"About ten minutes, thank God."
"Doing anything after?"
"Just collapsing somewhere."
"How about collapsing at my place?"
She studied him. He knew he looked good: he was not in scummy attire tonight, but wore a light-blue Arrow shirt and black slacks. He imagined he looked rather like an Arrow shirt ad come to life.
"I don't think so," she said unconvincingly, playing nervously with the gold filigree ring.
"Aw, come on. What's the harm? I got a nice bottle at home."
"Maybe… maybe we could go to a bar or something."
"Well, sure."
"I'm not that kind of girl, you know."
"Oh, I know."
"I'm not some easy pickup."
"I'm sure you aren't!"
They went to two bars and ended up back at his place, the reconverted surgery on Central. She was a pretty girl, and he hoped he could do the deed with her. They drank some more, especially her, and finally she passed out, probably due to the morphine he slipped in her Scotch. Having her pass out made it easier. He took her clothes off and did it to her while she was passed out. She didn't move at all while he was on her. That helped him do it. She was snoring a little when he climbed off and put his clothes on.
He was whistling when he went downstairs, flipping the light switch, illuminating the very white room below. The examining room cum surgery was spotless, probably cleaner than when his father had been practicing here. Lloyd had gone over the floor with a scrub brush to make it surgically disinfected as well as to destroy any evidence. He went to the large steel refrigerator and got out the lower torso of a woman and set it down upon the white-enamel examining table. He took from the lab bench his leather pouch of surgical tools that Father had given him and began to cut.
He didn't hear her on the steps.
The first thing he heard was her saying, in a slurred voice, "What are you up…"
Then he turned, scapel in hand, and she was standing there, on the stairs, slim and nude, with her eyes and mouth open very wide.
"… to," she finished. Breathlessly. Frozen there.
He sighed, and moved quickly toward her.
INTERLUDE
CHAPTER 14
Nine months had passed since the discovery of victim number nine-or victim number ten, if you counted (and Ness did) the 1934 torso that had washed up, half of it in a suitcase, on Euclid beach. Nine months since that startled tender in his tower on the Third Street Bridge had seen a dressmaker's dummy float by, only it hadn't been a dressmaker's dummy.
With the death of Frank Dolezal, and the apparent halt in killings, Eliot Ness had handed the Butcher case over to Merlo and Curry and returned to his duties as safety director. It had not been his idea: the Mayor had suggested that he "distance himself" from the investigation, what with the waters muddied by the sheriff's involvement.
Still, the Butcher remained a major concern of his, and he kept close tabs on his two detectives, who were (among other things) trying to track several suspects, including the hobo named Ben, the beggar called One-Armed Willie, and the nameless tramp who'd attacked Curry with a jackknife in the shanty town on the Run.
But none of this was on the mind of the young safety director on this pleasantly cool Saturday in April. Wearing a tux, looking and feeling spiffy, he was in the company of Evelyn MacMillan, a slender, lovely brunette of twenty-five years.
Ev's father was a well-fixed stockbroker in Chicago where several years back Ness-then head of the Justice Departments Prohibition Bureau in Illinois-had first encountered the MacMillan family socially. He'd been attracted to the girl then, but she'd been just a kid, a student at the Art Institute.
Last October he and Bob Chamberlin had taken the train to Ann Arbor for the Michigan/Chicago football game. He'd run into Ev and some friends at the stadium, and they'd all gone out to dinner afterward at his hotel. That was where and when Ness got the word that his mother had died in Chicago that afternoon.
He'd been close to his mother, very close, and it hit him hard, though he didn't think it showed. It showed to Ev, who insisted on taking the train back to Chicago with him. She stayed at his side throughout the next several days. She'd been a good friend to him; settling his family's affairs required several more trips home to Chicago, during which time a warm friendship with Ev blossomed into something even warmer.
Earlier this week, after much urging from him, she had moved to Cleveland. She was a gifted artist and had already illustrated several children's books for major New York publishers; so he didn't have to pull many strings to get her the job as fashion artist for the Higbee Company, one of city's major department stores.
This was their first night out on the town together, after her move. Ev wore a sleek black gown with pink and green satin ruffles at the bust, her creamy shoulders bare. She was quiet and rather modest personally, but she always dressed dramatically for an evening out. The fashion illustrator side of her, he supposed.
"This is a lovely place," Ev said, sipping her after-dinner champagne cocktail.
They were seated in yellow leather chairs at a corner table near a blue-mirrored wall in the Vogue Room off the lobby of the Hollenden Hotel. The Vogue Room was a streamlined, stainless-steel-trimmed nightclub with subdued, reflected illumination. The only light fixture visible was a steel chandelier over the central dance floor.
Ness, his back to the mirrored wall, sipped his Scotch and smiled and said, "Not what you'd expect of Cleveland, I guess."
"The town's not living up to its dull reputation. Very cosmopolitan, if you ask me." She touched his folded hands. "Eliot… I don't know what to say. I don't know how to thank you."
"You'll find a way, doll," he said, and smiled again.
She smiled big, showing pink gums above tiny white teeth; it was not a very cosmopolitan smile, but it appealed a great deal to Eliot Ness. "It sounds so corny when you call me that. 'Doll.'" She shook her head.
"Do you mind?"
"I don't mind it at all. It's just… it sounds like something some… movie tough guy would call his 'moll.' Jimmy Cagney or somebody. I'm glad they didn't serve grapefruit tonight."
He laughed. "Well, I'm supposed to be a gangbuster. Haven't you heard?"
"Of course I've heard," she said, gently swirling her champagne in its glass, looking down into the liquid as if it were a crystal ball she was trying to see the future in. "It's just that I've never heard it from you."
"I don't like to bring my work home."
"I can understand that. You work long hours. But my work is something I can and really have to take home with me."
"I told you, doll. You can have the tower for your studio. You can cloister yourself there all you want."
He was referring to the upper floor of the boathouse.
She squeezed his hand. "Oh, Eliot… I wish I could move in tomorrow."
"I wish you could, too. We need to wait awhile."
She nodded. "Till after the municipal election."
"I think it would be wise." His divorce hadn't been publicized, but it would be if he remarried, particularly if he remarried soon. He wouldn't care to give Mayor Burton's political enemies any ammunition; Burton had won by a landslide last year, but crucial council seats were at stake.
"November seems so far away," she sighed.
"Well, it'll give us a chance to get you acquainted with the city, and the city acquainted with you."
"I suppose. But darling… how much distance do we have to keep?"
"Well," he said, leaning toward her, whispering in her ear, "I expect you to stay on your side of the bed tonight."
She kissed her fingertip and placed it on his lips. "I think I can manage that."