Part 22 (1/2)
She didn't want to pile on, knowing how awful he felt, but the dead pieces of flesh before her forced her to point it out: ”There's a man out there right now to whom that will come as no comfort.”
CHAPTER 29.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26.
1936.
Sunday mornings were quiet in the cathouse business. No customers, and the staff catching up on their rest after the busy Sat.u.r.day-night trade. Consequently doors were opened to James and Walter only after a long wait and then by lined faces with tousled hair, faces none too happy to find cops on the doorstep but especially unhappy to be awakened earlier than usual on such a frigid day.
The first such madam they encountered told them so in no uncertain terms. Police were usually made welcome in exchange for their lack of enforcement of standing vice laws and a phoned tip whenever they were forced to make a raid in order to let the public think that cops occasionally did their jobs. Apparently the madam felt different rules applied in the harsh light of day, or she was just too tired to care. ”What do you want? Get the h.e.l.l off my doorstep. Oh, come in, or I'll freeze to death right in this doorway, with all the neighbors staring.”
”As if you care what your neighbors think, Rosie,” Walter said, stamping the snow from his shoes onto the welcome mat in a show of politeness.
Rosie had deep lines in her face, a mouth set like granite, and a man's figure. A strong man. ”I do. Some of them are my best customers. What do you want, this early on a Sunday? I know it ain't a visit with one of my girls, or you wouldn't have brought him along.”
She meant James, with an inflection that made it sound as if he came from outer s.p.a.ce. Did everyone in town know him as the police department oddity, the b.u.m who can't figure out what's good for him?
Walter said, ”Rosie, I got one question and one question only. Answer it and we'll be on our way and you can get back to your beauty sleep. Are you missing a girl?”
The woman blinked at him, then the sleepiness cleared. ”Why, you found one? You got a girl in jail? You got her, you keep her, she's got nothing to do with me.”
”Rosie, just tell me if you're short a girl, that's all. No trouble for you, I promise.”
”Hah,” she said before turning away. ”That makes me feel a lot better, the word of a chizz.”
When she had climbed the creaking stairs with the threadbare rose-patterned runner, James turned to his partner. ”I see you two have met.”
”So have you. Remember, we arrested two of her girls last year for rolling that drunk at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. At least it's warm in here.”
”I suppose it has to be, since most of the people in it are undressed at any given time.”
”Can't have the clients catching cold,” Walter said in agreement.
”A cold would be the least of my worries,” James said. Upstairs, he could hear the groans and protests as Rosie went from room to room, rousing the prost.i.tutes.
It did not take long. The madam thumped back down the steps and said to Walter, ”They're all here.”
”Every girl is accounted for? It's really important-”
”I got fifteen girls in this house, and all fifteen are upstairs in their beds. Now go away and let me get back to mine.” She opened the door, hiding behind it to avoid the arctic blast from the street. ”And don't come back unless it's paying business. You used up a free time with this little stunt.”
Walter grinned his chubby little-boy grin. ”I'd be upset if I thought you meant that.”
”Out.”
Out they went, and climbed into the freezing car. Walter gave a s.h.i.+ver as he started it up. ”Isn't she a dilly? Her place sure looks a lot different during the day.”
”Let that be a lesson to you.”
Walter laughed. ”Yeah, yeah. You should come by here sometime, when Helen gets on your nerves. Rosie's girls will do you right. They even play that Negro music you like.”
”Ragtime.”
”Yeah.”
They repeated the process at three more cathouses before two detectives from the Third Precinct caught up with them. They could stop waking prost.i.tutes; even without a head, the dead woman had been identified by her fingerprints. James found that impressive. Those Bertillon unit guys did some interesting stuff.
”She's a drunk named Flo Polillo,” they were told by one of the detectives. ”The Bertillon unit had her prints from a prost.i.tution arrest. Didn't work at it steady, though, either waitressed in gin mills or mooched off any man she could get, not that she could have gotten a lot. I saw her mug shot. Forty-one and she looked sixty. Your captain's at her place,” the detective added, and gave them the address. ”We're heading to the Feather Company over on Central. That's where the burlap bags came from.”
”And I'll bet you're just tickled,” Walter said.
”Ain't you a gas.”
James and Walter climbed back into the car. Any heat the engine built up inside instantly dissipated in the cold and they had to wait for it to warm again before driving to Flo Polillo's apartment at 3205 Carnegie Avenue. A fretting landlady let them in.
The shabby little room bulged with cops, but at least their gathered bulks warmed the air. Whatever her lifestyle, Flo Polillo had kept her place neat, with a dozen dolls arranged on the bed and bureau. Their tiny black eyes seemed to follow the activities of the men. James got the idea that even if the toys could talk, they would choose not to. Dolls could not be killed, could not suffer.
He and Walter found the captain at a small desk, poring over a notebook full of scrawls while an officer from the Bertillon unit crouched next to the radiator and poked with one hand at a tray of debris he held in the other. James detoured over to the metal pipes, which kept the room at a comfortable temperature. Picturing the city as a map, James figured that the body had been found about a mile away. Flo would not have willingly left her warm apartment to walk to her death on such a cold night. Her killer must have had a car.
He asked the cop, ”What have you got?”
The Bertillon unit guy looked up through gla.s.ses perched on a red and running nose. ”Bunch of nothing I swept up from the floor. Dirt. A b.u.t.ton. Piece of wood.” He rubbed the half-inch sliver between his fingers and sniffed at the residue. ”Smells like creosote. Coal tar.”
”That's used in railroad ties, isn't it?”
”And electrical poles, and roads with wood bricks, and floors in most factories, and docks. Any place they want to preserve the wood.”
”You think it's from the killer?”
The guy sniffled and dropped the sliver of wood back into the tray next to the white flower-shaped b.u.t.ton. ”Sure. Or the victim. Or her landlady. Or off the shoes of one of the twenty cops who walked around in here before I swept. I don't believe the killer ever came here. There's no blood in the place, not on the carpet, not in the bathtub or sink. I'd like to see him cut up a body like that without blood.”
”What if he washed it up?”
”It's not like a shaving nick. The benzidine would still find traces, with that much being splashed around.” He gestured to a wooden case that lay open on the floor. ”It's a chemical, turns blue when it comes in contact with blood. Then we could do another test to find out what type the blood is-A or B or-”