'Yes.' Ness looked at Curry. 'And that's why you're going in alone. Or almost alone-you'll wear a thirty-eight in an ankle holster. You'll work both settlements-the one at Commerce and Canal, and the one near the Thirty-seventh Street Bridge.'
Curry raised his eyebrows, let out some air, and put the eyebrows back down. 'Whatever you say, Chief.'
'I want you to take a blackjack and a sharp jackknife, as well.'
'No argument,' Curry said.
Ness sipped his coffee. 'I'll be going undercover myself,' he said matter-of-factly. 'I'm going to canvass the saloons around Kingsbury Run, and in the Flats.'
'You'll risk being recognized,' Merlo said. 'You've had a lot of press.'
'Thanks to me,' Wild said.
'I'm a very ordinary-looking fella,' Ness said with a wicked little smile. 'And with some stubble on my face, and in some ratty old overalls, I'll just be another guy bellying up to the bar.'
'Are you going alone, too?' Wild said.
'No,' Ness said. 'You're going with me.'
'Oh,' said Wild, flatly. Then with his usual archness: 'Whatever you say… just don't expect me to call you 'Chief.''
Ness turned back to Merlo. 'Do we have a shot at identifying any of the other victims?'
'I thought we had a shot at the colored woman,' Merlo said, 'whose bones were found under the Lorain- Carnegie Bridge.'
'Her bones, including her bridgework,' Ness said, nodding. 'You've been checking with dentists?'
'Yes. Everyone in the city.'
'How many colored dentists are there in Cleveland?'
'Two. We've checked them both.'
'She should be there. She should be in their records.'
'I know,' Merlo said, shrugging, frustrated. 'She isn't.'
Again Ness pointed at Merlo, his finger a gun. 'Get a list of all the colored dentists in the state. There can't be too many. Approach them all. If that doesn't work, go national.'
'It's a thought,' Merlo granted him. 'You know, there was a third colored dentist in town, but he died two years ago.'_
'Do his records exist?'
'Listings of patients, yes. X-rays and dental charts, no. They were transferred to other dentists.'
Ness thought. 'Tell you what. Take those patient listings and check them against any colored women whose names turn up on the local Missing Persons Bureau sheets. If you get a match, you may have our girl.'
'That's a damned good idea,' Merlo admitted. 'But without dental records…'
'A relative may be able to identify the bridgework. I could identify my mother's bridgework at fifty paces.'
Merlo shrugged, smiled humorlessly, said, 'I'll give it a try. If we dead-end there?'
'We try something else.' Ness turned back to Curry. 'I want to be frank with you, Albert. I'm not sending you into shantytown just because you're a good investigator, which you are. And I certainly want you to worm your way into that sorry community and ingratiate yourself into some information. But I've also chosen you for this because, well… you may make a good Butcher bait.'
'Butcher bait?' Curry said.
'Our man is homosexual, or bisexual, or… something. You may look good to him.'
'Swell,' Curry said.
'You'll need to be very careful. Trust no one, except your gun, blackjack, and knife. We have here, remember, a murderer who emasculated three of his male victims, while dismembering two of the female victims in such a way that the pelvic region remained attached to the upper thighs- fairly framing the victims vulva. He has sex with both sexes, possibly after killing them.'
Curry's face was white. 'Mr. Ness, how can you discuss this so calmly?'
'Because it's the only way such things can be discussed.'
Curry looked very white. 'I… I don't know how we go about this, finding a madman. You're dealing with this like it's… a normal case. But he's a fiend… he's inhuman…'
'No,' Ness said. 'That's the awful part. He's as human as any of us. If he were a monster, we could pick him right out of the crowd. But we have an intelligent, possibly charming murderer who fits right in. Who may lead a perfectly normal life, except in this one little area.'
'Having sex with the dead, you mean,' Wild said with a sick smirk.
'What happens to the dead doesn't concern me,' Ness said. 'What I'm interested in, what we all are interested in, is the living-and keeping them that way.'
'He should be killed,' Curry said.
'He should be stopped,' Ness said. 'He's the Butcher, remember-we're the police.'
CHAPTER 7
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
