Butcher's dozen en-2

by Max Allan Collins

  "If such a workshop exists," Curry said thoughtfully, "we should be able to find and identify it."

  "How do we do that, exactly?" Merlo said. "You can't see this lab or workshop or whatever from the outside-and there are hundreds upon hundreds of buildings in that area. Homes, shacks, industrial buildings, warehouses, butcher shops…"

  "You go inside," Ness said.

  "Without search warrants?" Merlo asked.

  Ness smiled smugly. "Have you forgotten I'm in charge of the fire department, as well as the police? That's a rundown ratty section of town-I think it would be prudent to send fire wardens down there to check for building violations. Don't you?"

  Merlo began to smile, too. "Yes. Yes. Very good, Mr. Ness."

  "Something simple that we can do," Ness said, "is place advertisements and posters around the city asking for information-particularly the discovery of any large quantity of blood."

  "That's been done to death," Wild said disgustedly.

  "Not in forty-four languages it hasn't, which is what I'm having worked up. We're a city of just under a million people, Mr. Wild, of which seventy percent are foreign born or the sons and daughters of at least one foreign-born parent."

  Chamberlin smiled, and so, finally, did Merlo. Curry looked intense. Wild just smirked, sitting in a cloud of Lucky smoke.

  Merlo said, "These are good ideas, Director Ness. But I keep coming back to a basic limitation. Take our most recent victim-the fellow who floated by that bridge the other day, like a human jigsaw puzzle we had to try and put together. Even with his hands turning up, we haven't been, able to I.D. him. In a murder case, you talk to the friends, you talk to the relatives. But how can you get a lead when you don't know who the hell's murder it is you're trying to solve?"

  Ness pointed a finger at the rumpled detective, as if accusing him. "You've hit it on the head. We have to go back to square one. We have to concentrate on the victims we've identified."

  "Andrassy and Polillo," Merlo said. Then he sighed. "But we've been over and over that."

  "Not lately," Ness said. "Subsequent murders have a way of taking precedence. Let's start back at Jackass Hill. What do we know about Edward Andrassy?"

  Merlo said, without checking any notes, "Well, he lived with his parents on the near West Side. Rooming-house neighborhood. Police record as a drunk, petty brawler, jailed once for carrying a gun. He worked at several hospitals as an orderly, had medical books on gynecology and some of those nudist magazines in his room. He was seen in various saloons with various women, but was known to pick up men, too. He was a minor-league con man-sold toilet articles, peddled aphrodisiacs. The oddest incident we came across was when Andrassy told a friend of his, who'd complained that he and his wife hadn't been able to have a child, that he, Andrassy, was a 'female' doctor. Andrassy offered to examine the wife, and the friend agreed. During the 'exam,' Andrassy committed sodomy on her, with the husband in the room."

  "It's like something out of Krafft-Ebing," Ness said, filling the room's shocked silence, shaking his head.

  "Who?" Wild asked.

  Ness said to Merlo, "You've talked to Andrassy's various girlfriends and boyfriends, obviously?"

  "They all check out," Merlo said glumly. "Though we got the runaround from time to time-not all of them are nuts about cooperating with cops."

  "That's the problem that runs throughout this case," Ness said with a tight, humorless smile. "We're dealing with vagrants and perverts and petty criminals-none of whom are terribly civic-minded."

  Curry said, "But it's their own kind who are being struck down."

  "They're individualists," Ness said. "They all think they can take care of themselves. We're the enemy."

  Ness buzzed for Wanda, who brought the men coffee; Ness joined them at the conference table and they probed various aspects of the Andrassy killing.

  "If Andrassy was an orderly," Chamberlin said, "he may well have met his eventual murderer at one of those hospitals-a doctor or an intern."

  "We've checked," Merlo said, wearily matter-of-fact. "And double-checked."

  "Tell us about the second victim to be I.D.'ed," Ness said. "Tell us what we know about Florence Polillo."

  "Well," Merlo said, again without checking notes of any kind, "she lived in a rooming house at Thirty-two oh five Carnegie Avenue. She paid her rent by relief checks; her landlady reported she was no trouble, other than getting pesky when she drank, which was often. She'd apparently been sterilized in a botched abortion years ago and was all sentimental about children-she played with her landlady's kids and let them use her dolls. She had a big collection of dolls."

  Curry said, "She sounds a little nicer than Andrassy."

  "Who doesn't?" Merlo said. "But she was, to put it bluntly, a fat, drunken whore. Frequent arrests for street soliciting. She left behind a notebook of addresses, mostly relatives. We talked to taxi drivers, tavern pals, and so on, but got nowhere."

  "You had one good suspect, though," Ness prompted.

  "Well, yes," Merlo said. "'One-Armed Willie.' A bogus beggar. She lived with him for a while-not long before she got it. They used to hang around together at a seedy saloon near Central and Twentieth. They fought, over what we couldn't ascertain, and he's supposed to have threatened to 'cut her up in little pieces.' Thought we had a live one, but when we looked into it, Willie seemed innocent-of murder that is."

  "Those are the two killings we're going to work," Ness said. "Andrassy and Polillo."

  Merlo looked frustrated.

  "And I want specifically to explore the angle that Andrassy and Polillo may have been acquainted. If we can prove that, if we can show that the Butcher is working the same 'social circle,' if you will, gaining their confidence and slaying them, one by one, we may be on our way to nailing him."

  Merlo's eyes narrowed; grudgingly, he nodded his head.

  "What I want you to do," Ness said to Merlo, "is work with the fire wardens in the search for the lab, as well as do follow-up interviews on all the upstanding citizens involved in the Andrassy and Polillo cases. Relatives and such."

  "What about those citizens who aren't so upstanding?" Merlo asked. "Hobos and barflies?"

  "That's not your department." Ness walked over to Curry and said, "Find yourself some smelly, dirty old clothes and lose your razor. You're going undercover."

  Curry's eyes were wide. "In shantytown?"

  "Exactly. Cops grilling the denizens of that community does no good at all."

  "Like pissing in the wind," Wild said.

  "Who's going with him?" Merlo asked.

  "Nobody," Ness said.

  Chamberlin spoke up. "But isn't it standard procedure for detectives to work in pairs?"

  "Yes." Ness looked at Curry. "And that's why you're going in alone. Or almost alone-you'll wear a thirty-eight in an ankle holster. You'll work both settlements-the one at Commerce and Canal, and the one near the Thirty-seventh Street Bridge."

  Curry raised his eyebrows, let out some air, and put the eyebrows back down. "Whatever you say, Chief."

  "I want you to take a blackjack and a sharp jackknife, as well."

  "No argument," Curry said.

  Ness sipped his coffee. "I'll be going undercover myself," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm going to canvass the saloons around Kingsbury Run, and in the Flats."

  "You'll risk being recognized," Merlo said. "You've had a lot of press."

  "Thanks to me," Wild said.

  "I'm a very ordinary-looking fella," Ness said with a wicked little smile. "And with some stubble on my face, and in some ratty old overalls, I'll just be another guy bellying up to the bar."

  "Are you going alone, too?" Wild said.

  "No," Ness said. "You're going with me."

  "Oh," said Wild, flatly. Then with his usual archness: "Whatever you say… just don't expect me to call you 'Chief.'"

  Ness turned back to Merlo. "Do we have a shot at identifying any of the other victims?"

  "I thought we had a
shot at the colored woman," Merlo said, "whose bones were found under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge."

  "Her bones, including her bridgework," Ness said, nodding. "You've been checking with dentists?"

  "Yes. Everyone in the city."

  "How many colored dentists are there in Cleveland?"

  "Two. We've checked them both."

  "She should be there. She should be in their records."

  "I know," Merlo said, shrugging, frustrated. "She isn't."

  Again Ness pointed at Merlo, his finger a gun. "Get a list of all the colored dentists in the state. There can't be too many. Approach them all. If that doesn't work, go national."

  "It's a thought," Merlo granted him. "You know, there was a third colored dentist in town, but he died two years ago."_

  "Do his records exist?"

  "Listings of patients, yes. X-rays and dental charts, no. They were transferred to other dentists."

  Ness thought. "Tell you what. Take those patient listings and check them against any colored women whose names turn up on the local Missing Persons Bureau sheets. If you get a match, you may have our girl."

  "That's a damned good idea," Merlo admitted. "But without dental records…"

  "A relative may be able to identify the bridgework. I could identify my mother's bridgework at fifty paces."

  Merlo shrugged, smiled humorlessly, said, "I'll give it a try. If we dead-end there?"

  "We try something else." Ness turned back to Curry. "I want to be frank with you, Albert. I'm not sending you into shantytown just because you're a good investigator, which you are. And I certainly want you to worm your way into that sorry community and ingratiate yourself into some information. But I've also chosen you for this because, well… you may make a good Butcher bait."

  "Butcher bait?" Curry said.

  "Our man is homosexual, or bisexual, or… something. You may look good to him."

  "Swell," Curry said.

  "You'll need to be very careful. Trust no one, except your gun, blackjack, and knife. We have here, remember, a murderer who emasculated three of his male victims, while dismembering two of the female victims in such a way that the pelvic region remained attached to the upper thighs- fairly framing the victims vulva. He has sex with both sexes, possibly after killing them."

  Curry's face was white. "Mr. Ness, how can you discuss this so calmly?"

  "Because it's the only way such things can be discussed."

  Curry looked very white. "I… I don't know how we go about this, finding a madman. You're dealing with this like it's… a normal case. But he's a fiend… he's inhuman…"

  "No," Ness said. "That's the awful part. He's as human as any of us. If he were a monster, we could pick him right out of the crowd. But we have an intelligent, possibly charming murderer who fits right in. Who may lead a perfectly normal life, except in this one little area."

  "Having sex with the dead, you mean," Wild said with a sick smirk.

  "What happens to the dead doesn't concern me," Ness said. "What I'm interested in, what we all are interested in, is the living-and keeping them that way."

  "He should be killed," Curry said.

  "He should be stopped," Ness said. "He's the Butcher, remember-we're the police."

  CHAPTER 7

  Sheriff's deputy Bob McFarlin, though on duty, was out of uniform. His clothing-a light blue workshirt and baggy brown pants-wasn't frayed, nor (other than sweat circles) did it look worked in; this alone separated him from the rest of the clientele in the nameless tavern near Central and Twentieth. Bob was having a beer because he figured he deserved one; it wasn't the first beer of a long day, either, and probably not the last. He had, in fact, been deserving-and rewarding himself-beers right along.

  A big man with a doughy face in which small, sleepy sky-blue eyes hid, he slouched bearlike against the bar, a foot on the rail, looking nothing at all like a representative of the law. Which perhaps made sense, as Deputy McFarlin-despite his title and position-had very little to do with the law, other than frequently breaking it.

  He sipped his beer, lost in the bitter daze that he carried around with him much of the time; because as he slipped into his late fifties, he was definitely a man who felt life had given him the shaft.

  Just a year ago he had been a city cop, desk sergeant in the Fifteenth precinct, where business had been good. Plenty of gambling and girls, which meant plenty of graft for all the boys. But then that lousy fucking reform mayor came along, with his lousy fucking G-man safety director, and holy shit, if cops didn't start going to jail! Captains, no less. And suddenly Bob McFarlin figured taking his pension was better than waking up to an indictment one sunny day.

  Now he was reduced to this: just another bagman for the county sheriff.

  Who was a decent enough guy, O'Connell was, and being one of O'Connell's deputies would have been okay, back in the old days-a year and a half ago. But business these days was bad. The big gambling joints-the Harvard Club, the Thomas Club, and the rest-were shut down. That lousy fucking Ness wasn't content to play his goody two-shoes games inside the city limits-he had to go suck up to the county prosecutor, Cullitan, and line him up in this crime-busting shit!

  And Cullitan, goddamnit, was a Democrat! Mayor Burton ran a Republican administration. What was Cullitan thinking of? It made no sense to McFarlin. What was politics coming to? Fuck, it hardly paid being a cop anymore.

  Today, Monday, was McFarlin's day to make the rounds of the joints in the old Roaring Third precinct-only the roar was down to a dull one, these days. At least, thank God, the police crackdown hadn't yet found its way to the Flats and the other seedier working-class areas where little bookie joints and backroom card and crap games still thrived. Too small potatoes, McFarlin figured, and anyway, such operations tended to float.

  But the Mayfield Road mob saw to it that a piece of even the smallest action in the city-and the county-got into their pockets; and they managed this through the sheriff's office. So Deputy McFarlin was a bagman for the mob and the sheriff, though it was up to somebody else to see that the Mayfield Road gang got its share.

  Even in a sleazy little joint like this nameless hole, fifty bucks got coughed up weekly. After all, the weekend backroom poker game, three tables' worth, stirred up some profitable dust. Today McFarlin had hauled in better than six hundred bucks from the various payoffs from other bars, and handbooks, along the unsavory circuit he'd been working.

  He was not worried about being jackrolled. He had a shiv in his pocket, and a. 38 in his car, in the glove box where he stashed the money after each pickup. He kept the car locked up, parked in front of each collection spot. Nobody bothered it, or him. He was known on the streets he worked. Known as muscle for the sheriff and the mob.

  He looked sleepy-eyed and doughy-faced and beer-bellied, but he had killed men with his hands, and people around here knew it.

  It wouldn't have been such a bad dodge if the money were his to keep. But he was just the lousy goddamn bagman. He sipped his beer. He was glad this was the last stop. Late afternoon, and if he didn't shake a leg, he'd be tripping over the fake cripples and real perverts who swarmed around this smelly barrelhouse come evening.

  "One more, Bob?"

  McFarlin shook his head no to bullet-headed, cigar-smoking Steve, back of the bar, and was about to step away from the rail when a guy in shirtsleeves and a bow tie came in.

  Tall, rangy, with curly, dark-blond hair peeking out from under a straw fedora, the guy looked familiar to McFarlin. He had a sharp-featured, sarcastic face, his mouth sneering around the cigarette dangling there, jacket slung over his arm.

  He did not belong here. He looked clean and wore a seersucker suit. Guys who worked in steel mills did not wear seersucker suits, McFarlin knew-shrewd detective that he was.

  Even if he didn't belong here, the guy moved with an easy confidence. He ambled down toward McFarlin's end of the bar and filled the space between the deputy and a bored-looking, stubbly-faced, out-of-work w
orking stiff who'd been nursing the same beer for half an hour.

  Now McFarlin looked closer and saw that the tall man had a notebook and pencil in one hand.

  McFarlin said, "Another," and Steve nodded, looking with narrow eyes at the stranger in seersucker.

  When Steve brought the beer to McFarlin, the stranger spun a silver dollar on the bar. Everybody standing at the bar looked at it hungrily. When it stopped spinning and clattered to a standstill, the guy said, "Just a beer. Keep the change."

  Steve took the silver dollar, eyes narrowing even more. "Keep the change" was not something heard much in a joint like this.

  "My name is Sam Wild," the guy said when Steve brought the beer, and McFarlin recognized the name, or anyway, the byline. This guy was a reporter, with the Plain Dealer.

  "I'm a reporter," he said. "With the Plain Dealer."

  Steve looked at him blankly; his mouth was slack-it seemed a trick that the cigar didn't tumble out.

  "I wonder if you'd mind a few questions."

  Steve shrugged. He leaned back against the counter behind him. Found a dirty rag with which to polish a glass.

  "I understand Florence Polillo used to come in here."

  "That's right," Steve said. His voice was husky, but a little high-pitched.

  "What can you tell me about her?"

  "She don't come in here no more."

  The reporter grinned, drew on his cigarette. "I guess not. Getting hacked to pieces cuts down on a girl's social life."

  Steve polished the glass, getting it dirtier.

  "Was she hooking?"

  Steve said, "This is a reputable place mister."

  The reporter glanced around, smirking, taking in the sawdust and smoke. "What could I have been thinking of?" He dug for something in a pocket of the jacket folded over his arm.

  It was a mug shot, side and front photographs of a pleasant if vacant-looking, jug-eared young man.

  "Ever see this guy before?"

  Steve, without moving closer to have a good look, glanced at the photo the reporter was thrusting forward. He said, "No."