“I don’t know. Maybe . . . because I can. It’s hard to care if you don’t know someone.”
“And you know them?”
“I know them as well as they will ever be known.” She shrugged.
That silenced him. In fact, it almost stopped him in his tracks. How very sad that was, to be unknown.
“I will come with you when I can,” he offered, surprising himself. Surprising her.
“You will?” she gasped. “Why? Today you already volunteered to be my new shoveler. Now you’re going to do dead duty with me?”
“Dead duty. It’s got a ring to it.”
She shook her head, incredulous. For once the tables were turned.
“So your aunts know where you go with your wagon and your bags of clothes?” he confirmed, changing the subject.
“Of course, though they’ve never set foot in the place.”
“And they say nothing?”
“Oh, they say plenty.”
He almost chuckled at that. He just bet they did. “That was the strangest experience I’ve ever had, and I used to know Al Capone,” he said.
“You will have to tell me all about that,” she said, but he wondered again how much she knew. He found that did not bother him like it should.
Something had shifted in him. He’d given dignity to those who had nothing. He’d hated every minute of it, but he’d liked it too. He liked the way he’d felt watching Dani attend to those who had, most likely, rarely been cared for. Those who could never thank her for the service rendered. He had liked helping her. And he had liked being with her.
He liked her.
8
Two weeks after the storm, Malone walked through the neighborhood near Sweeney, just off of East Fifty-Fifth where Jackass Hill sloped down into Kingsbury Run. He didn’t talk to anyone or duck into the bars as he’d been doing since he’d arrived in January.
He’d been to all the haunts and hangouts of the rougher crowd and the working-class toughs, starting with every joint in the vicinity of the Run and in the neighborhoods known as the Flats. There were a bunch of them. And he’d been making lists.
Most nights he sat alone nursing a beer while he kept his ears and eyes open. He’d heard a few mentions of the Butcher, a few theories, but without a recent murder, folks weren’t talking about it as much as they might have. He’d been propositioned a few times, threatened a few more, but so far he’d managed to make it back home every time without a tail or a tumble.
He was starting to know downtown Cleveland far better than he’d ever wanted to, yet he hadn’t managed to make much progress. Everything he did felt redundant, like waiting for a mouse to scurry across the floor when thousands lived in the walls. Then again . . . he was only hunting one mouse, and it was often the smallest crumbs that lured them out.
He needed a closer look at where the first two victims were found. He had the pictures and the reports and a description of the location, but without going there himself, he had nothing but secondhand impressions and, in many cases, third-rate accounts.
It wasn’t a nice neighborhood. Dogs and cats and children ran loose. He didn’t want to think about the rats. He was reluctant to judge, but first impressions were that everyone was hanging on by their fingernails. No one made eye contact, but he could feel their gazes skitter off his back and down to his shoes. Shoes said a lot about a man. Did he work? Did he walk? Did he take the time to shine them up? And if he did, he didn’t belong in the Run. He was wearing his spectators, the white-and-black paneled shoes that dressed up a suit and drew the eyes away from a man’s face. Malone liked that and utilized clothes like a costume director. Wear the right clothes, and you could go anywhere, no questions.
He wasn’t wearing the right clothes today. He’d been expecting to meet Ness and remain in the car. But Eliot hadn’t shown—something must have come up—and Malone had set out on foot as he tended to do. The way he was dressed now, folks might remember him, or worse, corner him in an alley and shake him down.
He went back the way he’d come and turned north on Fifty-Fifth and went another block to Praha and turned west again until he reached Forty-Ninth. If memory served, it was the base of Forty-Ninth, near the Shaker Heights tracks, where Edward Andrassy and the second victim, still only known as Victim #2, were discovered by boys chasing after their ball. The ground was frozen, but again, he wasn’t dressed right for a scavenge, and he surveyed the rather steep slope. There were no shadows. The day was too grim and shadows required sunlight. The reports and the newspapers had all marveled at the brazen act of the killer, “arranging his kills for all to see,” but it was a fairly desolate patch bordered by a few homes, with tracks and trees spread across it. At night, the killer would stand little risk of being seen.