He felt his breath coming fast.
He turned his head and saw a large, stainless-steel refrigerator; it was humming. He saw his reflection in its door. Clutched by the horror of the moment, bound tightly to the chair, he looked at his own wide-eyed reflection, wondering what—who—was in cold storage, wondering if he would be there soon himself.
Then he shook his head, pulled himself together, telling himself, You're not dead yet, you asshole, and began straining at the ropes.
They were snug; not so snug as to cut off his circulation, but snug enough.
Feet came tramping down the wooden, white-painted stairs. He saw bare legs first, in tennis shorts; unlike the room, the legs weren't white. They were as suntanned as Viv's; and where the hell was Viv?
Wild hoped to Christ she wasn't in that goddamn refrigerator.
Lloyd Watterson was grinning. The white tennis outfit, with its short pants, was like some absurd doctor outfit made for a child. He walked over to the counter and opened a drawer and his hand rustled around amidst metal objects. Then he withdrew something. Held it up in his right hand, catching the electric light.
A cleaver.
He turned. Smiled pleasantly.
"I'm no butcher," he said. His voice was soft, almost gentle. "Don't believe what you've heard. ..."
"Do you want to die?" Wild asked.
Lloyd started. "Of course not."
"Well, then cut me loose. There's cops all over the place, and if you kill me, they'll shoot you down. Do you know who I am?"
"Certainly. You're a reporter. It said so in your wallet, and I recognize your name from the paper."
"Then you know I work with Eliot Ness."
He thought that over, nodded.
"If you touch me," Wild said, "Ness and his men will shoot you down like a fucking animal."
Standing just to one side of Wild, holding up the cold polished steel of the cleaver, in which Wild's frantic reflection looked back at its source, Lloyd said, "I'm no butcher. This is a surgical tool. This is used for amputation, not butchery."
"I ... I can see that."
"Why did you insist on calling me a butcher, then? In your stories?"
"Do you want to be caught, Lloyd?"
"Of course not. I'm no different than you. I serve the public in my own way."
"How . . . how do you figure that, Lloyd?" Wild's feet weren't tied to the chair; he could move his legs from the knees down ... if Lloyd would just step around in front of him . . .
"I only dispose of the flotsam. Not to mention jetsam."
"Not to mention that."
"Tramps. Whores. Weeding out the stock. Survival of the fittest. Punishing the wicked. Experimentation. Does anyone mourn a guinea pig?"
"The guinea pig's mother?"
That stopped Lloyd short for a moment.
Wild filled the silence: "You make a lot of sense there, Lloyd. I think I did misjudge you. But I'm not flotsam or jetsam. I'm a reporter. I'm like you—I serve the people, in my way."
Lloyd thought about that.
"I could help you tell your story," Wild said. "So people would understand. So they'd know you aren't a—"
"I don't think so," he said, shaking his head no. "I don't think I have any choice in this."
He moved around the chair, stood just to one side of Wild, his expression troubled, the cleaver gripped tight in his right hand, held about breastbone level. Then his mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed as he made his decision.
Lloyd leaned forward and put his hand on Wild's head, grabbed him by the hair.
"You shouldn't have called me a butcher." he said.
"I'm sorry, Lloyd," Wild said, and kicked him in the balls.
Wild was surprised how much power he could muster, tied in a chair like that; but people manage some amazing feats when circumstances are extreme. And circumstances rarely got more extreme than being tied to a chair with a guy with a cleaver coming at you.
Only Lloyd wasn't coming at Wild now: now he was doubled over, and Wild stood, the chair strapped to his back, and butted Lloyd in the face.
Lloyd tumbled back, gripping his groin, cleaver tumbling from his hand, clattering harmlessly to the floor, his head leaning back, tears streaming down his cheeks, cords in his neck taut, his nose bleeding like a fountain, spilling onto the formerly spotless floor.
That's when the window shattered, and Vivian squeezed down in through, pretty legs first.
And she gave Wild the little gun to hold on Lloyd while she untied him, got the chair off his back.
Lloyd was still soiling the spotless floor with his blood, moaning like a sick child, when Wild and Viv went up the stairs and through the small neat house out into the sunny lay, into a world that wasn't white and antiseptic and full of death.
She was helping Wild across the lawn, toward the Bugatti, when detective Curry came running up, gun in land.
"What's going on?" he demanded. "What the hell's going on?"
Wild pointed back to the house. "Lloyd Watterson's the Butcher. He's in there—and I wouldn't ..."
Curry went rushing up the front stairs, where they'd left the door open hurrying out, and into the house.
"I didn't see him come home," Viv told Wild breathlessly. "I'm sorry, so sorry—I was getting worried about you, and checking around back, I saw Lloyd's car was in his garage. He must've gone in one of the back ways. . . . God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Wild couldn't think of anything to say to her. He just stood there, an arm around her, hugging her to him, for minutes that seemed like hours. Finally he said, "Damnit, give me that little popgun—he's been in there too long."
But as Wild was reluctantly approaching the house, Curry came out.
"There's nobody in there," he said, putting his own gun away. "And no car in the garage."
"You better put a call out on that sick son of a bitch," Wild said.
Curry looked pale, shaken. He glanced back at the bungalow and said, "If that isn't the murder lab, I'm Charlie McCarthy."
"Then do something!" Viv said.
"I've already done something," Curry said. "I radioed for the chief when I first spotted your fancy little car. You'll have to answer to him."
"He'll be grateful to us," Viv said, chin up.
"I don't think so," Curry said, looking past them.
The unmarked sedan with the EN-1 license plate screeched up to the curb, and an uncharacteristically rumpled-looking Eliot Ness sprang from behind the wheel and bolted across the weedy lawn toward them. His eyes were hard and ringed with lack of sleep; he was unshaven, pulled from the midst of a long day of interrogation.
"Explain," he demanded of all of them.
Viv flushed with anger, but Wild felt suddenly sheepish, as if he'd just noticed he'd stepped in something and was tracking it all the hell around. Curry filled his chief in.
"Maintain your watch," Ness told Curry. "In a few minutes I'll take this pair downtown and question them along with the rest of the vagrants." He looked sharply at Viv. "This is about the stupidest stunt you've pulled yet."
Her eyes flared; nostrils, too. "Well, you should've taken me seriously, you big sap!"
"I did take you seriously. That's why Lloyd Watterson is under twenty-four-hour surveillance. That's why I'm spending the day quietly showing his photograph to half the bums in creation. That's why my personal assistant is launching a full-scale investigation into the suspect. You two have tipped our hand, and most likely tainted the evidence.'
"You're welcome," Wild smirked.
Ness glared at them both and motioned them toward the Bugatti.
When they were seated within, he told them, "Wait," lifting a forefinger like a lecturing parent. Then, typically unarmed, he advanced upon the house.
He was inside perhaps ten minutes; he was ashen when he came out. He walked to the driver's side of the Bugatti and reached in and touched Viv's shoulder.
"If anything had happened to you," he said, to Wild as much as to Viv,
"I'd have killed you."
Then the little sports car, trailing after the sedan licensed EN-1, leaving Curry and his Ford behind, drew away from the Run, under the shadow of the black, hovering cloud of shantytown smoke.
CHAPTER 18
Two days later, at eleven in the morning, in a warmly appointed suite on the fourteenth floor of the Hollenden Hotel, Eliot Ness sat at a massive library-style desk near a bay window overlooking Superior Avenue. Of simple boxlike design, with a broad, shiny surface, the dark wooden desk had a central, rectangular panel—where a blotter might normally be—that obviously concealed some device within. Electric wires and rubberized cable were connected to one lower side. To the right of where Ness sat was a comfortable-looking brown leather armchair. It was positioned forward somewhat, so that anyone sitting in it, while facing the same direction as Ness, would not be able to see him without a turn of the head.
Detective Albert Curry, his shirtsleeves rolled up, stood nearby and said, "Well, is that where you want it?"
Standing behind and to one side of Curry were two uniformed officers, who'd helped him haul the desk and chair over here from the Standard Building, where they'd borrowed it from federal friends of the safety director.
Ness, who sat and then sat again in the chair behind the desk, as if making a test, smiled tightly and said, "This is fine." And to the two uniformed men he said: "Thank you, boys. You can go."
They nodded and left.
Curry stood with folded arms and narrowed eyes and said, "What the hell is this all about?"
"I'm going to administer a lie detector test." He checked his watch. "In about half an hour."
There was a knock at the door.
"Should I get that?" Curry asked, and Ness nodded.
Bob Chamberlin, nattily attired as always, came in and went over to the desk and chair and said, "I see you're all moved in."
Ness nodded and gestured to a couch along the wall. "Sit down, Bob. Albert."
The two men did.
"We have an awkward situation," he said, coming out from behind the desk, "and for the time being it has to be ... contained."
"Contained?" Curry asked.
Ness pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat across from them. "The mayor has made it clear that we need, at least for the time being, to keep the Watterson investigation under wraps. Now, what does Sergeant Merlo know about the events of the last several days?"
Curry shrugged. "Nothing. He got that lead from one of the shanytown vagrants that One-Armed Willie was doing time in the county jail in Cincinnati. He left by train Thursday afternoon to check it out. He got back this morning, I understand, but he doesn't work today."
"Albert," Ness said, "much as I dislike it, we need—for the present at least—to keep Merlo in the dark where Watterson is concerned. And every other active cop on the case as well. We're keeping this in-house—within the safety director's office."
"Well," Curry said, obviously somewhat confused, "I had to use several homicide detectives to gather some of what we put together yesterday. You did tell me to move quickly."
"Yes," Ness said, "and you've done very well. But only we three know of the significance—the seriousness—of the Watterson investigation."
"Chief, I don't understand . . . why are we . . ."
"Several reasons," Ness said. "First, I made a rather major mistake. When Vivian Chalmers gave me the lead on Lloyd Watterson, I immediately knew it was of possible, even probable, substance. But knowing how rash Viv can be, I didn't tell her so, playing down its importance. And at the same time, in no uncertain terms, I told her to stay out of the Butcher investigation."
"And naturally," Chamberlin said wryly, "that only served to light a fire under her."
Ness nodded wearily. "Yes. I should have known better than to tell that particular child to keep her hands off the cookie jar. And then she drafted Sam Wild to help her out, and he was just irritated enough at me, for not asking him along on the shantytown raid, to go along with her on that boneheaded fishing expedition."
"They did find the murder lab," Curry said.
"Did they?" Ness said. "We may never know. From what I saw, it certainly could have been—but the cabinets and refrigeration units I looked in were noticeably free of spare body parts. Of course, if we could get a crime-lab team in there . . . well. The family's lawyers are, for now at least, keeping us out."
"Can't we get a warrant?" Curry asked. "He did come after Wild with a cleaver, after all."
"Did he? That's Wild's word against Watterson's. Do you know what Watterson's stand is, on that little incident? Wild broke into his home—which is the truth, incidentally—and Lloyd only protected himself from an intruder. He overpowered Wild and tied him up until he could call the police. If anything, Sam Wild may face charges on breaking and entering, and assault—Lloyd is pretty bruised up around the face, I understand."
"But he threatened Wild with a goddamn!"
"Wild's word against Lloyd's. And, too, Wild is well-known to be 'unofficially' attached to my office. Evidence resulting from his intrusion into Watterson's home could be viewed as having been illegally obtained."
Chamberlin said, "Eliot, for Christ's sake—Wild isn't a cop, he's a reporter."
Ness smiled and shook his head. "Wild was there with Vivian Chalmers, remember—who for the last several years has been on the payroll of the city, via the safety director's office. No, gentlemen, we are screwed royal on this one. We don't even have enough yet to get a warrant to search that house."
Frustration walked across Curry's features. "But he is the Butcher."
"I think he is," Ness said flatly. "But much as I dislike it, we have to take his social standing into consideration."
Curry's face reddened. "Why in hell?"
"Because that social standing means the Watterson; can afford the highest-priced lawyers the country has to offer—we will have to mount a cast-iron case before we go to court on this one."
"There's another reason, too," Chamberlin said somberly, looking sideways at Curry.
"What?" Curry asked.
"The mayor," Ness said.
"The mayor?"
Chamberlin said, "Dr. Watterson is a personal friend of the mayor's. He was on the mayoral reelection campaign committee. He was a major contributor to His Honor's campaign coffers."
Curry smiled mirthlessly. "You're not saying the mayor would want us to cover this up, just because—"
"No!" Ness said. "No. We've just been requested to be careful to make sure the Watterson's are not unduly, unnecessarily embarrassed. By the press or otherwise. Until we are ready to charge Lloyd Watterson with murder, we have to keep this tightly—tightly—under wraps."
Curry's eyes locked with Ness's. Then the younger detective nodded and looked away.
"That," Ness said, standing, gesturing over to the desk, "is one of the reasons why I'm going to administer a lie detector test today, in this hotel suite, rather than take the suspect to Central headquarters and do so. It's why we borrowed the latest federal equipment."
"Also," Chamberlin said, "it's good procedure."
"How?" Curry said. Sarcasm faintly etched his tone.
"The federal approach to polygraph testing," Ness said, "keys off maintaining the composure of the person being questioned. That's why I wanted one of the federal polygraph 'desks,' where the testing apparatus is largely hidden. Intimidation by scientific gizmos only serves to screw up the testing." He gestured about the hotel suite. "This is ideal—pleasant, quiet surroundings for a friendly interview."
"And," Chamberlin said, "the fourteenth floor is empty at the moment. We're the only guests."
Ness checked his watch. "They'll be here momentarily."
"They?" Curry asked.
Ness nodded. "It's the father and son. I didn't call Lloyd, you see—I called the father. Dr. Clifford Watterson. told him we had certain evidence against his son in this matter and I wanted to give his son the opportunity to clear himself via l
ie detector. No lawyers, no police. Just myself, polygraph, and two citizens cooperating unofficially."
"Well, hell," Curry said, "lie detector testing isn't infallible."
"I know it isn't," Ness said. "We might be dealing with a subject whose rationalization and self-deceit enables him to pass with flying colors. And I didn't mean to imply to Dr. Watterson that I was offering a deal, that I would drop the matter if his son passed the test."
"But," Chamberlin said with a nasty little smile, "if Dr. Watterson chose to interpret it that way, that's up to him."
Ness walked to a doorway not far from the brown leather chair by the lie-detector desk. "This is to the adjoining room. Keep the connecting door unlocked. If Lloyd Watterson is the Butcher—and we have reason to believe that to be the case—anything could happen in here. You are my backup, gents."
Curry nodded.
"Also," Ness continued, "I had this room wired. You're going to be listening in, next door, recording everything."
"It won't be admissible," Curry said. "The son of a bitch could confess, and we couldn't do a thing about it."
"Sure we could," Ness said. "If we have something of that nature, we can pressure the father into doing the right thing. Otherwise we'll make the tape public and watch all hell break loose."
Curry lifted an eyebrow and nodded.
Ness went to him and put a hand on the younger man's shoulder, smiling gently. "Don't despair. We're going to get this bastard. It won't take long to build a solid chain of circumstantial evidence—look what you've dug up in less than forty-eight hours. We'll get him."
Curry smiled faintly, nodded again, and went into the next room.
Chamberlin sighed and smiled. He stood close to Ness and said, "The kid's an idealist, Eliot."
"I know," Ness said. "And I agree with him one hundred percent."
"We work for the mayor," Chamberlin reminded him.
"Yes," Ness said, "but we mostly work for the people I'll put up with this political bullshit only so long as it doesn't interfere with that."
There was a sharp knock at the door.
Chamberlin scurried into the adjoining room, and Ness went to answer the door.
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