the casino itself, patrons who'd moved to their cars and then stuck around to watch the raid.
Ness pulled into the Sohio station where Cullitan and his stalled wrecking crew waited. The sirens of the squad cars wound down as they too pulled into the gas station, their cargoes of cops staying aboard. The motorcycle cops remained mounted, engines rumbling.
Ness climbed out of his sedan and shook Cullitan's hand.
The prosecutor smiled. 'The cavalry arrives at last.'
'Any action?'
'I had a little shouting match with Shimmy Patton. I told him it was my job to close the club, and he suggested I quit my 'goddamn job.' He repeated his quaint threat to blow the head off anybody who steps foot inside. 'You got your goddamn homes to protect, and I got my goddamn business to protect.' '
'Mr. Patton is nothing if not colorful. So the state of siege remains?'
He shrugged. 'Well, the patrons are out. Must've been a thousand of 'em. We didn't try to stop them-we didn't want to stop them. Unfortunately, some of the equipment from inside, and of course money, may've been carried out under bulky overcoats. Trucks were pulling out of that parking lot along with the cars. We couldn't really monitor who was leaving. Besides, my warrants don't cover seizure of property outside the club itself.'
The crowd of onlookers was encroaching upon the gas station command post, and Ness put several cops in charge of moving them back. When that was done, he got back in the Ford and drove slowly across the street into the now largely empty parking lot before the sprawling barnlike Harvard Club. The squad cars and motorcycles followed, and Cullitan and his men trailed on foot.
All of the cars and the motorcycles lined up in front of the casino, the headlights cutting at angles through the darkness of the cinder lot, hitting the building like small prison searchlights looking for escaping cons.
'Leave your lights on!' Ness ordered, as he walked from his Ford up the steps of the Harvard Club.
Behind him, uniformed cops were piling out of the squad cars, falling in with Cullitan's private-eye constables. Ness was unarmed, but his cops were armed to the teeth: sawed-off shotguns, tear-gas launchers, riot guns, revolvers and nightsticks.
Ness knocked on the door.
Eyes appeared in the speakeasy peephole.
Ness said, 'I have a search warrant. Open up.'
The peephole slid abruptly shut.
'If that's how you want it,' Ness said, and raised his foot and, with his heel, kicked.
The sound, a splintering crunch, was strangely satisfying to Ness, as was the feel of the physical effort of punching his foot into the wood, the pull of the muscles in his leg.
He did it again.
And again, and that kick was the one that tore off the lock, springing the door, but a safety chain caught it. He kicked once more and the door flew open.
Ness stepped inside onto whorehouse-red carpeting and a big guy in a tux, no gun apparent but with hands open, came at him with a look that was supposed to be mean but seemed to Ness more on the order of constipated. He flipped the guy.
Now two more men approached, even bigger than the thug he'd given the jujitsu treatment to. They were wearing tuxedos and Thompson sub-machine guns. These two, Ness would later learn, were Shimmy Patton's body-guards, the ones who'd threatened McAndrew earlier.
Ness just stood there, his hands empty. He said, 'I'm Eliot Ness. I'm unarmed. I've got a warrant. Killing me would be about the surest ticket to the hot seat I can think of. You guys ambitious to burn?'
They apparently weren't.
Because they looked at each other, and, helping up the guy Ness had thrown, retreated quickly into the casino room.
Ness stepped outside into the headlight-streaked darkness and called out to Cullitan.
'All right,' he said. 'Your men can go on in and serve their warrants now. We'll back you up.'
As Cullitan moved by, Ness cautioned him: 'A couple of hoods inside have machine guns, so take it easy. I don't think they're in the mood to use them, but you never know.'
Sam Wild and other reporters from all the papers- photographers, too-showed up soon thereafter.
But all that was left for the photographers to shoot was a huge, pretty much empty room where open steel beams and catwalks looked down on a cement floor littered with paper, a U-shaped blackjack table, and a few baize dice tables. A gigantic race chart blackboard also remained, but otherwise, the casino had been stripped, the roulette wheels, slot machines and such having somehow been carted away. While the front of the Harvard Club held a well-appointed restaurant and bar, echoing the New Orleans appearance of the building's facade, the sprawling interior of the casino had all the atmosphere of the warehouse it once had been.
Perhaps a score of strong-arms remained, in blue cheeks and tuxes. No guns were in evidence. Patton and a clutch of bodyguards were grouped around the blackjack table. Cullitan sent two of the private eyes over to cuff them, and one thug threw a punch. A private eye punched back and punches from both camps began flying.
Ness crooked his finger and gathered one of his cops and waded in, pulling Patton and his men off the two constables, and Patton jerked away from Ness, saying, 'Don't you try to slug me! You do and you won't get out of this place alive.'
'Really.'
'Lightning's liable to strike you, buddy.' Patton brushed himself off. 'You guys act like gentlemen while you're in here, or you'll wish to hell you had.'
'I see.'
Patten looked at Ness.
Ness looked at Patton.
'I gotta get my coat,' Patton said, and scurried away, ducking into a doorway, followed by several of his 'boys.' The door, marked OFFICE-PRIVATE, slammed.
Ness laughed to himself, and shook his head.
Meanwhile, Press photographer 'Shorty' Philkins had climbed up on top of a stool to snap some pics, and picked as his subject one of Patton's boys who hadn't managed to flee to the office. Said subject quickly kicked the stool out from under Shorty, who fell hard on the cement floor.
Sam Wild, standing nearby and taking some notes, crossed over and swung a haymaker that started at his knees and ended on the chin of the thug, who went down on the cement harder than Shorty had.
There was no love lost between the Harvard Club's surly staff and the gloating reporters, whose papers had been harping about wide-open gambling in greater Cleveland for years, paving the way for raids like tonight's.
So, when the remainder of Patton's strong-arm squad went rushing over to thump Wild, the rest of the reporters picked up on that, and went rushing over themselves, fists flying and folding chairs getting folded over heads and backs. Ness had to go wading in again, some of his uniform boys backing him up, helping him try to pull the foes apart, only it just wasn't taking.
Finally Ness turned to one of the cops and held out his hand, palm up. 'Loan me your service revolver, would you?'
The cop, a surprised young rookie, obeyed.
Ness fired the gun in the air.
Reporters and hoods froze in mid-swing.
Ness smiled at the group and waggled a finger of his free hand at them, as if to say, 'Settle down, kids,' handing the smoking gun back to the startled cop.
Then he called Flynt over and had him herd the thugs into one corner to get them cuffed.
Ness wandered over to Wild, looking down at the sprawling, sleeping hood, who Wild had coldcocked, starting it all.
'In Chicago,' Ness said, 'we call that assault.'
'Good thing we're in Cleveland,' Wild said with a grin, rubbing his bleeding knuckles.
Shorty Philkins was still on the floor as well, but not out cold.
'You might want to get a picture of this,' Ness said to Shorty, helping him up, then heading for the office.
With several of Cullitan's constables backing him up, Ness stood at the door and said, 'I can kick this one
