“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.”
“I am. And I’m hoping the two of us can find that maniac before the police do.”
That confused me. “Why before the police?”
Around us, the Mexicans stared and snoozed, and bums slumbered; the shadows had gathered into night, and the lights of Olivera Street winked at us. Somewhere over there, a cafe musician was singing a Spanish song, “ Ay yi yi yi,” clear but strangely distant.
Eliot didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, “I’ll have to spend some time with the LAPD, doing my best to convince them the Butcher didn’t kill the Dahlia… the difference in M.O. should make that simple enough.”
“Why was there a difference in M.O., if Watterson did the murder?”
He didn’t answer that, either. “I have a lead-not much of one, but a lead. This Koch character told me that Watterson has taken a job as a male nurse for some shady doctor out here.”
“No kidding.”
Eliot nodded. “Koch claimed not to know what doctor, or to have any address on Watterson. You know, Koch may not be the first time Lloyd paired up with an accomplice of sorts.”
“Really? I always figured he was a loner.”
“In the original investigation, we theorized it may have been necessary for the Butcher to recruit help-have a sort of apprentice-to help carry out the murders and dispose of the various body parts. We even had a suspect, a young homosexual who worked in the butcher shop of a St. Clair Avenue grocery… but it never panned out.”
“If Koch is that kind of accomplice, and not just a jailhouse sweetheart, his information might be suspect… or he might have warned Lloyd by phone.”
“No-you see, I still have friends at the Cleveland P.D. They booked Koch on vagrancy-he’s being shuttled around from stationhouse to stationhouse, and should be off the streets till the middle of next week, at least. In the meantime, I’ll to try to worm a list of known abortionists out of Detective Hansen, which I will then turn over to you, so you can go looking for Lloyd.”
I tried the first question again. “Why aren’t we working directly with the police on this, Eliot? Why are we keeping this investigation to ourselves?”
He gazed at me with hooded eyes. “Nate… if this came out… that I was party to this… that in 1938 I had the Mad Butcher in my hands and allowed myself to be fooled in this way… that the Short girl, and God knows how many others, died because of it…”
He sat so slumped that his arms rested on his thighs, like a man trying not to puke. Then he touched a hand to his eyes. Jesus, was he weeping?
“Eliot… you couldn’t have known…”
He shook his head. “No excuse. No excuse. And… Nate, what I’m going to ask you to help me do is unconscionable… but I just have no choice.”
“No problem. We’ll kill the son of a bitch and bury him in the desert.” I shrugged. “Cutting his head off would be a nice touch.”
He laughed at that, as if I’d been joking, then said, “No… that’s not what I mean. It’s… really, it’s worse than that. I am desperately out of my element at Diebold, Nate-I need to get back into public life.”
“I don’t understand.”
Drawing in a deep breath, Eliot Ness straightened himself, looked right at me. “Remember, years ago, when my boss Harold Burton stepped down as mayor, to run for congress? And I was asked to run in his place?”
“Yeah-you turned it down. You were satisfied with your job as public safety director.”