If they’d had more time, he might have allowed himself to wade deeper, to swim farther, and not panic when he could no longer touch the bottom. If they’d had more time, he might have found the faith in himself—and her—to stay.
But the taskmaster had called, tugging the leash he’d been on for fifteen years, and he’d been dragged back to dry land. She was still treading water, hoping he would return.
Some days were easier than others, and she floated. Other days she felt like she was riding an anchor to the ocean floor. She knew she would have to wade back to shore sooner or later to face the prospect that the love he’d given her was all the love she was going to get.
But she had so much more to give him. She had so much more to give. And that kept her standing in the surf, looking out to sea.
For the first few days after he left, Lenka kept asking if she’d heard from him and when he was going to call. When he finally did, she’d demanded to know every word of the conversation. But Zuzana must have scolded her, for she stopped bringing him up.
The warmer weather meant less death from exposure but quicker decomposition, and without Michael’s help, her work at the morgue was suddenly intolerable. Smells were stronger as the days grew longer. Every day, at least one body was too ripe to touch or wash. She would write a few meaningless words—a line by Dickinson that she loved or a bit of scripture—and tuck the papers in soiled pockets and fill out her forms. She hated when she could do nothing for the dead but make a notation on a ledger no one would likely ever read.
May rolled into June, and June became July. She received three letters from him, all of them short, vague, and rather meandering, as though he composed them over days as new lines occurred to him. She loved them because they signaled he was thinking about her. She hated them because they were empty of detail and devoid of hope. He didn’t speak of seeing her again or tell her he missed her, but he signed them Michael, and that made her weep.
They were all postmarked in Chicago, and that was everything she knew about his current situation. She wrote back, using the post office box he’d provided her, and he seemed to have gotten her letters, though he never referenced anything she talked about specifically. He’d left her a telephone number too, but she didn’t call him. She had asked him to stay. He had refused. She would not ask again.
The Cleveland papers crowed about “Eliot Ness’s Secret Suspect” on May 31, but when no arrests were made and no official comments were forthcoming, the summer heat seemed to deflate that story. The summer heat had deflated every story. There was little talk of the investigation at all.
Darby didn’t come by the shop like she’d told him to do, but once she found a bunch of yellow flowers in her wagon and another time a big brass button with St. Christopher stamped on the surface. A thin book of poems by Emily Dickinson was there another day. She ran her hands over the leather cover, but the volume was new, and she felt nothing but the brush of a bookseller’s hands. Still, she had no doubt the items were from him.
Unemployment rose. Minimum wage rose too, though no one was working, so it was mostly a useless gesture. Dani was weary of useless gestures. Problems didn’t get solved, they just got covered up, repackaged, or shoved to the side.
Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia with a large population of “ethnic Germans,” be annexed, and the local Czech newspaper shared arguments for and against it, though Dani wasn’t sure anyone really cared all that much. It was too far away, and they were Americans now, with American concerns.
“They will give it to him,” Zuzana said. “No one wants war. So they will give it to him. And he will just keep taking and taking. You mark my words. You can’t appease tyrants. You have to defeat them.”
“We appease you every day, Zu,” Lenka had scoffed.
But Zuzana’s words struck a chord with Dani. With Michael’s sudden departure, she’d been distracted by her own misery and hardly thought about the consequences of what had occurred. She had no doubt about what she’d seen and felt on Francis Sweeney’s coat.
Michael had believed her. Eliot Ness too. But nothing had been done to hold the man accountable. Maybe nothing could be done. But why would he stop? If no one defeated him . . . why would he stop?
Malone was assigned to undercover detail at US Steel. He worked in a mill in coveralls and a cap, getting a firsthand look at the capacity and the conditions of the place. It had recently received an influx of money that didn’t seem to be making it into production or the workers’ pockets. It was going into someone’s pockets, and Irey had a fair idea whose, but the strategy was not to prosecute—that took too long—but to plug the hole and get rid of the problem.