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-
