She withdrew her arm. Looked out at the lake. "But we're not just talking about police work, are we?"
He licked his lips. Measured the words. Said, "We can't live together, Viv. Sooner or later it'll catch up with us."
She'd been staying for several months at the Clifton Lagoon boathouse, where Ness lived, though it wasn't his official address. The boathouse was a perquisite of his job.
"Because you're a public figure," she said. "With enemies. Political and otherwise."
"Exactly."
"Bullshit."
He winced. He couldn't get used to a woman talking like that. Her sailor's mouth was something that both excited and repelled him. Like her adventurousness in the bedroom.
"There already have been mentions in the columns," he said, "about moonlight swims and dawn boat rides."
"Hell, you have the press in your pocket," she said bitterly, dismissively. "Sometimes I think you and Sam Wild are sleeping together behind my back."
He glanced to see if anyone else was within earshot.
"For God's sake, Viv-"
"I embarrass you. I was fun for a while, but I'm not exactly the prospective next Mrs. Eliot Ness, am I? You don't think I'm up to the job."
Was there a quaver in that strong voice? he wondered.
"I asked you to marry me," he said gently. "You said no."
"Why… why don't you ask me again?"
"Would the answer change?"
"It might."
He took some of the gentleness out of his tone. "I want children, Viv. I want a very conventional wife, a very conventional life. I'm not very imaginative, I'm not very adventurous, when it comes to my private life."
"I know." She smiled a little, shaking her head, looking out at the choppy lake. "You save your imagination and your goddamn adventurousness for your job. You save almost everything you have for your job."
"That's who I am," he said unapologetically.
She leaned forward, touched his hand, which was resting on the white metal table, and said, "Don't you see it, you sap? I'm right for you. You're going places, and I can help you get there. You love the social life, don't try to kid me. And with me at your side, you're going to climb all the faster. You can fly right to the top of the social register."
"That's something you can give me, Viv. And that's fine, far as it goes. But it's not as important to me as you think."
"What is?"
He spelled it out for her: "Making my next marriage work. Making sure… nobody get hurts this time."
A waiter dressed like a ship steward came and took Ness's order and departed. Ness studied the reflection of the overcast sky on the restless lake surface while Vivian studied him with sympathetic eyes.
"Eliot," she said finally, tentatively. "I know the divorce hurt you, but these things happen. And I don't mean to be unkind, but don't you see that Eva was exactly the kind of conventional wife you say you need?"
He shook his head. "It wasn't Eva's fault it didn't work out. She just… couldn't take the pressure."
"That's just it-the little woman in the little house behind the white picket fence… that kind of woman isn't cut out for being married to somebody who lives as recklessly as you."
The ships-steward waiter arrived with Ness's drink, a double Scotch, straight up. Ness sipped it. Then he spoke without looking at her.
"I want kids, Viv."
She squeezed his hand. "We could have that. Someday. I… I don't rule it out…"
Now he looked at her. "We're in our thirties. And I have no desire to be Grandpa Daddy to my sons and daughters. I want to live long enough to see them graduate college."
"You sure as hell have it all planned out," she said, thin upper lip curling, eyes wide in wary contemplation of these as yet unborn sons and daughters. "Like another raid on another goddamn nightclub."
"I just don't want us to live together, Viv. It doesn't feel right."
"You mean it doesn't look right."
He ignored that. "We can still see each other. I'd like that."
"That's swell of ya."
"We could take it a little slower, pursue a different tack than the one we've taken…"
"Our fling is flung, is that it?"
"Viv… I still love you. And on the right terms…"
"Your terms."
"They'd have to be our terms. We'd both have to agree to them."
Her nostrils flared as she withdrew her hand from his. "What is this, a salary negotiation? Don't pull your executive horseshit on me. What's really bothering you, anyway? You haven't been sleeping worth a damn, not for weeks."
He shrugged that off and looked out at the lake. Choppier. Even choppier.
"It's that fucking Butcher, isn't it?" she said through her teeth, her lips as thin and red as a razor's stroke.
"Please don't talk that way. It bothers me."
"Like those sick photos you been studying bother you. You don't like to admit it, do you, Eliot? That something can get to you. You like to think of yourself as an executive… a young go-getter who fresh out of college chose law enforcement because it seemed a good career opportunity. A wide-open field for somebody ambitious. Which is you all over."
"What's wrong with that?" he snapped.
"Well, you're only fooling yourself. If professionalism and career is everything to you, why don't you stay behind your desk and be an executive? Why do you insist on going out in the field to investigate, to kick doors down, to play cops and robbers?"
"You tell me."
"Because, first of all, you really do care. You really do believe in right and wrong, good and evil, you poor silly bastard."
"And what's second?"
"That's easy: you like it. You get your kicks that way. Literally, when it comes to doors."
He lowered his head, smiled a little. She had a knack, didn't she? A knack for seeing through him. A knack for knowing him better than he knew himself. A knack for being right.
She sat up, looked at him sharply. "Wait a minute. I know why you want me to move out."
He began shaking his head no, even before she continued.
"You've been studying those files-studying those sick pictures-reading all that horrible 'Mad Butcher' material… you're going to ask the mayor to give you the goddamned case!"
How did she do it?
Carefully he said, "Maybe I am going to be involved in something that… might make it dangerous for you to be around. Something that's going to require all my concentration… no distractions-"
"I'm a distraction now! It is the Butcher, isn't it?"
He sat forward, found himself almost pleading with her. "Viv, look. These killings have been going on for years. Just a month ago we had number nine, for God's sake. Somebody's got to do something."
"You."
"It's ultimately my responsibility, after all. I'm in charge of the police department."
"You're in charge of the fire department, too, but that doesn't mean you ought to go around pissing out every fire in town."
"Viv, please…"
"I don't know whether to kiss you or toss you into the lake. You're protecting me, aren't you? You don't want me endangered, isn't that it?"
That was part of it. Part of it, too; however, was that he really was intimidated by her. By her strength of character, by the sexual dynamo she became between the sheets.
And after weeks of studying the Butcher files-with their descriptions of emasculation and sexual assaults upon dead, headless bodies-sex, particularly sex that in any way deviated from the missionary-position norm, made him feel… funny.
But he didn't say that to her. He said only: "I have to do this. And I can't have you living with me while I'm taking an active role."
"You dumb sap. It's the most dangerous case in the history of the goddamn world."
"No, it isn't. He kills transients, this madman. He won't kill me."
She shook her head, smiling tragically. "A man who wants a conventional life with a wife and kiddies. Who wants to play it safe, he says, as he prepares to go toe-to-toe with the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run."