Sheriff's deputy Bob McFarlin, though on duty, was out of uniform. His clothing-a light blue workshirt and baggy brown pants-wasn't frayed, nor (other than sweat circles) did it look worked in; this alone separated him from the rest of the clientele in the nameless tavern near Central and Twentieth. Bob was having a beer because he figured he deserved one; it wasn't the first beer of a long day, either, and probably not the last. He had, in fact, been deserving-and rewarding himself-beers right along.
A big man with a doughy face in which small, sleepy sky-blue eyes hid, he slouched bearlike against the bar, a foot on the rail, looking nothing at all like a representative of the law. Which perhaps made sense, as Deputy McFarlin-despite his title and position-had very little to do with the law, other than frequently breaking it.
He sipped his beer, lost in the bitter daze that he carried around with him much of the time; because as he slipped into his late fifties, he was definitely a man who felt life had given him the shaft.
Just a year ago he had been a city cop, desk sergeant in the Fifteenth precinct, where business had been good. Plenty of gambling and girls, which meant plenty of graft for all the boys. But then that lousy fucking reform mayor came along, with his lousy fucking G-man safety director, and holy shit, if cops didn't start going to jail! Captains, no less. And suddenly Bob McFarlin figured taking his pension was better than waking up to an indictment one sunny day.
Now he was reduced to this: just another bagman for the county sheriff.
Who was a decent enough guy, O'Connell was, and being one of O'Connell's deputies would have been okay, back in the old days-a year and a half ago. But business these days was bad. The big gambling joints-the Harvard Club, the Thomas Club, and the rest-were shut down. That lousy fucking Ness wasn't content to play his goody two-shoes games inside the city limits-he had to go suck up to the county prosecutor, Cullitan, and line him up in this crime-busting shit!
And Cullitan, goddamnit, was a Democrat! Mayor Burton ran a Republican administration. What was Cullitan thinking of? It made no sense to McFarlin. What was politics coming to? Fuck, it hardly paid being a cop anymore.
Today, Monday, was McFarlin's day to make the rounds of the joints in the old Roaring Third precinct-only the roar was down to a dull one, these days. At least, thank God, the police crackdown hadn't yet found its way to the Flats and the other seedier working-class areas where little bookie joints and backroom card and crap games still thrived. Too small potatoes, McFarlin figured, and anyway, such operations tended to float.
But the Mayfield Road mob saw to it that a piece of even the smallest action in the city-and the county-got into their pockets; and they managed this through the sheriff's office. So Deputy McFarlin was a bagman for the mob and the sheriff, though it was up to somebody else to see that the Mayfield Road gang got its share.
Even in a sleazy little joint like this nameless hole, fifty bucks got coughed up weekly. After all, the weekend backroom poker game, three tables' worth, stirred up some profitable dust. Today McFarlin had hauled in better than six hundred bucks from the various payoffs from other bars, and handbooks, along the unsavory circuit he'd been working.
He was not worried about being jackrolled. He had a shiv in his pocket, and a. 38 in his car, in the glove box where he stashed the money after each pickup. He kept the car locked up, parked in front of each collection spot. Nobody bothered it, or him. He was known on the streets he worked. Known as muscle for the sheriff and the mob.
He looked sleepy-eyed and doughy-faced and beer-bellied, but he had killed men with his hands, and people around here knew it.
It wouldn't have been such a bad dodge if the money were his to keep. But he was just the lousy goddamn bagman. He sipped his beer. He was glad this was the last stop. Late afternoon, and if he didn't shake a leg, he'd be tripping over the fake cripples and real perverts who swarmed around this smelly barrelhouse come evening.
"One more, Bob?"
McFarlin shook his head no to bullet-headed, cigar-smoking Steve, back of the bar, and was about to step away from the rail when a guy in shirtsleeves and a bow tie came in.
Tall, rangy, with curly, dark-blond hair peeking out from under a straw fedora, the guy looked familiar to McFarlin. He had a sharp-featured, sarcastic face, his mouth sneering around the cigarette dangling there, jacket slung over his arm.
He did not belong here. He looked clean and wore a seersucker suit. Guys who worked in steel mills did not wear seersucker suits, McFarlin knew-shrewd detective that he was.
Even if he didn't belong here, the guy moved with an easy confidence. He ambled down toward McFarlin's end of the bar and filled the space between the deputy and a bored-looking, stubbly-faced, out-of-work working stiff who'd been nursing the same beer for half an hour.
Now McFarlin looked closer and saw that the tall man had a notebook and pencil in one hand.
McFarlin said, "Another," and Steve nodded, looking with narrow eyes at the stranger in seersucker.
When Steve brought the beer to McFarlin, the stranger spun a silver dollar on the bar. Everybody standing at the bar looked at it hungrily. When it stopped spinning and clattered to a standstill, the guy said, "Just a beer. Keep the change."
Steve took the silver dollar, eyes narrowing even more. "Keep the change" was not something heard much in a joint like this.
"My name is Sam Wild," the guy said when Steve brought the beer, and McFarlin recognized the name, or anyway, the byline. This guy was a reporter, with the Plain Dealer.
"I'm a reporter," he said. "With the Plain Dealer."
Steve looked at him blankly; his mouth was slack-it seemed a trick that the cigar didn't tumble out.
"I wonder if you'd mind a few questions."
Steve shrugged. He leaned back against the counter behind him. Found a dirty rag with which to polish a glass.
"I understand Florence Polillo used to come in here."
"That's right," Steve said. His voice was husky, but a little high-pitched.
"What can you tell me about her?"
"She don't come in here no more."
The reporter grinned, drew on his cigarette. "I guess not. Getting hacked to pieces cuts down on a girl's social life."
Steve polished the glass, getting it dirtier.
"Was she hooking?"
Steve said, "This is a reputable place mister."
The reporter glanced around, smirking, taking in the sawdust and smoke. "What could I have been thinking of?" He dug for something in a pocket of the jacket folded over his arm.
It was a mug shot, side and front photographs of a pleasant if vacant-looking, jug-eared young man.
"Ever see this guy before?"
Steve, without moving closer to have a good look, glanced at the photo the reporter was thrusting forward. He said, "No."
"You sure?"
"No."
"No? You mean you aren't sure?"
"I mean no I ain't ever seen him. You spent your dollar, mister."
"I'll spend more, if you got the right answers." He spoke up, working his voice above the sound of the exhaust fan in the ceiling. "That's a standing offer, if any of you gents would care to take a look at the photo."
"Fuck you," the stubbly-faced guy next to the reporter said.
But the guy on the other side of him reached for the photo and it was passed down the bar. The half dozen men present all had a look, but passed it back, without a word.
"His name," the reporter said, slipping the mug shot back in the jacket pocket, "is Eddie Andrassy. If that names familiar to you, it might be because you saw it in the papers."
McFarlin, who was pretending to be paying no attention, damn near laughed out loud at that. Most of these guys couldn't read, and those that could wouldn't be wasting a nickel on a newspaper.
"He was one of the Butchers victims," the reporter said, his smirk gone. "He was one of the first ones found. He had his dick cut off, gents. Balls, too. Cheers." He lifted his beer to them and slurped at it.
Nobody said a word. Steve seemed to be getting irritated, his face settling into a nasty mask.
"It would behoove you gents," said the smart-ass reporter, "to help me out if you can. Not only is there a standing reward of some five grand in it for you, it's folks on these very streets of yours that are getting hunted by this monster."
Nobody said a word. The ceiling fan churned.
"Florence Polillo used to hang around this joint," the reporter continued, "and I think Eddie Andrassy did, too, whether this apron here remembers him or not." He smiled without sincerity at the bartender and said, "Maybe you weren't working here back then. It's been over a year."
Steve said nothing; he had stopped polishing the glass, which was shining and filthy.
"Flo used to hang out with a guy named 'One-Armed Willie,'" the reporter said, mostly to Steve. "Does Willie ever come in here anymore?"
"No," Steve said.
"Is he around?"
"I hear he hopped a freight," somebody down the bar offered.
The reporter looked at Steve for confirmation, and Steve, with some reluctance, nodded.
"I'm interested," the reporter said loudly, above the fan, stepping away from the bar, "in hearing about anybody who used to do business with Flo, or was friendly with Flo-man or woman."
A guy down the bar a ways laughed. "You think the Butcher is a woman?"
"Could be. Over in London, they figured Jack the Ripper was a midwife, you know. Why, take old Flo herself. She looked sort of like a fullback I know, only the fullback is cuter. Any of you gents want to earn a few bucks, I'm paying for info-and unlike that standing reward, I pay up whether the info leads to an arrest or conviction or not."
The reporter smiled pleasantly at the bartender and his patrons, downed the remainder of his beer, and swaggered out, swinging his coat over his shoulder.
"Cocky son of a bitch," the stubbly-faced guy said, still nursing that same goddamn beer.
"The fucker," Steve said, looking at the door where Wild had disappeared.
"He should mind his own goddamn business," the stubbly-faced guy said.
McFarlin gave the man a more careful look. Something was stirring in the recesses of his brain.
"Did she really used to come in here," the stubbly-faced guy was saying, "that butchered broad?"
"Yeah," Steve said. "She sure did. She was a sweet ol' hag."
"Pity she got hacked up."
"Yeah," Steve agreed. "But she caused me trouble, getting it like that."
"How so?"
McFarlin, without being obvious, just out of the corner of his eye, studied the stubbly-faced guy. I know him, he thought. Where do I know him from?
"Well," Steve was saying, "her buying it like that brought the cops in here like goddamn flies. We had to shut the game down in the backroom, for weeks."
"Fuck that shit," the stubbly-faced guy said sympathetically.
"And they messed with our patronage," Steve said with an oddly dignified formality. "Rousting 'em, hauling 'em downtown for questioning. Some of the people who come in here, they got reason to wanna steer clear of the cops."
"Whores like Flo, you mean?"
"Yeah," Steve said.
Somebody down the bar laughed and said, "This place is fairy heaven, after seven."
Steve scowled at the voice's owner, said, "Go to hell, Pete." He looked at the stubbly-faced guy and said, "We ain't a fag hangout, bud. We just don't figure what hole you wanna stick it in is any of our business, catch my drift?"
The stubbly-faced guy grinned. "Their money is as good as mine, huh?"
Steve tried to smile back; it was hard for him. "That's it. It ain't any of our business, in general, is the idea."
Ness!
McFarlin damn near spit out his beer. He hoped his face hadn't shown his surprise.
But he'd be damned if this scummy-looking near-derelict next to him wasn't goddamn fucking Ness himself.
"Well, that guy Andrassy," Ness was saying, "I hear he was a fag."
"He was a two-way ghee," Steve said matter-of-factly, nodding, drawing a beer for a customer and taking it to him down the bar. Then he came back and said to the director of public safety, "But Eddie was a good kid."
And Ness, cool as a cuke (McFarlin had to hand it to the son of a bitch), said, "So he did hang out here, huh?"
"Yeah. He knew Flo. They weren't thick or anything, but they knew each other. Had, you know… mutual friends."
"That guy 'One-Armed Willie' the reporter was mentioning, you mean."
"Yeah," Steve said. "Him and others. Like, you know-Abe Seleyman, the strong-arm guy. And Frankie Dolezal-he's a plasterer who's plastered most of the time."
Ness laughed, sipped his beer.
McFarlin was impressed. He hated Ness's guts on general principles, but this was a fine, sneaky piece of police work. Ness was wearing well-worn work clothes, his hair was a brown, dry mop, his face stubbly, his teeth looked scummy. To almost anybody down here, he would be unrecognizable.
It took a cop like McFarlin to make him, and it had taken him a while. McFarlin had never met Ness, but he had seen him any number of times, and not just in the papers; Ness, on the other hand, would not know McFarlin from Adam. There were scores of cops driven from the force, and only those prosecuted, or the higher-up ones, would have come to Ness's attention individually.
But it wasn't the role Ness was playing that impressed McFarlin, though he was playing it well; it was the scam of coming in, sitting at the bar, waiting for the reporter to come in and prime the pump, and then sitting back with a bucket and letting the bartender fill it up. Part of McFarlin wanted to shake Ness's hand, but at the same time another part would've like to put a bullet in him.
"I don't think I know either of those guys," Ness was saying.
"Well," Steve said, "Abe's a real bastard to a lot of people, but he's always been jake around here. He's been shaking down small merchants in East Cleveland. The cops shut the real protection racket down, so a small-timer like him can make a little chicken-feed racket play, for a while."
"Nice work if you can get it," Ness said enviously. "This Frankie guy, is he in the same racket?"
McFarlin continued to be impressed: obviously Ness had heard Steve describe Frankie Dolezal as a plasterer, but was playing dumb to keep the bucket filling up.
"Naw," Steve was saying, "Frankie's a nice guy. He's kind of a roughneck-I seen him go after somebody with a knife before."
"Maybe he's the Butcher," Ness said, conversationally.
"You don't know Frankie," Steve said, actually smiling. "He's a sweetheart. He's got a brother-in-law on the cops, for Christ's sake. Goes to church regular. Works regular, too."
Ness shrugged, as if he'd lost interest. Finished his beer. Then he had one more, which he drank more quickly
Once Ness had gone, McFarlin sat staring at the door.
"What's with you, Bob?"
McFarlin looked at the bartender blankly. He wondered, for a moment, what do. Should he tell Steve who he'd just been blabbing to?
"Nothing at all, Steve," he said, downed his beer, and headed out to his car.
Within an hour he was standing before the desk in the office of Sheriff William O'Connell on the fourth floor of the Cuyahoga County Criminal Courts Building, which also housed the jail. The jail, as the sheriff and his people referred to the Criminal Courts Building, was separated from the Central Police Station by a parking lot and a world of bitterness.
"That goddamn gloryhound!" the sheriff, on his feet, was sputtering, waving a fist. He was a big, fat man with a square head and small dark eyes and, at the moment, a bright red face; he was sweating through his khakis despite the buildings air-conditioning. His office was a moderately-sized affair decorated with awards of civic merit from the various suburban police departments where he had served the public and various gangsters, not necessarily in that order.
McFarlin knew all too well that the sheriff feared and resented Ness, who the papers were always saying would make a good county sheriff, if he ever got tired of the safety directors post.
"It was slick, Sheriff," McFarlin said, gesturing, shrugging. "Guys a detective. You got to hand it to him."
"I hand him shit! That son of a bitch has cost us more money than
…" Suddenly the sheriff began to smile. He sat back down. His desk was tidy in the way that the desk of a man who does little actual work is tidy.
"Sit down, Bob," the sheriff said. "Sit down."
Bob pulled up a straight-back chair and sat.
"This little Boy Scout bastard," the sheriff said agreeably, "has put his dick on the chopping block. You seen the papers?"
"Sure," Bob said, not getting it.
"He's taken over the 'Mad Butcher' investigation personally. Staking his whole goddamn rep on it."
"Well," Bob said, shrugging again, "you can't deny he's getting in there himself and doing the job.
The sheriff's face reddened again. "He's a showboat! An arrogant little prick! Doing it himself, out in the field…"
"From what I overheard," Bob said, "he was doing good-gathering new information, lining up new suspects. He was getting somewhere."
The sheriff smiled like an evil cherub. "Exactly. And so can we."
"What?"
"Get somewhere."
"I don't follow you."
"You're not: going to follow me at all." He pointed at his deputy. "You're going to follow Ness."
"Oh," Bob said, smiling, getting it.
The sheriff rose and went to a wire-meshed window and looked out, looked across at the Central Police Station and smiled. His small dark eyes glittered.
"And, Bob-you're going to steal that arrogant little prick's case right out from under him."