front pages. MAN DIES IN ELECTRIC CHAIR! one headline said; WOMAN HANGED TILL DEAD! said another. The largest of all said. TORSO KILLER DEATH MASKS INSIDE! He bought a ticket at the booth and went in.
Attendance at the expo in general might have been off tonight, but the benches inside this tent were jammed. Ness found a place to sit at the end of one bench and got a funny, "Why the suit, mister?" look from the straw-hatted apparent farmer he sat next to before the lights dimmed.
A velvet curtain parted and revealed, centerstage, an electric chair much like ones Ness had seen in use in prisons. A pale, heavyset man in black, wearing a black string tie, looking like a parson, led a pale, thin fellow in a gray-and-white-striped prison uniform to the chair. The "prisoner" sat in the chair and allowed the parson to place the electrical cap upon his head. The parson then walked to one side of the stage, to an apparatus that included three large switches. Then he threw each switch, to much electrical sparking, much convulsing by the thin fellow in the chair, and much noise from the startled audience. An acrid smell filled the tent. The prisoner slumped in the chair. The velvet curtain closed.
The audience were talking amongst themselves, screams and shouts having given way to nervous laughter, and soon the curtain opened again. An attractive blond woman in a white evening gown stood with an expression as blank as death and a noose dangling nearby, the rope disappearing upward. Her hands were tied before her.
The audience, transfixed, stared at her. The only sound in the room was that of breathing.
The parson walked out on stage slowly, deliberately. He carried a hood. He placed it over her head, her shoulder-length blond hair hanging out from around the bottom of the hood. He placed the noose around her neck. Cinched it tight, behind her left ear.
The pastor stepped to one side. He raised his hand in a signaling fashion; when he brought it down, the blonde plunged suddenly down and out of sight, through a trapdoor. The rope pulled tight. Then it swayed.
The audience was still gasping as the curtains closed.