MURDER BY THE NUMBERS (Eliot Ness)

by Max Allan Collins

  The offended but now docile doorman didn't reply, although it might have been a fair question to ask accessory to what.

  The lobby was small, clean, and modem, with assorted mirrors and potted plants; Ness and the patrolman took the elevator up to the third floor, where in Suite 3C the Emperor ruled his roost.

  Ness knocked on the bright red door. Three hard, rifle-shot knocks.

  There was no response.

  He knocked again. Three more hard rifle shots.

  "Guess I'll have to kick it in," Ness said, matter-of-fact but purposely loud.

  A muffled female voice from behind the door called out: ''Willie ain't here!"

  Ness spoke to the door. "Are you Mrs. Rushing?"

  There was a pause. "I is gonna be."

  "Who am I speaking to?"

  "Jewel LaVerne. We engaged."

  "Well, that's very romantic, Miss LaVerne. Open the door, please. We have a warrant."

  "Let me see it."

  "Open the door, Miss LaVerne, and I'll show it to you."

  She reluctantly eased open the door, halfway, leaning against the doorjamb with studied insolence that failed to mask her fear; a yellow-complexioned girl of perhaps twenty, she had a round face with sultry, long-lashed eyes and a full mouth and a lack of make-up made her no less sullenly pretty. She was wearing a man's silk pajamas, which she filled out interestingly, sleeves and pant legs rolled up to accommodate her shapely five-five frame. She smelled of lilac perfume and sleep.

  Ness dug the folded warrant out of his suitcoat pocket and showed it to her. She looked at it blankly; his guess was she couldn't read.

  She looked at him, batting her lashes in slow motion and gazing at him like a bored cat; but there was tension in the eyes nonetheless.

  "Willie ain't here, I tole you. He's outa town."

  "Where, out of town?"

  "Two hundred miles away."

  "Please stand aside, Miss LaVerne."

  The sullen face squeezed into a childish pout and she stepped back and slammed the door in Ness's face, damn near breaking his nose.

  He stood back, feeling more stupid than angry, rubbed his sore nose, and sighed.

  Patrolman Lewis asked, "You want me to bust it down?"

  "No thanks," Ness said, with a faint smile. "This is a specialty of mine."

  He kicked the red door three times, with the flat of his foot, emphasis on the heel, enjoying the feel of the impact as it climbed the muscles of his leg, shaking his whole body, rattling his teeth. The door sprang open on the fourth kick and Ness knifed through the apartment, pushing the sweet-smelling woman aside. The apartment was ornately furnished, the carpets thick-napped Orientals; the Emperor had himself a palace, all right.

  "Stay out here," Ness ordered Lewis. "Keep an eye on her, and the door!"

  Ness quickly found the bedroom, a room so garish it startled him, from the fancy brocade wallpaper, blood-red, to the ornate white furniture and huge polished brass bed with red silk sheets and overhead mirror. The smell of the woman's lilac perfume was in the room.

  Willie was, too.

  The big middle-aged man was climbing out the window—while his girl had been stalling the cops, fastidious Willie had taken time to get dressed, in a powder-blue shantung-silk suit and pale yellow crepe linen-silk shirt with a dark blue silk-knit tie. He was weighted down with gold jewelry—rings and cufflinks and diamond stickpin—and in his left hand was an alligator traveling bag.

  "All dressed up and nowhere to go, Willie," Ness said, standing with his hands on hips, grinning. "Except jail, of course."

  Willie stepped back inside; he let the alligator bag drop to the floor and put his jewelry-heavy hands up and his smile was as wide and white as a picket fence.

  "Mister Ness," he said. "I was jus' about to leave town on business."

  "Were you," Ness said, approaching Willie cautiously. "Do I have to cuff you, Willie, or will you come along quietly?"

  "What the charge?"

  "We're just going to hold you for questioning. No big deal."

  "Fine with me, boss," Willie said, and he shoved Ness with two big hard hands, knocking him back against the foot of the brass bed. Willie slipped out the window, with a deep laugh, and Ness picked himself up and smiled tightly and went after him, catching him on the fire-escape landing.

  Willie turned and swung a ham-size fist, but Ness ducked it, tackling Willie; the two men slammed into the metal railing and began wrestling, and soon the Emperor, a big bear of a man, was on top, the cross-hatching of the metal grill-work digging into Ness's back. The cool night was damn near day, with the full moon above, and Ness could see clearly the vicious expression over him as the Emperor drew back a massive fist and was about to let fly, when Ness grabbed the gun out from under his shoulder and pointed it straight up into the big man's face.

  The Emperor's two white wide eyes looked down into the smaller black infinite one of the .38 and he froze, his drawn-back arm and fist caught in midair, as if stiffened there.

  "Think about it, Willie," Ness said. "You can be dead, or we can go back inside and pretend this never happened."

  The Emperor swallowed and smiled the picket-fence grin again and crawled off Ness like a satisfied lover. He stood on the fire-escape landing and brushed off his fancy silk suit with whisk-broom hands.

  "Pretend what happened, Mr. Ness?" Willie asked innocently.

  Ness was on his feet now. It was a little windy up here, he noticed.

  "Are you all right, Mr. Ness?" the patrolman below called up. The fire escape was on the east side of the building and it had taken a while for the man stationed out back to notice the struggle.

  "Everything's under control," Ness yelled down. Then to Willie, with a gesture of the .38, he said, "After you, Emperor."

  Willie stepped back inside.

  "Them indictments is comin' down," Willie said, "ain't they?"

  "Let's put it this way," Ness said. "You're about to be deposed."

  Ness led the man through his apartment, where the girl stuck her pink pointy tongue out at the safety director; Ness, Rushing, and Lewis went down the elevator and out front, where a Black Maria was waiting.

  Lewis stood eagerly by as the paddy wagon officer closed the back door of the buggy on the glumly seated Emperor, and Ness checked his watch.

  "We're on schedule," Ness said to Lewis, "but barely. Let's go."

  CHAPTER 15

  The Demo League Hall was at East 71st and Central, a huge yellow-brick two-story building that came right up to the sidewalk in a thriving ghetto business district. The lower floor of the building was taken up by small businesses— liquor store, delicatessen, tavern, drug store. Curry stood, in the light of the moon and streetlamps, studying with a tourist's curiosity the cluttered display behind the iron-grilled window of Cohn's Drug, an array that included blood tonics, skin bleaching creams, and electric hair-straightening irons.

  Finding a place to park the unmarked sedan had been a trick; both sides of the street were thick with parked cars. They left it in the alley behind the massive building, Moeller saying it wasn't a bad idea blocking the alley, anyway. The windows up on the second floor were dark and shut tight, but the sound of a raucous party going on was seeping out none-the-less.

  They needed to move fast; they'd just been given the go-ahead from Ness on the police radio to make the hit, and that meant a paddy wagon would automatically arrive in five minutes, ready for a load of reluctant passengers.

  The small sign that extended over the street said DEMOCRATIC LEAGUE HALL in red letters on yellow, with a smaller black-letter notice: Available for Rental. Stocky vice cop Moeller—in plainclothes tonight—led the way, with Toussaint Johnson next, and Curry bringing up the rear. One uniformed man stayed down on street level, and another was in the alley with the car.

  It was a narrow, steep, dark stairwell, with the only light at the second-floor landing above. The door was unlocked, but just inside the door a cigar-smoking, beer-bott
le-clutching heavy-set Negro in a white shirt and suspenders sat at a card table with an open cigar box full of dollar bills and ticket stubs.

  The burly Negro in a gravelly voice asked them if they had tickets, but Curry, as he stepped into the hall, barely heard the man. He was overcome by the sights and sounds and smells confronting him. The air was blue-gray with cigarette and cigar smoke which mingled with the stink of body odor, beer, and bad breath.

  The high-ceilinged, many-windowed hall was crammed with banquet-style tables at which at least three hundred men—at least a third of them white—sat applauding and hooting as down on the stage at the far end of the hall a voluptuous young yellow-skinned stripper in a G-string and tassels was doing a bump and grind to a blaring version of "St. Louis Blues" from a scratchy record that was playing through a distorted but loud sound system. Several other strippers, of various Negro shades, were wandering through the audience, specifically enticing a group near the stage who were seated not at tables but on thirty or forty folding chairs; the men were grabbing at the women, stuffing money in their G-strings, generally playing grab-ass. Occasionally a stripper would light on the lap of one and wriggle. A good number of the men up in front. Curry noted, were white.

  The fat Negro ticket-taker was almost yelling, now. "I said, do you boys have tickets? If not, cash will suffice."

  Toussaint Johnson edged out in front of Moeller and said, "We're the men."

  "Christ," the fat man said, knowing that Johnson meant they were cops. "Is this a fuckin' raid? You're raidin' the Democratic League smoker? What the hell's the idea?"

  Working to get his voice heard, Moeller said, "We have warrants on six men who we believe are present in this hall at this time."

  The formality of that struck Curry as strange and even silly, as he watched two strippers scamper out of the audience up a staircase at either side of the stage and the three women began bumping and grinding in tandem. The yellow girl, who had bosoms that looked formidable even from this distance, was twirling her tassels, one in one direction, one in the other. It was the goddamnedest thing Curry had ever seen.

  But he was cop enough to snap out of it and he stepped forward and touched Moeller on the arm.

  "This is trouble," he whispered right into the man's ear. "We got political people here, Negro and white—the boss is going to have a shit fit, if this gets out of hand."

  Up on the stage, the central girl, the yellow one, was plucking off her tasseled pasties and flinging them into the eager audience; they were whooping and hooting and generally behaving like cheerful but hungry lions being tossed slabs of meat. The other girls followed suit—birthday suit, that is.

  "It's already out of hand," Moeller said, watching this.

  Curry could read him; Moeller was a vice cop, and Curry knew what he was thinking.

  "Don't do it," Curry said.

  The girls were sliding out of their G-strings.

  "Shit," Moeller said.

  "Let it go," Curry said.

  "He's right," Toussaint Johnson said. "Let's wait downstairs by the exit and nail the boys we want as they come out."

  "We have two more pick-ups to make," Curry reminded them both.

  "St. Louis Blues" ended and "Hold That Tiger" took over, just as scratchy, just as loud, inspiring even more frenetic gyrations from the strippers and even wilder response from their appreciative audience.

  "Go on ahead and leave me behind," Johnson said. "With one of the uniforms. I'll nab 'em."

  The girls were flinging their G-strings into the audience.

  "I can't look the other way on this," Moeller said, shaking his head.

  Curry couldn't look the other way, either, not in the literal sense anyway, but he said, "The boss just wants the policy suspects."

  A very drunk white man, his tie loose around his neck, his shirt half unbuttoned and hanging out, danced up onto the stage and began fondling the bosomy yellow-skinned stripper. She laughed. Curry couldn't hear the laugh, over the hollering and distorted sound-speaker music, but he could see her laughing, and now she was starting to undo the man's pants. The crowd was going berserk.

  "That's it," Moeller said, shaking his head. "This is lewd and indecent conduct. I'm hauling all their asses in. Johnson, go downstairs and call over to the Third Precinct and get every goddamn spare squad car they got over here—and every paddy wagon."

  Curry said, "Don't do it!"

  He wasn't sure if he was talking to Moeller or the woman on stage who seemed about to perform an act of oral sex on the inebriated but obviously capable male dance partner. Curry had heard of audience participation before, but this was ridiculous.

  "And tell 'em to come with their sirens blaring," Moeller said, "so I know when they're here. We're going to shut this fucker down."

  "You say so," Johnson shrugged to Moeller, and went out.

  Moeller turned to the fat man on the door, still seated at his card table, and said, "Not a word out of you. Don't move a goddamn muscle."

  "You got it, boss," he said unenthusiastically.

  The yellow girl on stage now had hold of the man, whose trousers were gathered absurdly around his ankles, and was leading him offstage, into the wings, as if walking a dog. The man was grinning; he walked like a penguin. The naked yellow woman and the grinning white man disappeared from sight and the audience began to cheer. It struck Curry as disgusting and unreal and a little exciting; but most of all, he was dismayed that vice cop Moeller had strayed from the objective.

  "When you hear police sirens," Moeller was telling the fat man, "hit the lights."

  The fat man swallowed and nodded; he looked like his best friend had died.

  Johnson emerged from the stairwell—he didn't look much happier than the fat man. "Be about three minutes," Johnson said.

  Curry knew that was no exaggeration. Ness had worked hard to get the response time of the department's squad cars to a minimum.

  Soon sirens were wailing, and the lights came up in the room and hundreds of men of several races turned faces as distorted as the music toward the back of the room in shock and even anger, and the naked strippers on stage froze momentarily, then lost their composure, the bright lights having turned them from nude to naked.

  Moeller stepped forward with his badge held high in one hand. "It's a raid, gents!"

  And Curry watched with amazement as dozens of the men headed for the side windows and began climbing out, jumping from the sinking ship that was the Democratic League Hall, risking the second-story drop.

  *****

  Ness snapped the cuffs on the sleeping man, then nudged him awake.

  "Lawrence," he said, as the slender handsome Negro sat up in bed startled, "you're under arrest."

  Lawrence Gasior, who ran one of Emperor Rushing's policy houses, glanced at his pretty young wife, who sat up in bed next to him, gathering the covers around the front of her, looking at him with wide searching eyes.

  His gun was in his wife's handbag way in the kitchen; might as well have been in France. His bedroom was filled with uniformed cops and the safety director of the city of Cleveland.

  "Ain't this the damnedest thing," Lawrence said.

  *****

  Bob Chamberlin, at the mansion-like home of Salvatore Lombardi on Larchmere in Cleveland Heights, had come up empty. Nobody was home but the servants.

  He called the bad news in, just as Garner, at a fancy apartment house on Eddington just off Superior, was discovering that Angelo Scalise had flown the coop as well.

  *****

  By dawn Ness was sitting in his office, with Curry, Garner, and Chamberlin; everybody else had gone home. The bad guys had been booked—of the twenty-three men on whom warrants were issued, all but six were rounded up.

  So, unfortunately, had been some three hundred men who attended the smoker at the Demo League Hall. A dozen paddy wagons had shuttled the angry and embarrassed guests to the Central Station, where they were allowed to sign waivers and were released. The booking a
gent for the strippers, who had shown obscene films to the group earlier in the evening, was among those arrested, as were the strippers themselves, girls in their twenties who had prostitution arrests on their records.

  Several dozen of the party-goers, who escaped the indignity of arrest, would be sporting wrenched backs and sprained ankles and worse, today, from jumping out the windows last night.

  "Will the papers cover it?" Chamberlin asked. His pipe was in his hand, unlit.

  All four of the men looked haggard, their beards heavy, their eyes bloodshot. All but Ness had their coats off and slung over the backs of their hardwood chairs; and even Ness had his tie loosened.

  "No," Ness said. "Only the Call and Post."

  "Why?" Curry asked. "Sam Wild and Fritchey and Kelly and Seeley were at the station when those paddy wagons rolled in."

  "Colored news," Garner said with a wry smirk. He had a cigar in his mouth, but it had gone out and he wasn't bothering to light it.

  "Not everybody who was arrested was colored," Curry insisted.

  "Most were," Chamberlin said, with a soundless laugh. "And as for those who were white, the local press wouldn't want to embarrass any prominent Clevelanders, now, would they?"

  "Was this a disaster tonight," Curry said, honestly wondering, "or a success?"

  "A qualified success," Ness said, though his expression was close to a scowl. He got up slowly and moved to the big wall map and began plucking out pins. Only six remained when he was done. "We've got everybody but a few of the bigger fish—and we'll get them, too."

  "Were they tipped, d'you think?" Chamberlin asked.

  "How?" Curry asked. "None of us knew about these raids until we were seated in this room, just hours ago."

  "I don't mean to imply anybody was tipped about tonight's round-up," Chamberlin said, gesturing with the unlit pipe. "But it was no deep secret that indictments were in the wind."

  Ness sat on the edge of the table. "Bob's right. We're lucky our net pulled in as many fish as it did. And today I'll call my friends at the Justice Department and get a national sweep going."