“They got Harry the Butcher last night,” the Viper told Roy. “Only after he piped a cop, though. I heard it on the radio.”
The city had been terrorized for days by a gang of six escapees from the Poor Children of Israel Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Roy had read about them in the headlines of the Tribune all week. madmen still at large was one. Others were lunatics on crime spree and terror grips city as crazy killers elude capture!
Roy and the Viper trudged through slush on their way to school. After two days of snow, the temperature had risen suddenly, turning the streets into a sloppy mess.
“Where’d they find him?” Roy asked.
“The Butcher and the other five broke into a room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. A husband and wife were in there. Swede Wolf strangled the guy. The woman ran out to the balcony and tried to climb down from the fourth floor. She was screamin’ and yellin’ for help. That’s how the cops found ’em.”
“Did she get away?”
“No, they grabbed her and kept her prisoner for a few hours. The radio didn’t say, but I bet those maniacs put it to her. Most of ’em had been locked up for years.”
“How’d a bunch like that get upstairs in a big fancy hotel?”
A bus sped through a puddle and splashed muddy water on the boys’ coats and pants.
“God damn it!” the Viper shouted. “I’ll get that driver with an iceball, you’ll see.”
“They must have snuck in during the night,” said Roy.
“Who was gonna stop ’em? Swede Wolf had murdered all kinds of people. Harry the Butcher, too.”
“Did they have guns?”
“No, just crowbars and tire irons. The cops shot the Mahoney twins, the ones who raped and decapitated their mother.”
“They cut her head off before they had sex with the body,” said Roy. “I remember when it happened.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Anyway, those two are dead. The rest of ’em were captured. The cop the Butcher laid out is in the hospital. He might not make it.”
The other big news Roy heard about that day was that the governor of the state of Georgia had forbidden the Georgia Tech football team to play in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day because their opponent, the University of Pittsburgh, had a Negro fullback. Students rioted on the Georgia Tech campus and were hosed down and beaten by Atlanta police.
When Roy got home after school, his mother was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine.
“Hey, Ma, you hear they caught those escaped mental patients at the Edgewater Beach Hotel? They murdered a guy and the cops shot and killed two of them.”
“How terrible, Roy,” she said, without looking up. “There’s some chicken left from last night in the refrigerator, if you’re hungry.”
Roy looked at the calendar on the wall next to the sink. The date was December 11, 1955. The calendar was from Nelson’s Meat Market on Ojibway Boulevard. The top part was a photograph of the Nelson brothers: Ernie, Dave and Phil. The three of them had white aprons on and they were smiling. Ernie and Phil had mustaches. Dave was the youngest, still in his twenties. His right eye was glass. He’d popped it out and shown it to Roy once and told him Phil had poked his real eye with a toy sword when they were kids.
“What a shame,” said Roy’s mother. “The Edgewater Beach used to be such a nice hotel.”