Max Collins - Butcher's dozen

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."

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.