The cops and the papers called the Lipstick Killer (the nickname was immediate) a “sex maniac,” though neither woman had been raped. The certainty of the police in that characterization made me suspicious that something meaningful had been withheld.
I had asked Lt. Bill Drury, who before his suspension had worked the case out of Town Hall Station, and he said semen had been found on the floor in both apartments, near the windows that had apparently given the killer entry in either flat.
What we had here was a guy who needed one hell of a visual aid to jack off.
What these two slain women had in common with the poor butchered little JoAnn Keenan, I wasn’t sure, other than violent death at the hands of a madman with something sharp; the body parts of the child were largely drained of blood. That was about it.
But the lipstick message on that alley fence — even down to the childlike lettering — would serve to fuel the fires of this investigation even further. The papers had already been calling the Lipstick Killer “Chicago’s Jack the Ripper.” With the slaying of the kidnapped girl, the city would undoubtedly go off the deep end.
“The papers have been riding the cops for months,” I told my Peg that night, as we cuddled in bed; she was trembling in the hollow of my arm. “Calling them Keystone Kops, ridiculing the ineffectiveness of their crime lab work. And their failure to nab the Lipstick Killer has been a club the papers’ve beat ’em with.”
“You sound like you think that’s unfair,” Peg said.
“I do, actually. A lunatic can be a lot harder to catch than a career criminal. And this guy’s M.O. is all over the map.”
“M.O.?”
“The way he does his crimes, the kind of crimes he does. Even the two women he killed, there are significant differences. The second was shot, and that, despite the knife through the throat, was the cause of death. Is it okay if I talk about this?”
She nodded. She was a tough cookie.
“Anyway,” I went on, “the guy hasn’t left a single workable fingerprint.”
“Cleans up after himself,” she said.
“Half fetish,” I said, “half cautious.”
“Completely nuts.”
“Completely nuts,” I agreed. I smiled at her. It was dark in the bedroom, but I could see her sweet face, staring into nothing.
Quietly, she said, “You told your friend Bob Keenan that you’d stay on the job.”
“Yeah. I was just pacifying him.”
“You should stay on it.”
“I don’t know if I can. The cops, hell the feds, they’re not exactly going to line up for my help.”
“Since when does that kind of thing stop you? Keep on it. You’ve got to find this fiend.” She took my hand and placed it on her full tummy. “Got to.”
“Sure, Peg. Sure.”
I gave her tummy the same sort of “there there” pat I’d given Bob Keenan’s shoulder. And I felt a strange, sick gratefulness to the Lipstick Killer, suddenly: the day had begun with my wife asking for a divorce.
It had ended with me holding her, comforting her.
In this glorious post-war world, I’d take what I could get.
8
Two days later, I was treating my friend Bill Drury to lunch in that bustling Loop landmark of a restaurant, the Berghoff.
Waiters in tuxes, steaming platters of food lifted high, threaded around tables like runners on some absurd obstacle course. The patrons — mostly businessmen, though a few lady shoppers and matinee-goers were mixed in — created a din of chatter and clinking tableware that made every conversation in this wide-open space a private one.
Bill liked to eat, and had accepted my invitation eagerly, even though it had meant driving in from his home on the North Side. Even out of work, he was nattily dressed — dark blue vested suit with wide orange tie with a jeweled stickpin. His jaw jutted, his eyes were dark and sharp, his shoulders broad, his carriage intimidating. Only a pouchiness under his eyes and a touch of gray in his dark, thinning hair revealed the stress of recent months.
“I’m goddamn glad you beat the indictment,” I said.
He shrugged, buttered up a slice of rye; our Wiener Schnitzel was on the way. “There’s still this Grand Jury thing to deal with.”
“You’ll beat it,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. Bill had, in his zeal to nail certain Outfit guys, paid at least one witness to testify. I’d been there when the deal was struck.
“In the meantime,” he said cheerfully, “I sit twiddling my thumbs at the old homestead, making the little woman nervous with my unemployed presence.”
“You want to do a little work for A-1?”
He shook his head, frowned regretfully. “I’m still a cop, Nate, suspended or not.”
“It’d be just between us girls. You still got friends at Town Hall Station, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
A waiter old enough to be our father, and looking stern enough to want to spank us, delivered our steaming platters of veal and German fried potatoes and red cabbage.
“I’m working the Keenan case,” I said, sipping my beer.
“Still? I figured you’d have dropped out by now.” He snorted a laugh. “My brother says you picked up a pretty penny for that interview.”
His brother John worked for the News.
“Davis met my price,” I shrugged. “Look, Bob Keenan seems to want me aboard. Makes him feel better. Anyway, I just intend to work the fringes.”
He was giving me his detective look. “That ten grand reward the Trib posted wouldn’t have anything to do with your decision to stick, would it?”
I smiled and cut my veal. “Maybe. You interested?”
“What can I do?”
“First of all, you can clue me in if any of your cop buddies over at Town Hall see any political strings being pulled, or any Outfit strings, either.”
He nodded and shrugged, as he chewed; that meant yes.
“Second, you worked the Lipstick killings.”
“But I got yanked off, in the middle of the second.”
“So play some catch-up ball. Go talk to your buddies. Sort through the files. See if something’s slipped through the cracks.”
His expression was skeptical. “Every cop in town is on this thing, like ugly on a monkey. What makes you think either one of us can find something they’d miss?”
“Bill,” I said pleasantly, eating my red cabbage, “we’re better detectives than they are.”
“True,” he said. He cut some more veal. “Anyway, I think they’re going down the wrong road.”
“Yeah?”
He shrugged a little. “They’re focusing on sex offenders; violent criminals. But look at the M.O. What do you make of it? Who would you look for, Nate?”
I’d thought about that a lot. I had an answer ready: “A second-story man. A cat burglar who wasn’t stealing for the dough he could find, or the goods he could fence, not primarily. But for the kicks.”
Drury looked at me with shrewd, narrowed eyes. “For the kicks. Exactly.”
“Maybe a kid. A j.d., or a j.d. who’s getting just a little older, into his twenties maybe.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Thrill-seeking is a young-at-heart kind of thing, Bill. And getting in the Johnson woman’s apartment took crawling onto a narrow ledge from a fire escape. Took some pretty tricky, almost acrobatic skills. And some recklessness.”