BUTCHER'S DOZEN (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  "Are you still in love with her?" Ev asked.

  "Don't be silly, doll."

  "She's still in love with you."

  "I don't think she ever was in love with me."

  "Oh, Eliot—don't you be silly."

  "Look, we just had a fling. I'd rather not talk about that. That's the past. I'm interested in the present."

  "And the future?'

  "And the future."

  He held her close and she let him.

  They were headed back to their table when a waiter stopped them.

  "Mr. Ness," he said. "Telephone for you in the lounge."

  He left Ev at their table and walked to the bar in the dimly lit, walnut-paneled lounge. He hadn't left word where he'd be, but he wasn't terribly surprised to have been tracked down. It didn't take much of a detective to figure Ness would be in the Vogue Room on a Saturday night. The only other two possibilities were the Bronze Room at the Cleveland Hotel or his country club.

  The bartender directed him to the one of the over-stuffed davenports where a table with a phone waited. He sat and spoke his name into the receiver.

  It was Curry.

  "Chief, he's back at it again."

  "You don't mean the Butcher?"

  "That's exactly who I mean."

  "Christ. Tell me."

  "We got an arm without a hand; a lower leg, from ankle to foot. Clean dismemberments with a sharp knife, I'd say."

  "God. Where?"

  "Washed up on the riverbank near the foot of Superior Avenue, below the Run. Not far from where some pieces of the last two turned up."

  "An arm and a leg at the foot, huh," he said wryly. "Where are you now?"

  "Merlo's still at the scene. I'm calling from a saloon that I don't imagine is quite as nice as the one you're in."

  "Can you tell anything from what you've seen? Man or woman?"

  "Woman. Not much decomposition. It's either fresh or refrigerated. One new twist."

  "Oh?"

  "He might've tortured this one, some."

  "How?"

  "The arm's scarred up, blistered. They look like sores or acid burns or something. Suppose that means something?"

  "I'm sure it does," Ness said. "I just wish it did to me."

  He told Curry he'd meet him at the crime scene and hurried in to make his apologies to Ev. She would understand. They always did at first.

  TWO

  August 17-22, 1938

  CHAPTER 15

  Sam Wild was standing in a rock and refuse-strewn wasteland near the intersection of East Ninth Street and Shore Drive. It was five-thirty in the afternoon, within spitting distance of the business district, though you'd never know it, judging from these several desolate sloping acres of rubble and rubbish. He was perhaps twenty-five feet from Shore Drive, where homebound traffic was clogged, many motorists stopping there and on East Ninth, perhaps two hundred feet away; a cordon of uniformed cops was keeping hordes of onlookers back.

  Word of the latest torso find had spread fast.

  Scouting the vast dump was a handful of plainclothes detectives, including the youngish Curry and older, haunted-looking Merlo. The slabs and chunks and hunks of cement beneath their feet, and the occasional concrete pillar that lay about as if discarded by some nonchalant Samson, were debris from the expo. All that was left of a once-proud city of the future.

  In charge, of course—and in this summer heat the only man in a vested suit rather than shirtsleeves—was the safety director himself, who was at the moment bending over the headless body of a woman, waving away flies.

  The upper and lower arms and upper and lower legs and hands and feet had all been neatly severed from the torso by an unknown party; but the pieces had been put back where they belonged, assembled like a puzzle, by Ness and Coroner Gerber. The small pale coroner, with his salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, and wire-frame glasses, all in medical white, seemed strangely out of place in this desert of garbage and stones. He was kneeling over the reassembled corpse, raising a hand over it like a priest making a benediction.

  The remains had been discovered, less than an hour ago, by an out-of-work young man named James Beason, who'd been searching the dump for scrap metal; at the moment he was being questioned just within Wild's earshot by Curry.

  Wild, who'd been in Ness's office when the call came in, had been allowed along on the condition that he didn't take any notes; otherwise, other reporters—not invited along—would take offense. That was okay with Wild. He had a hell of a memory.

  Beason, a man of average build in dungarees and workshirt, seemed calm, considering.

  "I was getting ready to gather up the scrap iron I found and put it in my wheelbarrow," he was saying. "You know ... so I could sell it to a junkyard? Then I seen what looked like a real colorful coat sticking out from under these rocks that was piled up neat."

  "Go on," Curry said, writing it down.

  Beason shrugged. "I took a couple of rocks off the pile and then I noticed these human limbs. So I went to call a policeman at a filling station on East Ninth Street. And that's all I know, I swear."

  "Well, you're going to have to repeat this at headquarters. We'll have some more questions."

  "What about my scrap metal?"

  "We'll make sure nobody takes it."

  Curry walked Beason to a uniformed cop and gave some instructions that Wild didn't hear; then the cop took Beason away.

  Wild moved closer to Ness and Gerber.

  Gerber was standing now, saying, "The technique is unmistakable, Eliot. Hesitation marks are all too familiar. This is no copycat. It's the genuine article. Our man is back at it. Butcher victim number twelve."

  "An even dozen."

  "I should think a butcher's dozen would number thirteen," Gerber said with a grim smile. "Let's hope he doesn't reach that tally."

  The most recent corpse (till now), as yet unidentified, had turned up—actually washed up—in April; an arm and a leg first, then both thighs, one foot and the torso in two halves, wrapped in potato sack burlap, floating in the Cuyahoga.

  Truth be told, Wild was glad this case was active again; it made for hot copy.

  Ness was saying, "What can you tell me about her, Doctor?"

  Good. Mentally, Wild began taking it all down.

  Gerber scratched his chin, glancing down at her. "Well, she was white."

  That was a hell of an observation, Wild thought.

  "Between twenty and thirty-five, I'd say," the coroner continued. "Five feet five—allowing for the absent head."

  Ness nodded, then said, "I'd put her weight at around one twenty."

  "Yes," Gerber said. "Again, allowing for the head. Small hands." He bent down and picked up a severed foot, studied it. "Size nine shoe."

  "Large foot," Ness said.

  "Maybe they just seem that way," Wild offered, "when you pick 'em up and look at 'em close."

  The coroner gave the reporter a quietly withering look. Wild smiled at him pleasantly, lit up a Lucky.

  "We have a piece of jewelry," the coroner said. "The first time for a clue of that nature, I believe—a gold filigree ring that apparently was on so snug it would have to've been cut off for removal. Though why that would have stopped our man is beyond me."

  Ness said, "Can you tell me when this woman was killed?"

  "I will if you don't hold me to it," Gerber said. "My estimate at the moment is a year."

  "A year?" Wild blurted.

  The coroner glanced at Wild darkly.

  Ness gave Wild a warning look but said, "Sam, if you'd like, take a closer look at the body."

  Wild pitched the newly lit Lucky away and moved closer.

  Ness pointed and said, "You can see that while the decomposition is limited, portions are dry and hard—as if preserved. And the stench is modest."

  "Yeah, right," Wild said, nose twitching.

  Gerber said, "She's been kept in a refrigerator, I'd say."

  "Then," Wild said, "she was dumped here r
ecently."

  "Yes," Ness said. He pointed over to some cardboard boxes nearby. One of them bore the bright colors of the Quick-Frozen Seafood Company and the other the labels of the Boston Biscuit Company; two others had markings that indicated they were from the Central Market area.

  "The arms and legs were wrapped in butcher paper and twine," Ness said, still pointing to the boxes, "and left in those. Only the torso, wrapped in that quilt, was under the pile of rocks."

  The colorful gingham patchwork quilt he referred to was also nearby.

  Ness was saying, "If those boxes had been sitting out here for a year—"

  "They wouldn't look so brand-new," Wild finished, nodding. The boxes indeed were not at all weathered. "So—where the hell's her head?"

  "Who knows?" Ness said, and sighed, glancing wearily about the littered landscape.

  Gerber said, "Six out of twelve, this makes, where he hasn't left us the head."

  "Maybe," Wild offered cheerfully, "this guy's got a collection in his attic."

  "Maybe," Ness said.

  Wild took off his straw fedora and wiped his brow. "If so, in this weather, it's gonna smell choice."

  Gerber, with no apparent irony, said, "That's what refrigerators are for, Mr. Wild."

  "Hey!" somebody called.

  About one hundred and fifty feet to the east, somber Merlo was waving his straw hat frantically.

  "Got something!" he called.

  They walked briskly over, where Merlo was pointing to another cardboard box, a big one. As if a present had been unwrapped, butcher paper was peeled back to reveal what the box held: an assembly of bones. Dozens of them.

  Gerber poked inside the box. "Human, all right . . . neck vertebrae . . . dorsal vertebrae . . . ribs . . . pelvic bones." He rummaged around in there like a kid searching for the toy in Crackerjacks. "No skull."

  "Man or woman?"

  "I don't know. Small person—that is, not tall. Big rib cage, though. Barrel chest. Probably a man. Five six, maybe. Dead a year, perhaps."

  Wild said, "But not refrigerated."

  Gerber ignored that. "Somebody get something . . . a container ... a bucket or something. I want to sort a Few of these out."

  Ness gestured. "There's a can over there. Get it, Sam, would you?"

  Wild went over and picked up the can; it was an old gallon container of some kind, with the lid on. He tried to pry it open with his fingertips, then asked around for a pocketknife. Curry had one and handed it to him.

  Ness was saying to Merlo, "There may be more bones scattered about this dump. Gather as many reliable volunteers as you can and go over this rock pile. Pick up every tin can, board, rock—look under and in everything. Examine every possible place of concealment."

  Wild pried off the lid and looked inside the can and said, "Oh, Christ."

  It was a skull.

  Wisps of blondish-white hair clung to it.

  Wincing, he handed it, still in the can, to Gerber, who beamed; this was the first time Wild remembered ever seeing the man look happy.

  "That's what I mean," Ness said, as if Wild had performed this feat to prove his point, "about places of concealment."

  "I think this is a man," Gerber said, looking in at the skull. He drew it out and looked at it; its hollow eyes stared back at him. "He's not young—blond hair turning white."

  "No kiddin' he's not young." Wild shuddered.

  Ness left Gerber and Merlo to deal with the box of bones and the can with the skull and returned to the pieces of the woman, Wild following along. Ness again knelt near the body, again waving flies away.

  He gestured to the severed right hand, which seemed to reach for an empty soap box not far away, fingers stretched toward the Gold Dust twins.

  "We got a few breaks this time," he said. "The Butcher hasn't always left us the hands. So this gives us fingerprint possibilities—even if the Bertillion boys do have one hundred thousand thumbprints to sort through in a given category."

  "And there's that nice specific piece of jewelry to try to trace," Wild said, gesturing toward the hand with the filigree ring.

  "Not to mention those cardboard boxes, which clearly come from the Central Market area."

  "Where all the finer transients go shopping," Wild said archly.

  Ness stood. Smiled grimly to himself. "Think I'm going to have to throw a little party tonight."

  Wild frowned in mild confusion. "What, that little shindig at the country club tonight, you mean?"

  "No. This party's after the one at the country club. Later tonight—at Kingsbury Run."

  A few minutes later Curry hollered out.

  He'd found the girl's head, wrapped in butcher paper and twine. She was brunette and had been pretty. Ness said the girl looked vaguely familiar to him, but he just couldn't place her.

  That didn't surprise Wild.

  Ness knew his share of women.

  *****

  Out on the country club terrace the ten-piece band was playing Cole Porter and a balmy breeze from Lake Erie was playing with the women's hair. Wild considered the surroundings a considerable step up from the lakeshore garbage dump of this afternoon. There were plenty of good-looking women present—low-cut dresses, bare shoulders— and lots of men in evening clothes for them to dance with. But some of the golfers were still here from late-afternoon rounds, so there were sports clothes and a few business suits—like Wild's white seersucker number—mixed in.

  Even some of the women were dressed casually—for instance, the tall, slender blonde in pink shirt and pale green pleated skirt who sat down next to Wild at the little white-mesh metal table. The air smelled like a flower garden: some of it was flowers, and some of it was her.

  "Buy you a Bacardi, Viv," Wild said.

  "No," Vivian Chalmers said, touching his arm. Her jade-color eyes were looking for trouble. "You're just a poor working stiff. Seeing as how I'm of a moneyed class, I'll buy."

  "Seeing as how you're of a moneyed class, I'll let you."

  Eliot was dancing with his girl, Ev, an attractive brunette in her mid-twenties; Wild liked her, but she was a little quiet for his tastes. But then so was Eliot, for that matter. After all, the guy was a bit on the dull side.

  Not in terms of brains, of course. Wild considered Ness about the savviest detective he knew, or anyway the savviest honest one he knew. And he was well aware that Ness had led—and continued to lead—a life filled with the sort of adventure and danger that little boys dreamed would one day be theirs.

  Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Eliot continued to be a little kid living out a Sherlock Holmes/Rover Boys fantasy. The man seemed, in certain respects, oddly naive to Wild. An innocent dedicated to tracking down the guilty.

  Vivian brought two Bacardi’s over, set one of them in front of Wild, and smiled.

  "You are alone tonight, aren't you?"

  "Oh, yeah," Wild said. "I rarely come out to these things, with or without female company. I don't know how I let Eliot talk me into joining this silly-ass sewing circle in the first place."

  "I heard he got you a complimentary membership," Viv said, smiling wickedly. "Like his."

  "Here's to friends in high places," Wild said, smiling crookedly, toasting glasses with her, "and the fringe benefits they bring."

  "Well, now that you're hobnobbing in society circles," she said, "if you want to hold out for a dame in an evening gown, I'd understand. You'll have to take me come-as-I-are. I just had to get an extra nine holes in."

  "Yeah, well if you were looking for a guy in a tux," Wild said, "I'm not it, either. And I've never been on a golf course in my life. What else do we have in common?"

  She had a nicely wry smile, which continued as she sipped the Bacardi. "Eliot, I suppose."

  "We're both undercover agents of his, in a way," Wild said.

  "Each in our own way, of course," she said.

  "There's a double entendre in there somewhere that I'd better not go looking for."

  Her smile turned
melancholy. "Maybe I wish you would, Sam."

  The band began playing a tango.

  Pretty soon, Ness came over to see how Wild and Vivian were getting along, while Vivian and Ev were both in the powder room.

  "What's this Kingsbury Run party I'm not invited to?" Wild asked.

  "It's private."

  "More private than the country club?"

  "Yes. You can only attend if you're a bum or a cop."

  "There's a difference?"

  "Sometimes not," Ness admitted. "Here comes Viv. Keep her entertained for me."

  "Gee, I'll do my best."

  Wild and Vivian sat at a table on the terrace and talked about her "undercover agent" days.

  "Things have slowed to a boring halt," she said nostalgically. "Eliot doesn't want to use me anymore."

  That had an ambiguous ring.

  "An undercover agent can only be effective so long,' Wild said. "Pretty soon the other side gets suspicious."

  "I gave him something big this afternoon," she said almost bitterly, "and he just shrugged it off'." Then she shrugged it off herself, with resigned frustration, and let Wild, who was wondering about the "something big" she mentioned, buy the next round.

  They took a walk in the dark, around the golf course, and ended up sitting on a green. Wild liked the breeze almost as much as he liked Viv. The flag on the hole—13— flapped.

  "Thirteen," he said.

  "Huh?"

  "Victim thirteen."

  "Oh. Yes. Today. It's a goddamned shame."

  "A goddamned shame," he agreed.

  "Shame they haven't found the son of a bitch and killed his ass. If that stubborn prick Eliot High-and-Mighty Ness would just listen to me ..."

  She was a little drunk, and so was Wild, but it still surprised and amused him to hear a woman, particularly a society" woman, speak that way.

  "Viv, you wouldn't happen to still be in love with that lucky bastard, would you?'

  She seemed taken aback for a minute, then her face wrinkled into a got-caught-with-her-pants-down grin. Maybe a little. But he's got a girl."

  "I don't."

  "You might."

  She leaned forward.