“Do you still carry his gun?”
“Yeah-the nine-millimeter. Well, not at the moment… It’s in my suitcase. I probably should be carrying it-this is turning into that kind of job.”
I told him about punching out Fat Ass Brown.
“Christ, they’re corrupt out here,” he said, shaking his head. “Worse than when I took over in Cleveland.”
“At least when the Chicago cops do want to solve a crime-as opposed to commit one-they can pull it off.”
“What about Harry Hansen?”
“The Hat’s a real detective.” I sipped my Coke; the bag of popcorn was propped between my thighs and I alternated eating a kernel or two, and pitching one for the birds to fight over. “Hansen’s one of the smart, honest ones, even if he is a glory hound.”
Eliot sighed. “I’m almost sorry to hear that he’s competent.”
“Why?”
He watched the pigeons pecking the popcorn I was pitching them. He sipped his coffee. Then he looked at the darkening sky for several long seconds, and finally at me, and said, “Nate… I have terrible news.”
“Personal or professional?”
“Both.” He shook his head. “This is something we have to keep to ourselves… something we have to do ourselves, work on in a… sub rosa manner.”
“Of course.”
“Nate, you’re the only one I can trust-”
“Eliot. Go on. Spill.”
He shrugged, gestured with both hands-no way to soften this blow: “Lloyd Watterson is in California.”
“Really.”
His brow clenched and the gray eyes were confused at my lack of reaction; nonetheless, he pressed on. “After we spoke on the phone, I figured I should check out Watterson’s status-personally. I went to the Sandusky Soldiers and Sailors Home, where Lloyd was in the psychopathic ward.”
“I wasn’t aware Lloyd was a veteran.”
“He wasn’t, but his father, Dr. Clifford Watterson, was. Anyway, I learned that because Lloyd was signed in as a patient voluntarily, he could be signed out the same way.”
I frowned. “That wasn’t part of the deal you cut.”
“Certainly wasn’t.” Finished with his coffee, he wadded up the paper cup and pitched it perfectly into a nearby trash receptacle. He turned to me and the gray eyes had hardened into steel. “Lloyd was to be committed, kept off the streets, completely out of circulation-and now I’ve learned that from August 1938, when he entered the mental hospital, until September 1944, he was signed out by his father eight times, for periods up to three weeks.”
“Jesus… What about after September ’44?”
He breathed in heavily, breathed out the same way. “His father died in August of that year. And then in September 1944, Lloyd signed himself out… and hasn’t been back since.”
Something wasn’t adding up. “What about those taunting postcards you received, postmarked Sandusky?”
Eliot helped himself to some of my popcorn, pitched it to the pigeons. “I did some good old-fashioned poking around-asked orderlies and patients about Lloyd. Turns out the Ohio Penitentiary Honor Farm shares certain facilities with the Soldiers and Sailors Home. Seems Lloyd struck up a friendship with a guy named Alex Koch, a convicted burglar.”
“Is this Koch still serving his sentence?”
“No. He’s been out for some time. I tracked him down to a rooming house in Cleveland. He was afraid, at first, when he saw me-and he wouldn’t cooperate unless I assured him he wouldn’t be considered an accomplice after the fact.”
“Accomplice to what?”
A wry little half-smile formed in the puffy face. “Sometime, in the course of their intimate friendship, Lloyd confessed to his friend Alex… bragged, it would seem… that he was indeed the Kingsbury Run butcher. Uh, as you may recall, Lloyd’s sexual preferences are… unusual.”
I shrugged. “His gate swings both ways. Plus, there’s that little fetish he has-most guys like to get a little head; they just don’t keep a spare one in the icebox.”
Eliot merely nodded. “I would call bisexuality combined with necrophilia a rather distinctive ‘fetish.’ And, although Alex did not specifically admit to this, I gathered that he and Lloyd were more than just friends. In any case, they did each other favors.”
I had a swig of Coke. “Like Lloyd having sex with Alex without hacking him to death, you mean?”
“There’s that. But it would also seem that Lloyd could perfectly mimic his father’s signature and would forge prescriptions for barbiturates for Koch, in return for his pal coming back on visiting days to smuggle liquor in to Lloyd. Since Dr. Watterson’s death, of course, that came to a stop. Still-and this is why I suspect a deeper bond between Alex and Lloyd-over the last several years, Alex has received occasional envelopes from Lloyd containing unmailed postcards-”
I snapped my fingers. “Postcards with those razzing messages to you. Lloyd had Alex mail them to you, from Ohio!”
Eliot smiled ruefully, tossed a kernel of popcorn to the pigeons. “Not only Ohio-Alex would drive to Sandusky to mail them, to get just the right postmark.”
“Did Alex tell you where Lloyd sent them from?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“California. Specifically, Los Angeles.” He shook his head. “And as if that weren’t disturbing enough, I made a chilling discovery. You see, I went down to the Cleveland P.D. and was up all night, combing through the three- thousand-some pages of the Torso file with Detective Merlo. You remember him? Martin Merlo?”
“Sure-he was obsessed with the Butcher case. Last I heard, he was still on it.”
“He still is, although he was officially removed from the investigation, years ago. Of course, Merlo was never part of the small circle of men who knew about Watterson, and he kept insisting that the Butcher was still striking- not in Cleveland, but around the country… Remember that murder in New Castle, Pennsylvania, that we thought might have been Watterson’s work?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding, “but you ascertained Lloyd was still institutionalized.”
“Correct-before I knew his daddy was signing him in and out of that padded suite.” He sighed. “Merlo volunteered to make this trip, but I offered my services, at my own expense, and of course Detective Hansen specifically requested me… so the police chief took me up on it.”
“With all your responsibilities at Diebold, Eliot, how did you spring yourself loose for this?”
He shrugged. “I get three weeks of vacation.”
“Some vacation.”
“As I started to say, I found something very disturbing in the Torso file-”
“I’d kinda think there’d be a lot of disturbing things in the Torso file.”
“Well, this one really sent alarm bells ringing. Back around 1939, Chief Matowitz and I got a letter postmarked Los Angeles from somebody claiming to be the Butcher. I dismissed it at the time, knowing-or thinking, that is-that Watterson was out of commission, tucked away inside rubber walls. And I’d forgotten it entirely, till I ran across the thing the other night-that letter said the Butcher’s next torso would be found on Century Boulevard between Western and Crenshaw.”
I was frowning again. “That’s not precisely the vacant lot where Elizabeth Short’s body was found… but it’s goddamn close.”
“Yes. Close enough to chill me to the bone, let me tell you. Los Angeles may have been one of Lloyd’s visiting spots when he was getting Papa to sign him out, periodically… and California would seem to have been his permanent place of residence since around October 1944.”
I wondered when, exactly, that bathtub slaying had taken place-that socialite friend of Beth Short’s, that “Bauerdorf girl” Aggie Underwood had mentioned at lunch.
“And now, obviously,” I said, “you’re thinking Lloyd may have killed Elizabeth Short.”
