small country airport in Iowa, to be sampled, weighed, cut, and distributed. Wholesale and retail action was conducted in a cool frenzy by Curtis, the calculating weight-lifter who never used any of the stuff himself.
For Curtis the parlors were a zany circus in which he played multiple parts: ringmaster, lion tamer, strongman. Most often he was the man on the flying trapeze. Every day brought thrills. His interview technique when hiring a new masseuse was to drop his pants and ask the lady to demonstrate her skills.
If you can't blow the boss, he would tell a prospective masseuse, how does the boss know you can jerk off the jerkoffs?
The ladies, the scams, the profits seemed endless.
Success did not spoil him. He stayed temerarious and mean. One night Curtis heaved a surly customer down a flight of stairs, punched him into the street, kicked him as he tried to crawl away, then mashed his face into the grille of an Oldsmobile until the man gurgled blood and bits of busted teeth. Curtis didn't care about the pain, inflicted or incurred. Pain and pleasure were strategies, methods to achieve what was desired.
Curtis's ability to give and take punishment was legendary among his friends. In the late sixties he was drafted for military induction. One of the favorite ploys of Madison's youth was to swallow a tab of LSD on the day of the physical and thus escape military service because of psychological problems and disorientation. Curtis would never tamper with his head so capriciously, but with his body he would take any extreme. He went to the weight room of the Central Y and ordered a friend to climb the squat rack and drop a hundred-pound dumbbell on his right foot, which mashed the bones in his toes and secured him an exemption from military service.
A couple years later, when Curtis discovered a female massage employee was taking her tricks outside the parlor, he had to set an example of what happened when his rules were defied. He didn't quiz the woman on her
scheme. He told her what he had heard, then punched her in the face. Her jaw was broken and had to be wired together.
His volatile temper and bellicose attitude did have consequences: arrests for disorderly conduct, a suspended sentence and probation for battery charges. He packed a pistol under the front seat of his Lincoln, for emergency use only.
By 1976 Curtis was getting fat financially. He was purchasing property and setting up dummy corporations to launder his funds. Where Curtis was careful to distance and protect himself, his partner, Sam Cerro, was reckless. On a muggy August evening in 1976 Cerro tried to purchase $72,000 worth of cocaine from a pair of undercover cops. He was busted. The charges carried a large fine and a maximum twenty years' imprisonment. At age fifty-one jail was a frightening prospect for Cerro, and because of his previous record a conviction might carry the maximum term.
The portly Cerro squirmed. He needed help from wherever he could dig it up.
When Chuck Lulling asked for help on the Hoffman case, Curtis schemed to do his partner a favor.
24
On January 6, 1978, the snow piled next to the green Dumpster behind 638 State Street was rechecked for evidence of blood. A spot on the bedsheet that had blanketed Harry Berge's body indicated that postmortem bleeding had occurred.
Perhaps on Christmas Day it was too cold for the cops to be thorough. Lulling assigned an officer assisting with the investigation to try again, to sift carefully through the snow no matter how high and tight it had been packed.
His instructions were followed. It was cold, eight degrees above zero, with winds that gusted across the
lakes and shivered the city. The snow, which had a couple of additional inches of fresh accumulation, was examined. No blood was found.
25
It was Jerry Davies who solved the Linda Millar riddle.
Standing in a hallway of the courthouse, his back slouched against a wall, Davies waited to see Jim Doyle. The shipping clerk had
For Curtis the parlors were a zany circus in which he played multiple parts: ringmaster, lion tamer, strongman. Most often he was the man on the flying trapeze. Every day brought thrills. His interview technique when hiring a new masseuse was to drop his pants and ask the lady to demonstrate her skills.
If you can't blow the boss, he would tell a prospective masseuse, how does the boss know you can jerk off the jerkoffs?
The ladies, the scams, the profits seemed endless.
Success did not spoil him. He stayed temerarious and mean. One night Curtis heaved a surly customer down a flight of stairs, punched him into the street, kicked him as he tried to crawl away, then mashed his face into the grille of an Oldsmobile until the man gurgled blood and bits of busted teeth. Curtis didn't care about the pain, inflicted or incurred. Pain and pleasure were strategies, methods to achieve what was desired.
Curtis's ability to give and take punishment was legendary among his friends. In the late sixties he was drafted for military induction. One of the favorite ploys of Madison's youth was to swallow a tab of LSD on the day of the physical and thus escape military service because of psychological problems and disorientation. Curtis would never tamper with his head so capriciously, but with his body he would take any extreme. He went to the weight room of the Central Y and ordered a friend to climb the squat rack and drop a hundred-pound dumbbell on his right foot, which mashed the bones in his toes and secured him an exemption from military service.
A couple years later, when Curtis discovered a female massage employee was taking her tricks outside the parlor, he had to set an example of what happened when his rules were defied. He didn't quiz the woman on her
scheme. He told her what he had heard, then punched her in the face. Her jaw was broken and had to be wired together.
His volatile temper and bellicose attitude did have consequences: arrests for disorderly conduct, a suspended sentence and probation for battery charges. He packed a pistol under the front seat of his Lincoln, for emergency use only.
By 1976 Curtis was getting fat financially. He was purchasing property and setting up dummy corporations to launder his funds. Where Curtis was careful to distance and protect himself, his partner, Sam Cerro, was reckless. On a muggy August evening in 1976 Cerro tried to purchase $72,000 worth of cocaine from a pair of undercover cops. He was busted. The charges carried a large fine and a maximum twenty years' imprisonment. At age fifty-one jail was a frightening prospect for Cerro, and because of his previous record a conviction might carry the maximum term.
The portly Cerro squirmed. He needed help from wherever he could dig it up.
When Chuck Lulling asked for help on the Hoffman case, Curtis schemed to do his partner a favor.
24
On January 6, 1978, the snow piled next to the green Dumpster behind 638 State Street was rechecked for evidence of blood. A spot on the bedsheet that had blanketed Harry Berge's body indicated that postmortem bleeding had occurred.
Perhaps on Christmas Day it was too cold for the cops to be thorough. Lulling assigned an officer assisting with the investigation to try again, to sift carefully through the snow no matter how high and tight it had been packed.
His instructions were followed. It was cold, eight degrees above zero, with winds that gusted across the
lakes and shivered the city. The snow, which had a couple of additional inches of fresh accumulation, was examined. No blood was found.
25
It was Jerry Davies who solved the Linda Millar riddle.
Standing in a hallway of the courthouse, his back slouched against a wall, Davies waited to see Jim Doyle. The shipping clerk had
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