BUTCHER'S DOZEN (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  He had met many homeless men, any of whom might be the Butcher, none of whom struck him as such. Some of them were down-and-out and others seemed taken by wanderlust. They were as young as eighteen and as old as seventy; there were a few families, women putting the wash out on makeshift lines, a few raggedy kids wandering about, though mostly the community had seemed male.

  What was troubling Curry was something vague, something he couldn't put his finger on. Perhaps it was the lack of structure, which meant so much to a career cop like Curry. Meals seemed to happen now and then, time blurred meaninglessly, men came and went, without a hello, without a good-bye.

  Or maybe it was that these men seemed to live in a different world, with its own ways, its own values. They were cleaner than he had imagined, many of them; there was less drinking; some of the men read papers, books, magazines—there was political talk, Red-tinged mostly, predictably. Bums were chased out when they appeared— shantytown welcomed hobos and tramps only. The hobos, he had soon discovered, were migratory workers; his cover story, of coming up from Florida having picked oranges, put him safely in that category. Tramps, it seemed, were migrants who occasionally worked—odd jobs and such— but did a lot of back-door begging at homes and restaurants. Bums were skid-row refuse to be disdained.

  That was why the hobos and tramps were cleaner, better kept, than he'd imagined they'd be: you had to be clean to get that job; you had to be clean to mooch that meal.

  He wheeled the sedan gently off Bessemer Avenue onto a dirt road, which wound behind the Ferro Foundry to a dump. He stopped beside a delapidated, deserted brick building, its windows dark and many of them broken-out. He locked and left the car here and began to walk, bedroll on his back. In front of him were flatcars; to the right, a sheer drop-off into that dark, stagnant pool, gurgling down there like a drowning man.

  He found the least-steep place and made his way down to the banks of the foul pool where one victims parts (some of them) had turned up; the moon and lights from a nearby viaduct were silver on the water's greasy surface. The pool was separated from the railroad tracks by a narrow strip, thick with sumac bushes, though a footpath of sorts was there. He took it.

  Branches reached out for him as he felt his way along. A breeze rustled the bushes, which he began to imagine hid the Butcher himself, and why not? This was the Run, after all, the Headhunter's stomping grounds. . . .

  Curry reached into his pocket and gripped his jack-knife, the blade of which was open. He'd rather have been holding a flashlight, though—it would've made his journey simpler—but he didn't figure a hobo would carry one of those. Did the Butcher?

  He could hear his own heart beating as he pushed branches out of the way, but after a time the scrub trees and brush let up somewhat, and he found himself in a clearing. And in the clearing, draped in shadows and the cool gray-blue of the cloud-filtered moonlight, was the shantytown.

  The shantytown at Commerce and Canal had been crowded in upon itself; this one, though, with perhaps a few shanties less than the thirty-some at the other settlement, seemed larger. It sprawled across the level ground of the gully and began crawling up the embankment. Shacks and lean-tos, sagging like the backs of old men, had some breathing room here—though why anyone would want to breathe this sewer-tainted air, Curry couldn't fathom. Corrugated metal, broken boards, packing crates, provided walls for the hovels; tar paper on roofs was kept in place with stones or chunks of cement. The ground was carpeted with straw and chicken feathers and charred tin cans and discarded rubbing-alcohol bottles.

  Several fires were going, with men clustered near them, but not huddling close to the flames; while it was cool, it wasn't cold, and the fires were presumably to keep the bugs away. And the Butcher perhaps. In fact, many of the men here were not sleeping in their shacks; they were stretched out under the stars, using their shoes for a pillow, and now and then a raggedy-ass pet dog slept near its raggedy-ass master. It was a lifeless scene, frozen, like something in a mural. Even when the streetcar-like Rapid Transit trains went roaring by on the nearby tracks, spitting sparks, nothing stirred. The gulley floor might have been a battlefield where corpses were strewn.

  Curry approached one of the fires where three men sprawled, leaning back on bedrolls, enjoying the quiet night—quiet but for the rattle and roar of the periodic Rapid Transit trains.

  "Mind if I join you, gents?" Curry asked. He smiled mildly, not wanting to come on too strong.

  Two of the men shrugged casually, while their eyes studied him. The other man, a heavyset, white-bearded hobo in his late fifties or early sixties, said, "Sit yourself down, son."

  Curry placed his bedroll on the ground and sat with his back braced against it.

  "There's a couple shacks standing empty," the old man said, pointing. "You can claim one if you like."

  "What happened to the former tenants?" Curry asked.

  "Spooked by the Butcher," said one of the other men, a tall, thin man in his late thirties maybe, who'd shaved within the last several days. He wore a plaid shirt and his hair was light.

  "Lot of that going around?" Curry said.

  "Some."

  The old man said, "I'm not afraid of this goddamn Butcher. Killings nothing new to this ol' life."

  "How do you mean?" Curry asked.

  The old man snorted a laugh; he plucked a corncob pipe out of his shirt pocket and stuffed a couple cigarette butts in and lighted it up, "Shootings, stabbings," he said. "I seen 'em all—over nothing, over some wisecrack, or at most a hijack ..."

  Curry had learned that "hijacking" down here meant robbing a fellow 'bo while he was sleeping. He had also learned that life on the road included frequent irrational, violent outbursts over insults, real or imagined.

  "Guys who been pickin' somewhere come in with a pocketful of cash, start flashing it around, pretty soon there's trouble. They get to drinking, then to fighting, and before long somebody's got a knife. A lot of people die in this ol' life, and nobody even keeps track of it. You're on your own here, son."

  It seemed death was commonplace in these parts.

  "So the Butcher doesn't frighten you," Curry said, "any more than anything else around here does."

  "Not many are all that spooked by this spook. Long as a person ain't a fool and goes walking alone in the Run—like you was doing."

  "I just hopped off a freight," Curry said.

  "I think he kills faggots and whores," said the third man, another gaunt individual, but a younger, not so well-shaven one. His eyes were bright, catching the reflection of the fire. "I think a real man's got nothing to fear."

  "That one guy was a sailor, they say," said the clean-shaven hobo.

  The bright-eyed one laughed derisively and said, "I never knew a sailor who didn't take it up the poop deck."

  "Gets lonely out at sea," the old man said philosophically. Then he looked at Curry carefully, saying, "Where you in from?"

  "Down Florida way," Curry said. "Picking fruit."

  "Long as there's fruit, there'll be 'bos to harvest it." The old man smiled; he didn't have all his teeth, and what he did have he wouldn't have forever. "You ain't been on the road long, have you, son?"

  "No," Curry said, smiling a little. "Does it show?"

  "A mite."

  Curry knew it showed more than a "mite," though he didn't know what to do about it. These men had earned the road-weary look they carried: eyes bloodshot from the dirt and cinders of riding the rails; leather-dry, sun-brown faces; callused hands.

  "You don't look like you been in Florida," said the younger one. "You're pale, like a baby's butt." There was no suspicion in his voice. It seemed merely an observation. He took a small waxed-paper bundle out of his breast pocket; it contained a sack of Bull Durham, rolling papers, and a book of matches.

  "The railroad dicks pulled me off a train in Georgia," Curry said smoothly. He'd used this story at the other shantytown and was starting to believe it himself. "Turned me over to the locals and they vagged m
e. I didn't see the sun in two weeks."

  "Cops get your grubstake?" the younger one asked, eyes narrowing.

  "No," Curry said, feeling a little wave of panic. Nobody had asked him that before.

  "The cops didn't take your dough?" the old man said, astounded. "What kind of cops was these?"

  "Well," Curry said, gesturing, improvising, "I had a hundred bucks, and I didn't want to travel with it. So I mailed it to a girlfriend of mine in West Virginia. I seen her the other day and picked it up."

  "And she didn't spend it?" the young one asked, eyes widening, as he rolled his cigarette.

  "She knew I'd beat the bejesus out of her if she did," Curry said with a wicked smile, proud of himself for coming up with this line of malarkey on such short notice.

  "Better be careful," the old man said, gesturing with his corncob pipe. "Moneys dangerous now, 'cause it's so short. You go flashing a roll around, round here, the jackrollers'll get ya, sure as I gotta take a shit."

  And with that, the old man got up and wandered off into the darkness to the designated spot, and Curry turned to the other two and said, "Now, it seems to me a guy wandering off to take a piss or a dump or what have you, in the middle of the night like this, is asking for trouble."

  "From that Butcher, you mean?" the clean-shaven one asked. He laughed shortly and waved the notion off. "Not tonight, anyway."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Got my reasons."

  "Such as?"

  "Maybe I know who he is."

  "You know who the Butcher is?"

  "Maybe."

  Curry tried not to let his anxiety show. "There's a big cash reward, you know."

  "Not for the likes of me," he said. He reached behind him and withdrew an unmarked bottle of clear fluid; rubbing alcohol, most likely. He swigged at it. Then he offered some to Curry and the young bright-eyed 'bo. Curry declined, but the other did not.

  "That burns," the bright-eyed one said, grinning, wiping off his mouth with the back of one hand.

  "I live for it," the clean-shaven one said. "Army did it to me. You drink or you go bughouse."

  "Were you in the war?' Curry asked.

  "Yes," he said, taking his bottle back from the kid. "They made a tramp outa me. Learned to live off what I could carry on my back. Learned I could live anywheres."

  Curry couldn't tell whether the man was spiteful or grateful, and he wasn't sure the man knew, either.

  Soon the old guy came back and sat back down against his bedroll. A Rapid Transit train went screeching by, sparking up the night.

  "Look at 'em," the old man said, "going to their fancy houses. Goin' nowhere!"

  "I'd like to be going there," said the bright-eyed one. "I had a good job once." He didn't say what it was.

  "They got no independence," said the old man, as if he felt sorry for the commuters heading out to ritzy Shaker Heights. "They own too much. It comes to own them. When the stock market crashed, my life didn't change. Long as I keep moving, something will turn up—another flop, another ride, another handout, another cigarette butt, another odd job."

  The bright-eyed kid studied the old man, his expression sober—perhaps he was contemplating the life ahead of him.

  The thought of one of his companions knowing the Butchers identity was gnawing at Curry.

  So he said to the old man, "This fella here says he knows who the Butcher is," and he gestured to the clean-shaven war vet.

  The old man shrugged, digging out more butts for his pipe. Not terribly interested.

  "If you know who he is," Curry said to the vet, "why don't you call the cops or something?"

  "The cops," the vet said, "work for the rich. Fuck 'em all, I say."

  "I seen the newspapers," the old man said, getting his pipe going again, "and the two corpses they put names to, neither of 'em is our people."

  "A faggot and a whore," said the vet.

  "But the other victims might be hobos," Curry said. ''The fact that they weren't identified—"

  "Look," said the clean-shaven one forcefully. "I know who the Butcher is, and he's moved on. I don't think we'll see him again.

  That seemed to satisfy the others—except for Curry, who was stewing in his own frustration, not being able to follow up harder on the matter without blowing his cover.

  "Think I'll sack out," the bright-eyed kid said suddenly, and he headed for a nearby shack, then disappeared inside. The clean-shaven war vet got up after a while, too, lugging his bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  That left only the old man. He smiled with patience and wisdom and bad teeth. He said, "Be careful tonight, son."

  Curry smiled back at him. "I thought you weren't worried about the Butcher."

  "I'm not. But watch yourself—there's thieves among us. Guys who are nice to your face, waiting till your back is to 'em."

  Curry nodded. "Thanks."

  "I'd sleep out in the open."

  "Well, actually, I'd rather have a roof over my head."

  "Up to you," the old man said, and began undoing his bedroll near the dwindling fire.

  Curry found a small, vacant shack; you could stand in it, but then you can also stand in a closet, which this was barely larger than. The "floor" was well-worn earth, and Curry unrolled his bedding—two blankets, which held an extra set of clothes, a tin cup, fork/knife/spoon, several pots, a frying pan, and a small, hard block of salt. He wrapped these items in one of the blankets and spread the other out like a tablecloth and placed himself on it like a meal he was serving up; he stuffed his shoes under the blanket as a pillow. The hard ground was uncomfortable, but he didn't mind. This shelter was more than he'd had at the other shantytown. He felt more secure here than he had there. He might even be able to drift asleep.

  The man was on top of him, the knife blade pressing against his throat.

  Curry's eyes snapped open; he didn't know if it was seconds later or hours. He only knew he was looking up into the clean-shaven face of the war vet who'd been so friendly at the fire. He only knew the point of a very sharp jackknife was poking him in the throat, right under the Adam's apple.

  "Give me your grubstake or I'll kill you," the man said.

  "I don't have any money," Curry said.

  "You been harvesting," he said, lip curling into a sneer, rubbing alcohol on his breath. "You got money. Hundred bucks, you said!"

  "Okay, okay. Take the knife away and I'll get it for you; it's in my shoes." He jerked a thumb at the lump behind his head.

  The vet pulled back, the blade eased off, and Curry's hand found the frying pan handle and he swung the thing and the guy saw it coming and pulled to one side, catching the impact on his arm. He howled and pitched to one side, no longer atop Curry, but the knife was still in his hand. Curry's hand dropped the frying pan and he fumbled at his pant leg, pulling it back to get at the little revolver in the ankle holster; but the guy was diving at him with the knife again so Curry ducked to one side and kicked, like Ness had showed him, jujitsu-style, and the guy went crashing through the side of the shanty. The little building caved in on Curry, who found himself flailing against the pieces of wood and cardboard and tar paper, a joker caught by a collapsing house of cards.

  By the time Curry had shaken himself free from the disassembling shanty, the war vet was running into the darkness of the Run, toward the train yard.

  The noise had roused a good deal of the shantytown populace, and the first one to approach Curry was the old man, who was again smiling. "I told you to be careful."

  "Damnit!" Curry said. "He got away!"

  "Good thing for him he did," the old man said, matter-of-factly. "Hijacks get whipped or kilt in a jungle, if they get ketched."

  "He came at me with a knife!"

  "Well, sure."

  "You don't understand ... he could be the Butcher."

  "No, I don't hardly think so," the old man said, taking Curry by the arm.

  "And why not?"

  "Remember how he said he knew who the Butche
r was?"

  "Right—and he was talking about himself!"

  "No, no, no. I know who he was talkin' about. Lot of us do."

  "You do?"

  "Sure. Who do you think told him? I can even show you where he lived."

  Now, Curry thought, I'm getting somewhere.

  "Where did lie live?" Curry asked.

  "He lived in a cave he carved out, just up the hill. Kind of a hermit type of tramp."

  Maybe, Curry thought, these days undercover have all been worth it . . . maybe I can hand Ness the Butcher on a platter.

  "But we don't have anything to worry about," the old man said. "He never bothered none of us. And besides, he seems to have lit out. Ain't seen him in days."

  "Do you know his name?"

  The Butcher's name!

  "Ben," the old man said. "He just went by 'Ben.'"

  CHAPTER 10

  Ness wore a gun, a Colt revolver, in a shoulder holster under the left arm of his tailored gray suit; he also wore a gray-and-white-speckled tie and a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. A snap-brim fedora shielded him from the Friday-afternoon sun, except possibly from its reflection in the fifty-cent shine of his shoes. He seemed out of place, standing before the run-down, two-story brick building on Central Avenue, like someone who'd taken a wrong turn from downtown, or better times. If he felt uneasy, however, his wardrobe had nothing to do with it: the gun did. He rarely carried one. Diplomacy was, after all, his preferred ammunition.

  Today his ammunition was thirty-eight caliber.

  Detective Albert Curry, also wearing a suit and gun, his face clean-shaven, came around the corner and up to Ness, saying, "Merlo has the back stairs covered."

  "Good." Ness motioned across the street, where their car, a black Ford, was parked in front of a vacant lot and near a three-story, paint-peeling frame rooming house. "Sit on the rider's side. Pretend to read the newspaper."

  "All right," Curry said. "What time do you expect him?"

  Ness checked his wristwatch. "It's not quite four. It'll probably be after six. He works till then. You have some waiting to do."