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.'
