Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness Read online

  “I’d like that.” She looked down at her food. “But I’ve heard it before.”

  “This time will be different.”

  “I’ve heard that before, too.”

  “Seriously, Edna, it will be. Good grief-all I’m supposed to do is clean up the city. It’s not like they’re asking me to bring in Capone.”

  She laid down her fork. “I think the only time you’re truly happy is when you’re working. That’s why you do it so much.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “And that’s why you’ll never change.”

  “I will. You’ll see. Starting tonight.”

  “Tonight?” She arched an eyebrow. “I thought you had homework.”

  “Maybe… that could wait.” He reached out again with his hand, and this time she let him take hers. “Maybe tonight we could spend a little private time, just you and me.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Maybe you could get out that little number you bought for our honeymoon-you remember? The red silk one.”

  She lowered her head, smiling and blushing at the same time. “It isn’t really silk.”

  “I don’t care. It feels good, whatever it is. Maybe we could put some music on the radio. Is Rudy Vallee on tonight? You wear that sweet little nothing and-”

  He heard a throat clearing just above them. “Sir?”

  It was Alphonse Carrelli, his new driver.

  “Sorry, but we’re not ready to leave yet.”

  “No, sir. I just thought you might like to know, given your reputation and what you said earlier today…” He cleared his throat again.

  “What is it, Alphonse?”

  “I was in the car, sir, listening to the radio.”

  “More news from Germany?”

  “No, sir. Local news. Seems there’s been a robbery. The police think they’ve got the two felons trapped.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Can’t you see my wife and I are having a meal?”

  Alphonse cleared his throat again. “Sir-it’s just two blocks from here. At the City Savings and Loan Company.”

  Ness ’s eyes lit up. His back arched. “Two blocks?”

  “That’s correct, sir.” As he spoke, through the front window of the restaurant, Ness saw and heard a police car racing by. The red light of the siren momentarily flooded the restaurant, then faded into nothingness.

  Ness ’s hands twitched on the tabletop.

  “Sir, I’ve got the car waiting just outside the front door.”

  Ness looked into Edna’s eyes. She stared back at him, stony and expressionless.

  “No,” he said.

  Edna’s shoulders rose. The corners of her lips turned upward.

  “No, if it’s only two blocks, I’ll walk.” He pushed himself to his feet, reached into his pocket and tossed a wad of bills onto the tabletop. “You stay here and take Mrs. Ness home. When she’s ready.”

  Edna did not speak.

  “As you wish, sir. Sorry for the intrusion.”

  “You did the right thing.” He grabbed his coat. “Edna-see you at home.”

  She remained silent. But her eyes said quite a bit.

  “Point me in the right direction, Alphonse.” He did. And Eliot Ness went roaring out into the cold Cleveland night, buttoning his topcoat to protect himself from the December wind blowing off Lake Erie.

  7

  Peter Merylo had been on the Cleveland police force for more than fifteen years, most of that time as a homicide detective. But he had never seen anything like this. Never.

  “You say two boys turned this in?”

  Lieutenant Zalewski nodded. “Found it this morning. Ran for the first adult they could find. He called it in. Before we had a chance to get anyone out here, two white kids found the same thing.”

  “Kids play out here a lot?”

  Zalewski shrugged. “Guess so.”

  “Four kids find the same corpse the same day. That suggests there’s enough traffic to find it anytime. So the corpse must not have been out here long.”

  “Possible somebody found it but didn’t say anything.”

  Merylo stared down at the corpse in question. “Somebody stumbled across this mess and kept it to themselves? I don’t think so.”

  The corpse was male, although that was not immediately apparent because he had been thoroughly emasculated. He was stripped naked, all except for a pair of dirty cotton socks on his feet. And his head had been severed-head and neck actually-cut clean across the shoulders.

  “Think he kept the head for a souvenir?” Zalewski asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “Kind of person who could do something like this, I think he kept it for a souvenir.”

  Merylo’s bushy eyebrows knitted together. “How long have you been at this work, Lieutenant?”

  “Almost two years now. Sir.”

  Merylo nodded. “I thought as much.”

  Merylo was a short man, stocky, muscular, with large eyes highlighted by dark circles earned over the course of fifteen years courting the worst element of society. He had a bulldog reputation. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest man on the force, but he was a hard worker, tireless. His wife and daughter would be the first to say so. And the fact that his mug could scare the truth out of Satan himself gave him a great edge in the interrogation room.

  Like most of the Cleveland police force, Merylo had no education past high school, but contrary to what most people assumed, he was no dummy. He took pains to keep himself educated. He read the slicks every week, high-quality magazines, so he knew what was going on in the world. He even read the made-up stuff, like the stories in Argosy and The Saturday Evening Post. He loved Scientific American and he genuinely believed science was going to change the world for the better. Any day they’d be driving flying cars and using sunlight to power engines. The world was changing, and he was not going to be left behind.

  “A more logical reason for keeping the head,” Merylo suggested, “would be to make it difficult to identify the victim. ’Cause if we can’t figure out who the chump was, figuring out who had a motive to kill him is pretty tough.”

  Zalewski pondered. “Huh. Hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Still got the men searching?”

  “Oh yeah. Every available member of the No. 6 Police Emergency.”

  “I count four men.”

  “Well, you know, the Emergency’s never had much of a budget. I hear that Eliot Ness guy wants to change that. Get us the money we need. Think he will?”

  Merylo grunted. “If there’s a photographer nearby.”

  “Lieutenant!”

  Zalewski and Merylo both swung their heads around. A uniformed officer raced down Jackass Hill at a speed that outpaced his coordination. He tumbled face first to the ground, then rolled for at least ten feet.

  There was a brief pause as the officer pulled himself together. He patted himself over from head to toe, as if checking to make sure everything was still connected. Then he pulled himself to his feet, obviously mortified, and brushed dirt and grass from his uniform.

  “Something to report?” Merylo said, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Yes, sir. They-they found it, sir.”

  “Could you be a little more specific?”

  The officer was having trouble getting the information out. He stuttered several times before anything emerged. When at last it did, he spoke in a whisper. “The head.”

  Without another word, Merylo made his way up the hill.

  “Well, this blows my theory, doesn’t it?”

  Lieutenant Zalewski wasn’t sure what he meant. “Your theory, sir?”

  “That the killer cut off the head to disguise the identity of the victim. Can’t expect it to stay a secret long if you leave the head twenty feet away from the body on the same side of the hill.”

  “He did bury it.”

  “But left hair sticking out. Enough for your man to find it. If the killer really wanted it hidden, I imagine he could’ve dug a little deeper.”

  “Then why did he do it, sir?”

  “Do I look like Dick Tracy?”

  “No, sir. Haven’t got the chin for it.”

  Merylo gave Zalewski a long look. If he didn’t know better, he might suspect that this naïve, witless man wasn’t quite as much of either as he first thought. “Maybe he’s trying to send a message.”

  “So it’s a mob thing. Lots of mobsters in town these days. Eliot Ness said so.”

  Merylo took a deep breath. “Then it must be true. Look, kid, I don’t know what the reason is, but I know there is one. A logical explanation. We need more evidence before we start running around guessing why anyone would do something like… this.”

  The head had deteriorated considerably, but Merylo could still make out the essential features. He was a fairly young man, Caucasian, dark hair parted on the left side. But the face seemed strikingly different from the many faces of the dead into which Merylo had peered over the years. His skin seemed unaccountably reddish, tough, leathery.

  He’d seen a lot of mob rubout victims, too. But none of them ever looked like this.

  Something was wrong here.

  “You still got those kids nearby, Zalewski? The second pair who reported finding the body?”

  “Sure. They’re brothers. Steve and Leonard Jeziorski. They’re in a car on the other side of the Hill. Why?”

  “I want to talk to them.” He paused. “Something here doesn’t add up.”

  Zalewski pulled a face. “You think they’re lying?”

  “No.” He stood up and granted himself the temporary mercy of looking away from the severed head. “No, I don’t. But there’s still something wrong here.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.”

  “Didn’t those boys you’ve got describe the corpse as fat?”

  “I think the word they used was ‘stocky.’ ”

  “Yeah, that’s the word people always use when they’re describing fat to someone who’s fat. Problem is-our corpse isn’t fat.”

  “Well, they’re just boys, sir. I doubt if they spent very long looking.”

  “Said he was on the short side, too, didn’t they?”

  “Ye-es…”

  “Our corpse is tall. Almost six foot, I make him. Adding in a head, of course.”

  “What do boys know? Everyone looks tall when you’re their age.”

  “But they said he was short.”

  “Well, everyone looks short when they’re lying on the ground. With no head.”

  “Have you given this head a good long look?”

  Zalewski’s voice dropped a notch. “Not any longer than I had to.”

  “He’s young. Barely more than a boy. Skinny.”

  “Like I said-”

  “This is not the head of a fat man. For that matter, the neck isn’t the right size.”

  “The neck-?”

  Merylo removed his hat and wiped his brow. “What I’m trying to tell you, Zalewski, is that this head doesn’t match that torso.”

  “But-it has to. I-I don’t understand how-”

  “You don’t have to. Just get your men back into the field. And call headquarters. I want more officers out here. I don’t care if you have to pull boys in from other precincts. I want two dozen police officers scouring this hill. Fanning out all across the Run if necessary.”

  “They won’t like it, sir.”

  “As if I care. Get the men out here. Your boys in the car didn’t find the same corpse as the kids this morning. They found another one.”

  8

  From the December 13, 1935, Cleveland Plain Dealer:

  “… and this reporter was not the only one impressed by the tireless energy and enthusiasm shown by Ness on what was only his second day on the job. Although the two burglars escaped pursuit by jumping to another rooftop, Ness accepted an invitation to join the officers on their nocturnal patrol of the crime-ridden Roaring Third, with its rampant vice, gambling, and illegal liquor. Ness then accompanied them as they responded to a five-alarm fire at a nearby warehouse, and in the small hours of the morning participated in a raid of a local house of prostitution. Unfortunately, when the police entered, they found the building had been vacated.

  “ ‘Obviously,’ Ness announced, ‘someone in the department tipped them off. I will find out who it was,’ he added, making it sound less like a prediction than a promise. ‘I will demand their badges.’

  “It is still early days for our new safety director. But already he is forming an excellent reputation with the people in government and law enforcement-everyone but those who know their days on the force may be numbered, because this is a man who means what he says. Six feet and 172 pounds of fight and vigor, an expert criminologist who looks like a collegian but can battle vice with the best of them, Eliot Ness is dedicated to his job of ensuring law and order in the city of Cleveland. Mayor Burton should be complimented for hiring a safety director without political ties or aspirations who has a spotless record of battling corruption…”

  – -

  Ness squeezed the paper in his fist and slapped it against his desk. “Did you read this, Robert? Did you read it?”

  Robert Chamberlin, the man temporarily assigned by Chief Matowitz to help Ness get situated, nodded. “Indeed I did. Great press. The papers love you.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  Chamberlin blinked. “Well, now. That’s the first time since I entered government service that I’ve heard that.”

  Ness bounced out of his desk chair and paced around the office. He had always had a hard time sitting still. “What matters is whether I have the clout to clean up the city. These newspapers are helping me get it.”

  “You’re the safety director, whether they like you or not.”

  “Yes, but for how long? And what exactly are my powers? Do I take orders from the mayor or am I independent? No one seems to know. I can’t do anything without funding, and the city council controls that. No, I need popular support if I’m going to accomplish my goals. That’s why I play along with those newsboys.”

  Chamberlin fingered his wire-rimmed glasses. “Is that why?”

  “Yes. Means to an end, that’s all.”

  “I see.”

  “You have any idea how much five hundred traffic lights cost?”

  “I don’t even know what a traffic light is.”

  Ness laughed. “You will. And then there’s the cost of motorcycles, ambulances. Two-way radios. All the latest scientific innovations. Everything this city needs to relieve congestion and make driving safer. But all of it has a price tag.”

  “I’m sure the city council will give you whatever you need.”

  “As long as supporting me looks like the popular thing to do. Any news on the brothel raid?”

  “I think it’s a lost cause, Eliot.”

  “No such thing, Robert. Our only problem has been that we move too slowly. The word gets out to the crooks. Gosh, even when it doesn’t, these mobsters can usually get everything and everyone hidden away between the time our officers knock and the time we get in. We have to move faster. And we have to plug up the leaks.”

  “Easy to say, Eliot. Hard to do. There are too many suspects, too many police officers who knew about the raid.”

  “And it could have been any of them?”

  “It could have been all of them.”

  “Get me names, Robert.”

  “I can’t be sure, Eliot. I have suspects. But nothing certain.”

  “Then I’ll put them on suspension. Then we’ll try the raid again and see what happens.”

  “You can’t do that.” Chamberlin was a tall, lanky man, experienced in dealing with bureaucrats and politicians-which had not fully prepared him for working for someone like Eliot Ness. Ness liked that. He knew Chamberlin was more political than he, and that was fine. He could use help in that particular arena. “You can’t take away a man’s job without proof.”

  “Not talking about firing them. Suspension with pay.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “I have to know who I can trust, Robert.” Outside his office door, a man was painting his name, just above the words SAFETY DIRECTOR. He liked the way it looked. “I have to find my Untouchables.”

  “We will, sir. But you must be patient.”

  Ness chuckled. “Not my best virtue.” His eyes were fixed on the letters on the door. FBI agents got their names on the doors, at least the top ones. He wondered if they looked the same.

  “By the way, Eliot-your wife called.”

  Ness looked up abruptly, breaking out of his reverie. “Edna?”

  “She wanted to know if you’ll be home tonight.”

  “Well-of course I’ll be home.” He paused. “I’m not exactly sure when.” The light flickered back into his eyes. “Chief Matowitz and I have made special plans.”

  “Anything you’d care to tell me about?”

  Ness winked, then he grabbed his hat and headed toward the door that now bore his name. “You can read about it in tomorrow’s papers.”

  9

  Merylo hated visiting the coroner’s office. Hated it worse than he hated wide ties, Joan Crawford, and that jazzy music. “It Ain’t Necessarily So”-what kind of song was that? Bad grammar excusing bad scansion. But at least he could turn off the radio. Visiting the coroner was part of the job, more and more so with every passing year. When he had started with the force, fifteen years ago, there hadn’t been all that much a coroner could do, other than pronounce a corpse officially dead, fill out the death certificate, and make a semi-educated guess as to the cause of death. Today, modern science had given them the ability to do much more; the coroner had become an integral part of the crime-solving team. So here he was.

  But Merylo still didn’t like it.

  Fortunately, the new coroner in Cleveland, Arthur J. Pearce, was one of the best in the country. Merylo knew he had written scientific articles for the top forensic journals. Merylo had even read some of them, though he usually got lost in the scientific gibberish. The man had a national reputation. He could be helpful.

  Pearce hunched over his examining table, a sharp instrument in one hand and a blunt one in the other, doing something to one of the corpses.