The Unknown Beloved(22)
5
Malone was waiting at the end of the driveway for Ness at exactly one o’clock on Friday. Eliot was punctual. Malone had always liked that about him. When he pulled up in front of the house in a nondescript black car, Malone climbed in and slammed the door, and Ness pulled away again, veering back into the traffic along Broadway without a hitch.
Malone pointed at the dashboard and the radio setup mounted like spaceship controls to the right of the wheel. “We goin’ to another galaxy?”
“It’s a two-way radio,” Ness said proudly. “I’ve been working on getting them in all the cars. Future of policing right there.” He shook his finger at it. “No more call boxes or blinking lights on street corners. Expensive as hell—this setup cost more than the car itself. But we’ve got at least one in every precinct.” He turned the dials and flipped switches, demonstrating, and then turned them off after a few minutes of meaningless chatter.
They drove for an hour, winding in and out of the streets, across the bridges and over tracks, Ness pointing out places of interest and pockets of trouble. They drove past a line of men, most in caps and overalls, that extended half a block.
“Is that a soup line?” Malone asked.
“Nah. That’s where they pick up their relief checks. Things are getting better, I think. I hope. But half the city is still unemployed, and the jobs they’re getting don’t pay enough to cover the rent. That’s why the Run is full of shantytowns. A lot of folks who live there work; they just can’t afford to live anywhere else.”
“I plan to go down there and start picking around. Hop a train or two. Talk to the hobos. But I need to get some different clothes. And I admit, I’m not too eager to ride a train right now. I’ve gotten soft in the last year. I don’t much like being cold or dirty, and I’m going to have to be both.”
“I know a place where we can get a look of the whole Run without getting out of the car. It’ll give you a bird’s-eye view of what’s down there.”
Ness drove several blocks and turned off a paved road onto a dirt path. Had the ground not been frozen, it surely would have been inaccessible, but Ness seemed to know where he was going. Sure enough, when he stopped, the crater that was the Run—a dry riverbed crisscrossed with train tracks and cluttered with mountains of junk—stretched out below them.
“They tell me it used to be an oasis down there,” Ness said. “Women would walk with their parasols on tree-lined paths. Families would push their babies in strollers, and couples would stroll along like it was Central Park.”
“Huh. Hard to believe.”
“Now we got railroad tracks, tin sheds, and pup tents. And that’s just in the nicer sections.” Ness’s laugh didn’t contain much mirth. “The rows of crates and cardboard boxes are a city of their own. I’ve thought more than once that I should go and just burn it all down. People shouldn’t live that way. I don’t know how compassionate it is to just look the other way.”
“Before you start burning things, you better have somewhere for them to go,” Malone said.
“And that’s why it’s all still there.” Eliot sighed. “Plenty of good people down there. Plenty of bad. Plenty of characters too.”
“Characters?”
“The truly bizarre, Mike. There are all types, everywhere, but down there, it’s not as easy to hide your proclivities. I got reports of a man beneath the Lorain Bridge that has a collection of shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes. He doesn’t sell them. He just sets them up, like they’re being worn by his invisible friends. And he talks to them. We’ve tried a couple times to question him, just because he’s so damn odd. But he’s always cleared out when we go.”
“It’s not a crime to like shoes. I know a few women—and even more than a few gangsters—who would be guilty if it were.”
“Yeah. Well . . . we were wondering if some of the shoes belonged to a few of our victims.”
“How would you ever know? You don’t know who most of your victims are. How in the world you gonna be able to identify their shoes?” Malone shot back.
“I just want to find the killer, Mike. That’s all I want to do.”
“You got any ideas? Any at all?”
“About eighteen months ago, we had what we called a Torso Clinic. Psychologists, coroners, scientists from the bureau, criminologists, pathologists, and of course the detectives on the case all attended. We even had some reporters from the different papers come. With everyone’s help, we put together a profile of the Butcher.”
“You’ve got a description?”
“Not eyewitness accounts, but yeah. An educated set of parameters telling us what kind of character is doing this.”
“I’m guessing it’s not one of your characters living down there.” Malone pointed at the Run.
“It’d be easier if it were. But no. I don’t think it is. We figure the man is either a butcher—an actual butcher—a doctor, or someone who has had experience that would provide him with the knowledge that the Butcher exhibits. He knows what he’s doing when he starts dismembering. Where the joints are, how to cut around them. That kind of stuff.”
“Is this why you didn’t want to go into detail over the phone? You think your Butcher might be someone with some prestige?”