BUTCHER'S DOZEN (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  Like a father.

  CHAPTER 19

  The following Monday, midafternoon, Sam Wild strolled into a dimly lit, hole-in-the-wall bar called Mickey's, on Short Vincent Avenue, not far from City Hall. He had been told by Wanda, the safety director's secretary that her boss might be there.

  And indeed he was, in a back booth, sitting quietly cradling a Scotch in two hands, with a slightly droopy-eyed look that told Wild his friend was half in the bag. Sitting across from Ness was Sergeant Martin Merlo, drinking nothing, speaking rather animatedly (for Merlo, especially), gesturing as if to make the quiet, quietly drinking man opposite pay him some heed.

  Wild stood by them and said, "If I'm interrupting something, fellas ..."

  Ness smiled faintly and said, "Not at all," and Wild slid in on the same side of the booth as the safety director. Merlo, whose solemn face seemed even more tortured than usual, clearly did not relish the reporter joining them, but was, after all, outranked.

  Then Merlo, with a barely discernible sigh of disgust, leaned forward and continued to plead his case. "This is no time to pull back on the investigation," he said. "We have the best clue we've had in four years."

  "Which clue is that?" Ness said.

  "The quilt!"

  Merlo was referring, Wild knew, to the many-colored, gingham-patched quilt in which had been wrapped the torso of the girl found in the lakefront dump.

  "We picked up Elmer Cummings today," Merlo was saying, "a fifty-six-year-old junk man. We located him through a tip from a barber who saw the newspaper photo of the quilt and identified it as one he gave Cummings when the junk man came around his house, looking for rags."

  Ness said nothing.

  Merlo, obviously exasperated by the lack of response, pressed on. "Cummings says he sold the quilt to the Scoville Rag and Paper Company. We interviewed the owner, a William Blusinsky, and his six employees, today."

  "And?"

  "Well, they say the quilt may have been stolen from a large quantity of material delivered to the warehouse last week."

  "Do Blusinky and any of his employees have criminal records?"

  Merlo's confidence faded. "No. They seem to be respectable workingmen."

  Ness sipped his Scotch. "Sounds like another blind alley to me. Any luck tracing the girls gold filigree ring?"

  Merlo stared bleakly at the tabletop before him. "No," he said. He looked up. "But it's early yet."

  "And you've established that One-Armed Willie is not a viable suspect."

  Merlo nodded. "He was in various jails at various of the key times. He's clean."

  "What about those two shantytown suspects? 'Ben,' and the guy with the jackknife who tried to jackroll Curry?"

  "We haven't ascertained the identities of either— although Coroner Gerber feels the man whose remains were found in the dump fits Ben's description. Blond, five six, broad-chested, and so on."

  "More blind alleys."

  Merlo's expression was pained. "I know, Mr. Ness, but that's no reason to pull the plug on the investigation."

  "I'm not pulling the plug on the investigation." Ness swirled Scotch in its glass, studied the dark liquid. "I'm just returning it to the homicide department. You're still assigned to the case, I understand."

  "Yes, but we had greater resources with your office behind the investigation. Detective Curry and I were developing into a good team. Now, damnit ..."

  "What?"

  "He seems almost . . . evasive. Doesn't even want to talk about the case."

  Ness finished his Scotch. He waved for a barmaid to come over and ordered another, a double.

  Then he said to Merlo, "It's my feeling that the case is closed."

  "Not officially ..."

  "No. But after examining the evidence carefully, I feel the Butcher is, in all likelihood, out of commission."

  Merlo's frustration was palpable. "You're not serious in saying that you think Dolezal was the Butcher ..."

  "It's the consensus of opinion," Ness said with an easy shrug. "The coroner has confirmed that all of the victims whose remains were discovered after Dolezal's death were very likely murdered before his death."

  "That's an iffy assumption," Merlo said, "and anyway, those bodies were dumped after his death." Merlo paused to let that sink in. Then he said: "It was evidence to that effect that led us to raiding shantytown."

  "And did we find the Butcher? Or any significant evidence of him or his possible whereabouts?"

  Merlo sighed. Swallowed. "No," he admitted.

  Ness sipped his Scotch.

  "Well, if Dolezal really was the Butcher," Merlo said, "then he must have had an accomplice, who dumped the bodies later."

  Ness seemed to consider that for a moment, then nodded. "Perhaps you'll turn that accomplice up."

  "I mean to," Merlo said tightly, and slid out of the booth and turned to go.

  "Sergeant," Ness said.

  Merlo glanced back, his features hard.

  "You've done excellent work. I admire your dedication."

  Merlo's expression softened, slightly. "Thank you, sir."

  "Good hunting." Ness raised his glass to Merlo.

  Merlo smiled humorlessly, briefly, turned, and went up the narrow aisle out of the gloomy bar into sunshine.

  "Only there is no accomplice," Wild said, moving to the other side of the booth, where Merlo had been sitting.

  Ness sipped his Scotch.

  "You oughta thank me, friend," Wild said pleasantly, lighting up a Lucky.

  "What for?"

  "For not busting out laughing when you said Frank Dolezal was the Butcher."

  Ness smiled faintly again, swirled the Scotch in his glass, then drank some more, not sipping this time.

  "Eliot. I've seen you drink plenty of times. But I don't remember seeing you drink before six o'clock. Not like this anyway."

  "I gave myself the afternoon off."

  "Well, I guess that's one of the fringe benefits of being the boss."

  Ness winced. "Yes. I guess it is."

  Wild gestured with cigarette in hand, making trails of smoke. "We're all alone back here. You care to tell me what the hell is going on?"

  Ness locked eyes with Wild. "What do you know about it?"

  Wild shrugged. "I know I was called in this morning by the publisher—not the city editor, not the managing editor, not the editor in chief—the goddamn publisher. And I was told not to write word one about Lloyd Watterson."

  Ness smiled the faint smile again and looked away.

  "Why hasn't he been arrested, Eliot? Why is Merlo still working the Butcher case without any knowledge of Lloyd Watterson at all?"

  "Lloyd Watterson," Ness said evenly, "was committed to an asylum for the insane this morning."

  "What? Where?"

  "In Dayton. Maximum security. Under twenty-four-hour lock and key."

  "Jesus."

  "Can you think of a better place for him?"

  "Sure! Death fucking row!"

  Ness shrugged with his eyebrows. "Good point."

  Wild sighed and stabbed out his smoke. "I need a drink myself"

  He went up to the bar and got himself a boilermaker and returned to the booth.

  Then he said,"So it finally came due, huh?"

  "What did?"

  "The bill from the mayor's financial angels."

  Ness said nothing.

  "The slush fund, the country club, the boathouse ... all those nice perquisites. I told you they wouldn't come free, Eliot."

  "Yes, you did."

  The two men sat and quietly drank.

  Then Ness said, "The mayor asked it as a favor. It was no backroom meeting, Sam. There was really nothing that smacked of . . ."

  "Being touchable?"

  Ness smiled again, wryly this time. "Nicely put. But then you reporters do have a way with words. What about you, Sam? Are you going to blow the whistle?"

  "Are you kidding? When the publisher asks a favor, he isn't asking. And I never did ha
ve a conscience."

  "The important thing is we got the Butcher."

  "Yeah. We did at that."

  They toasted glasses.

  Wild grinned. "Ha! This is a sweet irony."

  "What is?"

  "Here I sit with the biggest scoop of my life, and I can't write it up. There you are, old publicity-hound Ness, cracked the biggest case of your career, something to make old Scarface Al look like a footnote in your scrapbook, and you can't make the bust. You can't take the credit."

  Ness smiled on one side of his face. "It's called poetic justice, Sam."

  "Where I come from its called getting screwed, but what the hell."

  Ness laughed silently.

  "Look," Wild said, "you shouldn't feel bad about this. We did get the bastard. He's out of circulation, and that's what counts."

  Ness nodded.

  "It might be different," Wild said, "if the city believed the Butcher were still at large. But with Dolezal as a scapegoat, that really takes a load off. Lloyd is getting denied his 'glory,' too, you know. You don't have to live with the thought of the good people of Cleveland looking over their collective shoulder, wondering if sometime the Butcher's gonna pop back out at 'em again."

  Ness nodded.

  "Don't let it get to you," Wild said with a dismissive wave. "What's the harm in it?"

  "The harm," Ness said tightly, the rage bubbling under his apparent placidity suddenly evident, "is that good cops like Merlo are going to keep working this case, for months, possibly years, wasting their time and the taxpayers' money, when their safety director knows they are on a fool's errand. The harm is that a good cop like Albert Curry has to live with looking the other way on something that bothers him morally."

  "It's called being a grown-up," Wild said with a smirk. "Curry will get over it."

  "It will change him. Not for the better."

  "Is it going to change you, Eliot?"

  Ness said nothing. His jaw muscles clenched and unclenched. His eyes seemed cold, yet haunted, eyes that had seen too much. He sipped his Scotch and said pleasantly, "Of course maybe Sergeant Merlo will find out about Lloyd Watterson."

  "You think so?"

  "He's dedicated and he's obsessive. Someday, a week from now, a month from now, a year from now . . . Merlo may come lay Lloyd Watterson at the city's doorstep. I don't think Merlo gives a good goddamn about social standing and politics and such assorted bullshit."

  Wild drank some beer. "You might be right. Does it worry you?"

  "No," Ness said. Then he smiled. "It's kind of nice knowing your conscience is out there somewhere, working for you."

  "Better your conscience at large than the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run."

  They drank in silence for a while.

  "Sam . . . are you still seeing Viv?"

  "Yeah," he said, firing up another Lucky. "I don't know if it's going to amount to anything serious or not . . . we're not exactly from the same side of the tracks, you know."

  Ness studied his Scotch. "One of us is going to have to tell her."

  "About Lloyd escaping to the madhouse, you mean?"

  "Yes. Do you want me to?"

  "No," Wild said. "That's a cross I can bear."

  "Think she'll keep quiet about it?"

  "Oh, yeah. She's from that world. She understands it."

  "I'm glad somebody does," Ness said.

  And he ordered another double.

  Outside, the sun was shining, on rich and poor alike—even over Kingsbury Run, where the ashes of two shantytown settlements were smoldering still; but it was dark by the time Wild and Ness stumbled out of Mickey's. Wild caught a cab. Detective Curry was waiting at the curb in an unmarked car, waiting to drive his chief home to the castlelike boathouse on Clifton Lagoon.

  A Tip of the Fedora

  As was the case with my previous Eliot Ness novel, The Dark City (1987), I could not have written this book without the support and advice of my friend and research associate George Hagenauer. George and I made a research trip to Cleveland, where we visited many of the sites of the action in this novel and stopped in for a session at the Western Reserve Historical Society, where the Ness papers are kept. George made several additional trips alone and visited (and took reference photos of) virtually all of the death sites in the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run case.

  We are both grateful to the helpful staffs at the Historical Society, City Hall municipal reference library, and Cleveland Public Library, and we wish to especially thank Karen Martines and Joe Novak.

  While much of the research for this book was culled from the files of various Cleveland newspapers of the day, several remarkable in-depth articles provided valuable background material and insight into the Kingsbury Run slayings. These include "The Mad Butcher of Queensbury Run" by A. W. Pezet and Bradford Chambers in their book, Greatest Crimes of the Century (1954); "The Head Hunter of Kingsbury Run' by William Ritt in Oliver Weld Bayer's book, Cleveland Murders (1947); and "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" by James Purvis in his book Great Unsolved Mysteries (1978). Also helpful was the "Mad Butcher" entry in Open Files (1983) by Jay Robert Nash, and an article in Daring Detective (December 1949), "Cleveland's Jack the Ripper," by Seymour J. Ettman. Useful, too, was a 1960, ten-part Cleveland News series, "Where is the Mad Butcher?" by Howard Beaufait.

  The most detailed nonfiction account of the Ness role in the Mad Butcher case is a twelve-page chapter in Four Against the Mob (1961) by Oscar Fraley, coauthor (with Ness) of The Untouchables (1957). Unfortunately, Fraley was asked by his publishers to fictionalize names and dates, and, apparently at the behest of Ness's widow, he tended to present Ness only in the most favorable light. All of this has made his book as frustrating as it is valuable as a research tool.

  However, I have increasingly found in my research that Fraley s book is a dependable source. There have been those who doubted Fraley's claim that Ness solved the Butcher case (which remains officially unsolved in Cleve-land police records); and I was one of the doubters myself, until I examined the Ness papers and scrapbooks and held in my own hands the various crank postcards and letters apparently sent to Ness over a period of years by the institutionalized Butcher, just as reported by Fraley in his book. The apparent Butcher signs himself as "your paranoidal nemesis" and as an M. D., and addresses the cards to Ness variously as "Eliot Direct-Um Ness" and "Eliot (Head Man) Ness." Vague but distinct death threats characterize the postcards; strange clippings are pasted to them: "Handbook for Poisoners," one says; another is an ad with a "pansy" plant whose petals seem to form a skull-like shape. Another shows a man in a cowboy hat sticking out his tongue, and yet another is a scene from the film Riot in Cell Block 11 in which two prisoners clutch prison bars in crazed anger (one of the actors shown in the clipping, oddly enough, is Neville Brand, who would later play Al Capone in The Untouchables TV series).

  I did not know what these items were, at first, as I examined them in the safe confines of the library like Western Reserve Historical Society. But when I realized I was holding missives likely written by the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run to Eliot Ness (and saved by him!), I dropped them as if they were on fire; and I did not sleep worth a damn that night in my room at the Hollenden House hotel.

  Incidentally, if Fraley is to be believed, a Hollenden meeting between the Butcher and Ness, not unlike the one described here, did take place—right down to the backup men in the adjoining room going down for lunch and leaving Ness unwittingly alone with the dangerous suspect and his steak knife. (It is my assumption—and the indication of other sources—that the meeting involved someone else other than just Ness and the suspect; my speculation, of course, is that that someone was the suspect's prominent father.)

  According to Fraley, the Butcher died while institutionalized—apparently in the mid-1950s.

  Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and some liberties have been taken with the facts; the remarkably eventful life of Eliot Ness defies the necessarily
tidy shape of a novel, and for that reason I have again compressed time and used composite characters.

  Some characters, such as Sam Wild and Albert Curry, are wholly fictional, although they do have real-life counterparts. Wild represents the many reporter friends of Ness, particularly Clayton Fritchey of the Press (who, like the fictional Wild, was assigned to cover Ness full-time) and Ralph Kelly of the Plain Dealer. Sheriff O'Connell and his deputy Robert McFarlin are fictional, but the rivalry between the sheriff's department and the safety director's police is not—including the sheriff's unwanted intrusion into the Mad Butcher case. The depiction herein of the suspicious circumstances surrounding the possible "third-degree" questioning, and alleged suicide, of Frank Dolezal (his real name) is based on fact.

  Sergeant Martin Merlo is a composite character, based largely on two dedicated homicide detectives, Martin Zalewski and Peter Merylo. Merylo never gave up on the case and spent much of his spare time, until his death in 1959, searching for the killer. He believed the Butcher to be responsible for torso killings in other American communities, including perhaps the most famous torso slaying of all, the Black Dahlia.

  Among the historical figures included here under their real names are Coroner Samuel Gerber, Chief George Matowitz, Mayor Harold Burton, and Executive Assistant Safety Director Robert Chamberlin. While their portraits herein are drawn from research, those portraits should be viewed as fictionalized. In some cases, a single newspaper "personality profile" provided the basis for my characterization, so I request that these depictions not be viewed as definitive.

  Vivian Chalmers and Evelyn MacMillan are fictional characters with real-life counterparts.

  The real names (when known) of the actual Butcher victims have been used, as have been the details surrounding their deaths (with some minor, occasional fictional reshaping).

  Both Lloyd Watterson and his father are fictional characters. They would seem, obviously, to have factual counterparts.

  The polygraph sequence was suggested by material in Men Against Crime (1946), John J. Floherty; Criminal Investigation (1974), Paul B. Weston and Kenneth M. Well; and Basic Law Enforcement (1972), Harry Caldwell.