A knock woke Ness.
In the darkness, for a moment, he didn't remember where he was; then the stale smell, and the heat, and the rough, scratchy blanket, brought it back to him. He slipped out of the cot-like bed and padded toward the door in his stocking feet-he was sleeping in his socks, despite the heat, because the wooden floor in this rooming-house room was nothing you'd want to lay bare soles upon.
He didn't know what time it was-he'd left his wristwatch behind, back in the real world-but he'd gone to bed around one A.M., and it was still dark outside.
So whatever time it was, it was a hell of a time for somebody to come calling.
Another knock.
He was standing to one side of the door, questioning the wisdom of going on this mission unarmed, reaching for the chipped pitcher on the washstand nearby, when he heard a harsh whisper from the other side of the door: "For Christ's sake, it's me."
Wild.
Ness let some air out, unhooked the eye latch that locked the door, and let the reporter in, He shut and relatched the door, and his hand fumbled across frayed wallpaper and found the light button. A bare bulb above threw weak yellowish light on the small shabby room and its sparse, metallic, institutional-gray furniture.
"This is a fucking cell," Wild said, pushing his straw fedora back, his eyes wide.
"Not really." Ness, in his underwear, sat on the cot. "I'd offer you a chair, but there doesn't seem to be one."
Wild sat next to Ness. "Well, we probably aren't the only guys sharing a bed in this joint tonight. Mind if I smoke?"
"What, and have you stink up the place?" Ness asked, then smiled and waved his permission.
Wild lit up and sucked on a Lucky, threw smoke out restlessly, shook his head. "Four nights in this dump. How can you stand it?"
"I don't mind. Beats hell out of a flophouse crib with a chicken-wire ceiling. Ness paused, then said, "You shouldn't be here, Sam."
"Well, I'm delivering a message. Merlo wants to talk to you."
Ness sat up. "Developments?"
"Think so." Wild shrugged. "He didn't tell me. He doesn't like having a 'newshound' on the team. Anyway, he's sitting in an unmarked car a couple blocks from here, off the main stem."
He gave Ness directions.
Ness got up and got his pants and shirt out of a dented metal wardrobe. "You better go on," he told Wild, motioning toward the door with his head. "We shouldn't be seen on the street together."
Wild stood, smoked nervously, said, "Eliot, you're going to get yourself killed. Why didn't we stick to the original plan, anyway? It was working out fine."
Stepping into frayed brown pants, Ness said, "I didn't know we were going to hit pay dirt so soon."
He was referring to the nameless tavern near Central and Twentieth. They had known it was a prime possibility, since Florence Polillo was known to have frequented the place; however, it was to have been only one of many such hellholes that Ness and Wild would hit, using the system Ness had cooked up whereby Wild asked provocative questions, then departed, leaving the already-present, undercover Ness to listen to what was said in the aftermath of the reporters departure, asking questions himself when he could get away with it.
But discovering that victims Andrassy and Polillo had known each other-a fact that had eluded investigators for over a year-prompted Ness to stick with the nameless bar; and he had taken this room in a nearby two-story brick rooming house to better become an inconspicuous part of the local landscape.
He and Wild had continued pursuing their routine at other taverns in the areas bordering the Run, particularly the Roaring Third, but only from late morning till around six. Evenings, Ness-alone-would spend leaning against the rail in the seedy joint near Central and Twentieth. The canvassing has slowed down accordingly.
"Look, Sam," Ness said, bending to tie the laces of his heavy work boots, "I have three good suspects in that bar- and I've struck up conversations with all of 'em. In fact one of them lives right here in this rooming house."
"Jesus!" Wild said.
Ness, standing back up, raised a finger to his lips.
Wild went to the window and sent his cigarette trailing sparks out into the night. Then he turned to Ness, now fully dressed in his threadbare apparel, and said, "You're going to get yourself fucking killed."
Ness smiled dismissively.
Wild went to him and stared him down. "You don't even have a goddamn gun."
"I don't need a gun."
"Oh, yeah, you know all about that jujitsu stuff. That'll work swell against some crazy asshole with a butcher knife."
"Nobody knows me around here."
"Sure, sure. You're in disguise-just like Sherlock Holmes."
Ness had to wince at that; he'd been an avid Holmes reader since he was a kid. He didn't like to think he was acting out some childhood fantasy here. He preferred to consider this good, solid undercover police work.
"You got stubble on your face," Wild said evenly, "and you washed the Vitalis out of your hair. You put some gunk on your teeth, and you slouch, and you swear. But somebody who knows you will make you, my friend."
"Who would know me down here?"
"The Butcher."
Ness moved toward the door. "Merlo's waiting, Sam…"
Wild was patting the air with one hand, gently. "Eliot, let's not forget that you and the Butcher have something in common."
Ness laughed shortly. "Such as?"
"You're both publicity hounds. Now don't give me that look! I'm all for you getting headlines-I've helped out enough, in that line. And I know, I know, it's part of your job to make the papers. It's something you do well. But so does the Butcher."
The truth of that jabbed sharply at Ness, but he said nothing.
"He leaves these bodies out in the open, where they are bound to be found eventually," Wild went on, "when he could be disposing of them in such a way that they wouldn't be found-like the heads and hands aren't found, when he doesn't want them to be."
"Make your point," Ness said.
"My point is, this guy probably has a goddamn scrapbook of what he's been up to-he may even bump another victim off, or at least pull a body out of his fridge and dump it, when he's stopped getting as much play in the papers as he'd like. See, he likes being the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run-not just for the butchering, either. For the celebrity."
"Well, you may have something there."
"Of course I do. And if he's collecting his press clippings, and believe me he is, he knows all about you declaring private war on him. He hasn't just seen your mug in the papers-he's likely memorized it. He ain't no fool, but you, my friend, are bordering on that condition."
"If he recognizes me," Ness said, "maybe he'll come to me."
"Oh, yeah, and cut your head off and go steady with you, till the next idiot comes along."
"Sam…"
Wild sighed in frustration, then gave Ness a look so earnest and concerned it surprised them both. "You may also spook your boy. Have you considered that? You might make him take a powder."
Ness shrugged matter-of-factly. "If he's one of the suspects I've narrowed in on, then he'll give himself away if he runs."
Wild shook his head, rolled his eyes. "It's like trying to reason with a fucking brick wall."
Ness took Wild by the arm and led him to the door. "Then why don't you go on your well-meaning way before that brick wall falls on you."
Now Wild put a sarcastic grin on his face. "It's your funeral, buddy boy. I'll see you tomorrow morning, round ten at that joint on East Forty-ninth, to do our vaudeville act… if you're still breathing."
And he left.
Ness waited five minutes, or what felt like five minutes at least, and soon was approaching the black Buick parked on a residential side street that was shady in several senses of the word, where more rooming houses, some frame, some brick, huddled like conspirators. He slid in on the rider's side.
Merlo, who hadn't seen Ness in his undercover attire, started for a moment, then smiled and shook his head.
"Hell," Merlo said. "For a minute there, I thought you were the Butcher."
Ness, shutting the door, killing the dome light, said, "Sam Wild thinks I'm an easy target-thinks the Butcher will see right through this."
"Maybe," Merlo said, "but I doubt it."
Actually, Merlo didn't look much like a cop tonight, either. He wore a checkered sportshirt and slacks and no hat. But then Merlo didn't ever look much like a cop with his scholarly glasses and thin, dour face, though tonight he seemed less dour. He was smiling, in fact.
"You look like the bearer of glad tidings," Ness said.
"That I am," Merlo said. "Your notion about checking the patient records of that dead colored dentist with appropriate Missing Persons reports, well… it paid off in spades, if you'll pardon the expression."
Merlo handed Ness a manila file folder and passed him a pocket flash. Ness opened the file and lit up the face in the photo: a black woman, attractive if slightly heavyset, about forty.
"Mrs. Rose Wallace," Merlo said. "Lived on Scoville Avenue-that's not far from where the skeleton was discovered. Been missing since August twenty-first of last year."
Ness studied the picture: the face seemed somehow both good-natured and hard. "Do you have anything besides matching the Missing Persons report to her name on the dentists list?"
"We sure do," Merlo said. "You were right on that account, too. We showed the bridgework to her son and he broke out crying. It was pretty distinctive-three gold teeth and all. He recognized it as hers, all right."
"Good, good," Ness said. "Any rap sheet on her?"
"No. But talking to her son and neighbors, it's clear she ran with a rough crowd-and in the same lowlife parts of town as Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo. She worked in taverns. Maybe hustled. Heavy drinker."
An old car rumbled by; Ness clicked off the pen flash and the men sat in near darkness.
"Nice work, Sergeant." Ness smiled over at the detective, glad that he'd trusted his instincts and kept the dogged Merlo on the job. "You got right on top of this. I appreciate it. Hell, I admire it."
"Mr. Ness," Merlo said, "I eat, sleep, and drink this case. I go to sleep thinking about it-when I finally do go to sleep-and when I wake up, I'm still thinking about it."
"I know the feeling." Ness lifted a finger to one eye. "These aren't bloodshot for effect."
Merlo laughed shortly, then said, "I also have some preliminary info on your three suspects."
Ness had relayed the names to Merlo through Wild.
"Good," Ness said. "Anything interesting?"
"Nothing on the bartender, this guy Steve Fabian, other than some busts back in speakeasy days. He does own the place. What makes you suspect him?"
"Just that that saloon is his little world. A world where at least two victims-Andrassy and Polillo-did a lot of living before they died. He has relationships with all his regulars-they trust him. And he's pretty cold."
"Cold?" '
"I've talked to him about the Butcher a couple of times, and he doesn't seem particularly broken up that the victims include friends of his. And his eyes just kind of… glaze over, when the subject comes up. He seems detached. And, he's got a sadistic streak. He's his own bouncer-he tossed a kid out the other night and busted him up pretty good in the process."
"That's not much to go on," Merlo said.
"No," Ness admitted. "And the kind of joint he's running, he's running pretty close to form."
"What kind of joint is it?"
"Hangout for petty thieves and prostitutes. But it's more than that-it's a regular latter-day court of miracles."
"Miracles?"
Ness grinned lopsidedly. "Yeah-every evening half the beggars in town stumble in there and get miraculously cured. Backs get straight, missing limbs appear out of empty sleeves, blind guys match quarters with each other for drinks… must be something in the water, only nobody's drinking water."
"The dregs of humanity," Merlo said archly. "Perfect stalking grounds for the Butcher."
"One of those beggars was this fellow One-Armed Willie, who apparently knew both Andrassy and Polillo. He sounds like a suspect to me."
Merlo shrugged wearily. "Willie was able to prove he was out of town when several of the murders occurred."
"Willie seems to get around. Word at the tavern is he's hopped a freight to pick oranges in Florida-how many hands he's using, I'm not sure. Maybe we could talk to the Florida authorities. Even if Willies not a valid suspect, he ran in the same 'social circle' as the others. We need to talk to him."
Merlo nodded. "I'll get on it."
"Anything on Seleyman?"
Merlo shrugged again, not so wearily. "He's a Turk- got a laundry list of a rap sheet, petty stuff but a lot of it. He used to be a professional wrestler, barnstormed all over the country when he was younger."
"I want him shadowed," Ness said.
"I took the liberty of doing that already," Merlo said, somewhat sheepishly.
"Undercover guys?"
"Yes. But I told them to stay clear of that tavern of yours."
"Good. What are their early reports?"
"Seleyman does indeed have a petty shakedown racket going, in East Cleveland. Small merchants-shops, cafes, saloons."
"Tied in with the Mayfield Road boys?"
"Hard to say. You know, we have enough to bust him, right now…"
Ness shook his head no. "I want to clip him on more than a petty-racketeering rap."
"If he's the Butcher…"
"Let's wait till we have better reason to believe that that's so-then the petty-racketeering charge will keep him off the street, and out of his digs, long enough for us to send a team in and build the Butcher case."
Merlo nodded, looking at Ness shrewdly. Ness could sense Merlo's respect and gratitude-even if the scholarly-looking detective's feathers had been ruffled at first by Ness's intrusion into "his" case.
"What about Dolezal?" Ness asked.
"Well," Merlo said, "he's fifty-two years old, an immigrant. Speaks half a dozen languages, of which English is his worst. A plasterer and bricklayer by trade. Been on some WPA projects. Right now he's working over on Harvard Avenue for the U.S. Aluminum Company, where they say he's a good joe. Apparently was once a fairly well-to-do contractor. What arrests he has, you'll be interested to know, fall into an old category of yours."
"Oh?"
"He was supposedly a very successful if small-time bootlegger. Was in the money at the height of Prohibition- known to everybody in the district. I'm surprised you never ran into him."
"I didn't start working Cleveland till after repeal," Ness said. "But we were rounding up former bootleggers to testify in those police corruption cases last year. He must be one of the ones we were never able to track down."
"That's understandable," Merlo said, "because he's been seriously on the skids. We checked with his brother-in-law, who really is a cop, like that bartender said-a patrolman-which is where a lot of this info came from, incidentally. And apparently Mr. Dolezal hit hard times not so much because of the Depression, but because he keeps looking for the bottoms of bottles, and finding them."
"I've witnessed some of that," Ness said. "He put ten bottles of beer away last night. Have you got him shadowed, too?"
"Yes. For the last three nights. Last night he was in that tavern where you were, of course."
"And the nights before?"
"Various parks, approaching various men. Transient types."
"I see."
"If he's our boy, and we keep him shadowed long enough, we may catch him in the act."
"That's fine, but if so, let's try to catch him before he chops somebody's head off, okay?"
"Speaking of which," Merlo said slyly, "there is one other interesting fact about Mr. Dolezal's past."
"Saving the best for last, Sergeant?"
"You be the judge, Director Ness." Merlo smiled nastily. "A few years ago, between bricklaying jobs, the suspect worked in a meat-packing plant."
"Doing what exactly?"
"Slaughtering animals."
The two men sat in the dark and listened to the silence.
Finally Ness said, "The coroner and other experts think the Butcher has surgical training."
"Well, Dolezal obviously has at least some knowledge of carving, knows something about bone structure."
Ness nodded. Then he used the pen flash to study the face of Rose Wallace again, asking, "How goes the search for the murder lab?"
"Nothing has turned up as yet, but five teams of fire wardens, accompanied by detective bureau men I hand-picked, are out in the field. They're reporting to me, until you re back in your office. Oh, and Curry reported in from undercover today, as well."
"What did he have to report?"
"Not much so far. He's been hanging out at the shantytown at Canal and Commerce since Monday. Turned nothing up, to speak of. He came in this morning looking like hell-hasn't been sleeping, and who can blame him."
"Did you send him home?"
"Yes. Told him to get some rest. By now he's probably heading out again."
"To the other shantytown, this time, I trust."
"Right. The more spread-out one, not far from Jackass Hill."
"Good." Ness got out of the car quickly, then looked in the window. "Now, I have further instructions."
Merlo leaned forward eagerly. "Yes?"
"Go home," Ness said. "Get some rest yourself."
Then he walked back to the two-story brick tenement where he was inhabiting suite 3.
As he went up the creaking stairs, he noted a figure seated on the landing, using the top step for a chair. A gathered-into-itself figure, leaning against the wall, crying.
Ness slowed. The sound was eerie-like a child's sobbing. Soft, pitiful, plaintive.
And the man crying was Frank Dolezal.
"Frankie?" Ness said, stopping a few steps from where the blond man sat.
It was dark, but both men had their night vision in full swing. And Dolezal, his unshaven face wet with tears, squinted at Ness, then recognized him, uttering in a guttural slur, "Oh. Hello, Harry."
Harry was the name Ness had made himself known by at the nameless saloon.
"You okay, Frankie?"
Dolezal nodded yes, but said, "Not so good, Harry. Not so good. You want drink?" He offered a wine bottle in a paper bag.
"Thanks," Ness said, and sat on the step next to the man, pretending to drink from the bottle before passing it back.
Dolezal used both hands to clutch the bottle as he drank from it. That was good: Ness wanted both of Dolezal's hands in plain sight. Night vision or no, he wished he and his drinking partner were somewhere other than this unlit hall.
"I need move, Harry."
"What do you mean, Frankie?"
"Can't sleep. Room has ghost."
"A ghost?"
Dolezal nodded. He had a square head and haunted eyes.
"I need move," he said. "That woman still in my room."
"What woman, Frankie?"
"Flo."
"Flo?"
"Woman who get chopped up."
Both of Dolezal's hands held the bottle.
"Oh. Who do you suppose did that?"
Dolezal's eyes flared and he gulped at the wine.
"I think maybe it was that wrestler," Ness said.
"Abe?" He snorted; suddenly the nervousness, the fear, was gone. "I am stronger than him."
"I bet you are," Ness said.
Actually, the man seemed small to Ness, albeit stocky.
"I am very strong. More I drink, more strong I am."
Ness said nothing: he was watching the two hands on the bottle.
"All his fault."
"Whose fault, Frankie?"
"Damn Hoover. That goddamn Herbert Hoover."
Somehow Ness felt the former president would have an alibi for the Butcher killings.
Suddenly Dolezal put a hand on Ness's shoulder; the grip was surprisingly strong. "You drink much, Harry?"
"Too much, sometimes, Frankie."
"You ever… wake up and not know what you do?"
"Sometimes. That happens to you, Frankie?"
"Sometimes," he said gravely. He gulped at the wine, wiped off his mouth with a grimy hand, which he'd removed from Ness's shoulder. Then both hands settled back on the bottle, caressingly. "Sometimes I no remember."
"Do you remember Flo, Frankie?"
"I remember Flo. Fat gal."
"Flo Polillo."
"Flo. Fat Flo."
"Did you drink with her?"
"Yes. Many nights. Flo could drink. Rose, too."
Rose!
"Rose, Frankie?"
"Rose."
Ness watched the two hands on the bottle.
"Was Rose fat like Flo, Frankie?"
"Rose was big, but not like Flo. Colored gal."
"I don't think I know her, Frankie."
"Not see her in long time."
"Rose, huh? Can't place her… what was her last name?"
"Wallace."
Ness watched the two hands.
"I move tomorrow. After I get my check."
"Move, Frankie?"
"Ghost in room. And they search houses. You not hear, Harry?"
"Who's searching houses?"
"Cops or somebody. Looking in everybody house. Looking in everybody business. I move tomorrow, Harry."
Dolezal rose, shakily, bracing himself on the wall. Ness watched the man's hands, felt very aware of the flight of steps at his back.
But Dolezal only shuffled down the corridor, weaving like the drunk he truly was, and entered suite 5.
Ness entered his own "suite" and gathered his things. He, like Frankie Dolezal, had decided to move.
Only he was moving tonight.
Right this minute.