Butcher's dozen en-2

by Max Allan Collins

  He didn't like all this brandishing of guns; but he'd figured the conspicuous presence of firearms, in the hands of men who'd been warned to be anything but trigger-happy, would help keep order among the army of hobos whose camp they were about to invade. Only the plainclothesmen would carry guns: the uniformed cops would be threatening enough in badges and blue and nightsticks-on-belts.

  Ness broke the remaining men up into groups of five, putting Merlo in charge of one squad and Curry in charge of the other, and sent them off to the right and left, keeping four men with him.

  Several minutes crept by, of which Ness could feel every slow second. The blackness below seemed to have swallowed the men without so much as a belch. Ness waited. He brought the hand with the gun in it up near his face and chewed a hangnail on his thumb.

  Then a flicker-on and off, on and off-signaled one man was in place.

  More flashlight flickers followed, down in the darkness, like so many oversize fireflies, signaling that the rest of Chamberlin's men were in place as well.

  Ness thumbed on his massive flashlight and swept a beam across the area below in one broad swing, signaling those guarding key positions down there, and those waiting up top, that he was about to move in.

  And move in he did, the other raiders moving with him, rushing through the darkness and the brush and the wild trees, sliding, stumbling, tumbling at times. As they reached the outskirts of the sleeping shantytown, barking dogs announcing the raiders' impending arrival, Ness swung his flashlight arcing through the night behind him in another signal.

  A blaze of white light banished the darkness and left the shabby village naked in its glare. A giant searchlight mounted on the fire truck above swung its beam slowly across the landscape, as if giving the hillside hovels a collective third degree.

  Cats scurried away, screeching, but dogs held their ground and howled.

  So did their masters.

  "Goddamnit!"

  "What the fuck-"

  "What in the name of God are you-"

  "Sons of bitches!"

  Those outraged occupants who rushed out of shacks in protest and surprise were grabbed and cuffed by uniformed cops. The charge was vagrancy, and basic personal information, mostly just names, was quickly taken down; as per Ness's instructions, each bum was tagged with a number, and the shack that bum belonged to was tagged with the same number. Then the alleged vagrant was dragged up the hill and tossed in a waiting Black Maria. Once a uniformed cop had deposited a 'bo in the back of one of the vans, said cop would head back down the hillside and repeat the process.

  Other doors required kicking in, much of which was done by Ness himself; if he seemed to have knack for it, he certainly took no pleasure in it on this raid.

  Gun in hand, Ness would kick in a makeshift card-board-tin-and-wood door and throw the flashlight beam into the eyes of a just-awakened man, blotting out the man's face with light, jerking him from his sleep on his bed made of boards atop battered steel drums, and a cop would rush in and grab the guy, yanking him out of the security of his packing-crate home.

  Those whose slumber was a drunken one sometimes required carrying out; one heavyset, bad-smelling 'bo took two cops to hoist him, like a sandbag, up the hill.

  There were a few women and children. Not many. They were treated gently, though one woman screamed and kicked worse than any two of the men. She outswore them, too. The kids were quiet, scrawny things. One of the plainclothesmen present, Gold, was with the juvenile bureau, and he took charge of the ragamuffins.

  It sickened and saddened Ness to see how these poor bastards lived. These men weren't criminals, not in the sense that he considered a man a criminal.

  What was criminal here was not the shantytowns inhabitants, but that such a town needed to exist; what was evil was men somehow becoming faceless noncitizens who could be preyed upon by a Butcher made anonymous by the very anonymity of his victims.

  The fire-truck searchlight continued its all-pervasive swing, casting dark shadows, making this ragged world seem unreal, here sharply white, there sharply black. A cacophony of screams, curses, barks, yowls, commands, provided a tuneless sort of background music. For better than an hour Ness moved across a landscape littered with refuse, some of it human, cops like garbage collectors of humanity hauling screaming men away. He felt like a man moving through a nightmare.

  "Eliot, jeez, look…"

  Ness turned quickly; saw the shovel blade coming and ducked.

  "… out!"

  It was Curry who yelled, and a massive, wild-eyed, bearded hobo who had swung the shovel; and he was still swinging it. It cut the air, slashing, swooshing.

  Ness, still dropped in a crouch, kicked a foot out and up and caught the man in the stomach; doubling him over.

  The 'bo was groaning on the ground when Curry cuffed him, kicking the shovel away.

  "I'll get him out of here," Curry said.

  "Don't forget to tag him, and his home," Ness said, standing, brushing himself off.

  Curry nodded.

  Ness returned to kicking down doors; nearly another hour passed. Now and then a siren would rend the night, as a filled Black Maria would head back to Central head-quarters.

  Merlo came over; he looked like a ghost. A tired one.

  "We've rounded 'em all up," he said. "Thirty-nine of 'em."

  "Good," Ness said, tucking his revolver in its shoulder holster and glad to do so. "Link up with Bob Chamberlin and have him turn over his men to you. It's going to be a long morning."

  "And it's not even dawn yet," Merlo said with a sorrowful roll of his eyes.

  Ness intended to have the detectives begin grilling the vagrants immediately and at length, at Central headquarters. Each one of them would be questioned regarding the torso slayings-sorting out the suspects from the witnesses, gathering whatever information about the Butcher these men might have.

  As Merlo was leaving, Ness called out, "I want them all fingerprinted! Make sure."

  Merlo turned and a confused look crossed his face. "But we don't have any fingerprints to compare them with," Merlo said. "The Butcher's never left us anything to…"

  A few last vagrants were still in the process of getting tagged and having basic information taken down.

  Ness walked to Merlo and spoke softly. "That's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of the future."

  "The furture?"

  "Future victim identification."

  Merlo's smile was mirthless; he said with grim admiration, "You are a detective, Mr. Ness," and went off up the hill.

  Ness called Chamberlin over and said, "Round up your men. It's time to make the trek down to the other settlement."

  "Are you coming?"

  "No. I'll keep Curry and half a dozen others here. We're going to sort through the shacks for evidence. Now, keep the procedure identical, Bob-I want every vagrant and his shack tagged. Once you've emptied the settlement of its squatters and had them hauled away, then search the shacks, bagging up any possible evidence or personal belongings."

  "And tagging that with the same number," Chamberlin said, nodding. "Right. Do you really expect to find the Butcher among these fellows?"

  Ness lifted his eyebrows in a facial shrug. "It's possible. If we can find a ringer… somebody who doesn't belong here among them.. some rich guy slumming… we may have our Butcher."

  "An undercover maniac," Chamberlin said. He glanced at the clustered huts around them. "But there's no place here that our friend could be keeping the bodies of his victims for months on end."

  "Yes, precious few refrigerators in these modern homes," Ness noted wryly. "Even if he's been living here, he has to have some other place to store the bodies… and do whatever else he does to them."

  Chamberlin's tiny black mustache twitched in a moment of disgust. Then, matter-of-factly, he said, "Well, we know for sure those cardboard boxes in the dump, with the human bones in them, came from the Central Market area. There's no doubt of that." He made a clicking so
und. "I think this raid was needed."

  "It was time," Ness nodded.

  Chamberlin, with his customary precision and speed, gathered his men and left.

  Soon, with the exception of the fire truck, its search light still shining, most of the vehicles had moved out. The Black Marias were already gone; they would deposit their human cargo and meet up with Chamberlin at the Thirty-fifty Street Bridge.

  Ness, Curry, and several other men went through the shacks; it was a pathetically easy job. There were few possessions, and nothing resembling evidence at all, with the exception of a few cardboard boxes from the Market area, which were tagged and kept.

  When the job was done, Ness went up to his car and radioed for several more fully manned fire trucks.

  As he waited for them to arrive, he noticed that Curry was down amongst the shacks, wandering, hands in pockets, looking glum, like a lone performer caught in the spotlight of the huge searchlight, which was stationary now, no longer probing.

  Ness worked his way back down the hill.

  "What's wrong?" he asked Curry, walking alongside the restless young detective.

  "Wrong?"

  "You seem… out of sorts."

  Curry shrugged. Then he shook his head. " It's wrong."

  "What is?"

  "What we did here. These people live here."

  "I know that."

  "I know it doesn't look like much… it isn't much… but it was home to these people."

  Ness put a hand on the detectives shoulder. "Albert, I know you lived with these people for a while. So it's understandable, how you feel. But don't forget we're helping get them out of harm's way."

  "I know," he sighed, shaking his head. "What you said earlier made sense."

  What Ness said earlier, in the briefing, was: "The removal of the vagrants is for their own protection since, should they remain here, they might well become victims of the Butcher." But Ness knew the reality was many of them would stay in the Flats, in the Third precinct-somehow, somewhere-and would remain the Butcher's meat.

  Curry was saying, "This effort should help us nail the Butcher. Maybe we nailed him here tonight. Maybe he's being questioned at Central headquarters this very minute."

  "It's possible," Ness said.

  Curry's youthful features contorted. "But what do they do now? Or anyway, after we spring 'em loose? Where do the poor devils go?"

  "They're going to have a choice," Ness said. "We're offering one-way train tickets out of town-Mayor Burton got me the money for that this afternoon. Or they can have their cases turned over to the Relief Department, and with a little luck wind up with a CCC or WPA job."

  Curry nodded. Sighed heavily. "Yeah. Maybe this'll help some of 'em get back on their feet, at that. Still…

  "I know, Albert. Look, why don't you go on home. Get some sleep."

  "What about all the questioning we're supposed to do?"

  "I've got the vagrants covered. I don't need you. I need you on that other suspect."

  "The one you got the tip on? You think he's a good prospect?"

  "Reliable source," Ness said. "We're doing a thorough investigation of the guy, soon as we've got this raid behind us, but in the meantime, you keep him under surveillance."

  "Starting when?"

  "Starting when you wake up about noon after going home and getting some sleep. Get going. Right now."

  Curry nodded, smiled wearily. "Okay, Chief. Soon as we're done here."

  "We're done. Take the car. The fire department will give me a ride."

  Curry nodded again and trudged up the hill. He looked back a couple of times at the deserted city of huts, frozen in the searchlight's now-motionless glare.

  And now Ness wandered the ghost shantytown, feeling as melancholy as Curry.

  It was still dark when, atop the hill, fire engines pulled up, five of them, manned to the hilt. Ness went up and gave instructions all around.

  Two companies under Battalion Chief Reece dragged the tin-wood-and-cardboard shacks to the very bottom of the hill, some of the structures disassembling on the way, trailing pieces of themselves. The firemen gathered all of the pieces and tossed them on the pile, poured on coal oil, and torched the whole shebang.

  Fingers of flame clawed the air; burning wood crackled and snapped. Soon the sound built to a roar, and the flames to a conflagration-albeit a controlled one. The night turned orange.

  Ness stood staring down into what he'd wrought.

  The fire was so bright, Ness barely noticed dawn. A cloud of gray smoke hovered over Kingsbury Run. On-lookers began to gather at the top of the hill.

  "Just like Anacostia," a middle-aged, stubble-cheeked man in a workshirt said to himself. Hands in his pockets, eyes glazed. He was standing next to Ness.

  "Anacostia?" Ness asked.

  The man glanced at Ness's suit and tie and smiled knowingly, said, "You don't look like you was in the Bonus Army."

  "I wasn't," Ness said.

  "The big boys burned that Hooverville, too," the man said expressionlessly, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  CHAPTER 17

  On Thursday, just after noon, Sam Wild sat at a small white-metal triangular table under a colorful umbrella and waited for Vivian Chalmers. The little outdoor cafe in the shadow of Terminal Tower was doing a brisk business; and the predominant topic of conversation here, and elsewhere in Cleveland for that matter, was the burning of shantytown.

  Most folks appeared pleased that the city's worst eyesore had been removed, but others were annoyed at the rashness of the safety director's action. The sky was clear now, but all morning a gray smoke-cloud had hung over Kingsbury Run and drifted over downtown Cleveland as well. In the areas bordering the Run in the early morning hours, people awakened by the noise and/or glare ran to windows and thought the city was on fire. Telephones at police headquarters and at the local papers had rung off the hook.

  As for Sam Wild, he was pissed off.

  Specifically, he was pissed off at Eliot Ness, whose ass he wanted to chew out, the way his own ass had been chewed out all morning by his city editor. It really steamed him, thinking about all those coy remarks of Eliot's about private parties and bums and cops, at the country club last night…

  As yet today, though, Wild hadn't been able to see the safety director, who was still burrowed in at Central headquarters questioning the dozens of vagrants pulled in on the two shantytown raids.

  Vivian breezed in around twelve-fifteen. She was smiling and looked girlishly fresh; but something off-kilter lurked in the jade eyes, and her usually smooth brow was creased. She wore a pale orange dress; she sat, crossing her pretty brown legs.

  "Thanks for meeting me," Vivian said.

  "My pleasure."

  "Speaking of which… about the other night…"

  Wild waved it off, saying, "We were both a little drunk. Forget it." Then he grinned at her. "Just don't ask me to."

  They were served lemonade and little ham-and-cheese and lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off the toasted bread. He wondered if there was a story in the missing crusts; he could use a scoop right now.

  She smiled as she nibbled her sandwich.

  "Looks like Eliot was a busy boy last night," she said.

  "Yeah, right," Wild said disgustedly.

  "Don't you approve of his actions?"

  "Hell, I could care less about makin' the homeless homeless," Wild said, biting off half a sandwich.

  "You sound cruel, Mr. Wild."

  "Guys like that are used to life dealing 'em a lousy hand. Anyway, don't kid yourself-most bums were bums before there was a depression."

  "Then why are you so put out with our mutual friend?"

  " 'Our mutual friend' screwed me, if you'll pardon my French. He didn't invite me along on that little hayride and that put my ass in a sling with my city editor. Me, who's supposed to be his right-hand man."

  "Well, you work for the Plain Dealer, not the safety director's office.
"

  "True. But Eliot knows that he's my only assignment. When he goes out on something this big, I got to get a piece of it."

  She smiled to herself. Sighed. "He does have a selfish streak, our Mr. Ness."

  "Our Mr. Ness sees things one way: his."

  She rolled her eyes like Eddie Cantor. "You're telling me."

  "Why do I have the feeling Eliot gave you the short end of the stick, too? And why do I have the feeling that's what you wanted to talk about today?"

  She smiled impishly. "Because he did, and I do. Want to talk about it, that is."

  He smiled at her shrewdly; tapped the air with a forefinger. "It's that 'something big' you mentioned last night, isn't it? The information you gave Eliot yesterday that he just 'shrugged off,' I think you said."

  "My. You're very perceptive, Mr. Wild."

  "I'm a reporter, and flattery will only get you the key to my apartment."

  "Really?"

  "Lady, the only thing I'd like more out of life than being city editor myself someday is marrying a beautiful heiress."

  That seemed to amuse and please her. "Is that right? And I qualify?"

  "Well, as soon as you fall head-over-heels over me you will. Didn't you see It Happened One Night? You're perfect for the Claudette Colbert role."

  "Gee," she said mock wistfully, "I'm usually told I'm the Carole Lombard type. As for you, you look about as much like Clark Gable as our waiter."

  "Actually," Wild said, "I thought our waiter looked a little like Carole Lombard."

  She laughed, sipped her lemonade. "If we're going to go on with this giddy repartee, we'd better move to a bar so we have alcohol as an excuse."

  "Vivian-"

  "Viv."

  "Viv, I like you. You're a good kid, for a rich girl. But sometimes I get the feeling… hell. I don't know how to say this without spoiling a beautiful friendship."

  "Sam, say what you think. As if you didn't always."

  "Last night was… well, it was last night. Only here it is today, and you still seem interested in me. Now, maybe you got a yen for impoverished newshounds, I dunno; I realize, of course, I have this striking resemblance to Clark Gable that attracts you wildly. But we don't exactly come from the same worlds. In fact, we only got one thing in common."