Ange turned tail and ran.
But in the hall, down at their respective ends, both Greene and Berns were in the custody of workmen—or cops dressed as workmen, anyway.
There was nothing else Ange could do: He shot Greene in the head and the cop had a dead guy in his arms and brains in his face when Ange rushed past, rocketing down the stairs.
"Scalise"
The voice echoing down the stairwell was one he recognized: that fucker Ness. Ange kept running; three steps at a time. Behind him he could hear the sound of somebody hurtling down the stairs, the footsteps on top of each other, applause-like.
That fucker Ness.
He could stop and shoot it out, but better to get outside, where there were nigger babies playing and the cops wouldn't dare shoot. His heart was pounding against his chest when he reached the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. Ness was right behind him, a flight behind him—but if he could get through the lobby, shoot his way through if there were cops there, to the outside, to the truck or even to where he could run between buildings and out to the street, take a hostage if he had to, some little darkie he could haul around like a rag doll, then he was home free. . . .
The lobby was still empty and he ran out into the cool afternoon, a gun in either hand, and something hit him in the chest. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Literally.
*****
Will Garner, dressed like a carpenter, stood over Angelo's corpse, smoke curling out his revolver's barrel.
Ness was out the door a moment later, and knelt over the body, felt for a pulse in the neck. Sighed and stood.
"Right through the pump," Ness said.
"I know," Garner said blandly.
Toussaint Johnson bolted out the door, stopped dead in his tracks—figuratively—and looked down at Angelo's body.
"Who nailed him?" Johnson said, emotionlessly.
Ness nodded toward Garner.
"Nice goin'," Johnson said. To Ness he said, "Sorry it got out of hand up there."
"Not your fault," Ness said, putting his own gun back in its shoulder holster. "They called it, not us."
Johnson gestured upward with a thumb. "Those boys I drilled upstairs—they're the triggers who hit Rufus Murphy, years ago. I recognized the skinny one."
"The Keenan brothers," Ness said, nodding. "Purple Gang. Done a lot of freelance work over the years, including a hand in the St. Valentine's Day job, if rumor's right."
"No shit," Johnson said. He put his silver guns away and yawned. "I could use a meal 'bout now."
Ness just looked at him. Albert Curry, dressed in work clothes, came walking up, had a look at the corpse and smiled tightly.
"Rest for the wicked after all," Curry said, quietly.
"Come on, fellas," Johnson said. He grinned at Ness. "I'm buyin'. Who's for gumbo?"
CHAPTER 18
Eliot Ness spent the morning of the first of May—a beautiful, sunny Monday—cooped up in court. And he didn't mind one bit.
Judge Hurd, presiding in the criminal branch of Common Pleas Court, refused to lower the $50,000-per-man bond under which the policy racketeers were being held at County Jail—except for Willie "the Emperor" Rushing, of course, who rated $150,000. The various attorneys for the various defendants reiterated their mutual contention that the size of the bail was unconstitutional. But Judge Hurd completely backed up Judge Walther, who on Saturday had set the bail when the suspects to a man pleaded not guilty to extorting money by force from numbers-game operators.
All of that was first thing Monday morning; by mid-morning Ness was in another courtroom, watching the arraignment of Frank Hogey, the white policy king whose sleazy smugness had finally evaporated, Hogey, dressed in an expensively tailored suit but nervous, his hands twitching, lips trembling, listened glumly as his lawyer spoke on his behalf.
A less reliable judge than Hurd or Walther had slapped Hogey on the wrist with a fine, when Ness had made that big numbers haul the previous year. Today would be different.
Hogey, who'd been vacationing at Hot Springs, Arkansas, had surrendered himself over the weekend, at Central Jail, where he demanded to see Ness. The safety director, relaxing at his boathouse with Ev MacMillan, declined to drive into the city, but agreed to speak to Hogey on the phone.
"Mr. Ness," Hogey said, his desperation unhidden. "Couldn't we work something out? You said something about immunity, if I testified ..."
"I don't need your testimony anymore, Frank. Scalise is dead, and Lombardi went south. And we got testimony and evidence enough on the rest of you to last till Christ comes back."
Hogey's voice exploded with frustration. "Jesus, how the hell was I supposed to know you'd pull off this goddamn harebrained investigation?"
"You gambled, Frank. You lost."
And Ness, with a great deal of satisfaction, had hung up.
This morning, in court, Hogey's attorney had described his client as a large property holder, the proprietor of meat markets, cafes, restaurants, and a former bail bondsman himself. "We don't deny Mr. Hogey has operated gambling games to some extent, but we do deny he ever extorted money from anybody. A bond of $ 10,000 would be more than adequate."
But the judge hit Hogey with the by-now standard $ 50,000, anyway.
And Ness had sat in court, arms folded, smiling to himself, feeling like the cat that ate every goddamn canary in town.
Despite his canary feast, he'd taken his inner circle— Chamberlin, Garner, and Curry—out to lunch. No champagne, but he did pick up the tab. After they'd eaten, the ebullient men had a couple of drinks.
"I've asked the U.S. Immigration Bureau to help us hunt for the missing fugitives," Ness said.
"You still hold out hope to bag Lombardi?" Chamberlin asked.
"As long as I'm safety director, he'll stay a prime target. We're already talking to the Mexican authorities."
"Good," Garner said.
"And we're going to keep the heat turned up on the east side. Various Mayfield Road lieutenants are scurrying around the Roaring Third, trying to carry on for their departed bosses. We have to make sure they don't get a foothold."
"Then what?" Curry said.
"Then," Ness said, sipping his Scotch, "we get on about our business. We have bigger and better crimes to tend to than persecuting small-fry Negro policy operators."
"Do I smell the subtle perfume of politics?" Chamberlin said, a wry little smile curving under the military mustache, as he lit up his ever-present pipe.
"You smell your own damn fumes," Ness said cheerfully. "And you smell reality." Ness sipped his drink, raised an eyebrow. "With the Mayfield Road mob out of business, the numbers racket just isn't a major concern of the department of public safety anymore."
Curry was swirling his drink, a bourbon and water. "Maybe that's not such a bad thing."
"What?" Chamberlin asked.
"You know what I mean," Curry said, shrugging. "Leaving the east side Negro community alone, where that's concerned. For a lot of 'em, the numbers is the only hope they got in a hopeless life."
No one said anything.
Ness smiled one-sidedly and said, "Albert, that doesn't sound like you. You usually see problems in terms of black and white."
"No," Curry said, shaking his head. "I've always seen problems in terms of white. We all have."
That sobered everyone, but not in a bad way; everyone was smiling, albeit faintly.
Then Garner said, "What you mean 'we,' paleface?" and the table broke up into laughter.
"Albert," Ness said, "you seem older, all of a sudden—maybe it's being a sergeant that's done it."
Curry looked at Ness curiously. "A what?"
"A sergeant," he said. "If you pass the exam, that is.
Here's to Sergeant Albert Curry, Department of Public Safety."
Ness raised his glass to the suddenly grinning Curry and the other men raised their glasses and smiled and general congratulations were passed around.
Now Ness was back
at his office, and he had one other member of his team to deal with. At two-thirty, right on time, Detective Toussaint Johnson was shown into the safety director's office. Johnson held his misshapen charcoal fedora in one hand; his angularly handsome face was a blank slate. He looked considerably different than he had when, dressed in John C. Washington's finery, he led the bad guys from Washington's house to Outhwaite, where a trap was being laid.
"Sit down, Detective," Ness said, pleasant but business-like. Ness was standing, gesturing to the nearby conference table.
Johnson nodded, and sat. Ness stood nearby. Even standing over him. Ness felt the massive presence of the big colored cop. This was not a man who could be easily intimidated.
"I've been searching my soul," Ness admitted, "about what to do with you."
Johnson thought for a moment, before calmly saying, "What you mean, Mr. Ness?"
"I mean you're a good cop. One of the best I've worked with in Cleveland."
Johnson grinned easily. "Is that what white folks call damnin' with faint praise, Mr. Ness?"
Ness didn't grin back. "Not really. There are quite a few good cops in this town. But, I'll admit, not many in your class."
"You mean, colored?"
"No. I mean, good. Dedicated. Hard. I want to promote you, Toussaint."
Johnson sat up; the surprise registered only in his eyes, but it registered.
Ness sat on the edge of the conference table. "Only I have a problem. You did a fine job on this numbers racketeering case. We couldn't have done it without you. No question of that."
"Thanks.''
"I've already put you in for a certificate of commendation, and a medal of valor."
"Well. Thanks, again."
"No thanks necessary. You earned both, in spades."
Johnson's lips quivered with amusement.
Then Ness realized what he'd said, and, embarrassed, added, "You know what I mean."
"Yes, sir."
"And a promotion would certainly be appropriate. I've put Albert Curry in for promotion, to sergeant, for his work on this case."
"He got it coming."
"No more than you. Not as much as you, frankly."
"Well . . ."
"He's white? Sure he is. But that's not why I promoted him, without having to dedicate one moment to soul-searching. You see, Albert's loyalty is unquestioned. His integrity you could bounce rocks off."
Johnson shifted in his chair; he swallowed thickly. Something approaching anger was building behind his eyes. "What are you sayin', Mr. Ness?"
"I'm saying you held out on me, Toussaint. You knew Clifford Willis was a dirty cop. You knew that was why he got bumped off by the Mayfield bunch. You knew that he used to be Johnny C.'s bagman. You knew that was why his brother officers rushed to his presumed defense, smashing up Johnny C.'s castle. And you didn't tell me. I had to find out elsewhere. I had to find out from a goddamn snitch."
Johnson's anger never got off the ground; his eyes went hooded, as if he were sleepy. He seemed more weary than ashamed. If he felt any shame. Ness couldn't tell.
He tried to find out. "What do you say to that, Toussaint?"
Johnson sighed; he moved his head on his neck like it weighed more than the rest of him put together. "Mr. Ness—I told you when we first talked, I used to work for Rufus Murphy. You knew I wasn't no angel. But you didn't ask me no questions about whether I was ever on the pad or not. You know why you didn't ask?"
Ness paused. Then he said, "Why?"
" 'Cause you didn't want to know."
Ness said nothing.
Toussaint went on: "I wasn't hiding anything from you. I just 'didn't want either one of us to have to come to terms with why I knew what I knew. That's all."
Ness got up. He sighed heavily. Then he took the hardwood chair next to Johnson and said, "I've already put you in for that promotion."
"What?"
"You're going to be a sergeant, Toussaint, if you can pass the test,"
"Hell, I'll pass the damn thing."
"But I'm pulling you out of the Roaring Third."
Johnson backed off, his eyes open very wide. "Well, that's my turf. Shouldn't I oughta be workin' that side of town?"
"From time to time, you will. But if you think I went through these hard months to let a good cop like you give in to temptation, you're crazy."
"Temptation?"
"To go back on the pad. To be the cop who fixes things on the east side for the colored independent policy operators."
Johnson looked like he'd been struck with a plank.
"Toussaint," Ness said, smiling, not hiding the irony in his voice, "you're part of my team now. No one can accuse me of race prejudice when I have a Negro detective on my personal staff."
Johnson's eyes were filled with incredulity. "You assigning me permanent to the safety director's office?"
"That's right, Sergeant Johnson."
Ness held out his hand.
"Welcome aboard," Ness said.
Numbly, Johnson shook Ness's hand.
Then Johnson threw back his head and began to laugh, until every pebbled-glass window in the office was rattling.
"And one of these days," Ness said, as he walked the still-chuckling Johnson out, "we're going to nail that bastard Lombardi. He can run . . ."
"But he can't hide," Toussaint Johnson said.
And he wasn't laughing or smiling when he said it.
EPILOGUE
JUNE 2, 1941
CHAPTER 19
Black Sal Lombardi sat under the thatched sun shelter on a wooden beach chair, sipping coco-loco from a carved-out coconut. He was watching pretty American girls play soccer with their slightly older American boy friends; they all (Sal, too) wore bathing suits and were soaking up the afternoon sun. He was between Mexican whores right now, having gotten bored with the last girl the hotel man had provided. Sal had been enjoying his privacy these last several days; but watching these golden-tanned American girls bounce and jiggle got him thinking about requesting a new puta for this evening.
Playa Caleta was the "morning" beach and most of the tourists headed for Playa Hornos, the "afternoon" beach, after one o'clock. Nobody Sal asked seemed to know why this was—though a few had mentioned tide and shade patterns—but the tradition was long-standing. Sal liked to watch the girls, but he didn't like a crowded beach; so he waited till the afternoon had thinned of tourists before making use of palm-fringed Caleta beach, which his hotel fronted. When he wanted to swim or sun some morning, he used the private pool of his casita.
Sal had taken to the sun, though he seldom swam. His olive complexion had gradually baked to a near black, making him truly worthy of the nickname "Black Sal" at last. He had been here, after all, over two years. Two years of vacation or retirement or however you cared to view it.
He knew only that he was happy. His pre-ulcerous condition had gone away; he hadn't had a glass of milk in eighteen months. He weighed ten pounds less and was as physically fit as a teenage boy. At least three times a week, he played the golf course at Playa Encantada—usually with vacationing American businessmen, some of them with ties to his own business—and went fishing several times a month, hiring out a boat and tackle and captain through the hotel. He had sent home several photos of himself with prized catches: sailfish and marlin longer than an elephant's dick. He'd been fresh-water fishing in the coastal lagoons, by torch light; he'd gone duck-hunting and once even took a guided expedition into the mountainous interior, where he bagged a mountain lion.
The spectator sports weren't bad, either: Jai alai every night in the fronton building near Playa Caleta; bullfights every Sunday afternoon; boxing and wrestling. The nighttime entertainment was wild; from one nightclub you could view a spic kid climb down La Quebrada cliff to a platform and, torch in hand, dive forty feet into a breaker, then climb the opposite cliff to a flat rock one hundred thirty feet up and dive the fuck again, between a narrow sea ravine with jagged rocks on either side. Down below newsp
apers were set on fire so the kid could see what he was doing. This took balls or no brains or both, but whatever, it was a hell of thing to see.
Sal was glad he had a piece of this action. Acapulco had been just another scenic bay city in the boondocks until the highway was built between here and central Mexico back in '27. Horvitz and some of the other big boys from back home, when Repeal was around the corner, got in on the ground floor when resort hotels started going up along these beaches.
The resort town would only continue to grow. Sal knew, but there would come a time when it would be too crowded with tourists for his taste. By that time, though, he'd be back in the States, back in Cleveland, back in business. That fucking Ness was already out from under the protective wing of his patron. Mayor Burton; now that Burton was in the U.S. Senate, an acting mayor—Edward Blythin—was filling the slot till the next election. If the democrats won, and they probably would, that meant the end of Ness as safety director—and the beginning of Sal Lombardi finding his way home and back to the top.
Not that he was anxious. If his late cousin Angelo, God rest his soul, had thought that the life down here would make you any less a man, Sal had only to look at his wall of mounted fish and his scrapbook of hunting and fishing photos and for that matter slap his flat firm belly to know how very much a man he was. And people here, whether tourists or locals, knew Sal Lombardi was somebody important from the States. So he had respect, too. Which was important to him.
He would go back home, eventually. He even looked forward to it—but he didn't dwell on it. He was having too good a time drinking tropical drinks out of hollowed-out pineapples and watching sailboats against blue skies and divers cutting into clear water and pretty girls in skimpy bathing suits frolicking and beautiful sunsets painting the horizon.
He had learned something important here: Saludy pesetas, y tiempo para gastarlas—health and money, and the time to enjoy them. No accident that "tiempo" came third. Back in the U.S.A., Sal was like everybody else: a slave to watches, to clocks, marking his life in minutes and hours. These Mexicans knew enough to measure their lives in days or even years.
MURDER BY THE NUMBERS (Eliot Ness) Page 18
