where he worked as a young man. Daily workouts on a handball court and jujitsu training kept him fit now. He didn't smoke. He did drink. Too much, at times, he knew.
He had gone hatless tonight-his only nod to the balmy evening-and as he hesitated before the tent of 'The Front Page,' he brushed a comma of brown hair back to its temporary place while he studied several sandwich board signs that bore mock newspaper front pages. MAN DIES IN ELECTRIC CHAIR! one headline said; WOMAN HANGED TILL DEAD! said another. The largest of all said. TORSO KILLER DEATH MASKS INSIDE! He bought a ticket at the booth and went in.
Attendance at the expo in general might have been off tonight, but the benches inside this tent were jammed. Ness found a place to sit at the end of one bench and got a funny, 'Why the suit, mister?' look from the straw-hatted apparent farmer he sat next to before the lights dimmed.
A velvet curtain parted and revealed, centerstage, an electric chair much like ones Ness had seen in use in prisons. A pale, heavyset man in black, wearing a black string tie, looking like a parson, led a pale, thin fellow in a gray-and-white-striped prison uniform to the chair. The 'prisoner' sat in the chair and allowed the parson to place the electrical cap upon his head. The parson then walked to one side of the stage, to an apparatus that included three large switches. Then he threw each switch, to much electrical sparking, much convulsing by the thin fellow in the chair, and much noise from the startled audience. An acrid smell filled the tent. The prisoner slumped in the chair. The velvet curtain closed.
The audience were talking amongst themselves, screams and shouts having given way to nervous laughter, and soon the curtain opened again. An attractive blond woman in a white evening gown stood with an expression as blank as death and a noose dangling nearby, the rope disappearing upward. Her hands were tied before her.
The audience, transfixed, stared at her. The only sound in the room was that of breathing.
The parson walked out on stage slowly, deliberately. He carried a hood. He placed it over her head, her shoulder-length blond hair hanging out from around the bottom of the hood. He placed the noose around her neck. Cinched it tight, behind her left ear.
The pastor stepped to one side. He raised his hand in a signaling fashion; when he brought it down, the blonde plunged suddenly down and out of sight, through a trapdoor. The rope pulled tight. Then it swayed.
The audience was still gasping as the curtains closed.
When they opened again, the pastor was on stage, smiling and gesturing to the thin young prisoner, who smiled and bowed, and the blond woman, who did the same. The audience applauded wildly; some whistled. Some people even stood up.
The lights came on, and the pastor, speaking for the first time, directed the audience into a section of the tent declared to be 'The Front Page Museum of Crime.' Several display cases held guns and clothing labeled as having belonged to John Dillinger and his associates. A shot-up car, roped off, was labeled the Bonnie and Clyde 'Death Car.' Another glass case bore three death masks, three male faces, painted rather garishly, as if wearing feminine makeup. Their expressions were placid, strangely innocent, almost angelic. A large sign within the case, behind the frozen faces, said in large black block letters: 'Do You Know Us? Any One of Us?' In smaller print, information was given about whom to contact at the Cleveland police department, making mention of the $5,000 reward posted by the city council. Ness smiled to himself as people paused at the display, studying the plaster faces. A uniformed cop-the real thing, not a security guard-was posted near the display case. His eyes narrowed when he saw Ness, and the two men nodded, imperceptibly, at each other.
Behind the display case was a large poster that bore the words 'Do You Know This Man?' The poster showed the outline of a body, and superimposed over the chest was a photo of a handsome young man whose eyes were shut and whose longish dark hair seemed unruly. The poster, drawn with a cartoonists flair, mapped the location of various tattoos-right shoulder: butterfly; outer right arm: heart with piercing arrow; inner right forearm: crossed flags with the initials W.C.G.; inner side of left forearm: names 'Helen and Paul' beneath the image of a dove; calf of right leg: anchor and cupid; calf of left leg: 'Jiggs' comic strip character. A dotted line at right indicated height: '5 ft. 10 in.' The poster was further labeled: 'Age-22 to 25 years, dark or olive complexion, very dark brown hair, weight about 150 lbs.'
'Hope this does some good, Mr. Ness,' a female voice said.
Ness looked over his shoulder. A handsome if somewhat hard-looking brunette woman of about forty, wearing a red blouse and black skirt, was lighting up a cigarette. No one, other than Ness, recognized her as the 'blond' hanged on stage.
'I appreciate the effort you're making, Mrs. Castle,' Ness said.
She nodded, pulling on the cigarette. 'Our biggest draw,' she said. 'I owe you a vote of thanks, even if I don't end up with a piece of that reward.'
'If any of your patrons identify any of the victims, you'll get some reward money, that I guarantee you.' Ness glanced at the death mask display, where people lingered in fear and fascination. 'A lot of people are filing past those faces. Maybe somebody will recognize one of them.'
'I don't know what I'd have done, without you and this 'Mad Butcher' character,' Mrs. Castle said, smiling wearily. 'You know, I had to fire Dillinger's father last week,' she added, pronouncing 'Dillinger' with the correct, hard g.
Ness nodded sympathetically. 'I noticed you weren't listing him out front anymore.'
'Yeah, pasted the Butcher come-on right over his. It's too bad. He's such a nice old gentleman. But people around here just don't seem to be interested, especially not in a town that's got a crazy 'torso killer.' Who wants to hear a nice old guy tell about how he ran a store while his boy John ran around loose and got in with bad company? Mr. Dillinger used to draw just dandy for me, but I guess his public-enemy-number-one son is yesterday's news. Any-way, thank you, Mr. Ness.'
'You can thank Sam Wild of the Plain Dealer,' Ness said. 'It was his idea.'
He smiled and shook hands with Mrs. Castle, nodded again to the cop on duty by the display, and slipped back out on the midway.
It seemed breezy suddenly, and he tucked his hands in his pockets, checking his watch before he did so. Nearly ten. Time to meet Vivian.
He walked briskly from the midway into the area dominated by the Hall of Progress and other massive modern structures, skirting illuminated fountains and decorative pools and the occasional sculpture of a ship or boat. Much of the expo had a nautical theme-even the lampposts were made to resemble masts; from where he stood, he could see Admiral Byrd's ship, The City of New fork, moored and lit up like a Christmas tree. Otherwise, Lake Erie, getting choppy, was free of craft.
Just to the west of the lagoon theater, where Vivian had been attending a fashion show, the three-story Horticultural Building rose, a red, blue, and mostly white affair fashioned after the streamlined forward deck of an ocean liner. Ness entered the massive boat of a building at the top of a twenty-five foot incline where two giant pylons framed the entrance.
From the top deck of this landlocked Titanic, Ness paused to enjoy the cooling crisp air and the bracing scent of the lake and the panoramic view to the west: a hillside replete with rock gardens, waterfalls, and rare plants, a five-hundred-foot slope of landscaped grass falling to a giant fountain and reflecting pool, and a promenade winding beneath the trees at the edge of Lake Erie. The deck, sparsely populated for a Saturday night, and the impressive view gave Ness a feeling of solitude and calm that he drank in like a thirsty man.
Vivian was sitting at one of the small tables beneath a red umbrella, drinking in the view herself-that, and a Bacardi. She was a slender blond-even seated, she appeared tall, which she was, nearly as tall as Ness. She wore, with casual grace, a light blue blouse and dark blue slacks with a white sweater about her shoulders, the arms tied about her neck, reminding him of the other blond and the noose. He touched her shoulder and she smiled without looking up at him, recognizing his touch.
'How was the fashion show?' he asked.
'Fashionable,' she allowed. A smile tickled the corner of an attractive if wide and thin-lipped mouth lipsticked bright red; her teeth were as white as porcelain, her eyes green as jade, her suntan brown as amber.
Vivian Chalmers was a divorcee of thirty with no children and plenty of social pull. Her father was a banker-a solvent one-and she was, as the society pages liked to say, 'an all-around sportswoman'-expert trap-shooter, golfer, tennis player. She had also been, for well over a year, an active agent of Ness's-unpaid, other than satisfying her sense of adventure-in his ongoing war against the Mayfield Road mob, the gangsters who controlled gambling,
