prostitution, and the policy racket in these environs.
Ness would call upon her to case various gambling joints he planned to raid; she, as a socialite, could take a fling in any joint she chose without raising any suspicion. He had proposed this alliance in bed, having met her hours before at a country club dance where the both of them got a little drunk. She had accepted the offer of being an undercover agent for him as readily as she had accepted being undercover with him.
'I'm surprised we never got out here last year,' she said, meaning the expo. Her voice had an edge to it, a mannishness that somehow took nothing away from the woman she was.
'Well,' he said softly, 'we weren't being seen together much, were we?'
She looped her arm in his, cuddled, grinned widely. 'No. Not you and your undercover agent.'
He smiled gently and looked away.
Still, he caught the tightening around her eyes as she said, 'It's getting chilly.'
'It may rain,' he allowed.
'I wasn't talking about the weather.'
He looked at her. Jade eyes that were hard and soft at once. Like her.
'It can't go on, Vivian.'
'They've made me, you mean.'
He sighed. 'Yes. I'm afraid Patton and Miller and their people do have you made. Your presence in those clubs has been too often followed by my presence. Besides,' he said with a shrug, 'we have the gambling situation pretty well under control now.'
She withdrew her arm. Looked out at the lake. 'But we're not just talking about police work, are we?'
He licked his lips. Measured the words. Said, 'We can't live together, Viv. Sooner or later it'll catch up with us.'
She'd been staying for several months at the Clifton Lagoon boathouse, where Ness lived, though it wasn't his official address. The boathouse was a perquisite of his job.
'Because you're a public figure,' she said. 'With enemies. Political and otherwise.'
'Exactly.'
'Bullshit.'
He winced. He couldn't get used to a woman talking like that. Her sailor's mouth was something that both excited and repelled him. Like her adventurousness in the bedroom.
'There already have been mentions in the columns,' he said, 'about moonlight swims and dawn boat rides.'
'Hell, you have the press in your pocket,' she said bitterly, dismissively. 'Sometimes I think you and Sam Wild are sleeping together behind my back.'
He glanced to see if anyone else was within earshot.
'For God's sake, Viv-'
'I embarrass you. I was fun for a while, but I'm not exactly the prospective next Mrs. Eliot Ness, am I? You don't think I'm up to the job.'
Was there a quaver in that strong voice? he wondered.
'I asked you to marry me,' he said gently. 'You said no.'
'Why… why don't you ask me again?'
'Would the answer change?'
'It might.'
He took some of the gentleness out of his tone. 'I want children, Viv. I want a very conventional wife, a very conventional life. I'm not very imaginative, I'm not very adventurous, when it comes to my private life.'
'I know.' She smiled a little, shaking her head, looking out at the choppy lake. 'You save your imagination and your goddamn adventurousness for your job. You save almost everything you have for your job.'
'That's who I am,' he said unapologetically.
She leaned forward, touched his hand, which was resting on the white metal table, and said, 'Don't you see it, you sap? I'm right for you. You're going places, and I can help you get there. You love the social life, don't try to kid me. And with me at your side, you're going to climb all the faster. You can fly right to the top of the social register.'
'That's something you can give me, Viv. And that's fine, far as it goes. But it's not as important to me as you think.'
'What is?'
He spelled it out for her: 'Making my next marriage work. Making sure… nobody get hurts this time.'
A waiter dressed like a ship steward came and took Ness's order and departed. Ness studied the reflection of the overcast sky on the restless lake surface while Vivian studied him with sympathetic eyes.
'Eliot,' she said finally, tentatively. 'I know the divorce hurt you, but these things happen. And I don't mean to be unkind, but don't you see that Eva was exactly the kind of conventional wife you say you need?'
He shook his head. 'It wasn't Eva's fault it didn't work out. She just… couldn't take the pressure.'
'That's just it-the little woman in the little house behind the white picket fence… that kind of woman isn't cut out for being married to somebody who lives as recklessly as you.'
The ships-steward waiter arrived with Ness's drink, a double Scotch, straight up. Ness sipped it. Then he spoke without looking at her.
'I want kids, Viv.'
She squeezed his hand. 'We could have that. Someday. I… I don't rule it out…'
Now he looked at her. 'We're in our thirties. And I have no desire to be Grandpa Daddy to my sons and daughters. I want to live long enough to see them graduate college.'
'You sure as hell have it all planned out,' she said, thin upper lip curling, eyes wide in wary contemplation of these as yet unborn sons and daughters. 'Like another raid on another goddamn nightclub.'
'I just don't want us to live together, Viv. It doesn't feel right.'
'You mean it doesn't look right.'
He ignored that. 'We can still see each other. I'd like that.'
'That's swell of ya.'
'We could take it a little slower, pursue a different tack than the one we've taken…'
'Our fling is flung, is that it?'
'Viv… I still love you. And on the right terms…'
'Your terms.'
'They'd have to be our terms. We'd both have to agree to them.'
Her nostrils flared as she withdrew her hand from his. 'What is this, a salary negotiation? Don't pull your executive horseshit on me. What's really bothering you, anyway? You haven't been sleeping worth a damn, not for weeks.'
He shrugged that off and looked out at the lake. Choppier. Even choppier.
'It's that fucking Butcher, isn't it?' she said through her teeth, her lips as thin and red as a razor's stroke.
'Please don't talk that way. It bothers me.'
'Like those sick photos you been studying bother you. You don't like to admit it, do you, Eliot? That something can get to you. You like to think of yourself as an executive… a young go-getter who fresh out of college chose law enforcement because it seemed a good career opportunity. A wide-open field for somebody ambitious. Which is you all over.'
'What's wrong with that?' he snapped.
'Well, you're only fooling yourself. If professionalism and career is everything to you, why don't you stay behind your desk and be an executive? Why do you insist on going out in the field to investigate, to kick doors down, to play cops and robbers?'
'You tell me.'
'Because, first of all, you really do care. You really do believe in right and wrong, good and evil, you poor silly bastard.'
'And what's second?'
'That's easy: you like it. You get your kicks that way. Literally, when it comes to doors.'
