He was not a 'butcher.' He was a surgeon. Hadn't his father said so, at the Torso Clinic? 'No layman could have attempted such meticulous incisions.' His father was proud of him! 'We are dealing with an intelligent human being-most likely not a denizen of the lower strata.' Yes! Father recognized breeding when he saw it!
In addition to its medical import, he saw his adventuring in the Flats, in the Third precinct, as another kind of research-sociological and psychological. In fact, that was how he maintained a 'cover' (he did so enjoy the true- detective magazines); he told the landladies of the various rooming houses he oversaw that he would be keeping one room for himself and using a pseudonym. He was doing scientific research and it was crucial they not reveal to any of the other tenants that he was anything but another worker (or out-of-worker) in the neighborhood.
He had become 'Andy,' and it was a tribute to his intelligence and social skills that he could blend in with this rabble so effortlessly. They trusted him. They became his friends. For as worldly as they were, they were naive fools.
Like Frank Dolezal. Had Frankie mentioned his friend 'Andy' to the cops, he wondered? Lloyd doubted it. Knowing Frankie, the poor bastard had spent most of his time begging for a drink, and thinking he'd committed the murders himself. That was a laugh! Frankie Dolezal, bricklayer, blackout drunk, and onetime slaughterhouse stooge, pulling off 'meticulous incisions. Not in this lifetime, Frankie!
But the sheriff (and Ness) now made Frankie for the 'Butcher.' Which presented Lloyd with a dilemma.
Should he at this point wish to give up surgical and sexual experimentation, he could; the blame, the 'Butcher' title, would forever be Frank Dolezal's. Part of him hated the idea of that-that such an untalented lowlife should get credit for his brilliance-but there was much to be said for quitting while you were ahead.
That was where shadowing Ness came in. But Lloyd had a problem with killing Ness. First, doing so would tip to the world that Dolezal was not their 'Butcher'; and second, Lloyd was not a murderer. He was a surgeon, a sociologist, a psychologist, a bold and creative experimenter in the laboratory of life; but not a murderer. He did not kill to protect himsef, but for science, and for love.
Killing Ness would be neither scientific, nor sexual, and Lloyd wasn't sure he was up to that. Even if Ness had been spouting off in the papers.
Oh, if it were a matter of self-defense, if Ness came at him with a gun or something, Lloyd would not hesitate to kill. This had begun when he had killed that blackmailing whore, after all, which was self-defense of a sort. But cold-blooded murder? And of someone more or less from Lloyds own social class? That was not Lloyd's style; he was no fiend, after all. He had standards.
Perhaps it was time to end all experiments. He would be married soon.
He wondered if, by now, he could perform adequately with a woman-a live woman, a whole woman. He thought so. Practice, as they said, made perfect.
Now, as he finished his third bowl of Wheaties, he approached the counter, where the slim, pretty brunette waitress was leaning against one elbow, fooling absently with the gold filigree ring on her right pinkie.
'You look tired, beautiful,' he said, and smiled.
She smiled back at him. 'Been a long day.'
'When's your shift end?'
'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.
