Max Collins - Butcher's dozen

"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."

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.