BULLET PROOF (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  "Eliot, I can't help you on this one. I have contractors to call; I have much to put in motion. I have a restaurant to open. If you'll excuse me."

  Gordon, glass snapping under his shoes, exited through a bullet-scarred doorway that led to a stairway.

  The three detectives stood in the rubble-scattered room, looked at each other and, with the precision of choreography, shrugged.

  Ness picked up a chair, glanced at it to see if it was more or less intact, shook some crushed glass and detritus from its seat, and sat down. He nodded to Garner and Curry to find chairs and sit, and they did.

  "We need Vern Gordon," Ness said. "I'll keep working on him. I'll talk to the mayor and see if he and Frank Darby, the Chamber of Commerce president, can't apply some pressure."

  "I hope they have better luck than Will and I," Curry said glumly.

  Ness looked at Garner, who shrugged with his eyebrows. "No luck?" he asked them.

  Curry pulled his pocket notebook and began to thumb through it. "Over the past several days, we've talked to several dozen merchants who've been victims of vandalism that seems to be union-related."

  "A number of them were willing to speak off the record," Garner said, "but no one wants to buck the unions and talk to a grand jury."

  "That new shoe store on Euclid, they were hit up for a grand," Curry said. "It was the same tactic the boys no doubt pulled here at the restaurant: threatening to pull the union glaziers off the job, leaving 'em windowless on the eve of their big opening."

  "Our friends hit the smaller businesses, too," said Garner.

  Curry nodded, leafing through the notebook, stopping here and there to point out an example. "Here's a fashion shop, also on Euclid, that paid Caldwell a hundred-buck 'fine' because they had some nonunion painting done. And a soda shop paid a fifty-buck 'fine' because the owner allowed his cousin to paint a storeroom, and a butcher who paid 'em sixty bucks because he used nonunion labor to install some fixtures. And a clothing store that, during a work halt, coughed up five hundred for a fund for unemployed union workers."

  "That," Garner said with a quiet sarcasm, "was in return for Caldwell and McFate settling a jurisdictional dispute' between two unions."

  "What about this 'jurisdictional dispute' business?" Curry asked Ness. "Is there anything to it?"

  "Phony as a three-dollar bill," Ness said, shaking his head no. "A real jurisdictional dispute is settled by arbitration, and work on jobs continues until the arbitration is settled."

  "We haven't talked to everybody," Garner said. "We may get somebody willing to talk on the record, yet."

  "If we could convince Vernon Gordon," Ness said, "the rest would fall in line."

  Curry glanced around at the shot-up room. "This is the one to nail 'em on. We got a lot of photographs this morning; they'll look great blown up as court exhibits."

  A voice from behind them said, "What did I miss?"

  They turned to see Sam Wild, in a red bow tie and pale yellow seersucker suit and straw fedora, grinning at them through the framing of a shot-out window.

  Ness motioned for Wild to join them, and he did, coming around through the front double doors that were barely there. He found a chair on the floor, set it upright, brushed it off and sat on it backward, leaning up against the back of it.

  "Some air-conditioning system this joint has," he said wryly, noting the sunshine snooting in. "I bet our safety director's feeling homesick."

  "Homesick?" Curry asked.

  Ness said, "I think he means this place ought to remind me of Chicago."

  Wild nodded, grinned wolfishly, dug a pack of Lucky Strikes out of a pocket. Lighting up a smoke, he said, "Looks like the Hawthorne Hotel's coffee shop the day Hymie Weiss tried to have Capone splattered."

  "You're a sentimental soul, Sam," Ness said.

  "Has Gordon been around? I'd like to interview him. We got some dandy photos this morning, but the great entrepreneur himself wasn't around."

  "Gordon came in not long ago," Ness said. "He's upstairs in his office, I'd imagine. I don't think he'll want to talk to you."

  "He's not cooperating with the Department of Public Safety?"

  "He's not uncooperative."

  "But he's not cooperative, either."

  "You could say that."

  "Yeah, but not in print." He shrugged. "The Gordon family are big advertisers. You know, these clowns Caldwell and McFate've got everybody scared—and now this machine-gun nonsense—brother. You're going to have a hell of a time getting anybody to testify."

  "You're telling us," Curry said.

  "I think we can give you a list of merchants," Ness said, "who might be willing to talk off the record."

  "Yeah, that'd be something, anyway," Wild said reflectively, blowing out smoke. "We could do a nice big expose on the 'boys.' That might build some nice public pressure."

  "Worth a try," Ness said. "You can get the names from Detective Curry."

  "Any other ideas? We dissipated denizens of the Fourth Estate need all the help we can get from our public officials."

  "Go around and see Jack Whitehall," Ness said casually.

  Both Garner and Curry looked sharply, with some surprise, at their boss.

  "The Teamster?" Wild asked, equally surprised. "That thug?"

  "He's no angel," Ness said, "but unlike Caldwell and McFate, his goals are rooted in something more than just making a buck. He really believes in the union ideals. He's no shakedown artist, and I've heard he resents the two Jims."

  "Are you serious?" Wild asked, smiling, eyes narrowed, thinking Ness might be stringing him along.

  "Give it a try," Ness said, with a little shrug.

  Wild lifted his eyebrows and put them back down. "Oh-kay," he said.

  The reporter and Curry sat and put their heads together for a few minutes as the young detective gave Wild a list of merchants, with words of guidance on each.

  Then the lanky reporter rose, stretched, yawned, and pitched his spent cigarette to the glass-littered floor.

  "See you in church, kids," he said, and ambled out.

  "Do you trust him?" Garner asked. The Indian was watching Wild's departing back through the row of windowless windows, as if considering whether or not to put an arrow or maybe a tomahawk between the reporter's shoulder blades.

  "Yes, Will, I trust him," Ness said. "So should you."

  Garner shrugged, smiled a little. "Okay. I trust him."

  Curry said, "What's the next step? Do we keep at the merchants?"

  "Not just now. Let's let some of that public pressure Mr. Wild mentioned build up some. I have another assignment for the two of you."

  They looked at him expectantly.

  "We know that Caldwell and McFate handle almost every aspect of their shakedowns themselves. Certainly they make all the initial contacts themselves, and take the payoffs."

  "A small circle," Garner said, nodding.

  "Let's widen that circle some," Ness said, with a nasty smile. "Let's put a twenty-four-hour watch on Big Jim and Little Jim. I'll get several more shifts of two-man teams, assigned 'round the clock."

  "And, what?" Curry asked. "Try to catch them in the act?"

  "No. I want you to make no pretense of hiding your presence. Get on their fat butts and stay there. Our goal here is deterrence, not surveillance. From now on, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. McFate will be chaperoned by the city—they'll have their own private police escort."

  "I like it," Garner said, the thinnest of smiles on his bronze face.

  "But we can't catch them at something that they aren't doing anymore," Curry said, confused.

  "We don't need them to commit any new crimes," Ness said. "They committed plenty already. We'll keep working on Vern Gordon and other potential witnesses, both here in Cleveland and outside the city as well. I'll be building a case, gentleman, while you keep on theirs."

  The three men exchanged smiles and rose and exited the restaurant into a sunny morning just as a contractor, several carpenter
s, painters, and plasterers were unloading trucks out front.

  CHAPTER 10

  Little Jim McFate, after a week of it, was not amused.

  He wasn't known for his sense of humor, anyway; in fact, Big Jim often kidded him about being such a gloomy Gus. But Little Jim knew that the labor racket was a serious one; that when you were organizing, you had to paint a black picture of what life without unions was like. That when you were running a shakedown, for instance, you had to make the mark believe you really would break his legs. And then you really had to break them, if it come to that.

  Nothing funny about it. He hadn't got to this exalted position by being some half-assed prankster. Like when he formed the protective association for the barbers of Cleveland, where he clipped the barbers for dues while elevating and fixing prices. You had to be tough, sharp, and taken seriously, to pull off that kind of scam.

  So Little Jim's no-nonsense manner had come in handy, over the years. But he liked a good time as much as the next fellow. The workers he represented—painters, carpenters, glaziers, and the rest—thought he was swell. They knew he was a down-to-earth guy who would sell you the shirt off his back and gladly hoist a few with you.

  And it wasn't like he didn't enjoy a good laugh—he liked "Jiggs and Maggie" in the funnies, and Laurel and Hardy at the movies, although the dirty stories you heard in bars made him uncomfortable. He was a family man, after all. A husband. A father.

  He had fond memories of his own childhood, though memories of his father, who died when Jim was six, were few. Pop, a carpenter, had worked himself to death trying to support the McFate brood. Growing up on the West Side, in a working-class neighborhood, Little Jim learned early on that there were goddamn few opportunities to make it out, to make it big. He watched his older brothers work their tails off, getting cheated out of good wages by the factories where they toiled, and swore it would never happen to him.

  Real wealth, he could see, came not from hard work, but from theft. Some thieves were thieves; some were mob guys; while others were robber barons, or bankers. And Little Jim had learned, also, early on, that there would never be an opening for him on a steel mill's board of directors, or at a bank.

  When he got back from the war, he got a painting crew going, and noticed that not only his business, but all business, was booming. Consequently, unions seemed like a place where some good could be done, and some money could be made. He signed a lot of painters up for the local, and put together a really nice con on the side, selling permits to home owners who wanted to paint their own homes. If a home owner didn't buy a permit, Little Jim would wait till the house was painted and then splash stain all over it.

  That con, after years of moneymaking, finally got shut down last year, when Little Jim's front man got nailed by the safety director's dicks. But it was sweet while it lasted.

  So, anyway, it wasn't like Little Jim McFate had no sense of humor.

  And when this goddamn thing had first begun, he'd even allowed Big Jim to convince him it was a big joke.

  "They're following us around, everywheres we go," Little Jim had said after a full day of it, two days after the Gordon's restaurant shooting. He was pacing around Big Jim's office at union headquarters on East Seventeenth Street.

  Caldwell had his feet on the desk and his hands behind his head, elbows flaring out, a big grin on his face and a big cigar in his grin.

  "Laddie-buck," Caldwell said, eyes twinkling like a goddamn pixie's, "the great Mr. Eliot Ness has gone and done us an honor."

  "An honor?" Little Jim halted his pacing.

  "He's put us under police protection. To make sure no harm comes our way."

  "Judas priest, man. How can you take this so lightly?"

  Big Jim swung his feet off the desk; he flicked ashes off his cigar into an ashtray that was one of the few objects on the desk. There were no papers or anything else to indicate work was ever done on that smooth oak surface.

  "I don't take it lightly," he said, standing, strolling over to McFate. "But we're the subject of some very bad press right now. We can use this police attention to our betterment."

  "To our betterment? What in the hell—"

  "Boyo—look. We took extreme measures with Mr. Vernon Gordon. They were necessary, and I think they'll in future make our efforts with other downtown merchants go even quicker, even smoother. But right now the newspapers are engaging in some nasty speculation. About us."

  "They're all but goddamn coming out and saying we did it!"

  "Well, we did."

  "Like hell! I was home in bed, asleep with my missus!"

  "Bucko, we had it done. And that is a fact."

  Big Jim shrugged. "Well, sure. We had it done. Of course we had it done. We should sue the bastards for slander!"

  Caldwell put a hand on his partner's shoulder, patted it in a there-there fashion. "It's libel, only it isn't libel when it's true, and so we're not going to make a bad situation worse by acknowledging those accusations."

  "It's that bastard Wild. He's in Ness's pocket."

  "So he is. But the other papers have picked up on it as well. We're the top-billed act of the editorial pages these days."

  "And now we got goddamn cops trailing us all over town! Trailing me home! It's embarrassing! I'm a goddamn family man."

  "I know you are, lad. As am I. But there's no harm done by this attention."

  "No harm! How are we expected to do business when—"

  Caldwell frowned, shook his head no, vigorously. "We aren't going to do any business. Not any new business. Now's not a good time for that, anyway, not with a press spotlight on us. And we'll have our regular payoffs picked up by people we trust. Harry Gibson needs something to do with his hands."

  "I thought you gave him a job at your glass warehouse."

  "I did. But he can use that as a place to work out of."

  Now Little Jim was the one shaking his head no. "I don't like getting too many people involved. I like to keep the business end to just the two of us."

  Caldwell shrugged with one shoulder. "Gibson's already involved."

  "Well, he's an all right ghee," Little Jim admitted. "But let's not pass out too many invites to the party."

  "Agreed," Caldwell said, nodding.

  "Far as I'm concerned," Little Jim went on, "we got two uninvited guests already, all the time."

  He was referring to the two cops who were constantly on their tails.

  "Actually," said Caldwell, "I think there's six of 'em—three shifts of two. Think of the money we're costing the taxpayers. After a week or so of lawful activities, we might point out to some reporter—and I don't mean Sam Wild—that Mr. Ness is wasting precious tax dollars."

  Now Little Jim began to smile, a little. "You mean, we use the cops hanging onto us to show that we're not doing anything wrong."

  Big Jim nodded. "That's exactly right—not doing anything but going about union business, upright moral representatives of the working man."

  "Will the papers run that?"

  "Sure they will. They need a new story every day. That story about us being bad boys will be old before you know it. Eliot Ness is a big shot in the papers, but remember—the next day they wrap fish in 'im."

  That made Little Jim laugh. That was a good one.

  "Besides," Caldwell said, grabbing his derby, "we can have a little fun with our chaperons."

  "Fun?"

  "Just follow me," Caldwell said, grinning, pausing only to relight his cigar before swaggering out of the union offices and heading for the street.

  And for the better part of a week Big Jim, and Little Jim, too, indeed had fun with their police retinue.

  The boys made a habit of taking long drives in the country, in a new Buick owned by the union (but used by Big Jim—a matching Buick owned by the union was Little Jim's to use). The cops were driving old clunkers and had trouble keeping up with the sleek, powerful sedans. Big Jim would step on the gas and take the car to the edge of the speed limit, over
rough, .bumpy backroads, making the cops work to keep up, their buggies shimmying and shaking and rattling. Sometimes the two Jims would lose their escorts and have to pull over to the side of the road and wait, or slow to a gawking Sunday driver's pace, till Cleveland's finest caught up.

  Similar hijinks marked their in-town pleasure driving. Big Jim would take it easy, then round a corner and slip into an alley before the cops had made the turn; then Big Jim would wait for them to go by, pull in behind the shadows and honk, startling and embarrassing them.

  It was good for a laugh, for a while. But Little Jim got sick of it quickly, and, finally, after almost a week of it, so did Big Jim.

  And now, at the beginning of another day that held as its only prospect driving aimlessly around the Cleveland area with cop magnets stuck to their asses, Big Jim was the one pacing around the union office, while Little Jim sat glumly behind the desk, frustration and boredom eating at him.

  "I thought they'd give it up by now," Caldwell said. He was smoking a cigar again, but puffing nervously at it, like the smokestack of a train engine taking a steep grade.

  "And the papers haven't taken the bait," Little Jim said.

  Big Jim shook his head side to side in bewilderment. "I thought they would. I really thought they would. Us leading those jerks on wild goose chases out in the sticks, that's good stuff. They oughta use it, goddamn it."

  Dour Little Jim leaned his long face on one hand, elbow propped against the uncluttered desktop. "Why should they? You plant the story in a few reporters' ears, but how do they know it's for real? They got to see it with their own eyes."

  And now Big Jim stopped in his tracks and grinned. He pointed with the stubby cigar at his partner, like he was aiming a projectile. "You, my friend, are more than just a pretty face."

  "Huh?"

  "You gave me an idea. You gave me one hell of an idea."

  The chunky Caldwell fired himself at the desk like a cannonball. His charge was so quick it took McFate aback.

  "You're gonna love this," Caldwell said, grinning like a demented cherub. "You're gonna just love it."