“That’s easily enough done.”
“Pretty soon the cops and reporters will have the girl identified. Maybe in Chicago, all that’ll rate is a few column inches, inside. But if Beth Short’s picture is splashed on the front page-like it will be out here in sunny Southern California-then she’s going to get recognized.”
“Was Elizabeth Short that distinctive looking?”
Gazing at the sleeping Peggy, I said, “Think of Deanna Durbin, Lou, but sexy-jet-black hair, pale pale skin, dark dark lipstick, lovely lovely smile, figure like Lana Turner.”
“Yeah,” Lou said dryly, “kid like that just mighta got noticed.”
I cautioned Lou to keep a close eye on the Herald-American, because the Hearst papers were the most likely to play it up big. I explained that a handful of people-at the Morrison Hotel, the St. Clair, Lindy’s, Henrici’s-could possibly link the Short woman and me.
“And eventually,” I told him, “even these dumb L.A. coppers will figure out Beth Short spent time in Chicago, and they’ll send somebody to start poking around.”
“Christ, Nate…”
“If that girl’s name and picture do start showing up in the Chicago papers, cut her mug out and show it around the Morrison, and see if she gets made.”
“I get you-just staying ahead of the game.”
“Just staying ahead of the game.” I had another sip of rum and Coke. “Now, in the meantime, Beth Short told me she was going to see a doctor in Gary, a gynecologist most likely… She said she had ‘female trouble.’ Lou, I want you to track that doctor down.”
“Should I use her name?”
“No! Beth may not have used her real name, anyway. Just give ’em her description-it would have been late October of last year. See, I been thinking, and it may be wishful thinking at that… but if she saw a doctor in Gary, ’cause she was already pregnant-”
Even over the wire, I could hear Lou snap his fingers. “Then she wasn’t pregnant by you!”
“That’s right. Maybe she was looking to get an abortion, thanks to one of these war heroes she had such a yen for-so you’ll need to be sure to check up on the less savory quacks in the Gary area.”
“No shortage of rabbit pullers in that neck of the woods… but, Nate, if you didn’t knock her up, why would she call you from the Biltmore, looking for abortion money?”
“Maybe she was just trying to shake me down. To her, I must’ve looked like a well-off mark-big-shot private eye, opening an L.A. branch. Maybe she wanted to buy some more fancy black threads, or maybe she had some other medical problem she was raising dough for.”
“Y’know, she might have had an ongoing ailment; maybe she was seeing that doc in Gary ’cause of a venereal disease.”
“Yeah? Then why didn’t I catch it?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“See, Lou, that’s just it-I don’t have any memory of actually having intercourse with the girl. Of course, that was when I was drinking heavily, and-”
“You get around, Nate, but I would assume you usually remember having sex.”
“Usually.”
“If the Short girl wasn’t really pregnant by you, that would give you less of a motive. Or anyway, we could play it that way.”
“Yeah, and it would also indicate I wasn’t necessarily the only person she was trying to shake down.”
“Right! Which means somebody else has a murder motive.”
“Maybe several somebody elses, Lou. Hansen and Richardson and the rest of these chowderheads, they all see this as a sex crime-me, I keep seeing a woman’s mouth slashed the way a gangster does an informer… or a blackmailer. And one of the few things we know for sure in this case is that Beth Short was capable of blackmail.”
“You’re hoping the cops and reporters are going down the wrong road.”
“Hoping like hell-that’s my best shot at coming out of this cluster-fuck breathing air and not cyanide fumes. If the cops and reporters are looking for a sex maniac, when the killer is really some disgruntled ex-boy-friend or some gangland type Beth got misguidedly involved with-”
“Then you’ll see things that they won’t,” Lou said, something hopeful in his voice. “You’ll look at evidence, at clues, that they’re dismissing, when you’re seeing the significance.”
“Exactly. I have an in with both the Examiner and the lead police detective… and if my take on this murder is on target and theirs isn’t… I might come out of this with my ass and business intact.”
“And maybe even your marriage.”
I gazed at Peggy, still on her side, snoring softly. “Maybe even that.”
Lou grunted. “… I guess this is my fault, really.”
“How do you figure that?”
“When you were mooning over bustin’ up with Peggy? I encouraged you to get back in the saddle again.”
“So to speak.”
“Next time I give you advice, take it from me: don’t.”
We signed off, and I placed another call, to a friend who was even closer to me than Lou, and just as close as I had once been to Barney-my other best friend in the world, actually… Only I couldn’t risk coming clean with this guy. This guy was too straight an arrow for that. This guy was Eliot Ness.
I had known Eliot since we were both students at the University of Chicago in the late ’20s. When I was a cop and, later, a private detective, I had found Eliot to be my most reliable source within federal law-enforcement circles, back in the days when he and his Capone squad-the so-called Untouchables-had helped put Big Al away.
After Prohibition, Eliot had gone on to a well-publicized, highly regarded six-year stint as Cleveland’s (and the nation’s youngest) Public Safety Director, cleaning up one of America’s most corrupt police departments, busting the notorious Mayfield Road Gang’s numbers racket, and exposing numerous crooked unions. In several instances I had worked for Eliot in Cleveland, particularly during the period when the cops there couldn’t be trusted.
One of the cases I’d helped crack was that of the infamous Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run; from 1935 through 1938, the torso killer had killed at least thirteen men and women, mostly indigents, and possibly as many as seven or eight more. Officially, this case remained unsolved. But Eliot and I knew otherwise.
“This killing does sound as if it has some of the earmarks of the Butcher,” the celebrated gangbuster said from his home in Cleveland. We had a long-distance connection as strong and clear as Eliot’s voice. “A number of the torso slayer’s victims were bisected at the waist.”
“And washed and drained of blood.”
“Yes, Nate… but our friend Lloyd also liked to collect heads, remember. That was his signature.”
The Butcher was Lloyd Watterson, a former medical student, the son of a well-to-do Cleveland physician. The prominence of the family had made it a political necessity to sweep the Butcher’s capture under the rug, and for Watterson himself to be committed to a Sandusky, Ohio, mental hospital.
“I realize Watterson almost always decapitated his victims,” I said, “but this girl’s face was mutilated in such a distinctive fashion-”
I could sense Eliot nodding. “Like an informer, a ‘squealer.’ ”
“My thinking, exactly. The killer obviously left the girl’s head attached because the slashing of her face was a part of a message he was sending.”
“A message to whom?”
“That’s the key question, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think Lloyd Watterson would vary from his signature, particularly when sending a message… if he were at large.”
“You’re probably right, Eliot. Still, with these striking parallels, I thought you should know about the murder. Since the Butcher case is officially open, and so few people actually know the score about Watterson, you could be getting a phone call from the LAPD, any time now. Harry the Hat specifically asked me to call you on this.”
“Nate, I haven’t been Public Safety Director of Cleveland for a long time.”
Eliot left the Public Safety post in March 1942, under a cloud, after he was in an icy-roads auto accident that involved drinking and even an accusation of hit-and-run on his part. It was mostly trumped up, by some of the crooked cops he’d been in the process of rooting out, but the scandal had damaged his otherwise Boy-Scout-flawless reputation.