Max Collins - Butcher's dozen

"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-in-law, who really is a cop, like that bartender said-a patrolman-which is where a lot of this info came from, incidentally. And apparently Mr. Dolezal hit hard times not so much because of the Depression, but because he keeps looking for the bottoms of bottles, and finding them."

"I've witnessed some of that," Ness said. "He put ten bottles of beer away last night. Have you got him shadowed, too?"

"Yes. For the last three nights. Last night he was in that tavern where you were, of course."

"And the nights before?"

"Various parks, approaching various men. Transient types."

"I see."

"If he's our boy, and we keep him shadowed long enough, we may catch him in the act."

"That's fine, but if so, let's try to catch him before he chops somebody's head off, okay?"

"Speaking of which," Merlo said slyly, "there is one other interesting fact about Mr. Dolezal's past."

"Saving the best for last, Sergeant?"

"You be the judge, Director Ness." Merlo smiled nastily. "A few years ago, between bricklaying jobs, the suspect worked in a meat-packing plant."

"Doing what exactly?"

"Slaughtering animals."

The two men sat in the dark and listened to the silence.

Finally Ness said, "The coroner and other experts think the Butcher has surgical training."

"Well, Dolezal obviously has at least some knowledge of carving, knows something about bone structure."

Ness nodded. Then he used the pen flash to study the face of Rose Wallace again, asking, "How goes the search for the murder lab?"

"Nothing has turned up as yet, but five teams of fire wardens, accompanied by detective bureau men I hand-picked, are out in the field. They're reporting to me, until you re back in your office. Oh, and Curry reported in from undercover today, as well."

"What did he have to report?"

"Not much so far. He's been hanging out at the shantytown at Canal and Commerce since Monday. Turned nothing up, to speak of. He came in this morning looking like hell-hasn't been sleeping, and who can blame him."

"Did you send him home?"

"Yes. Told him to get some rest. By now he's probably heading out again."

"To the other shantytown, this time, I trust."

"Right. The more spread-out one, not far from Jackass Hill."

"Good." Ness got out of the car quickly, then looked in the window. "Now, I have further instructions."

Merlo leaned forward eagerly. "Yes?"

"Go home," Ness said. "Get some rest yourself."

Then he walked back to the two-story brick tenement where he was inhabiting suite 3.

As he went up the creaking stairs, he noted a figure seated on the landing, using the top step for a chair. A gathered-into-itself figure, leaning against the wall, crying.

Ness slowed. The sound was eerie-like a child's sobbing. Soft, pitiful, plaintive.

And the man crying was Frank Dolezal.

"Frankie?" Ness said, stopping a few steps from where the blond man sat.

It was dark, but both men had their night vision in full swing. And Dolezal, his unshaven face wet with tears, squinted at Ness, then recognized him, uttering in a guttural slur, "Oh. Hello, Harry."

Harry was the name Ness had made himself known by at the nameless saloon.

"You okay, Frankie?"

Dolezal nodded yes, but said, "Not so good, Harry. Not so good. You want drink?" He offered a wine bottle in a paper bag.

"Thanks," Ness said, and sat on the step next to the man, pretending to drink from the bottle before passing it back.

Dolezal used both hands to clutch the bottle as he drank from it. That was good: Ness wanted both of Dolezal's hands in plain sight. Night vision or no, he wished he and his drinking partner were somewhere other than this unlit hall.

"I need move, Harry."

"What do you mean, Frankie?"

"Can't sleep. Room has ghost."

"A ghost?"

Dolezal nodded. He had a square head and haunted eyes.