An Eliot Ness Mystery Omnibus by Max Allan Collins

An Eliot Ness Mystery Omnibus by Max Allan Collins

Author:Max Allan Collins [Collins, Max Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647349394
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2020-06-30T22:00:00+00:00


Lloyd Watterson lived just off Kingsbury Run on Central Avenue in a rooming-house district. From the small but weed-overrun lawn and the boarded-up basement windows, the modest bungalow, its white paint curling off, might have been abandoned. There were signs of inhabitation, though, namely the draped front windows and some mail sticking out of a box by the front door.

It was midafternoon, and Wild was having second thoughts.

"What if he comes home?"

"He isn't home," Viv said. "He and Jennifer are at the club today; I checked it out thoroughly, Sam, and anyway, if he comes home unexpectedly, I'll start honking the horn."

"Swell. Then what? I'm unarmed."

"I have a gun," she said, simply, and showed him a small pearl-handled automatic in her purse.

"Do you know how to use it?"

"I'm the best female skeet shooter in town."

"Well, hell—anybody who can shoot female skeet with a twenty-five automatic is Jake with me.” He sighed. "Here goes."

She stayed behind in her little shiny blue Bugatti sports car, which couldn't have been more out of place in this neighborhood. Hers was one of the few cars parked on the street, and the sidewalks were relatively empty as well.

The game plan was for Wild to get inside that bungalow and snoop around enough to see if there was any possibility that the residence, reconverted from a general practitioner’s office years ago, might still be a surgery of sorts. To see if it might indeed be a possible "murder lab."

If Wild felt that was the case, he would tell the director of public safety.

Wild's say-so, both he and Vivian felt, would be enough to get Eliot off the dime. And if Lloyd turned out to be the Butcher, there would be the scoop of a lifetime in it for Wild. He—not Eliot Ness—would be the man who "got" the Butcher.

Which was all well and good, but what if there was more substantial evidence of butchery? What if he found a stock of torso parts in cold storage, a virtual human meat locker? What if a half-carved victim lay on a surgical table?

It was a warm day, but Wild shivered. He had a cynical nature, and he had seen about all there was to see in his time. But the small, unprepossessing frame house before him chilled him like nothing he'd ever faced.

Reluctantly, pitching a spent Lucky behind him into the street, he climbed the half dozen steps, his hand on the rusting rail.

He didn't care what Viv said, he wanted to make sure Watterson wasn't home; so he knocked. Should Lloyd come to the door, Wild might ask directions to the nearest gas station, or maybe do a man-in-the-street (or on-the-porch) interview about the Butcher. How does it feel living in this neighborhood when it's under the cloud of these killings?

Of course, right now the cloud the neighborhood was under was from the shantytown fire. The acrid smell of smoke was everywhere.

He knocked again.

Nothing.

Like any good reporter, Wild carried several skeleton keys, and the first he tried worked.



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