parish priest ('the gallant lad shielded his father from jailhouse bars, shouldering the blame on himself) won him a Presidential pardon. It paid, young Joe had learned, to put money in the collection plate.
The next family business, engineered by Phillie of course, was importing human hair from Italy to make wigs for American would-be Gibson girls. This went very well, till the Burns Detective Agency proved the Fuscas had conned twenty banks out of nearly a million bucks by taking loans on hair shipments based on phony invoices.
The whole family was caught in New Orleans, boarding a Honduras-bound liner. Joe tried to throw twenty grand overboard, but it landed in a government boat. Phillie again gallantly took the rap for the family, winding up in the Tombs in New York City. He played stoolie for the prosecutors for a year, spying on other prisoners, and earned the gratitude of the law, and a suspended sentence.
Chicago and Prohibition came next. Phillie became a partner in a pharmaceutical manufacturing company, entitling him to five thousand gallons of alcohol a month for production of hair tonic and cough syrup. It was Joe's idea (Phillie was proud) to color and scent the products in such a way that a simple run through a still turned them back into high-proof straight alcohol. A little water, some color and flavoring, and you had stuff 'right off the boat.'
They had to tie in with the Capone crowd, of course, but there was money enough to be had by all.
At least there was until that goddamn Ness had busted the entire operation and put Phillie in stir. Another year and Phillie would be out, and Joe had no doubt great things would start happening again.
Until then he was on his own, picking up on whatever con he could. The Chicago outfit offered him work, but he didn't like all those deaths in the family. Anyway, he preferred grifting.
This cemetery scam was better than most. Cleveland wasn't the only place where this sting was playing. He first broke in his G-man act (fuck you, Ness) in New York, for another cemetery lot sales outfit. The New York cops had finally got wise, and he and two other salesmen had lammed. But Joe had heard about the Cleveland game, and so, here he was.
In front of a creaky old house on East Sixty-sixth.
Joe dug his hands in his topcoat pockets-Christ, it was cold-and made his way up the front walk, and around the side and climbed the rickety steps to what was more an attic than a second floor. Twelve grand, hiding out in a hovel like this. He knocked on the door. Yellow paint dropped off like ugly snowflakes.
The door opened and seventy-three-year-old childless widower Elmer Elsworth answered. A skinny prune- faced geezer in Coke-bottle wire-framed glasses, Elsworth was the first client Joe had encountered in the neighborhood who wasn't a Slovak.
'What can I do for you?' the old man rasped, squinting behind the thick glasses, smiling, immediately friendly. He wore a frayed plaid shirt, suspenders, and well-worn brown trousers. None of the clothing looked any too clean, and Elsworth's face was stubbled white.
Joe showed him the badge, identified himself as Agent White and asked if he could step in out of the cold.
' 'Course you can,' Elsworth said, gesturing graciously. 'Glad for the company. These winter evenings are mighty dull.'
The interior was a shock. It made Joe wonder what made Elsworth so goddamn cheerful. With the exception of a worn easy chair, the room was bare of furniture. Across the room a fire burned in a small coal stove. The colorless wallpaper was ancient and peeling off walls that fell from a slanted, cracked ceiling. There were no curtains on the windows, just weathered shades, pulled down. The wooden floor was bare and dirty. In front of the easy chair was a crate, which served as a table for a plate of beans and a cup of coffee, Elsworth's supper, it would seem. On the floor, near the chair, was a large brass ashtray, a remnant of better days perhaps, filled with cigar butts. The smell of smoke and beans lingered in the air. And on another crate was a lit candle, dripping wax. Somewhere in the darkness, perhaps behind a wall, perhaps not, was a chittering sound. Mice.
'Sorry it's so dark in here,' Elsworth said. 'Don't have no electricity. Place is wired for it, but I just don't care to spend the money. And, well, I'm legally blind, so the devil take it.'
The room was fairly warm from the glowing stove, but it was obvious that otherwise there was no heat either.
'Can I offer you my chair?' Elsworth asked, gesturing toward it.
'No. No thank you. You sit. I'll stand.'
'Mighty neighborly of you,' Elsworth said. He bumped into the crate as he sat, jostling his beans and coffee, and asked Agent White if he'd like some Java. Agent White declined.
'If there's some way I can be of service to the government,' Elsworth said, 'just let me know. I was a babe in arms during the War Between the States, don't you know, and too old for the Great War. But that don't mean I'm not a good American.'
'I'm sure it doesn't,' Joe said. 'Besides, the government is interested in helping you.'
And Joe went into his spiel: he was collecting pass-books in restricted loan companies with the idea of forwarding them to Washington so Mr. Elsworth could get full value, all at once.
Elsworth sat blinking behind the thick glasses and gradually started to smile.
'I knew it,' he said, 'I just knew it.'
'Uh, knew what, Mr. Elsworth?'
'I knew one day my ship would come in. Why, I scrimped and saved all these years… worked for White Motor Company for longer than you've been alive, I'd reckon. Retired some time ago, and I suffered privations, believe you me, preparing for my declining years.'
Jesus Christ, Joe thought, these crazy old coots. What were they waiting for? Elsworth here has a twelve- grand passbook (worth six grand face value, at least) and he lives in a dirty, dreary attic, sitting in the dark, eating his plate of beans, dancing with mice, waiting for what? To get even older?
They didn't deserve their money. They didn't know how to enjoy it. They didn't know anything to do with money but save it. Let somebody have it who knew what to do with it.
Joe Fusca.
'Then you'll stop by in two days with my security bonds, Agent White?'
'That's correct. And I'll see you then. You don't have to get up to show me out. I know the way.'
Elsworth pointed to the coal stove.
'I was just about to stoke up my fire,' he said.
'You just relax,' Agent White said. 'Let me do that for you.'
CHAPTER 9
On Tuesday morning, Eliot Ness sat at the scarred rolltop desk in his spacious wood-and-pebbled-glass office in City Hall, signing papers. Judging by the grin on his face, you'd think that paperwork was his favorite part of his new job. You would be wrong.
These papers were special ones. As he blotted his signatures one by one, he savored his executive position. He was very quietly, in an administrative way, shaking up the city's police department as it had never been shaken up before.
In the midst of this pleasant paperwork, Ness was interrupted by the buzz of the intercom on the desk.
'Captain Cooper is here for his appointment,' his secretary's voice said tinnily.
'Good,' Ness said, leaning into the little speaker box. 'Send him in.'
A tall, balding, round-faced cop of about sixty, Cooper wore a brown suit that looked slept in, and his tie bore a food stain or two. But Ness could grit his teeth and overlook a little personal sloppiness in a cop as hard-working and well-respected as this one.
Cooper, hat in hand, took the chair Ness offered him at one of the conference tables that took up the central part of the room, and Ness sat across from him. Cooper's face was almost as rumpled as his suit, though his light- blue eyes were incongruously benign and even becoming in the midst of his battered features.
'Captain Cooper, I'm naming you acting Detective Bureau chief.'
Cooper opened his mouth, but at first couldn't seem to think of anything to say.
Ness went on. 'And, if the work of the weeks ahead goes at all well, we'll drop the 'acting.' '
