'It's vital that you keep all the exits blocked,' Ness continued. 'It's a fairly big facility, with a lot of ways out; fortunately, the windows are mostly too high for exiting.'
'He might get to the roof,' Garner said. 'Warehouses have lofts and such. Ladders up to storage areas.'
'True,' Ness said, 'but we're not expected. If our man bolts, he'll bolt immediately, and for one of the exits. So wait until I'm inside, and then deploy yourselves accordingly.'
Ness did not have his gun in hand. He wore the tan camel's hair topcoat with his badge pinned to the lapel; the badge was glittering gold and it said CITY OF CLEVELAND DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC SAFETY. He walked calmly across the graveled loading dock and parking area and went up the half flight of stairs and inside.
There was no vestibule, no reception area, just an open room with only a single counter separating visitors from the half-dozen desks where secretaries and various office personnel were at work.
Ness spoke to the nearest office worker, who was typing up a form or a bill of some kind. A plain woman of about thirty, wearing glasses, she seemed startled and annoyed all at once.
'May I speak to the office manager?'
'In what regard?'
Ness tapped his gold badge. 'Police business.'
'Just a moment,' she said, trying for indignation but seeming mostly unsettled. She rose and walked briskly off, a small-busted, wide-hipped woman in a white blouse and black skirt.
Ness glanced to the left, where the warehouse was. A double doorway was marked NO ADMITTANCE. He returned his gaze to the office area, where he found every eye trained on him, but only for a moment, as the workers returned nervously to their work, all of them having the guilty look that most innocent people have when police intrude into their lives.
The office manager was a man in a vest and loosened tie and rolled-up shirt-sleeves; he was perhaps fifty, stocky and balding, with a rumpled face that had a cigar stuck in its skeptical mouth.
'What sort of police business?' the man asked.
No niceties; just right into it.
'I understand Harry Gibson works for you.'
'That's right. What about it?'
'Where is he?'
'What's this about?'
'I have a warrant for his arrest.'
'Is that right?' The skeptical mouth twisted into a smile. 'But do you have a search warrant for Acme Glass?'
'No. But I will leave armed police at every exit while I go get one. And when I come back, I'll have more than a search warrant. I'll have photographers and reporters from every paper in town. Maybe you'd like the free publicity.'
The mouth lost its skepticism; in fact, it went slack, the cigar clinging to the moisture in one corner.
'Well?' Ness said.
'He's in the warehouse. He has a desk he sits at.'
'Is it in an office?'
'No. Right out in the open. I only have one office back there, and the warehouse manager needs it. Harry, uh…'
'What?'
The man shrugged; now he seemed embarrassed. 'Harry doesn't do much around here, really.'
Ness laughed shortly. 'What a shock.'
Ness walked to the double doors, then turned and saw the office manager standing at a desk with a phone in hand.
'Give Big Jim my best regards,' Ness said pleasantly. 'And tell him he's next.'
The office manager tasted his tongue and nodded, but did not put down the phone.
Ness unbuttoned his topcoat. He unbuttoned his suitcoat underneath. He touched the gun under his arm, half withdrew it from the holster, just to loosen the weapon from the leather binding, and put it back in place. Then he went in.
Off to the left was the slant of the loading-dock area, with three large garage doors. Immediately he passed the warehouse manager's office; the manager-or so he assumed, as the fellow was wearing a shirt and tie-was talking to two men in work denims. All three wore metal helmets. The manager noticed Ness walking by and stepped out of his office with a look of irritation and concern.
Before the man could speak, Ness tapped his badge with a forefinger and said, quietly, 'Harry Gibson.'
The manager made a disgusted face-more out of distaste for Gibson, Ness thought, than anything else- and pointed off into the warehouse area.
Ness moved past a wall of pegboard where various tools hung, past the loft over the manager's office-a loft stacked with truck tires and boxes-and into a world of wood, metal, and glass.
It was a vast high-ceilinged room, cement floor, brick walls. Wood crates of plate-glass sheets, stored upright in metal framework bins, were arranged in rows, with aisles between them, with occasional open work areas where metal-hatted glaziers were cutting glass on large workbenches while others tended a massive machine with rollers on which large plate-glass sheets were being washed. Some of the metal frameworks were two-story affairs, with sheets stored sideways; steel ladders, some of them on rollers, were here and there. The warehouse was a warren of metal framework and wooden racks and glinting green-edged glass.
Looking up, Ness saw a gridwork of metal beams and bars and pipes, with several pulley systems designed to unload trucks and move massive crates of glass. Handcarts with glass sheets roped onto two-sided padded racks, which formed tight upside down V's, were lined up like autos in traffic, though occasionally a dolly, loaded or not, was stalled out in an aisle. But mostly there was row upon row of stacked, crated, racked glass sheets.
It was a big facility, but Cleveland was a big city, and this one warehouse had a good share of that city's glass business in its pocket; no wonder Big Jim Caldwell's income was in six figures.
Toward the back of the building, behind an open area where glaziers were assembling windows-the sound of their hammering not unlike that of machine-gun fire-sat Harry Gibson, at a desk on which his feet were up. He was reading The Police Gazette; his lips were moving. It occurred to Ness that, oddly, he had never seen a policeman reading The Police Gazette. Gibson, whose metal hard hat was on his desk next to a cup of coffee, was wearing denims and work shoes, like the other workers, but his looked unused, like his conscience.
'Hello, Harry.'
Gibson looked away from the pin-up photo he was perusing to regard his visitor. His eyes narrowed; his lumpy face tightened in thought and aggravation.
'What the hell do you want?'
'A word with you.'
'I'm busy, Ness. Go make your headlines at somebody else's expense.'
'You do look busy, Harry. By the way, you're under arrest.'
Gibson sighed heavily, as if to say, Oh, brother; then he grinned. His teeth were a pale yellow, like sweet corn. He hauled his feet down off the desk. He stood. He was a big, brawny son of a bitch, at least two inches taller than Ness.
'What chickenshit charge is it this time, Ness?' Gibson said, sneering down at the detective. 'Breaking windows? Tossing stink bombs?' He shook his head, his greased-back brown hair as motionless as if painted on his scalp. 'Don't you ever get tired of bum-rapping the labor movement?'
Ness took several steps and stood very close to Gibson; he could smell the man's boozy breath. With a small smile, in a quiet voice, Ness said, 'My girl was in the car.'
Gibson, shaken, stepped back a little, not enjoying having Ness right up on him like that, staring up at him coldly. 'W-What… what are you-'
'My girl could have been killed. She was in the car with me when you went duck hunting on the bridge with your tommy gun. That was unwise of you, Harry.'
'You're crazy-you're a goddamn crazy man!'
'We matched the bullets, Harry. We matched them all-we can tie you to the food terminal, and Gordon's
