"Now I have to ask you to do much the same thing again, and I have no right to. You can say no. I won't hold it against you. Not in the least."
"Say no to what?" There was more than a hint of impatience in Ness's voice.
Burton gestured in a conciliatory manner. "You have to understand, Eliot, that while we've accomplished much, there is much yet to accomplish."
"I know," Ness nodded with a sour smile. "There's still corruption on the force. We still have gambling, policy . . . labor racketeering. None of it is gone."
"Strides have been made," Burton said. "Remarkable strides. And your deams of modernizing the force, of putting a patrol car within a half-minute of any home in the city, of reorganization of the traffic bureau, of instituting a juvenile delinquency unit . . . we need to make them come true. I have a great belief in your theories, and their practical application, Eliot."
"I appreciate that, sir."
"But the sad truth is, we have an election coming up."
Ness smiled. "You'll take that in a walk."
"It's not that simple. I'm running on the Republican ticket, but I'm perceived, correctly, as an independent. I'm going to be up against four challengers in the primary race, Eliot."
"Well, if there's anything I can do . . ."
"We'll get to that. You have to understand that for me to win I need more than just the support of the people. I need the support of the business community."
"You've had that in the past," Ness said. "I probably know that better than anybody."
"Yes, you do. The industrialists, the merchants, who came through with private funding for so much of the work you've accomplished, who've kept our slush fund full, have to be convinced that we're still worth backing. That we're not going to embarrass them and the community."
Ness frowned. "I don't understand . . . our successes have gotten us attention all over the country. The world! I've got clippings in my scrapbook from as far away as . . ."
Burton lifted a hand, gently. "Yesterday's news, as your friend Mr. Wild might say."
Ness thought about that, darkly.
"The Butcher," Ness said.
"The Butcher," Burton agreed, sighing. "What the world knows about Cleveland right now is that we have America's answer to Jack the Ripper stalking our streets. And our police department can't seem to do a thing about it."
"We're being made to look ineffectual by this maniac."
"You haven't been tarnished by it, personally. Everyone knows you have your own staff of investigators, that you've hired outside investigators"—that was one of the major reasons for seeking slush-funding from the business community—"that from time to time you do your own investigating. You've managed to stay aloof from the . . . embarrassment."
Ness said nothing, his expression an understated scowl.
"I know you care deeply about this case," Burton said. "I'm well aware that you, personally, arranged to have those 'death masks' shown at the expo. At a midway attraction, no less. ..."
Ness bristled. "Hundreds of thousands of people—maybe millions of people—will walk by those dead faces. And maybe one of those people will make an identification."
"But Eliot—a carnival tent?"
"I tried eleswhere, Ness said tightly." Don't think I didn't. I was blocked at every turn—even the U.S. government building, with their crime prevention section, where I thought I had connections, turned me away. The display was found too . . . unpleasant. Bad for the image of the expo, of the city. Well, having that son of a bitch at large is bad for the image of the city, too."
Burton smiled gently, touched the shoulder of the younger man. "Son of a bitch" was about as rough as the safety director's language got; the expression was a gage of how deep his concern really ran.
"I've taken some heat," Burton admitted, "for the damage you've done the city's 'image.' The movers and shakers in our community hardly find a display of death masks of the victims of the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run a positive contribution to the public's perception of our fair city. On the other hand, I agree with your decision to have the masks shown."
"You do?"
"I do. I only wish you had spoken to me—I might have been able to arrange a more . . . dignified exhibition hall."
"I'm sorry, I—"
"Never mind. But you have to understand the displeasure of our financial 'angels.' Attendance at the expo this year has fallen off drastically. Shopping downtown is similarly well below last year's mark. This new discovery of yet another Butcher casualty, just a month after the last such discovery, is hardly going to help pull people our way, either."
A twitch of irritation tugged Ness's cheek. "It's silly," he said. "The Butcher strikes exclusively at the poor homeless bastards of the Run, of the worst sections of the Flats. The average expo attendee hardly has any—"
"Eliot, you're looking at it like a policeman. Look at it as if you were still living in Chicago. Let's say you're in the insurance business. You're looking for someplace to take mom and the kids for a summer holiday. You start thumbing through the Sunday paper, to look for travel ideas, and you come across a story about the discovery of victim number nine of the mad headhunter who is stalking Cleveland's streets."
Ness smirked humorlessly, shrugged. "I guess I wouldn't be taking the next bus here, at that."
"Exactly. That's why I have to ask—propose—that you consider taking this risk.
"Whatever it is, ask."
"I want you to take over."
"Take over?"
"The investigation. I want you to turn your desk over to your executive assistant and make the Butcher your top personal priority."
Ness grinned. "Hot damn! Is that what this is about? Why do you think I made the appointment with you? I wanted to request this goddamn case!"
Ness was laughing and shaking his head, but Burton smiled uneasily and patted the air with his palms.
"Eliot—it's not that simple. We would enter this arena with the same fanfare as before. We would put you and your reputation on the line. The man who got Capone sets out to become the man who gets the Butcher. That sort of thing."
Ness, still smiling, nodded. "I see no problem with that."
"You don't? What if you fail?"
"Fail?" he said. As if the possibility had never occurred to him.
Burton shook his head woefully. "If I lose the primary—or if I win but then lose the election that follows— there's very little chance my successor would hold you over. Not if you go on the line by making the Butcher your personal meat, as it were, only to have the killings continue."
Ness nodded matter-of-factly.
"And frankly," Burton said, "even if I do win, I might be pressured to get a new safety director. If you've been made to look . . . well ..."
"Stupid?" Ness was grinning. "Ineffective?"
"Well, yes. Pick your own disparaging adjective, if you like."
"I'll tell you what I'd like," Ness said, and his grin was gone. "I'd like to stop the killing. I'd like to stop fishing arms and legs out of rivers, to stop finding the remains of human beings scattered like so many cuts of beef across the godforsaken landscape of the Run. I'd like to put that evil bastard, whoever he is, in the electric chair."
Burton laughed shortly. "When would you like to start trying?"
"I already have," Ness said, and began walking down the gentle slope to the edge of the river where Merlo, Curry, and the uniformed cop, and two dismembered arms awaited.
CHAPTER 4
The Torso Clinic, as the press came to call it, met at seven the next evening in the ballistics lab on the second floor of the Central Police Station. Shortly before seven, grave-looking men began filing into the stark, high-ceilinged room. Work desks with comparison microscopes had been moved to one side, as had various file and card cabinets, to make room for rows of folding chairs; an aisle had been left to allow the slide projector its path to the screen set up before them. Few of the men were taking their seats as yet; they were stu
dying in churchlike silence the wall of torso-murder photos the coroner had arranged for his guests. Coroner Samuel Gerber had also set a table, just in front of the large bulletin board where the photos were thumb-tacked, a table covered by a white cloth as if a meal were about to be served; but rather than china and silverware, the coroner provided an arrangement of human bones, including several skulls. The photos, and bones as well, were clearly labeled as to which victim or victims were represented.
Ness had stood in the hallway greeting the clinic attendees, shaking hands, thanking them for coming at such short notice. Among them were Dr. G. Clifford Watterson, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University medical school; Dr. Louis A. Williamson, superintendent of the Newburg state hospital for the insane; Police Chief George Matowitz; County Prosecutor Frank T. Cullitan; Sergeant Hogan, head of the homicide squad; several other doctors, including a psychiatrist in the probation department of criminal courts; and various detectives, including Merlo and Curry, all of whom had worked one or more of the individual killings.
A brace of reporters had also been invited, to give evenhanded coverage to all the papers. The representative of the Plain Dealer was the last to show.
"You sure you know what you're doing?" Sam Wild, lighting up a Lucky Strike, asked Ness.
"Yes."
Wild was a tall, pale, bony-looking man in his mid-thirties. His hair was dark blond and curly and his features were pointed, giving him a pleasantly satanic look. He wore a white seersucker suit and a blue bow tie and a straw fedora with a blue band.
"Your self-confidence is an example to us all," Wild said, exhaling smoke, smiling, looking like a happy cadaver. "But you're putting more on the line than just your good name, you know. Like your ass, for instance."
"Sam, I'm just doing my job here."
"Bullshit. Your job is to be an administrator. Your hobby is chasing crooks down. But I'm not complaining. You always do right by me where the headlines are concerned, and this is sure as hell no exception."
Wild had been exclusively attached to City Hall, specifically to cover the activities of the safety director, for well over a year now.
"I'll get you your headlines," Ness said.
Wild laughed. "Christ, you're a smug son of a bitch! Well, I'm with you, pal. Only, you lead the way. I'll be right behind you—watching behind you."
"With my 'ass' on the line like it is," Ness said with a quiet smile, "that'll come in handy."
Wild's smirk dissolved and he stared at Ness with a curious blankness. "Aren't you afraid?"
"Not really."
"Don't shit me, Eliot. Don't you realize what you've done?"
"Sure. I'm risking embarrassment . . . maybe a career setback . . . if I don't pull this one off."
"Embarrassment? Career setback? You've come out and publicly made the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run your personal public enemy number one! That sick fucking son of a bitch is into wholesale human slaughter."
"I noticed," Ness said, taking Wild's arm, leading him into the lab, where the men were settling into their chairs, to one of which Ness led Wild. "Now sit down and get out your notepad. You ain't seen nothing yet."
"I haven't been covering this ghoulish damn story—"
"Well, you are now," Ness said, and sat him down.
He walked down the aisle and turned and faced the assemblage of men, many of whom were trusted colleagues, such as Cullitan and Matowitz, while others—such as the various doctors who'd been asked in as experts—he knew only by reputation.
"Again, my thanks to all of you for rallying at such short notice," he said. "This is an emergency measure, as with the recent discovery of Butcher victim number nine, it's clear that these inhuman killings have reached epidemic proportions. It's my hope that this conference will channel various expert opinions—pointing the way toward a solution to this mystery. I'd like to turn the proceedings over to Coroner Gerber."
There was polite applause as Coroner Gerber, a small, sallow man, rose from the front row and began by taking off his suit coat. Most others in the room followed the coroners lead, as the several wall-mounted fans weren't nearly up to combating the warmth of this summer night. Ness, who left his coat on, sat in the front row.
Gerber, eyes large and dark and mournful behind wire-frame glasses, was a man of forty who looked older, white beginning to overtake his dark hair, including his mustache, lines creasing his face.
Nonetheless, he had great energy as he spoke, moving restlessly before his audience.
"This mass-murder mystery is the equal of any of the famous mass-murder cases known in history," Gerber said with a strange combination of enthusiasm and dread. "Equal in interest, gruesomeness, and—most important, gentlemen—ingenuity on the part of the murderer." He glanced toward the back of the room and said, "Lights."
And the lights went out and the projector came on. In photos sometimes larger than life, the sorry parade of dismembered bodies began.
Of the victims whose bodies were found by the two boys at the bottom of Jackass Hill on September 23, 1935, one had been identified, through fingerprints: the younger man, Edward Andrassy, twenty-eight years old, a minor street tough in the so-called Roaring Third precinct, the seedy, crime-ridden area adjacent to Kingsbury Run. Possibly a homosexual, Andrassy had once been employed at Cleveland City Hospital as an orderly. The older, stocky victim had not been identified.
On January 26, 1936, in the Roaring Third itself, the next victim emerged, in several installments. First, a local butcher, attracted by the insistent barking of a dog behind a nearby factory, found various body parts of a white woman—lower torso, right arm, both thighs—wrapped in newspaper, left in two burlap bags and a half-bushel basket. Thirteen days later, the left arm and lower legs turned up behind an empty building on Orange Avenue, SE, near East Fourteenth Street. Though the head had not yet turned up, identification was made by fingerprints, an identification confirmed by the woman's ex-husband, who recognized an abdominal scar. The woman was Florence Polillo, a forty-one-year-old, heavyset, heavy-drinking prostitute.
On June 5, 1936, two colored youngsters playing hooky from school were wandering Kingsbury Run much as had those two other boys in 1935. Just half a mile from Jackass Hill, the boys noticed a pair of trousers balled up and stuck under a tree on the embankment. One of the boys grabbed a stick and poked at the pants, and a head rolled out and tumbled to their feet.
This was the head of the handsome young man, thought to be a sailor, whose heavily tattooed body had turned up intact in bushes nearby; the elaborate body markings seemed to insure prompt identification. While the sailor's fingerprints were not on file, a poster detailing his tattoos and including a photo of his handsome, almost pretty, dead face had been widely circulated to the press (and was still on display at the expo). To date, he remained unidentified.
On July 22, 1936, a man's head had been found separated from his body; the two lay fifteen feet apart in the weeds near railroad tracks and a hobo camp, in the dismal, desolate Big Creek region on the West Side of town. This victim—like the tattooed apparent sailor—had not been emasculated. He remained unidentified, his death mask on display at the expo.
On September 10, 1936, a hobo hopping a freight spotted two halves of a male torso bobbing in the fetid, stagnant pool where the sewers flowed out from under Kingsbury Run into the Cuyahoga. Police fished out the torso halves, then with grappling hooks brought up the lower legs and thighs. Then they provided a diver with the thankless job of the decade: to go exploring for the arms and head in the pool of excrement. When this task proved as fruitless as it had been unpleasant, the pool was drained, flushed with a fire hose. No head. No arms. No identification. Also no genitals: the Butcher had, with this victim, reverted to his emasculating ways.
February 23rd of this year, the upper torso of a young woman washed up on Euclid beach from the icy waters of Lake Erie, where it had apparently drifted from the Cuyahoga. The woman was not identified, but the discovery ca
used police to recall another similar incident.
Two and a half years before, on September 5, 1934, a man gathering driftwood on that same beach had discovered the lower torso of a woman; a few days later, a suitcase containing the headless upper torso was fished out of the same waters. Prior to the February 23rd discovery, Gerber conceded, this slaying had not been connected to the Mad Butcher. It had not yet been officially added to the roster.
On June 5th, a fourteen-year-old boy walking under the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, kicking stones, kicked a skull. The rest of the skeleton was nearby. The body had probably been under the bridge for nearly a year, Gerber said; the victim had been decapitated, but the skeleton was otherwise intact—including bridgework with three gold teeth. From the formation of the jawbone and the skull, Dr. Watterson, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University School of Medicine, had deduced the victim was a colored woman.
"Which brings us to the most recent victim," Gerber said as slides of the Third Street Bridge discovery began filling the screen, "who has yet to be identified. What we know about this deceased gentleman is that he was approximately six feet tall, weighed one hundred and eighty-to-ninety pounds . . . and his heart, liver, and various other vital organs were removed. Lights."
As the lights came up, the men on the folding chairs winced as their eyes got used to the light. Ness glanced around at them; this was a somber group, sickened and perhaps numbed by the shocking, dismaying material they'd viewed in Gerber's wall display and his slide presentation. Overkill on Gerber's part, perhaps; but overkill on the part of the Butcher, most certainly.
Ness rose, turned, and spoke to his audience. "Seeing this panoply of the Butchers handiwork should bring home to us just what it is we're facing—just what it is we have to put an end to. Now, I've asked Dr. Strauss, our county pathologist, to say a few words."
Strauss, a dignified, heavyset man, displayed on an easel a large chart of the crimes, comparing them as to dismemberments, condition of bodies, clothing, and other factors. He mentioned that the decapitations were invariably made between the third and fourth vertebrae of the neck.
BUTCHER'S DOZEN (Eliot Ness) Page 4
